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"  While browsing thingiverse.com, a popular site for sharing design files for 3D printing, you&amp;#039;ll see more than 50 downloadable digital blueprints for everything Yoda, including cuff links, custom key chains, and plastic figurines. Perhaps because the threat of revenue loss is so minimal on a Star Wars cultural icon that&amp;#039;s been around for more than 35 years, Disney (Yoda&amp;#039;s new master) has not yet tried to prevent fans from 3D printing their own plastic versions of the company&amp;#039;s copyrighted, pointy-eared gnome.  Other media companies have not been so pragmatic. When the Belgian company Moulinsart discovered 3D printing designs on thingiverse.com for the cartoon rocket of their beloved character Tintin, it asked the site owners to take down the offending files. Last year HBO sent designer Fernando Sosa a Digital Millennium Copyright Act takedown notice, insisting that Sosa stop selling his 3D-printed Game of Thrones iPhone dock.  Tech-savvy people know that a 3D printer is a manufacturing machine that creates physical objects by layering raw material according to instructions from a digital blueprint. The technology has been around for decades, but in the past five years consumer 3D printers have vaulted the process into the mainstream. Amid the excitement, however, lurks concern over intellectual-property rights as users gain the ability to produce unauthorized copies of copyrighted, patented, or trademarked products. The market research firm Gartner predicts that by 2018, businesses will lose more than $100 billion a year to 3D-printing-enabled IP theft. We&amp;#039;ve covered the field since its inception, and we believe it&amp;#039;s highly unlikely that in the next few years markets will be flooded with counterfeit 3D-printed products. Here&amp;#039;s why. Bits vs Atoms Fifteen years ago the music and media industries became targets for IP disruption when digital media files replaced compact discs and paper books. Unlike a CD, DVD, or book, digital files are easy to copy, and once consumers began sharing content over the Internet, big-media companies began bleeding revenue. There&amp;#039;s a world of difference, however, between making a copy of an MP3 file and making a copy of an object. Despite ever-improving software, scanners, and 3D printers, it&amp;#039;s still challenging to print high-quality replicas of cheap, mass-produced physical things. The process is ruled by the laws of physics. Raw materials come into play. Tyrannies of time and distance introduce cost and complexity to the process.  It&amp;#039;s a Multimaterial World If you look around your home or office, you&amp;#039;ll notice most of the things that surround you are made of several kinds of materials. Even the humble pencil consists of wood, metal, rubber, and a graphite\u2013clay compound. It will be years before a consumer-priced 3D printer is capable of fabricating an object composed of such different substances. Because of this, materials limitations will continue to have a dampening effect on widespread 3D-printed counterfeiting. Slow Manufacturing Even if multimaterial 3D printing becomes affordable, there&amp;#039;s another challenge: time. 3D printing is slow. It takes seconds, at most, to copy a song, but hours to copy even a simple plastic cup. Imagine a counterfeiter from the future who buys a multimaterial 3D printer and sets up a shadow factory. She painstakingly prints copies of name-brand products, puts her wares up for sale, and learns a hard economic lesson: 3D-printed items do not benefit from economies of scale, which makes the process an unattractive method for brazen piracy. Few customers would opt to pay more for a higher-priced, 3D-printed counterfeit than for an identical name-brand original. Who Will Be Affected? The companies that will struggle to compete with 3D-printed knockoffs share two characteristics: Their product lines could be described as overpriced plastic, and their profit margins rely on vigorous IP enforcement. In addition to the toy industry, another such market segment is the replacement-car-part industry. Big automakers control that market by using design patents to block competitors from making lower-cost generic versions of bumpers and other parts. Once 3D-printed generics become available, it&amp;#039;s going to be difficult for rights-owning companies to convince customers to pay their steeply marked-up prices. Why spend $100 for a floor mat when you could download the design file and print out the object on a home machine, or pay a professional 3D-printing service to do it for you for a fraction of the price?  Embrace It, Don&amp;#039;t Fight It We predict that 3D-printing technologies will create new markets, not gut profits from existing ones. The toy company Hasbro recently signed a partnership with 3D Systems to codevelop a website where children can design and print their own custom plastic Hasbro toys. Smart companies will add value to existing products or entice customers to pay a premium to purchase authentic products that come with a quality guarantee. Wise companies will embrace 3D printing to enrich the users&amp;#039; experience, not embark on quixotic IP battles against their own customers. Melba Kurman is an author and the founder of the technology consulting firm Triple Helix Innovation. Hod Lipson is a Cornell University roboticist who won a 2007 PM Breakthrough Award for Fab@Home, a tabletop-3D-printer kit designed for consumers. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/gadgets/a10687/why-you-shouldnt-worry-about-3d-printed-piracy-16841445/>