"Clone Wars": Episode II - The Next Generation: The Copyright Implications relating to 3D Printing and Computer-Aided Design (CAD) Files

The future market potential of 3D printing will rest on the dissemination of Computer Aided Design (CAD) files. Without clear instructions from a CAD file, a 3D printer will not function. In fact, “a 3D printer without an attached computer and a good design file is as useless as an iPod without music”. The importance of CAD-based design files, therefore, cannot be underestimated. Drawing on UK and EU copyright laws and their application to 3D printing and CAD files, this paper will, first, question whether CAD files can be protected by copyright law before considering the copyright implications thrown up by the modification of CAD files as a result of scanning and the use of online tools. Highlighting some of the challenges for rights holders and users existent in the present law the paper advocates new business models over a premature call for stringent intellectual property laws before concluding with some recommendations for the future

Balancing, Proportionality, and Constitutional Rights

In the theory and practice of constitutional adjudication, proportionality review plays a crucial role. At a theoretical level, it lies at core of the debate on rights adjudication; in judicial practice, it is a widespread decision-making model characterizing the action of constitutional, supra-national and international courts. Despite its circulation and centrality in contemporary legal discourse, proportionality in rights-adjudication is still extremely controversial. It raises normative questions—concerning its justification and limits—and descriptive questions—regarding its nature and distinctive features. The chapter addresses both orders of questions. Part I centres on the justification of proportionality review, the connection between proportionality, balancing and theories of rights and the critical aspects of this connection. Part II identifies and analyses the different forms of proportionality both in review, as a template for rights-adjudication, and of review, as a way of defining the scope and limits of adjudication

Trustworthy 100-Year Digital Objects: Durable Encoding for When It's Too Late to Ask

How can an author store digital information so that it will be reliably intelligible, even years later when he is no longer available to answer questions? Methods that might work are not good enough; what is preserved today should be reliably intelligible whenever someone wants it. Prior proposals fail because they generally confound saved data with irrelevant details of today’s information technology—details that are difficult to define, extract, and save completely and accurately. We use a virtual machine to represent and eventually to render any data whatsoever. We focus on a case of intermediate difficulty—an executable procedure—and identify a variant for every other data type. This solution might be more elaborate than needed to render some text, image, audio, or video data. Simple data can be preserved as representations using well-known standards. We sketch practical methods for files ranging from simple structures to those containing computer programs, treating simple cases here and deferring complex cases for future work. Enough of the complete solution is known to enable practical aggressive preservation programs today.

Digitising the public domain: Non original photographs in comparative EU copyright law

The purpose of this chapter is to explore the legal consequences of the digitisation of cultural heritage institutions’ collections and in particular to establish whether digitisation processes can trigger forms copyright and copyright-related protection under EU law. Whereas the study will also look at the originality requirement for copyright protection in the digitisation of physical items, the main objective lies elsewhere, namely in forms of protection for non-original photographs. In fact, in some EU Member States (MS) a dedicated related (or neighbouring) right to copyright is available for the protection of “other photographs” that is to say photographs which are not original. The chapter’s working hypothesis postulates that in a vast majority of situations digitisation processes do not attract, nor should attract, any form of protection based on copyright and related rights. Nonetheless, in some limited cases, protection afforded by copyright and by the neighbouring right protecting “other” photographs may be available