Can you actually think of any examples where "printing" 3D objects that are protected by patents is likely to be a problem in the foreseeable future?

I think that it depends on your definition of 'foreseeable'.

One of the first markets I can see this disrupting are things like war-gaming miniatures, and board gaming pieces, which have a HUGE markup, but could be reproduced in plastic relatively easily after a more few generations of this tech. I'm not sure about patents per-se, but it's certainly an intellectual property issue.

Once these printers gain the ability to draw circuits and build or insert basic electronic components, things will really take off, but even before then there are some big markets for what are basically hunks of plastic and metal that are only expensive because they're well designed/marketed.

Will you be printing off an iPhone in 5 years? Of course not. But that fancy $60 paperweight on your boss's desk? There's a big market for those too.

This made me think of what is potentially a very large market - kids toys. As any parent will tell you, an awful lot of toys (especially for young kids) are cheap bits of plastic where the only "value" is the associated licensing of a brand/character from someone like Disney.

The relevant patents on Lego® bricks expired decades ago, and you would think clone bricks would have flooded the market by now. And yet Legos still sell—even the sets that aren’t licensed brands. My experience with Mega Blocks, cheaper bricks that are supposed to interlock with Legos, is that they don’t interlock very well—the tolerances are just far off enough to cause frustration. There must be something in Lego’s manufacturing process that keeps their quality high even though, on paper, nothing could be easier than replicating their technology.

Lego bricks are easy to replicate on current-generation 3d printers. It's nothing to do with the manufacturing process, it's just that making the molds a bit looser makes them much easier to separate, and cheaper. They also tend to round the peg size up to 5mm, when actual legos are around 4.9. This http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:1005 is a lego-compatible part designed from scratch that describes the issue. Using that, it's easy to make custom parts that attach to legos. Here's one that I designed and someone else printed: http://www.thingiverse.com/derivative:5042

There was also an attempt by Lego to trademark the blocks. That would have prevented competitors from creating compatible designs. However this was recently struck down by the European Court, http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/eu-judges-rul...

Execution is everything, even in something as apparently simple (it isn't!) as a lego brick.

The tolerances, the plastics used, the pigments, all add up to a quality product. The difference is so large that you can tell the 'real' from the 'imitation' just by looking at them, you don't even need to do a trial fit to see which one is which.

Yes, yes. It's not patents that will be the issue for 3D replicas, but branding/trademark/licensing. I can make the Toy Story action figures for my kids, rather than pay Pixar for the rights. I can make Thomas the Train toys.

It's not that there's anything patentable in these items, but the licensing deals associated with things like TV shows and movies takes a serious hit.

In the transformers toy world I have been watching this and wondering what it will do. What does it mean to collectors when anyone can just print off that old toy they had as a kid? How about the brand new toy that just came out? On the flip side it opens the world for accessories and addons to existing toys like never before. Or even for all new toys that fit into the existing toy worlds, enhancing the brand if you will.

More down to earth and something you can make today with any of those: cookie cutters in any shape you want.

Games Workshop already asserts things like this, they get really touchy if you talk about casting models, and they only allow 'official' plastic in tournaments, etc...

The next version of RepRap will supposedly draw circuit traces. It is designed to have interchangeable extruders.

The current one can do that already, with a sharpie. It has managed to replicate its own electronics in this way.

The technology is further along than I'd realized. Probably not economically feasible except for the most marked-up items.

http://www.shapeways.com

It depends on how you define 'problem', but here's one small example ( http://fabathome.org/?q=node/110 ) and I've been reading recently about others. e.g. all kinds of small kitchen, bathroom, and utility items that are currently sold at relatively high margins in stores.

I remember when mp3s were too big to store or move easily, and couldn't be played portably. Piracy was purely a geek thing then. That situation changed incredibly fast.

How about the Glif? http://www.theglif.com/ - They were a Kickstarter project and the actual prototype was made on a 3d printer. The costs to pirate one don't quite make sense yet (I'm pretty certain that even with markup it will be cheaper to buy one from them than print your own currently), but the threat is clearly there.

I also wonder about things like: if you downloaded a file to print your own Glif, but tweaked it for your android phone and made it a different color you're starting to get a transformative work out of the thing.

Maybe the future is mixed atoms and bits (like when you buy a BluRay and it also has a "digital copy" on it for use on your PMP). Maybe when you buy a Glif they'll email you the plan to print your own that you can tweak up.

I don't know, but the underlying problem is very real: counterfeit goods.

If the Consumer Is Not Deceived, It's Not "Counterfeit"

http://www.cepr.net/index.php/blogs/beat-the-press/if-the-co...

I agree in general, however there are circumstances where it's rather a different story: http://news.thomasnet.com/IMT/archives/2009/04/closing-the-d...

I don't see traditional counterfeit goods like watches and perfumes being printed any time soon.

The economic harm caused by both actions is analogous; "printing" goods is basically a more sophisticated way of counterfeiting them.

Counterfeiting implies the intent to deceive the customer. I'm not counterfeiting when I burn a copy of legal music to put in my car's CD changer. If I made many copies and sold them at a flea market, that would be counterfeiting.