Date: 12 July 2016
Event: 3D Printing and IP Law Research Seminar
Location: Institute of Advanced Legal Studies, London
Additive manufacturing or ‘3D printing’ has emerged into the mainstream in the last few years, with much hype about its revolutionary potential as the latest ‘disruptive technology’ after the Internet to destroy existing business models, empower individuals and evade any kind of government control. This lecture examined some of these themes from a socio-legal perspective, looking at how various areas of law (including intellectual property, product liability, gun laws, data privacy and fundamental/constitutional rights) interact with 3D printing theoretically and in practice and comparing this interaction to that of the Internet before it. Despite rhetoric proclaiming that it is ushering in the end of government control and corporate-enforced scarcity, 3D printing, especially consumer-oriented printers, may not be as disruptive to law and society as commonly believed. This is because 3D printing is not just empowering ‘prosumers’, but government and corporate actors that have been investigating the potential of 3D printing for their own purposes, which may in the end just reinforce existing hierarchies and distributions of power.
This seminar was followed by the book launch of ‘Socio-Legal Aspects of the 3D Printing Revolution’ by Angela Daly (Palgrave, 2016).
Biographies:
Angela Daly recently joined Queensland University of Technology’s Faculty of Law as Vice Chancellor’s Research Fellow and research associate at the Tilburg Institute for Law, Technology and Society. She is a socio-legal scholar of technology with expertise in intellectual property, human rights (privacy and free expression), and competition and regulation. She is the author of ‘Socio-Legal Aspects of the 3D Printing Revolution’ (Palgrave 2016), which was based on her postdoctoral research at the Swinburne Institute for Social Research, and ‘Private Power, Online Information Flows and EU Law’ (Hart 2017), which was based on her doctoral research at the European University Institute. She also has degrees from Oxford University and the Université de Paris 1 Pantheon-Sorbonne and has previously worked for Ofcom and the Electronic Frontier Foundation.
Dinusha Mendis is an Associate Professor in Law at Bournemouth University and Co-Director of the Centre for Intellectual Property Policy and Management (CIPPM). Dinusha specialises in Intellectual Property Law, in particular copyright law, copyright licensing and digital copyright policy, and has published widely in this area. Her research also includes exploring the challenges to intellectual property law as a result of emerging technologies. In this context, she has conducted extensive funded and independent research on the intellectual property implications of 3D printing and emerging technologies. She has been invited to speak on the topic at the European Parliament; the Office for Harmonization in the Internal Market (OHIM); the UK House of Lords and at various academic organisations, as well as for blue-chip industry clients. During 2015, Dinusha was on research leave and held appointments as a Visiting Scholar at the University of Tasmania Australia and Stanford Law School, University of Stanford California. Dinusha holds qualifications from the Universities of Aberdeen (LLB (Hons)); Edinburgh (LLM, PhD); Nottingham Trent University (BVC), has been Called to the Bar of England and Wales and is a member of the Honourable Society of the Middle Temple Inn, London.
Reference: Information Law and Policy Center
