Dr. med. Constantin Blanke-Roeser, an alumnus of Bucerius Law School who currently works as a research assistant at the Bucerius IP Center (Center for Transnational IP, Media and Technology Law and Policy), won the best paper award at the interdisciplinary conference “Zukunft der Wertschöpfung” (“The Future of Value Creation”) at Helmut Schmidt University Hamburg.
On December 14-15, 2016, the conference brought together scientists from economic, legal, social-scientific and technical backgrounds who discussed modern concepts such as open innovation, open source, crowdsourcing, value co-creation, as well as the sharing and collaborative-economy, all from an interdisciplinary perspective.
Blanke-Roeser entered the competition with his highly up-to-date work “3D Printing as a Challenge for Patent Law in Europe: Legal and Practical Limits, and Practical Chances for Rights Holders” and was finally awarded with a (matching) prize printed by a 3D printer!
The paper discusses how the costs of 3D printing have been falling for some time, and are expected to decrease even further in the near future. This development will enable a growing number of users to reproduce objects on the basis of computer-aided design (CAD) files. This will also apply to products protected by patents. After a short introduction to the technical background of 3D printing, the paper focuses on the current legal regime under German and European law, and its limitations. This part includes considerations about the ‘European Patent with Unitary Effect’ which is expected to come into force within the next few years. In its last part, the paper deals with possible alternative solutions to the new challenges, and reflects on the role of patent law in times of 3D printing.
The paper is available here.
