Fellow designer blogger csven has written a great article on his observations on the state of Intellectual property and its future impact on Design and of cause Industrial Design as well. Here is an excerpt: At some point, p2p networks won’t have just mp3 files,they’ll have CAD files. When they do, the first thing that will happenis factories in distant corners of the manufacturing world will startchurning out bootleg product at a pace that will make currentinfringement look like pre-Napster music “sharing”. After that peoplewill start using locally-based fabbing services to rapid manufactureparts the way people used to photocopy stuff at the local copy shop.Eventually, home-based 3D printers {or, possibly in the more distantfuture, nano-factories} will allow people to fab something as easily asthey currently print their digital photos.That’s the future. It’s all up for grabs. Creatives can either try to fight it or they can figure out new business models.This is a multi-fold discussions with many considerations.The Intellectual Property Protection MythPersonally for me I have long given up on this IP nonsense. If yourentire business plan is backed by an IP you got a problem. It takesonly about a 10% modification of a design to over come an IPprotection. Put it this way if you really wanted to take the effort tocopy something its not really that difficult.The reality is an IP only has specific coverage, and if yourtechnology has value and multiple applications then by all meansprotect it and sell it. IP is a sink hole of funds, but if you can farmit out for royalties then go for it!The real rules of the GameThe reality of things are a successful content {music, product,object etc.} is more than IP. It is a well oiled engine of branding,design language, technology, manufacturing, and marketing. All addedtogether makes it a hard act to follow. Just look at Apple? Their products not only push the edge of designminimalism, but their part construction is flawless and extremelydifficult to replicate without specific technology. Furthermore anyvendor that steps out of line with Apple will never survive due totheir brand equity walking out of the door. At the end of the day, my view is copy all you want, but you ain’t getting into the infrastructure I have created. The IP point of it All?On the other end, I find the extent by which IP is often enforced isjust plain ridiculous! As csven laments it has just went overboard andstink of corruption and dirty politics. While copying in any form is always bad, but claiming a loss ofbusiness that forces obscene settlements particularly in the musicindustry? It’s just not logical unless if you can prove if that personwould have bought your product in the first place should such MP3downloads are not available.A cease and desist punishable by the law or fines is good enough. What point is there to bankrupt a poor struggling housewife when her young naive son downloads?IP and CreativesAt the end of the day we are fast approaching a creativity cusp. Amelting pot of fast internet, digital media, and miniaturization ofmanufacturing {fabbing}. When you can download CAD files off the netand “print it” on your desktop, my inclination is to give the filesaway for free! And why not? It takes a big change in mind set, but the reality oftrying to protect digital media is like carrying water in a sieve. From a designer’s stand point, content creation NOT contentprotection will becomes even more and more important. It will alsobecome a discussion of the difference between amateur andprofessionals. I coined the term Hyper-creative in my previous post “Fabbing: A primer for Guerilla Design Strategies”and that will be what design professionals need to become in this newproduct development era ruled by digital media and the Internet.
www.designsojourn.com/the-future-relationship-of-ip-and-industrial-design/