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Just 3d print it lawsuit
Round 4 (!) of Thing 1350837 – Michael Weinberg
Because, why not, it appears that we have arrived at round 4 of Just 3D Print vs The World. In this round, Just 3D Print is bringing a new lawsuit* (it lost the last one) against the media company 3DR Holdings for reporting on Just 3D Print’s shenanigans. The tl;dr version of this round is that Just 3D Print has brought no new evidence to the table and its claims this time seem just as big of a waste of time in Round 4 as they did in Round 3. There do not appear to be any good reasons left to continue this lawsuit, although there are potentially one or two bad ones (see below).
The deep background is here, but at this point the short version is: Just 3D Print downloaded hundreds of models from Thingivese and, in violation of their licenses, started selling 3D prints of the models on eBay. This resulted in pushback from the community and media coverage. After the models were removed from eBay, Just 3D Print commenced a number of lawsuits against media outlets that covered the drama. The lawsuits claimed that the negative coverage cost Just 3D Print a $100,000,000 business. Courts that addressed the merits of Just 3D Print’s claims have all ruled against Just 3D Print. Courts came to this conclusion because, among other things, we are in America and reporting on public behavior and having opinions about public controversies is not illegal.
3DR Holdings owns websites like 3DPrint.com and 3DPrintingIndustry.com. Just 3D Print sued 3DR for its coverage of the dispute. Just 3D Print claimed that 3DR defamed Just 3D Print by reporting on the controversy surrounding the Thingverse/eBay models and that the defamation caused Just 3D Print damage (mostly in the form of lost business opportunities and sales). In Round 3 of this dispute, a court found that 3DR did not defame Just 3D Print because 1) 3DR’s post was not defamatory, and 2) even if they were defamatory, Just 3D Print failed to prove that 3DR’s actions were in any way related to any harm experienced by Just 3D Print.
The court did not need to determine if any copyright infringement actually occurred in the underlying dispute in order to reach this conclusion.
That original case was in Philadelphia Municipal Court and was resolved in August of 2017. As best as I can tell, Municipal Court appears to be the local equivalent of small claims court.** In October of 2017 Just 3D Print filed a new case against 3DR in the Court of Common Pleas, which appears to be the PA civil court. According to the Municipal Court’s website anyone involved in a case in Municipal Court can appeal the decision to the Court of Common Pleas for a trial de novo. De novo means that the Court of Common Pleas will reexamine the facts of the case itself instead of just relying on the factual conclusions of the Municipal Court. Again according to the Municipal Court’s website, less than 3% of cases in Municipal Court are appealed up to the more formal Court of Common Pleas.
The New ComplaintThe original complaint in Municipal Court by Just 3D Print is short enough to easily reproduce here:
ON FEBRUARY 21, 2016 THE PLAINTIFF STATES THE DEFENDANT PUBLISHED AN ARTICLE ON LINE (PLEASE SEE ATTACHED EXHIBIT).
THE PLAINTIFF STATES THAT THE ARTICLE CONTAINED FALSE AND DEFAMATORY IN NATURE INFORMATION. DUE TO THIS ARTICLE, THAT PLAINTIFF’S COMPANY LOST PROJECTED REVENUE IN EXCESS OF
$100,000,000.00. THE PLAINTIFF HAS CONTACTED THE DEFENDANT VIA MAIL TO ATTEMPT TO RESOLVE THIS MATTER TO NO AVAIL. THE PLAINTIFF IS AWARE OF OUR JURISDICTIONAL LIMIT OF $12,000.00 AND FORFEITS ANY AND ALL MONIES OVER THIS AMOUNT. THE PLAINTIFF NOW SEEKS A JUDGMENT IN THE AMOUNT OF $12000.00 PLUS COURT COSTS.
The new complaint makes essentially the same sets of claims in full-blown-civil-complaint form, which means that it is long enough that I’ll just link to it here. Once again, Just 3D Print claims that 3DR’s articles about Just 3D Print’s antics cost it a thriving business. As a result, Just 3D Print is asking the court to award it $150,000 in damages ($50,000 each for defamation, unfair trade practices, and tortuous interference. All three of these claims are attempts to show that the same original reporting caused trouble for Just 3D Print under slightly different legal theories).
I could spend another few thousand words working through these claims, talking about the procedural fights they contain and why the entire case may be dismissed without a substantive decision by the court because Just 3D Print may have failed to follow various administrative rules, but my and your life is finite so I won’t. This is basically another round of the same dance that we saw in Round 3 moved to a slightly larger court. That means that the post outlining Round 3 takes care of most of the substance.
At this point I have no idea what purpose this case is serving. It does seem to be effective at wasting a lot of people’s time. It is also starting to develop the characteristics of the types of cases that are brought to intimidate critics and find scapegoats for the failure of stupid business ideas. Without even getting to the question of if there was copyright infringement or not, two courts have already concluded that the reporting in question here is not the type of behavior that can trigger defamation.
Just 3D Print does not appear to have found any new evidence to call that basic conclusion into question or any substantive reason why those courts are incorrect.
Even if a court came to a different conclusion – a change that would strike me as unreasonable without some sort of unexpected additional evidence – in the Round 3 post I explained why 1) there does not actually seem to be a link between any of the reporting in question and the models being taken down by eBay, which is nominally how the harm was caused, and 2) if the public facts are correct it is pretty clear to me that Just 3D Print did infringe on a number of copyrights. Oh, also, $100,000,000 in lost business opportunities?
Why Does This Matter?In the previous post I wrote that I’ve been following this case because
“we are still in a formative time in the context of 3D printing, copyright, and Creative Commons licensing. While there is some ambiguity, there isn’t total ambiguity.
Throwing settled areas of copyright law into question does not help work towards a solution for the complicated stuff. When there are legitimate disagreements about the intersection of 3D printing, copyright, and Creative Commons licenses, they are important to explore. But if someone is bringing dubious claims into a discussion it is important to identify them as such as quickly as possible.”
That’s still true. However at this point it seems like this case is also evolving into an example of someone trying to use the legal system to discourage criticism they do not like, or to suppress discussions of events they wish were not widely discussed. Just 3D Print has every right to bring these cases if it believes that it has been wronged. Similarly I – and 3DR and anyone else for that matter – has every right to report on Just 3D Print’s antics and to clearly state that they think that Just 3D Print is abusing the legal system to harass a critic and pass the blame.
Which I’ll do now: I believe that Just 3D Print is abusing the legal system to harass a critic and pass the blame for the failure of its incredibly ill conceived business onto anyone else.
To the extent that there is a Round 5 of this case (and boy do I hope there is not), my guess that it will finally move beyond the copyright questions – the answers to those are pretty clear. Instead, any Round 5 will likely be about Just 3D Print trying to find new ways to harass critics and justify its bad behavior via lawsuit. That’s something I wouldn’t usually write about here, but I guess at this point I’m in for a penny, in for a pound.
As always, I’ll update this post if and when there is additional information. If you have such information, contact me however you please.
* This new round was brought to my attention by the team at All3dp.com. You can read their coverage here. Also, because it is always a good practice when writing about lawsuits, here’s a link to Just 3D Print’s complaint and amended complaint, as well as 3DRs responses.
**This seems like a good place to reiterate once again that I am in no way an expert in Pennsylvania law or the structure of its courts. Like anything I write in relation to this case, this post is my personal best understanding and opinion but should not be confused with a statement of legal fact. It also isn’t legal advice. I’ll update this post as the inevitable errors emerge.
Sad face image courtesy of Loubie.
Just3DPrint Loses Defamation Lawsuit Against 3DPrint.com, But IP Piracy in the 3D Printing Industry Remains - 3DPrint.com
Sad Face by Thingiverse user Loubie.
Beleaguered 3D printing startup Just3DPrint (Just Print It Inc.) lost its long shot defamation lawsuit against 3DPrint.com parent company 3DR Holdings this month, the last of three legal battles that they filed in a Philadelphia court in February of this year. The case was filed by Just3DPrint CEO Ryan Simms in response to our coverage of their unauthorized sale of copyrighted 3D models and their subsequent public comments on the matter.
Simms claimed that several articles written by me and published on 3DPrint.com in February of 2016 were defamatory and cost the nascent company an astonishingly unlikely sum of $100 million. Simms’ claims were rejected by the court, with the ruling judge saying that he failed to prove that any lost revenue was caused by our negative coverage. The company also filed and lost a similar lawsuit against TechCrunch, and filed a case against Stratasys, who declined to defend themselves, instead choosing to take the case to arbitration.
Back in mid-February of 2016 I was forwarded a link to a new 3D model that had been uploaded to model sharing marketplace Thingiverse by popular user Loubie, who has been written about on 3DPrint.com several times over the years. The simple Sad Face model was uploaded with information about an eBay seller that was selling 3D printed versions of models uploaded to Thingiverse despite many of the models having restrictive licenses that should have prevented their use in such a manner.
Loubie found one of her models in the eBay store of Just3DPrint and was rebuffed when she contacted them asking that it be removed. A new Thingiverse user named JPI, presumably Simms himself, subsequently took to the model’s comment section and began explaining his reasoning in a tone that was equally confrontational, condescending and dismissive. The community fired back and inundated eBay with complaints and takedown requests, leading to the site to eventually suspend Just3DPrint’s account entirely.
You can read the entire saga here, here and here.
Just3DPrint’s complaint against 3DPrint.com filed in a Philadelphia court.
A full year later Simms filed a lawsuit against 3DPrint.com’s parent company 3DR Holdings for defamation, claiming that our original article, published February 20th 2016, “is defamatory in nature and has caused my firm considerable harm.” In his complaint, Simms claimed that his young company lost an estimated $100 million, as they were on the cusp of generating nearly $2 million a month.
He also claimed that they lost a contract that would have generated $10,000 a year in revenue, lost two advisors from their board of directors and countless business opportunities based on our article being one of the top Google hits on their business name.
When YouTube’s 3D Printing Nerd Joel Telling examined the count documents he found that when eBay suspended their account Just3DPrint had only brought in about $2,000 over the previous five months combined. Those numbers make their projected revenue claims of $2 million a month seem a bit over exaggerated. However proving a loss of revenue wouldn’t be Simms’ primary concern, proving to a court that I willfully defamed him while reporting on facts as I saw them would be. While my tone in the original article was, at times, pointed, I was very clear that I myself wasn’t a lawyer and was speaking as an informed layman. I was also responding to things directly said by Simms or a representative of Just3DPrint, allowing their own statements to speak for themselves.
Proving defamation would be an uphill battle, and thankfully the court agreed:
“Other than factually summarizing the dispute between Loubie and the plaintiff and on occasion using somewhat ‘unflattering’ words to describe the plaintiff’s conduct, there is nothing in any of the articles which would lead this court to find the publications to be defamatory. In fact, the tone of the defendant’s articles is no different than the tone in the plaintiff’s February 19th comment on Thingiverse,” wrote Judge Pittman in his judgement.
Excerpt from Judge Pittman’s judgement.
According to Pittman, Simms failed to demonstrate that the original article met the legal definition of defamation as well as failed to prove that there was any special harm caused by its publication. While Pittman notes that Just3DPrint did lose revenue when their eBay account was suspended they failed to prove that the 3DPrint.com article played any part in its suspension. Just3DPrint didn’t even provide the court with an official reason for the account suspension or explain why eBay chose to suspend it, they just made a dubious claim about our involvement that they did not manage to back up with any evidence, even after the court asked them to do so.
The ruling was, naturally, a welcome one, but it didn’t happen by accident. The case was taken very seriously by 3DR Holdings and our editorial staff at 3DPrint.com. While I was assured that no one at the company believed that myself or 3DPrint.com had done anything wrong, being accused of intentionally harming someone is never pleasant. Thankfully our attorneys were successfully able to argue that Simms had completely failed to prove his case. I’ve attached our defending brief at the bottom of this article; it’s a pretty satisfying read, especially in the face of a legal challenge from someone who seemingly made up legal precedent as he saw fit.
“This lawsuit has touched on a number of important issues in today’s digital world; intellectual property, rights of use, responsibility of businesses/designers/customers, file sharing platforms, freedom of the press. The attention the matter has gained across the entire 3D printing community — and beyond, as echoes have been felt across digital file sharing and other businesses — points to the importance of IP as we digitize and make available designs and other files.
It is our hope that this case will set a precedent in that integrity remains a critical business value in the press and in 3D printing,” said 3DPrint.com Editor-in-Chief Sarah Goehrke.
It is a relief that that the legal case is finally settled, but 3DPrint.com still needed to spend a lot of time and money defending our publication’s reputation, my professional reputation and the freedom of the press. It’s frustrating that rather than move on from a few poor business decisions Simms chose to attack us through the courts, seemingly as retaliation for my articles. It was not 3DPrint.com or TechCrunch or Stratasys or even Loubie and the other 3D designers, who had their hard work stolen against their wishes, who chose to ignore the law. None of us made the choice to defy legally binding and clearly identifiable copyrights in order to make a few bucks on eBay. Thankfully we are a publication that was in a position to spend the time and money required to defend ourselves. It’s sad that many hard working 3D designers do not have those same resources available to them in the face of injustice.
“It is nice that ‘right’ won out as sometimes the legal system can throw one a curveball,” said 3DR Holdings President Alan Meckler. “We had to defend our business and writers.”
Just3DPrint was just one of countless shady businesses who defy notoriously unsettled and unwritten IP laws in our industry. This one business was shut down due to overwhelming community action, but eBay still looks the other way with countless other similarly shady businesses. As I pointed out in one of my original articles on the subject, this was a disaster entirely of Just3DPrint’s own making. Had Simms, or whoever publicly addressed the issue, not made their inflammatory and specious legal claims it is likely that they would not have suffered the closure of their store. Had they simply removed Loubie’s design when asked they would likely have continued be to allowed to make money off of the work of others, and nothing would have happened to them. That is, in my mind, a far larger crime than the one that actually started this whole mess.
Here is a PDF of the full legal brief provided by the defense.
Discuss in the Lawsuit forum at 3DPB.com.
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Tagged with: 3D printing and intellectual property • 3d printing lawsuits • 3dPrint.com • 3dr holdings • copyrights • creative commons • Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike license • creative commons license • ebay • intellectual property • ip • ip law • just3dprint • lawsuit • legal judgements • Loubie • makerbot • Ryan Simms • Sarah Anderson Goehrke • Scott J Grunewald • stratasys • Tech Crunch • techcrunch • thingiverse
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3D printer as a service - does it make sense? / Habr
Our company has one main project that we have been working on for more than four years.
During this time, we have acquired a lot of rather specific knowledge and skills in the field of development, manufacture and logistics of electronic products. One of the problems that electronics designers face is making cases. And if there are no special surprises with their mass production for a long time (only three things are needed - money, money and money), then with prototyping, until recently, everything was very difficult. And suddenly the era of 3D printers has come!
We are ripe for buying ourselves a 3D printer. Naturally, we will use it in our projects, but we are unlikely to be able to provide (at least for the first time) 100% load. We know for sure that many companies provide printing services on their devices to everyone. So, it is proposed to discuss the "ideal" 3D printing service - what should it be?
The fact is that one of the by-products of our main project is the entry of one of our companies into the Special Economic Zone. The status of a SEZ resident gives (among other things) the opportunity to save on the purchase of equipment - there are no customs duties and import VAT.
We will have to customs the consumables in the usual way, but for the printer itself we will not pay anything in excess of its price and the cost of delivery to our office. It's great, right?
Another of our "tricks" (which was born as part of the work on the main project) is the ability to buy anything cheap in China, control the quality of the purchase on the spot and inexpensively deliver the purchase to Moscow. It is clear that the printer can be bought outside of China, but there is a suspicion that in China you can find something very tasty for much less money than, for example, in the USA (although if it suddenly turns out that the best option is sold in the USA or Australia - we can also buy it without any problems).
And here the well-known problem of choice arises. There are so many delicious things on the market in terms of 3D printing right now - it’s just dizzying! Therefore, the first question to the community is: what to take in the budget, for example, up to 10K USD? What is it now - the 3D printer of our dreams? We need printing from ABS - does it make sense to consider universal units that can also use PLA? Or maybe it's better in this budget to buy two printers for different materials? What sizes of products are in demand - is it necessary to chase large platforms? Plastic of different colors - is it necessary? Maybe just white and/or black is enough?
If we bought a printer only for ourselves, we would answer all these questions ourselves.
There are suitable candidates (and even in a budget of up to 1500 USD), and an understanding of what we need in terms of materials ... But, once again, why not do a good deed to our colleagues? Gentlemen, what do you need for ?
Now for the actual service.
3D printing "to order" is not our core business. We are not going to “make a fortune” on this, but the extra money for our tiny company will not hurt. Therefore, the pricing of the service will be extremely transparent - the cost (which consists of the cost of consumables, electricity and the salary of the personnel involved in this particular order) plus a reasonable margin (say, 20-25%). So the prices promise to be very humane.
With the terms a little less rosy: it may take several working days for production, legal export from the territory of the SEZ and delivery to Moscow.
In terms of additional attraction, we plan to provide customers with access to a webcam that will show the process of printing their order online.
Well, or someone comes to us (this is not very simple, but in principle possible) and rents “printer time” right on the spot.
Another possible service: after successful prototyping, we will be able to organize industrial production. There is a Russian company that can do this, but there is a common Russian problem - we need circulation, or rather, even - CIRCULATIONS . There are our proven Chinese who will make an industrial batch cheaply and cheerfully, and we will bring the result here. In general, we can help with this too.
So, gentlemen, there are two main questions:
1. Does it make sense to bother with all this or just buy a 3D printer for our needs and use it “secretly”?
2. If we imagine that we do organize such a service, then (subject to reasonable prices) what else would you like to receive from such a service?
Well, advice/suggestions on specific printer models and types of consumables are welcome.
White House sued over 3D printed weapons blueprints
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07/31/2018 16:42:09 Sergey Chernobay
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Attorneys general of eight US states and the metropolitan District of Columbia filed a lawsuit against the administration of US President Donald Trump to force it to stop the publication of weapons blueprints for 3D printers in the public domain.
“It's crazy to give criminals the tools to create untraceable, undetectable 3D printed pistols at the touch of a button, but that's exactly what the Trump administration is allowing. We cannot stand by while this abrupt change of course by the federal government threatens the safety of New Yorkers," New York State Attorney General Barbara Underwood said in a statement.
The lawsuit was also signed by the Attorneys General of Washington, Massachusetts, Connecticut, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Oregon, Maryland, New York and the District of Columbia.
In June 2018, US authorities allowed Defense Distributed to post on the Internet drawings of weapons that can be "printed" from plastic using a 3D printer. According to company founder Cody Wilson, his firm plans to do this by August 1st.
In an interview with CNN on Monday, Defense Distributed legal adviser Josh Blackman stressed that 3D printed guns do not pose a gun-trafficking problem and "9The 0058 case is about freedom of speech, not arms trafficking.
