INTA Berlin 2017: Lego blueprints may be future in 3D printing world

Although 3D printing of Lego bricks at home may not currently be a feasible option, the future may hold something different, an industry conference heard.

“If I overlook the legal implications, some day we may sell official Lego blueprints,” explained Mette Andersen, corporate counsel at Lego System, Lego’s main line of building elements and minifigures.

She was speaking yesterday, November 30 at INTA’s Brand Authenticity conference in Berlin.

For Lego, 3D printing is nothing new—it’s been using this technology to make prototypes for years.

The Washington Post described 3D printing as potentially Lego’s “biggest test ever”, but Andersen disagrees, adding that Lego welcomes free competition as long as rivals don’t use any of Lego’s trademarks, copyright and patents.

According to Andersen, the two most important questions on this technology for the Denmark-headquartered company are: will people print their own bricks at home, and will the Lego group 3D print lego bricks itself?

With 3D printing today it can take between ten minutes and three hours to print a single brick. There’s also a cost issue, and finding the right material is essential.

But there are two potentially untapped markets.

The first is for special elements that Lego doesn’t make, such as military models. The second is customisation.

There’s a Texas-based 3D printing company looking to fill in the gaps that Lego can’t, and Andersen stated that Lego was accepting of this: “as long as they do it fairly, we accept it”.

Lars Thalmann, co-founder of e-NABLE, shared his story of the community of makers, engineers and designers that build open source 3D printed hands.

When the community was first starting out, they had a fear that some big companies would take designs to make profit.

“We didn’t want to have a price tag on a kid’s smile,” explained Thalmann, adding that the designs were published on open source platform Thingiverse so that others could use them but not sell them for profit.

For John Hornick, partner at Finnegan, Henderson, Farabow, Garrett & Dunner, 3D printing is a disruptive game changer.

The technology, he said, will allow individuals to be able to make things without anyone knowing about them or being able to control the activity, and will democratise manufacturing, where supply can be accessed anywhere in the world to produce goods.

He added that there will be a paradigm shift, with lines beginning to blur between who is the manufacturer and the customer.

“Business models will be forced to evolve … It has the ability to take us back to being makers again, and not buying,” said Hornick. “As democratisation increases, the ability to make things away from control increases and IP eventually becomes irrelevant.”

Citing a report by research and advisory firm Gartner, Hornick said that 3D printing will result in the loss of at least $100 billion in IP globally per year by 2018.

He concluded that 3D printing was a “foe to IP” but a “friend to the world”.

All presenters were speaking in a personal capacity at the conference, which ends today.