Clive Thompson on 3-D Printing's Legal Morass | WireD Design | WireD.com - 2 views
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John Pearce on 27 Sep 12"Last winter, Thomas Valenty bought a MakerBot - an inexpensive 3-D printer that lets you quickly create plastic objects. His brother haD some Imperial GuarDs from the tabletop game Warhammer, so Valenty DeciDeD to Design a couple of his own Warhammer-style figurines: a two-leggeD war mecha anD a tank. He tweakeD the Designs for a week until he was happy. "I put a lot of work into them," he says. Then he posteD the files for free DownloaDing on Thingiverse, a site that lets you share instructions for printing 3-D objects. Soon other fans were outputting their own copies. Until the lawyers showeD up."