I’m curious how the law treats intellectual property on sites like thingiverse.
If I upload a tool or something that I designed, and someone else prints and sells a hundred of them in their local hardware store, what’s the general consensus on that? Not that I would even find out, but could I sue them for a cut?
It depends on the license specified by you when the design is uploaded. If you use CC then you could add the NC attribute. Only uploading the STL also helps because you keep the original design files and can defend their origin.
FYI, by uploading to thingiverse you give full rights to reproduction/sale of said file to thingiverse so you couldn’t sue them if they broke your license. It’s in their TOS.
If you want to make money from your brilliantly designed “thing”, don’t put it on thingverse, print it and put it on e-bay,
Usually - only the lawyers win - most everyone else looses (something). /~sarc
Omar - where does the Thingiverse ToS allow then to violate CC by A NC for example?
@John_Driggers you license your files as CC (or whatever license you choose) to anyone browsing the site, but you grant an additional, broad license to Makerbot, so they are practically free to use your files in whatever way they see fit.
@Andrew_Mazzotta i’m no lawyer or specialist in legal concerns, but the way I understand it is that there has to be some additional licensing to the platform for the purpose of displaying the content and indirectly monetizing it. However, Makerbot’s TOS give them more liberties than necessary, which is alienating quite a few of the more involved users.