Copyright protection in additive manufacturing

Abstract

Additive Manufacturing (AM) has been proven to be a significant development for production as well as become an attractive alternative manufacturing process compared with Subtractive Manufacturing (SM). This can be explained by the massive advantages of AM including mass customisation, less material wastage and ability to create prototypes. However, in order to make use of the AM process, firms, developers and designers require a virtual sharing platform, which can be used to trade designs and make the whole industry better off. This desire requires ways to protect the models and designs from digital thieves. Moreover, internal transactions of designs inside a single firm also require a significant level of security. So, this paper offers different ways of protecting both physical models and virtual designs. The solutions in this paper can be used to ensure the integrity of the physical products and virtual designs during different kinds of transactions.