TECHNOLOGICAL advancements have yielded enormous benefits to businesses and its customers alike.
For instance, the advent of three dimension (3D) printing technology has now enabled customers to have an opportunity to make some of their own products rather than rely on manufacturers!
That sounds fascinating, doesn’t it? Yes, it does!
As we saw last week, RMIT University in Australia used Directed Energy Deposition to repair the leading edge of hundreds of turbine blades used in power generation.
RMIT repaired the blades on site, using portable 3D printing equipment.
Once again, I am grateful to the Herriot Watt University, Scotland as well as to John Hornick, a Patent and Trade Mark Litigator and author in the United States (US), for the special copyright permission granted for the benefit of our column.
John Hornick also offered his invaluable expert legal advice on this subject and also allowed me to use an extract from his book “3D Printing Will Rock the World”
Imagine, the global 3D printing industry is expected to grow from $3.07 billion in revenue in 2013 to $12.8 billion by 2018, and exceed $21billion in worldwide revenue by 2020.
As it develops, 3D printing technology is destined to transform almost every major industry and change the way we live, work, and play in the future.
Research reveals that every time a 3D print is successfully done, a manufacturers brand is one step closer to ceasing mass production of the original product.
Why should one buy an expensive branded product when he or she can print a generic substitute, especially if the blueprint for the generic amounts to substantial cost savings?
This may likely be a brand infringement!
The multi-million Kwacha question that arises is: “Will customers still buy genuine branded products if they can more cheaply obtain blueprints and possibly customise products themselves?”
As we have previously alluded to on this column, counterfeit products are a drain on lawful businesses.
However, brand owners will have options to fight back against the counterfeiters.
This problem will not be fundamentally different from brand counterfeiting we experience today, except that it will inevitably be on a much larger scale.
This time part of this counterfeiting will not only be in form of goods being sold to a third party, it will have to take the form of a customer doing a substantial repair to his own spare part!
Assuming Zambian laws do not regard repairs to one’s own spare parts as a patent and trademark infringement, then the effect of 3D printing technology is likely to be heavier in countries like ours than in the US.
Additionally, repair can be infringement if the part is essentially replaced.
That is the US, but how vigilant are our manufacturers in Zambia and how easy is it to enforce their patent rights by law?
These are some of the questions that may need to be answered sooner than later!
The battle on whether 3D print technology will save the customer from the capitalistic manufacturer is a matter of time to tell.
To survive this undesirable competition, brand owners will be forced to provide added value, which will lead some consumers to continue to want and even demand authentic branded products.
A number of customers will definitely pay a premium for genuine and the guaranteed safety of highly tested branded goods.
On the other extreme, many customers will print the products themselves. Often times, price and other factors will obviously affect each customer’s decision.
As 3D printing liberates manufacturing, manufacturers will be forced to police the marketplace for counterfeits.
However, identifying genuine products will be a mammoth task in a 3D-printed world. The other issue that I have noted is the reluctance of our manufacturers to collaborate.
It is possible for other equipment manufacturers to fall prey to “me too strategies” by copying the competition and selling printable 3-D digital blueprints rather than making products.
This would possibly make some of our manufacturers digital design companies and lead them to consequently close their production plants.
IBM is reported to have carried out a case study in 2013 on 3-D printing and reported that:
“For leading global companies to prosper in this new environment, radical change is essential.”
Some companies will take full advantage of the implications of 3-D printing while other companies will not be so lucky, they will have to die.
We have a number of cases in history of companies like as Kodak, which failed to adapt to the digital imaging revolution and history may have a way of repeating itself.
Whether the effects of 3D printing on our economy will be devastating or not may depend on the answers that we will honestly give to the following questions:
(i) Will our cultural mindset consider repairing a branded product using 3D as a brand infringement?
(ii) Are our manufacturers vigilant enough to police their products on the market?
The effects of counterfeiting are likely to be more pronounced on developing countries than the developed world where this technology is being advanced from.
Previously, we noted that some countries are havens of counterfeit goods production.
For comments e-mail: ntumbograndy@yahoo.com Mobile +260977403113 +260955403113
The author is the Managing Consultant at GN Grant Business Consultant, a fellow of the Association of Chartered Certified Accountants (ACCA), a Master of Business Administration (MBA) holder and a candidate for the Herriot Watt University (Scotland) Doctor of Business Administration (DBA)