The potential for counterfeiting and intellectual property theft or transgression—intentional or not—abound with 3D printing. It has already become challenging to efficiently protect innovation due to the speed and availability of technology today; securing a patent for something one has created is slow, and jeopardizes your ability to capitalize on it with so many other people out there working to solve problems and providing their solutions for free while you wait. For 3D printing, there are tens of thousands of designs, ready to print, for free, on pages like www.thingiverse.com.[1][2]
Other illegal goods and nefarious uses of the technology abound; as bioprinting comes online, technology advances, and hardware becomes cheaper, the opportunity and ability to create new illicit drugs, bioweapons, or hard-to-detect weapons like plastic firearms at the individual level increases. The technology has few limitations, and so there are nearly limitless ways an individual or small cell might use or abuse it.[3][4]
