3D Printing.

[sandy]

It's my understanding that as said before, copyright is hard to apply here, patents generally protect devices, inventions and solutions to specific problems.

however, printing objects that are demonstrably someone elses design, then you'll likely fall foul of intellectual property and trademark laws.

You'll generally be fine if producing these for yourself, but selling such items would be the no-no.

There are many 'free' designs of things on sites such as thingiverse.

That sounds OK Stese. What made me bring it up was I did in fact buy some jacks for a Breakdown crane which after I received them they turned out to be 3D copies and not the Hornby ones. Made me ask what others thought of the legal point of view. There was nothing in the ebay listing saying it was 3D copy.

[sandy]

Thanks for your reply Ian , but I guess time will tell don't you think.

[Walkingthedog]

There are some jacks on there now with (repro) after the description. I suppose if it says that or 'to fit xxxx crane' they might not be saying it is the real thing.

[sandy]

There are some jacks on there now with (repro) after the description. I suppose if it says that or 'to fit xxxx crane' they might not be saying it is the real thing.

When I got mine last year they were just sold as Hornby brakedown crane jacks but when they arrived they were not very good copies a bit rough I would say, I had to clean them up with a fine file. But they did the job OK.