3d printing, medicine and Intellectual Property

Abstract

Additive manufacturing, better known as three-dimensional printing, is becoming increasingly popular and this is reflected in the fact that its applicability covers such diverse fields that our society is involved, in an indirect way. This study attempts to reflect this repercussion and to do so, it is necessary to take a retrospective view of this type of manufacturing in order to understand how it works and to focus on one of its fields of application, medicine. What interests us about 3D printing is that it has a very close relationship with Intellectual Property rights and, therefore, we must bear them in mind when generating three-dimensional files or printing objects, focusing on the area of medicine where we can find more conflicts due to its technical-biological implications and the great relevance of healthcare for society as a whole.