Can I print this? Licences, spares and trademarks
What can and cannot legally be printed: downloaded models, appliance spares, other people’s logos and licensed figures. Explained plainly.
We get asked this a lot, almost always sheepishly, and the answer is usually more reassuring than people fear. This is not legal advice — that needs a lawyer and your specific case — but it is what years of printing for other people has taught us, and it is enough to know when to ask.
Almost always fine
- A spare for an appliance you own, for your own use. Repairing what you bought is entirely ordinary, and in Europe the right to repair points exactly that way.
- A model you designed yourself. It is yours, full stop.
- A model downloaded under an open licence, respecting what the licence asks. Almost always that means crediting the author and, if the licence says so, not selling it.
- A generic functional part: a bracket, an adapter, a bush, a cover. Function is not protected by copyright.
Where care is needed
- 1Selling copies of somebody else’s model. Free to download does not mean free to sell. Many open licences permit personal use and forbid commercial use: they are two different permissions.
- 2Characters, figures and props from films, games or comics. They are protected even when a fan made the model and even when it circulates freely. Printing one for your shelf is one thing; selling twenty at a market is quite another.
- 3Third-party logos and trademarks. A part carrying a brand’s logo that is not yours can infringe a trademark even if the part is yours and you designed all of it.
- 4Copying a product that is on sale. A registered design or a live patent protects the shape or the function against copying, in some cases even for personal use.
What we do
We are a workshop: we print the file you send and assume you have the right to order it — that is what the terms you accept at checkout say. We do not audit the provenance of every model or act as police. We do say no to the obvious: reproducing branded product to sell, or counterfeiting. And if you have a reasonable doubt, ask before ordering: it is a two-minute conversation that avoids a much longer problem.
Can I print a spare for a branded appliance?
To repair your own appliance, it is the clearest and most common case we see, especially with discontinued parts. It changes if you make that part in quantity to sell as a replacement: registered designs and trademarks come into play there, and it is worth taking advice.
I downloaded a free model. Can I sell what I print?
It depends on the licence, and you have to read it. Creative Commons licences with the NC clause forbid commercial use; others allow it if you credit the author. Free and unrestricted are not the same thing, and the difference is written on the model’s page.
Can I put a brand or logo that is not mine on a part?
Somebody else’s trademark on a part can infringe even if you designed the whole part yourself, and even if you are not selling it. With your own brand, or with written authorisation from the owner, there is no issue. Without one of the two, the prudent answer is to leave it off.
Do you keep my file? Could you print it for somebody else?
The file is kept while needed to produce the order and handle any claim, and deleted sooner on request. It is not shared, not published and not reused for anybody else. If you need a signed NDA before sending geometry, we sign one.