The workshop consisted of three parts: project and subject introduction, presentation of technical solutions, and guest panel discussion. This session was funded by Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) centre and aimed to promote the protection of intellectual property rights in the 3D printing industry in China and the UK. The project will provide a licensing mechanism for the protection of intellectual property rights in 3D printing through the construction of an online platform for the licensing of source designs for 3D printing, thereby protecting the intangible assets - intellectual property rights - of the companies and individuals involved.

On how to realise the proposed platform, Niu Jie, a PhD candidate in the relevant field at the University of Nottingham, introduced the technical background, basic framework, and application areas of digital watermarking technology, arguing that the emerging 3D digital watermarking technology can effectively protect 3D digital files for 3D printing as opposed to traditional cryptography. The technology can hide product information into the digital model without affecting the product's usage function through null or frequency domain transformation and can extract the hidden information through inverse transformation after attack operations such as affine transformation, mesh simplification, noise, shearing and mesh light smoothing. Niu Jie believes that the use of such technologies for platforms can effectively protect the rights of IPR owners.

For this type of intellectual property protection platform, He Qi, founder of Ningbo Jock Brothers 3D Technology Co Ltd, said that the innovation of technology comes from open source in the first place and that entrepreneurs need to dig deeper and improve the technology that is already exists, and then later protect the intellectual property rights of the improved products. He argues that if there is no secondary profit-making of the product, but only viewing or learning, then there is no infringement. Therefore, the environment for the development of such platforms in China is not mature enough. Meanwhile, Yu Yang, president of the Zhejiang Creators Service Association, pointed out that although 3D printed designs need to be protected, the low cost of infringement and the high potential profits available make many individuals and companies choose to infringe on the works of others. Ningbo Chengyuan patent firm director Yiping Zhang lawyer proposed the promotion of such platforms needs to have the role of the market, only the market is aware of the need for intellectual property rights, and the platform can really serve the 3D printing industry. At the same time, Dr. Edwin MOK, Chief Engineer at SLM's Asia Pacific headquarters in Singapore, mentioned that its users are happy to see the protection of intellectual property rights. At present, the Singapore government has invested a lot of resources to promote the development of 3D printing and the protection of 3D printing intellectual property.

Finally, in his comments, Director Yuan suggested that many IP owners currently do not know how to defend their rights in the event of IP infringement. In addition to the relatively long and costly route of litigation, infringers can also choose administrative means to defend their rights. With regard to third-party platforms, Ningbo already has a relevant IPR trading platform that enables online trading of IPR for buyers and sellers. Admittedly, there is no large-scale trading platform for 3D printing, and Director Yuan noted that he hoped the project team would continue to study the subject in depth after this workshop.