Invention, Intellectual Property and Incomes

Architecture for dogs

"Architecture for dogs" is a very interesting project that I am going to comment and analyse to help me in the task of developing a plan for dissemination of my final project:

Invention

As I have already mention in the Applications and Implications assigment there are some interesting products for pets out there. Recently I found out about this interesting project: "Architecture for dogs" which consist on a collection of projects of houses for dogs designed by international artists. These projects will be exhibited at Long Beach Museum of Art, but before this moment, blueprints of the 13 designs are available on the Internet from their "Architecture for dogs" site. There is also a short video of how to build projects step by step. On their site they encourage people to download blueprints, build their own houses for dogs and published pictures on their "Architecture for dogs" site.

Intellectual Property

The Intellectual property framework of the "Architecture for dogs" project is not clearly explained; however, as blueprints are available in a non friendly modification format, I supose is not prepared to be modify.

Income

Admission at the Long Beach Museum of Art costs $7, but it offers visitors more than this "Architecture for dogs" exhibition. So, I would only considerate the income from "Do it your self" kits that are sold at the museum and also on www.architecturefordogs.com. The image we can see below describes a 500 limited edition unit of the wanmock kit. It is being sell at 235$; and the size of the package is w830xd330xh45mm and its weight is 5.7 kg.

My final project: "A cat friendly bench".

Invention

Cats tend to destroy furniture at home, I thought about designing some furniture that cats will not destroy and owners would like and enjoy. As I have already mention in the Applications and Implications assigment there are some interesting products for pets out there that have inspired me.

Intellectual Property

In the " Architecture for dogs" project sharing the blueprints on their site seems like a part of the marketing strategy of the project. As blueprints are shared in a non editable format final user do not have the possibility to personalize or customize the dog house. However, in my project I would like to implement all the possibilities that digital fabrication offers. The cat friendly bench would be customizable and would be designed under standars to help local production all around the world throught Fablabs.

Blueprints of the cat friendly bench would be under Attribution-ShareAlike 2.5 Generic Creative Commons license allowing people to Share (to copy, distribute and transmit the work), to Remix (to adapt the work) and to make commercial use of the work. This license would allow people to customize their own cat friendly bench and would help me to learn and understand how other people use my designs. This would help me to improve my design skills.

Income: A plan for dissemination of your final project.

• Re make blueprints on an editable format like opensad. (Blueprints today are a .dwg file -cad software-)
• Standarize the fabrication process
• Publish blueprints, guide to build it and pictures of the result.
• Stablish an online strategy to start building cats friendly bench on demand.

In this case, the cat friendly bench would give me the opportunity to test all the steps needed to past from a prototype to a product; so this would be the most important objective of the process, not to make money from the prototype. Once I had this experience I could think about another bussiness model to really start thinking on making a sustainable bussiness from selling a fab-able product.