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That CAD is intellectual property just as surely as music, video or anything else is. It’s not going to be given away, not by the creators and not by the owners. Small businesses will both create and own intellectual property for use in the distributed 3D printing economy.

"That CAD is intellectual property just as surely as music, video or anything else is. It’s not going to be given away, not by the creators and not by the owners."

People in the music/video biz are already feeling the sting from things like netflix, youtube, and pandora. Draftsmen can't trade on celebrity the way they do. Some starving person in India using pirated or open source software can produce/reproduce that content just as easily as somebody here. That's already becoming a cottage industry in its own right. Also, a significant portion of 3D printable objects are already open source or very low cost. Take a good long peek at thingiverse.com, or shapeways.com some time. Might open your eyes.

The only entities really equipped to fight frequent/prolonged court battles over IP are large corporations. They can defend "their" IP, and alternatively, if they really want something you've got in terms of IP, they'll eventually get it by hook or by crook. Once again, this doesn't favor decentralization. I wish I was wrong, but I don't see anything at all trending that way at the moment.