''Defense Distributed v. U.S. Dept. of State'' is a set of court cases brought by

Defense Distributed Defense Distributed is an online open-source hardware organization that develops digital schematics of firearms in CAD files, or "wiki weapons", that may be downloaded from the Internet and used in 3D printing or CNC milling applications. Among ...

challenging the federal export control of 3D gun files on the Internet.

History

The case was brought in 2015, two years after

Cody Wilson Cody Rutledge Wilson (born January 31, 1988) is an American gun rights activist and crypto-anarchist. He is a founder and director of Defense Distributed, a non-profit organization that develops and publishes open source gun designs, so-called ...

and Defense Distributed were banned from sharing the files for the first 3D printed gun, Liberator, on the Internet. In May 2013, Wilson had been a law student at the

University of Texas The University of Texas at Austin (UT Austin, UT, or Texas) is a public research university in Austin, Texas. It was founded in 1883 and is the oldest institution in the University of Texas System. With 40,916 undergraduate students, 11,075 ...

, and had published the Liberator plans on his organization's website when the Obama administration asserted export control of the files under the

ITAR International Traffic in Arms Regulations (ITAR) is a United States regulatory regime to restrict and control the export of defense and military related technologies to safeguard U.S. national security and further U.S. foreign policy objective ...

and directed Wilson and Defense Distributed to remove them from public availability. Making First, Second, and Fifth Amendment claims, Defense Distributed was represented by attorney Alan Gura, and had local counsel and other assistance from attorneys Josh Blackman, Matthew Goldstein, and the law firm Fish & Richardson, P.C. In August 2015, the District Court for the Western District of Texas denied Defense Distributed's

preliminary injunction An injunction is a legal and equitable remedy in the form of a special court order that compels a party to do or refrain from specific acts. ("The court of appeals ... has exclusive jurisdiction to enjoin, set aside, suspend (in whole or in par ...

request. In September 2016, the United States

Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit The United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit (in case citations, 5th Cir.) is a federal court with appellate jurisdiction over the district courts in the following federal judicial districts: * Eastern District of Louisiana * M ...

similarly ruled against the motion and subsequently denied a request for rehearing en banc. Defense Distributed appealed this ruling to the

Supreme Court A supreme court is the highest court within the hierarchy of courts in most legal jurisdictions. Other descriptions for such courts include court of last resort, apex court, and high (or final) court of appeal. Broadly speaking, the decisions of ...

in August 2017, who declined to hear the case on January 8, 2018. On remand to the district court, and on the eve of changes to the federal export regulations, the U.S. State Department offered to settle the case, and on July 27, 2018 Defense Distributed accepted a license to publish its files along with a sum of almost $40,000.

Reception

When later asked to justify the settlement in a press conference, State Department spokesperson Heather Nauert defended the agency's decision, saying: Over its life, the case drew frequent comparisons to

Bernstein v. United States ''Bernstein v. United States'' is a set of court cases brought by Daniel J. Bernstein challenging restrictions on the export of cryptography from the United States. History The case was first brought in 1995, when Bernstein was a student at ...

, a successful First Amendment challenge to the ITAR from 1996 where the

Ninth Circuit The United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit (in case citations, 9th Cir.) is the U.S. federal court of appeals that has appellate jurisdiction over the U.S. district courts in the following federal judicial districts: * District o ...

held source code to be protected speech.

Aftermath

The announcement of the settlement, which involved a temporary modification of the ITAR, came as a surprise to many in the gun control movement and was immediately challenged by over 20 state attorneys general in various federal venues. Cases prompted as a reaction to ''Defense Distributed I'' include: * ''State of Washington v. U.S. Dept. of State'' * ''Gurbir Grewal v. Defense Distributed'' * ''Commonwealth of Pennsylvania v. Defense Distributed'' * ''Defense Distributed v. Gurbir Grewal''.

References

{{Reflist, 30em 21st century in United States case law Firearms in the United States