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Image search technology has become an important tool for a wide range of industries and applications, ranging from research, law enforcement, e-commerce, historical archiving, and more. And yet, as sophisticated and useful as this technology has become, it has one severe limitation. It\u2019s flat. Only two-dimensional data can be searched. Yet, we live in a three-dimensional world. 

This is a problem Paul Powers understood personally as a patent attorney. \u201cWe couldn't find the 3d models that people were using to steal intellectual property,\u201d he says. \u201cWe could find anything else\u2014plagiarism, 2d pictures, whatever, but as soon as it was three dimensional, forget it.\u201d When he discovered the emergence of 3d search technology, he became excited. And when he discovered how underdeveloped it was, he started his own company, Physna. 

On this edition of UpTech Report, Paul tells us how his efforts to solve this one particular problem turned into a solution for seemingly endless use cases, and he also talks about the relationship to his other venture, thangs.com, an open 3d modeling community.