Open Sourcing Innovation

Super_Z writes "Reading an old issue of The Economist, I came over this - whynot.net - a forum for ideas - effectively open sourcing innovation. Doing so, these ideas can hopefully be adapted faster and on a broad basis. Now if I can only get someone to take up and produce my radarguided laser mosquito trap."

Comments

Spying?

[Uber Banker]

A nice community idea. The site seems /.ed so I can't check... but what prevents someone/some company with low moral standards heading over there, getting ideas and patenting them/slightly changing them and pretending they came out of the R+D department?

Good idea, but I am cautious.

Re:Spying?

[rzei]

Wouldn't the board hold then prior art? Of course one can get inspiration from anywhere, but if a similiar patent is filed after it's been on the board, I guess the patent is pretty meaningless.

Ideas are easy, deeds are difficult

[Moderation abuser]

Which is why "intellectual property" is such a bullshit concept.

Anyone can have good ideas, it's actually putting it into practice which is the difficult bit. Intellectual property implies that you can have an idea, patent it and then charge anyone who actually wants to put it into use. You should have to produce a *working* prototype for anything you want a patent on.

Re:Ideas are easy, deeds are difficult

[jfengel]

Both ideas and implementation are difficult and important phases of invention. The ideas phase can often be done by people without money; the implementation usually requires investment. The goal of patents is to encourage everybody, not just those with money, to participate in the ideas phase, and provide a way for them to synch up with those in the implementation phase. By giving a patent to a person with an idea, those with money can't just take the idea; legally, they have to buy it.

(You do, of course, have to have the idea fully worked out before it's a saleable item; it's only the rarest ideas which can be considered truly novel without a detailed plan for implementation. The border between novel and not-novel is badly defined and very ugly.)

The same idea applies to copyright. I, as an author, can write a book, but it takes a publisher to actually make money with it, since it takes a lot of money to get a book published (editing, printing, distribution, advertising, and the monetary risk of the fact that all those things happen up front.) The author owns the copyright and sells it (or leases it) to the publisher in exchange for a cut of the sales of the physical books.

The law protects the copyright owner as owning property. Although it isn't like real property in every respect, it shares many common features: the right to sell it, the limitation on who may use it, the ability to sue if ownership is violated.

Such is the concept, at least. In practice, when the law gets involved, money talks. One can certainly quibble with the implementation, even to the point of declaring the flaws in implementation more important that the benefits, but I don't think the concept itself merits being called "bullshit".

Re:Ideas are easy, deeds are difficult

[WolfWithoutAClause]

I don't know where you get "implies", but in fact you can't say, "Hey, I thought of a radar guided laser mosquito trap!" and patent it. An implementation is necessary.

Actually, incorrect you do not need a working example; except in certain special cases- IRC the patent office only accept perpetual motion machines patents if accompanied by a working model :-).

A patent is an *idea* that is being patented. It's your own problem if your idea doesn't actually work.

Ideas are cheap

[heironymouscoward]

but turning them into reality is brutally hard work.

Honestly: one lunch with some intelligent company and a little wine can produce enough ideas for five years' work. No big deal.

To benefit the community, all is well

[Nomihn0]

The philosophy behind many of these "idea sites" is to make good ideas/products public so that do-gooders can realize them. If a corporate pirate steals an idea from such a site, it is only half of a crime. This is because, although they took the idea without permission, the product is eventually created - thereby achieving what the board sought in the first place.

It Helps To Get Free Assistance

[osewa77]

For developers/inventors who would like to try to concieve and develop a product that requires the contribution of a large number of people, who do not have the support or money of large corporations, Open Source could well be the right way. The core of any product, is the *idea* that differentiates it.
says me, seun

Paper and practice are quite different.

[Moderation abuser]

If all you do is write software you might not agree, but when you are trying to invent something, what goes down on paper is what is plausible, what might or should work and frankly that's often just bullshit which skims over the real showstopping implementation problems.

The need for a real working prototype which actually demonstrates that it can target and zap mosquitos successfully with a real laser would force inventors to actually go through the process of solving the many and real problems.

It would make it nearly impossible for patents to be overly broad.

It would mean that the patent would have to have enough *real* information in them for a competitor to build a working clone when the patent has expired.