Securing a New Idea for the Public Domain?

Posted by Cliff on Monday August 2, 2004 @04:45AM from the defensive-patents-for-free-software dept.

piotru asks: "I live in Japan and am implementing a new idea in software. I was told that it deserves patenting, but I intend to make sure that it remains in public domain (preempting anyone else from patenting it). What can I do to make sure that no one else patents my idea? Here are some choices I have come up with: 1) Patent and apply free license; 2) Apply for the patent, then drop it (will be published with time stamp, and more than likely will be costly); or 3) Copyright the implementation (will have a time stamp, but will it remain compatible with the GPL?) Any ideas?" Some of these issues were touched on in an older story, but the basic premise remains a difficult issue. How would you go about releasing an idea to the public domain while making certain that close software couldn't co-opt it out from under you?

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Re:Establish as prior art by jmac880n · 2004-08-02 04:59 · Score: 4, Insightful

A better way would be to get the idea published in a trade journal (an ACM or IEEE journal sounds pretty good). In addition to firmly establishing it as prior art, it will also make the idea available to others.

If the idea is really significant, then these journals "should" be willing to work with you to get it published. That's what they're there for, after all.