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How Do I Secure An IP, While Leaving Options Open?
Tiger4 writes "Let's say I have a photograph, or a television script, or have finally perfected the water-to-gasoline conversion process, or some other piece of non-software but copywritable or patentable IP. I know I want it secured in my name, on this date, in a provable and verifiable way. But being an Open Source, free-to-the world sort of person, I'm willing to share my knowledge to the world, as long as all credit points unambiguously to me. Any attempts at theft could, would, and must be immediately rebuffed by my offer of proof from when I first secured the IP. What, if any, tool or method is available to me in the digital world? MD5 and the like are available to show that copied files are the same as the original source, but they don't show time of authorship unambiguously. The same with Public Key crypto. I could lock it up with a time stamp, but what prevents me from faking the stamp that locks the file? Is there a way to homestead a little chunk of time with my IP's name on it?"
I found this in 30 seconds through Google, did you even look before submitting your question to Slashdot?
There ya go.
This is surprisingly simple. If it's a copyrightable and you have $45, register the copyright of the work with the US Copyright office (or the copuyright office in your country, I assume you're in the US because I'm an Americentric bastard). Check out http://www.copyright.gov/register/ for forms and details. A registered copyright strengthens your argument of ownership immeasurably. It raises the bar of proof that any opposition must overcome to disprove your ownership. If it's IP, I'm in the camp that it's covered by copyright, and hate IP patents, but if it's patentable like software (grumble grumble) then it's somewhere around $500 to apply to the patent office yourself. If it's that valuable to you that you genuinely fear theft, then $500 is a small price to pay for insurance.
jX [ Make everything as simple as possible, but no simpler. - Einstein ]
Send registered mail to your lawyer which contains inside a sealed, timestamped envelope with your stuff in it (digitally or dead-tree based) and instruct your lawyer to store it somewhere safe.
When you;re fighting copyers, you can have this opened in the presence of a lawayer or court, have everything verified and checked and then have it re-sealed in the same venue and have all proceedings officially recorded.
Post your idea on slashdot. All posts have a timestamp.
Email the IP to several people on several different ISPs. The timestamps on gmail or yahoo as well as other witnesses would build some evidence for your cause.
Apparently you can (used to be able to?) mail yourself a copy of the design / code / idea etc.. registered post, that will get you a nice date stamped master to use if you need to, (I think you may be better mailing it to your solicitor and asking them to hold it) don't open it when you get it back though.
Might have been an old wives tale though.
Although realistically if it is a major find you should be grabbing a solicitor and filing your idea in whatever manner is appropriate.
This is not legal advice and IANAL.
I've always been of the opinion that mail was the way to do this. When my band was worried about copyrights, we just burned a CD of our album, mailed it to ourselves and now we have the sealed copy with the mail timestamp should we ever need it. Note, however, I can't vouch for whether this is foolproof, it's just what I've been told.
In addition to copyright, you might look into registering a trademark if applicable. That's getting into a question better suited for your lawyer, though.
you may check for a "notarius publicus" or similar service too.
If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then the first woodpecker would destroy civilization.
Just because you are the patent holder (contrary to popular practice) doesn't mean you have to be a jerk. You can hold a patent and then allow anyone to use the IP for whatever they want. Holding the patent doesn't mean that nobody else can use the IP, it just means that you set the rules for its use.
The downside is that getting a patent can be a bit expensive.
DISCLAIMER: This post was not checked for speling and grammar- if you complain- you're a whiner
Slashdot, contrary to what a lot of people on here believe, is not generally a particularly great place to seek legal advice.
Particularly considering you haven't stated which country you're in.
If the IP you want to protect is worth any serious quantity of money, then an hour or so of a lawyers time is a worthwhile investment.
Alternatively, if you're a cheapskate, I understand the traditional method was for authors to post themselves a copy but not open it. That way, if a dispute ever arose, there was a sealed envelope containing the work which a disinterested third party (the Post Office) had printed a date on.
Basically, you want a way to write your name on an idea/thing with indellible ink. Good luck on that. Computers don't even try to do this - I'm reminded of my OS class, where metadata (name, permissions, etc.) were separate from the actual file/folder.
Unless you embed your name in the material in some way it can't be removed (impossible if it's just an idea), you're out of luck. One way to do this would be from a branding/marketing perspective - think Coke, Kleenex, Xerox, etc. - if you can get the thing referred to as a "Zonk", then your name might stick.
Most of the scientific community works that way. When someone in a university discovers something, he wants the world to know about it, but most of the time, they are interested in making money from it. So they have scientific journals in which they publish. And then these are distributed and everyone knows where its from.. Now if you want to be famous, make sure you publish it in something that is widely read (like Slashdot! or Nature). And not on your own blog or some obscure scientific journal.
Whoever told you to do this is wrong, and you should not take any more advice from them about copyright.
To learn why, do a google search on "poor man's copyright".
I'd say get a patent, and then create an open license, a la GPL, that way you actually have a legal footing to stand on if anyone ever tries to steal it.
Ran out of mod points earlier so here is my idea...
I think a news collector/ comment allowing website in the slashdot model should assign moderation points but let the user choose when to activate them, subject to predefined rules that would prevent the usage of so many points over a given time span or used in a single article.
Remember you heard it from me first as the time stamp shows. Tune in next week for the secret to free energy, and world peace. That is all.
Well.. maybe. Or Maybe not. But Definitely not sort of.
If you need to unambiguously datestamp it, utilize a unbiased third party notary-like service such as http://www.itconsult.co.uk/stamper/stampinf.htm to sign the detached signature of the material and publish that signature. By signing it yourself, you are showing that you possessed the material. Employing the third party to sign your detached signature of the material provides a reliable timestamp of when you possessed the material. A challenge could be met by providing the material along with the relevant signatures. Logically it makes perfect sense, but legally it might be harder to explain it to a judge/jury, or bring the owner of the site to come and attest to his methods.
Employing a real world Notary to witness you signing a copy of the material would probably be easier to get admitted in a legal process (IANAL), but that is outside your 'digital world' stipulation.
(The reliability of that third party signature is reinforced since the date/time is evident not only in the signature, but also the time at which it was posted to usenet, which is archived by various parties.)
STOP POSTING RUMORS AS LEGAL ADVICE!
Find me a court case referring to such a thing, or an actual law, and I'll believe you. Otherwise, it's just a waste of a stamp.
My blog: http://www.seebs.net/log/ --- My iPhone/iPad app: http://www.seebs.net/seebsfrac/
If you don't have a personal lawyer and don't want to mess with the copyright office, you may also have a notary public sign and date a printout of the document. Be sure that the law in your state allows notaries to act in that capacity; I don't think they can i New York, for example.
Advantages: cost and convenience - you might very well know one or have one on staff at your office.
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
The digital world is the wrong place to search for a solution. The simplest, most effective (though not, particularly in the case of patents, the cheapest) solution is to simply secure the appropriate legal registration of the IP (a registered copyright, a patent, etc.) and then offer the product under a no-cost license that requires credit and whatever other terms you want to impose.
(Since copyright is automatic, you can technically avoid registration and still be protected, but registration serves the documentation role you are looking for without any technical trickery, and copyright registration isn't particularly expensive.)
Mail it to yourself, using public servers. Do it from some different servers. They have to keep copies for years, with timestamps. You cannot easily falsify those. And the records in the mail servers have force of proof, as shown in some high-profile cases that I wont name here, basically because I dont remember them :-)
Rome taught me patience and assiduous application to detail. Virtues which temper the boldness of great, general views.
Fado, fado , ... When ATT patented the SETUID Bit in the early mists of the middle ages of computer development they explicitly put the invention into the public domain. You can also publish (or get published) an article that details in enough clarity that a person skilled at the state of the art in the field could replicate the invention from your article. And in the article explicitly put the invention into the public domain. If you want to be a little less that free about the use of your invention, then include specific public licensing terms for the use of your invention without fee in the patent / article.
/. with appropriate detail in a long article and hope it gets published ... ;)
Patent route is safest as some officious staffer of the USPTO has given it a stamp of uniqueness attributed to you. Then never bother to pay additional fees after it grants... Unless you want the invention licensing restrictions you might place on it to remain in force.
Of course you could publish the idea to
- Tjp
I am in wallow with my inner money grubbing capitalistic pig. ... Oink!
Of course, if you want to turn a buck on the idea later on you should patent or copyright it and be a bastard. You can't have your cake and eat it, too.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
You want anonymity. If you were to (re)discover how to run cars on water, the oil companies will either discredit you - making you look like a raving lunatic, or they would "disappear" you. The risk is greatly reduced with anonymity. I suggest you take your invention and file it away, or better yet - burn it!
You will receive no further warnings on this subject.
The US government have made it clear that we have no inalienable rights; any we do not defend vigorously will be taken.
...about creating a simple system. It goes like this: you upload a document. It then returns a copy of the document with a datestamp and a cryptographic signature of both. You keep this signed copy for later reference.
Because the system is run by a third party with no interest in the ongoing litigation, it would likely be trusted by a court.
There's also a nontrivial chance it would earn the person who set it up some reasonable expert witness fees.
shows the file existed- with that hash- on that date.....
kinda hard to reverse do from a has to the file then...
every day http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
I don't know why people are so resistent to simply registering a copyright. It's a simple form, costs less than $50, and a stamp. End of story. And you can't enforce a copyright in court without registering it first, nor is the court interested in anything but the registration as proof. And if you're not willing to enforce it in court, it doesn't matter what you are willing to do, because you can't enforce it.
Patents are considerably more complicated, of course, and more expensive, but again, the only thing the court will care about is the patent.
Does anybody have a patent on reinventing the wheel yet?
He could patent it within a year of public disclosure.
The Raven
1. Send it via certified mail to yourself and leave the envelope sealed when it arrives.
2. Post it to Usenet.
There are other more official options as well, but both of these should be sufficient to associate a date with something.
Send 3 copies, certified mail to yourself or your local bank which you have a safe deposit box with. Put sealed letters in the box. Never open it again until discovery when you sue. Problem solved.
Often wrong but never in doubt.
I am Jack9.
Everyone knows me.
I'll meet you to discuss how to secure your IP. Please bring all relevant documents, and don't tell anyone where you are going.
Seems like some people missed the point that you wanted a digital time stamp and did not want to snail mail for timestamping. Some others seemed to have not considered the burden of proving that the time in the stamp was accurate. http://digistamp.com/ seems to be what you want.
I'm feeling lucky google for "digital signature time stamp"
Cheers,
P-
This is exactly the sort of thing public notarys are for.
You give them a piece of paper, they sign it and keep a copy. If you ever have to go to court they appear as a witness with their copy of the paper.
No sig today...
There are a variety of digital timestamps available. Ideally you should use multiples from different sources, so it doesn't matter if some become discredited. In this article, a company compares itself to the service provided by the US Postal Service.
The mentioned services would have to be provided on a retail basis rather than commercial, as these seem to be described, but I have no reason to believe they are not.
If you choose a sufficiently-strong message digest, they do not have to sign the whole digital archive containing your data whose existence you want to prove, but only the message digest.
Disclaimer: just because this service is credible to those understanding the theory, doesn't mean it will automatically be credible to a court, but I think a court established to hear technical issues could hear a good witness testify to the unforgeability and probably be convinced that it constituted proof. Although you might want to also do the more-traditional thing with the stamp that judges are used to seeing, too.
Please don't mod up this urban legend. There are plenty of ways to fraud this, and no one can offer a court case that actually accepted this as proof.
http://www.snopes.com/legal/postmark.asp
"Who is the Journal of Quantum Physics going to believe?" --Stephen Hawking
Confer:
When in doubt, go to the library. - Ron Weasley in Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets
IP sucks. Its never as simple as you think.
If you don't want to personally profit - but you just want to make sure that no-one else can control it - then you could release it/publish it, using any or all of the suggestions given by well-meaning but legally ignorant slashdotters above (or better still ask a lawyer).
However seriously, if its a great idea, then there's a high chance someone else will want in - perhaps claiming you stole it from them for example. Yes there are people out there like this. Do you really want to stand in the way of a mega conglomerate's or a patent troll's legal team? Whether you are in the right or not will have little to do with it - you'll get spanked and have to move to a cardboard box.
Perversely, you're probably safer to patent it yourself - that way at least if you get attacked you'll have something to offer to a white knight who might help to defend you.
[x] auto-moderate all posts by this user as insightful
For $200 (in the US), you can file a provisional patent application. It will never be examined, and will expire in one year, but it is an unambiguous date stamp. (If you're a "small entity", you may be able to cut the fee by 50%.)
If you want it published with that date, you'll need to file an actual utility application ($1000, same small entity options). In 18 months or so, it'll be published, with the filing date clearly indicated. No one says you have to prosecute the application after filing it.
From the pilot episode:
Michael is visiting his father, George, who has been arrested for SEC violations. George is eager to explain to Michael why he chose his wife, an alcoholic layabout, to be the new CEO of his company, instead of his hardworking son.
George Sr.:They cannot charge a husband and wife for the same crime!
Michael: That's not true.
George Sr.: Really?
Michael: Yep.
George Sr.: I got the worst fucking attorneys.
Put it in a sealed envelope and ...oh f***, nevermind.
How come I don't have any "Please! Stop!" mod points?
Give a man a fish and you have fed him for today. Teach a man to fish, and he'll say "WHERE'S MY FISH, YOU IDIOT?"
Offering people wrong advice makes you an idiot.
Modding up wrong advice makes you an even bigger idiot.
There's no point in mailing something to yourself unless you are a stamp collector. This is why asking for legal advice on slashdot is a really bad idea.
What do you mean by secure? You better go to the store and by a book about do it yourself patents. There are many good ones. Assuming you want to secure the date that you thought something up, you will want to print out a detailed description of your idea (this does not need to contain claims or anything. Just a good description of what it does, how it improves existing solutions, etc. Patent book will give you an outline for this document). Take this document to 2 people who are capable of understanding it (non family members) and have them witness it by signing and dating it. Then you will have that date PROVIDED that you attempt to reduce it to practice. If it just sits and you do not actively try to build it or sell it you will lose your rights. Note that if you try to sell it before applying for a patent you will have only get 1 year therafter to patent it and you will automatically forfeit international patent protection so think carefully (the US is a big market so you may be content with a forfeit, after all international patents are expensive and costly to enforce). This method btw is free and open source. Also, keep a notebook and have it signed periodically by another person. A witnessed notebook written in ink is also VALID proof for dating IP as well as proving to the court that you were actively try to reduce it to practice. For computer stuff that I do not print out and paste into lab book, I use digital timestamps services from USPTO or digistamp. p.s. DO NOT MAIL IT TO YOURSELF. Postmarks have never been accepted by courts as valid for dating IP. You will need to have your document witnessed so that the court can talk with the person if necessary.
I'm sure there are a number of timestamp services, but I've used digistamp.com. The service claims it was designed by scientists and certainly seems to meet some of their IP needs. It's based on RFC3161.
Essentially you generate a checksum and they digitally sign the checksum + the time. So it's crypto proof that at that time T you had a document with checksum C. (You're tied to the document by your account.)
You can, for example, timestamp a PDF file. It integrates with Acrobat pretty well.
I think this is the way to go. For example, you could back up your files every night and timestamp them, so if someone is working concurrently on the same idea as you and a dispute happens as to what day you added a particular feature, you would have evidence. I've used it to "notarize" some PDFs and other stuff.
I have no idea if there have been any legal challenges to this. Digistamp claims that their system has hardware specially designed by IBM to be hard to crack. As far as that goes... well, they're not Diebold...
Copy it and send it to yourself by registered mail and don't open it.
---- aut viam inveniam aut faciam
Poor man's copyright is not recognized in the U.S. It's too easily faked, among other things.
There's ip.com's Legal Safeguarding Agent, which has Windows software that will automatically (or manually, if you prefer) compute a document hash for pretty much anything; the company then publishes a daily digest of hashes -- and they even get printed in hardcopy format.
I don't know the specifics of their hash algorithm, other than it's some combination of MD5 and SHA-1.
Offering people wrong advice makes you an idiot.
And I suppose calling the other an idiot removes the need for including any argument, right? Mailing to yourself *does* prove you came up with it first. Whether the proof useful in a dispute is another question that depends on the work itself. However, it's sufficient for "moral rights", i.e. claiming you did/wrote/invented it first.
Opus: the Swiss army knife of audio codec
Send a registered mail application to the US Library of Congress (or National Library if you're Canadian) for copyright.
Technically, sending it to yourself (even if a flash drive copy) by registered mail will do, but you get a lot better protection if you go the whole nine yards (8 meters).
Legally, an electronic signature is also binding, and you can apply for it online as well, but it's amazing how effective a physical copy is in court.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
I've found that a rule-based IP firewall like netfilter works well.
DNA just wants to be free...
Every week, I send myself an unsealed envelope, registered mail. The post office thinks I'm weird, but when someone comes out with a cool idea, I write it up and stuff it in an old envelope and seal it...
Awesome furniture, accessories and cabinetry in Santa Rosa, CA: http://humanity-home.com/
I think this is a state by state thing. I was a notary in Vermont for a few years and I did not keep a copy of what I notarized. I did log the signings that I did, for my own benefit, but there was nothing in the laws governing notaries saying I would have to do so. Basically, the laws in Vermont said that if you notarize something without using proper diligence to make sure that the person signing the document is actually who they say they are, you'd be liable. So it was in the notary's best interest to only accept official identification and try and spot counterfeit ID. However, unless there was a problem, nobody came around to check these things. I just had to swear to the state that I wouldn't knowingly notarize false documents.
How do you prove the document was in the envelope at the time of mailing?
Awesome furniture, accessories and cabinetry in Santa Rosa, CA: http://humanity-home.com/
Buy a small space in your local newspaper and put your name and the MD5 in it (you might consider doing it without your name, but thats risky - if the paper goes out of business who will be able to testify it was you who placed the ad?). Shouldn't cost more than a couple bucks.
As others have pointed out, this is a useless tactic. Yes, when you mail something to yourself, it gets date stamped. Great, wonderful. But there's no onus on the post office to ensure that you have properly sealed the envelope in anyway. You could leave it completely open and empty, and they'll mail it to you. Later on, at any time, you can put something into the envelope and seal it.
But what if the post office insists on datestamping over the enclosure of the envelope? Then it MUST be sealed. Sure-- or at least that end of the envelope does. Some envelopes can have two openings, because of the way they're folded. Have them timestamp over the second end. Or unseal the second end and reseal it later.
Or steam open the envelope, and very carefully reseal it afterwards so that the timestamp matches up.
Or use a plain white envelope, and a pair of chopsticks. Roll your document around the sticks, then stick the sticks into the envelope through the bottom where it isn't QUITE sealed along the fold.
There are so many ways to tamper with it. And you forget there's also the question of chain of possession. Who has actually had the envelope from the time it was stamped until the time you present it to the courts?
And what about a biased source? You're suing someone because you claim you own what they're say they own. Your proof? "Because I said so."
The main issue here isn't proving that you own something. It's that you own it, and that you came up with it, and that you came up with it first. As others have mentioned, use the patent office. Use a notary. They're all trusted third parties who can verify the when of it.
And to prove that you actually came up with it-- simple. Show your work. Keep every rough draft, concept sketch, hand-drawn Rose diagram, cvs revision and so forth. If someone does steal the final product, it becomes a huge advantage to you. The other guy says "This is my idea". You say "This is my idea, and here's fifteen boxes of evidence that demonstrate the process I went through to create it." Who do you think the judge is going to believe?
UTF-8: There and Back Again
Put your stamps accross the envelope's seal, when the stamps get canceled (with the date) you'll have proof that you sealed it before mailing it. I once did this, but actually had to do it twice because the first time the cancellation stamp didn't go through the stamps (they put it in the traditional place).
post all kinds of inventions on Slashdot - thereby making them "prior art" yet releasing them formally to the public - blocking others from patenting them in the future?
Being a "Open Source, free-to-the world sort of person", you should know that it is not possible to take your idea from you. If you tell someone your idea, you still have it.
Any intellect or idea is not really a property.
The reason information starts to resemble property is that the temporary monopoly granted by the government has been mis-used and unconstitutionally extended in ways not benefitial to society. The government should not support such profiteering schemes.
Now if you want to know how to protect you idea such that you get rightful recognition and compensation (for a limited amount of time), then that is a worthy goal.
But if you are looking to protect your infinite information monopoly from "theft" forever, I suggest you encrypt it and hide it at the bottom of the ocean.
If you want sufficient evidence that you thought of something by a certain time, get it published in a magazine, newspaper, or such. Who's going to argue that your plans and concept aren't prior art when they're in Scientific American, Wired, Dog Grooming Monthly, or Fast-food Mexican on the Cheap Magazine before someone else starts using the idea?
Well, taking a look at what your question is, and giving it a good read, there isn't a whole lot I can suggest that hasn't been suggested already. I can update a couple of things, though.
i ght/
First of all, you seem to be operating under the idea that IP laws are restrictive of what you can do with your own IP. This actually isn't the case. Under copyright law, you can do whatever you want with your own IP. Protecting it, or more specifically, the terms under which you want to share it, on the other hand, is another matter, and how you'll go about it will depend on what it is.
As far as digital timestamps go when it comes to legal proof, that's a tricky one. I honestly don't know if there's a digital proof that will stand up in court. In fact, I'm almost certain there isn't. For that, you'd want to consult a lawyer, particularly since there are a lot of ways a digital timestamp can be faked, and I am not actually a lawyer (I'm a pro writer, but that means I have a working knowledge of the law, rather than an encyclopedic one).
When it comes to copyrightable materials, mailing it to yourself is NOT considered legal proof of copyright. There are too many ways to fake it, and there is not a single court case, at least not one I have ever heard of, where it was considered to be proof. For more information, see this site: http://www.copyrightauthority.com/poor-mans-copyr
However, there are two steps you can take that will secure your copyright. The first is very simple - place on the IP "Copyright (or just the © symbol) [year] [name]," and then list the rights that are reserved or granted. So, an example, using my own name, could be "Copyright 2007 Robert B. Marks. Reproduction under the Open Source License is permitted, all other rights reserved" or "© 2007 Robert B. Marks..." That secures your copyright in regards to the Berne Convention. However, for proper protection, that is not enough - you need to register the copyright with your country's copyright office. There may be a digital way to register it with the office, but that registration is still necessary if you're worried about protecting it. This site seems to be a good general reference: http://www.copyrightauthority.com/
(Please note that while you can copyright a story, a piece of music, or a work of art, you CANNOT copyright an idea. Copyright just doesn't work like that. An idea falls under patent law, and has different rules.)
As far as an invention goes, that would be a patent of some sort, and you would want to go through your local patent office. Unfortunately, I don't know a great deal about it except for a few bizarre cases of patents gone mad in the US. However, the patent office will have information about how to patent your invention, so you'll want to consult them.
Should somebody violate your copyright, it is important to be methodical in dealing with them. Keep in mind that it might eventually get to a court case, in which case your own conduct will also be under the magnifying glass. I would suggest beginning with a gentle but firm letter or email informing them that they are infringing and asking them to stop. If they don't, then consult a lawyer and move on from there. Whatever you do, document everything.
And, if I don't miss my guess, that's it in a nutshell...
Robert B. Marks
Author, Demonsbane in Diablo Archive
Have as many old or seriously ill people as you can find (e.g., at your hospital's cancer treatment center) read it to analog audio or, even better, video tape.
First, you are asking for legal advice. Stop now and walk away from the website. Talk to a lawyer. Do not listen to a storm of layman opinions, all of which are almost certainly wrong.
Second, if you're still reading this, there is no such thing as "IP" in the law. There are copyright, patents, trademarks, trade secrets, and possibly a few other things. They are not the same, and disclosure has radically different effects on them. The laws vary from country to country.
Third, it sounds like you're talking about a patent. If so, whatever you do, do not disclose any of it or show work derived from your neato idea until you have talked to a lawyer. Timestamps are the least of your worries, what you really need to care about is killing your chance at the patent before you even get out of the gate. The rules vary by country, and the standards for disclosure vary by country.
The reason it is generally not useful in a dispute is because it doesn't prove anything; it doesn't prove that you came up with it, and it doesn't (because its fairly easy to falsify by a number of means) prove that you had it at a particular time in the past.
Morally, you know you created it and when. You don't need any kind of documentation for that. Proving it to an even slightly skeptical third party, OTOH, is probably not going to be helped much by the mail-it-to-yourself method.
What?
You could always send it registered post to yourself and leave it unopened.
Just be sure to have plenty of these handy:
Karma: Non-Heinous
Copyright and patents extend a monopoly of limited duration on creative works to the creator or their employer, depending on contracts or law. If it can be considered 'property', then it is the property of all. If you don't like the idea that ultimately your creative work doesn't belong to you, then work to get copyright abolished and replaced with some sort of actual intellectual property right. This idea that copyright makes something 'intellectual property' is ass backwards and only serves the interests of those who are trying to get us to believe that copyright infringement equates to theft. Copyright infringement is wrong because it violates the monopoly control granted by law to the holder of the copyright, not because it's stealing, or even more laughable 'piracy'.
/rant
Loose lips lose spit.
Won't work. The "Post Office Patent", as it's called, is not valid in any court case, because nothing stops you from mailing an unsealed envelope to yourself and later filling it with material.
"copywritable"? Dear god. First, learn how to spell; then learn what it means. Then think, then start asking some questions. And do your best to avoid the catch-phrase "intellectual property", because when you get down to brass tacks and in law, it's vague and somewhat meaningless.
-b
myselfmusic
... but a few days later I received a letter in the mail that showed that the EXACT SAME THING had been copyrighted on the same day. Boy was I bummed.
Digital timestamps offered by USPTO or digistamp type services cannot be faked. They use custom, certified, tamper proof hardware that is locked after the initial configuration.
File it with the copyright office. Doing so authenticates the date filed. That is what the copyright office exists for, after all.
Moderating "-1, Disagree" is simple censorship. Have the guts to post your opinion.
File a provisional patent application using the USPTO provided form as a cover sheet online. This preserves your patent filing date for one year. You can do it yourself. But, if its worth anything to you, you should get the help of a registered patent attorney or agent.
your gravity fails and negativity don't pull you through
...use a firewall and a VPN.
The idea is, you have something to publish which is so huge that you just couldnt trust anyone not to steal it, not the patent examiner, not the notary, not your lawyer, nobody.
Best idea I've come up with is to put an add that appears to be a 'word search' puzzle in a major newspaper like the new york times, but its actually a simple encryption to some major text like the declaration of independence. Don't tell anyone what it really is.
Now, its published wide and far, but nobody knows about it!
One of the downsides of sci journals is that they own the text. So you can't publish it on a journal and then publish it on slashdot.
HOWEVER... you can make TWO versions: One as in a technical report, but with less scientific level. You post that on a public site. Then make a journal-ready version and submit it to the sci journals.
Simply put, a Notary Public in the United States verifies Identity, not ownership of IP and as such can not usually and damn well better think twice about it; notarize anything that is not a written document with a signature on it. Things like Contracts, Afidavits, Acknowledgements and so on that indicate some type of written response with a signature is required.
Mod me up/Mod me down: I wont frown as I've no crown
If all you're interested in is all credit pointing back to you, just go to your local copyright office, register the copyright on it, and offer it under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which allows anyone to use, share or create derivative works of. Alternatively, if you don't want anyone messing with it, use the Creative Commons Attribution-No Derivatives License.
This way, people are free to use it under the terms those licenses provide for, but since you hold the registered copyright, if anyone tries to use it for anything the licenses don't allow, you can take them to court. Thanks to the copyright registration, the burden of proof is shifted to them to prove that you *don't* own it, not an easy task compared to you having to prove you do own it.
If the idea is more of an invention, than you'd be better off patenting it, which is much more expensive ($500 for patent, $40 for copyright), but the same idea applies: Register protection on it, then license it so that anyone can use it under your terms.
Have you read about http://www.askemos.org/ ? It seems to do what you are looking for.
Where I live the Notaries definitely keep a copy. I've even asked one for a duplicate copy when I lost an original.
And...if they don't keep a copy of documents then what use are notaries? Any signature can be forged.
[shrug]
No sig today...
Patent it, and if anyone wants to use it charge them one penny. That protects your patent and everyone thinks your a kind generous soul. However, if enough people use your idea because it's so amazing you could make a fortune. Though taking all those pennies to the bank might get a bit tiresome.
What would it take to establish a computer system that can be audited in a transparent way and that can store any document sent to it in a date-and-content-secured fashion? Yes, you'd have to establish for the courts that the record was unfalsifiable. But it ought to be possible to build something, based on write-once media and some method of severely locking down ntp timestamps, that could store anything that could be sent digitally, in a way that would to a high degree of certainty establish the date it was received.
With the most minimal fee per item stored, this would be a goldmine. The only difficult part is how to absolutely lock down the timestamping method.
"with their freedom lost all virtue lose" - Milton
2.4.3 Opened Envelope
Any envelope or package that appears to have been opened and resealed, or otherwise improperly prepared, may not be registered.
2.4.6 Sealing
The mailer must securely seal envelopes.
If you try contesting a defendant that uses the "poor-man's copyright" by claiming that the document wasn't in the envelope at the time it was mailed, this is close enough to the response you'll get. You may want to ask a lawyer on how to properly contest the document, unless it's obvious that the envelope was tampered with.
Sorry for replying to my own post, but...
I've just been reading Wikipedia and notaries in the USA are different than the rest of the world. In the USA they don't keep copies.
As far as I can tell from reading that, notaries in the USA just prepare standard documents/contracts (eg. transfer of real estate) and oversee the signing of them. Their signatures have no legal power in a court of law.
Here in Spain (and other countries) they do all that but they also keep a copy of everything they sign in case a dispute arises (eg. somebody tries to add extra words to a contract).
No sig today...
1. Mail this, don't seal the envelope.
1. Wait.
3. Print out latest invention or something.
4. Seal in envelope.
5. ???
6. Profit
Thanks, I'll be here all week.
Obligatory blog plug: http://www.caseybanner.ca/
Best three bucks you can spend to have proof of a piece of paper existing on such and such a date. It's analog, not digital, but as part of your IP protecting scheme it sure can't hurt.
Dear god, man!
In response, I'm not sure time.gov is sufficient. I'd prefer something more decentralized. Right now, we do have a few timestamping authorities...
What I'd like to see is a network of cooperating timeservers, that send logs of their signatures to each other to get signed. So that you would first get one signature back, then 5 or 10, and so on... Also making a breach of security much less devastating.
And by the way... DON'T USE MD5!!! There are better hashes out there now.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
I don't have to argue with every half-baked theory on the internet. If you read the comments to this article, they're full of people shooting down the idea you espoused.
a) It's not my argument to make. Do you have any proof for your outrageous claim? As in a court case. Certifying copies is what a notary public is for. I'm skeptical the judge would give much weight to your proof.
b) I've heard at least two lawyers laugh at the idea you just described. It probably depends on jurisdiction, you really should mention what country's law you're arguing from.
c) This paricular website:
http://www.snopes.com/legal/postmark.asp
seems to strongly disagree with you. I'm not going to find any more, you find some support for your claim.
d) Moral rights really only apply if you assign your copyright.
Your entire "argument" is unsubstantiated assertions. I'm warning people to talk to a lawyer before they rely on them.
...Or, you could use StampYourDocuments.com. I've used their software, and it is really easy. Plus, they offer PDF Registration certificates so you can include it with your distributable.
Really, I'm not trying to be clever with my signature.
You file a (simple) provisional patent application. That starts the clock for you to patent it and sets the date right in the patent office so nobody else should be able to. Then, before a year is up, you can file a utility patent application or you can abandon it. Costs around $150.
And if someone tried to do an end-around on that, you could hit them with a DMCA lawsuit.
And just for the record, I OWN 2007-08-31 16:20:23 UTC. ...and I'll sue you if you try to use it.
I'm not an actor, but I play one on TV...
It may be considered tamper-proof because sealing strips are pasted over all of the seams and postmarked, with the mailpiece usually being locked in a safe when not in transit (and when in transit it is signed over to a postal employee), but it is by no means a method of proving date of creation for copyright purposes. The postal service only keeps delivery records for a certain period of time, so as long as you can fake a postmark outside of the post office's records, it would be easy to game the system.
IAACPRC - I am a contract postal retail clerk
Won't work. The "Post Office Patent", as it's called, is not valid in any court case, because nothing stops you from mailing an unsealed envelope to yourself and later filling it with material.
In the US you can have a notary public stamp the sealed envelope. I don't know if this will hold up in court today but it's a method writers have used for a long tyme.
FalconShould there be a Law?
Yeah, think about this: how can you prove the envelope was sealed, and contained it's present contents, when you mailed it? If this worked, you could just mail yourself an empty, unsealed envelope tomorrow, and then 15 years from now you could stick whatever you wanted in it and seal it.
That bring up something I read about lawyers. I don't know if it's true but I read lawyers have to keep correspondence for 7 years, even email. This one lawyer upgraded his computer and wanted to how to copy all of his email over. Even the spam, 7 years of it, as he had to keep that as well.
FalconShould there be a Law?
For patents, you get a composition book, and write up the progress of your invention every day you work on it. At the end of the day, you date and sign the entry, and have someone else -- your partner, boss, or whatever, to countersign. That's your evidence that you developed the idea, and the exact time frame of when you developed the idea.
Digitally signed timestamps might be better in theory, but I wouldn't bank on a judge or jury understanding why they're meaningful. So until there's a precedent establishing their validity, you should probably at least do the above.
A witness who can state, in court, they knew about your invention on a specific date is useful when determining who gets custody of an idea if two people file for patent simultaneously.
-- Programming with boost is like building a house with lego. It's a cool but I wouldn't want to live in it
Every week, I send myself an unsealed envelope, registered mail. The post office thinks I'm weird, but when someone comes out with a cool idea, I write it up and stuff it in an old envelope and seal it...
A way to defeat that is to put the postage stamp on the sealed envelop seam. Better yet, in front of a notary public stuff the envelop and have them stamp the envelope then mail it.
FalconShould there be a Law?
by Richard M. Stallman
It has become fashionable to describe copyright, patents, and trademarks as "intellectual property". This fashion did not arise by accident--the term systematically distorts and confuses these issues, and its use was and is promoted by those who gain from this confusion. Anyone wishing to think clearly about any of these laws would do well to reject the term.
One effect of the term is a bias that is not hard to see: it suggests thinking about copyright, patents and trademarks by analogy with property rights for physical objects. (This analogy is at odds with the legal philosophies of copyright law, of patent law, and of trademark law, but only specialists know that.) These laws are in fact not much like physical property law, but use of this term leads legislators to change them to be more so. Since that is the change desired by the companies that exercise copyright, patent and trademark powers, these companies have worked to make the term fashionable.
According to Professor Mark Lemley, now of the Stanford Law School, the widespread use of the term "intellectual property" is a fad that followed the 1967 founding of the World "Intellectual Property" Organization, and only became really common in the past few years. (WIPO is formally a UN organization, but in fact it represents the interests of the holders of copyrights, patents and trademarks.)
Those who would prefer to judge these issues on their merits should reject a biased term for them. Many have asked me to propose some other name for the category--or proposed alternatives themselves. Suggestions include IMPs, for Imposed Monopoly Privileges, and GOLEMs, for Government-Originated Legally Enforced Monopolies. Some speak of "exclusive rights regimes", but this means referring to restrictions as rights, which is doublethink too.
But it is a mistake to replace "intellectual property" with any other term. A different name could eliminate the bias, but won't address the term's deeper problem: overgeneralization. There is no such unified thing as "intellectual property". It is a mirage, which appears to have a coherent existence only because the term suggests it does.
The term "intellectual property" operates as a catch-all to lump together disparate laws. Non-lawyers who hear the term "intellectual property" applied to these various laws tend to assume they are instances of a common principle, and that they function similarly. Nothing could be further from the case.
These laws originated separately, evolved differently, cover different activities, have different rules, and raise different public policy issues. Copyright law was designed to promote authorship and art, and covers the details of a work of authorship or art. Patent law was intended to encourage publication of ideas, at the price of finite monopolies over these ideas--a price that may be worth paying in some fields and not in others. Trademark law was not intended to promote any business activity, but simply to enable buyers to know what they are buying; however, legislators under the influence of "intellectual property" have turned it into a scheme that provides incentives for advertising (without asking the public if we want more advertising).
Since these laws developed independently, they are different in every detail as well as in their basic purposes and methods. Thus, if you learn some fact about copyright law, you had best assume that patent law is different. You'll rarely go wrong that way!
Laymen are not alone in getting confused by this term. I regularly find that experts on patent law, copyright law, and trademark law, even law professors who teach these subjects, have been lured by the seductiveness of the term "intellectual property" into general statements that conflict with the facts they know. The term distracts them from using their own knowledge.
People often say "intellectual property" when they really mean some other category, larger or smaller than "intellectual property". For instance, rich count
MFG: "The system supports both the LAMP (Linux, Apache, MySQL, PHP) and WIMP (Windows, IIS, MySQL, PHP) platforms."
No, there's no treble damages for copyrights.
-- This and all my posts are in the public domain. I am a lawyer. I am not your lawyer, and this is not legal advice.
Unless I misunderstand, this was the entire purpose of the IBM Technical Disclosure Bulletin. I don't know why they canned it, because it's a great idea -- an insanely boring magazine that no one is supposed to read, but it exists solely for establishing prior art. So if they have an idea that's cool but they're not going to patent it, they write it up in a TDB issue and the prior art ends up stored in whatever libraries like to hoard this kind of thing, which makes it easy to thrash (in court) anyone who later tries to patent the idea. (You don't have to take IBM's word that they invented it because they made it public record at the time.)
Is the FSF doing anything like this? It's such an obviously good idea, I hope someone still is. Well I suppose if you don't mind paying advertising rates, you can use any halfway respectable publication for this -- i.e. take out a classified ad (in the legal notices section I guess) in your local paper that describes your idea, and it'll end up on microfilm at the local library etc. Hopefully that's respectable enough to be admissable in case you wind up being sued by some weasel who patents your idea five years from now and claims you didn't invent it.
When working in R&D we always had someone else sign the pages and date the pages of our notebooks. My boss could be or was anal retentive on this. On more than one occassion in 12 years (2 that I can remember) it showed a clear documented history of how we arrived at the process we were patenting.
Yeah it was really awkward at first. But we all really got the hang of it after awhile. Hey Bob I did some shit today and I need you to sign my notebook. It got to where you glanced at the pages and signed and dated them, yeah because they were mostly crap. But they led to a signed document that showed the history of how you were working on something and it led to this one day.
So for one of the patents it showed a history where we had been working on something and like 7 to 10 people had signed our work throughout the progression. I really think this is one of the better ways. Rarely does an idea on how to make a better mouse trap spring up in one day and having multiple people or a another person sign and date your progression provides pretty good evidence of when and how you arrived at an idea.
Which is probably way better than the evidence of say: We were sitting around and thought hey wouldn't it be neat if people could click on an icon and they could buy an item. So we patented it.
Versus: we were working on a web site and we were trying to come up with simple, secure ways for purchasing. We initially did this and then we realized that with javascript and cookies we could do this and then one day we realized that we could combine it all it one secure transaction.
I wasn't working in programming at the time, but this is more like how we arrived at stuff, a progression rather than eureka.
I talked with Jack Kilby once and he more or less had the same inputs about his invention (the integrated circuit), although it was rather condensed (he went from transistor to circuits in a matter of months). He knew where he was headed but there was a progression to what he was accomplishing. I believe that his notes showed this and that was why he was accredited with the invention of the integrated circuit. My boss knew him and that's how I met him. I am pretty sure that is why my boss was so anal about the notes we took.
Because if you look at it now the IC seems to be a inevitable progression from the transistor. But at the time Kilby was working on it, it wasn't an inevitable progression it was a lot of hard work proving and overcoming obstacles such as latching.
He who said 1,000,000 monkeys on 1,000,000 typewriters would eventually type the great novel, never saw an AOL chat room
"The same with Public Key crypto. I could lock it up with a time stamp, but what prevents me from faking the stamp that locks the file?"
Ehm, Public Key crypto? Look it up on Wikipedia if you are not sure about a mechanism. Relevant part of Wikipedia contents follow.
The TSA concatenates a timestamp to the hash and calculates the hash of this concatenation. This hash is in turn digitally signed with the private key of the TSA. This signed hash + the timestamp is sent back to the requester of the timestamp who stores these with the original data (see diagram).
Since the original data can not be calculated from the hash (because the hash function is a one way function), the TSA never gets to see the original data, which allows the use of this method for confidential data.
Simple solution used in previous times was to post sensitive data via official state post service to your own address, since post stamp is an official time-stamp recognized in court.
I missed an h... should have been
kinda hard to reverse do from a hash to the file then...
every day http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
Those technical solutions are all very well, and I wish governments would get with the times and offer official digital timestamping services of their own, or bless some of the existing ones. Unfortunately, there's at least one good technical excuse why they need not rush to embrace these new ways. We don't have a proof that P!=NP, and a great deal of crypto (and other things) depends upon the assumption that P!=NP. Would be a bummer to set everything up, get systems, procedures, offices, legal traditions etc. all established, and then someone discovers that P=NP after all. (As if the possibilities from P=NP wouldn't be more than enough compensation for that drawback, but enough digression.) Well of course that's not why governments have not done more of this. It's not like governments waited around for proof that Intellectual Property was a good idea or even made sense before enshrining those concepts in law.
But being an Open Source, free-to-the world sort of person, I'm willing to share my knowledge to the world, as long as all credit points unambiguously to me.Very good. Why not use the Gnu Public License, or some other similar license? Here is how the GPL answers your concern.
If you think about it, identification is crucial. Neither copyright nor the GPL could not work if there was no way of attribution. Otherwise, anyone could claim to be the author of some GPLed software, and therefore perfectly within their rights to release "their" code under any other license they want. Imagine if no one could dispute a claim by Tivo that Tivo was the author of all the GPL code in their devices, because there was no legal means to identify who really wrote something.
Note that copyright law, and therefore the GPL, sidesteps all question of proof by technical means. The law dates to times long before there were even the concepts of one way hashes, public key encryption, and digital signatures, let alone equipment capable of doing it. The law simply uses witnesses. There are a few details to try to make witnessing more reliable, such as the process notaries go through to become notaries, or the registration process at a copyright office. The law is not without problems-- for instance there are rumors it is possible to copyright something in country A, and get shafted in country B as someone else copies your stuff and copyrights there in their name before you get around to it.
Intellectual Property is a monopolistic, selfish, and defective concept. It is "tyranny over the mind of man"
- For copyrightable items, in the USA you can register your copyright with the Copyright Office. There is a form to fill out and a small fee (around US $45).
- For patentable inventions, you can either file a patent application (in the USA - a non-provisional application if you ever want it to publish) or a statutory invention registration (SIR). An SIR is examined like a patent application but does not give patent rights. Non-provisional patent applications are published 18 months after filing with the US Patent and Trademark Office. However, you cannot use the USPTO as your publishing house - you must actually be seeking patent rights in good faith. The filing fee for a small entity is the US is currently US $500. You may also need to pay a patent attorney to assist you in getting a patent application in the proper form and to comply with the requirements of the patent laws. A source code printout will not suffice as a valid patent application.
- You can submit a white paper for publication in a journal. Obviously, this will not be a viable approach for source code but it may be suitable for system-level descriptions of your code.
These methods are not perfect. None of these methods will conclusively prove beyond any doubt whatsoever that you created something as of a specific time. Someone can always make the claim that you copied what you filed from another source. However, if you are the true creator, anyone challenging your claim that you are the creator will be unable to substantiate their claims.Laws affecting technology will always be bad until enough techies become lawyers.
err... If something is opensource, then I assume you accept contributions. Then "intellectual property" isn't truly owned by you, is it? By the way, the world is constantly changing. Software is more and more commodity, unless you work in particular niches or develop truly complicated stuff, generally applicable to algorithms. Consider also how the software can be used to develop a certain kind of "ecology" in your area. So rather than just developing tools, you become a kind of steward for that area with consultancy, knowledge management etc... This is a perfect match for opensource and with more people into the idea, your business can grow a lot stronger and at a much faster pace. If you don't limit marketing and commercial "application" of the software by others in different countries, then everybody wins. The project gains reputation and this kind of reputation is easily related to the business you may be starting (since you need to show sponsorship). The difficulty is wearing two quite different hats most of the time. The key here is looking for the right balance!
In the UK, the use of postal evidence is actually recommended by the patent office: http://www.ipo.gov.uk/copy/c-claim/c-register.htm
The use of Special Delivery ensures that it is sealed when despatched through the post office...
http://www.tinaja.com/patnt01.asp
I've been writing patents for a while for the companies I've worked for and here's my view: if you want to be able to enforce the protection of your IP - you better have deep pockets. Just to get the patent is hundreds if not thousands of dollars. And then once you have it - depending on the level of detectability - you will need to determine if someone is infringing on it. Obviously - there are certain kinds of inventions that are easy to detect and vice-versa. Then once you've determined that, it's not like you can just call the 'cops'. You need to *sue* them and pay legal fees.
That whole question is sooooo 20th century!
--Rob
Towards the Singularity.
try www.wgaregistry.org -- non-profut, in business 75 years, for screenwriters but takes all kinds of files
I wonder if webmail, can be proof of priority. It is probably better to use several big webmail providers. Email (content and timestamp) stored on webmail provider server, not easily accessible by outsiders.
As a punk musician, I used to have to copyright my works all the time. And as a punk musician, I didn't really much money to do it with, nor the extended periods of sobriety required for anything complex.
I simply wrote to the copyright office asking for copyright forms - they're pretty general. You fill out the form, throw it and the cassette or cd in the mail, and you're done.
On occasion, there was something else I wanted to copyright, text or ideas or whatever. Not wanting to spend extra money on a whole separate stamp, I'd just read the ideas into the tape recorder, appending it to whatever songs I submitting that month. You can afford a computer, electricity, and internet access - so it'd probably be easier to get a copyright in the work's intended medium. It's still the same copyright form.
Patents are a much bigger process, involving fees. This won't make your IP patented, but it's at least proof of prior art, so you can prevent someone else from getting an enforceable patent. And if that situation arises, there'd be a good chance that it would be worth going to the time and expense of filing for a patent yourself, after having invalidated the other guy's one.
But I like the idea of copyrighting everything as music. The RIAA clearly loves to go around suing people. They've got too much money, and not enough decent cases. Sing your water-to-gasoline conversion process as song, copyright it, and then have the RIAA go after the newly formed conglomerate, Sunoco Springs, for infringing on your *lyrics*.
In the US without registration all you could win in court if it went that far is to get a cease and desist order.
Basically true, but one should note that that's if you haven't registered when you go to court; you don't have to register before the infringement to be able to sue for damages. It's a limitation on instituting (certain types of) legal action not on your rights as a copyright holder.
Thanks, I didn't know that. If you find someone who's copying your work as their own, you can then register and sue for compensation.
FalconShould there be a Law?