Slashdot Mirror
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.
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
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.
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.)
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?
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.
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...
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
Not done.
http://www.snopes.com/legal/postmark.asp
This solution is way too easy to fraud. As a simple example:
Have notary notarize several basically blank pages (fill in only as much as you need to convince a notary to mark it).
Mail an unsealed envelope to yourself.
Fill in your 'discovery' 'borrowed' from someone else on the notarized pages years later.
Stick in envelope, seal, sign over seal.
Done!
"Who is the Journal of Quantum Physics going to believe?" --Stephen Hawking
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?"
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.
While I agree with your statement that mailing yourself an envelope is useless, I don't think you could easily do what you said.
_ 081707.html
Every time I remember sending a registered mail, the post office stamped ink across the seams of the envelope - presumably to ensure that it wasn't opened.
But seriously, Slashdot is the worst place to get good legal advice. Yikes.
That said, there was a good article on the August 11th Talk of the Nation Science Friday called "What Inventors Need to Know". One of the guests emphasis was on securing a way to finance and market your idea rather than the actual protection of IP. But if you're really worried, he suggested getting a temporary patent for $100, which will cover you for a year.
http://www.sciencefriday.com/pages/2007/Aug/hour2
I've found that a rule-based IP firewall like netfilter works well.
DNA just wants to be free...
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.
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
IP sucks because it doesn't exist.
Look, you either have an object, which is patentable, a work, which can be copyrighted, a symbol, which can be trademarked... or you have an idea, which is only protected until you tell somebody else. If you don't want to share, don't.
The concept of Intellectual Property - i.e. the idea that an abstract construct can have the same properties as a physical construct - is self-contradictory: If it's intellectual, it's not property. The idea has no basis in law, philosophy or history. I've written about this elsewhere, so I won't waste my breath repeating myself here.
As far as the submitter is concerned, the alternatives are clear: You can protect the work, but not the idea. If it's a song, write it down and/or record it, then copyright it. If it's software, put it in a public repository that has reliable tracking and timestamping, and associate it with an appropriate license. As the owner, you can change this license any way you like in the future, so pick something that suits you for the time being and leave it at that.
Crumb's Corollary: Never bring a knife to a bun fight.
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.
Bear in mind the poster you replied to is in the UK (and the original poster didn't state his location).
The UK Intellectual Property Office implies here that although posting something to yourself (by Special Delivery) and not opening it upon receipt doesn't prove you created it, it does give you proof you held that information on that date.
-- Soruk
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
While the exact duties of a Notary Public vary slightly by state in the US (because you are acting as an officer of the state and regulated by state law, in my case Ohio) we generally have two responsibilities.
1) Perform signature acknowledgements (verify a document is signed by the person it says it was by requiring the personal appearance of such person with proper ID. A common example of this is real estate mortgages as you alluded.
2) Administer oaths for sworn statements (jurat/affidavit). A common example of this is sale of a vehicle where you are required to swear that the information on the ownership title is correct.
Some additional duties can include: administering the oath of office for elected officials, making certified copies of documents that are not subject to public recording, etc.
...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.
IP sucks because it doesn't exist.
Look, you either have an object, which is patentable, a work, which can be copyrighted, a symbol, which can be trademarked... or you have an idea, which is only protected until you tell somebody else. If you don't want to share, don't.
I'm afraid that objects are not patentable, it is the design of the object or process the object implements that is patentable (an invention). The point behind a patent is not to keep something to yourself, it's to license the process/design/etc to someone else. The licensing aspect is what makes it property.
In that vein, I'm not really sure what the submitter of this question intends to do, so it's hard to give advice, but here are some rules of thumb:
If it's something you want to publish the expression of an idea (in words, music, video, etc), copyright it (with the copyright office)
If you want to license the idea itself, patent it.
If it's a logo or name that you want to use to sell something else, trademark it.
If you want to just keep it secret, just don't tell anyone; or do the appropriate NDAs, etc as a trade secret.
And I have to say, IP in all its forms (copyright, patent, etc) does exist. Just ask a musician (recording artist), author, or inventor how they make their money.
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"
try www.wgaregistry.org -- non-profut, in business 75 years, for screenwriters but takes all kinds of files