Open Source Patent Donations?

patspam writes "As a software engineer I come up with patentable ideas every now and then, ideas which I'm not interested in pursuing myself but which I'd like to keep out of the hands of private entities/patent trolls in my own personal effort to defeat software patents. Should I patent the ideas and donate them to some sort of open source foundation? Or just blog about the ideas so that the 'prior art' exists in the public domain? What's your strategy for fighting against restrictive software patents?"

Comments

As far as US is concerned

[hansraj]

you could just blog since the system is not first to file but first to invent. Moreover it also saves you patent fees that you would have to pay if you actually try getting a patent.

Re:As far as US is concerned

[mavenguy]

This is a common misconception. This will not defeat someone else who conceives and files for a patent later in the US. From 35 USC 102:

A person shall be entitled to a patent unless--
...
(g)(2) before such person's invention thereof, the invention was made in this country by another inventor who had not abandoned, suppressed, or concealed it. In determining priority of invention under this subsection, there shall be considered not only the respective dates of conception and reduction to practice of the invention, but also the reasonable diligence of one who was first to conceive and last to reduce to practice, from a time prior to conception by the other. (Emphasis added)

You need to actively work on it and have reduced it to practice (the latter which is satisfied by filing a patent application). Your triumphant opening of the envelope might garner you bragging rights, but no destructive effect on the patent rights of others.

Re:As far as US is concerned

[IAmGarethAdams]

Unfortunately however, this is unlikely to be admissible in any serious context.

Most postal services have absolutely no problem with letting you send an empty, open envelope to yourself; after which you have an open, registered and dated empty envelope which you can later fill with a pre-dated proof of invention and seal.

Re:As far as US is concerned

[thegrassyknowl]

you could just blog since the system is not first to file but first to invent.

Since when has that pesky little thing called 'prior art' stopped the patent office granting patents, and since when has it stopped the legal system upholding those patents when they are used to sue the pants off the original inventor or anyone who is using his invention free of charge?

Re:As far as US is concerned

[Instine]

"not abandoned, suppressed, or concealed"

Do you think thats an inclusive or an exclusive or?

Re:As far as US is concerned

[Instine]

and don't say "yes"

Re:As far as US is concerned

[ddrichardson]

No.

Re:As far as US is concerned

[ckaminski]

And if it's signed, dated and notarized?

Re:As far as US is concerned

[IAmGarethAdams]

Then putting it in a sealed envelope still adds no additional credibility

Re:As far as US is concerned

[Instine]

tee heee.. would mod funny if could.

Re:As far as US is concerned

[Anonymous Coward]

Not sufficient for a prior art search. The patent examiners are going to look at (a) old patents, and, and . . . and not much bloody else.

If the idea has been practiced in a shipping product, that's great. Academic papers are a possibility, but they are weaker.

Some random web site (that could also be lying about the date) is not going to do much good.

Re:As far as US is concerned

[bloobloo]

Any of them. IF the invention by the original inventor was abandoned OR it was suppressed OR it was concealed THEN a patent can be issued to a later "inventor" Remember that you can have a cruel punishment as long as it is usual, and an unusual punishment as long as it is not cruel because the wording in the 8th amendment is cruel AND unusual.

Re:As far as US is concerned

[Anonymous Coward]

You need to actively work on it and have reduced it to practice (the latter which is satisfied by filing a patent application).

Filing a patent application is not identical to reduction to practice. Reduction to practice means you have actually done or implemented whatever your idea is, and that can happen substantially after your patent is filed.

For example, I could come up with the idea of using trained butterflies in El Paso to clear up fog in London, based on an extension of the well-known butterfly effect. That's (arguably) a patentable idea. I've now blogged about it on /., so the idea has been conceived. If someone else were to pick up the concept, set about training some butterflies, and actually decrease the London fog, then he would have reduced the concept to practice and his patent rights would supersede my own.

If the submitter is talking about some bit of code that he's actually implemented, but has no intention of improving, then he's achieved the highest standard of reduction and can not be thought to have abandoned the invention. Now, if someone else would pick up that idea, improve on it, or extend it in some non-trivial way, then that second person would be eligible for a patent on the extension.

Re:As far as US is concerned

[SimonGhent]

If someone else were to pick up the concept, set about training some butterflies, and actually decrease the London fog

Hey, I'm in London and it not foggy *at all*

Go butterflies!

Re:As far as US is concerned

[1u3hr]

go to post office and mail it (sealed) to yourself (and may be also another one to your trusted legal advisor) by registered mail. Do not open the package, when you receive it. In case of a prior art you'll have a sealed, registered and dated proof of invention, which can be produced to lawyers.

All you'll have is proof you posted an envelope. No proof it was sealed or had anything it it when you did so. This is only useful for stamp collectors collecting first day covers.

Re:As far as US is concerned

[kalirion]

before such person's invention thereof, the invention was made in this country by another inventor

Wait, so we can freely patent ideas/inventions from other countries?

Re:As far as US is concerned

[Dare nMc]

Although having no bearing on the subject at hand.

>have a cruel punishment as long as it is usual, and an unusual punishment as long as it is not cruel because the wording in the 8th amendment is cruel AND unusual.

from the Magna Carta, which applies to both US and English law

the right and duty of the jury to pass final judgment on all laws, the moral intent of the law

typically this is more often used to throw out a unjust law, but I assume it works both ways. In the case of the 8th amendment this would clearly throw out any law allowing cruel but usual punishment.

Re:As far as US is concerned

[SLi]

I've been told that a common trick for large companies in some countries when they hit a thing they figure out might be patentable but they are not interested in patenting it is write a rudimentary description of it and file it as a patent. At least here they've told me that is enough to get the application published in some public PTO journal, but it won't be examined until the examination fee is paid, which they just "forget" to do. So then they have very officially published prior art to similar claims for free.

Re:As far as US is concerned

[DustyShadow]

No. If the invention is published in a foreign country, that document can be used as prior art in the U.S.

Re:As far as US is concerned

[bloobloo]

I just picked a well known "and" to show the difference from "or" in law.

I know it's poor form to quote wikipedia but take a look at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eighth_Amendment_to_the_United_States_Constitution#Cruel_and_unusual_punishments - a punishment has to be both cruel and unusual to be automatically unconstitutional.

As you said, it's off topic but Magna Carta is no longer of much legal status. The only significant section left in the law in England is:

"NO Freeman shall be taken or imprisoned, or be disseised of his Freehold, or Liberties, or free Customs, or be outlawed, or exiled, or any other wise destroyed; nor will We not pass upon him, nor condemn him, but by lawful judgment of his Peers, or by the Law of the Land. We will sell to no man, we will not deny or defer to any man either Justice or Right."

Re:As far as US is concerned

[beavioso]

IANAL, but I think you're trying to say that if this person writes it down in a journal, or a blog, that this person will not be able to stop someone from patenting it.

If that's what you're asserting, then you're wrong. There's a court case about prior art, which ruled something to the effect that prior art is anything that is accessible by the public (i.e. a PhD dissertation available through a public university library only needs to be available for access, and you do not need to prove that someone actually looked at it or read it after it's been cataloged). Once an examiner finds a reference with a varifiable date that predates a filing by one year, then 35 USC 102(b) is used and it creates a bar for patenting (e.g. the person seeking a patent cannot swear back and come up with evidence that they in fact invented more than one year ago).

In the end, I'm almost positive that blogs can be used as evidence, especially if they provide enough detail and motivation to do something. It might even be best to let archive.org to archive your blog, so that the dates have a second varifiable date attached to it.

Now, if all you meant to address, was that a person cannot get a patent after abandoning, suppressing, or concealing the subject matter, then that is correct. But, I haven't heard of many 102(g)(2) rejections.

Re:As far as US is concerned

[Anonymous Coward]

102(g) is not what is most applicable in the case of open source/bloggers. Try 35 USC 102(a).

35 U.S.C. 102 Conditions for patentability; novelty and loss of right to patent.
A person shall be entitled to a patent unless -

(a) the invention was known or used by others in this country, or patented or described in a printed publication in this or a foreign country, before the invention thereof by the applicant for a patent.

But as mentioned in other comments below, just making a statement of "wow, I love AJAX I have the idea to design widget A using it!" means nothing in terms of anticipation (the standard applied with respect to prior art rejections under 35 USC 102).

Also, the statement "You need to actively work on it and have reduced it to practice (the latter which is satisfied by filing a patent application)" is not entirely correct. Reduction to practice does not require the filing of a patent application. Rather, the filing of a patent application is constructive reduction to practice, which can be used as an actual reduction to practice in view of full disclosure.

Re:As far as US is concerned

[Sandbags]

Mailing an envolope to yourself by itself could be sent opened, however, mailing a certified letter requires the envelope not only to be sealed, but the certification is placed across the back of the envelope covering the seal. when recieved, the return receipt is also dated and signed by you, then kept on file with the post office for many years (7 at least). There's a comments field on the certificate for to indicate the envelope's contents. Note the type of invetion contained therein and it should be fair proof of your prior art.

Of course, to go through all this, why not simply have the documents notorised... It's probably cheaper to do so.

You'd also need to prove not only that you came up with the idea, but also that you worked on attempting to bring it to market. this would likely mean a mock up or prototype. For a program or function of a program, at least flow charts if not actual sample or speudocode would be expected. You need to get a lot farther than a simple description in a blog. You need images, plans, design ideas, workflow, analysis, etc. I know a guy who files patents every few months in magneto radioscopy (MRI and megnetic probe research). The amount of work is insane, and the language and method for composing images is very specific. Even after several dozen granted patents he still has some sent back for editing that get declined.

Finally, you have to satisfy the ruling that the idea can't be hidden or obscured. It would need to be published somewhere... Somewhere at least resonably obvious like a trade magazine related to the field for the product.

For all the effort, and with lawyers able to refute most of what you could at some level prove, it's more likely they'll win, not you. It;s about $1,200 to file a patent, plus legal fees and drawings. More if you actually want to do a search to see if it's already been patented before you file. If you have a really good idea, do a search. If noone else patented it, you should. If you can't afford to, a lot of companies will do it for very small fees, in exchange for a sizable cut of the profits if someone licenses your ides (or if they're a patent troll and sue in your name).

Re:As far as US is concerned

[greensoap]

First off ---- I am not a lawyer. The information contained within should not be relied upon. If you are in need of legal counsel, please seek out a licensed attorney in your state. I do not intend to create an attorney/client relationship with any reader. I am just a law student and I am not qualified to provide legal advice, but hopefully I know a little more than the average joe.

The parent is flat out wrong. The USPTO, or a court, can use a publication under 102(b) or 102(e) to show that an invention is not novel. Regardless of the status of the a patent on the prior art. 102(g) is related to if an inventor is trying to get a patent on his invention, not whether a publication can be used against another as prior art.

Perhaps I should explain. If there exists a publication describing the subject of a patent application and that publication was published more than one year prior to the application (also applies to if the subject of the patent was in public use in the US or for sale in the US), it is an absolute bar to the patent. 35 USC Section 102(b).

Blogging about an invention is a publication and can be used to destroy novelty for further inventors. The problem is that the USPTO is less likely to find your art than if it is an issued patent or an application.

If the As a suggestion to the original post, maybe a provisional application would meet your desire:
http://www.uspto.gov/web/offices/pac/provapp.htm

Provisional applications are published after 18 months, and if the application matures into an issued patent, it will count as art from the day it was filed. You still have to meet some of the more stringent requirements though, so this may not be the right solution. Also, if you don't intend to get a patent on the idea, it is better to publish something as well as file the provisional. That way there is a publication farther back in time than just the publication of the application that will never mature into an issued patent.

But as I said before, the parent is wrong and misunderstands the import of 102(g). The designation of informative on that post is misplaced.

Re:As far as US is concerned

[dwye]

A person shall be entitled to a patent unless--

...

(g)(2) before such person's invention thereof, the invention was made in this country by another inventor who had not abandoned, suppressed, or concealed it. In determining priority of invention under this subsection, there shall be considered not only the respective dates of conception and reduction to practice of the invention, but also the reasonable diligence of one who was first to conceive and last to reduce to practice, from a time prior to conception by the other. (Emphasis added)

There has to be more to it than that, as well, or I could patent the horse collar and horseshoes, or even the use of subordinate clauses in Indo-European languages (as no one claims these "inventions" anymore). Assuming that I cannot, there must be a way to define "prior art" that recognizes ideas or practices in the public domain for ages, let alone to place one's patentable inventions into that public domain (which seems to be the article writer's goal).

Re:As far as US is concerned

[JSBiff]

Well, if you are trying to look at it from a programming standpoint, instead of normal language standpoint, then the above construction means if you didn't abandon it, you better suppress it or conceal it, otherwise you can't patent it (because the not only applies to the abandoned). *grin*

However, I think, translating from English to C, the above is roughly equivalent to:

bool ElligibleForPatent( const patent_t * x)
{
      if (!abandoned(x) && !suppressed(x) && !concealed(x))
      {
            return true;
      }
      else
      {
            return false;
      }
}

Hope that clears it up.

Re:As far as US is concerned

[rtb61]

One extreme mistake in your quote, after each and every subsection under the clause there is an 'or', fail under any one those conditions and you lose. Hence;

(a) the invention was known or used by others in this country, or patented or described in a printed publication in this or a foreign country , before the invention thereof by the applicant for patent, or,

So publish the idea on the internet and no one can steal it and patent it out from underneath you.

Sure they can apply the idea, but they can not patent it and charge you or others for it (they can of course go back to the originator of the idea seek the patent in the originators name and then charge everybody else)

How can you abandon an idea, the concept is ludicrous, about the closest would be releasing the idea into the public domain but again that kills all future patents.

So blog it or slashdot it and prior art is locked in.

So a good lesson in legislation watch out for the 'or'/'and' at the end, they have real impact.

Re:As far as US is concerned

[rhkramer]

the system is not first to file but first to invent

I guess that is still true today, but isn't legislation (or something) pending to change our patent system to first to file?

And even if it isn't pending at the moment, or has recently been defeated, many other countries' patent systems are first to file, and that seems to be the trend. So, even if that change has been defeated recently, I'm sure it will come up again.

My point: the advice in this article should account for that (or at least mention it), with strategies that work for first to invent as well as first to file, or, if that is not possible, discuss strategies for both situations, or something.

Re:As far as US is concerned

[bronsinbound]

You cannot patent ideas! You must patent working inventions.

Re:As far as US is concerned

[kiracatgirl]

I'm pretty sure, yes. They might send assassins after you, though.

Re:As far as US is concerned

[WindShadow]

The fact the IBM does publish a disclosure journal and invention disclosure publications just to establish them as prior art would indicate that this is valid, although there may be conditions applying which aren't obvious. However, I was contacted a few years ago by a patent attourney who was looking for prior art to invalidate a patent, and wanted to verify that I was the author of a usenet posting made in about 1989, describing a way to validate ROM. So clearly that constituted prior art (or maybe proved obviousness) in a useful way, since they needed a notarized statement that I did make the post in question.

Re:As far as US is concerned

[Anonymous Coward]

Completely wrong, a blog is not a publication:

"Publication"

          The legislative history to the Copyright Act makes clear
that "any form of dissemination in which a material object does
not change hands . . . is not a publication no matter how many
people are exposed to the work." Thus, a work that is only
displayed or performed via the NII would not be considered
published, no matter how many people have access to the display
or performance, because a material object -- a copy of the work -
- does not change hands. However, in the case of transmissions
of reproductions, the recipients of the transmissions receive
copies of the work (i.e., copies of the work have been
distributed) -- although they may not have "changed hands" in the
literal sense.

          Whether the transmission of copies of works is clearly
within the scope of the distribution right is also a problem with
respect to the act of publication by the transmission of copies.
Indeed, the definition of "publication" incorporates the language
used to describe the distribution right, which S. 1284 and H.R.
2441 would amend. Publication largely turns on whether the work
has been distributed to the public. Thus, if copies of a work
may be distributed to the public by transmission, then a work may
be published by the transmission of copies to the public.
Therefore, consistent with the proposed amendment of the
distribution right, the Administration supports the amendment to
the definition of "publication" in Section 101 of the Copyright
Act that would recognize that a work may be published through the
distribution of copies of the work to the public by transmission.

Re:As far as US is concerned

[greensoap]

Yes and no. If the blog is of substantial character in the industry, it may satisfy the publication requirement. First off, do not rely on the definition of a publication in copyright for the definition of publication in patent law. Go see the MPEP instead: http://www.uspto.gov/web/offices/pac/mpep/documents/2100_2128.htm "A reference is proven to be a 'printed publication' 'upon a satisfactory showing that such document has been disseminated or otherwise made available to the extent that persons interested and ordinarily skilled in the subject matter or art, exercising reasonable diligence, can locate it.' In re Wyer, 655 F.2d 221"

Re:As far as US is concerned

[Anonymous Coward]

Thank you, greensoap, for taking the time and effort to give a full and thoughtful response that addresses both the current argument and the original point of the thread. I notice that too often, Slashdot comments fail to address the original issue, are unconstructive and unhelpful, or are downright inflammatory.

Re:As far as US is concerned

[Anonymous Coward]

This hasn't worked for me.

As the first to invent I am protected from getting sued, but I have had 2 companies that both stole my working invention, and patent it, then sue each other in a highly publicized battle.
Both parties refused to acknoledge my prior art or respond to me, because it would make both of their patents worthless!
Since I am an outside third party there isn't much I could do.

Problem is not that one lost then came up with some settlement with the other, they now have case history that make it much harder for anyone else who could get sued when they figure out how to do it also.

BEWARE THE LINK

[IBBoard]

I've not clicked the link, but it's another Yahoo redirect link to an on.nimp.org address. Proceed with caution/insanity.

Re:BEWARE THE LINK

[jdowland]

I don't know which link you are talking about, but patspam.com is a tag redirect to a wordpress blog hosted at blog.patspam.com.

Re:BEWARE THE LINK

[hansraj]

I did click the link and it is just a troll. Not work safe.

Re:BEWARE THE LINK

[IBBoard]

I realised after posting that it would appear as a post with no obvious parent and I should have been clearer. The "beware" is for the GP comment, not the summary (noticed the "parent" link under my comment ;) )

legal advice

[simonharvey]

What's your strategy for fighting against restrictive software patents?" Well I suppose the first would be not going to slashdot for legal advice, but then IANAL.

Re:legal advice

[sporkme]

My company is vastly intrigued by your refreshing concepts. Please email all of your code to: code-stealer slashtot.org (sorry for the obfuscation... can't be too careful these days). Once our firm receives your code, we will review it for viability and email you back with our offer. IANAL but I am totally "Al." You can trust everyone online, but be aware, many profitable arrangements are ruined by "best friends" who feign suspicion of legitimate businesses like mine, only to steal the data to resell to Korea. Just think about it. Tens of dollars await you my friend!

wtf legal advice on /.

Re:legal advice

[deblau]

Well, I am a patent lawyer. Don't go to slashdot for legal advice.

When you have a serious problem, you hire a professional in that field. People don't go to lawyers when they want code, why should they go to coders when they want legal help?

Establishing Prior Art

[codegen]

I publish to a peer reviewed academic journal or conference. In most
of the conferences I'm involved in, we are always looking for
more industrial contributions.

Re:Establishing Prior Art

[Anonymous Coward]

is that a haiku or something, i can't figure it out

Re:Establishing Prior Art

[Anonymous Coward]

yeah that might work if your some academic freek but what if u dont have a degree?
just cos u have a greate idea dont mean u know about the some academic journal/conference crap letalone how to get something into it.
were talking 'i know how to code/maths for xyz way faster/simpler' kind of stuff here i would think.

Re:Establishing Prior Art

[n00854180t]

You don't have to have a degree to publish to a peer-reviewed journal. As long as you understand the process and quality requirements of writing a white paper (honestly people, it's not that difficult, even if you never attended college) you can likely get it published. That is, assuming you have a good enough understanding of the subject to write about it.

Re:Establishing Prior Art

[Anonymous Coward]

Industrial contributions do not show up because we are all under NDA, up until 6 months after we leave our jobs. Nothing will ever transpire MWHA HA HA HA HA (jabba the hut laugh) - sigh.

Re:Establishing Prior Art

[codegen]

I guess it depends on the company. I used to work in the private sector under an NDA, but I was still able to publish occasionally, I just had to get permission beforehand and had to have the paper reviewed by the CEO/VP Research (It was a small company) before it was submitted. I currently collaborate with one very large software company (Under an NDA), and we are publishing the results, I just have to push the paper through legal before I can submit it.

Re:Establishing Prior Art

[codegen]

I agree. Some of the conferences such as the IEEE International Conference on Software Maintenance usually have an Industrial Track. As long as it is novel and reasonably well written, it can be published. However, as a quick piece of advice to potential industrial contributors. One of the usual weaknesses of the industrial contributions is usually in the related works section of the paper. Spend a quick survey with google scholar or DBLP to check for other research/industrial papers that are similar to your own. This will also allow you to clearly state how your work is novel related to the rest of the world.

sorry mate, somebody beat you to it.

[apodyopsis]

sorry mate, somebody beat you to it. the "toilet snorkel" is already patented..

http://www.totallyabsurd.com/toiletsnorkel.htm

Some considerations

[kanweg]

Publishing is a fine way to create prior art, effectively inhibiting any further patents for that very idea. However, make sure you add as much detail as possible to give a patent attorney as little leeway as possible.

If you blog it, the content may get lost. Is it possible for you to (crudely) implement your ideas and put that code on sourceforge or some other repository, together with a description. In the comments of the code you can elaborate on things not implemented. In such a repository, the ideas may be longer lived, and more people may see it (and if necessary bring it to the attention of a patent office).

Bert
Patent agent

Re:Some considerations

[n3tcat]

I thought too much detail would in effect give the patent troll a "way out" as they can then just change one of the many details and become unique.

Re:Some considerations

[Otter]

That's why patents are normally written in an "inverted pyramid" style, with a broad claim at the beginning that narrows to details of a specific implementation or implementations. Most of the scaremongering patent stories here are based on someone reading the first, vague claim of a patent and freaking out. (In any case, if your goal is to create prior art, not to go around suing people, who cares if someone else can scrape out a narrow patent when you have a perfectly good unpatented implementation in place?)

That said: as with most of these prior art creation schemes, this guy seems to have a unrealistically low notion of how developed an "idea" needs to be for patent purposes.

Re:Some considerations

[muffel]

Most of the scaremongering patent stories here are based on someone reading the first, vague claim of a patent and freaking out.

And rightly so. Because that "first, vague claim" is exactly what is being patented. (Actually, there may be several main claims in a patent.) It is usually the only thing you have to read in a patent, if you want to find out if something is patented.

The sub claims have two purposes:

1. To have a more specific fallback in case your main claim doesn't go through
2. To keep someone from registering a patent on a specification of your main claim

E.g.:

Company A registers a patent with two claims (1 main and 1 sub):

1. A vehicle.
2. A vehicle as in claim 1, with four wheels.

The patent office says that claim 1 is too broad, but they can patent in conjunction with claim 2.
So they end up with a patent with just one main claim: "A vehicle with four wheels".
The only reason they were able to do this is because the four wheels were already included as a sub claim in the original patent application.

Now Company B comes along and patents (successfully) "A vehicle with four wheels, an engine, and a steering wheel."

A could have stopped B from doing that, had they thought of including an engine and a steering wheel in their sub claims.

Now B has a nice patented car, but they cannot make it without a license from A, as -- despite their own patent -- their car still violates A's broader patent.

A can make all the four-wheeled vehicles they want, unless it has an engine and a steering wheel -- in which case they need a license from B.

Patent Commons vs Prior Art

[Anonymous Coward]

Patent Commons can be pooled and used defensively (aggressively in defence) to defend Open Source. A patent commons that defends one particular cause can help find infringement in order to scare off someone accusing others of infringement. It can cause a ceasefire.

Prior Art helps block patents in general, but as we saw with the Amazon shopping cart patent it can take years and effort (from New Zealanders) to remove them.

So Patent Commons is more powerful, but it involves the patent submission process, and it can be costly. I suggest the patent commons if you're got the resources.

(I am not a lawyer)

Re:Patent Commons vs Prior Art

[JavaRob]

How much does it cost to submit a patent? From what I understand, the legal documents are extremely complicated (so you need a lawyer) and the total cost will be somewhere from $5K up to $25K and possibly beyond depending on the complexity of the thing you're patenting (though the higher numbers will only come into play for highly-complex physical devices).

I absolutely agree that a donated patent can be quite useful -- but keep in mind that it's a sizable donation that *might* be valueless if there's some prior art you didn't find in your search.

The prior art approach seems like the way to go for most of us. It sounds like you just need to publish the idea with enough detail that someone could implement it, to qualify as prior art:

In most patent systems, in order to anticipate a claim, prior art is expected to provide a description sufficient to inform the average worker in the field (or the person skilled in the art) of some subject matter falling within the scope of the claim. Prior art must be available in some way to the public, and many countries require the information to be recorded in a fixed form somehow. A blog would seem to qualify; any way to more reliably prove the date of publication? Get it into the wayback machine, maybe?

Hey when did Knuth start posting to Slashdot?

[Anonymous Coward]

As a software engineer I come up with patentable ideas every now and then

Because if you're not Knuth, you have no patentable ideas (and no, new to you is not new).

Re:Hey when did Knuth start posting to Slashdot?

[Anonymous Coward]

Aye, if all you're making is software, you have nothing patentable, but that doesn't mean you can't get a patent for it.

Creating "Prior Art."

[mlwmohawk]

To establish prior art you need to publish. The problem is that magazines and journals are fairly selective about content because they have to pay or the content has to fit their market or be interesting in some way. Then there is credibility, if you write an article about recommendations or motor control methodology, something you've done as a hobby project, a magazine or journal may not choose to publish because it can not properly verify the content.

We need to create an "on-line" and perhaps paper "journal" that will accept all technical submissions and publish them in a way that fits the USPTO's definition of "published" to establish prior art. That way *all* ideas get covered easily.

I've written a lot of articles and only been published a few times, its hard to get published. There are lots of would be authors out there and a lot of subject matter being written about.

Re:Creating "Prior Art."

[Anonymous Coward]

Patents are also supposed to be non-obvious. That is to say, 'not obvious to a professional working in the particular field in question'. Blogging (etc.) about a new idea could also be used as evidence that a hypothetical patent fails to meet this criterion. Especially if several bloggers at different times in different fields of IT all independently come up with the same solution for a problem.

A good example is the attempted patent on the cursor. To be honest, as a programmer I can't see any other way of marking where the next character is going to appear - the cursor is pretty much /the/ most obvious way to do it. Therefore the cursor ought to be non-patentable. There are quite a few other IT-related things that have been patented, where I've thought 'wait a minute, if I had needed to do X, that's the first thing I would have tried'. So I think we should attack and undermine more patents on grounds of obviousness rather than on prior art. Obviousness is not affected by the issue of who was first to file.

Re:Creating "Prior Art."

[stranger_to_himself]

When I worked in biotech (this was in the UK in 2000-2003) our lab books, countersigned regularly by a senior academic and archived in the institute library were considered a good enough defense against subsequent US patent applications. I don't know if this was ever tested.

I agree there should be repositories for articles that are not necessarily of enough immediacy, impact or quality for publication, but still contain potentially valuable IP. I wouldn't be surprised if such a thing already exists. Nature magazine have a new 'Nature Precedeings' website to share pre-publication research, and I'm sure other subject areas are doing similar things.

Re:Creating "Prior Art."

[ortholattice]

To establish prior art you need to publish. The problem is that magazines and journals are fairly selective about content because they have to pay or the content has to fit their market or be interesting in some way. Then there is credibility, if you write an article about recommendations or motor control methodology, something you've done as a hobby project, a magazine or journal may not choose to publish because it can not properly verify the content.

This is highly dependent on the journal. In the case of trade journals, a lot of them are actually dying for "real" articles buried in their mass of ads, and ads thinly disguised as articles, to attract readership. In the past I have submitted many "test cases" to a trade rag on electronics test and all of them were published without question. In some cases they were patentable ideas I specifically wanted to make public domain, because it wasn't worth it to me to go through the patent expense but I also didn't want to be prevented from using them in the future. As a side effect I became well-known in the field, very helpful for my consulting work.

On the other hand, I have submitted a couple of ideas to the "Design Ideas" section of EDN magazine. Both were rejected, even though I thought they were reasonable. I think the problem there is simply that the column is very popular and they have more submissions than they can publish, so it depends on the whim of the editor that day.

Anyway it depends on the journal. I guess my point is that if you're going to write it up anyway, might as well submit it and see what happens, doesn't cost anything. If it does get published, you'll make a name for yourself and have something for your CV, as well as establishing prior art. For best results find a little known or start-up trade rag in the field that's 90% ads. And if it doesn't get published, you'll still have your write-up for some on-line thing as you suggested.

Re:Creating "Prior Art."

[kong74]

Maybe http://www.lulu.com/ is a sufficient way to publish.

Re:Creating "Prior Art."

[asdjlfhgas]

The USPTO doesn't require a disclosure accessible to the public to be in a certain format to constitute prior art...an informal, off the cuff, profanity-laden, dated comment on slashdot.org would constitute prior art if it was pertinent to any claims at hand. Your personal website that is the last search result on google, if relevant and accessible via archive.org or dated with CMS or whatever, would fit the USPTO definition of "published".

Re:Creating "Prior Art."

[Anonymous Coward]

published a few times, its hard to get

"; it's".

Worthless advice, here's why.

[Yoozer]

Moreover, also write the idea, go to post office and mail it (sealed) to yourself (and may be also another one to your trusted legal advisor) by registered mail.

Do not do this. See http://www.copyrightauthority.com/poor-mans-copyright/
This trick works with anything else, too, so it worthless advice.

Re:Worthless advice, here's why.

[Psychotria]

Additionally, copyright is implicitly given (well, in Australia anyway), so sending yourself a copy of something is a waste of a stamp.

We are not talking about copyright though--we're talking about patents. I do agree that it is silly posting yourself a copy of "whatever"... better just to publish the thing and claim the original art (read: others after you will have to battle with you prior art--it's not good if the prior art is sealed in a vault. Is it?)

Re:Worthless advice, here's why.

[Anonymous Coward]

So post a blank postcard with your address on it. Years later, write someone elses invention/copyrighted work on the postcard. Still doesn't prove anything.

Re:Worthless advice, here's why.

[asuffield]

And if you want to accomplish something along those lines (proving that you had a document on a certain date) then that is precisely why notaries public exist in the first place. Take whatever it is along to your local notary and pay them their fee. In the eyes of the law, the document has now been proven to exist in your possession on that date. Unlike the ridiculous games with envelopes that you see in the movies, it actually works.

Re:Worthless advice, here's why.

[91degrees]

Okay, it's not the best way of doing things, but I imagine it could help. If a copyright infringer claimed that he came up with the idea at a certain date, and you had done the sealed envelope trick at a date before then, then the infringer would at least need to come up with some suggestion as to why you mailed a blank envelope to yourself. An elaborate scam in which you planned to steal someone else's copyright some years hence really wouldn't pass the plausibility test.

This may be of limited use, and there are certainly better alternative available, but it's not totally worthless advice.

Re:Worthless advice, here's why.

[Yoozer]

It is worthless because the "evidence" is easily faked - you simply don't seal the envelope (completely) before sending it, so you can put in it whatever you want. If you read the link, you'll see a few methods of faking it. In fact, it's even worse than worthless because it gives the sender a false sense of legal security.

Re:Worthless advice, here's why.

[91degrees]

It's not that easily faked. Let's use my comment here for an example. It's copyrighted by me. If you wanted to falsely claim ownership, how would you apply the technique in the link? Put it in the envelope that you previously mailed to themselves. Did you previously mail an unsealed envelope to yourself? I'm betting you didn't. Not only would your opponent have to prove it could be faked, but that it probably was faked.

Reasonable doubt is not enough to disqualify evidence in civil suits. You need the preponderance of evidence. i.e. is it more probably that you planned to fake this before the infringed item even existed, or that you posted to yourself in an attempt to protect yourself?

Re:Worthless advice, here's why.

[MarkGriz]

"so it worthless advice"

Not completely worthless.

Say for example, your name is Rikki, and you have this number you don't want to lose.

Re:Worthless advice, here's why.

[phoenix.bam!]

Except the author does it wrong. You place the stamp on the evelope across the sealed section. Not only do you have to seal the envelope, but once stamped the postmark is added which also crosses the sealed opening of the envelope.

Re:Worthless advice, here's why.

[Kadin2048]

I think the traditional way to seal a document using a postmark is to close the envelope, then place the stamp (and the address) on the BACK of the envelope, so that the stamp (and, when mailed, the postmark) are across the flap, effectively sealing it.

Obviously if you put the stamp on the front, you have no way of proving that you didn't just mail an unsealed envelope and stuff the papers in there after the fact. It's only of any use if you put the stamp on the back.

However, this is all a moot point because even if you do the envelope trick right, that's not enough to stop a patent filing later on. You need to PUBLISH the information, not conceal it. Putting it on a blog and letting Archive.org pick it up, or posting it to an appropriate Usenet group / public, high-traffic mailing list, etc. would be better.

Re:Worthless advice, here's why.

[Belial6]

If the mailing method worked, I WOULD send myself half a dozen manila envelopes. Do I have a plan for them? No. I just figure, you never know. I don't think I would be alone in this.

Re:Worthless advice, here's why.

[91degrees]

Really.

I wonder why all none of the people who believe the method works have considered doing so.

Re:Worthless advice, here's why.

[Belial6]

A) There is no reason to believe that they have not.
B) There may be a correlation between people who believe the mailing system works, and people who don't plan ahead. Both require not really thinking the whole situation through.

publish

[nguy]

You need to publish your invention in an archival format. Write it up for Dr. Dobbs or some other magazine.

Publishing it on the Internet is not enough; it doesn't count as prior art.

Even if you publish in an archival format, companies will often still patent almost the same thing and then worry about fighting it out in court. There are all sorts of ways of basically invalidating your publication for the purpose of counting as prior art, but it's still the best chance you have.

Patenting is pretty hopeless: it's enormously expensive, and trying to enforce a patent is even more costly. Patents are not useful for inventors or open source, they are only useful as legal ammunition for big companies and law firms to play games with.

Re:publish

[asdjlfhgas]

Who modded this up? Publishing on the internet does count as prior art, if it is accessible via archive.org or is dated such that there is generally no reason to believe it was backdated. A dated comment on slashdot.org would constitute prior art as there is the presumption that the date was not altered for deceptive intent. It may be more transient over the course of decades as opposed to an actual publication, but it certainly would be usable as prior art if found.

Re:publish

[anomalous cohort]

I can't believe that posters here are taking the original poster seriously as he is basically asking for advice on how to create submarine patents for the open source community. Hey folks, when did the ends start justifying the means?

IMHO, criticizing the patent system when for profit corporations abuse it yet encouraging the same abuse when it is done by open source foundations shows a lack of integrity. Wake up, people!

Re:publish

[SimonGhent]

he is basically asking for advice on how to create submarine patents for the open source community

I think that's a little unfair.

Another interpretation could be that he's protecting an idea that could be used in open source and subsequently patented. Then if the patent holder were to complain there would be evidence or prior art, I don't think he's talking about submarineing here.

Re:publish

[Anonymous Coward]

The one thing it does help with (not that I am a supporter of the current patent system) is to establish credibility in a field. (No, no, I'm not talking about patenting the colour magenta or one-click shopping or that crap. I'm talking honest patents.)

This is enormously helpful when you start building a company. Venture capital flows in a touch easier if you can show that you are serious. One tangible way to do this is with a patent. It might cost you $10,000 to patent, but it might benefit you with $100,000 in start-up capital grants.

Re:publish

[nguy]

That's idiotic advice. Prior art claims are hard enough to establish anyway, and you simply don't want to spend time arguing in court about whether a blog post counts as prior art.

There's a bunch of established ways of publishing something so that it counts reliably as prior art. Use one of them. Doing anything else is unnecessarily risky.

(You seem to assume that public accessibility and an established publication date are sufficient to establish prior art. That is incorrect: there are additional requirements, and it is far from clear that a blog post or a Slashdot post meet them.)

Re:publish

[asdjlfhgas]

I didn't say there weren't better ways to publish. But if you are disclosing it for defensive purposes only, as an individual, chances are you don't want to spend the time and money trying to get your paper published in an official journal. You state that "you simply don't want to spend time arguing in court about whether a blog post counts as prior art" and "Doing anything else [besides established ways of publishing] is unnecessarily risky." Perhaps you would like to elaborate on these additional requirements which pertain to the medium in which something is published? Otherwise, you're merely generally alleging a point.

Re:publish

[XLawyer]

USENET has by and large been taken over by the spammers and trolls, but it may be a viable way to publish: after all, Google does index it through Google Groups. It's publicly available, indexed, and even has evidence (some, at least) of publication date.

Re:publish

[Anonymous Coward]

(You seem to assume that public accessibility and an established publication date are sufficient to establish prior art. That is incorrect: there are additional requirements, and it is far from clear that a blog post or a Slashdot post meet them.) I am a patent examiner, and I have to say that if you were correct, there would be far more dubious patents officially granted than there already are. I have frequently cited web pages as prior art, provided that either there's a date on them or the Internet Archive has a copy from before the effective priority date, without incident. I've even used old revisions of Wikipedia entries and yes, even a Slashdot article or two. In all that time, I've only once had a problem where an attorney challenged the admissibility of something I found on the Internet, based on a discrepancy between the metadata in the PDF file I was quoting and the copyright notice inside the document itself being on opposite sides of a priority date. It's been my experience that most applicants just accept the publication or "last modified" date on a web page on its face, since the amount of effort they would have to expend to challenge it, combined with the diminished likelihood that they actually could prove that the claimed date of the reference is invalid for whatever reason, makes it simply not worth their time and money to challenge it IMHO.

Re:publish

[jc42]

I can't believe that posters here are taking the original poster seriously as he is basically asking for advice on how to create submarine patents for the open source community.

I'm not sure I follow this. The "open source community", as far as I can tell, isn't a "person" in any legal sense, and can't sue or be sued. However, I am a "person", and I can be sued. What the OP was talking about was publishing his own ideas in such a way that a corporation can't later claim to own those ideas and sue him for using them.

Hey folks, when did the ends start justifying the means?

I also don't see how this applies. The "end" is a situation where I can use my own ideas without fear that a corporation can take my ideas and sue me for using them. The traditional "means" of doing this is prior publication, which if done correctly can invalidate a later patent claim. This seems to me to be quite justified, considering the history of corporations taking others' ideas, patenting them, and suing the originators for infringement.

In any case, the OP was asking how to correctly do prior publication in our current legal situation (which is essentially incomprehensible to the anyone but a trained IP lawyer). I'd think this is a topic that's well worth explaining to us laypersons.

Part of the current legal situation is that I, as a software developer, can easily be sued for violating patents that I don't have a chance of understanding. I and many others would like to know if we're just "screwed", or whether there might be some defense again this that we can understand and use effectively.

Re:publish

[anomalous cohort]

Oh, I misunderstood his intentions. Mea culpa. I thought that he was interested in going after companies that used his ideas. If all he wants is to protect himself from being sued, then applying for a patent won't help. IANAL but it is my understanding that a patent is an offensive rights weapon. It has no defensive component to it. Just because you already have a patent on an idea can't keep you from being sued for using that idea. All that a patent does is give you some basis for suing someone else.

In terms of defense, all that he needs to do is publish his idea.

Re:publish

[ortholattice]

Publishing it on the Internet is not enough; it doesn't count as prior art.

So the 3-D "printing" idea I just published on slashdot won't count?

Re:publish

[USPTO]

Not true. An internet publishing can definitely serve as prior art, provided it's public. An private FTP site nobody knowns about won't work. OTOH, a listserv with mirrored archives will do very nicely.

Using blogs and tags

[MosesJones]

A while back I blogged on using tags and blogs as a standard mechanism for publication. Now the point of this is that while the patent act says published it doesn't specify the publication type it just says that the other people filing could have obtained the information from it and that others will have read it.

To me this is a classic case where the internet has over taken the current laws to give us a much cheaper and simpler way of doing this.

The us is currently "reforming" its patent laws

[plasmacutter]

I haven't seen anything on this in a while, but It passed one of our houses already.

From what little i've tracked on it, theyre "reforming" the patent system by handing it even more firmly to trolls:

e.g.:

switching to first to file
putting severe restrictions on who has standing to challenge a patent
putting severe restrictions on the period during which it may be challenged before it can never be invalidated period.
(goodbye EFF patent busting campaign anyone?)

I'm sure more "reforms" have and will be added to this bill.

Given this, many other horrid sellouts, and the recent news our new bush appointed head of the fed refuses to impose regulations economics experts nationwide say are absolutely necessary because he holds right wing dogma above economic reality (surprise surprise), I would like to be first to cry "WOMEN AND CHILDREN FIRST!"

the lifeboat is across the great lakes to the north folks, those of you in steerage might want to start making your way there now.

Re:The us is currently "reforming" its patent laws

[Anonymous Coward]

Sadly, you're absolutely right.

So all of us on /. have two options:

1. Expend massive effort and resources in a futile attempt to fix the system.
OR
2. Because a patent attorney or patent agent and PROFIT!!!

Personally I'm going with option 2.

Sometimes you have to make things worse before you can make them better.

Re:The us is currently "reforming" its patent laws

[cgenman]

Switching to first-to-file is actually kind of a good idea. The whole "*we* started working on it first, look at these suspiciously backdated memos" thing is immediately resolved if it simply rests on the stamp by the patent department.

If it is the Patent Reform Act of 2007 (still going through) that you're talking about, it also expands protections for prior-use, and allows unaffiliated 3rd parties to petition for patent cancelation. So it's definitely not all bad. It still doesn't solve the examiner crunch which is at the core of the current meltdown, though.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patent_Reform_Act_of_2007

Re:The us is currently "reforming" its patent laws

[plasmacutter]

They can petition for patent cancellation.. only in a very narrow window immediately after the patent is granted, after which the rules I mentioned in the grandparent post make it pretty much impossible to debunk the abusive patents which prompted calls for change and offering serious protection to submarine patent trolls. Also first to file is a horrible Idea. The point of patents was to allow the small inventor to start his own venture. In order to begin he has to court VC's or other sponsors who could, under the new act, simply take the idea, patent it, and give the finger to the person who worked hard coming up with it.

The nature of software does not support the....

[3seas]

...patent ideology

What is universally accepted as not being patentable:

abstract ideas,
natural law
physical phenomenon

Mathematical algorithms as often added to this but in essence are included in the three primary.

The reason these are so universally accepted as not being patentable is that its near impossible to enforce patents against such things.
i.e. patent on gravity... you cannot use gravity without paying me royalties. But if you try and avoid gravity and walk off a cliff, paying royalties to some fool is teh least of your concerns.

How these applies to software:

Abstract ideas is rather obvious as software is the art of abstraction creation and use if anything is to be considered an art of abstraction.

Natural law is that abstraction is naturally a characteristic of human ability. Without it we could do nothing more than preform like any other animal incapable of developing technology, medicine, clothing, etc..

Physical phenomenon - thru the application of non-physical based abstraction we cause physical movement. If I tell you to go to the store and get a gallon of Mayfield milk, I have used abstract ideas communicated and received by you to act upon. If I/we did not have such ability, Mayfield milk would not exist to begin with.

Now many claim that software is in essence mathematical algorithms, but the basis of computer technology, the way it works, defines this constraint as a computer is based on "calculating" defined in terms of numbers (binary based). However, a radio station (fm or am) uses a carrier signal that cares not of what is carried over the signal, be it music, news, talk, noise, etc... And in the same way this basis of computing can as well be used as a carrier of abstraction far beyond math. Yet the carried its still inherently made up of the three primary things universally consider not being patentable.

This software patent fraud that has been going on has, as any attempt to contradict physics and nature, very bad effects, only due to the inherent nature of abstraction the skill of abstraction manipulation (human use and ability to deceive via abstraction manipulation) there are those who have remained fooled by such deception and unfortunately are in positions to indirectly tell people they have to walk off a cliff rather than recognize they are human with inherent abstraction skill and as a natural human characteristic it is to be expected and even encouraged to be what we are and make the best of it.

There is a way to not only prove all of this but in so doing build up a foundation of common knowledge solution direction of anyone "skilled in the field", non novel, and other aspects supporting non-patent-ability.

Humans can be deceptive for a long time and in an environment that even proves otherwise. This might be called the "human denial factor". Examples of this are well known, ie. Galileo and teh exoneration in the early 1990 of his views. But a lot of good such exoneration does Galileo now. Likewise the Hindu-Arabic decimal system took three hundred years to over come the far more mathematical limiting roman numeral system. Lets face it, only a fool would think nothing cannot have value (re: zero place holder), yet accountants using roman numerals were elite.. (sound familiar?)

Anyways, this idea of asking for funds/donations for to support software patents, regardless of the claimed intent of obtaining such patents, is supporting dishonesty and does not help to resolved the real issue of genuinely recognizing the honest nature of software.

for more see: Abstraction Physics

Re:The nature of software does not support the....

[samkass]

Software is a machine. It executes in a virtual mathematical environment, but in its domain it's every bit as much a constructed machine as a lever, airplane, or telephone. Giving physical machines some sort of exclusive status as "patentable" while rejecting the patentability of software makes no sense to me. Yes, it executes on mathematical principles, but so do all the physical machines that have been patented.

Re:The nature of software does not support the....

[Kadin2048]

You're ignoring that software is already protected via copyright. So particular implementations of a new idea are automatically protected -- and not for a mere few decades, but for more than a century.

Personally I'd be up for one or the other: software patents would be acceptable if you couldn't copyright source code (and actually this would be pretty nice, since it would dump everything into the public domain in a relatively short period), but having both -- being able to copyright a particular implementation while also patenting the general principles -- is atrocious. It's really surprising that we can do as much today with computers as we can; I suspect that's really only because most large companies have such large "MAD" patent portfolios that they can violate others' patents with relative impunity.

Re:The nature of software does not support the....

[samkass]

You're ignoring that software is already protected via copyright.

No I'm not. That's a completely separate issue. The source code is protected via copyright, and rightly so-- source code can be very creative.

However, that's completely beside my point: software is a machine. Once you admit that, it's obvious that it should also be patentable. Yes, it's a machine made of copyrighted text. Blueprints can be copyrighted and the device they describe can be patented. Software is no different.

Patents are expensive, publishing is cheap

[Anonymous Coward]

In both cases expensive lawyers are needed to enforce your "rights". All in all, public domain probably has less protection than patents since it has no net perceived worth.

I've put stuff into the public domain before. It didn't stop anyone from filing patents on some of it anyway.

Re:Patents are expensive, publishing is cheap

[Woodpeckeruk]

Applying for a patent simply to publish, and not to have a patent granted, is a cheap and effective way of publishing for defensive purposes, and is a sure way of making the work searchable by patent offices. See my comment below.

Proof right there

[Anonymous Coward]

The simple posting in the above demonstrates how dumb software patents are. It also demonstrates how few people really understand what it was intended to support. Anyone, including those that simply support it, that thinks they are able to just "sit around and think of patentable ideas" is wrong from the start. You're not a genius. You are one of the morons that are screwing up a system designed to protect fairly rare ideas.

Send them to me

[realkiwi]

Send your ideas to me I'll look after them free of charge!

Bill G.

oh wait maybe I shouldn't have signed...

Honest opinion?

[dpx420]

Sell out. Patenting the ideas is going to cost you time and money, whereas if they are truly worth the attention of the 'evil corporations' you stand to make a substantial gains from making them available to a company with the required resources to put them to use. Around here a higher than average subset adhere to strange personal religions that financial benefit from your own ingenuity is somehow immoral, and that the world is better off if real companies can't use these ideas and make them a practical reality (but that's ok, some guy sitting in his parents basement will knock off a buggy implementation in 10 years time, for freeeeeee man). You decide which of these outcomes you would rather see.

There are only small number of people for which simply blogging their ideas would:
a.) get them taken seriously, or even noticed at all,
b.) be worthwhile for them personally in terms of personal reputation and the longer term benefits of that.
Those are people who are already recognised within specific (usually comparatively small) technical communities, often with freelance careers for which reputation is important. I'm going to guess that you are not in this position because all this would be obvious to you otherwise. It is also rather naive to think that articles simply posted on a web page will stand up as prior art in courtroom against competent lawyers. This is simply pragmatism.

I'm going to make another assumption, that you are posting this question out of a genuine uncertainty of how to reap the results of your own creativeness (which is something that anyone deserves). If you are simply seeking group endorsement (perhaps subconsciously) then my reply probably hasn't been of much help to you.

Re:Honest opinion?

[Anonymous Coward]

What if 'my own ingenuity' is finding a way to be a con-artist and trick the world into thinking that the ideas of others are really my own, and then milking them for all they are worth? Am I a moral, upstanding capitalist citizen?

What about taking over as CEO of a company and using 'my own ingenuity' to embezzle as much money from the company while running it into the ground, and then jumping off with my golden parachute just before the company crashes?

I -- and many others -- believe that people making money off of their ideas isn't necessarily a bad thing. A bad thing is people thinking that they are /owed/ something by society just because they had an idea. You should have a /limited/ window in while to capitalize on your idea. If you can't do it, then society shouldn't guarantee you some 1000 years of making attempts to turn your idea into personal profit. On the other hand, society shouldn't guarantee you some 1000 years of profitting off of your idea.

When it comes to things like patents, society is granting you a monopoly to develop your idea into a reality and sell it to the public. The purpose of patents is not to give huge multinational corporations extra legal ammunition to beat small businesses over the head with in the pursuit of paying their CEO and board of directors an extra $1 million Christmas bonus. The purpose is also not to say that just because you came up with an idea, you can keep that idea in some sort of death grip into your grave.

----

In any case, he's saying that he wants to basically give his ideas away for free. You're just trying to say "Your personal philosophy is wrong." You're not really helping anything with the original question. The fact that 'competant lawyers' can render any prior art as invalid says bad things about our patent system. How can a functioning patent/legal system allow someone who first came up with an idea have his idea 'stolen' away by some company just because they have enough money to throw at the issue? Is this moral to you too? For a company's 'ingenuity' in litigation to give them profit by stomping out others' legitimate claims?

Re:Honest opinion?

[mdwh2]

Around here a higher than average subset adhere to strange personal religions that financial benefit from your own ingenuity is somehow immoral

There are many arguments against software patents - this however is just a straw man.

and that the world is better off if real companies can't use these ideas and make them a practical reality (but that's ok, some guy sitting in his parents basement will knock off a buggy implementation in 10 years time, for freeeeeee man).

Your argument is the wrong way round - under the patent system, we're left to the individual who comes up with them to come up with an implementation, which might work, might not, or maybe he might sell it to a company, who then might use it, or they might just use it as a bartering tool against other companies. Under the suggestions of the OP, real companies will be able to use these ideas and make them a practical reality.

If he makes his idea available for all, then that means those companies with resources are also free to be able to use this.

(I presumed by "out of the hands of private entities/patent trolls", he means companies that patent them to prevent others using them, and not that he wants to prevent companies from using the idea - after all, if he did that, then he too would be a patent troll.)

Re:Honest opinion?

[expro]

Sell out. Patenting the ideas is going to cost you time and money, whereas if they are truly worth the attention of the 'evil corporations' you stand to make a substantial gains from making them available to a company with the required resources to put them to use.

OK so far...

Around here a higher than average subset adhere to strange personal religions that financial benefit from your own ingenuity is somehow immoral, and that the world is better off if real companies can't use these ideas and make them a practical reality (but that's ok, some guy sitting in his parents basement will knock off a buggy implementation in 10 years time, for freeeeeee man). You decide which of these outcomes you would rather see.

Now the idiocy is starting to show. Most people on slashdot make their living by making their ideas available to others for money and being happy that they can.

The moral question, which either you choose to distort or has just eluded you is whether it is moral to use the patent system in the way it exists today. This is similar to other moral questions such as whether it is moral to dump radioactive waste into a river, sell your children into slavery, profit from fraud, etc.

Whether you work with a corporation to patent something or try to do it yourself, you will likely get screwed out of any real profit, and be a tool in the hands of others for proliferating monopoly and stopping others from using their own brain and ideas even in ways which were not at all benefiting from your work. That is how patents work, and that is why many try to derive their incomes without being part of the corrupt patent system, selling their ideas and inventive capacity without insisting on government subsidy/monopoly grants to profit from them.

Re:Honest opinion?

[dpx420]

This is similar to other moral questions such as whether it is moral to dump radioactive waste into a river, sell your children into slavery, profit from fraud, etc.

Aside from the debate surrounding the morality of software patents, the fact that you are comparing their alleged negative effects with those of human rights abuses, or deliberate nuclear release, shows that you are out of touch with reality. Unfortunately this doesn't make it any easier to not take what you say with dubiety.

you will likely get screwed out of any real profit, and be a tool in the hands of others

Are you talking from experience? Or basing the probability of this happening from what you have read on your favourite nerd websites. Somewhere in the world people are getting screwed over every day, in all aspects of life. Maybe it's safer to shut yourself away 24/7 so that your ideas never see daylight (or languish in some repository which every company is afraid to touch). Of course, risk/reward dictates that you won't ever achieve much either. Someone better tell that to all the successful inventors out there who had legal and business sense as well as being brilliant innovators.

Re:Honest opinion?

[Anonymous Coward]

Corporations do not have to be evil to be profit driven. Why should they buy something they can take for free? The thing that makes start-ups attractive to large corporations is (1) a large user base and (2) a large patent portfolio. Without that, why not just patent it themselves (first to file!) and leave you out in the cold? The patent process can cost anywhere form 5-20 grand, it takes 3-4 years, and if you get the patent, then you would haveto enforce your rights, which would cost even more. Even those of us who do not live in our parents basement may not have that kind of spare change laying about.

That is essentially what is broken in our patent system. It quashes innovation because it is expensive, lengthy and complex and it cost a lot of time and effort to enforce the rights under the patent if it is granted. Only large corporations and people with money can afford to get and enforce the patents so only those who have resources already benefit. You can not "sell out" if you have nothing to sell. Oh, and it would also help if the IPO had a clue about what was "obvious" and was stricter on denying obvious patents.

There is nothing wrong with those who choose to make money from their innovations. How and if the creator chooses to make money on an invention should be up to the inventor. The playing field should be level--even if the inventor chooses to collaborate, make it open and academic, or give it out on the street corner with beer.

Re:Honest opinion?

[cycoj]

Sell out. Patenting the ideas is going to cost you time and money, whereas if they are truly worth the attention of the 'evil corporations' you stand to make a substantial gains from making them available to a company with the required resources to put them to use. Around here a higher than average subset adhere to strange personal religions that financial benefit from your own ingenuity is somehow immoral, and that the world is better off if real companies can't use these ideas and make them a practical reality (but that's ok, some guy sitting in his parents basement will knock off a buggy implementation in 10 years time, for freeeeeee man). You decide which of these outcomes you would rather see.

I can't believe this is modded insightful. You totally missed the point. He doesn't want to prevent any 'evil corporation' from using his idea. He just doesn't want any 'evil corporation' patenting his idea and preventing others including himself from using it in the future. And what is it with you people who discredit everyone who doesn't want to use everything for his own monetary gain?

protective publication

[Anonymous Coward]

protective publication usually serves this purpose. It is less effort than a patent and much faster.

A private blog may or may not be found, should such patent be later filed by anyone, or should there be a legal case. Private blogs are useful only if you are the one who will be using the idea, then you know there is one.

The two are not mutually exclusive..and good idea.

[plasmacutter]

There are several large companies with highly publicized ties to the OSS community who do things like vow to set aside patents when an OSS projects are using them. Doing research on this regard is a good thing.

You could even make it a condition of your "selling out"

so whadda ya expect?

[airdrummer]

> strange personal religions that financial benefit from your own ingenuity is somehow immoral

after 40+ years of commie infiltration into our pubic edumacation system;-}

build a prototype

[FudRucker]

build a prototype version .0.1 with well known friends of GNU/GPL and get it licensed under the GNU/GPL-3 and release it on SourceForge, then you know it is anchored somewhere...

Accelerando

[er_head66]

Check out the novel Accelerando.

Discusses this concept precisely...guy goes around dreaming up random ideas, then immediately patenting them and donating to Open Source organisations.

Fun singularity-related read. Creative commons too, so it's free.

Re:Accelerando

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, because the singularity nutjobs are sure a rational, well grounded source of ideas and legal advice.

Link to Patent Commons

[Tran]

at least one - there may be others.
http://www.patent-commons.org/ Check on Groklaw.net as well..

Publish it as a patent application

[Woodpeckeruk]

The best way to ensure that i) it is published; ii) that it will be available for patent searching in perpetuity; and iii) you don't have to spend too much money, is to write it all down in detail and send it to a patent office as an application. Provided you pay the initial filing fees, all patent applications are published. You can speed up publication by specifically requesting it, rather than waiting for 18 months. As an example (since I am a UK patent attorney), what I would recommend is filing an application consisting of pretty much anything at all, paying the £100 fee and then letting the application lapse after publication. Even easier than that, simply post your invention disclosure to the UK-IPO, Newport, Gwent, UK including the words "I would like to apply for a patent for the following", making sure to include some contact details, and the UK-IPO will let you know what else they need.

If I remember right, the US has a similar 'defensive' patent system for doing precisely this, but I would rather leave the details to someone else.

Re:Publish it as a patent application

[theantipop]

This is the best answer so far in regards to the actual question. If you want your idea to be used as a defensive measure against future patents, you want it to get the most coverage by the examiners who will be searching. Previously published patents and patent applications are, with few exceptions, the primary source and the major focus in the course of the search of an examiner.

You may think publishing it somewhere on the internet will be good enough until you realize it's not feasible to search every whackjob blog out there for claim language that you probably haven't reproduced. Also, archive.org doesn't actually archive a lot of these small, personal websites so it would be very difficult to reliably date the material.

Ban this troll, and some other advice!

[greginterrupted]

Can the moderators look up this troll's IP address and ban it? Or even the range of IPs? We have all seen these nimp.org links on Slashdot for several days at least, and it is annoying. I hate to give the troll attention by posting this but we should be able to ban this hater from Slashdot with minimal effort. I would hate to think that it is a dupe account of a meaningful poster, but we can take that chance given the content that the troll is posting as Anonymous Coward.

I fell for the link in Firefox and their popup blocker didn't catch it, even though I'm running the latest version and I have auto-updates turned on. Good thing my speakers were turned off.

If it hits you:

1. It's easy enough to hit ctrl-alt-delete and bring up task manager to close the instance of your web browser if you run windows.
2. If you run linux you're probably knowledgeable enough to do a kill or kill -9.
3. The design of the nimp.org link actually helps you to close all of the web browser windows that pop up. The default behavior of windows is to "group similar taskbar buttons" together. You may have noticed this from the old tabless-web browsing when you had many instances of (gasp) IE or another browser open. Windows would annoyingly consolidate all of the windows into a single button on the taskbar. To switch between windows, you needed to click on the button and a drop-down menu would appear. So the nice thing about this grouping is that after enough nimp.org browser windows show up, windows consolidates them, and you can simply right click on the one button that represents the dozens of web browser windows. Select 'close' from the drop down menu and you're good. In fact, I keep the "group similar taskbar buttons" feature turned on just for trolls like the AC who posts the NIMP links. That, and tabbed browsing lets me run only one instance of a web browser instead of running one instance for each open web page. If you want to change the behavior, right click on the taskbar and select properties, and you'll see a menu with the 'group similar taskbar buttons' checkbox.

Just wanted to bring some attention to this instead of sweeping it under the rug, and also wanted to provide advice on how to close your browser easily if it hits you.

Re:Ban this troll, and some other advice!

[thePowerOfGrayskull]

Just curious, why click the link in the first place? A mouseover shows that it redirects (ultimately) to nimp...

Re:Ban this troll, and some other advice!

[TooMuchToDo]

Slashdot should prevent posting any link that goes to or redirects to nimp.org. Simple fix.

Re:Ban this troll, and some other advice!

[MarkGriz]

Better yet, since I'm sure many of you here run Firefox with ABP, why not just add *.nimp.org to your filtered sites?
(or like someone suggested here a while ago, to your hosts file)

Re:Ban this troll, and some other advice!

[Ethanol-fueled]

Or just use adblock and noscript addons for Firefox.

Re:Ban this troll, and some other advice!

[geminidomino]

Until they start using the yahoo exploit to point ot a tiny url to point to a cjb to a...

Re:Ban this troll, and some other advice!

[TooMuchToDo]

Perhaps the ability to flag the post or moderate it "-1 | Malicious link"?

Re:Ban this troll, and some other advice!

[Anonymous Coward]

Just curious, why click the link in the first place? A mouseover shows that it redirects (ultimately) to nimp... Safari lacks a status bar. You have no idea what the link you're about to click on actually is...

Re:Ban this troll, and some other advice!

[geminidomino]

A new mod option really won't buy us anything other than what modding them "-1| troll" already does, and flagging just BEGS for abuse.

Re:Ban this troll, and some other advice!

[Kalriath]

Actually, the BlockSite extension is far better for this. It also de-hyperlinks the link in the first place. To me, there IS no link in the troll post. Just the telltale "[yahoo.com]" indicating there was one.

Re:Ban this troll, and some other advice!

[Idiomatick]

don't use apple products if you want to know whats going on.

Re:Ban this troll, and some other advice!

[Anonymous Coward]

Opera lacks one as well.

Re:Ban this troll, and some other advice!

[Idiomatick]

"You can turn it on by clicking View, then Toolbars, then selecting Status bar. Opera goes one better than most browsers, too: go under View, then Toolbars, and choose Customize, and you can tuck the status bar away as part of another toolbar, anywhere you want."

Re:Ban this troll, and some other advice!

[thePowerOfGrayskull]

Holy crap. That's even worse than IE's desire to put an abbreviated link in the status bar.

IP.com

[Anonymous Coward]

A website called www.ip.com was specifically designed as a place to publish if you want your work to be recognized as prior art. It is recognized as an acceptable form of publication by the USPTO, as far as I know. Visit the site yourself and read the full details.

open source patent pools and patent agents

[j0nb0y]

I've seen some discussion on /. of creating open source patent pools to protect open source projects from patent infringement.

I want to point out to everyone thinking about such a thing that you *do* *not* have to go to law school and become an attorney to file prepare/file/prosecute patent applications. All you have to do is pass the patent bar exam.

A law degree is not required to sit for the patent bar exam. All you need is a technical background (which most /.ers have). There are a list of degrees that will automatically qualify you to sit for the patent bar. Included are various engineering and science degrees. Computer Science is included, but to automatically qualify, the school had to have had a certain accreditation at the time you graduated. You can also qualify with *any* computer science degree under category b option iv, but that requires a transcript along with course descriptions for 40 credits worth of qualifying courses.

If open source projects want to start filing a lot of patent applications, then having a project member become a patent agent would be a good idea.

I'm a first year law student, and I'm planning on taking the patent bar this summer.

Re:open source patent pools and patent agents

[Woodpeckeruk]

You don't have to pass any exams to prepare and file patent applications. Anyone can do it. It's just that patent attorneys can get a better patent for you.

Re:open source patent pools and patent agents

[sharkb8]

The patent bar is merely a test of your ability to do paperwork. It's all procedural, and doesn't cover anything substantive. You CAN file a patent for someone else after having taken the patent bar, but it won't be worth a crap until you have some experience drafting patents. No one tells you when you're studying for the patent bar why you use "comprising" instead of "consisting of" in the claims (it's because "comprising" is open ended, and doesn't foreclose any other elements being added to a claimed invention, "consisting of" limits your invention to the elements claimed) By the way - the patent bar's easier than you think, take it asap. It's computerized, multiple choice, and the answers are all taken straight from the MPEP. They even give you a searchable MPEP in the test software. It's in PDF format, and split into chapters, but not too bad. As for costs, it's $515 to file a patent for a company with less than 500 employees, double that for a large company. Legal fees range from $k-$20 for the initial application and $1500-$3k for each office action. It's also about $2k for publication and issue fees after the patent is granted. And yes, IAAPL.

Re:open source patent pools and patent agents

[Actually, I do RTFA]

No one tells you when you're studying for the patent bar why you use "comprising" instead of "consisting of" in the claims (it's because "comprising" is open ended, and doesn't foreclose any other elements being added to a claimed invention, "consisting of" limits your invention to the elements claimed)

Interesting... other than law school, is there a way of finding out all these extremely specific word meanings?

Re:open source patent pools and patent agents

[sharkb8]

Books on patent claim drafting ("Landis on Claim Drafting" is a golden oldie), reading case law, working at a patent law firm. Or ask a friendly lawyer.

Re:open source patent pools and patent agents

[Actually, I do RTFA]

1. Books on patent claim drafting ("Landis on Claim Drafting" is a golden oldie) - I can read that one. I assume Landis is a person's name and not an olde English word that indicates its obsolete?
2. reading case law - Have a good site to suggest? This course of action seems endless, and a book or two is a far more finite (absent needing to know a specific answer), and thus easier for me to convince myself to do.
3. working at a patent law firm - Not planning on leaving my job now, but I'll keep that in mind.
4. Or ask a friendly lawyer - used these up already on a variety of other bits of information

Produce a proof-of-concept

[CodeShark]

At the lowest possible but probably patentable level. Pretend that you're a patent examiner and include in your notes enough detail about what the code is designed to do and how it works to defeat subsequent attempts to patent the same tech, and then publish the piece as "open source software", and submit the code via the GPL to a larger project or code library such as Creative commons.

s
Reason being, if the technique is truly useful, it is more likely to be used in other projects and more the more projects that it's in, the more eyes that are aware of the tech and the higher likelihood that if someone gets sneaky with a patent application they'll object during the patent evaluation process with NUMEROUS examples of prior art.

OT: Poor man's copyright the easy way

[davidwr]

1) Post it to a web site and wait 6 months for archive.org to grab it.
2) Post it to a popular blog location whose date-stamps you can't fake.
3) If it isn't large, post it to your Wikipedia user page then revert the edit if the content is inappropriate for a Wikipedia user page. It will still be there, properly date-stamped, in the edit history.
4) Ditto your /. Journal.

prior art implementation v.s. online posting

[vglass]

I am seeing some posts saying that a blog posting may not be considered sufficient in court for proving prior art. However, I'm curious to know how an actual working implementation of an unpatented idea would be seen. For example, once an idea becomes part of a software product documented version history would that be seen as prior art?

There is a better way

[Jane Q. Public]

to stop software patent trolls: fight the entire concept of software patentability.

Software is properly part of the domain of copyrights, not patents. The very idea of patenting software is an abomination.

Just Say No.

IBM defensively published for 50 years;

[davidwr]

IBM Technical Disclosure Bulletin.

IP.COM provides a way for you to publish your own work and add it to their searchable prior art database.

You may also be interested in the Patent Commons.

Re:IBM defensively published for 50 years;

[Woodpeckeruk]

Although IBM technical disclosures are a valuable prior art source for patent examiners, IBM stopped publishing a few years ago (in order to get more flaky patents granted) and it now costs money for mere mortals to access it. IP.com charge a minimum of $200 for your publications, charge more for longer documents, and do not provide a guarantee that their database will be either searched by patent examiners or that your publication will always be around. The patent system, however, is guaranteed to always be around (at least for as long as patents are granted), so once a document is published there it is much much more likely to come up in a future patent search. A UK application at least is still cheaper, as all it costs you is £100 and the postage. As for the patent commons, that just looks like company PR to me. If a company genuinely wants to give everyone access to their patent, the best way is for them to abandon it.

Did I say 50?

[davidwr]

Sorry, I meant 40. Wishful thinking perhaps.

Provisional Patents

[Anonymous Coward]

Provisional Patents are the answer.

They only cost around 100 or 150 $ and they permit you to take a year to file the full patent. In the meantime, they represent prior art *in* the patent system, so no one else can patent that.

In a year's time, you still don't have to patent your idea, but the prior art stays there as a record that you at least thought it up back then...

Re:Provisional Patents

[Anonymous Coward]

This is completely incorrect. Provisional patents are NOT prior art in the system and are NOT published if they are not converted to a non-provisional application.

The best way to create prior art it to publish in a journal (there are journals that will publish and archive anything for a nominal fee) You also have the option of filing a Statutory Invention Registration with the USPTO. http://www.uspto.gov/web/offices/pac/mpep/documents/1100.htm

For the best solution to your situation, please seek the advice of a Patent Attorney and nothing stated here should be considered legal advice.

Are you employed by someone?

[timothyf]

Better make sure your contract doesn't say anything about the company owning inventions that you come up with while you're employed by them. Bottom line, talk to a lawyer, not Slashdot.

USPTO FEES

[jbeaupre]

USPTO Fees: http://www.uspto.gov/web/offices/ac/qs/ope/fee2007september30_2007dec17.htm

IANAL, and this is not advice. But it may help you understand some options.

The costs you quote are for paying someone else to write, file, and handle all correspondence with the patent office. Do it yourself and it's around $500 to file (basic utility filing). Get fancy, deal with a lot of responses to the patent office and it can get a bit more expensive. Have the patent allowed and pay for it to be issued is $720. Maintenance fees the add up.

But if your objective is to make the work public, then you're effectively abandoning the patent. Once it publishes, you might be inclined to not even bother with any of the steps beyond just filing. I understand you can also write to the patent office telling them you are abandoning it so something like that.

Two problems with this route:

1) clogs up the patent system with more stuff. More work for examiners might mean less attention paid to patents that might not deserve a patent grant.
2) The application will show as published, but it's not obvious if it's been abandon (requires more research). The existence of a published app may dissuade people from using your idea since they may think you are keeping it alive as a submarine patent.

Should FOSS Developers Apply for Patents?

[JimGarrison]

From the Software Freedom Law Center's legal guide:

Merely owning a few patents will not provide an effective defensive counterweight to a hostile competitor that holds hundreds or thousands of patents. It will also be entirely ineffective against so-called patent trolls. Patent trolls are companies that acquire, sue on and license patents but do not produce any products that might infringe others' patents.

Prior art argument may need to be more robust

[WebCowboy]

...than "just blogging" about your idea. To claim prior art, an invention must be reasonably accessible public knowledge AND must not be "abandoned". You can't just come up with some blueprints or computer code or a specification document, publish it in a blog or technical journal and be satisfied that a patent will not eventually be granted to someone else.

You have two choices regarding your patentable ideas:

1. Fully implement your ideas in a complete, functional application and put as much effort as possible into getting it widely distributed. It would be especially beneficial if you made such an implementation work with a widely distributed Free software project (for example, a Linux kernel module, an Apache module, a Perl implementation available on CPAN...). Promote the hell out of it, try to get it included in a Linux or BSD distro, whatever. If the implementation of your concept is ubiquitous, or could be discovered by a cursory search, then you'd have a strong case of prior art and could have patents overturned.

2. Apply for a patent yourself. If you are not interested in creating a full implementation of your idea then you don't have a rock-solid case of prior art, so this would be the best tool at your disposal to protect your invention. Stipulate (perhaps even in the patent submission itself) that free, unrestricted and non-exclusive rights to incorporate the invention is granted on the condition that the derived work MUST be made available under an OSI-approved open license, otherwise steep license fees/royalties are applicable. If you insist that closed implementations require a percentage of revenue or per-user fee, it would keep Microsoft away, as it is known BillG personally as well as the company are extremely loathsome of paying on such terms.

The submitter suggested that he isn't too keen on carrying forward with implementation of the inventions himself, so his idea would likely be considered "abandoned" unless someone friendly to his interests did it for him, so option 1 is out.

I'd say, that if you want protection of your ideas from falling victim to submarine patents or patent troll corporations then you really MUST apply for a patent yourself. The patent and copyright systems around the world may have severe flaws, but if you want to beat patent trolls and copyright cartels then you have to play their game. The Free software community does this widely in the copyright arena and the FSF, on creators behalf, has vigourously enforced copyright in a few cases to make sure the code stays Free, in the same way as Microsoft would enforce copyrights to make sure its own software stays closed (to the extent it served their interests). If you have hardware or software concepts that you believe are patentable and are potentially valuable then it would be wise to use the rights granted by the patent system to enforce your ideals the way copyright is used.

Your employee probably already owns your ideas

[jpswensen]

As for whether you own your own ideas or not, many companies make you sign away patent right for anything you come up with (while working for them, whether on the job or not) that is related to their business interests. Sometimes very skilled or well-known people can weasle their way out of clauses like this, but for the most part you probably signed away your right to patent tech stuff when you signed you offer acceptance letter. go read it.

me, I just wait until the idea passes..

[davido42]

I have gone so far as to download the US Patent Office filing application, and sketch some ideas, but I have never filed a patent on my own. Frankly, it just seems like a lot of effort to keep others from profiting from an idea I will not be implementing anyway.

david

YOU FOOL

[cromar]

It's CmdrTaco and CowboyNeal posting anonymously!

Those solutions wont work

[shaitand]

Apparently people still don't understand. You can patent an invention, you can copyright a tangible representation of an idea, but you can not protect an idea through any IP method.

Software is really a representation of an idea and should be copyrighted, not patented. Since patents are granted as if software were an invention you do still actually have to make the invention to qualify for a patent. I can scream my idea from the heavens all day long and that doesn't qualify as prior art, only implementing the idea would qualify as prior art.

Re:Those solutions wont work

[Woodpeckeruk]

Perhaps you should count yourself in amongst those people who still don't understand. The vast majority of patent applications describe inventions that have not been made. There is no legal requirement to 'make' the invention (the US abolished theirs over 100 years ago), only a requirement to describe it sufficiently to allow a person skilled in the art to make it. Software inventions are treated just the same as any other invention. If, as a programmer, someone gave you a really good idea about how to do X on a computer, would they need to tell you the exact code to enable you to do it? The other side of patents works the same way: provided a prior disclosure is 'enabling', it will prevent someone later on getting a patent for the invention.

Re:Those solutions wont work

[shaitand]

Software is an expression, not an invention. It is a mathematical implementation and therefore a new algorithm is a discovery, not an invention. But that is another debate.

You seem to be confusing things. The US never abolished the requirement that you actually invent something. The US could no longer warehouse all the prototypes so they removed the requirement to send in your working prototype. That doesn't mean patents are now for unimplemented ideas.

'If, as a programmer, someone gave you a really good idea about how to do X on a computer, would they need to tell you the exact code to enable you to do it?'

Well yes and no. If someone described a sunset sufficiently I could draw one, but it would be the same sunset. If I heard a bit of music I could replicate it but never repeat the original expression. That is how intangible copyrighted works like software function.

However, describing a microwave oven to me would not enable me to build one. That is what we call an invention and as such qualifies for a patent.

release it under the gpl

[Anonymous Coward]

Developers who write software can release it under the terms of the GNU GPL. When they do, it will be free software and stay free software, no matter who changes or distributes the program.this is called copyleft: the software or code is copyrighted, but instead of using those rights to restrict users like proprietary software does, we use them to ensure that every user has freedom

Don't blog it ,HalfBake it!

[Thelasko]

A site exists for just such a concept. It's called the Halfbakery.

A true conservative would not favor change...

[Jynx77]

Your point would be clearer if you focused less on labels and more on ideas. Bush is hardly an economic conservative in the true sense of the term. In fact, aside from cutting taxes, what has he done that is economically "conservative?" "Reforming" the patent system is not something I see as a "conservative" move either. In fact, eliminiating patents altogether would be the most economically "conservative" thing to do as it would represent the least amount of government intervention.

Re:A true conservative would not favor change...

[plasmacutter]

Conservatism has been about serving the upper income brackets and corporate proprietors for a long time. Anything which serves corporate interests, the top 1 or 2% income bracket, or otherwise acts at the expense of middle and working class individuals is the bread and butter of republican politics since at least the Reagan administration.

This has always been the case, and that representation of the wealthy and big business was more or less healthy until the latter quarter of the twentieth century because they didn't have an excuse they could pass public scrutiny. The advent of supply side theory changed all that. They could use simple economic jargon, righteous rhetoric about you(and the way they present it, only you) paying someone else's bills, and the big lie of rags to riches to pass it off on a public which was either not educated on the fallacies this theory ignores or were at best exposed to it in a passing comment in high school. Now the uneducated and the incompetent(and the economic field is full of them) are happily allowing conservatives to sell them out.

Changing the patent system to prevent challenges and allow first-to-file snatch and grabs from inventors trying to launch their own ventures serves incumbent corporate interest. Eliminating patents is against the interests of corporations and the wealthy.

Re:A true conservative would not favor change...

[Jynx77]

Your response is a perfect example of the point of my original post -- you cloud the real issue, corporate interests, with your own personal take on who's serving them.

I agree wholeheartedly that the current patent system (and legal system for that matter) favors entities with the cash and scale to pay lawyers' hourly rates.

To pretend that only conservatives/republicans (at least in the US) have been "serving the upper income brackets and corporate proprietors for a long time" is laughable at best. I suggest that you check the donation statistics for the parties or review the favorable treatment corporate interests received under the Clinton administration.

Your silly use of labels and one-sided demonization of the "conservatives/republicans" obfuscates the real issue. Frankly, I'm tired of the whole two-party system. In the last 10-15 years, about the only sigificant differences between the two major parties in the US in practice (as in passed legislation) have been social, not economic ones.

patent it, then license it for free

[Anonymous Coward]

patent it, put it on your website, and offer free licenses for the technology. That way you get to show off, people that use your patented process are protected from patent trolls, and you get a patent for your resume.

If people are using it, it's not abandoned or neglected.

-AC

Open Invention Network

[Anonymous Coward]

You may want to contact Open Invention Network.

Why spelling matters

[ChrisMaple]

There is no such word as varifiable, but if there were it would come from the obsolete root word "varify", which means "to make varied, to diversify". This would oppose what I assume you mean, "verifiable".

Nature of patent office doesnt supprt patent sense

[MickLinux]

Considering the way patents are issued and cases pursued, if I had a lot of money it might make sense to patent respiration as a business process.

  "lower chest diaphragm, expanding chest cavity... ... additionally as a separate item, aids in business communications via sonic variable frequency energy transmission..."

But alas, I wouldn't have the assets to pursue the cases against the main violators, and they all are busy in their own court cases anyhow...

NoScript offers a solution

[sammydee]

A better solution all round to this sort of thing is to run the NoScript Firefox extension. It blocks javascript from all sites except those you specifically allow, either for a session or forever. It really does give you better security, even against 0-day exploits. It's also useful all the time for sites that like to bombard you with javascript crap like these spam sites do.

I HIGHLY recommend it to everyone that is vaguely security conscious.

publish

[azakem]

IANAL, but...

Publish, publish, publish. Put the prior art out there and make it easy to find. It is very important that the prior art is not only easily accessible to any interested person, but also that it is timestamped and teaches the "person having ordinary skill in the art" to practice whatever novel idea it is you are presenting.

Patenting with a ton of disclosure would also achieve this purpose, but getting a patent isn't as easy as everyone thinks... you're looking at eighteen months on average of negotiating with the patent examiners before you get any claims through. You don't need to get any claims through to put your disclosure in the public domain, so long as the application gets published later on, but publishing like a madman seems a quicker and easier way of providing examiners with prior art to base rejections on. Believe it or not, most examiners are trying to reject patent applications and the easier you can make it to find prior art the easier that task becomes.

Here is the solution

[itamblyn]

http://www.publicpatent.org/ Users create pages that only they can edit. The time and date of all changes are monitored. Backups are made to DVD which are date authenticated for future court challenges. Oh, and it's free. :)

Free, open alternative for defensive publication

[itamblyn]

http://www.publicpatent.org/ [publicpatent.org] Users create pages that only they can edit. The time and date of all changes are monitored. Backups are made to DVD which are date authenticated for future court challenges. Oh, and it's free. :)

Prior Art

[NoobixCube]

When, in the past twenty years, has prior art actually mattered in a patent case? From reading stories on Slashdot, I've seen companies patent things that other companies have already patented! If I phrased the patent application right, I could have everyone who SPEAKS pay me royalties.

WRONG - Internet can count as prior art

[Krioni]

See the post by asdjlfhgas (603713) above. The parent is wrong - too bad the mods didn't know that.

Re:WRONG - Internet can count as prior art

[Krioni]

Of course, stress the word CAN. Some posters below suggest filing an application (relatively cheap). In the U.S., even a provisional application should do the trick (easier to fill out). Just be sure that you NEVER are going to change your mind. If you file a provisional and wait more than a year without doing anything else, you're barred from patenting the invention. IANAL (yet), so I hope I got that right.

ekoo

[ekoo]

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Put Stamp On Back: cancellation will be over seal

[Anonymous Coward]

so will the stamp, the return-address, etc.

Perfect solution to the problem, buy the patents

[elucido]

Start an open source patent foundation, allow individuals to sell their patents to the open source foundation and recieve a lump sum of money. The foundation then profits off the patents themselves while keeping the patents open source. I'd rather sell my patents than give them away, and I'd rather sell them to an open source foundation where I can receive credit for the creation of it.

The Official (non-free) Way To Do It

[WheezyJoe]

Sorry if this comes a little late :|

The U.S. Patent Office provides a way to submit an invention where the applicant does not want patent rights, but does want the subject matter published and used as prior art by the PTO just as an actual patent would to prevent future applications from getting patent protection on it.

It's called a Statutory Invention Registration. It's not free. It costs much the same as filing a regular Patent application. But I would think that it carries the greatest weight against any future patent applicants trying to get a patent on your idea.

Read more about it here, and the fees are here.