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Open Source Patent Donations?

Posted by kdawson on from the fighting-the-good-fight dept.

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?"

4 of 185 comments (clear)

  1. Some considerations by kanweg · · Score: 5, Informative

    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

  2. Worthless advice, here's why. by Yoozer · · Score: 5, Informative

    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.
  3. Publish it as a patent application by Woodpeckeruk · · Score: 5, Informative

    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.

  4. Ban this troll, and some other advice! by greginterrupted · · Score: 5, Informative

    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.