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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?"

2 of 185 comments (clear)

  1. Patent Commons vs Prior Art by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Interesting

    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)

  2. Re:As far as US is concerned by SLi · · Score: 4, Interesting

    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.