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Are My Ideas Being Stolen? If So, What Then?
BinaryGrind writes "I just got started taking Computer Science classes at my local university and after reading Universities Patenting More Student Ideas I felt I needed to ask: How do I tell if any of my projects while attending classes will be co-opted by my professors or the university itself and taken away from me? Is there anything I can do to prevent it from happening? What do I need to do to protect myself? Are there schools out there that won't take my work away from me if I discover TheNextBigThing(TM)? If it does happen is there anything I can do to fight back? The school I'm attending is Southern Utah University. Since it's not a big university, I don't believe it has a big research and development department or anything of that ilk. I'm mostly wanting to cover my bases and not have my work stolen from me."
^This. In addition, I'd like to preemptively warn you away from worrying about "Java can be decompiled" or "Javascript shows the source code!" The bits and pieces of your code simply aren't that valuable. Either someone is going to steal it outright (in which case you've got them on Copyright Infringement) or they're already experienced enough to re-implement what you've done. And in the time it would take to pull your code out of context, modify it to work in a new environment, then attempt to disguise its origins, it would have been faster to re-implement the concept from scratch!
So in short, don't worry about the technology. Obtain your Copyrights, Trademarks, and Patents as necessary. Those are your real protection.
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
I was also paranoid, but for slightly different reasons. I'm very open about my ideas and I worked in a lab as a graduate student that caught the attention of another university organization. They asked if we could meet for an informal "idea exchange," to which we agreed because, hey, we're all a part of the same university.
It turns out the organization had just been spun off the university into its own LLC and moved off campus. When we got to their office, the first thing they wanted from us was an NDA. We called bait-and-switch and asked them if they would mind signing an NDA for the ideas *we* would contribute. "That would defeat the purpose of this meeting," they told us.
So we signed, sat through a presentation of their work, gave no feedback and left. It wasn't that we were paranoid of them stealing our work, it was that we refused to get played like that.
Later, I spoke with an expert in my field, who is also an open-content guru, and I asked him how I could avoid things like that. He said, "Post everything you do to Sourceforge. Get it out there under GPL, or CC-non-profit license. If anyone wants to patented it, you'll have the evidence you need." (But that's not legal advice.)
I'm not sure if something like that would work at SUU (Go T-Birds!), since they could easily think *you* stole the code from Sourceforge, but it's an idea.
I'd rather have someone respond than be modded up.
I partly agree.
Most ideas are considered stupid by most people.
Even more ideas that are good, were already thought of and may even be on the market already.
But still there are the few really ground breaking ones.
If I had a dime for every one of my ideas stolen I'd be rich.
Here is where I disagree, execution is a matter of resources.
I had the very first audio every on most computer platforms. From digital audio on the Apple II, Lisa and Mac, C64, IBM PC and XT and even the Tandy Model 2 and 3.
I had the first PC digital audio products on the market the Sound Byte, then someone literally took my name trade marked and and sent me a cease and desists on the name! So I renamed it Audio byte. http://www.dnull.com/zebraresearch
Then another company (first byte) reverse engineered my Digital Audio on the PC speaker and patented it, and tried to sue a number of game companies who also reverse engineered my code and used it. This was Intel Assembly language, almost as easy to reverse as JAVA. So many of these paid me and used my Prior Art to toss out the patent suits.
But the kicker was after 3 years and selling some 5000 units at $30 each, Creative Labs came out with an inferior product for $115 and sold 47,000 units in there first month. Past us by like we were standing still. I found out that the same VC we pitch financed them while not financing me. And there plan used us as an example of market feasibility!
So much for execution. It's all a matter of resources. If you don't start off with enough money, and try to boot strap from sales like I was doing, you going to get killed if it's a really important product.
I have repeatedly had this happen with different ideas. Many I did execute on and for some was even selling and making a profit.
* Wearable computers with VR goggles 1984
* Hand held Oscilloscope 1984
* VOIP (internet phone calls) in 1987
* Streaming internet video 1988.
* 13000 streaming video viewers (VQ) with 384 video servers on SUN Microsystems network 1990
* Online Banking for Wells Fargo, 1992
* Livecam (JPEG, GIF, and MPEG1 & 2, modified H.261) 1994
* The CDN where I built the first on for video in 1994. IN 1997 we had over 1M simultaneous views at 56K. One of the largest consumers of Bandwidth on the Internet, and no one knew who we were, because it was adult.
I can directly trace back to specific individuals where Genutity's Hopscotch network and Digital Islands CDN directly copied what I was doing!
Peer1 that host Youtube is now using one of my methods that I pioneered for CDN.
* load balancing of internet servers 1995
* Caching web servers 1996
* TCP/IP Selective Acknowledgment implemented in my ECIP. 1996 http://www.ecip.org/
* Streaming H.263/MPEG4 video and MP3 1996/1997
* the first Stand alone IP Camera 1996
* Fanless servers to improve reliably in our CoLo's 1997 (used heat pipes on CPU, HD and PS)
* The first CCTV DVR 1997 done in Partnership with Korean company. Also included the first multichannel(16 input) video capture board.
* Cell processors & Blade servers http://www.enumera.com/
1999
* silent computers * computer cooling in 2002
My new stuff I am keeping under wraps now till I can get better resources lined up.
I am not listing these to brag, but to show how much effort I have put in over the past 20 years, with great technical success but only partial business success.
It's always boiled down to one thing, lack marketing budget. Lack of money to manufacture. Lack of the "right connections" to raise money or make large sales because I wasn't part of the good old boys/rich kids club. There is a class system in this country whether you believe it or not.
Almost every one of these ideas I filed or tried to file a patent on, then ran out of money to comp
I am always doing that which I can not do, in order that I may learn how to do it. - Pablo Picasso
Depending on your country and university, tuition/fees only cover a portion of the actual costs of your education - often with taxpayers footing a decent chunk of the bill. In that case, as a taypayer, I would argue that anything developed should be public domain - as it was paid for with public money.