In trying to offer information, I think my previous may have missed your point. Agreed that the beauracracy you encounter sounds silly. My suggestions are attempts to handle a problem that you should not have in the first place.
Sure, but the provisional patent covers that. The (cheap in world terms) NZ provisional buys you 12 months protection to seek funding and partners without a risk of being scooped.
You can then file a Patent Cooperation Treaty (PCT) application which gets your invention into the international WIPO system, which covers all the countries you mentioned (and more!). This gives you another 18 months to fund patent applications in individual countries around the world, while maintaining your priority date. That means nobody can scoop you.
The PCT applicatoin is more expensive, but by that point you've had 12 months to talk to people and get funding.
The patent system is not perfect, but it is designed to help in your situation. The total costs of patent protection are massive. But the amount needed up-front is low (comparable to the cost of a very cheap second-hand car). This up-front cost protects you while you find backers with real money.
If you do not have the price of a cheap second-hand car (around NZ $3000), then you can try to have potential partners sign a Non-disclosure Agreement. This is riskier than having a provisional patent, as the agreement may have gaps. Big companies may refuse to sign NDAs, or may shuffle the legal responsibility around their various divisions and screw you.
If you're interested, I'm happy to talk more about an NDA or a provisional patent. You can reach me at ensorassociates on Google's email provider.
I'm working in an NZ patent attorney firm, and I don't think there's a catch-22. You said:
Before I can gain any worthwhile IP protection (ie: a patent), I need to ensure that the design is tested/finalised.
The patent system provides for a provisional application. This means you give a general description of your idea (it solves problem X by means Y). You then have 12 months in which you can refine and market the invention before filing the formal "claims" which would define your patent monopoly. If granted, patent protection is back-dated to the provisional application date.
It sounds like you have a promising idea and the skills to carry it off. If you're keen to talk, you can email ensorassociates at google's email service. I would love to see this get off the ground (pun most definitely intended).
Firefox already stores bookmarks in an HTML file - it would be easy to copy the links to HTML files on your hard drive. Then put links to these files on your bookmarks toolbar, making a customisable set of webpages, each devoted to specific subjects.
I too have suffered bookmark overload; now I mostly use the Sage RSS reader for Firefox instead. Only visit pages as they're updated.
The difficulty is the present availability of "cheap" fossil fuels. On earth we only receive energy from the sun (leaving aside nuclear and perhaps geotechnical energy for a moment).
It's like a bank account. Over a few hundred million years we built up a pretty significant store of biological crud, some of which was compressed beneath rock. Recently we've been literally burning our savings! This stuff is too cheap, and the less responsible among us are frittering away much of this "investmment". We need to learn to budget, and keep within our solar paycheck. Energy might become more expensive, but if we collect and use it more efficiently this needn't be too bad. Might be more sustainable - and it limits reliance on stability in oil rich regions.
Oh yeah, and it might be kind of nice to have oil to make plastic things, like DVDs, and cool gadgetry...
Like the British liberated Belfast, a stronghold of the IRA insurgency. Their goal was to prevent civilian deaths so just like the US in Fallujah they used air strikes, indiscriminate machine gun fire and white phosphorus... No, wait...
It's not possible that the military operations of the USA in Iraq demonstrate a disregard for Iraqi lives... Y'know, the ones we're liberating...
Why do we watch sport? To marvel at the physical limits of human ability; but also to see a competition. Competetive sport is exciting because it has rules. If cricketers started stealing runs, or baseball pitchers took a run-up then it would break the game - it would be cheating.
In the same way, if a sprinter used a jetpack, and managed to avoid crisp-frying his legs, and won, then the spirit of the competition would be destroyed. Rules set up an interesting game.
Sports can't provide a totally level playing field, but everyone involved knows, or can find out about the rules (except perhaps in cricket). To keep rules consistent, enhancements to people must be either allowed for everyone or banned.
My feeling is that they shouldn't be allowed. While new techniques help sports stay interesting , cheap tricks which break the spirit of the rules cheapen the competition. We respect athletes because they are normal people who have gained abilities through long hours of training. If anyone could take a pill and lift twice their weight then it wouldn't be a worthwhile achievement.
If such modifications were to become available then a sub-race of doped-up super athletes would emerge. This would in my opinion be somewhat grotesque. I quite like the idea that while I hardly compare with my sporting heroes, I can at least play the same game.
I used to respect Michael Moore as a dissenting voice... and I still do. He is a brilliant populist and propagandist: rightly or wrongly this seems to be an effective way to communicate a message to wider America.
From my (admittedly outside) point of view, the states seem to be quite well stocked with conservative commentators; Moore makes a different viewpoint more visible.
While I wouldn't go to Michael Moore for good journalism, hopefully his presence opens people to considering different points of view. I hold out hope that people who are engaged in this way can seek out more accurate analyses, and at least acknowledge other opinions.
No single political label can accurately describe them complex webs of a person's beliefs and opinions.
That requires at least two labels;)
This site allows you to compare (a simplified matrix of) your views with elected leaders as well as famous despots [insert G W Bush joke here].
Slashdot Mirror
In trying to offer information, I think my previous may have missed your point. Agreed that the beauracracy you encounter sounds silly. My suggestions are attempts to handle a problem that you should not have in the first place.
Sure, but the provisional patent covers that. The (cheap in world terms) NZ provisional buys you 12 months protection to seek funding and partners without a risk of being scooped.
You can then file a Patent Cooperation Treaty (PCT) application which gets your invention into the international WIPO system, which covers all the countries you mentioned (and more!). This gives you another 18 months to fund patent applications in individual countries around the world, while maintaining your priority date. That means nobody can scoop you.
The PCT applicatoin is more expensive, but by that point you've had 12 months to talk to people and get funding.
The patent system is not perfect, but it is designed to help in your situation. The total costs of patent protection are massive. But the amount needed up-front is low (comparable to the cost of a very cheap second-hand car). This up-front cost protects you while you find backers with real money.
If you do not have the price of a cheap second-hand car (around NZ $3000), then you can try to have potential partners sign a Non-disclosure Agreement. This is riskier than having a provisional patent, as the agreement may have gaps. Big companies may refuse to sign NDAs, or may shuffle the legal responsibility around their various divisions and screw you.
If you're interested, I'm happy to talk more about an NDA or a provisional patent. You can reach me at ensorassociates on Google's email provider.
Before I can gain any worthwhile IP protection (ie: a patent), I need to ensure that the design is tested/finalised.
The patent system provides for a provisional application. This means you give a general description of your idea (it solves problem X by means Y). You then have 12 months in which you can refine and market the invention before filing the formal "claims" which would define your patent monopoly. If granted, patent protection is back-dated to the provisional application date.
It sounds like you have a promising idea and the skills to carry it off. If you're keen to talk, you can email ensorassociates at google's email service. I would love to see this get off the ground (pun most definitely intended).
*ahem* (From New Zealand, Australia, Japan, South Korea, Holland, Ireland, Switzerland, Austria, Qatar, Sweden, Israel, and perhaps a few more)
Awesome post. Whether you believe in a creator or not, that is fantastically elegant. Thank you for sharing it.
I too have suffered bookmark overload; now I mostly use the Sage RSS reader for Firefox instead. Only visit pages as they're updated.
It's like a bank account. Over a few hundred million years we built up a pretty significant store of biological crud, some of which was compressed beneath rock. Recently we've been literally burning our savings! This stuff is too cheap, and the less responsible among us are frittering away much of this "investmment". We need to learn to budget, and keep within our solar paycheck. Energy might become more expensive, but if we collect and use it more efficiently this needn't be too bad. Might be more sustainable - and it limits reliance on stability in oil rich regions.
Oh yeah, and it might be kind of nice to have oil to make plastic things, like DVDs, and cool gadgetry...
It's not possible that the military operations of the USA in Iraq demonstrate a disregard for Iraqi lives... Y'know, the ones we're liberating...
Is it?
In the same way, if a sprinter used a jetpack, and managed to avoid crisp-frying his legs, and won, then the spirit of the competition would be destroyed. Rules set up an interesting game.
Sports can't provide a totally level playing field, but everyone involved knows, or can find out about the rules (except perhaps in cricket). To keep rules consistent, enhancements to people must be either allowed for everyone or banned.
My feeling is that they shouldn't be allowed. While new techniques help sports stay interesting , cheap tricks which break the spirit of the rules cheapen the competition. We respect athletes because they are normal people who have gained abilities through long hours of training. If anyone could take a pill and lift twice their weight then it wouldn't be a worthwhile achievement.
If such modifications were to become available then a sub-race of doped-up super athletes would emerge. This would in my opinion be somewhat grotesque. I quite like the idea that while I hardly compare with my sporting heroes, I can at least play the same game.
I'm Gary Cherone you insensitive clod!
The Grauniad has an interesting interview which seems to capture Moore as a person.
From my (admittedly outside) point of view, the states seem to be quite well stocked with conservative commentators; Moore makes a different viewpoint more visible.
While I wouldn't go to Michael Moore for good journalism, hopefully his presence opens people to considering different points of view. I hold out hope that people who are engaged in this way can seek out more accurate analyses, and at least acknowledge other opinions.
No single political label can accurately describe them complex webs of a person's beliefs and opinions. That requires at least two labels ;)
This site allows you to compare (a simplified matrix of) your views with elected leaders as well as famous despots [insert G W Bush joke here].