FWIW: Email is a crappy medium for prior art. Most emails rarely delve into the how to actually do something, most stop at suggestions of things to try. If i

FWIW: Email is a crappy medium for prior art. Most emails rarely delve into the how to actually do something, most stop at suggestions of things to try. If i email you a problem, and you email me "you should try a hashtable", and then i reduce the problem to practice using a hashtable, i will likely still be able to patent it. It depends on the country/details, but yeah. At best, you may or may not be named co-inventor. (Even here, you can see that one of the arguments the examiner has to make is that it would be obvious how to implement the suggestion. This is because if it wasn't true, it would still be patentable) Code is a better medium, but there is no way for most patent offices to understand what code does. But i would never rely on issues and emails being a good medium for prior art. You'd really need a design doc and reference impl if you want it to be considered for real.