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There should be a legally accepted way to publish something, free of cost, that demonstrates a new invention, that prevents other people patenting it, and can a
by Intermernet 2y ago
There should be a legally accepted way to publish something, free of cost, that demonstrates a new invention, that prevents other people patenting it, and can allow the person who published it to claim the credit for doing so.
I'm not sure what's so difficult about this concept in the age of verifiable chains of communications and transactions.
- light_hue_1 2y agoThis has always existed. You disclose the idea. Things that are public cannot be patented. Put your great idea up on arxiv and it becomes prior work which the patent office can find. Or publish it in some conference. Etc. It gets officially timestamped and you're all done. You don't need any of this useless verifiable chain of communication nonsense. The world figured out how to do this centuries ago in far simpler ways. Whether the patent office finds your prior art or not, that's a whole other question. They may still grant a patent no matter how obviously it overlaps with prior art. But then you can use your prior art when they come to try and shake you down, if it comes down to that.
- bilsbie 2y agoCouldn’t you post it on hacker news or X? That would have a pretty strong timestamp.
- rvnx 2y agoIt’s easy to fake if you are part of YC. You think they would lose 1B+ potential revenue if the only thing they have to do is to change one database record that nobody except them is monitoring ?
- qup 2y agoThey're not the only ones monitoring their own database.
- DowagerDave 2y agoit's pretty hard to unpublish something on the internet though. How many system do you think are consuming HN content? how many consume those? You can't un-ring a bell, so a simple social post is almost always discoverable in the future.
- aspenmayer 2y agoHN timestamps get rewritten for second chance pool submissions and possibly others.
- ogou 2y agoA simple social media post can work as prior art, especially if it has details or some kind of diagram. But, that only limits their ability to patent it. Your own ability to monetise it is not protected by that. For independent inventors, licensing a patent is far more practical and lucrative than actually manufacturing something or releasing complex software packages. If you are raising VC money, having any kind of patent can increase your chances by a substantial factor.
- prennert 2y agoDoes licensing from smaller actors happens much in practice? It feels to me as there is a huge asymmetry of the ability of corps either infringing the patent directly, or circumventing it vs an individuals budget for infringement discovery and lawyers. I wonder even if bigger players like universities have much success in licensing their IP.
- littlestymaar 2y agoI guess if you have a patent and a big corp infringes it, then a patent troll would be more than willing to buy it from you.
- pclmulqdq 2y agoYes, it does, but it often needs at least an implied threat of a lawsuit or some extra deliverables that help implementation of the technology. Patents also turn "I got crushed by Google" stories into legal battles done by patent trolls that often have a decent payoff.
- pclmulqdq 2y agoThere is: Publishing it on a blog or in a scientific publication does that. At trial, your blog can be used to invalidate any patent claims that it predates.
- ricksunny 2y agoThis is correct. And it is called ensuring 'Freedom to operate' - FTO.
- kjellsbells 2y agoThat is supported by the article, but I would find it hard to imagine that an inventor who is trying to assert their rights against a much more well-resourced competitor would want things to go to trial. The article is pretty clear that filing first is what matters, not posting first, and first to file provides much, much, stronger evidence of your claim than a social media post.
- freejazz 2y agoYou don't need to go to trial to invalidate a patent. It happens frequently at the motion to dismiss or summary judgment phases.
- DowagerDave 2y agoyou still need the resources to go through the courts though. This closes out the option for almost all.
- teddy000 2y ago[dead]
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]