In article ,
Lostgallifreyan wrote:

I won't patent. I've been reading of the cost in the UK. (All figures are
UKP) 3000 to 6000. Add 10000 give or take not very much to add US protection.
That;s in the first year. You have to add about 4 grand more within a year
and a half, maybe more, and that's ignoring ALL costs of actually defending a
patent! Add those, the costs soar to around 150 grand.

I will not release my code to the public domain unless there is a GUARANTEED
way to prevent patent trolls and sharks from stealing it, a way that does not
extort more money than I may ever earn before I even start to earn it!

As I noted earlier, if you release to the public domain, you cannot
prevent other people from using the idea.

However... if you *publish* your invention, you can often prevent
other people from coming at you years later and accusing you of
infringing *their* patents. Many high-tech companies used to do this
sort of thing... IBM, for example, would often publish new inventions
in the IBM Journal. They'd do this for ideas that they thought were
useful, that they might want to use themselves, which they didn't
think were necessarily worth the time and money to patent.

By doing so, they established the "date of invention" and "date of
first public disclosure" of a new idea. This would prevent other
people from filing patent applications on this specific invention, and
would establish this invention as "prior art".

If there is no such way, then I may release code that strictly emulates an
existing instrument (the Yamaha DX7) in its main funtion, and on the strength
of that, I will hope to find a performer who can afford to take on the
extended code privately as a performing instrument.

Why is it that patents force me to seriously consider ideas of elite
sponsorship that belong to the 16th century?! Has the world of ideas and the
right to profit from original work really progresses so little in all those
years? After all, the only way to win the game is to have already won. I'm
not going to cause myself misery fighting tautologies like that.

I don't think patents are what I should be asking about. The real question
is: how do I defend my work from the patent system while trying to earn money
from it, or share it with the world?

An important question is this: do you want to earn money from it, or
do you want to *prevent* other people from earning money from it?

If you want to do the latter, "patent" and "trade secret" are the only
ways I know of.

If the former, you can publish the idea (establishing a "prior art"
barrier against somebody else trying to patent the same idea), and
then go ahead and sell implementations of that idea under whatever
terms you desire.

You can always *copyright* your *specific* implementations (the actual
code, circuit schematics, and so forth). That's a whole type of
protection which is independent of patents, since it protects specific
examples rather than the underlying idea.

(David Platt) wrote in newshg7jb-
:

As I noted earlier, if you release to the public domain, you cannot
prevent other people from using the idea.

However... if you *publish* your invention, you can often prevent
other people from coming at you years later and accusing you of
infringing *their* patents. Many high-tech companies used to do this
sort of thing... IBM, for example, would often publish new inventions
in the IBM Journal. They'd do this for ideas that they thought were
useful, that they might want to use themselves, which they didn't
think were necessarily worth the time and money to patent.

By doing so, they established the "date of invention" and "date of
first public disclosure" of a new idea. This would prevent other
people from filing patent applications on this specific invention, and
would establish this invention as "prior art".


Exactly so, and this is one thing I asked yesterday and got no answer for...
what kind of publication is considered 'adequate'? It would have to have some
reasonable guarantee of endurance, or widespread distribution at the time
even if most copies later vanished, no?

(I'm answering this post, it's the first I saw, so please forgive any lack of
response to the other. I will respond, it's just big, and possibly answers
here may make some answers reducndant there.)

(Another side issue, in case Rickman has a way to see this, after killfiling
the thread due to some habitual disruptions spilling from other threads...
I'm ok discussing this with you, I just want to keep it in one thread because
it's already way off-topic, maybe ok here, but risking thread spill to
counter thread spill is not the way I want to go)

"Lostgallifreyan" wrote in message
. ..

Exactly so, and this is one thing I asked yesterday and got no answer
for...
what kind of publication is considered 'adequate'?

That is because thos NG is for radio amateurs discussing antennae, and
not for some electronics dabbler in an unrelated topic.

(David Platt) wrote in newshg7jb-
:

An important question is this: do you want to earn money from it, or
do you want to *prevent* other people from earning money from it?


Which I asnwered, emphatically. Easily lost by now, perhaps..
I don't mind other people making money from their work using mine to help do
it. I just don't want them claiming it as their own, and denying ME the right
to earn from my own work! Especially if they want to sit back in their
millions, creating nothing while preening themselves on yet another cruel
aquisition at yet another person's hard earned expense. I will not lift a
finger to help that kind of thing. Dying alone knowing what I have created is
an easier thing to bear. If no part of the world will help me, then no part
of the world will share the work.

If you want to do the latter, "patent" and "trade secret" are the only
ways I know of.

If the former, you can publish the idea (establishing a "prior art"
barrier against somebody else trying to patent the same idea), and
then go ahead and sell implementations of that idea under whatever
terms you desire.

You can always *copyright* your *specific* implementations (the actual
code, circuit schematics, and so forth). That's a whole type of
protection which is independent of patents, since it protects specific
examples rather than the underlying idea.


Absolutely, I'll be doing that anyway. I suspect that it won't be enough, but
it will at least lock down the form it had at some specific time. The problem
is that it's a form of self-publication, I imagine not as solid as a third-
party publication that has already got some public respect. I'm not sure what
'weight' of publication carries enough authority to give good protection
against furture predation.

On 11/10/2014 2:33 PM, David Platt wrote:
In article ,
Lostgallifreyan wrote:

I won't patent. I've been reading of the cost in the UK. (All figures are
UKP) 3000 to 6000. Add 10000 give or take not very much to add US protection.
That;s in the first year. You have to add about 4 grand more within a year
and a half, maybe more, and that's ignoring ALL costs of actually defending a
patent! Add those, the costs soar to around 150 grand.

I will not release my code to the public domain unless there is a GUARANTEED
way to prevent patent trolls and sharks from stealing it, a way that does not
extort more money than I may ever earn before I even start to earn it!

As I noted earlier, if you release to the public domain, you cannot
prevent other people from using the idea.

However... if you *publish* your invention, you can often prevent
other people from coming at you years later and accusing you of
infringing *their* patents. Many high-tech companies used to do this
sort of thing... IBM, for example, would often publish new inventions
in the IBM Journal. They'd do this for ideas that they thought were
useful, that they might want to use themselves, which they didn't
think were necessarily worth the time and money to patent.

By doing so, they established the "date of invention" and "date of
first public disclosure" of a new idea. This would prevent other
people from filing patent applications on this specific invention, and
would establish this invention as "prior art".


Unfortunately, this is no longer true. The U.S. law changed last year
such that prior art isn't so important. Nowadays, it's "first to file".

See http://www.uspto.gov/aia_implementat...t_inventor.jsp.

--
==================
Remove the "x" from my email address
Jerry, AI0K

==================

Jerry Stuckle wrote in news:m3r6g8$28s$1@dont-
email.me:

Unfortunately, this is no longer true. The U.S. law changed last year
such that prior art isn't so important. Nowadays, it's "first to file".

See http://www.uspto.gov/aia_implementat...t_inventor.jsp.


Ok, well, that's the absolute end. US as only world superpower, claiming
tyranny over all creation. Literally! THE END.
For now.... but any change will be after my lifetime, so I'm done.

Jerry Stuckle wrote in news:m3r6g8$28s$1@dont-
email.me:

Unfortunately, this is no longer true. The U.S. law changed last year
such that prior art isn't so important. Nowadays, it's "first to file".

See http://www.uspto.gov/aia_implementat...t_inventor.jsp.


I just learned that First To File is actually not new except in the US! Maybe
this isn;t the big scare after all...
I found this:

http://thenextweb.com/insider/2013/0...s-has-a-first-
to-file-patent-system-so-you-can-leave-that-prior-art-at-the-door/
"Update: It turns out my understanding of prior art was a bit off,
so the headline on this story is a touch wrong. As Luke Chamberlin
noted via email, prior art is material that was or is in fact
publicly available. He went on to point out that “‘First to invent’
claims on the other hand are often based on material that is *not
publicly available*.” This is in fact a key distinction. In short,
with the new system, if you have prior art, but were not first to
file, you will retain, and I quote Luke again “protection.”
Sorry for the mixup."

Assuming this is true, I should ask again: What form of publication can be
considered a minimum for adequate establishment of prior art to prevent my
work being patented by a troll and used against me?

In article ,
Lostgallifreyan wrote:

Assuming this is true, I should ask again: What form of publication can be
considered a minimum for adequate establishment of prior art to prevent my
work being patented by a troll and used against me?

http://www.uspto.gov/web/offices/pac/mpep/s2128.html

II "Electronic publications as prior art"
A "Status as a 'printed publication'"

"An electronic publication, including an on-line database or Internet
publication, is considered to be printed within the meaning of 35
U.S.C. 102(a)(1) and pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. 102(a) and (b) provided the
publication was accessible to persons concerned with the art to which
the document relates."

You might want to consider a combined approach. For example, you
could do a fairly extensive technical writeup on your invention, with
enough detail to disclose all of its essential elements, and format
this as a PDF document and then put it up on a website on a server you
control. Include a date of publishing in the PDF. Add enough
relevant keywords to make it web-searchable.

Then, do a short advert: "A new and novel design for sound and music
synthesis has been published at http://.... with a SHA-256 hash of
xxxxxxxxxx", and buy space for this ad in the classified section in
the back of one or two electronic-music magazines ("accessible to
persons concerned with the art to which the document relates"). When
the magazines are published, buy a copy of each and stow 'em away, as
well as a copy of the PDF in electronic form.

Keep some logs on your web server for a few months to record any
public accesses to the PDF.

This combination ought to be enough to demonstrate to any relevant
court that the document had in fact been published and was accessible
to the public on such-and-such a date. You'd have a tangible "paper
copy" of a magazine with the announcement and a cryptographically
secure hash, and the document matching the hash.

On 11/10/2014 7:29 PM, David Platt wrote:
In article ,
Lostgallifreyan wrote:

Assuming this is true, I should ask again: What form of publication can be
considered a minimum for adequate establishment of prior art to prevent my
work being patented by a troll and used against me?

http://www.uspto.gov/web/offices/pac/mpep/s2128.html

II "Electronic publications as prior art"
A "Status as a 'printed publication'"

"An electronic publication, including an on-line database or Internet
publication, is considered to be printed within the meaning of 35
U.S.C. 102(a)(1) and pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. 102(a) and (b) provided the
publication was accessible to persons concerned with the art to which
the document relates."

You might want to consider a combined approach. For example, you
could do a fairly extensive technical writeup on your invention, with
enough detail to disclose all of its essential elements, and format
this as a PDF document and then put it up on a website on a server you
control. Include a date of publishing in the PDF. Add enough
relevant keywords to make it web-searchable.

Then, do a short advert: "A new and novel design for sound and music
synthesis has been published at http://.... with a SHA-256 hash of
xxxxxxxxxx", and buy space for this ad in the classified section in
the back of one or two electronic-music magazines ("accessible to
persons concerned with the art to which the document relates"). When
the magazines are published, buy a copy of each and stow 'em away, as
well as a copy of the PDF in electronic form.

Keep some logs on your web server for a few months to record any
public accesses to the PDF.

This combination ought to be enough to demonstrate to any relevant
court that the document had in fact been published and was accessible
to the public on such-and-such a date. You'd have a tangible "paper
copy" of a magazine with the announcement and a cryptographically
secure hash, and the document matching the hash.


You're grasping at straws. Just the fact something was accessible to
the public does not necessarily mean it's not patentable in the United
States. Not any longer, anyway - as a couple of good patent attorneys
have recently told me.

--
==================
Remove the "x" from my email address
Jerry, AI0K

==================

Jerry Stuckle wrote in news:m3rq68$d6t$2@dont-
email.me:

You're grasping at straws. Just the fact something was accessible to
the public does not necessarily mean it's not patentable in the United
States. Not any longer, anyway - as a couple of good patent attorneys
have recently told me.


Any chance you can ask them again? Please.. if they can point out the exact
bit of law they think is weak, that will help a lot. They may well be hot
stuff, but even the best may be in error, and if they don't state a specific
detail of weakness, we can't examine it.