Subj : Re: Software Patents To : comp.programming From : Joe Seigh Date : Sat Jul 09 2005 08:45 am websnarf@gmail.com wrote: > > IBM is also very interesting in that any time their patent applications > are denied, they go ahead and publish in some "inventors publications" > anyways, to make sure that someone in the future who gets an ever > dumber patent reviewer can't patent it, because IBM will have published > prior art. > > That's standard practice. There's three ways to protect an idea. Patent it, publish it, or make it proprietary (trade secret). There's trade offs associated with each method. With patents there's something called discoverability, can you detect whether someone is infringing on your patent. If not, it's probably not worth getting a patent on. Trade secret might be an option in this case. The downside of trade secrets is if someone else discovers the idea they can patent it and prevent you from using it if they can provide evidence that you are infringing on their patent. Kind of hard to do if you only use non discoverable ideas as trade secret. Publishing protects your right to use your own ideas since it make it prior art as you mentioned. IBM published the IBM Disclosure Bulletin monthly. It was pretty hefty and there was some pretty lame stuff in it, probably because you could get an invention point for it (1 pt. for a disclosure, 3 pts. for a patent) which meant money everytime you reached a given plateau. Most of the major corporations have these. Printing a dead tree edition and meeting the distribution requirements that constitute publishing isn't really an option for most individuals. I use usenet. Most of the IP lawyers I've spoken to seem to agree it's effective. Usually they say something like after 6 months it's very difficult to patent anything published on usenet. I'm not sure whether that 6 monthes is unique to usenet or any form of publishing. I think it is or was tied in the US patent law practice of granting patents based on when someone came up with the idea, not when you actually filed the patent. You had to be able to prove it. That's why IBM had technical notebooks where you wrote down your ideas when you had them and had 1 or maybe 2 other people witness and sign the page in the notebook. And you didn't get to keep the notebook. When it filled up, you turned it in and got a new one. That's changed somewhat. But anyway I think US Patent law has changed to be more in line with international patent law and it's first to file. -- Joe Seigh When you get lemons, you make lemonade. When you get hardware, you make software. .