Why not get a patent and then offer DIY-friendly cheap licensing?
I don't think patents are evil. They encourage people with money to invest that
money helping people with patents bring their ideas to the market.
I just think they aren't for me. They are a license to sue, and it costs money to
defend them. The people who are investing lots of money can defend them. Those
of us who choose not to solicit large amounts of money from those people, and
end up effectively working for them, can bootstrap our businesses, using the web
as both a marketing platform and as a distribution channel.
Taking money from investors in exchange for stock means that growth is the main
objective in your business. It also means that you no longer own your business, and
you can get fired if you don't grow it fast enough.
A fine furniture maker might want to spend his time hand-crafting art. He might be
content to have the business make only enough money for his family, if he gets his
satisfaction from admiring customers. Writers, artists, and performers might also
have this kind of motivation, and they tend not to be patent holders.
None of these people benefit from keeping their work secret.
I am not aware of anyone in this group getting sued for patent infringement. Nor have
I seen any evidence that someone in the group has had their ideas stolen from them and
then patented. But somehow there is a lot of fear that this will happen, and people are
spending time worrying about it, and keeping secrets from the rest of the group in fear
of it. That is harmful.
Put your ideas out there right away. The rest of the group can help, with comments,
sourcing of materials, helping you find problems, or pointing out opportunities and
corollaries you didn't think of.
Fear being what it is, I am not going to convince anyone they are not in some kind of
danger. To those people, I offer this: File a provisional patent application. It costs
between $110 and $220. You just describe your invention, perhaps adding some drawings.
You don't need legalese or lawyers. Now you can say "Patent pending" for a year.
Now you can talk about it for a year, and decide if you want to pay a patent fee (starting
at $545). That fee gets the patent office to look at your description and tell you why it
isn't patentable. Keep their refusal letter. If some company then later patents your idea,
and then sues you, you can present that letter in your defense, as evidence of prior art.
You might pay your court costs with a Kickstarter campaign. But you won't have to, since
you will never be sued.
-----
Get a free science project every week! "http://scitoys.com/newsletter.html"On Fri, Jun 8, 2012 at 7:47 AM, John Griessen <john@industromatic.com> wrote:
On 06/06/2012 02:44 PM, John Griessen wrote:
On 06/06/2012 11:12 AM, Simon Quellen Field wrote:
Don't worry about patents. Publish your ideas early and often, and freely. Society will
benefit earlier
In this talk at minute 19 Sangiovanni Vincentelli expounds an what drives peopl
e and companies
to innovate, create value--
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GW4WrEI4-IY
He sums it up as innovation's impact is the driver -- something to brag about -- in society, not alone,
in an ecosystem like he matured in: Silicon Valley/Berkeley. So he probably sees mostly good in patents,
but would also be open to free-publishing's value, coming from Berkeley. Starting out as a professor,
his work caught Intel's attention and he became a founder of Cadence, so has plenty of money and is a VC
now.
All I say, is it's perfectly OK to not give all your work away in this world, and instead demand
some income from it to enable more work/play/exploring. Probably secret developments and then
expiring patent apps are the best anti-patent device we have at present.
Especially if your work has broad appeal. My work is all niche market now so I can get myself
enough money to operate well, but later, with some workable anti-patent strategy, some
work on big public issues would be nice without having to go to venture capitalists and without a
stock company to fund it.
John Griessen
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