I have an invention that I want to lay claim to being the inventor, but also give it to the public domain once it has been vetted as possible and useful.
So I want to publish it, so others can check the math and mechanics. But I do not want anyone to patent or copyright it.
Can I put the plans in the care of a notary. Dated, sealed, etc… So nobody can claim it later?
If I state that the invention is to be public domain when I publish it for vetting. Is that sufficient to prevent anyone from locking it up in patents, etc…?
You would be best off getting a patent for the invention and then grant anyone who asks a free license to use it on the condition they give you credit in whatever form you desire.
Put in a provional patent application and don’t take it any further. It becomes prior art for anything that comes later and because it is in the patent system very hard for subsequent patent approvals to ignore. Next stage would be to actually patent it and then let the patent lapse. But that isn’t cheap.
I’m not up on recent patent law, but at one time publishing something before a patent was submitted destroyed the chance that you or anyone else could get a patent on the idea. IBM, for instance, published a disclosure journal where they described inventions that they did not wish to patent (being too trivial) but that they did not wish anyone else to patent either.
That doesn’t really help in getting credit, though. Licensing as mentioned above would do that, but would be hard to enforce and is expensive.
As noted, to ensure credit and prevent others from patenting it later any decent public disclosure of it will work. By far the best is the provisional patent application mentioned earlier. It will show up in patent searches, etc.
This works much better now that the US has switched to first to file like most everybody else.
As to putting it into the public domain, that’s not really guaranteed doable under current US law. You can say “I hereby put it into the public domain.” but we don’t know for sure if that will really stick.
Suppose you file the provisional patent application, you proclaim it public domain and then you die the next day. The patent rights go to your estate and it’s not clear if they are held to your statement. They might finish the patent application process and start charging people.
Ditto if you go bankrupt and all your IP goes to your creditors, etc.
As to prior publication on the inventor’s part, there’s a window between you publishing an idea and being allowed to patent it. This grace period is 1 year for most situations.
If you publish it and then wait a year it definitely becomes public domain. Note that the publication should be reasonably detailed, in the form of a patent application is ideal.
OTOH, just because the law says that someone can’t patent something in the public domain doesn’t mean it can’t actually happen. There have been a lot of cases of people obtaining patents on prior art*. What you have to do then is hire a lawyer and spend a lot of time and money getting the patent voided.
The worst such patent I ever saw was one for managing a task queue on a computer. Basically the usual increment a counter, put on a list when adding an item, etc. Something that was in textbooks going back to at least the 70s.
That’s for sure. I’ve been asked by my company to find prior art for a set of patents, which I assumed they were planning to challenge. I was able to, simply, in all cases. Never heard anything back, so I assume it got settled.
The first two patents I got were initially rejected due to prior art, which we had to respond to. The last two, ten years later, went right through, and they were no better.
I wonder what percentage of computer related patents are bogus. Quite high, I’d think.
Thanks for the thoughts folks. Seems a little dicey no matter what route is taken. Oh well. Greed is a powerful thing.
I will work on a good presentation for vetting and post it on a few sites with the statement that is is to the public domain and see what happens. I am not interested in royalties, patent or copyrights. Just want to make sure I get credit as the inventor and nobody profits by doing those things. If they want to make it and sell it, that’s fine. Just not exclusively or get money for nothing. ( chicks for free, fine )