Patent Ponderings
May. 24th, 2006 03:52 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
tcepsaI think I've asked this before, but I can't remember where or when or what the answer was, so I'll post it again:
Say you invent something that you want anybody in the world to be able to use, and you want to make sure that nobody else tries to put a patent or copyright or anything like that on the design. Can you file for an Anti-Patent or something? Is there some sort of established procedure for ensuring this? (Can the GPL--Gnu Public License--be extended to mechanical blueprints, and would it accomplish the above purpose?)
Say you invent something that you want anybody in the world to be able to use, and you want to make sure that nobody else tries to put a patent or copyright or anything like that on the design. Can you file for an Anti-Patent or something? Is there some sort of established procedure for ensuring this? (Can the GPL--Gnu Public License--be extended to mechanical blueprints, and would it accomplish the above purpose?)
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Date: 2006-05-24 04:23 pm (UTC)(Personally I was happy enough with our policy of "well just don't burn the bloody house down", but now that she's on this home-repair kick she's unstoppable!)
no subject
Date: 2006-05-24 05:03 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-05-25 06:52 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-05-24 05:02 pm (UTC)- Trademark law protects use of words or a logo, only on a specific product. Trademark protection, if renewed, can last indefinitely.
- Copyright law prevents someone from copying what you have done, typically for your life plus 50 years. It does not prevent anyone from coming up with the same thing independently.
- Patent law protects an invention that would not be nonobvious to a person having ordinary skill in the area of technology related to your invention. Most patents last for 20 years.
Mechanical blueprints might, therefore, fit under either copyright or patent law, depending on whether they were something that would be "nonobvious." See http://inventors.about.com/od/patents/a/patent_novelty.htm for more information about the whole concept of nonobviousness.Both copyrights and trademarks can be acquired simply by use of the copyright material or the trademark, although greater protection is available if they are registered. Patents, by contrast, are available only if the invention is registered. The trade-off in the case of a patent is that you can get protection for 20 years, even from people who might independently invent the same thing, but only if you make the invention public so that others can make it once the patent expires.
If you want to make a patentable product freely available, you could apply for a patent, then license it to anyone who wanted to use it. However, the time and cost involved in getting a patent normally make this impractical. Your best bet may be to get the drawings known generally enough so that if anyone else tried to patent them, the patent would be rejected for obviousness.
With respect to copyrights, you own the copyright in anything you made from the moment you make it. The question then becomes the extent to which ytou license others to use it.
By its terms, the Gnu Public License applies only to software. However, you could basically announce to people that they could use your drawings subject to terms similar to those of the GNU Public License.
no subject
Date: 2006-05-24 05:04 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-05-25 06:54 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-05-25 06:54 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-05-26 12:25 am (UTC)-Dave