[sdiy] Patents

[Kenneth Elhardt]

Ken Stone writes:
>As far as I am concerned, the best way to "protect" something from
>greedy corporates is to put it in the public domain. Sure, the @#$%s
>can use the info/design, but more importantly, they can't stop you from
>doing so.

That seems like a self-defeating thing to do.  Now you'll have to compete
against those greedy corporations.  I don't see why many people vs one
person using something makes the situation better.  If the one person gets a
product into the market, that should be enough proof it was his idea.  I
think secrecy is better.  Just tell any of those filthy overpaid lawyers to
go to hell if they try to bully you.

Rainer Buchty writes:
>And, as a side note, it might make you interesting enough for certain
>corporations to hire you, if your publicly disclosed idea gains enough
>momentum.

Depends.  If you disclose your idea, nobody needs to hire you.  Coming from
the software side of things, if I made the source code to my real-time
assembly coded software 3D render (the world's fastest), I might not have
made a deal with Strata and made royalties from it.  Nor would they have
paid me an addition $30K for the source code.  And just to show what happens
when companies get your knowledge, they start doing things behind your back
that you might not get paid for.  I handed the source code to a game to
Wizard Works / then Infogrames / now Atari, just so the interface programmer
could make changes without bothering me all the time.  Then I see my game on
the Discovery channel being controlled with a 3D glove with some changes to
the screen display.  I think, how the hell did they do that without my
source code?  Somebody passed it on to them.  Then by chance I find out my
game became a coin op game when doing a web search.  I think, what the f**k.
My source was passed on to them too.  Another similar game appeared from the
company, probably with the help of my source code.  All this crap going on
behind my back.  Some things are better kept to yourself so they have to
come to you and you have control over what happens.  Perhaps not as easy
with a circuit design, but if it's something that can't be reversed
engineered so easily I'd rather go the secrecy route.  They might hire you
to get the knowledge.

-Elhardt