Klarinet Archive - Posting 000095.txt from 2000/08

From: "Musicstudents.com" <jonathan@-----.com>
Subj: Re: [kl] patents
Date: Mon, 7 Aug 2000 02:55:11 -0400

Yes, it would be pretty expensive to patent something just to give it
away. If you want to give your idea away, I would say go ahead and do it,
just post it. I'd say that the chances are slim that someone else would
try to patent it because of the cost of the patent and the fact that they
wouldn't have an exclusive on it. The cat would be out of the bag before
any one maker could patent it themselves. The idea of a patent, or patent
pending, is the idea gets registered before it's made public, so the origin
is provable.

If someone were then to patent it later, they couldn't prove they had the
idea first, since it was already in common knowledge when they applied for
the patent. So they couldn't accuse others of infringement if the others got
the idea from common knowledge before the patent was even applied for. Since
any patent infringement suit might then not hold up, I doubt if anyone would
bother to try to patent it at all. Not to mention too it's unethical to
patent something that isn't your work, I think all manufacturers would want
to avoid the ill will that would come from claiming the idea as theirs.

It seems to me that while the unpredictability of the results might keep
anyone
away from investing in patenting costs, it might also keep them from using
the ideas at all because of the possibility that later they might get in
trouble, after they've done tooling and design work and prototypes using the
new ideas.

An interesting dilemma.

Jonathan
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