Horace Heffner wrote:
>
> On Jul 1, 2007, at 10:43 AM, Paul Lowrance wrote:
>
>> Horace Heffner wrote:
>>> On Jun 29, 2007, at 1:06 PM, Paul Lowrance wrote:
>>>> There's a lot of talk about the verbiage used in Steorns NDA. I'd
>>>> bet this NDA would kill any chance of me patenting any future
>>>> successful "Free Energy" machine.
>>> Hopefully you are aware that anything patentable that you have
>>> created and you publicly disclose, by posting here or placing on your
>>> web site for example, without first having a patent application,
>>> instantly becomes public domain in most countries, and starts a one
>>> year clock for a patent application in the US. After that one year
>>> you will be unable to obtain a valid patent in the US. At least
>>> that's the way things used to be. I haven't kept up with changes in
>>> recent years.
>>
>>
>> Lets try this again. Thanks for the info! As far as I know it becomes
>> Prior Art in the U.S., and open-source/public-domain in various other
>> countries.
>>
>>
>> My stated goal is to freely give away such a device to the world and
>> patent it in the U.S. Furthermore I would encourage people to build
>> such a device to personal use and/or build such units for others
>> incapable of building such a device for free or for profit.
>
> Yes indeed. There is a huge worldwide need. If you have a patent you
> can stipulate such things in the license. It appears to me the only
way
> to make inventions and their progeny "freeware" is to patent them and
> then protect the free nature through the licensing. Unlike copyright,
> which is automatic, there is considerable cost and diligence
required up
> front.
> Unfortunately, though public disclosure on the web may
> disqualify the inventor from obtaining a valid patent, it may not
> prevent another inventor from patenting the same.
Are you saying that if the inventor freely publishes it on the web
that it can
actually prevent the inventor from obtaining a patent, but anyone else
can
obtain a patent on the invention??? If true (God help the silly
government) then
how about the inventor getting a family member to obtain to patent?
> Posting is a public
> disclosure, but not necessarily considered publication by the PTO, so
> there is a grey legal area now with respect to exactly what is prior
> art. It might be a good thing if the international patent system made
> available a low expense "freeware" or "freepat" registration
database to
> establish prior art. This seems to me to be a good thing for a company
> like Google to attempt if they want to do something a bit altruistic,
> though, like Wiki, it would end up being high traffic. I think it
might
> require some of serious funding, though, because instead of "examiners"
> there would be a need for patent writing assistants to cull over the
> more important inventions and give them the best protection possible.
Paul Lowrance
