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. 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.
It's my impression the court merely wants proof of Prior Art. Perhaps web
forums, yahoo & google websites, and wikis don't count as much proof. What if I
handed out a few thousand xeroxed papers to various people?
Regards,
Paul Lowrance
