Dear List,
Scan patterns can be patented or copyrighted for their novel approach to
better perform a task. Therefore the question is do you want your scan
pattern to become a public domain item or do you want some third party
to patent the technique then later tell you that you do have any right
to the technique. This situation occurs often in the commercial
world. I am not an attorney, but it is my opinion when you submit an
article for publication in the proceeding of a conference you place the
information in public domain and therefore it is no longer a patent able
item as presented. Public domain information can be enjoyed by all who
wish to partake of the information. However, when you submit your
information to the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office before any
publication of information, this information is proprietary and belongs
only to the parties who patented the information for some period of
time. I must add, this is not an easy process and is very costly.
Trade secrets are very difficult to maintain while obtaining an
economic benefit in a small company. Confidentiality agreements and
non-disclosure agreements are helpful in keeping trade secrets. A
compromise solution is to sell the novel technique to a party that can
properly commercialize the information, whoever that may be. Usually, a
none commercialized item does not have much value in trade.
You can preserve the identity of the creator of the ideal by properly
recording all ideals and actions in a bound logbook. Should you work
for a large defense contractor more than likely you signed all of your
rights of ownership over to the company when you were hired as well as
pledge your secrecy. Therefore, you can not give away or sell your
ideal unless you violate company policy. Most large companies have a
proprietary properties department who can clarify these matters for
you. Most technical information appearing on the rpml is art of the
trade and is not any information that should be protected by patents.
Now a good question arises. Should you post an article to the rpml is
that information placed in public domain? I would think so, provided
there is some means to archive the information in a verifiable manner to
prove that it was posted. That is to say in five years from now can you
prove without a doubt that you posted the article?
Some aggressive companies do seek to patent public information and
seemingly create a large package of proprietary property to stave off
competition. This is called mine field placement, based on the theory
that one will eventually get you should you be brave enough to compete.
HP and Auto Desk have created numerous scan patterns called cross
hatching methods and provided access to the software to create your own
particular methods. Third parties have then create insert packages to
use with these systems for particular industrial applications. These
are protected by copyright action to prevent the primary vendor from
cannibalizing the best features. This allowed the primary products to
become more widely accepted by the masses. I suppose you have heard the
old saying, "cater to the masses and dine with classes".
Presently, most modeling software is machine dependent, but in a few
years this will change to allow the best and the smartest power users to
exploit the market with adaptable software on a variety of machines for
the best benefit of the user. You may be the key to change.
Well, for whatever it is worth.
Albert C. Young
CEO
AAROFLEX, Inc.
For more information about the rp-ml, see http://ltk.hut.fi/rp-ml/
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.2 : Tue Jun 05 2001 - 22:52:50 EEST