Jeremy, most of these ideas were NOT "open source", or otherwise accessible to
the public. Many of the people that provided BP with ideas were fairly naive
(including many scientists and engineers) and trusted BP with their proposals.
They did, however, state that the information they were providing the company,
for the purpose of evaluation, wasn't considered confidential - but that's not
the same thing as their having already made these ideas public knowledge (since
BP didn't make them public, even though they could have). For those who did
publish their ideas before submitting them to BP, it's a different story, but
most did not - they just provided them to BP and waited for some feedback, which
most never got (except maybe to be told by BP that the ideas were not viable).
Both in Europe, and now here, it will become the law that unless you can
actually prove that someone filing a patent before you has done so based on
documents actually stolen from you, or the invention that they are claiming is
essentially identical to yours (or at least very, very, similar) - then you will
no longer have any recourse. Also, anything in the public domain has to be
almost identical to someones patent filing for it to be really useful in
blocking that person's application (you should see some of the things that
actually get patented in the U.S.!).
So, you could well be the "first to invent" something in the minds of many
people (i.e. all your colleagues and family), but that will no longer matter if
you, also, are not the "first to file", or at least the first to publish your
work within the prior year of someones filing (imagine what that means for
hackers that are good at hiding their tracks and can file even before you
publish your results - forget !). Even if you publish your research, but then
fail to follow up with a patent filing on it, you can loose all rights to many,
if not all, the elements of your work that a court finds another person can
lawfully claim as theirs, by reason of filing first, as long as they can argue
they have made sufficient "novel contributions" to distinguish their application
from the prior published work (which doesn't take much at all). Drug companies
in the U.S. get new patents all the time by merely "tweaking" their drugs, or
making them "time-release", changing their shapes and colors (for trademark
purposes), or combining 2 or more prior drugs into one pill. There are dozens of
RP patents that are extremely similar to one another, yet all appear to be
considered equally valid and independently developed. It is also well known that
many other types of patents overlap each other in terms of their claims, but no
one is doing anything about this serious problem. I have even found a few
examples of recent inventions on disguised perpetual motion machines that, under
statute, aren't even supposed to be allowed to issue (but then not all patent
examiners understand conservation of energy principles) - just look for
"gravity motors", or certain other types of magic "fuel-less" motors.
G.S.
________________________________
From: Jeremy Pullin <Jeremy.Pullin_at_Renishaw.com>
To: I.T. Daniher <explodingmind_at_gmail.com>
Cc: G. Sachs <sachsg_at_sbcglobal.net>; rp-ml_at_rapid.lpt.fi
Sent: Thu, November 24, 2011 11:22:45 AM
Subject: RE: [rp-ml] Z-corp, "open-sourcing" & "crowd-sourcing"
That’s not correct.
Outside the U.S. we already operate the ‘first to file’ system. This does have
an effect on who can apply for the patent but it makes no changes as to the
validity of it. What I said below about prior art would still mean that BP would
not be able to have a valid patent regardless of whether they are the first to
file or not as would be the case for all open sourse stuff. I (and the vast
majority of engineers outside the US) personally think that it can only be a
good thing from a worldwide perspective that US patent laws are at last being
brought into line with those for the rest of the world. Too many times in the
past individuals and small organisations both inside and outside of the US have
invented things and filed patent applications only for the ideas to be stolen
and protected by US patents by larger US corporations who have the resource to
be the first to achieve ‘reduction to practice’ whereby they are granted patent
under the current ‘first to invent rule’ operated in the US.
From:owner-rp-ml_at_rapid.lpt.fi [mailto:owner-rp-ml_at_rapid.lpt.fi] On Behalf Of
I.T. Daniher
Sent: 24 November 2011 15:50
To: Jeremy Pullin
Cc: G. Sachs; rp-ml_at_rapid.lpt.fi
Subject: Re: [rp-ml] Z-corp, "open-sourcing" & "crowd-sourcing"
As of the ratification of the America INVENTS act, prior art factors very little
into the granting of a patent. We in the US have moved from "first to invent" to
"first to file."
If BP finds something patentable in their newly collected ideas, and submits an
application before anyone else, they're legally entitled to the IP.
On Thu, Nov 24, 2011 at 05:20, Jeremy Pullin <Jeremy.Pullin_at_renishaw.com> wrote:
I’m not as familiar with patent laws in the US as I am with those in the UK and
Europe but the idea of but the theory of BP and others stockpiling crowd sourced
ideas for their own evil ends sounds a little conspiracy theorist to me. The
problem with attempting to farm IP in this way lies in ‘Prior art’. Prior art
which also known as ‘state of the art’ or ‘background art’ refers to any
information which has been made available to the public before a date that could
be relevant to a patent's claims of originality. Basically, if an invention has
been described in prior art, a patent on that invention is not valid. To
establish the validity of a patent application, the patent offices explore the
prior art that existed before the invention occurred (in the US) or before the
application was filed (in the rest of the world). Obviously there is no way that
BP could track down the hundreds of thousands of people that submitted ideas and
sign them all up non disclosure agreements. If the ideas were submitted onto
discussion forums and publicly accessible web portals at the time then that
constitutes prior art and even if BP restricted access to them after the oil
spill had been dealt with, there is still no way that any patents they attempted
to file would be valid. If BP (or others) were to be awarded a patent due to no
prior art showing up on the initial ‘Novelty search’ the awarded patent could
still then be ruled invalid if prior art was found during a subsequent ‘validity
search’.
For the reasons above the scenario described where open source and crowd
sourced’free offerings get co-oped by large commercial interests, which can
then go on to acquire patents on things they didn't even invent and then
completely control them’ cannot happen. Once something has gone ‘open source’
such as RepRap or Arduino it cannot be seized upon by anyone and retrospectively
patented. Even if it is then the patent can be retrospectively ruled as being
invalid. Not even Adrian Bowyer could get a valid patent on the RepRap now even
though he is widely and rightly recognized as the father of the platform. I hope
that puts your mind at rest a bit about open source.
Regards
Jeremy.
From:owner-rp-ml_at_rapid.lpt.fi [mailto:owner-rp-ml_at_rapid.lpt.fi] On Behalf Of G.
Sachs
Sent: 23 November 2011 18:36
To: rp-ml_at_rapid.lpt.fi
Subject: [rp-ml] Z-corp, "open-sourcing" & "crowd-sourcing"
Some good points, Markus and Adrian (especially about some of the screwed-up
things that go on in the U.S.!).
While this is starting to get pretty far afield from the original, Z-corp,
acquisition story, this discussion does bring up some other interesting
questions about current economic trends and future employment possibilities and
risks (with one of the less optimistic of those being that, most of us, may just
end up working for little or nothing, in the future!). For example one of my
biggest concerns with regards to both "open-sourcing" and its close cousin,
"crowd-sourcing", is when these free offerings get co-oped by large commercial
interests, which can then go on to acquire patents on things they didn't even
invent and then completely control them. If and when this happens, it clearly
defeats the purpose of the original, non-commercially, motivated work.
For instance, during last year's Gulf oil disaster, there was a worldwide call
for ideas to help stop the disaster and clean it up. Literally hundreds of
thousands of ideas were generated and sent in to BP (at the request of the Obama
administration). In the end, BP and the Obama administration claimed that not
even a single useful, or practical, idea was generated from all this effort. In
following up on this truly, record breaking, crowd-sourcing "experiment", I
discovered that most of the participants never got any feedback from BP; no one
in the government wanted to directly deal with any of the incoming ideas (that's
why they were all referred to BP) which lead to and allowed BP to stockpile them
into a huge proprietary database (repository) that only BP now has access to.
This database has never been made public even though everything in it was
contributed by the public and more troublesome, it is now not available to
journalists and outside independent scientists to evaluate. To make matters
worse, BP now has the right to patent anything derived from that database that
the original proposers may not have thought to try and patent at the time of
submission - i.e. those who so enthusiastically participated in this
crowd-sourcing "exercise" ( homework), have now allowed for their commercially
exploitation. Another example of this can be found in the protein folding
websites and "games", that encourage people to help figure out how certain (very
important) proteins are spatially configured. At first I thought this was a
great idea and it sounded like both fun and "helpful to society", but then I
realized that many of these solutions will go on to help large pharmaceutical
companies developing new drugs (and make lots of money), without the "solvers"
being compensated at all.
There are also a few web sites devoted exclusively to providing clients with
crowd-sourced solutions to very tough problems, in exchange for either just some
"recognition", or in exchange for a, rather small, fixed-price reward - provided
they are successful in finding a solution. Of coarse, if they are not completely
successful (according to the paying client), then they get absolutely no
compensation for their efforts. In addition to this, rather suspect, "reward
model", the question of what happens to the runner-up ideas (which also may
still be quite good) is never made clear - but I suspect the client gets to
keep and use any of those as well, even though they have to pay nothing for
those.
When I questioned one of the founders of one of these crowd-sourcing sites about
the equity of such business models, he told me that the non-financial rewards to
the participants was, perhaps, just as valuable as the, possible, financial
rewards (i.e. I guess the prestige of being named a "solver" might be worth just
as much as any actual monetary compensation) - to which I responded that
"prestige" was all, well and good, but I'd, still, much prefer "the cash". I
also made it clear that I didn't much care for their business model and indented
to expose it for what it really was.
G. Sachs
P.S. When it comes to the issue of IP rights, at least in the U.S., it all gets
very complicated, very fast. There are no clear and simple answers as to what
can and cannot happen and unfortunately there are considerations and
"strategies" that go beyond just the law. When it comes right down to it, IP (in
the U.S. at least) is really just a an example of game theory applied to the
world of ideas.
________________________________
From:Markus Hitter <mah_at_jump-ing.de>
To: Jeremy Pullin <Jeremy.Pullin_at_Renishaw.com>
Cc: "rp-ml_at_rapid.lpt.fi list" <rp-ml_at_rapid.lpt.fi>
Sent: Wed, November 23, 2011 8:34:57 AM
Subject: Re: [rp-ml] Zcorp!?
Am 22.11.2011 um 15:22 schrieb Jeremy Pullin:
> Just think how much computer hardware and ancillaries have been sold to
> linux users over the years. Giving things away free does not nor will it
> ever remove or even reduce the necessity for money and financial
> exchanges.
This is true and there are a few additional points:
- If you buy a consumer PC, you get a closed source operating system for free,
preinstalled. Well, perhaps not for free, but you can't avoid it anyways. So,
the cost of proprietary stuff in the PC world is very low and undoubtly a
noticeable number of PC users use the preinstalled OS just out of laziness.
- In the computer server market, where people take a lot more care what variant
of software they're running, open source OSs are on par or even dominant over
proprietary counterparts.
- Sheer price. Windows server costs a 3 digit number, a Rapid Prototyping
machine costs a 5 digit number. The more digits, the more people think.
- An important difference between open source software and open source hardware:
with hardware, you can make quite some money by just manufacturing copies.
Material price for the plastics parts of a RepRap is about EUR 5.-, still the
price of such printed sets currently settles somewhere at EUR 65.- to EUR 80.-.
No such thing with software, nobody would pay you a single Euro for just
downloading a Linux kernel or Ubuntu OS*.
This later point leads to quite a number of people doing financially healthy
business by just making copies - not just Adrian with his 5 friends. It also
leads to many people designing something new in the prospect of selling the
result. It also leads to some RepRappers saying: developers do the work, copy
shops collect the money.
To keep the topic: open source hardware is very obviously a working innovation
model, not just a freetime hobby for altruists. Think of your engineering
textbooks being full of downloadble designs and you concentrate yourself on just
the new part. That's close to what happens in the open source hardware
community.
Markus Hitter
aka "Traumflug" on RepRap
* When downloading legal music, you don't pay the download either, but a licence
fee for "owning" the music.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Dipl. Ing. (FH) Markus Hitter
http://www.jump-ing.de/
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Received on Fri Nov 25 04:15:55 2011
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