[okfn-discuss] [Fwd: SumoBrain now free]

Wed Oct 15 21:47:53 UTC 2008

Hi there,

here are some slightly related patent question.

I was asked the other day by a local inventor about how one can
release designs into the public domain without fear of another company
patenting the invention and preventing others from exploiting it later
on.

After a little digging, I was pointed to the whole white paper
industry. As I understand it patents are based on first publication
and the normal format is a a white paper that consitutes publication
and is sufficient to establish priority of invention for the
publisher. This establishes the legal priority of the idea/design for
the inventor and would be enough to defeat a later patent application
by an imititator should they apply.

Although patent offices prefer to have an actual patent application as
proof of priority a white paper publication should be enough.

Understandably the whole patent validation and search business is
patchy at best as seen by the peertopatent[1] initiative that seeks to
offload some of the work of patent validation from the patent office
into the community.

Should I advise the inventor to publish his invention/design under an
open content license as a white paper?

Is there an advantage in making a patent application over publishing a
white paper?

Is there an accepted format for patents that will not be enforced by
the inventor?

Is there an accepted format for stating that white papers will not
generate patents, but prevent others from doing so?

Are white papers supposed to be published in journals or does a url
consitutute publication?

What steps should he take to make sure that patent offices are aware
of his paper so that they will not be patentable in future?

Are there any services or meta data schemas that specifically aid
white paper publishers in categorising work in ways that are easily
integratable with patent office searches?

Would an online journal of open designs be useful or does something like it
exist already?

oops -  that's alot of questions. any fragments much appreciated.

cheers

/julian

[1] http://www.peertopatent.org/

On Wed, Oct 15, 2008 at 10:21:38PM +0200, Jonathan Gray wrote:
> Shame its only free as in beer :-)
> 
> -------- Original Message -------
> 
> A little while ago I emailed you to let you know about a new patent 
> searching site, http://www.SumoBrain.com.  I thought the site might be 
> useful to your readers given 
> http://www.okfn.org/open%20knowledge%20trail/think_again/.
> 
> I wanted to let you know that since that time SumoBrain has gone from 
> being a subscription-based service to being a free service.  
> 
> The features it offers are unprecedented for free patent searching 
> (e.g., world patent searching, alerts, collaboration tools, bulk PDF 
> downloading).  If you already linked to it or wrote anything about it, I 
> just wanted to let you know that you might want to update your 
> information to let people know that it is now free.
> 
> Sincerely,
> James
> 
> 
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