On Feb 7, 2008 4:45 PM, Arthur Britto <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > What prevents you from mailing yourself an unsealed envelope?
Why would you want to do that? The point is to get a reliable date stamp associated with the material inside the envelope. And as the other link pointed out, it doesn't hold up well in court, and could also be used against you to say that this idea was not being implemented... was just sitting on a shelf until you got around to filing the patent or defending against one. I think the notary method would be better because the stamp is right on the invention diagram/description; and not being sealed, they can't say it was necessarily sitting on a shelf. Some companies take "lab notebooks" seriously for the same reason - if you have a practice of dating and signing every page, and the book is a hardcover bound one, and it stands up to reasonable scrutiny that the notebook could not have been constructed and bound later on, then maybe some courts would be convinced that the idea struck you on that date... because it fits into the timeline of the other writings in that book, some of which could probably be corroborated via other sources. (Since I don't like the process of writing on paper though, that's one habit I haven't taken up very much.) More about the notary method here http://robertplattbell.blogspot.com/2007/10/poor-mans-patent.html and here http://books.google.com/books?id=7G5A2pyvCQUC&pg=PA137&lpg=PA137&dq=notary+establish+date+of+invention&source=web&ots=dEnJJyMR-m&sig=piJSbDkPsCkKJOmMd_XtzcwISmQ but I'm not proposing it's anywhere near as good protection as an actual patent... just for a "prior art" defense. _______________________________________________ OpenMoko community mailing list [email protected] http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
