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.
Regards,
Horace Heffner
