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How Do I Secure An IP, While Leaving Options Open?
Posted by
Zonk
on Fri Aug 31, 2007 04:51 PM
from the i-suggest-tacks dept.
from the i-suggest-tacks dept.
Tiger4 writes "Let's say I have a photograph, or a television script, or have finally perfected the water-to-gasoline conversion process, or some other piece of non-software but copywritable or patentable IP. I know I want it secured in my name, on this date, in a provable and verifiable way. But being an Open Source, free-to-the world sort of person, I'm willing to share my knowledge to the world, as long as all credit points unambiguously to me. Any attempts at theft could, would, and must be immediately rebuffed by my offer of proof from when I first secured the IP. What, if any, tool or method is available to me in the digital world? MD5 and the like are available to show that copied files are the same as the original source, but they don't show time of authorship unambiguously. The same with Public Key crypto. I could lock it up with a time stamp, but what prevents me from faking the stamp that locks the file? Is there a way to homestead a little chunk of time with my IP's name on it?"
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Use a digital timestamping service (Score:4, Informative)
I found this in 30 seconds through Google, did you even look before submitting your question to Slashdot?
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Submit it to usenet.
Seriously, you can't "secure" IP and still make it known to the general public. Ask Coca-cola. They protected their recipe by simply not releasing it. If they had, any protection would have expired long ago.
There is no innate "right" to IP - you only have what the local laws + your enforcement of same can provide. Even then, you can't stop all uses. Fair use comes into play on copyrights; obviousness, prior art, lack of true invention come into play on patents. On top of that, paten
Use the GPL as well (Score:3, Interesting)
Those technical solutions are all very well, and I wish governments would get with the times and offer official digital timestamping services of their own, or bless some of the existing ones. Unfortunately, there's at least one good technical excuse why they need not rush to embrace these new ways. We don't have a proof that P!=NP, and a great deal of crypto (and other things) depends upon the assumption that P!=NP. Would be a bummer to set everything up, get systems, procedures, offices, legal tradition
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What planet was I on again?
Re:Use a digital timestamping service (Score:5, Informative)
Parent
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Chain it to a lawyer. (Score:2, Funny)
Copyright Office. (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Copyright Office. (Score:4, Informative)
Which is probably why you don't realise that most other countries don't have a copyright registration system.
Parent
Re:Copyright Office. (Score:4, Informative)
This is one of those few government services I believe to be legitimate.
-Peter
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Notarys... (Score:5, Informative)
You give them a piece of paper, they sign it and keep a copy. If you ever have to go to court they appear as a witness with their copy of the paper.
Parent
Re:Notaries... (Score:5, Informative)
I think this is a state by state thing. I was a notary in Vermont for a few years and I did not keep a copy of what I notarized. I did log the signings that I did, for my own benefit, but there was nothing in the laws governing notaries saying I would have to do so. Basically, the laws in Vermont said that if you notarize something without using proper diligence to make sure that the person signing the document is actually who they say they are, you'd be liable. So it was in the notary's best interest to only accept official identification and try and spot counterfeit ID. However, unless there was a problem, nobody came around to check these things. I just had to swear to the state that I wouldn't knowingly notarize false documents.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
1) Perform signature acknowledgements (verify a document is signed by the person it says it was by requiring the personal appearance of such person with proper ID. A common example of this is real estate mortgages as you alluded.
2) Administer oaths for sworn statements (jurat/affidavit). A common ex
Use your lawyer (Score:3, Informative)
When you;re fighting copyers, you can have this opened in the presence of a lawayer or court, have everything verified and checked and then have it re-sealed in the same venue and have all proceedings officially recorded.
Post your ideas on Slashdot! (Score:5, Funny)
Awesome (Score:2)
I think a news collector/ comment allowing website in the slashdot model should assign moderation points but let the user choose when to activate them, subject to predefined rules that would prevent the usage of so many points over a given time span or used in a single article.
Remember you heard it from me first as the time stamp shows. Tune in next week for the secret to free energy, and world peace. That is all.
Post (Score:2)
Might have been an old wives tale though.
Although realistically if it is a major find you should be grabbing a solicitor and filing your idea in whatever manner is appropriate.
This is not legal advice and
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I asked my lawyer once, he told me it was stupid and accomplished nothing.
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This is not legal advice and IANAL.
Clearly not. This is known as "poor man's copyright", and is generally considered to be useless (due to the fact that it's trivially easy to game the system to claim
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Every time I remember sending a registered mail, the post office stamped ink across the seams of the envelope - presumably to ensure that it wasn't opened.
But seriously, Slashdot is the worst place to get good legal advice. Yikes.
That said, there was a good article on the August 11th Talk of the Nation Science Friday called "What Inventors Need to Know". One of the guests emphasis
Depending on where (Score:2)
Patent it (Score:5, Informative)
The downside is that getting a patent can be a bit expensive.
Ask a Lawyer (Score:2)
Particularly considering you haven't stated which country you're in.
If the IP you want to protect is worth any serious quantity of money, then an hour or so of a lawyers time is a worthwhile investment.
Alternatively, if you're a cheapskate, I understand the traditional method was for authors to post themselves a copy but not open it. That way, if a dispute ever arose, there was a sea
How about a Sharpie? (Score:2)
Unless you embed your name in the material in some way it can't be removed (impossible if it's just an idea), you're out of luck. One way to do this would be from a branding/marketing perspective - think Coke, Kleenex, Xerox, etc. - if you can get the thing
Publsh it (Score:4, Informative)
Online timestamper (Score:2)
Call a notary (Score:4, Informative)
If you don't have a personal lawyer and don't want to mess with the copyright office, you may also have a notary public [wikipedia.org] sign and date a printout of the document. Be sure that the law in your state allows notaries to act in that capacity; I don't think they can i New York, for example.
Advantages: cost and convenience - you might very well know one or have one on staff at your office.
Wrong solution for the problem (Score:4, Insightful)
The digital world is the wrong place to search for a solution. The simplest, most effective (though not, particularly in the case of patents, the cheapest) solution is to simply secure the appropriate legal registration of the IP (a registered copyright, a patent, etc.) and then offer the product under a no-cost license that requires credit and whatever other terms you want to impose.
(Since copyright is automatic, you can technically avoid registration and still be protected, but registration serves the documentation role you are looking for without any technical trickery, and copyright registration isn't particularly expensive.)
Just mail (Score:2)
Re:Just mail (Score:5, Informative)
http://www.snopes.com/legal/postmark.asp [snopes.com]
This solution is way too easy to fraud. As a simple example:
Have notary notarize several basically blank pages (fill in only as much as you need to convince a notary to mark it).
Mail an unsealed envelope to yourself.
Fill in your 'discovery' 'borrowed' from someone else on the notarized pages years later.
Stick in envelope, seal, sign over seal.
Done!
Parent
From a California Notary Standpoint: (Score:3, Informative)
Simply put, a Notary Public in the United States verifies Identity, not ownership of IP and as such can not usually and damn well better think twice about it; notarize anything that is not a written document with a signature on it. Things like Contracts, Afidavits, Acknowledgements and so on that indicate some type of written response with a signature is required.
ATT did it this way... (Score:2)
Why Not Just Publish? (Score:2)
Of course, if you want to turn a buck on the idea later on you should patent or copyright it and be a bastard. You can't have your cake and eat it, too.
I've been thinking for a while... (Score:2)
Because the system is run by a third party with no interest in the ongoing litigation, it would likely be trusted by a court.
There's also a nontrivial chance it would earn the person who set it up some reasonable expert witness fees.
There's already a system in place (Score:3, Insightful)
Patents are considerably more complicated, of course, and more expensive, but again, the only thing the court will care about is the patent.
Does anybody have a patent on reinventing the wheel yet?
Where are you right now? (Score:3, Funny)
Just ... (Score:5, Funny)
How come I don't have any "Please! Stop!" mod points?
How Do I Secure An IP, While Leaving Options Open? (Score:3, Funny)
DON'T mail it to yourself - and a better alternate (Score:3, Informative)
As others have pointed out, this is a useless tactic. Yes, when you mail something to yourself, it gets date stamped. Great, wonderful. But there's no onus on the post office to ensure that you have properly sealed the envelope in anyway. You could leave it completely open and empty, and they'll mail it to you. Later on, at any time, you can put something into the envelope and seal it.
But what if the post office insists on datestamping over the enclosure of the envelope? Then it MUST be sealed. Sure-- or at least that end of the envelope does. Some envelopes can have two openings, because of the way they're folded. Have them timestamp over the second end. Or unseal the second end and reseal it later.
Or steam open the envelope, and very carefully reseal it afterwards so that the timestamp matches up.
Or use a plain white envelope, and a pair of chopsticks. Roll your document around the sticks, then stick the sticks into the envelope through the bottom where it isn't QUITE sealed along the fold.
There are so many ways to tamper with it. And you forget there's also the question of chain of possession. Who has actually had the envelope from the time it was stamped until the time you present it to the courts?
And what about a biased source? You're suing someone because you claim you own what they're say they own. Your proof? "Because I said so."
The main issue here isn't proving that you own something. It's that you own it, and that you came up with it, and that you came up with it first. As others have mentioned, use the patent office. Use a notary. They're all trusted third parties who can verify the when of it.
And to prove that you actually came up with it-- simple. Show your work. Keep every rough draft, concept sketch, hand-drawn Rose diagram, cvs revision and so forth. If someone does steal the final product, it becomes a huge advantage to you. The other guy says "This is my idea". You say "This is my idea, and here's fifteen boxes of evidence that demonstrate the process I went through to create it." Who do you think the judge is going to believe?
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Find me a court case referring to such a thing, or an actual law, and I'll believe you. Otherwise, it's just a waste of a stamp.
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Confer:
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Hint: The answer is almost certainly not "a lawyer". I am quite confident it is not "a competent lawyer".
Re:Self addressed envelope, and 41cents... (Score:5, Informative)
http://www.snopes.com/legal/postmark.asp [snopes.com]
Parent
Re:Patent it yourself, or forget the whole thing (Score:5, Interesting)
IP sucks because it doesn't exist.
Look, you either have an object, which is patentable, a work, which can be copyrighted, a symbol, which can be trademarked... or you have an idea, which is only protected until you tell somebody else. If you don't want to share, don't.
The concept of Intellectual Property - i.e. the idea that an abstract construct can have the same properties as a physical construct - is self-contradictory: If it's intellectual, it's not property. The idea has no basis in law, philosophy or history. I've written about this elsewhere [livejournal.com], so I won't waste my breath repeating myself here.
As far as the submitter is concerned, the alternatives are clear: You can protect the work, but not the idea. If it's a song, write it down and/or record it, then copyright it. If it's software, put it in a public repository that has reliable tracking and timestamping, and associate it with an appropriate license. As the owner, you can change this license any way you like in the future, so pick something that suits you for the time being and leave it at that.
Parent
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Look, you either have an object, which is patentable, a work, which can be copyrighted, a symbol, which can be trademarked... or you have an idea, which is only protected until you tell somebody else. If you don't want to share, don't.
I'm afraid that objects are not patentable, it is the design of the object or process the object implements that is patentable (an invention). The point behind a patent is not to keep something to yourself, it's to license the process/design/