[Noisebridge-discuss] advice on PCB patents?

[Mitch Altman]

Yup -- our IP system is inanely broken.  Thanks for trying to make it less broken, Marc.

And thanks for pointing out the (broken but available) ability to comment on prior art.  I wasn't aware of that.

Mitch.

________________________________
From: marcjc at gmail.com <marcjc at gmail.com> on behalf of Marc Juul <juul at labitat.dk>
Sent: Thursday, April 27, 2017 3:34:00 AM
To: Mitch Altman
Cc: Zach R; NB Discuss
Subject: Re: [Noisebridge-discuss] advice on PCB patents?



On Thu, Apr 27, 2017 at 3:21 AM, Mitch Altman <maltman23 at hotmail.com<mailto:maltman23 at hotmail.com>> wrote:
Make it public and open source (on Github, or wherever you like).  Then no one can patent it because you can prove "prior art".  (Well, with our inanely broken IP system, anything can be patented now-a-days, but, it wouldn't be upheld if you chose to fight it in court.)

The other solution right now is to patent and then immediately abandon the patent. That's currently the only way to ensure that patent examiners will see it when doing a prior art search.

There is a third solution which is rather recent. Patents now have a period of time where they are publicly viewable but not yet granted and there is a free online form where anyone can submit a prior art claim on those patents. Unfortunately it was poorly implemented so you can currently pay more to rush the patent application which bypasses this comment period :/

I'm scheming with a patent lawyer on a possible upgrade to this that would allow prior art claims to be submitted online for free but I wouldn't get my hopes up.

--
marc/juul

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