[Noisebridge-discuss] advice on PCB patents?

[Marc Juul]

On Thu, Apr 27, 2017 at 3:21 AM, Mitch Altman <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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