OK, I'm just whining. How many of you have designed something that was very useful for you, and posted it on a forum to help some other participant…for their personal project. Then you later find that someone has taken your exact concept or design and gone commercial. I supposed you should feel flattered!…but you feel…robbed?
Yesterday I got a flyer from Woodcraft and found this:
**broken link removed**
Not that auto-start shop dust collector controls haven’t been around for some time, it’s my delayed–start/delayed-stop that was unique.
I recently was informed, be someone that wanted to build mine, about this: **broken link removed**
Look kind of familiar? OK, they switched the LEDs and Rate control positions. The two LEDs indicating high/low current and pulse rate scale that switches from Hz to Sec at 1 Sec/Hz are just too unique to be coincidence.
I have no claim except that they were made for my job and I suppose that the intellectual property does belong to my employer. But, since they're an educational institution I doubt they will want to spend scarce funds on it.
I agree that ideas evolve and build in previous ones. As stated in my text file, my TIG pulser was built on others' ideas that I credited. But, Oakden's TIG pulser is just too much of a copy.
The iVAC's explanation the delay-on...and a delay-off... feature is just too close to mine to be independently developed concepts.
I doubt those manufacturers will give credit to you. The real rub will be if they patented it and you then try to patent and/or manufacture it.
I was at an academic institution that had a policy of not patenting medical devices. The philosophy was that such inventions were for the public good. Then, a competing lab patented one of the tests we developed and tried to charge us royalties to use it ourselves. Our policy on IP changed overnight.
IP is a tricky area of law. Prior disclosure is only one factor, and lawsuits are extremely expensive. I do feel your pain though. I think open-source licensing is a breath of fresh air in the area, but am not sure it would apply in your examples.
That's interesting, but I agree we share our knowledge without conditions. I am aware that some of the projects I and others aided on were being developed as commercial products. Makes me think about changing form corporate cubicle prisoner to tech consultant. I know of one of our members who once consulted professionally. Now that I'm out of work, I'm thinking about the options.
PS If I do become a consultant and get stuck on something, you can bet believe I'm going to ask for help from the geniuses here!
Publication of an idea will prevent anyone from enforcing a subsequent patent on the same idea. Called 'defensive publication'. Some of my ideas were published so we didn't have to patent but still were guaranteed the right to use.
It is much more complex than that. Patents are for inventions, not ideas. If you publish an idea, and someone subsequently patents an invention, you might claim it was obvious from prior art, but you have an uphill fight.
If one is serious about protecting IP, they need to go through the steps and pay the money to proper counsel.