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Comment by jonafato | Hacker News Reader

Get your idea down on paper, seal it, and mail it to yourself. This will of course prevent no one from infringing on your idea, but if all you are looking to do is prove someone came up with something before a certain date, this should do the job. Also, IANAL, so I don't know exactly what legal uses this would have.

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This idea is called "Poor Man's Copyright" and is discussed by Snopes here:

http://www.snopes.com/legal/postmark.asp

tl;dr Don't do that.

The particular method is frowned upon (because it could be faked), but the reasoning behind it is sound: As long as you can prove that you had an idea on such-and-such a date, you can challenge any later patent on it, and file for a patent yourself at any time (or rather, until other folks start using your idea without you challenging them).

Think of some electronic equivalents of sending yourself certified mail: save your idea on Google Docs; email it to yourself and your friends; check it into a private Github repo and save it to Tarsnap (both cost $$ unless you're already using those services). You should flesh out your idea in great detail, as detailed as a patent. If you take all these steps, you should be able to successfully challenge any later patent on the idea.

But, if you want to be able to sue anyone who uses your idea, you're going to need a patent. That's what a patent is: a license to sue. So if there's a good chance that someone will use your idea in the next few years, filing for a patent now will save you a lot of headaches. Remember that it takes years for a patent to be approved.

To be more technical, a patent is the right to exclude people from using your idea (which includes making using selling etc. etc.) Thus, you have a right to sue if someone is using it, but that is not the purpose of the patent on its face.

sounds like a neat hack..

This is certainly a cool hack, but pretty common. When I first met with my startup's IP lawyer, this was one of the first things he told us to do; it's cheap, easy, and holds up well.

Why would that hold any weight at all? How do you prove you didn't just mail yourself an empty, unsealed envelope, into which you inserted the contents later... possibly even today?

Then that must have been one crappy lawyer!

Are you serious? An actual, practicing attorney told you this?

Seriously, this.

Time for a new lawyer

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