Crowdfunding Backer Patented My Project (2018) | Hacker News Reader

Crowdfunding Backer Patented My Project (2018)

patentpandas.org

95 pointsoptimalsolver33 comments

Nice lesson that a patent, other than some possible value to the marketing dept, is nothing more than a a ticket to start a lawsuit.

It does not actually prevent anyone else from infringing or doing what they want, unless and until they hire the lawyers to attempt to enforce it.

Having a lot of published prior art may form a decent moat. Sure, you'll have to defend, but if you fold, they get nothing, and if you sustain the defense, they'll likely lose the patent entirely.

She also makes a very good point about bridging patent- light and patent-heavy sectors/cultures.

Also relevant is Musk's choice with SpaceX at the other end of the scale -- to forego patents entirely in favor of the trade secret route. He figures that publishing in a patent would just be tantamount to publishing manuals for the Chinese and also be unenforceable...

Patents sometimes seem almost magic, but they're really quite limited.

[2018]

I think the author was also a guest on the Embedded.fm pod cast where she or someone from PatentPandas explains the story more. [0]

Patent law on all topics can be summed up with one simple phrase. Doesn't matter if you're applying, fighting, buying, all your prior art, the number of sealed envelopes you mailed yourself, testimony, claims, or anything else on the topic.... When it comes to anything patent:

"You're going to need a lawyer"

EDIT: Found it, https://embedded.fm/episodes/277

What about "Patent It Yourself: Your Step-by-Step Guide to Filing at the U.S. Patent Office" by David Pressman?

I applied for a patent after reading that book but was unsuccessful (for various reasons). I successfully obtained different patents with an attorney. I found what I learned from the book to be very helpful when getting patents with an attorney.

Thanks for sharing your experience, I want to try to patent something by myself. How much did you spend using an attorney?

Nothing, since I did the successful patents through my employer :-)

I've heard you might be spending around $10,000.

The immorality of this makes me a little crazy. I feel like a flatlander being shown the third dimension. I get a (very) mild panic attack.

My first thought is, "well maybe she (the evil patent person) really needed the money".

My second thought is, "Maybe the monetary prospects were just so awesome that it overrode her sense of decency".

And then, after reflecting, the list of things that I would not suck for a million dollars is darn short. So hmm. Am I evil? Maybe.

I blame capitalism.

One of the positive things about capitalism is that's actually viable way to make a million dollars if you'd like. Choice is yours my friend.

How is being able to make a million dollars by outright patent fraud a positive aspect of capatalism?

They accidentally said the quiet part out loud.

Wow, what a journey. I'm glad the original authors took such a rational and mentally healthy approach to such a frustrating situation.

On the plus side, I'd never heard of Chibitronics, but it seems so approachable that I am now strongly considering getting some of the starter kits for my 8 y/o nephew :)

Ditto. The product is here: https://chibitronics.myshopify.com/products/chibitronics-chi...

Caveat: I probably will not end up going for it since the book ($10) doesn’t come with the LEDs, the stem kit is a reasonable $35, but with shipping (to Canada) and tax it comes to $63.47USD.

Discussed at the time:

Crowdfunding Backer Patented My Project - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18568641 - Nov 2018 (46 comments)

> So though I’m not happy to be in this complicated patent situation, I’m still glad that we chose to share our ideas as openly and as broadly as possible.

The reality is that it wasn't complicated. Getting the answer was expensive and complicated for them, without free guidance.

Jill wasted her time filing that patent which would be invalidated if Jill ever tried to use the patent on the prior art creators. There is a chance that Jill can get settlements from other people though. But anyone Jill actually has to go into litigation with will get that patent invalidated.

Shameless plug: Help us pass a constitutional amendment to abolish patents and copyrights (https://www.reddit.com/r/ifa/).

Safety not guaranteed. I have only done this once before.

Why does anyone think abolishing copyright is a good idea?

Your friend writes a novel. They've never been published before, so they shop it around to various publishers, but no dice. A little while later, they see a hot new entry on the bestsellers list, and surprise, it's their novel word for word - one of the publishers took it.

Without copyright this can happen to writers, musicians, film creators, artists, and so on.

There should absolutely be limits on copyright. Disney should not be allowed to turn the copyright laws into their own personal tool. But I see so many people who get angry when corporations take advantage of copyright, and so few of them seem to consider the fact that the same laws protect the little guy against those same corporations. Unless we want Disney to literally be able to get away with stealing art from anyone and everyone, we need intellectual property laws.

As for patents, the general idea behind patents is that in order to get one, you need to describe your technique. The motivation is furthering shared knowledge - we give you the promise of exclusive use of the patent for a limited time in order to encourage you to divulge your invention. Patent law is more ripe for abuse than copyright but its general policy motive is still sound.

> Why does anyone think abolishing copyright is a good idea?

Because entire industries, like fashion, have no intellectual property protection—and work just fine. In fact, they're extremely wealthy industries, with very low costs for consumers.

With R&D costs near 0.

When R&D costs are high, competition is minimal because it's so expensive to compete.

Example: (patent-free) SpaceX

Aren't design patents used to protect many fashion products?

This isn't correct, the fashion industry uses a wide array or different IP protection methods, trademarks for specific colors, sketches of design can by copyrighted, you can then get a design patent to prevent others from creating fashions that resemble your sketch, designs on clothing can be protected by copyright, even textile design can be copyrighted.

And as for the low cost to consumer, seizing and processing counterfeit goods cost consumers nearly $500 million a year in taxes to pay for law enforcement alone.

An example of a design patent issued to Yves Saint Laurent:

https://www3.wipo.int/designdb/en/showData.jsp?ID=USID.D8883...

The application guide: https://www.uspto.gov/patents/basics/types-patent-applicatio...

And the Wikipedia article - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Design_patent

Also there is no copyleft without copyright. I agree though the term should be much more limited.

If there was no copyright, you wouldn't need copyleft.

Wrong: Copyleft ensures that the users of a given program can get access to its source code and release modified version of it, and that the users of that modified version have the same rights to access, modify, release it, and so on. Without copyright, there would be no way to enforce this preservation of user rights.

That's a good point; I didn't consider that.

The cost of giving my friend a one in a million chance of living out his Hemingway fantasy of making a fortune by writing a novel by himself while sipping coffee in some Parisian cafes is billions of people with little access to the world's best knowledge.

This is almost as bad as cheating in sports. Truly the world is a foul and desolate wasteland, but full marks to the OP for dredging onward stoically through the mire

You can sue in Pro Per(son) -- essential act as your own lawyer. I know someone who studied the Law so he could sue his former business partners. Most of it was a reverse deep pockets kinda game: "It will cost you $300K in legal fees to defend yourself ... or settle for a fraction of the cost." As a result, I and colleagues ignore this troll. But, there are intriguing implications ...

For example: register the site patent<patent#>.com and use the site to link to the facts. Maybe add the legal definition of "In Pro Person." Thus, when someone does a search on the Patent #, your disclosure site will appear.

Another example: Claim copyright on the expression of the idea. Thus, anyone attempting to express the patent would infringe on the copyright.

Disclaimer: IANAL. I could be off-base here. Get a valid legal opinion to save yourself some grief. And good luck!

No. Absolutely do not act as your own patent lawyer - ever - especially in litigation. It is correctly considered an arcane and difficult field even by other lawyers.

The ability to sue is not the same as suing. Simply the threat of a lawsuit is enough to discourage some transactions. That's the point.

In my case, I used a hybrid approach: I studied the law, drew up a response, and then hired a lawyer at $900/hour (as he was a law professor) to put out a response though his firm. By understanding the basics, I could hypothesize a response, on my own time, and then verify that hypothesis with an expert.

[update]

Actually, I just re-read my above post, and didn't make the point very well. Thanks for pointing that out.

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