[3980] in cryptography@c2.net mail archive
Re: How to put info in the public domain for patent puropses?
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Markus Kuhn)
Fri Jan 15 16:49:30 1999
To: "Arnold G. Reinhold" <reinhold@world.std.com>
Cc: cryptography@c2.net
In-reply-to: Your message of "Thu, 14 Jan 1999 00:07:46 EST."
<v03130304b2c32c19854d@[24.128.119.92]>
Date: Fri, 15 Jan 1999 19:01:22 +0000
From: Markus Kuhn <Markus.Kuhn@cl.cam.ac.uk>
"Arnold G. Reinhold" wrote on 1999-01-14 05:07 UTC:
> If I recall correctly, the US Patent and Trademark Office has said that=
it
> would not consider information placed on the Internet to be published f=
or
> patent purposes. Preparoing papers for journals or conferences is a pai=
n,
> takes months to be published and runs the risk of rejection.
> =
> Is there a low hassle, inexpensive way to place a crypto invention into=
the
> public domain for patent purposes?
The by far most reliable way of putting something into the public domain
for patent purposes is to write it up, file it as a patent application,
pay for the preliminary search such that the patent application becomes
published after 18 months, and then just let expire the deadline for
paying the fee for the final search and examination that would grant you
the actual patent.
This way, you ensure that your patent is fully indexed in all the
databases that patent examiners will use all over the world, you are
guaranteed to get an immediate, proper, legally binding, and published
priority date, and in addition you even get a preliminary search report
that will tell you with some reliability about whether there were any
existing patent applications published prior to yours that covers some
of your claims.
This way does cost a bit, but it has the advantage that as a side effect
you will get through the preliminary search report some certainty about
whether your technique really is still in the public domain and has not
been patented before.
You don't have to hire an expensive patent lawyer and all the other
stuff; the only somewhat annoying aspect is that you have to fulfill a
few formal requirements on how your patent application is structured
(with a claims section, etc.).
Going through these stages costs =A3 155 per application here in the UK,
which is what paying for a search to find out whether your idea is new
would cost at least anyway.
<http://www.patent.gov.uk/dpatents/howprep.html>
Markus
-- =
Markus G. Kuhn, Computer Laboratory, University of Cambridge, UK
Email: mkuhn at acm.org, WWW: <http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~mgk25/>
