Papers, Patents, Trade secrets and Copyrights: A geeks look at IP Protection.

What is an IP?

Come on, you are a geek genius! you certainly awed your moronic colleagues today with a brilliant display of your intelligence... You did! there, you just used your intelligence so now you have some intellectual property. Lets get down to the business of protecting it....

What are the IP protection mechanism?

Which protection mechanism should you use? well lets figure it out...

Let

• X be the problem to be solved
• Y be the solution to the problem
• I be the inventor who solved X
• T be the time taken to solve X by Inventor I.
• P be the process used by I to solve X to get Y in time T.

• C be a person form you domain with the same skill set as you having knowledge of all publications and patents filed in your domain till date.
• P' be the process used by C to solve X
• T' be the time taken by C to solve X
  

Depending on the values of X, Y, P, P', T and T'  we may use one of the following IP protection methodology

1. Trade Secret
2. Patents
3. Papers
4. Copyrights
   

Trade secrets

Given X and Y if the time T' taken to arrive at  P' is very high (approx >20 years) The IP protection methodology applied is called Trade secret. This protection methodology is valid only as long as the collective lips of all people having access to this IP is sealed.

Patents

If  X and Y are necessary conditions to  identify P  then the IP protection methodology applied is called patents. The process P or the solution Y are termed innovation. This methodology legally binds and prevents another entity from using P, P' or any other process to arrive at Y. Technically this methodology cannot be used if given only X, C can still deduce Y and P, and the time T and T' are negligible. or P and P' are well known processes to solve a class of problems of which X is a subset.
Each country has a different set of rules and procedures for filing a patent. Check with your patent attorney for your country specific rule. Indian patent law will be different form US Patent law Or European patent laws

As an engineer most of your patents will be utility patents (New and useful process, machine, manufacture, or composition of matter). 

But if you spent most of your time on adding frilly laces and bells to your product box or debating on whether you should use RED10 or RED11 as the color for your alert box, then its time to look at filing a Design Patent (New ornamental design for an article of manufacture). I would also ask you to hand in your geek club membership card to the nearest geek poisoning him selves with caffeine.

And if that unwashed coffee mug of yours starts sprouting a new unknown lifeform its time to file for a plant patent (New variety of plants, including spores, mutants, hybrids, or seedling).

Beware filing a patent requires you to interact with your legal counsel,pattent attorney or company lawyer

Paper

IP ownership protection mechanism of paper publishing is used in the following cases
Either P, T, Y or their comparison with P',T' are of academic interest AND

•  IP is already protected using Patents OR
• IP cannot be protected using Patents or trade secret methodology.

How does this benefit me?

• Patents and publications are used as a measure of technical merit.
• Your company can use your patents to crush smaller players and bargain with the large players in order to escape paying royalty for their patents.
  
• After the project is finished your supervisor may forget the work done by you, but he will surely have a reference of the Publication and Patents under your belt.
• Most companies pay a token amount for each patent or publication.
• Claims of published IP (patents and papers) look good on your resume.

Process of IP protection

The first step is to consult the IP cell of your department. This cell determines which form of protection should be applied to your Idea. Note: Normally you need to go through this cell even for publishing any technical material that will be available in public domain.
If the IP cell determines that the work done by you qualifies to  be released in public domain as either a patent or a paper.

So whats the guideline for IP protection?

1. If its really good and cannot be easily reverse engineered Make it a trade secret, ELSE
   
2. If its is something new in your field write a paper and maybe file a patent.
3. If your sure no respectable journal will publish your paper then what the heck file a patent.
   

Bookmark to:
                 

Comments and discussion

Patents for Geeks

tags patents copyright

Papers, Patents, Trade secrets and Copyrights What to file? and when to file? : A geeks look at IP Protection.

Read the full story Comments(2) Add Comment

-- 2006-09-21 10:06:04

Subject
Comment
Name

We need an article on how to file silly patents

Submit as many silly patents as possible let the patent system collapse under its own silly burden --Omkar 2006-09-21 11:36:52Reply

how "silly" Patents saved America

Quoting from http://www.againstmonopoly.org/index.php?perm=886089000000000521
The history of the semiconductor industry exemplifies this trend toward changing the legal structure to aid firms in gaining a competitive advantage from intellectual property rights rather than from developing an edge in productive capabilities. As late as 1981, Roger S. Borovoy, vice-president and chief counsel for Intel Corporation, declared, "In the electronics industry, patents are of no value whatsoever in spurring research and development" (Anon. 1981). A recent study published by the Philadelphia branch of the Federal Reserve System describes the dramatic transition that came soon after Mr. Borovoy's evaluation of the importance of the patent system to his industry: Within the U.S. semiconductor industry, reverse-engineering was a well-established practice. But by the late 1970s, American firms objected to similar behavior by Japanese firms when they began to increase their market share in the more standardized products, such as computer memory chips. The level of competition eventually became so intense that, by the mid 1980s, most American companies abandoned these segments entirely. When it became clear they could no longer dominate Japanese firms on the basis of production technology alone, American firms attempted to consolidate their comparative advantage in research and development. To do this, they would have to find ways of reducing their competitors' ability to reverse-engineer their products. To that end, American companies began to lobby Congress to increase intellectual property protection for their semiconductor designs. In 1984, Congress created a new form of intellectual property right, called mask rights, especially tailored to address the needs articulated by the industry. [Hunt 1999, pp. 19-20] During this period, both Texas Instruments and National Semiconductor were both tottering on the verge of bankruptcy. Irving Rappaport, former vice-president and associate general counsel for intellectual property at National Semiconductor recalled: 'I'm not exaggerating when I tell you that National Semiconductor was only weeks away from bankruptcy in late 1990 .... All the papers had been signed before it was decided to continue the business and give licensing a more aggressive push. And without a doubt, patent fees bought us valuable time in which to complete our restructuring process. For a while there, in fact, three-quarters of our revenues came from patent licenses." [Rivette and Kline 2000, pp. 125-26] Texas Instruments struck first. Typically license fees ran about 1 percent of revenues. In 1987, Texas Instruments raised its royalties on chips to 5 percent (Dwyer et al 1989, p. 79). The company filed a suit against one Korean and eight Japanese semiconductor companies, accusing them of infringing semiconductor patents. The settlements yielded the company more than $600 million in payments, according to a 1990 report. The company became so aggressive in seeking royalties that by 1992 it earned $391 million in royalties, compared to an operating income of only $274 million (Warshofsky 1994, p. 111). In effect, these companies are beginning to transform the semiconductor industry from a manufacturing industry to a service industry, just as the postindustrial utopians would have them do it. According to one industry insider, James Koford of LSI Logic, "Silicon Valley and Route 128 are worlds of intellectual property, not capital equipment and production. Most of the employees of U.S. high technology live in southeast Asia" (cited in Kenney and Florida 1990, p. 237). --Leon 2006-09-24 12:47:46Reply