The Curse of The-So-Called PATENT

[LVUER]

Even if that US dude had patented your silver-working process, the patent would only last like 15-20 years (not like 100 years like in copyrights).

Wow, copyright last for 100 years? Can we pass the copyright to our children/grandchildren? Talking about passive income ^_^

I know patent only last for 20 years, but it still quite a long time. Eh, I think secret military technology must be disclosed to public after 20 years. Is this has the connection to patent?

Patents aren't like copyrights - copyrights cost nothing to get or maintain, and they last for a freaking lifetime or two. Patents cost thousands and thousands of dollars, and they only last a couple years.

Copyright is free? But should we register or do something to have a"strong" protection of our products OR do they created automatically (so we just do nothing)? Like if we create a VN or self-published manga, what should we do to start selling them without worry someone will steal our idea/products? (it's going farther and farther away from the topic, sorry ^_^ )

Hell, i've let at least half a dozen expire just cause i didn't want to have to pay thousands of dollars a year every year just to keep the fucking patent alive... and the amount you have to pay each year gets higher and higher every year! Screw that.

Eh? What kind that you let expired? Isn't that a waste? Since you could make lots of money from that...

[Aenakume]

Wow, copyright last for 100 years? Can we pass the copyright to our children/grandchildren? Talking about passive income ^_^

Ho ya! Copyright in the US is like life of the author + 70, or 90 years if the "author" is a corporation (that's off the top of my head, so look it up before takin my word, ya?). So if you publish a VN today at 20 years old, then live to be 80, your VN will become public domain in the US in 2138. Course, it will be less for other countries.

You can pass on the copyright to whoever you want. Like i passed on the copyright to the path motion to code to Py'Tom a little while ago - it's his now to do as he pleases, so if he wants to tell me i can't use the code i couldn't. (Course, i could just write a new one ^_^; so i don't know what the point would be.) When you die your copyrights are part of your estate, so they go to whoever you give them to in your will, or whoever gets your shit by default if you don't make a will.

I know patent only last for 20 years, but it still quite a long time. Eh, I think secret military technology must be disclosed to public after 20 years. Is this has the connection to patent?

20 years is not so long, really. It lets you cash in like a mofo if you really do have an idea that is technologically ahead of the curve, and then lets the entire world benefit a couple decades later.

Military stuff is a special case. Patents aren't secret - when you file a patent for your top-secret, state-of-the-art process, it becomes public knowledge a year or so later. You wanna know the secret processes of Intel for makin chips? Check the patent files - it's all there, if they filed any patents on it. If you want to keep your process secret, don't patent it... the risk is that if anyone else figures out your secret, they might patent it and then you'd have to pay them. If you wanted to keep some milspec process secret, the company would be retarded to file a patent on it.

Patents aren't like copyrights - copyrights cost nothing to get or maintain, and they last for a freaking lifetime or two. Patents cost thousands and thousands of dollars, and they only last a couple years.

Copyright is free? But should we register or do something to have a"strong" protection of our products OR do they created automatically (so we just do nothing)? Like if we create a VN or self-published manga, what should we do to start selling them without worry someone will steal our idea/products? (it's going farther and farther away from the topic, sorry ^_^ )

Well, i think copyright stuff is good for publishers to know - and most people here are (or will be, hopefully) publishers of games or VNs. So i wouldn't say it's off topic.

Copyright is 100% free and automatic in every country that signed the Berne treaty (which is a shitload of countries, damn near all). You don't need to do anything. You don't need to register. You don't need to put "© 2008 LVUER. All rights reserved." You don't even need to publish. The moment you put your idea in a concrete form of some kind - like on paper, or on a computer disk - it's protected by copyright law.

So, to answer your last question... just start selling it. As soon as you publish the VN or manga, you're protected (technically, you're protected as soon as you make the VN or manga). Anyone that steals your work is guilty of copyright infringement.

But! There's a catch. ^_^;

The US is a little backward when it comes to copyright. In the US you do have to register your copyright if you want to be able to sue for the most amount of money possible. You can still sue without registering... but you won't get as much. You still have every other right, and your copyright is still 100% strong (in every Berne country). That's the only thing you need to register your copyright for: to get more money when you sue.

(It may also help your claim that you published first... but in reality, not really. If you publish online and announce widely enough, it's not hard to pin down to the minute when you first released.)

So, here's the rundown:

• Copyright is free - you don't have to pay a cent.
• Copyright is automatic - you don't have to do anything except make the thing, and it's copyrighted.
• Copyright is yours for your whole life, unless you give (or sell) it away. (You can give or sell the whole copyright away, or you can give or sell bits of it away, and only for certain periods.)
• You have full and complete rights to control all distribution and publication of your work automatically, except for fair use cases and any rights you have given away.
• Copyright registration is unnecessary (unless you want to be able to sue for the most money possible).

Different countries have different laws, tho - but all Berne countries have certain minimums that are good enough i think. Like the US has that thing about registering to be able to sue for more... which is nice but even without that you still get the automatic right to sue.

Hell, i've let at least half a dozen expire just cause i didn't want to have to pay thousands of dollars a year every year just to keep the fucking patent alive... and the amount you have to pay each year gets higher and higher every year! Screw that.

Eh? What kind that you let expired? Isn't that a waste? Since you could make lots of money from that...

Eh, i'm makin enough. My field is so specialized that i don't have a lot of competition, and anyway technology changes so fast that there's no point to holding on to patents for twenty years. It's just wasted money. After five years, there's no point anymore - if someone wants to steal the idea, they're stealing five year old technology.

[Jake]

• Copyright is yours for your whole life, unless you give (or sell) it away. (You can give or sell the whole copyright away, or you can give or sell bits of it away, and only for certain periods.)

Bear in mind also that this isn't the case in all Berne countries. For example, IIRC - Germany has the concept of 'Moral Rights' which the creator cannot give away. So (as I understand it) if you're a German and you create something, you can give someone a perpetual exclusive license to publish your content or derivative works of your content, for example, but if they decided they wanted to use your content to promote a cause you disagreed with, you'd have the moral right to refuse that use.

[herenvardo]

Note that I'm not a lawyer and, while this comment is based on some legal advice I gathered a while ago, it shouldn't be treated as legal advice itself, since I might be missing some important point.

Copyright is free and automatic and all that, but you need to somehow prove your publication before you can enforce it. The most obvious way to ensure you'll have a proof of your work's publication if you ever need them is to register it at your country's official copyrigth offices (whatever they are called; it varies from country to country): this often has a cost, but is normally cheaper than patents and trademarks.

Patents are immediatelly invalidated in most countries if it is proven (in courts) that the patented concept was not already in use before filing the patent. Which means can be used to proof such a fact, and how much can it cost to proof it in courts, heavily varies from country to country.

Patents cover ideas or inventions (which may be used in certain works, but the patent covers the idea rather than the work). Copyright cover specific works (they might be based on an idea or invention, but the copyright covers just the work, not the idea on which it is based). Here comes the interesting part: copyright registry entries can be used as a low-cost shield against unfair patents. The idea would follow these steps:

1. Write a description of the idea or invention you want to shield against patents.
2. Register the copyrigth of that written description. The registration by itself only protects description, not the idea being described, but it attaches a date to such description.
3. Use your idea normally. Anyone else can use that idea as well. If somebody files a patent about it, simply ignore it: it's already invalid, but you shouldn't bother about prooving that unless you need to
4. If somebody sues you for patent infringement, defend yourself with your copyrighted description: it is a blatant proof that the idea existed before it was patented, and as such is should be enough to invalidate the patent.

This method can work (may depend on the exact wording of copyrigth and patent laws of each country, so you still need to get case-specific legal advice before you rely on it) to ensure that your idea will remain publicly usable and non-patentable; but it will not work as a patent: you cannot use this to prevent others from using the idea.
AFAIK, this should work at least in Spain and Ireland, and probably in all EU countries, but again, I'm not a lawyer, so don't take this as legal advice.

[Aenakume]

Patents cover ideas or inventions (which may be used in certain works, but the patent covers the idea rather than the work). Copyright cover specific works (they might be based on an idea or invention, but the copyright covers just the work, not the idea on which it is based). Here comes the interesting part: copyright registry entries can be used as a low-cost shield against unfair patents. The idea would follow these steps:

1. Write a description of the idea or invention you want to shield against patents.
2. Register the copyrigth of that written description. The registration by itself only protects description, not the idea being described, but it attaches a date to such description.
3. Use your idea normally. Anyone else can use that idea as well. If somebody files a patent about it, simply ignore it: it's already invalid, but you shouldn't bother about prooving that unless you need to
4. If somebody sues you for patent infringement, defend yourself with your copyrighted description: it is a blatant proof that the idea existed before it was patented, and as such is should be enough to invalidate the patent.

This method can work (may depend on the exact wording of copyrigth and patent laws of each country, so you still need to get case-specific legal advice before you rely on it) to ensure that your idea will remain publicly usable and non-patentable; but it will not work as a patent: you cannot use this to prevent others from using the idea.
AFAIK, this should work at least in Spain and Ireland, and probably in all EU countries, but again, I'm not a lawyer, so don't take this as legal advice.

Ah, no that won't work. >_<

Patent laws vary from country to country, but one thing that came up when i was talkin with the patent lawyer was that the patent could be upheld even if i wasn't the first person to know or use the technique. i could - theoretically - patent your idea and get away with it, even if you could prove you had the idea first, and were using it.

Patents are invalid if the idea is common knowledge - like an average person in the field would know the idea - not just prior knowledge. In the case of the silver-working thing, if it really is a technique that is traditionally used and all the silver-workers in the country know it, that's common knowledge. If it's common knowledge in the original country but not in the US, then the patent might be valid in the US (but i seriously doubt it), but it would be no good in the original country.

i guess if your idea spreads like wildfire and it becomes common knowledge in the field before any patents get filed, you should be fine. But you're takin a risk.

[Neon Lemmy Koopa]

patents are basically legal weapons. You have an idea, make it, then patent it. Someone takes it, sue the living hell outta them.

My dad works for HP. Therefore he works with Microsoft. For a long time he had given them the idea and code to implement some special sleep feature in Windows. Im talkin years here. Finally they use his idea with the release of Vista. Now he always complains that he didnt patent that idea.

Point is, patents protect your ideas. If one doesnt patent their idea, it is likely to be thought of or even stolen somewhere else.

[herenvardo]

My dad works for HP. Therefore he works with Microsoft. For a long time he had given them the idea and code to implement some special sleep feature in Windows. Im talkin years here. Finally they use his idea with the release of Vista. Now he always complains that he didnt patent that idea.

That couldn't have happened in the EU: regardless of who patents that code; anyone in Europe could use the idea (implementing it with their own code, however, since the original code is copyrighted) without caring at all about the patent: under EU law, software is not patentable, and software patents (registered outside of the EU, of course) are not enforceable in EU countries.
In addition, the last time I checked, USA courts had not yet settled about the validity of software patents: there haven't been too many patent-related sues (specially, big companies most often sue about copyright and trademarks, but not patents), and I don't know yet of any case of a software patent lawsuit that has been settled by a court (there might be, and often are, many strategic lawsuits that are settled by an agreement between the parties rather than by a court decision).
To put a more specific example, Microsoft representatives have sometimes stated that Linux was violating more than 200 patents from Microsoft. But they have never sued the FSF nor the GNU project nor any particular GNU/Linux contributor about that, despite they'd be really interested in doing so: Linux (thanks to Apache) is already slightly ahead of Windows on the server market; and it's continuously gaining foothold in the domestic market. Adding OpenOffice.org to the mix, Microsoft's main income sources are seriously threatened by free software in the mid term; but despite they claim they have those 200+ patent violations, they don't use them to defend their interests. This might only mean that that claim is a lie, or that MS is unable to enforce such patents, or (completely absurd) that they want to lose market-share and money with no good reason.

Anyway, outside of the software sector, patents are still an issue that needs to be kept in mind.