Open Metal Detector Project Charter

[WM6]

Interesting things about the "1-year grace period" and other limitations for patent application:

http://www.uspto.gov/web/offices/pac/mpep/s2133.html

***
Conditions for patentability; novelty and loss of right to patent.

A person shall be entitled to a patent unless -


(b) the invention was patented or described in a printed publication in this or a foreign country or in public use or on sale in this country, more than one year prior to the date of application for patent in the United States.

***

Mean, that 1-year (or less old) fresh prior art ideas has no implication to patentability first patent filling.
Something like legal heaven for patent trolls.

[BILLY]

Carl, I call it as I see it. If my asking Woody who claims to have the answer to the best detector
is being too deep I am sorry. I get tired of people saying they have the "best" detector ever made. Then nothing ever happens with it. I guess I am one who does not believe in being politically correct and speak my mind. How many times have you said someones idea will never work? Again I am sorry for speaking the truth.

As far as Woody goes he has said he has the answer. Several years ago he said and even formed a link to post the great results. But that was 5 years ago and nothing else was posted. Left many wondering what happened. Not a peep from Woody about the site.

[Carl-NC]

My preference of copyright is in terms of being a precedence instrument in case of litigation, and in a case you do have a copyrighted idea pre-dating any patent attempt - nothing can stop you from continuing production. It is true that when an idea flies in the public, even though it is automatically copyrighted, there is no stopping its further development and you can't sue anyone but the blatant copiers. But you are free to do with it whatever you want.
Provided of course it is originally yours.

Gotcha. You are correct.

[Carl-NC]

Carl, I call it as I see it. If my asking Woody who claims to have the answer to the best detector
is being too deep I am sorry. I get tired of people saying they have the "best" detector ever made. Then nothing ever happens with it. I guess I am one who does not believe in being politically correct and speak my mind. How many times have you said someones idea will never work? Again I am sorry for speaking the truth.

As far as Woody goes he has said he has the answer. Several years ago he said and even formed a link to post the great results. But that was 5 years ago and nothing else was posted. Left many wondering what happened. Not a peep from Woody about the site.

You seem to have problems for what people have said elsewhere; you should go elsewhere to file your grievances with them, not here. And if you're tired of what people are saying, then stop reading what they post. Folks are free to share what they want to share, and if they decide not to follow through on prior claims then that's their decision; incessant badgering is uncalled for.

[Orbit]

You seem to have problems for what people have said elsewhere; you should go elsewhere to file your grievances with them, not here. And if you're tired of what people are saying, then stop reading what they post. Folks are free to share what they want to share, and if they decide not to follow through on prior claims then that's their decision; incessant badgering is uncalled for.

Absolutely support this !

[scrungy_doolittle]

Yes. You are supposed to list all prior art, and it

It being the patent, not the prior art.

can't include the exact idea that was already posted by someone else, as it is supposed to describe some original idea. Some people fail to list all prior art, and risk losing their patent - regardless of being granted.
When contemplating a patent, you must realise that it is only good as a litigation tool. If ever it comes to defend your right to produce whatever it is you do, and you do it based on your copyrighted material, there is no patent in the world, except maybe in Australia, that will ever win over your pre-dating solution.
If you still have any doubts, just visit https://www.patexia.com/ and see what sort of research they do
If anyone finds a source that describes a patent and pre-dates its precedence date, such patent is kaputt, out of order, not working, broken, good for nothing, defunct, and also finished off.

The only function of a patent nowadays is that it easily impresses simple people.

Patents are easy to break, and only give you the right to sue someone. Therefore for many ideas, they are a waste of time and money. I have to agree with Don Lancaster, who says to tuck ideas away in
the public domain, where they can be used by anyone, including you.

[Qiaozhi]

Patents are easy to break, and only give you the right to sue someone. Therefore for many ideas, they are a waste of time and money. I have to agree with Don Lancaster, who says to tuck ideas away in
the public domain, where they can be used by anyone, including you.

There are other things to consider, such as relief on corporation tax if your product is patented -> https://www.gov.uk/guidance/corporat...the-patent-box
Although this will be going away sometime next year in its present form, and the new model will link tax breaks to the location where the R&D is carried out. This is to stop 'creative accounting' by some large companies.

Patents can also increase the value of your company, especially if another company wants to buy you.

It depends what you need the patent for. If you just want it as protection for your IP, then you probably need to think hard before spending the money.

[Davor]

... provided you are a company or a corporation.
But not an individual inventor.

[Tim]

This all sounds like corporate spiel to me. Not an open metal detector project. 14 pages and not one idea presented. Only the fear and paranoia of a Cold War, big brother retribution. 14 pages of corporate propaganda to scare the bejeesus out of anyone who dares to try. The fear of litigation should not exist. It is a machination of capitalist dictatorship. Many here seem to defend the stance of the big boys whilst, and by, discouraging the individuals from disclosure of original and copied circuits.
My IB project is up and running, but the board need mods to neaten it up. I am still considering whether I will post it for 2 reasons. Firstly, if it's as good as I think it is, it will be one of the above nay-sayers who will pick it up for their company, and secondly, despite scouring this site there is very little mention or interest in anything but PI.
I am sure the moderators are repeatedly asked to compile a list of the circuits here, but for their vested reasons, don't.

[detectormods]

A good design could make you a small fortune, it could be the start of becoming the next White, Garratt or Minelab. Just give away your I.P, i am sure most people would rather have an average job with average salary. Go on, give it all away for free. I know one person who found Gold in the form of information on Geotech and uses this as the basis of a product they sell to detector market. I think they net $200,000 a year from it. So yes give it all away.

[Tim]

Sorry mate, I can't tell if you're opinion is positive or facetious, for, or against sharing. Did the $200,000 a year man glean ideas from here, or steal some battlers invention?

[detectormods]

Depends on what hat you are wearing, i have seen many designs taken, changed slightly and then become a commercial product. The Chinese are experts at it. Either its a good thing or a bad thing depending on your own objectives.

[greylourie]

So how do we protect hobbyists from legal threat ?

The concept is to encourage learning and offer hobbyists an umbrella. Can't this be a two way street, with benefit to all ? The majority of examples/projects on this forum derive from old but none the less commercial designs that in their time were cutting edge.

If hobbyists embellish or improve on a technology in some way, shouldn't it be allowed ? After all, manufacturers do that all the time.

[Davor]

A whole difference is - are you going to production or not? Turkish and Bulgarian small scale manufacturers do it. They start with a design, make a detector, and then make some more. If you are not up to making a line of detectors yourself, safest way of ensuring you'll be able to do so when you change your mind is to put it all to public domain, or alternatively keep it entirely to yourself.
Public domain is a place everyone may grab what is needed, but it will not work for you if you are not in a sharing mood.

Keeping it to yourself makes sense if you have in mind some solution that is entirely different from the current state of art. There is no patent in the world that will prevent such an idea to mysteriously pop here and there in forms that are not violating your precious patent. If you are serious about it - start your own production before others. Idea that is already in production is as good as patented - it is not patentable by others.

All technology at the market right now is more or less known among the members of this forum. There are no surprises, only incremental improvements. There is no significant improvement in neither depth nor discrimination, but patents flow of big manufacturers seem uninterrupted. One person alone can't match that pace.

The only way to win a rigged game... is to not play it.

Eric Foster until only recently did not have any patents. Instead he was first to market, and he was good at it. As an individual inventor that's about maximum one may hope for.

[scrungy_doolittle]

There are other things to consider, such as relief on corporation tax if your product is patented -> https://www.gov.uk/guidance/corporat...the-patent-box
Although this will be going away sometime next year in its present form, and the new model will link tax breaks to the location where the R&D is carried out. This is to stop 'creative accounting' by some large companies.

Patents can also increase the value of your company, especially if another company wants to buy you.

It depends what you need the patent for. If you just want it as protection for your IP, then you probably need to think hard before spending the money.

In the US there are no tax breaks. Perhaps one can depreciate the patent over it's 17 year lifetime. My boss, who is an older ex Texas Instrument VP, says that they are more a marketing gimmick than anything. Once you have successfully gotten one here in the US, then you have "maintainance" fees. I think there are 3 or 4 spaced across the life of the patent. Fail to make those payments, and you
lose the patent. For a large company with deep pockets, patents can be useful. But for a small guy... Let me share a real true to life experience.
My first job out of college was working for a man named Stephen Toussaint in Mishawaka Indianna. He had managed to patent what amounted to the binary search. His patent was for a system that
identified a location based on a unique signature. His laymans description: Assume that you have 10 friends with flashlights in a dark field at night. you holler out to them, where are you. Everyone turns on his flashlight. What do you know? Only the locations, However, if each person blinked his light according to a pattern, then you had "signature coded target recognition". The application was to video. Back in 1980, graphics was fairly primitive on home computers. My job was to implement this on a TRS-80. What I did was use the push and pop instructions (the fastest load and store into memory). I made a copy of the entire screen (1024 locations), then painted the upper half of the screen with * astericks, and the lower half black. A light sensitive diode which was embedded in a pen and connected to the processor, was then read. The status of the wire depended on whether or not the led was sitting on light. So I would determine if there was light or not. Then I would restore the half of the screen that was opposite to that. so If I saw light, I would restore the black half back to what it was. Then I repeated the process with the half where the pen was pointing. Again painted it half black and half white. Each time I read the scan, a bit was set or cleared in a register. This proceeded until there was no more to do. At this point, the register contained the BINARY NUMBER of the particular character spot in the display that the pen was pointing to. It took 7 frame refreshes, so I could get about 8 locations a second.
What does this have to do with anything?
Well Mattel came out with what they called VEIL (which allowed a game to interact with a TV. Essentially they would paint targets on the tv screen and then change the color or erase them on various frames. The result is that the target would emit a signature in the form of flashes that the photocell gun could pick up. An absolute and direct violation of this patent. They totally ignored Steves letters to cease and desist, his attorneys letters etc. They knew 1. They had DEEP pockets. 2. This was a single individual and that he had no deep pockets.
so they were free to violate the patent, because they knew he could NOT enforce it.
This patent was worthless, did not add any value to his company. He had another patent that saw limited commercial production, but was quickly outdated.

So patents are an individual inventor's losing game. A large company sledge hammer. So if you have an original Idea, getting some company to accept it and pay you for it is rare. The safest thing to do is to place it into the public domain (yes give it away) . Why? Because you can then use it, and no one can take it away.

The open source and copyleft have proven this to be a highly sucessful strategy.