Open Metal Detector Project Charter

[scrungy_doolittle]

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.

Davor, once again you nailed it on the head!

Back in 1976 I had two ideas for metal detectors. I called Whites up and spoke to them about the possibility of them using the ideas.
They made the best detectors, and I had an idea. I still believe that they would not have stolen the ideas, but I wound up only discussing one with them
They sent me an NDA. in that NDA it essentially said, we can't tell
you what we are doing, but if it is the same as what you are revealing, then we can go ahead and do it without compensation.

A rough paraphrase.
Translated, we don't know what you have in mind, but if we are doing it already, we can continue to do it. But we won't tell you what we are doing. (leaving the door open for them to simply say
oh yes, we are already working on that idea, when they were not), and taking it and using it.


One idea was to use a micro processor to set discrimination parameters, and a digital meter to show responses. I had that mapped out and designed pretty carefully.
I never shared that idea.

The one I did, and I still think is a valid way of ground balance, was to provide a 3rd very small receiving coil, null balanced along with the main receiving coil, and using the signal from that
as a real time ground signal to remove the ground matrix from the main signal. That is, the theory being that the very small sample area (about an inch across) would almost all of the time, NOT have a target in it, and if it ever did, it would be very fleeting. BUT it would always be affected by the ground, this reading the ground and providing a signal that could be used to remove the ground effect.

I did discuss this with Whites.
I have long forgotten who I talked to, but not his words: "gaussian noise minus gaussian noise is gaussian noise".

Getting around the "not invented here" syndrome is very very very difficult.

[Qiaozhi]

Getting around the "not invented here" syndrome is very very very difficult.

I think we all agree that the lone inventor is caught between a rock and a hard place. Let's assume you've just had a [brilliant] idea, but have no way to commercialise it ... the "not invented here" brigade will ignore it (although sometimes inventors can be blinded to commercial reality, and the disinterested company may have some good reasons for being disinterested), and a patent is next to useless. So, what can you do?

It's probably best not to have any brilliant ideas.

[Tim]

Thanks Q and Davor. These answers set the field for me. It seems the only way to avoid being trampled by the corporates is wield the bloody big stick of open source. As someone who has been extensively and continually targeted by government and corporates alike, I know first-hand the bas tardry of politics and legislation that protects the big boys and squashes the rest. Justice and democracy do not exist in Australia, unless you have money. We here live under the mentality of an extended Penal colony. Penal-capitalism. The elite consider us wards of the state, and will not be satisfied until our rights are fully removed to reflect this. It is all about the criminalisation of society for profit.
The litigious mentality of Penal and Seppo Capitalism has overstepped the mark. The use of litigation in such matters should either not be legal, or be freely available to all. Not reserved for the rich.
In the words of a barrister "Oh, no, the judiciary system doesn't work like that! ". Sorry.

[scrungy_doolittle]

Thanks Q and Davor. These answers set the field for me. It seems the only way to avoid being trampled by the corporates is wield the bloody big stick of open source. As someone who has been extensively and continually targeted by government and corporates alike, I know first-hand the bas tardry of politics and legislation that protects the big boys and squashes the rest. Justice and democracy do not exist in Australia, unless you have money. We here live under the mentality of an extended Penal colony. Penal-capitalism. The elite consider us wards of the state, and will not be satisfied until our rights are fully removed to reflect this. It is all about the criminalisation of society for profit.
The litigious mentality of Penal and Seppo Capitalism has overstepped the mark. The use of litigation in such matters should either not be legal, or be freely available to all. Not reserved for the rich.
In the words of a barrister "Oh, no, the judiciary system doesn't work like that! ". Sorry.

The big bloody stick of open source has worked very well for many things, even commercial items. I love your legal eagle quote "oh no, the judiciary system doesn't work like that." Very true.
You owe your cell phone, and probably your router among other things to the open source community. Linux and Android...My router runs an embedded linux.
The thing with open source, and public domain, is that it protects you from someone squashing you. Sure, you will have competition, but you can still continue to make and produce the item
without violating IP. Even of you have an idea you keep secret, sooner or later, if it is worth anything, someone *will* reverse engineer it. I've done my share of reverse engineering products, and
creating better products based on what I've learned. And more importantly, prior art will forestall patents.

[moodz]

..open source does not necessarily protect you from legal action .... if they are going to sue someone they have to start somewhere .. if they want to make an example of you they could start with you ... it will cost you $5000 just to get a basic legal opinion even if you are innocent.

Best plan is publish "new ideas" under bogus name and use the idea without making big deal of if on forums etc. If it is covered by a patent you dont want to be the one promoting patent infringement by publishing and using the idea. Your only other recourse is publish your own patent. ( not as hard as some make out :-) )

[Davor]

... but largely pointless.

[WM6]

... but largely pointless.

Due its real legal status or due coexisting expenses?

[Davor]

Mostly because of uselessness. If you want your IP protected, you have copyright on your side. But also as you mentioned, legal status of a patent by an individual is shaky at best. Say bugwhiskers - he has a valid patent, properly examined and undisputed, loosely related to the marketing leader's solutions via a common prior art (by George Paltoglou), and yet he got funked over and stolen his property. If only he was a corporation with a strong team of lawyers, he'd funk them back. Well ... he is not.

Financial expenses are not showing the time and effort with preparing a patent application - gathering prior art etc.

So what is it good for? Precisely nothing.

There is a single use of an individual patent I can think of: it is often one of the admission criteria to be hired as a professor at some academia.

Otherwise it is a corporation toy. It is tailored for their needs.