I used to be on one of the IBM Invention Development Teams and the rules on patents changed a few years ago. Prior to the change, the protection date was date of invention. After the change, it became the patent filling date. If you publish anything about the patent you intend to file, anyone can take your info and file a patent on it then you are screwed. The publish process you describe defines prior art and is to protect the invention against another company inventing it in parallel and applying for a patent. There are many inventions which do not meet the requirements of the cost of the patent but should be protected.
Clear as mud? Jim On Mon, Nov 4, 2019, 11:02 AM Tony Harminc <t...@harminc.net> wrote: > On Sun, 3 Nov 2019 at 20:31, Timothy Sipples <sipp...@sg.ibm.com> wrote: > > > Matt Hogstrom wrote: > > >https://github.com/walmartlabs/zUID > > >Courtesy of Walmart > > > > Tony Harminc wrote: > > >Wouldn't want to bump into that pending patent from Walmart... > > > > Walmart licensed the code they're sharing under the Apache License 2.0: > [...] > > I commend Walmart for doing this. > > Indeed. I wish IBM would do a bit more of it, rather than crowing over > the ever increasing number of patents they hold that are not so > licensed. > > > Without filing for a patent, somebody else (who might be much less > generous) could grab it. > > Well, no. The easier and cheaper thing to do would be to publish the > potentially patentable information as early as possible. This makes > the knowledge available, while forestalling anyone else's attempt to > patent it. IBM used to have an entire print journal for just this > purpose. [IBM, and doubtless others, have also exploited the nifty > trick of publishing in the most obscure (preferably foreign language) > journal that the US patent office will recognize as counting toward > publication. Then when someone else independently invents and tries to > patent, out comes the journal article to shut it down. But that's > another story.] > > Tony H. > > ---------------------------------------------------------------------- > For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, > send email to lists...@listserv.ua.edu with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN > ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to lists...@listserv.ua.edu with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
