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Problem statement:

I see innumerous patents being filled with vague and generalized descriptions, with most of them never coming to fruition. Humanity as a community suffers because of these patent lockers, who hold onto human advancement for years for meeting their own individual needs.

Expected solution:

Is there a way (preferably free) by which people can contribute their idea to the public domain? If enough people can log their ideas under the public domain, then everyone can benefit from it.

The patent trolls can think of about a hundred ideas. But if thousands of brains contribute their hundreds of ideas in the public domain, then humanity can greatly benefit from it. The goal is to put every idea that the human brain can think of into the public domain. If a corporation wants to make a profit they can, as it's royalty free and everyone can pick it up and make better products out of that idea.

Peter Mortensen
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Anurag Vohra
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    This would probably be bad. Ideas can't be patented themselves, but this website would inform trolls in which areas they could profitably file patents that do implement such ideas. As MadHatter also notes, a good defensive publication requires something more substantial than just an idea. – MSalters Apr 11 '22 at 09:38
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    https://www.priorartarchive.org/ seems something like this. I think I've heard of another but cannot find it right now. – ecm Apr 11 '22 at 12:47
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    https://www.tdcommons.org/ seems similar too. – ecm Apr 11 '22 at 13:39
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    https://priorart.ip.com/ also relevant – ecm Apr 11 '22 at 15:08
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    A great example of a patent fiasco is modern North American circuit breakers. Most breakers use a common shape and they will cross-fit competitor panels. However the electrical contact shape was subject to patent squabbling, so each is different enough that they make poor contact when crossed. The result is the public misconception that they are compatible, and millions of panels with alien breakers at risk for contact burn-ups. There's not some rich treasure there; these sophisticated 2-mode breakers are like $5. – Harper - Reinstate Monica Apr 12 '22 at 21:52
  • @ecm tdcomons seems most relatable. Can you please make it as answer so I can accpetit as the one I am looking for. – Anurag Vohra Apr 20 '22 at 02:53

1 Answers1

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The mere act of publication of an invention serves to put it into the public domain for patent purposes, thus rendering it unpatentable. The body of pre-existing ideas that might help thus invalidate a patent is known as prior art, and the idea of publishing your own invention in order to prevent other entities patenting them is known as defensive publication.

If you've had a patentable idea, and embedded it in a software implementation, the act of freely publishing your software will serve as defensive publication, particularly against later software implementations. It certainly helps if you use one of the large, centralised repositories for software development, because it eases the task of people doing large, automated prior art searches, and because you get third-party-verifiable timestamps on everything, but the important thing is to publish. The FSF maintains a list of the "freeness" of various contenders, which can be found here.

And although your concept is laudable, remember that ideas are not generally patentable, only their implementations. That's another reason that having a piece of free software embodying your novel idea is an important step towards freeing up that idea for the general benefit of humanity.

MadHatter
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    "Public domain" has two meanings: 1. Everyone can know about it (public knowledge). 2. Everyone is allowed to copy it (free of copyright restrictions). Open Source software is in the public domain according to the first meaning, but not the second meaning. – gnasher729 Apr 11 '22 at 08:30
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    I submit it only has one meaning, but you're right to draw a distinction between "being in the public domain for copyright purposes" and "being in the public domain for patent purposes". Thank you for that! – MadHatter Apr 11 '22 at 08:39
  • @gnasher729: I agree with MadHatter. There's one definition, but multiple consequences. "Everyone can know about it" is not one of them, though. Say I own the only copy of a medieval work, then I do not have a legal obligation to provide access to it. Everyone who has access could copy it, yes, but that presumes access. – MSalters Apr 11 '22 at 09:32
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    The FSF list is barely relevant from an Open Source perspective (seriously, it's 2022, and they still complain about Javascript?), and even less for this purpose. For the purpose of defensive publication, GitHub scores top marks. It's well-known and will hold up in court. Gnu's "Savannah"? It's the first time I've heard about it. – MSalters Apr 11 '22 at 09:43
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    @MSalters you're entitled to your opinion, but the FSF is entitled to theirs also, and as for contemporary relevance that list was last updated less than two months ago (19/2/22). Unhappiness with license-opaque, minified JS isn't limited to the FSF, nor do I think it misplaced. If you haven't heard of Savannah I can only assume you've not tried to download the authoritative source of any GNU package recently, because savannah.gnu.org is where they've all lived for some time. – MadHatter Apr 11 '22 at 10:02
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    "And although your concept is laudable, remember that ideas are not generally patentable," if it only was like that. But it is not, for reasons probably best explained in the documentary "The Patent Scam". However the purpose of sites like tdcommons.org is to pre-empt the patenting of overtly broad ideas and is one example of what was asked for. – alec Apr 12 '22 at 04:25
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    @alec What about making this into an actual answer (and summarizing the key points of the mentioned documentary and of the strategy of the site that you link to? – Zimm i48 Apr 12 '22 at 09:11
  • There are some things in the FSF's "ethical repository criteria" which seem unrelated to ethics (as I see it), e.g. they expect any essential Javascript code on the website to be "labeled properly for LibreJS to recognize as free", which seems to suggest they would consider it unethical for a site to serve Javascript without metadata that their own browser add-on recognises, even if the Javascript is FOSS; and they require that the site "encourages GPL 3-or-later licensing at least as much as any other kind of licensing" as if promoting e.g. MIT or Apache licenses over GPL 3+ is unethical. – kaya3 Apr 13 '22 at 00:12
  • @kaya3 both those FSF positions seem perfectly reasonable to me, though there are items in there that I also disagree with. But the FSF's positions have been inspiring fervid debates for decades, and this is not the place to relitigate any of them. I think the most important thing is that the list of criteria, and how each candidate fared against them, are all public, so you can decide for yourself how much weight you personally will be placing on the FSF's opinion. I don't think anyone can be fairer than that. – MadHatter Apr 13 '22 at 06:27
  • @MadHatter It's certainly reasonable for the FSF to prefer that people write code that is compatible with their own browser plugin, or prefer that people promote their own license rather than a different one. What seems unreasonable to me is the implication that it is unethical for other people not to meet those criteria (let alone the idea that it is unethical to say "open source" instead of or in addition to "free software"). Yes, I know their criteria are public and we can judge for ourselves whether we think they are good criteria; the reason I commented is because I think ... – kaya3 Apr 13 '22 at 11:41
  • ... that people who don't read the fine print may be misled by the title "ethical repositories". (I recognise the irony in my comment being finer print.) – kaya3 Apr 13 '22 at 11:47
  • @kaya3 I understand you don't completely agree with the FSF's positions, but I repeat, this is not the place to relitigate them. Please don't continue this discussion here. – MadHatter Apr 13 '22 at 13:00