Not all, but certainly a large portion of halfbakers seem oblivious to the fact that posting their next great idea here is putting it in the public domain, and forever voiding any future patent claims.
It's a fabulous place, and great if you want to share and have fun with ideas. However, if you DO intend to get greedy with the idea, then this just isn't the place to test it out unless you filed a patent BEFORE posting it here.
Expand the nugget of wisdom above into an appropriate 1/2 hour, or 1/2-day web-based class and sell it to halfbakers.
(At half-price, of course.)-- sophocles, Mar 05 2004 "Protecting Your Ability to Get a Patent: What Counts as a Bar to Patenting?" http://web.mit.edu/...www/patentbars.html“The U.S. patent law system ... allows you to publish your invention ... prior to filing a patent application, provided that you file your patent application within one year of the publication. ... The one year period is known as a “‘grace period.’” [bristolz, Oct 04 2004, last modified Oct 05 2004] 1) I don't think posting an idea, song, or design on this, or any other place relinquishes assignment to the public domain. (However, I would be gitty for years if people would copy any of my ideas :-)
2) Patent prior to post? That would drive up the cost of halfbaking astronomically. It would weed out the riff-raff, but a bunch of other bakers to.
The HB is for "fictional" ideas - as in specualtive engineering. I think most bakers just want to be able to say, at some point in the distant future, "Hey, they're installing custard filled ________, I came up with that idea years ago, here's a hyperlink!"-- 1st2know, Mar 06 2004 As far as I know, patent law in the US allows validity for 12 months after disclosure. Your mileage may vary in other countries.-- bristolz, Mar 06 2004 Quite coincidentally, the halfbakery tagline atop the page when I pulled up this idea was "There's no money in it" which I think speaks well for almost all the ideas posted here. Methinks [sophocles] doth overestimate the collective practical creativity of the 1/2b. But then again there's always the thousand-monkey theory...-- Canuck, Mar 06 2004 This needs an update. We're in a first to file world now, not the old first to invent one.-- popbottle, May 10 2016 Not as soon as there is a case with actual damages rather than just potential damages, at which point the supreme court will have no choice but to overturn this blatant abuse of power to corrupt the constitutions of North America since both the Canadian and US constitutions are worded quite specifically stating that congress does not have the "right" to issue patents to any person who is not "the inventor"... y'know, to prevent the money lenders from being able to steal our grandchildren's very thoughts from them and such...
Oh what a shit storm it's gonna be...
<walks away muttering stuff about greedy sell-out bastards>-- 2 fries shy of a happy meal, May 10 2016 <...and the horses they rode in on.>-- 2 fries shy of a happy meal, May 12 2016 random, halfbakery