Idea exchanges, collaborative inventing, and prior art

Websites such as shouldexist.org enable users to publish their inventive ideas and collaborate with others to refine and develop their inventions. Users may donate their time and money to the website and to specific projects. Of particular interest is that all discussions and projects are documented, dated, published on-line, and publicly available; this, and any other on-line publication, is considered prior art (MPEP 901.06, 2128 ). While it is unlikely that any patent office, patent attorney, or professional prior art searcher is currently searching this and similar websites, such sites should be searched prior to and during the drafting of any patent application. The public disclosures on sites such as shouldexist.org may also prove valuable in questioning the validity of patents during reexaminations and patent infringement proceedings.

Links: shouldexist.org, halfbakery.com, idea-a-day.com, brightidea.com, creativitypool.com, Idea Banks on dmoz.org, thinkcycle.org, globalideasbank.org.

Posted: 11/3/2005 in:

2 Comments »

  1. These sites are part of our regular search strategy and have helped in more than a few invalidity searches. It would appear these sites would also serve the same purpose as IP.com as a means for a company to disclose information that they may not want to patent but would like to prevent others from patenting as well.

    Comment by Norm — 11/10/2005 @ 12:22 pm

  2. Regarding invention idea banks or exchanges -

    · Do you know of any one web-tool that searches all the idea banks at once? This concept might be similar to esp@cenet® searching multiple country patent databases at once.

    · In addition, do you know of any one web-tool that a person could submit ideas for inventions to multiple idea banks at the same time? This concept might be similar to e-filing one EP or PCT patent application for multiple countries.

    · Lastly, do you know of any one web-tool that alerts others of newly published ideas for inventions for a given topic? This concept might be similar to existing commercial patent alert tools that lets others know of recently published patent applications and grants.

    If these tools exist, would you please give me the link to them? If not, do you know of anyone working to develop these tools? Feel free to pass this note along to others who might be interested. Maybe computer science or patent law students looking for a project? Let me know if I can help on this.

    Thanks!

    Tom G.
    TG Ideas LLC
    Ideas Blog - http://tgideas.blogspot.com/
    Website - www.athenet.net/~ideas
    E-Mail - tgideas@athenet.net

    Comment by Tom G. — 7/14/2006 @ 6:25 am

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