Invention, Intellectual Property, and Income
The eighteenth assignment is to develop a plan for dissemination of your final project.
I am rather certain that my dreidel spinning machine will have no commercial value and I am not concerned about anyone copying my design. I don't even need to be credited with the idea. I actually hope others find value in it and I hope they improve upon the design. I decided to go forward with a design that I knew would have no commercial value and want to distribute it freely. I see a lot of educational value in the project at my school and I think I will have some students that will want to challenge my machine and build a better one. If things go really well, I hope to distribute a revised version of the machine and potentially control all of the machines via the internet and break the world record....from several places around the world...simultaniously. If other schools, teachers, or students are interested, I will share my Fab Lab website with them. They can download the files, see the explanations and pictures and contact me if they need help.
I do have a number of student that want to patent or license their ideas. The information on the lecture and on the lecture notes are very helpful. I plan to share this information with my students so they can make informed decisions about the direction they should pursue with their idea.
If I were interested in a license, I would likely choose Creative Commons CC BY-NC-SA. Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike This lets others tweak, remix, and build upon my work non-commercially as long as they credit me and license their new work under the identical terms.
There may be a time in the future that I would like to patent something that I could commercialize. If I did, I would do my best to fill out an online provisional patent form, but would seek legal advice prior to submitting it.