The goal of this assignment is to develop a plan for dissemination of our final project. We should also look at possible licensing models to share our work.
Patents grants the owner/inventor a set of rights on ownership for a limited amount of time in exchange for public disclosure of details about the invention.
There are two types of patents
1. Utility Patents : A patent on some feature or functionality.
2. Design Patent : A patent on some design of a product.
Generally it is better to have a utility patent than a design patent.
In order for the patent to be accepted, it has to be teaching. It has to teach the person reading it the art and science involved. So if I'm going to take a patent on a new method to unlock doors, In my patent application I have to explain the procedure very clearly so that the examiner can read and understand my method.
This can be a problem since you have to disclose your idea to the public, and if your idea is easily replicable, then more copycats will follow.
A patent has two parts
1. Specification : This is where you tell the story and explain in detail about your craft.
2. Claim : This is a more specified section, where you claim what your patent covers. You have to be very careful in writing this section. If a claim is too general then the application will be rejected, and if a claim is too narrow, then it will not be useful. If a claim is unrelated, then the examiner will make you separate them.
Once a patent is filed then it will be verified by the examiner, what they are looking for is. Is your idea Novel and non-obvious? Is it useful? Is is possible? Yes, the examiner will check if your idea is possible or not, but unfortunately the examiners are not the brightest scientists we have so sometimes some patents which are physically impossible do pass under the radar.
Next is one of the important and less understood part of the patent. Will a patent protect you?
A patent doesn't protect you, all it gives is access to the court systems to litigate. You cannot stop anyone from infringing on your patent, you can only litigate if you find an infringement, like Neil said "The world is filled with bitter Small Inventors."
Let me drive this point further, if you have an idea and you patent it, it dosen't mean you can stop other people from copying your idea. All Your patent gives you is access to the court systems to litigate. You can take some one to court if you find that they are infringing on your patent, but this is long and messy and takes a lot of money.
So what is a patent useful for?
For a patent to have any use
1. You must be able to identify when someone is infringing on your patent.
2. There must be some barrier to infringement to make it worth doing. If your idea is easily replicable, then its no use taking a patent on it.
So unless you know when someone is infringing on your patent and infringement is not easy, then your patent won't protect you.
Copyrights are given for creative works. You can protect the engineering not for the design itself as a creative work, but for the design files themselves as a creative work. Intel copyrights the masks it uses to make its ICs.
Copyrights are secured for creation, you don't need to file for a copyright.Copyrights have commercial value in licensing your work. Putting a copyright on your work will determine how people can use it and how you can benefit from it.
Some of the common licenses
Creative commons was formulated primarily for sharing creative contents by creators legally. It states clearly whats all rights are reserved by the content creator and how the end user can use their work. The main point of this license is the 'commons' ideology. It is considered to be providing an alternative to the 'All rights received' copyright license to 'Some rights received' creative commons license.
Under this license, You are free to:
An MIT license has very limited restriction over reuse of the code. It is also compatible with many of the existing commonly used licenses like GPL and many other copyleft licenses. The license comes under the category of permissive licenses, which defined as "lets people do anything they want with your code as long as they provide attribution back to you and don't hold you liable."
The MIT License (MIT)
Copyright (c) <year> <copyright holders>
Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy of this software and associated documentation files (the "Software"), to deal in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions: The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software. THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM, OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE SOFTWARE.
I want to share my works with the public, so they don't have to repeat the same thing all over again, they can continue where I left off, but under a few conditions.
I should be getting the credits for my work.
If they have made a progress/modifications to my work, I need to know that, so does the rest of the world. Which means those who uses my work are required to share their work just like I did.
I cannot be held responsible for any kind of harm caused by another party who used my work.
My project is intended to be used as an educational model, I have no commercial interests as of yet, but I also don't want anyone using my work commercially without my permission. I want people who are interested, to continue and improve my work and share it with others. Hence the licenses which fit the bill are MIT license and Creative Commons CC-BY-SA-NC
I prefer the CC-BY-SA License for all my Fab Academy documentation, the final project and all the assignments. This is because CC license is meant to cover all sorts of work like documentation, images etc and a lot of people are already familiar with Creative Commons.
My motivation to disseminate and continue my work after fab academy is most because of social and educational reasons. Social because my work will be open source and it can help build a community of people, who continually improve upon it. Educational because, I believe that my project will be used as a starting point or reference for people wanting to know more about Self-Balancing Robots. Like Neil said, Stand on the shoulders of Giants.
As for Income sources, I have no commercial interests as of now. My project will be a starting point into other areas of Robotics that I want to explore. But still, if I were to derive an income from my work, I would not do it by selling ready made Self-Balancing Robot. As Neil said "One of the worst ways to make a business is sell something you made in a fablab."
So direct selling of the product is not an option, my project is not a finished product yet. So the next option would be to sell Kits. This is a better option. Kits mean less liability for me and since all the documentation is open-source, people can explore further with a kit than a ready made product. But still that is not something I would try now, its not a sustainable model.
The next method is to use my project as an educational model and teach kids. This I believe is a good model. Making kits along with this approach will also work. So I can distribute kits and teach kids how to make a self-balancing robot. This would be the closest I will get to making some money, but still I won't be doing this now. I will be following this model in the future when I create something truly worth sharing.
As Neil said, "You don't sell the thing, you sell the benefit of the thing." This is done by successful companies like Google and Facebook, They don't sell the thing you see, they give away the thing you see and sell the benefit of the thing. For example, Google dosen't sell search, it gives away search, but sells advertising related to search.
I believe this is a crucial point which many businesses fail to see. You don't sell the thing, you sell the benefit of the thing.
I understand Scaling your project from prototype to production is not easy, it has its own set of challenges. Then I have to shift my focus from technical to business side of things. I look forward to doing that in the future. But right now, I'm staying in technical side until I come up with an awesome product/business model.
I really liked this week, Neils lecture on patents and Intellectual property, it was very good. He shared a lot of information form his own experience.
I have also included the presentation.png and presentation.mp4 in the root directory.
rahulsrajan.com
rahulsrajan01@gmail.com
Trivandrum, Kerala ,
India.
Technopark, Kerala, India
