Patents

A patent is a right granted to the owner of an invention that prevents others from making, using, importing or selling the invention without his permission. A patentable invention can be a product or a process that gives a new technical solution to a problem. It can also be a new method of doing things, the composition of a new product, or a technical improvement on how certain objects work.

Once you register a patent, apart from using the patent to prevent others from exploiting your invention, you can employ it to raise funds for your business, license it to third parties for commercial returns or sell the patented invention.

Once it is granted, its term of a patent is 20 years from the Date of Filing, subject to the payment of annual renewal fees.

Once the patent expires, the invention enters the public domain and can be made, used or sold by anyone. Only the inventor can apply for and receive a patent for an invention and only the inventor or the inventor's registered patent attorney or agent may prosecute a patent before the patent and trademark office.

Having a patent itself doesn't protect the owner from his invention being infringed or be used by anyone, it just allows the owner to go to court and litigate. If the owner could not figure out who is infringing his work, there would be no use of having the patent. Unless you have a system in place to handle litigation process which could be tiresome and dragging.

Different types of patent applications exist so that inventors can protect different kinds of inventions. There are four different patent types:

• A utility patent is what most people think of when they think about a patent. It is a long, technical document that teaches the public how to use a new machine, process, or system.
• A provisional patent allow inventors to file a less formal document that proves the inventor was in possession of the invention and had adequately figured out how to make the invention work. Once that is on file, the invention is patent pending. If, however, the inventor fails to file a formal utility patent within a year from filing the provisional patent, he or she will lose this filing date. Any public disclosures made relying on that provisional patent application will now count as public disclosures as well.
• A design patent protects an ornamental design on a useful item. The shape of a bottle or the design of a shoe, for example, can be protected by a design patent. The document itself is almost entirely made of pictures or drawings of the design on the useful item. Design patents are notoriously difficult to search simply because there are very few words used in a design patent. In recent years, software companies have used design patents to protect elements of user interfaces and even the shape of touchscreen devices.
• A plant patent is just that: a patent for a plant. Plant patents protect new kinds of plants produced by cuttings or other nonsexual means. Plant patents generally do not cover genetically modified organisms and focus more on conventional horticulture.

Copyrights

Copyright is a legal right created by the law of a country that grants the creator of an original work exclusive rights for its use and distribution. This is usually only for a limited time. The exclusive rights are not absolute but limited by limitations and exceptions to copyright law, including fair use. A major limitation on copyright is that copyright protects only the original expression of ideas, and not the underlying ideas themselves. Copyright is a form of intellectual property, applicable to certain forms of creative work. Some, but not all jurisdictions require "fixing" copyrighted works in a tangible form. It is often shared among multiple authors, each of whom holds a set of rights to use or license the work, and who are commonly referred to as rights holders. These rights frequently include reproduction, control over derivative works, distribution, public performance, and "moral rights" such as attribution.

Creative Commons

Creative Commons (CC) is an American non-profit organization devoted to expanding the range of creative works available for others to build upon legally and to share. The organization has released several copyright-licenses known as Creative Commons licenses free of charge to the public. These licenses allow creators to communicate which rights they reserve, and which rights they waive for the benefit of recipients or other creators. An easy-to-understand one-page explanation of rights, with associated visual symbols, explains the specifics of each Creative Commons license.

Creative Commons licenses do not replace copyright, but are based upon it. They replace individual negotiations for specific rights between copyright owner (licensor) and licensee, which are necessary under an "all rights reserved" copyright management, with a "some rights reserved" management employing standardized licenses for re-use cases where no commercial compensation is sought by the copyright owner. The result is an agile, low-overhead and low-cost copyright-management regime, profiting both copyright owners and licensees. Wikipedia uses one of these licenses.

The licenses from Creative Commons,


Attribution
CC BY-SA

This license lets others distribute, remix, tweak, and build upon your work, even commercially, as long as they credit you for the original creation. This is the most accommodating of licenses offered. Recommended for maximum dissemination and use of licensed materials.


Attribution
CC BY

This license lets others remix, tweak, and build upon your work even for commercial purposes, as long as they credit you and license their new creations under the identical terms. This license is often compared to “copyleft” free and open source software licenses. All new works based on yours will carry the same license, so any derivatives will also allow commercial use. This is the license used by Wikipedia, and is recommended for materials that would benefit from incorporating content from Wikipedia and similarly licensed projects.


Attribution-NoDerivs
CC BY-ND

This license allows for redistribution, commercial and non-commercial, as long as it is passed along unchanged and in whole, with credit to you.


Attribution-NonCommercial
CC BY-NC

This license lets others remix, tweak, and build upon your work non-commercially, and although their new works must also acknowledge you and be non-commercial, they don’t have to license their derivative works on the same terms.


Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike
CC BY-NC-SA

This license lets others remix, tweak, and build upon your work non-commercially, as long as they credit you and license their new creations under the identical terms.


Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs
CC BY-NC-ND

This license is the most restrictive of our six main licenses, only allowing others to download your works and share them with others as long as they credit you, but they can’t change them in any way or use them commercially.

MIT License

The MIT License is a permissive free software license originating at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). As a permissive license, it puts only very limited restriction on reuse and has, therefore, an excellent license compatibility. The MIT license permits reuse within proprietary software provided that all copies of the licensed software include a copy of the MIT License terms and the copyright notice. The MIT license is also compatible with many copyleft licenses, such as the GNU General Public License (GPL).

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.
                        

Dissemination of My Work

My project and all the works that I did during this FabAcademy is creative work. So I find the licenses from Creative Commons seem apt for me. Since during the project, I was able to design a low cost optical system with good peripheral vision retainment, I am planning to reiterate that design, improve upon it.

So it suits to have a provisional patent on the design if I'm planing to have this commercialised. Having the provisional patent could give some time to keep authorship of the work I did. But at the same time, my field of expertise is not in optics engineering and there could be much capable people who could iterate on this work. If I were to get MIT license for my work, it only provide limited restrictions on reuse and anyone could do whatever with my work provided they keep the copyright license and can commercialise. But I'm of the view that commercialising infant technologies straight away could halter its growth.

For these reason, I would like to have all my work done during the course of FabAcademy issued under


Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike
CC BY-NC-SA

Augmented Reality is a new field of technology which does have a lot of potential in lot of areas, med surgeries, transporting, warehousing tech, 3D design visualising, educational etc. It has the potential to be a new means of peripheral device, much like touch screens did to portable personal devices. But even though large companies tried their hand on augmented headsets, these devices were too costly. My view on new technologies that are kept costly is that they wont ever get traction.

I would like to have others iterate upon my work and publish their work under the same license. Keeping the iterations under the same license helps improve this field of technology. There are no warranties on my work, so I can't be held accountable for any misuse done by others based on my work.

References

Some articles that I read through,

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intellectual_property
https://www.legalzoom.com/articles/what-are-the-different-types-of-patents
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Creative_Commons
https://opensource.org/licenses/MIT
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MIT_License