Invention, Intellecual property and Bussiness Model

Types of licences available

Patents- A patent is a set of exclusive rights granted by a sovereign state to an inventor or assignee for a limited period of time in exchange for detailed public disclosure of an invention-Wikipedia

There are two types of patents- one is a utility patent which is granted for 20 years, these are much more powerful and are given to things which do something eg a pen or a type of drug, and a design patent which is granted for a period of 15 years, these are given to design related things such as curving the edges of an i-phone. Patents are a type of intellectual property.

A common misconception is that the patents protects you, well it does not it only gives you an access to the court to litigate to protect

CopyRight- copy right is for creative works, all the work that we do in FabLab is a creative work just like movies or music. It regulates the permision to copy, modify, distribute your work. The great thing about copyright is that you dont need to file a copyright you just need to create a creative work, copyrights are created at the source and are valid for lifetime + 70years. For getting a copyright one can put a copyright symbol on the work or mention a sentence.

Trademarks- It protects the name of the product just like Mcdonalds(which have drop the rights for it), we have to write a tm everytime we use it, and if someone infringes we need to send a nasty legal notice. It makes sense to protect a brand with a trademark.

Why this licence

The reason I choose to claim a copy right is that I want to others to work on my idea and share their ideas or modification with me. At the same time I dont want others to make a commercial use of it, thus I got a licence from creative commons which is an open source but does not permits anyone to make a commercial use of it. I just want to be that my work be acknowledged when some uses it.

I got the creative commons license for my project, they have a very sutle and a simple way of getting various licences of our choice.

Future Plans

Vigyan Ashram has an Enterpreneur who is making domes made out of ferrocements, he has an established bussiness, I want him or anyone else to take up this project and go ahead with it. I would like to be in the team taking care of all the technicalities.

When I started making this dome I did not have a fix customer in front of me but now that the project is nearing a success I see a lot of potential customers. A unique thing about this dome is that it can be taken with you if you have a decent enough size vehivle with you, the dome panels will stack on one above the other like lego bricks or plastic chairs.

I see a lot of people can benefit from such homes, people like construction labourers or contract farmers are few amongst them.

Besides this house can also be a temporary structure for places affected with natural calamities or refugee situations

Steps to make possibilities into probabilities

I belive workng with resin needs some time to get use to, it is a material which does not behave like the usual construction material. This skill needs to be acquired, in order to set up a construction unit I will need to train myself and some people in handling resins.

I will be needing some molding experienced person who will guide me in making a mold because the panels are as good as your molds.

There are a lot of areas for improvements, I can make a sandwhich of resin and styrofoam to make the panels insulating, I can add rubber liners on the edges of the panel to make it water tight and as Neil suggested I need to find a way to pressfit or interlock the panels so that I can give up on nuts and bolts

There is a lot I can do with electronics and electrical systems, I can make panels embedded with electical wires concealed in it so the house just becomes like a gadget where you plug into the power and it is ready to work

I am very impressed with microsolar dome, these are lighting fixtures which provides sunlight throughout the day while charging the solar battery and in the night use the same to work an artificial light

These dome lights will be perfect for my dome.