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Old 6th Apr 2019, 11:20 pm   #647
Argus25
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Join Date: Oct 2016
Location: Maroochydore, Queensland, Australia.
Posts: 2,679
Default Re: Audiophoolery?

Quote:
Originally Posted by Craig Sawyers View Post
Indeed - I have quite a number of patents in my name (but none in my ownership, alas), so I understand the patenting process quite well.

Craig
You are a genius. In this day and age the last thing you want to do is own a patent yourself. If you ever do, try to transfer the ownership of it ASAP. I will explain why:

Firstly, the patent exposes the owner to 3 risks.

1) somebody else sees the published work, because the patent has put it in the public forum, concludes (rightly or wrongly) that the work uses some of their IP. They start a case and you end up paying large legal fees to your Lawyer to defend your work.

2) You, or somebody else notices that somebody else's work looks like it has borrowed from yours, or even downright stole your idea. You spent money to protect it, so now what should you do ? Your legal team advises you to start a case, as the years go by nothing much happens except you pay a lot of legal fees.

3) You are sitting quietly at home and have not instructed anybody to do anything. Then in some legal office somebody is asked by a company using the patent to review something or do something related to the patent. Because you own it, a week later you get sent a bill for some $1000's of dollars, they call that a "patent maintenance fee".

It is almost inevitable that really good ideas and inventions get copied pretty quickly, especially in China etc. So now a lot of companies have abandoned the idea of patents . They simply are first to the market with the product and keep the workings of their devices as secret as possible (which has been aided by secure firmware). This way they are immune from costs of patents, claims of using any other people's IP, which are usually baseless anti-competitive attacks anyway. And it saves a fortune on lawyers.
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