Does secret or semi-secret prior art invalidate granted patents when presented? An example would be inventions from the former Soviet Union that were officially secret, then some became semi-secret as they leaked into the public realm but so obscure that only very narrow circles knew or were interested in knowing about them. And of course there may still be inventions that have never been leaked to the public, that are officially secret, that may still qualify as prior art to some current patents.
The patented RSA algorithm (public key exchange) was independently developed by Rivest, Shamir and Adleman. However the algorithm had been found much earlier and secretly by Ellis and Cocks. This was eventually revealed, but the RSA patent remained valid until it expired in 2000. The prior art must be known to the patent office before the patent is granted to stop a patent from being granted. What the patent office grants will obviously depend on what they know. To invalidate a patent later, what counts is the date when the &quot;secret&quot; prior art became public knowledge. So if the patent office could have theoretically found the prior art, then you have a chance. In the case of RSA, that wasn't the case. It is clearly documented that Ellis and Cocks invented the algorithm earlier, and it was even shared with US intelligence, but it was not known to the public when RSA got their patent. For your semi-secret prior art: If I try to get a patent, could you write to the patent officer &quot;there's a small village named XYZ in Siberia, and in their public library there's a book titled &quot;Secrets of ABC&quot; that has prior art to gnasher's patent&quot; before I get my patent? So it's public, but so obscure that nobody would ever find it in practice, but the patent officer could book a flight to Siberia, a bus to the village, and he could enter the library and find the book with the prior art?
There is something called the exhaustion doctrine that says that once the holder of a patent sells a patented device, they have relinquished control over that particular instance of the patent implementation. Anyone who legally purchases this hardware has the right to run whatever software they want on it, as long the software is otherwise legal (software designed to defeat DRM would be an example of software that is is not legal).
Yes The US constitution is in the public domain. Anyone may publish a version of it, including an altered version. No US law forbidding publication of an altered version would itself be constitutional -- the First Amendment would prevent such a law. However, if an altered version were sold under such conditions that a customer might reasonably believe it to be an unaltered version, that might be false advertising, or perhaps fraud, because the seller would be deceiving the customer as to what the product is.
Ideas (methods of playing, game mechanics, strategy, goals) cannot be protected by copyright. But any part of a creative work can. So, no copying of drawings, patterns, images, sounds, or the element. I suppose copying the software code is not an issue here, but it can, obviously, also not be copied. And nothing in your game can look like someone's else trademark.
Under US copyright law, all works are protected by copyright except for US Government works. The concept of "public domain" is not legally well-defined, and is used colloquially to refer to government works, works whose protection has expired, works available to all, and works not copyrightable (such as scientific laws or old software). Under older copyright law, releasing a work without the copyright symbol effectively put the work in the public domain. One can simply say "I dedicate this work to the public domain", and that is typically taken to be enough. CC0 purports to do this (using more words). However, as far as I can tell, author rights under European law are so strong that it is simply impossible. Releasing works into the public law has to be consistent with other aspects of the law. If you grant an perpetual exclusive right to copy and distribute to a publisher, their right does not go away on your death (a right which they would not have with a real public domain work). A problem is that an author who makes such a dedication (a bare license) could revoke the license and reassert their copyright. They could be estopped from making that argument. As property, your heirs would inherit the copyright and could (try to) revoke the license. Presumably the courts would not allow them to pursue ostensive infringers. Nevertheless, your plan is neither trivial nor bullet-proof.
Generally, this question is not a singular inquiry as its wording may suggest on its face. What typically tends to come up as the subject of dispute is rooted in the urban legend that one cannot obtain a patent (utility) on software. This is substantially incorrect, and any patent attorney asserting to the veracity of this makes a substantially false conclusory statement of law knowingly and willfully controverting the actual state of law in, at least, all Western jurisdictions as it omits to assert to the fact that one is not barred to obtain a patent on any system that comprises of non-obvious software, and hardware to run on is entitled to a patent — except in the U.S. where one must also comply with the Alice decision requiring that at least one hardware component in addition to the hardware of a generic computer be necessary for the utility of the system. However, in the U.S., one may obtain a software-centered patent through a (i) method or (ii) a computer program product in addition to (iii) systems or apparatuses which are available avenues for patents everywhere else. When disputes around IP and software come up, this is typically at the crux of the debate: May one obtain a software patent? The answer is: One is not barred merely because the non-obvious aspect of an invention is software. For example, if one uses hardware that are prior art, in fact, patented to someone else, but by the use of software a system, method and/or computer program product achieves a different objective (since utility patents, axiomatically, must have a utility objective) one may obtain a patent, and a layman may very well consider their invention of the system as that particular component that appears to them as having required any inventive steps, encompasses the inventive novelty (understandably) which, in many cases may be software. So the advice from a patent attorney that “you can’t patent software” is simply malicious (or wide and far disbarringly incompetent). One may patent software so long as it is an invention, and the administrative (or at times judicial) process requirements are complied with. Nevertheless, since the question inquired about “IP”, below is the answer to other avenues of intellectual property. Copyrights The software code written to make this operable could be the subject of copyright as long as it is not substantially identical with another solution (or such to give reasons to believe it to be a derivative thereof) that also put buttons in the four corners. The visual design may possibly also enjoy copyright protection, but that is less plausible to imagine since not only the copyrighted work of art is protected, but anything that may objectively be deemed a derivative work (regardless of whether the “re-author” actually knew about the copyrighted material that it may be deemed the derivate of). Design patents It is possible that one could get design patents for the actual graphical design of the layout provided there isn’t something substantially similar already out there protected by a design patent. Utility patents This would most certainly not overcome obviousness, that is, the requirement for one to obtain a patent which needs that a presented invention not be obvious for anyone “with ordinary skill in the art” (an ordinarily knowledgable person in the field of the specific area of tech). Trademark I have a hard time stretching my imagination to see how this could be applicable.
Can only be done one way and has been done - not novel; you can only think of one way to do it and don't know if it has done that way or at all, may be is patentable. From one example it is hard to give a general answer that might apply to a case you might actually be thinking about. One can not get a patent on something that is not novel or is obvious (using U.S. patent law concepts) or not useful. Novelty is judged by trying to find a single reference, published before the filing date, that contains all elements of the claimed invention. An examiner can't just say &quot;that is the way I would have solved the problem&quot; or &quot;everybody knows that already&quot;. This is to make the test for novelty more objective and give the applicant something tangible to argue against. Next consider obviousness. The examiner can't just say &quot;seems obvious to me&quot;. Besides the problem that it is far from objective, there is a strong psychological effect called &quot;hindsight bias&quot;. Once you know a solution, it seems obvious even if you would never have come up with it independently. To assert a rejection based on obviousness an examiner needs to find one or more references that, together, have all the elements in a claimed invention. That part is pretty objective. Then they need to argue that a (fictitious) person of ordinary skill in the art would think to combine those references to achieve the claimed invention. A POSITA knows everything that was ever published anywhere at any time in any language in the relevant field or specifically relevant to the problem from an other field and is of median/average skill in the field. There are rare cases where the problem was never recognized and the recognition of the problem is an important part of the invention. In that case the solution might be obvious once the problem was (inventively) identified. That would still not be an obvious invention. Your example might fit into this. In the rest-of-the-world obviousness is replaced by &quot;having an inventive step&quot;, not exactly the same concept. And the rules of what can be considered prior art different. A third criteria is &quot;useful&quot; in the U.S. It is somewhat analogous to &quot;industrial applicability&quot; in the rest of the world. Until about 2000 this was a trivial hurdle in the U.S. As long it was not a law of nature (abstract), something completely done in your head or a perpetual motion machine, it was probably useful. There have been many rulings since then that have put more and more things in the &quot;abstract&quot; category and if it's abstract its not useful. This is the basis of the &quot;you can't patent software&quot; mantra. There are plenty of things that look like software that get patented but it is getting harder.
That is not at all what USPTO is telling you. Courts do not simply "dismiss" patents - that isn't a terminology you'd ever see used for a patent that was found to be invalid. Timeline of events: United Industries Corporation brought a suit against the owner of the patent, claiming unpatentability. That case went to trial, and the court found the claim to be invalid and that UIC failed to show unpatentability. UIC appealed that decision to the Court of Appeals. The Court of Appeals dismissed the case because both parties agreed to its dismissal (it's possible they reached some external agreement we don't know about). As far as I can tell, at this moment, the patent is active.