Intellectual Property - Philosophy Can I patent a philosophy? I'm very new to IP law and was disappointed to find out that the US now uses a first to file system like everyone else. Before spending money on legal services, I want to educate myself as much as possible. I've been working on a philosophical concept which can be boiled down to a very simple qualitative formula. It is going to be the foundation for a number of entrepreneurial projects of mine. The simple formula is very high level. If a philosophy can be patented, I need to get an understanding of what level of detail and explanation is most appropriate. Can anyone recommend reading/web resource on this subject, law firms worth discussing this with or other resources in the New York area?
No, you can only patent: any new and useful process, machine, manufacture, or composition of matter, or any new and useful improvement thereof 35 USC 101 The courts have read into this (along with being informed by constitutional constraints) judicial exceptions which preclude abstract ideas, laws of nature, and mathematical formulas from being patentable subject matter.
There is no IP in ideas! There is copyright in writing it down - they can't use your exact words without permission. However, sending it to them in the form of a suggestion would give them a pretty much unassailable argument that you have given them an implicit licence. You can patent an invention (not an idea), claim IP in a trade mark (also, not an idea), register a design (again, not an idea) and hold copyright in an artistic work (once more, not an idea). They are required to keep confidences but offering them a suggestion probably doesn't count as supplying confidential information. I can see no risk in acting on customer suggestions. Hence, the idea to raise prices can be acted on or not at the discretion of the company.
There is no IP in ideas Any code would by subject to copyright (who owns that copyright is itself a convoluted and separate question), however, if the 4 of you abandoned any existing code, notes and images and start over you would have no legal impediment.
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.
The idea for an app is not subject to copyright. Only the artifacts of the app itself (sourcecode, images, texts, sounds, etc.) can be. So if one only copies the idea and creates their own version of all the other assets, then they are not violating copyright. However, in some cases, ideas can be subject to patents. But patents on software are tricky. First of all, only new ideas can be patented. When a supposed new idea was already published before, then that's called &quot;prior art&quot; and you can not patent it. Then getting a patent means a lot of investment in money and time (which is very different from copyright which you get automatically the moment you make something copyright-worthy). So not everything that could theoretically be patented gets patented. And then, many jurisdictions do not recognize software patents at all, and those which do have different limits on what is and is not patentable when it comes to software. This means patents are rarely a concern when copying the app idea of someone else, but not never. And another possible concern is the third pillar of intellectual property: Trademarks. This protects the name of the app. Trademark law oversimplified forbids to create a competing product with a name which might confuse customers. So if you created StevesSuperCoolAppForCoolPeople and I create StevesSuperCoolAppForCoolPeople - Simplified Edition, then I would be violating your trademark, because my product name sounds as if it was your product, when it is in fact an unrelated product with a similar purpose.
This supposes that the patentable concept can’t be learned form the operation of the whole program and hiding the invention while making use of the invention in public is not a disclosure. However, in the US there is a famous case In re Blaisdell, 242 F.2d 779, 783, 113 USPQ 289, 292 (CCPA 1957); Hall v. Macneale, 107 U.S. 90, 96-97 (1882); Ex parte Kuklo, 25 USPQ2d 1387, 1390 (Bd. Pat. App. &amp; Inter. 1992) that concluded a public demonstration that didn’t expose the inner workings did start the clock on a bar to patentability. See previous question https://patents.stackexchange.com/questions/20886/would-the-demonstration-of-an-invention-be-considered-public-disclosure The answer (from me) has the caveat that this is a pre-AIA case and courts might come to a different answer under that current law. The U.S. has viewed public use, especially commercial public use, as disqualifying (after a grace period) but the rest of the world puts its emphasis on actual disclosure of the inventive concept so this result might be different elsewhere. One thought experiment would be to analogize with an article in a widely available journal with the words Don’t read the article that starts on page 19 on the cover. From a disclosure point of view I do not think that is different from it being possible, but illegal, to read.
Under U.S. copyright law, the First Sale Doctrine protects such conduct. As the U.S. Justice Department explains: The first sale doctrine, codified at 17 U.S.C. § 109, provides that an individual who knowingly purchases a copy of a copyrighted work from the copyright holder receives the right to sell, display or otherwise dispose of that particular copy, notwithstanding the interests of the copyright owner. The right to distribute ends, however, once the owner has sold that particular copy. See 17 U.S.C. § 109(a) &amp; (c). U.S. law with respect to the First Sale Doctrine is typical, and copyright law is fairly uniform internationally due to some relevant intellectual property treaties. But there are hundreds of countries in the world, and some of them might not include the First Sale Doctrine in their jurisprudence. For example, I do not know how this would be handled under the laws of the People's Republic of China, or under Islamic law.
The first question is whose law you are concerned with, since in principle you might have violated copyright law in any country, and might be sued under the laws of multiple countries. The US has a concept of "fair use" which is notoriously difficult to apply. When you are sued in the US, you can defend against the allegation by arguing certain things: telegraphically, this includes purpose and character of use, nature of the work, substantiality in relation to the whole, and effect on market. Plus there is a 5th factor to be considered, transformativeness. The court then weighs these factors to decide if the use is "fair". By reading existing case law on the topic (conveniently available from the US Copyright office) you might develop a fact-based opinion of the risk: you would be vastly better off hiring an attorney who specializes in US copyright law to do an analysis for you. Do not hire a programmer to give you legal advice (do not hire an attorney to debug code). You would "fail" on the test of substantiality in that you are copying a highly substantial portion of the original work(s). You would "win" on nature of use (research especially non-profit and commentary are the underlying purposes that drive fair use law). It's not clear how you would fare w.r.t. nature of the work, which is intended to distinguish the extremes "news report" and "literature and artistic work" where copying news is at the fair use end of the spectrum. It is not clear how you would fare on "effect on market", but probably not so badly: are you avoiding some licensing fee? Coupled with the tranformativeness consideration, you are most likely having no effect on the market, since the product that you will distribute is not the original work, but a scientific conclusion about the work. Germany has different laws, and this article would be relevant if you cared about Germany. There was a change in the law that expanded the analog of fair use pertaining to research use. That law allows 15 percent of a work to be reproduced, distributed and made available to the public for the purpose of non-commercial scientific research. That, b.t.w., does not refer to what you are planning to do (unless you also publish quotes); for personal scientific research you may reproduce up to 75 percent. Since this is a new law only a year old, you could become part of the cutting edge in testing the limits of the law. So the standard disclaimer applies: ask your attorney. But note section 60d of the law which legalized data mining, and is squarely on point: (1) In order to enable the automatic analysis of large numbers of works (source material) for scientific research, it shall be permissible to reproduce the source material, including automatically and systematically, in order to create, particularly by means of normalisation, structuring and categorisation, a corpus which can be analysed and to make the corpus available to the public for a specifically limited circle of persons for their joint scientific research, as well as to individual third persons for the purpose of monitoring the quality of scientific research. In such cases, the user may only pursue non-commercial purposes. (2) If database works are used pursuant to subsection (1), this shall constitute customary use in accordance with section 55a, first sentence. If insubstantial parts of databases are used pursuant to subsection (1), this shall be deemed consistent with the normal utilisation of the database and with the legitimate interests of the producer of the database within the meaning of section 87b (1), second sentence, and section 87e. (3) Once the research work has been completed, the corpus and the reproductions of the source material shall be deleted; they may no longer be made available to the public. It shall, however, be permissible to transmit the corpus and the reproductions of the source material to the institutions referred to in sections 60e and 60f for the purpose of long-term storage.