Today I was reading some of the older posts and came across the thread
about non-disclosures. Everyone seemed to have the same thoughts about
that issue, but I don't find the answer to be as black and white as
everyone had stated. There are several problems you could run into.
Imagine that you did have a working device of your own design, what do you do?
You try and patent it and risk the possibility of government suppression or
other such problems making your invention basically useless.
You show the device to some people you think you can trust (without a
non-disclosure) in hopes of getting help developing it (or just to get the
word our to someone that other people trust), or you just give the
information away for free. Someone else patents your invention, and now
no-one except them can build the invention, and you are relying on them to
get it out to the public.
You sell it to a corporation with the possibility of making a lot of money,
but risk that it never gets released to the public.
There are endless scenarios but I think you get the point.
I have been reading information about patents, etc, on the net, and it
seems ownership unfortunately seems to fall on anyone who can prove that
they had the idea first, regardless of patents. And proof looks like it
can be pages of a notebook with the idea, and principle behind it's
operation, etc, dated with an earlier date then whom-ever you are claiming
against. Add to that some people they get to back up the story and the
invention is theirs. Once again you lose any right to it, and cannot even
build it yourself. Something that large corporations that may want to
suppress the technology, or claim it for themselves could probably do
without much trouble. At the least it could be tied up in court forver
trying to decide who gets the rights.
Of course a lot depends on what type of invention it is, but really, what
do you do? There is definatley a few shades of grey in there....