by britta
First Patent Pending
2:28 am in Education, Version 3.0 Modular Airlift Columns, Windowfarms Project News by britta
The first patent is pending, thanks to the generosity of Rafe Furst.
As the area of open hardware/mechanics intellectual property law gets sorted out, this patent pending status secures the community’s design against patent trolls but keeps the designs free & in the public domain for individuals who accept the community’s open terms of service.
In general, the larger opensource community takes a stance against patenting in favor of Creative Commons and GNU licenses. However, the information we are sharing on this site is different from those other projects because it is not covered by copyright or trademark law– we are dealing almost exclusively in the area of patentable knowledge. The kinds of ideas window farmers deal with are different from those that open hardware folks deal with because the end product is seldom a circuit board layout, between two of which it would be (arguably) easier to identify one as a physical or functional copy than say a pump design or a configuration of valves.
Why pursue a patent and not just let anyone do whatever he/she wants with the information shared here like so many other opensource projects do? We would like to do that, but we recognize some other unusual circumstances in this area and, thus, believe that we would better serve our community through proactive patenting paired with royalty-free licenses for non-commercial individuals.
We want to keep hydroponics from going the way of Monsanto & the pharmaceutical industries. We do not want yet another valuable lifegiving human resource to be tied up in corporate intellectual property. Consider three assumptions we face:
1) Anyone on this site has already thought about the idea that growing hydroponically makes sense as one of the best ways to supply fresh food to people in cities, making the intellectual possibilities in this area fit into what is called the commons.
2) Our attorneys (many of whom have given us pro bono advice worth thousands of dollars) have told us that hydroponics is one of the most active areas of patenting in the US currently. This makes it a valuable area of public knowledge, a candidate for over-harvesting, and subject to the tragedy of the commons.
3) Our attorneys have also recognized that the popularity of this project in conjunction with 2), means that the community’s ideas are a good target for patent trolls, who are often patent attorneys who find and patent aspects of successful products or ideas that have not already been patented and then find ways to financially benefit from current users of the idea.
Thus, proactive patenting + royalty-free licenses is the path we have chosen, for the time being, to keep a tech that’s vital to healthy future cities in the public domain. We welcome your comments and look forward to seeing how the opensource movement makes inroads into the complex area of IP law.
If you would like to support us and help contribute to our extensive legal consulting and administrative costs of keeping windowfarms opensource and free from patent issues, please visit our contribute page.
I have been involved with inventions and the patent process for over 20 years. Most of the above makes little sense to me. For instance: “In general, the larger opensource community takes a stance against patenting in favor of Creative Commons and GNU licenses. However, the information we are sharing on this site is different from those other projects because it is not covered by copyright or trademark law– we are dealing almost exclusively in the area of patentable knowledge”. As far as I can tell, you are not any different than others in the nature of your IP. Others have patentable material. And, your material can be copyrighted and trademarked, as well. Later on you say that you are going to patent your IP to keep it in the common domaign. All you have to do is publish your patentable IP to put it in the public domaign (after one year in USA, immediately in the rest of the world.
You mention that you have been given a lot of free legal advise that would have cost you a lot of money, but now you write that you need money to patent. Let me guess. These lawyers advised you to file patents and now they want you to pay them to write patent applications.
Irrespective of Howard Davis’ oppinion that intellectual property patent may be unnecessary, his point about the protection that may be provided by applying and getting trademark and copyright to window farms makes sense. I would hope window farms would pursue getting both trademark and copyrights for all their materials as a further protection against corporate piracy. Securing a copyright is a relatively easy and inexpensive process (I have done it.) Trademark registration may be more involved, but probably is not prohibitively expensive or too difficult in terms of paperwork.
I saw your video on Youtube and think this is an amazing concept, but your TOS and this patent stuff is seriously turning me off.
First of all, I have a beef with the part of your TOS that claims everything on the site is available under the CC Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike. That’s great, but you then misrepresent that license, by claiming that it requires contributions back to the community. It very clearly does not. It grants rights as long as certain conditions are met. The sharing is completely optional, and only must be done under the same license, if done at all.
Also, you’ve obviously considered that under the above license, you are denying yourselves the right to commercialize without permission any contributions made by the community as modifications to your original designs, as they will of course come back to you with the same license, and you offer to allow members to assign the same license to their own work, but very clearly state that you will disregard it in both cases for your own purposes.
And as for the patents, I’ll leave it at what Howard said above. It seems to me that you are listening to lawyers that are giving you advice worth what you paid for it.
Please take a moment to read another “Open Hardware” project’s approach: http://wiki.makerbot.com/open-source-ftw
This at first looks to be a project with very good intentions, but all of the legalese makes that hard to swallow.
I think this is an interesting discussion.
Clearly, window farms is doing a difficult dance between traditional IP and Open Source. I think that the community members get the value out of the network by participating in the innovation and the tinkering. That said, to expand the community beyond the tinker class of individuals I see the wisdom in offering the community an easy product for them to share with their friends and coworkers.
What clearly trips people up the most is money – and money is a huge contention in the sustainability community over here in Amsterdam.
One of the most confusing things about non-profits is that they – just like a business – have cash flows. When the cash flows out – and its gone — its all over. This is irrespective of the good they are doing or trying to do in the world.
I do not think that window farms has claimed to be anything else but a business. Correct me if I am wrong. So it does not really matter if it is a business or a not-for-profit — it still depends on cash. What exactly does everyone think keeps this website up and running? If they sell the communities refined design – they can go on and make more money. Which I for one view as a good thing.
The larger point seems to be – how do you get more people to be just a little bit active in food production. This is extremely important in urban areas, where parents and children alike have totally lost touch with what food is and where it comes from…
Big picture – why do we really care if they are using the happy community of tinkerers to get as many ideas as possible? So they patient and sell one product along with a line of services. What is the big deal with that? So they did not build an R&D center on the Macdonald’s scale – maybe one day they will be able to harvest their most productive and innovative tinkerers around the globe and give them a place to work and make money as in traditional employment
I think the big picture is more people are involved with making food in a way that makes them feel happy and improves the dreadful diet of the average American.
I really want to drive this point home with an example of how things happen in the innovation market.
I worked for a very innovative LED company (one featured in Fast Company as really really innovative) SO we manufactured light bulbs – simple right?
At one point — a bit boy in the market came along — and said you see that little green tip on the base of the bulb… That is our brand — we are producing LED bulbs with little green tips on the base – this is how OUR consumers recognize OUR lamps. (mind you this had nothing to do with technological IP — just the color of one part of our lamp – so no high tech IP here)
So our company had to remove lamps from the shelf — change our production line – and get rid of the little green tip on the base of the screw cap.
Once window farms get big — I mean real big… They will have parties just like that knocking on their door — and it will mean real big problems.
So while I agree with Howards point — on the lawyer wants to earn his fees — and I sure that he does as all lawyer do. This is most likely good advice that can prevent a serous problem down the line. because we are talking about manufacturing – international supply lines – good old fashion competition in the market place.