You're right, my implication that online posts are not prior art was wrong. I have a negative bias against the patent office from past experience, however it's also not a simple as 'an idea being unpatentable as soon as it is described'.
Firstly, a patent doesn't cover only an abstract idea, but an abstract implementation of an idea. It's a description with a list of claims about how the idea is acheived, which can cite prior art, but the requirement is that a "non-obvious" invention occurs in the claims, which can unfortunately include "combination" of two or more existing ideas.
Given that the author had only described brief ideas, they might serve as prior art, but as they don't really establish claims on what is invented, someone could later come along and take the idea and develop it, coming up with "inventions" in their implementation. Such inventions are probably obvious to someone who takes the time to develop an idea, and would be rediscovered by anyone who starts from the same piece of prior art. A problem is that patent applications always start by using the broadest sense of the "invention" that it covers, and the claims are narrowed down if the application is rejected by the patent office, but applications can be revised and resubmitted many times.
The obviousness of ideas really depends on how much consideration is given to each one, so perhaps it would be in the interest of authors to establish claims on how each of their ideas might be achieved, as patents do (although they shouldn't need to be written in legalese.) Maybe a separate hyperlinked article where more detail is given on each, particularly the ones he cares most about, would surely improve the protection against the ideas being taken.
One of my concerns is the invention of new terms in patent applications which cover already existing ideas. I've seen patents which cover something very obvious, but choose some unknown term to describe it like it's something new.
The other major issue with these ideas is whether they are discoverable by a patent examiner, and proving that they were published prior to a patent application.
I had a discussion with a patent examiner a few years ago, and he pretty much expressed that existing patents, journals and scientific publications are preferred as prior art, because they are easier to verify. Other non-patent literature is googled, and archive.org is sometimes used to confirm publication date, but is unreliable.
However, I've just been reading the manual on patent examination[1] and it turns out that the scope of online publications is quite broad, and that providing a date on the publication is sufficient for an examiner to consider it prior art. They also need to archive a search strategy for each application.
I guess what we can take from that, is to ensure that we always include a publication date, and make an effort to reasonably disseminate the ideas so that they can be easily found by examiners and used as evidence that it was accessible to any patent applicant. Guess that means I should drop a self-hosted wiki and publish on github like the author too.
Firstly, a patent doesn't cover only an abstract idea, but an abstract implementation of an idea. It's a description with a list of claims about how the idea is acheived, which can cite prior art, but the requirement is that a "non-obvious" invention occurs in the claims, which can unfortunately include "combination" of two or more existing ideas.
Given that the author had only described brief ideas, they might serve as prior art, but as they don't really establish claims on what is invented, someone could later come along and take the idea and develop it, coming up with "inventions" in their implementation. Such inventions are probably obvious to someone who takes the time to develop an idea, and would be rediscovered by anyone who starts from the same piece of prior art. A problem is that patent applications always start by using the broadest sense of the "invention" that it covers, and the claims are narrowed down if the application is rejected by the patent office, but applications can be revised and resubmitted many times.
The obviousness of ideas really depends on how much consideration is given to each one, so perhaps it would be in the interest of authors to establish claims on how each of their ideas might be achieved, as patents do (although they shouldn't need to be written in legalese.) Maybe a separate hyperlinked article where more detail is given on each, particularly the ones he cares most about, would surely improve the protection against the ideas being taken.
One of my concerns is the invention of new terms in patent applications which cover already existing ideas. I've seen patents which cover something very obvious, but choose some unknown term to describe it like it's something new.
The other major issue with these ideas is whether they are discoverable by a patent examiner, and proving that they were published prior to a patent application.
I had a discussion with a patent examiner a few years ago, and he pretty much expressed that existing patents, journals and scientific publications are preferred as prior art, because they are easier to verify. Other non-patent literature is googled, and archive.org is sometimes used to confirm publication date, but is unreliable.
However, I've just been reading the manual on patent examination[1] and it turns out that the scope of online publications is quite broad, and that providing a date on the publication is sufficient for an examiner to consider it prior art. They also need to archive a search strategy for each application.
I guess what we can take from that, is to ensure that we always include a publication date, and make an effort to reasonably disseminate the ideas so that they can be easily found by examiners and used as evidence that it was accessible to any patent applicant. Guess that means I should drop a self-hosted wiki and publish on github like the author too.
[1]: http://www.uspto.gov/web/offices/pac/mpep/s2128.html