Reply To: IP on the forums repost of #1128

In response to the above, Larry Pfeffer sent me a personal email, relevant parts reproduce below. I will respond in a reply:
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Ivan,

In forum post #1128 you wrote:

In this and all other topics, please do not speculate or suggest ideas in the public forum. … We may already have worked out something in great detail and are just about to file the patents on it, only to have an innocent well-intentioned suggestion give enough of the idea that a patent is no longer available, or could be attacked even if granted.

I suggest you re-post your message #1128 in such a way that all forum members see it. On the off chance you haven’t thought of these options to better protect your IP, you might want to:

1. Explicitly change the forums’ terms of use, so that all ideas posted on millcomputing’s forums becomes millcomputing’s property. If so, I suggest sending a message to everyone already signed up and change the forum signup to agree to the same message as a condition for forum participation. Doing so seals one type of IP-loss hazard, but even under that forum change, posts could still establish new deadlines for patent filings.

2. Change the forums to be moderated. That’s clearly more work, and it requires moderators to know Millcomputing’s current and foreseen IP. (Admittedly, an ouch.)

I hope you won’t close the forums, but I’d rather see you keep ownership of your IP and bring it to market ASAP. I’ve done my best to write my forum posts such that they don’t poison any of your wells. I’m first inventor on a recent patent, through which I learned about some of the many things that can screw a patent application’s chances of being granted. And drafting a patent application to get through the USPTO is considerably easier than drafting a patent application and claims that can also stand up to concerted challenges by deep-pocketed opponents, e.g. Intel, IBM, Google….