Week 18 - Invention, Intellectual Property and Income

This week's task is to develop a plan for disseminating the final project and to prepare drafts of the summary slide and a short video (~1 minute, less than 25 MB).

This week, we learned about intellectual property, including copyright, licensing, and various commercialization strategies. Below, I summarize what I learned from Neil and Ivan on these topics.

Copyright

All creative works (text, music, art, and software) automatically receive copyright protection for the creator's lifetime + 70 years. The © symbol is not required for the copyright to be valid. However, if a similar work has already been in wide use, copyright cannot be claimed. Re-implementing a similar work from scratch is allowed if it can be proven that no copyrighted material was used. For creative works, copyright is often more practical than a patent. For example, Intel's products are more heavily protected by copyright than by patents.

Licensing

There are various licensing options for how to share your work:

• Creative Commons: A family of licenses that let you choose which rights you want to keep or share.
• GPL, LGPL, BSD, MIT, etc.: Various open-source licenses, each with their own strengths and weaknesses. In open-source, all product details are made public (like Prusa 3D printers), often increasing trust and sales. The MIT License, for example, allows free use with attribution.
• Fab License: Neil Gershenfeld created this concise license with MIT lawyers. It's just four sentences long, compared to several pages in GPL. In short:
  • All copyright rights are shared.
  • The creator does not expect payment, only acknowledgment.
  • The creator retains copyright.
  • There are no guarantees: you're using it at your own risk.

At the beginning of this project, I chose the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives (CC BY-NC-ND) license. I knew that it is not possible to switch to a more restrictive license later, but it is allowed to move to a less restrictive one. So, to be on the safe side, I chose this relatively restrictive license. I may consider relaxing it later, but for now, I'll keep it as is.

• Attribution — You must give appropriate credit, provide a link to the license, and indicate if changes were made. You may do so in any reasonable manner, but not in any way that suggests the licensor endorses you or your use.
• NonCommercial — You may not use the material for commercial purposes.
• NoDerivatives — If you remix, transform, or build upon the material, you may not distribute the modified material.

Patenting

A patent is a type of intellectual property that gives its owner the legal right to exclude others from making, using, or selling an invention for a limited period of time in exchange for publishing an enabling disclosure of the invention [Wikipedia]. You can start by checking existing patents on Google Patents, for example. If your idea is new, you can file a provisional patent, which gives you one year to apply for a full patent while allowing you to discuss your idea publicly. A patent is usually awarded for something tangible and must be new, useful, and feasible. Still, some patents are granted for ideas that defy the laws of physics.

There is no such thing as a global patent, but the Patent Cooperation Treaty simplifies applying in multiple regions. Timing is crucial: if someone else files first, you lose the right to patent that idea. If you are not planning to manufacture for example in China it's worth considering whether applying for a patent there is sensible, since enforcement can be expensive and difficult.

Once an invention is publicly disclosed, like this Fab Academy project, it can no longer be patented.

Plan to Share My Work

Before taking the device home, I plan to leave it at the Fab Lab for a while to demonstrate what can be built there.

Future Opportunities and Development

The game I created serves as a learning tool for exploring digital fabrication. However, if improved, a commercialization model could follow the example of pinball machines: renting the device to bars or restaurants. Another option would be to place it in public venues and charge per play, for example using MobilePay. Possible enhancements include:

• More game modes
• Multiplayer capability
• Improved durability for public use
• Larger or smaller size

A minimum viable product could be developed as a side hustle using Fab Lab resources. Some people use crowdfunding on Kickstarter for funding. Prototypes could also be tested with real users to gather feedback and assess market potential.

According to the Fab Lab Charter: "Designs and processes developed in Fab Labs can be protected and sold however an inventor chooses, but should remain available for individuals to use and learn from. Commercial activities can be prototyped and incubated in a Fab Lab, but they must not conflict with other uses; they should grow beyond rather than within the lab; and they are expected to benefit the inventors, labs, and networks that contribute to their success." This makes Fab Labs ideal environments for early-stage product development. If a result is novel, useful, and feasible, it could potentially be patented.

Fab Academy has been inspiring in showing that quite large projects are achievable, while also providing a realistic understanding of what can be done with limited resources.

Final project video and summary slide