19. Invention, Intellectual Property & Income.

The tasks for this week are as follows:

  • Develop a plan for dissemination of your final project.
  • Prepare drafts of your summary slide

The checklist is as follows:

  • ✅ Created a dissemination plan for your final project
  • ✅ Outlined future possibilities and described how to make them probabilities
  • ✅ Uploaded a draft summary slide and video in the correct resolution and format
  • ✅ Checked your slide and video are accessible from your website

The last two on the checklist were simple enough. The first two are a lot wordier.

The License

My final project is a machine that dispenses trading cards for automated scanning. I created this primarily for my own use but I’d love to make it accessible for others to make and improve upon. I am therefore licensing this under a CC BY-SA 4.0 License:


You are free to:

  • Share — copy and redistribute the material in any medium or format for any purpose, even commercially. Adapt — remix, transform, and build upon the material for any purpose, even commercially. The licensor cannot revoke these freedoms as long as you follow the license terms.

Under the following terms:

  • 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. ShareAlike — If you remix, transform, or build upon the material, you must distribute your contributions under the same license as the original. No additional restrictions — You may not apply legal terms or technological measures that legally restrict others from doing anything the license permits.

Notices:

  • You do not have to comply with the license for elements of the material in the public domain or where your use is permitted by an applicable exception or limitation .

  • No warranties are given. The license may not give you all of the permissions necessary for your intended use. For example, other rights such as publicity, privacy, or moral rights may limit how you use the material.


Dissemination

Although primarily created as a solution for my own problem I believe this type of device has a target group in the hobby. Several people I know are already anxious to borrow it for scanning their own collections once it’s fully functional so I think there’s definitely an audience. I’ll be iterating upon this continuing after graduating and once it’s polished enough I intend to publish this on a site like Printables.com. This will require clear documentation and instructions as well as access to materials. I want people to be able to order all the non-fabricated hardware.

Development/Refinement

There are several things I already want to improve upon. Primary among them is reliability and finish. The first plan is to experiment more with different dispensing mechanisms. The current servo-sweep arrangement was convenient in the moment but I believe a pick-and-place style vacuum system might be the best in the long run. I also intend to completely overhaul the assembly/modularity of the machine. Designing a way to disassemble the machine for transport with easy connectors between segments which can also transmit power and data.

Commercialization

I’m not particularly interested in commercializing the project for the time being as it’s not something I have the time or energy for. However I’m open to the idea if I manage to develop it further but I still want it to remain as open as possible. This article on the Prusa blog from 2023 goes into some of the hurdles and concerns they’ve had with license compliance and the difference between Hardware and Software licenses. They claim to be drafting a new open-source hardware/software license that would resolve some of the current issues with most available licenses. I’ve been waiting for and keeping an eye on that development for a while now hoping for a good license. Depending on how my project development/refinement goes and the state of licenses I might consider commercialization.