Week 19 : Invention, Intellectual Property, and Income

This final week considers how the final project — the portable, pay-as-you-go solar PV system for street vendors — could be protected, licensed, shared, and made financially sustainable.

Basics on invention and IP

• Intellectual Property

  • Patents (US)

    • Use Google Patents to search for existing patents. To be patentable, an invention must be novel, non-obvious, and useful.

    • Types

      • Utility patent – Protects how something works (its function). Usually stronger and more valuable than a design patent.
      • Design patent – Protects appearance rather than function.

    • Disclosure

      • Defined as publicly revealing the mechanism of the system. An invention can alternatively be kept as a trade secret.
      • A patent is fundamentally a deal with the government. In exchange for a ~20-year legal monopoly, the inventor must publicly disclose how the invention works.
      • Defensive disclosure is the opposite strategy: deliberately publish the idea so that nobody can patent it and it remains free to use. "If I can't patent it, I'll at least make sure no one else can either."

    • Process

      • Provisional patent application – A lower-cost filing that establishes a priority date and provides 12 months before a full filing is required.
      • Non-provisional patent application – The full patent application which, if granted, becomes public.

    • Claims

      • The most important part of a patent. Claims define exactly what is legally protected.
      • Categories include:
        • Composition of matter
        • Method / process
        • Apparatus / machine
        • Article of manufacture

    • Patent Cooperation Treaty (PCT)

      • Allows a single application to reserve the right to file in multiple member countries.

    • Other notes

      • The US uses a first-to-file system, not first-to-invent.
      • Patents incur maintenance fees throughout their lifetime.
      • A patent does not automatically stop infringement; it grants the owner the right to enforce the patent through legal action.

  • Copyright

    • Protects original works of authorship such as software, documentation, CAD models, artwork, and designs.
    • Copyright is generally automatic upon creation, though registration may strengthen enforcement.

    • In many jurisdictions, protection lasts for the author's lifetime plus 70 years.

    • Creative Commons licenses (commonly used for documentation, media, diagrams, CAD models, etc.)

    License	Credit (BY)	Commercial Use	Modifications / Remixes	Share-Alike Required
    CC BY	Yes	Yes	Yes	No
    CC BY-SA	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
    CC BY-NC	Yes	No	Yes	No
    CC BY-NC-SA	Yes	No	Yes	Yes
    CC BY-ND	Yes	Yes	No	No
    CC BY-NC-ND	Yes	No	No	No

    • Common software licenses

    License	Type	Closed-Source Allowed	Must Share Modifications
    MIT / X11	Permissive	Yes	No
    BSD	Permissive	Yes	No
    Apache 2.0	Permissive	Yes	No
    LGPL	Weak Copyleft	Yes (when linked as a library)	Only modifications to the library
    GPL v3	Strong Copyleft	No	Yes

    Analogy: Permissive licenses (MIT, BSD, Apache) are roughly analogous to CC BY. Copyleft licenses (GPL) are roughly analogous to CC BY-SA. LGPL sits in between. User may use the library in a proprietary project, but improvements to the library itself must remain open.

  • Trademark

    • Protects brand identity, including names, logos, slogans, and other source identifiers.

  Source: Cursor by Anthropic, June 2026

License statement

The project is not intended to be patented. It is largely fab-able and it deliberately builds on existing open-source work. The work is released under open licenses and the split are as follows based on the type of material :

• Hardware, 3D models, PCB design, and documentation are licensed under Creative Commons Attribution–NonCommercial–ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0).

• Firmware / code is licensed under the MIT License.

The project is intended to serve as a reference platform for organisations working in energy access, digital inclusion, and micro-enterprise support. While Kilat was primarily designed to address the needs of street vendors by providing an affordable, portable, and self-sustaining source of electrical power, its applications are not limited to this use case. Potential users include social-impact organisations, NGOs, and community groups deploying pay-as-you-go (PAYG) energy systems in underserved or off-grid communities. The design may also be valuable for Fab Labs, makerspaces, educators, and students seeking a practical example of low-cost solar tracking, embedded systems, and IoT-enabled energy management.

The videos below demonstrate the system's load-switching functionality and servo actuation under remote control. A detailed explanation of the underlying software architecture, LoRA communication flow, and user interface is provided in Week 15 : Interface & Application Programming.

Scaling-up strategy

The project has so far been self-funded as part of Fab Academy, using the machines and infrastructure of the lab. Rather than a full business plan, the immediate focus is a small pilot to learn from real users (the street vendors) before scaling. The nature of the scale and the modularity of the product provides easy access for deployment compared to large, fixed installation.

Self-funding and grants will be explored and the next step is through crowdfunding. To reach that goal, the following technical work needs to be addressed :

• A functional payment system - replacing the dummy/token lock with real transactional backend.
• Standardise manufacture (phase 1) - freeze a single fixed design and build a small, repetable batch (e.g. 10 units). See Week 18 : Project Development, Applications & Implications for open questions and next-iteration improvements. This includes the robustness of the system
• Expand the loads - lighting and other small appliances beyond USB phone charging