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Rights to Ideas

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vashon Gadson

Guest
What is the name of your state? NC, I Have a great concept for a new Reality show. A producer at a television network told me to submitt the idea, but I would like protection of my idea. In other words, compensation if my idea is used. How can I propose my idea and ensure compensation if my idea is used?
 


divgradcurl

Senior Member
Ideas themselves are not protectable, unless you keep them to yourself. An expression of an idea can be protected by copyright -- so, if you want, you could register the copyright on your work before sending it to the producer. That's about the best you can do.
 

KDP

Junior Member
Diva,

In tune with Gadson's question: Is there any credance to the saying... "Poor man's patent"??

This would be where one may describe, in detail, the scope of one's idea or invention and mail it to one'sself??

Any thoughts??

Also, wouldn't "Ideas" fall under "Intellectual Property"? If not, Why?

KDP

P.S. This topic really belongs under: https://forum.freeadvice.com/forumdisplay.php?f=59
 
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divgradcurl

Senior Member
Okay, one last time: It's NOT diva, it's div, then grad, then curl...! I am not Whitney Houston!

Anyway, the only thing that a "poor man's patent" or "poor man's copyright" might get you is some extra evidence of an invention date. That's it.

Under patent law, you have NO rights or protections UNTIL a patent ISSUES. Patent pending is a legally meaningless statement -- whether or not a patent is pending doesn't affect anything, because you have NO rights to enforce until a patent issues. Period. A "poor man's patent" may be helpful to establish an earlier priority date, that's it. The USPTO assumes that the day you file for your patent is the day you invented it. You only need evidence of an earlier invention date if you need to prove you invented before some prior art was published or to defeat another's claim to the patent.

Finally, a patent only covers an invention, which requires both conception (the "idea") and reduction to practice (actually developing the invention far enough to be "practiced"). So an idea alone is insufficient for a patent.

Under copyright law, the idea is also not protected, only the expression of the idea. The old adage is, "boy meets girl is not protectable, but Romeo and Juliet is protectable." Copyright protection begins immediately when a creative work is "fixed in a tangible medium" -- you only need to prove a creation date if you want to sue someone for infringement. A registered copyright is useful because 1) it is presumed you are the owner if you have a registration (you don't have to prove it in court) and 2) it gives you more options for damages in a later infringement suit.
 

divgradcurl

Senior Member
One last thing that I forgot above:

Also, wouldn't "Ideas" fall under "Intellectual Property"? If not, Why?
The purpose of IP law in the U.S. is to provide an incentive for people to create and innovate. The idea is that if someone invents something, spends the time and money to create something new, the law provides an incentive -- they get a temporary monopoly on the invention. In return, they have to fully disclose their invention to the public, so that others can build upon their work. Same is true for trademark and copyright law, although the protections are a bit different -- the underlying policy is still the same.

If an idea alone could be protected, then the owner of the idea could prevent anyone from using that idea for some period of time -- and that stifles innovation.

A better way to describe this might be through example -- if someone could have patented, say, the "idea" of displaying a photograph on a computer monitor, where would we be today? Anyone who wanted to build a webpage with pictures would have to obtain a license -- and what if the guy didn't want to issue licenses?

What really happened was that someone (I don't remember who, maybe Unisys or Digital) figured out a good way to display images on a computer monitor -- the GIF image -- and got a patent. They could keep others from developing HW and SW from displaying GI images without a license, but they couldn't keep others from coming up with JPEG. If they had a patent on the idea alone, they could have prevented JPEG from happening; but, since they were only given a patent on the idea + a way to do the idea, they could protect their invention while leaving others free to pursue alternative ways to solve the same problem.
 

KDP

Junior Member
VERY GOOD REPLY (DIVGRADCURL :D )!!

Really, Thank you!!

Gadson: The rest is up to you! :D
 
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Z

zilantyas

Guest
Non-Disclosure No-Compete

For an idea, isn't it possible for them to sign a non-disclosure; no-compete agreement before even discussing the idea and this should protect it for a period of time. I'm not an expert so I might be wrong but if someone knows better, then please follow-up. Thanks!
 

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