Patent/copyright a website idea without building it?

Dave!

Hey guys,

As far as I know patenting is only for inventions, and websites wouldn't fall into the category....

But I have a pretty good idea for a website, yet don't have the expertise to build it myself! Nor do I have the money to pay someone else to

Truth be told I'm not too eager to take on the responsibility or workload of maintaining it even, since I'm going into my final year in college!

So I'm wondering if there is a way to protect the idea, so that someone else could not use it for the time being... Yet if someone wanted to buy the idea and implement it themselves, they could do that.

I believe that's how patenting works anyways: the inventer patents the idea with description and blueprints etc, and a manufacturer can offer to make it/buy it.

Cheers

Stab*City

Intellectual property (IP) is a legal field that refers to creations of the mind such as musical, literary, and artistic works; inventions; and symbols, names, images, and designs used in commerce, including copyrights, trademarks, patents, and related rights. Under intellectual property law, the holder of one of these abstract "properties" has certain exclusive rights to the creative work, commercial symbol, or invention by which it is covered.

aidan_walsh

Patent a website? No. Patent a software business process? Yes.

pwd

No idea about patents. Software patenting is a contentious issue. I'm currently working my ass off trying to get an idea implemented properly before someone else thinks of it myself!
If getting a patent doesn't seem viable (and maybe even if it is) you should speak to someone involved in research in the college about the possibilty of writing an academic paper on it. That way you can at least make sure you get the credit for the idea etc if it gets published. Don't be shy about this - research staff like people to present ideas for papers so if the idea is novel and good they'll be only too happy to hear about it - they'll get partial credit for it.
If you decide to do this, do be careful about who you choose to talk to about it, because you should want to get your name first on the paper, since it's your idea and you'll probably do most of the work. I'm not sure what happens typically but I think sometimes the order of names on a paper reflects rank rather than the work done and sometimes vice-versa. I'm a research postgrad and I've had a paper published with my name first so it's not always the case that the supervisor's name is first anyways.

p

Why should you make money from just having an idea, not telling anybody, and then just sueing someone who does put the work in to make it viable. The cheek of you! People have great ideas all the time. An idea is very different from an invention, where someone has actually created something new.

Thankfully, for the most part copyright & patent law doesn't protect people like you and is aimed at protecting people who actually do things and then get copied.

And, on a related note. Read this.

turgon

Dave! wrote: »

But I have a pretty good idea for a website, yet don't have the expertise to build it myself! Nor do I have the money to pay someone else to

Tell us the idea and we will get back to you

I would you could patent it somehow. But maybe you would actually have to describe how it works. For example, one could not patent the hinge; one would have to patent your design implementation of a hinge.

Dave!

Thanks folks

p wrote: »

Why should you make money from just having an idea, not telling anybody, and then just sueing someone who does put the work in to make it viable. The cheek of you! People have great ideas all the time. An idea is very different from an invention, where someone has actually created something new.

Thankfully, for the most part copyright & patent law doesn't protect people like you and is aimed at protecting people who actually do things and then get copied.

And, on a related note. Read this.

We should probably do away with the whole patent system then huh p?

Your judgement has been duely noted and given what I have deemed an appropriate amount of consideration.

Hobbes

aidan_walsh wrote: »

Patent a website? No. Patent a software business process? Yes.

Exactly. If his website is a software business process then he can go for it.

However patenting isn't cheap. It costs a lot of money to file one.

mneylon

The problem with patents is that they can be granted for very broad concepts and if they are enforced then others suffer.

Trademarks are a different matter entirely

p

Dave! wrote: »

We should probably do away with the whole patent system then huh p?

Not at all. I believe in protecting people's work. However, the patent system is designed to protect people who actually invent things, not people who just come up with an idea for an invention, but don't bother we any of the actual inventing.

If you allowed that to happen, it would cripple industry, and discourage R&D and new inventions.

oeb

Generally you will find it extremely difficult to patent a website. Due to the nature of web development, there is more than one way to do anything, so it's quite possible for me to deliver the same product as you, done in a very different way.

ianhobo

p wrote: »

Not at all. I believe in protecting people's work. However, the patent system is designed to protect people who actually invent things, not people who just come up with an idea for an invention, but don't bother we any of the actual inventing.

If you allowed that to happen, it would cripple industry, and discourage R&D and new inventions.

I would have to disagree, there are entire companies out there whos sole purpose is to track down patent infringement on both implemented and un-implemented idea.

You are more than free to file for a patent for something and not implement it! But you pay for the privilege, and the upkeep of the patent whos maintenance costs INCREASE each year. Sometimes the idea is can be worth more a patent, than having had huge expense in implementing it.

r3nu4l

Dave! Following on from our PMs...

I think your idea is good but I do feel that it can wait. Even if there are a few sites doing what you have thought of there;s huge room in the market. Also, how you market this eventual site to prospective clients is more important than other aspects or whether someone else is doing the same thing.

Patents are very difficult to protect and patent lawsuit bills can be massive. Diageo took out a lot of patents on widget technology to protect it from being copied. Within two years a rival company had developed their own widget without infringing the Diageo patents.