Protecting software

There is a great story from the early days of personal computing that is relevant to this.

The first electronic spreadsheet was a useful little program called Visi-Calc. (I used it on an Apple IIe as an undergrad.) The guys that developed the concept and wrote the code, copyrighted the code itself but did not patent the stunningly, groundbreakingly good concept of the electronic spreadsheet. Whilst no-one could reprooduce their actual code (legally), people could, and did, rip-off the idea by simply writing their own code. The rest is history, as they say. Lotus 1-2-3 and then Excel evolved. The Visi-calc guys became a little bit rich, but not close to the extent that they could have, had they held rights to the concept.

To effectively protect intellectual property, there are no shortcuts. You need legal advice to help to lock it down. It is not cheap (to do properly). One approach would be to sell a share of the prospective business to partner you trust to fund the legal bills.

http://dssresources.com/history/sshistory.html


Would imply that history is somewhat more convoluted than this.

Great read. It certainly is an interesting story. I obviously could not do it justice in a single paragraph dredged from memory.

The message that IP rights are complex remains valid.

It did not take me all that long to retrain from Visiculc to Lotus 123

quote:

Originally posted by Sniper:
I have written a sweet little programme/utility/tool to automate the indexing of a book (a hugely labourious job usually). There are software packages out there already but I think I may have something commerically viable but how do I protect it? Does it need patenting? I could not afford that. How about copyright? If I offer it to (say)a publisher I don't want them pinching it. Any ideas?

Why not release it as shareware or free-ware - if it really is exceptional then lots of people will use it and a few will send you some wonga - as a programmer you can have nothing better in your CV than wrote a programme used by millions - once you have a critical mass of users then you have potential customers for software.

If your code is open sourced then sort the licensing and then as suggested above try to collect some cash and lastly look at Source Forge or something along those lines to house and distribute your baby.

ROTF

quote:

Why not release it as shareware or free-ware - if it really is exceptional then lots of people will use it and a few will send you some wonga - as a programmer you can have nothing better in your CV than wrote a programme used by millions - once you have a critical mass of users then you have potential customers for software.

And then die a pauper with a great C.V.?

Cheers

Jim

SaaS? You sell the service of indexing and never give the software out.

C

Intellectual property rights is a hugely complicated area. Its a mess of international/national laws, politics, and money, the latter being reason no. 1 they exist in the first place. And it gets even worse when dealing with software which isn't really patentable as such, at least not in Europe. But it can apparently sometimes be done. In general, it must be possible to consider them as 'inventions'. Inventions are roughly those with technical effects in industrial applications (whence the money-thing).

AFAIK you automatically have copyright to anything you write in text, including source-code. It gives you little IPR-protection though. E.g. someone could simply rewrite your program, hence altering the text. There are other reasons too.

Its costly and it can easily take several years to get the patent (I think 18 months is minimum in Europe), at which point it may no longer be necessary to protect it. Moreover, if you do add new functionality, the patent is not guaranteed to cover that - unless you've filed you're claim sufficiently cleverly. And the evil list goes on and on...

I think the freeware/shareware idea could be a good alternative. Don't get distracted by the idealistic undertones. Rather, consider it as a means of propagating your knowledge and expertise into a potential market. This, in a way, is a stronger "lock-in" than the program itself can obtain. Accompany this by building a (business) network around your ideas. Because, if you intend to make money on the program, the latter is of crucial importance, as you woulnd't gain much by sitting on a clever (patented) program on something no one could be bothered to buy - or even know exists. If you get this far, I'd say that patents are often of limited use. Your (potential) customers won't care if you have a patent or not. They need to solve their task, and if they know you're the man (woman) for this, they'll go shopping in your store.

Of course, as you go along, you do have to make sure you are set up with good contracts etc. as to ensure someone doesn't run off with your program and knowledge. Patents is only one of several mechanisms for doing this though. And you need to take care because patents can get you into trouble as well. Suppose if someone saw your patent and thought, hey, that's clever, but I'll do this in addition and with slight variation and patent it myself. Rendering your program useless, and moreover you would forever (for the rest of your life at least) be prevented from "getting that idea" yourself.

I guess this also illustrates that if you are really serious about patenting, it almost follows that one must consider the entire business needed to actually make money it. Unless perhaps, you can afford the patent without needing the cost covered for.

This is why I also would suggest that you contact some independent sources for consulting. I don't know how it works where you live, but in Denmark there are several organisations that can assist aspiring businesses in getting started, including assistance on IPR-issues.

(If you knew this, please discard. Also, I know very little about this. I once attended a course on IPR, and this is all from my vague recollection of those days)

quote:

Originally posted by Exiled Highlander:
ROTF

quote:

Why not release it as shareware or free-ware - if it really is exceptional then lots of people will use it and a few will send you some wonga - as a programmer you can have nothing better in your CV than wrote a programme used by millions - once you have a critical mass of users then you have potential customers for software.

And then die a pauper with a great C.V.?

Cheers

Jim

Marty Roesch wrote Snort and gave it away as suggested; in 2001 he founded a small company called Sourcefire to offer user support. In 2005, Check Point offered Marty $225 million for his company. Marty turned them down. in 2008 Sourcefire had funds of At the end of 2008 the company had over $100 million in cash and equivalents. and were #1 in their field according to Gartner.

This is not a unique story - Netscape was similar, but the software has to be good.

ROTF

I know...all good stories and there are a few of them, but for every one there are thousands of opposite stories where success was totally elusive.

Cheers

Jim

I want to thank everyone who contributed to this thread. Lots of sensible advice very much appreciated. Thank you.