[ale] OT: Manufacturing an idea....

[Marvin Dickens]

On Wed, 2003-05-14 at 19:22, Christopher Bergeron wrote:

> The old envelope trick probably won't do squat for you these days. 

No one thing does it these days. For that matter, no two or three things
do it for you these days. You've got to generate as much documentation
as is possible.


> You can probably prove "first-use" by the date of the Postal Stamp,

You can't even prove "first use" with the postage stamp thing. All you
can prove with that is that by or on the date of the post mark, the
paper work enclosed in the envelope was indeed notarized. This stops the
imminent assertion the that the date of notarization on the document is
dubious. Simply, the post mark supports the date of the notarization.  

> however, the high profile IP attorneys will shoot holes in that arguement.  I 
> might offer you some protection, but it won't give you much (if 
> anything).  IP law is a very big-money industry, with some high powered 
> attorneys.  Your best bet is to document your idea (explicitly), and 
> have it signed by 2 people that understand it completely, and have it 
> notarized. You want 2 witnesses instead of just one in the event that 
> one of the parties dies (god forbid, but it is a possibility considering 
> that humans ship with expiration dates).

Actually, this is a good start, but not even this will guarantee it.
Basically, Every time the opportunity presents itself, leave a paper
trail. If the opportunity does not present itself, create a paper trail
anyway. Just be sure that your paper is reconized by the courts as a
legal and/or binding document that *clearly* documents whatever it is
that you think needs documenting.

As crazy as this sounds, I had an experience about 10 years ago where
the deciding factor in a piece of litigation was a fax transmittal log:
You know, the log that a fax machine can be programmed to spit out every
time you make a fax.It contains the date, time, number of pages,
successful send,unsuccessful send and etc... What it did was support our
claim that the company in question had a critical critical piece of
information in their possession at a certain time. From the log, we were
able to show with the phone records that the opposition was lying. Their
attorney sh!t in his pants when we produced the log... Point is, you
never know what the ultimate deciding piece of documentation is going to
be.

Best

M. Dickens


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