@bgcarlisle To clarify: suppose you have some method and you could decide to try to patent it or try to publish a paper on it, what are the tradeoffs?

@gzt @bgcarlisle I've heard that if you publish and fail to patent after X amount of time, other people can come along and patent it, closing you out from using it. :/ I've come up with some processes and want to publish, but I'm afraid of this.

@bthall @gzt @bgcarlisle If you've published and have an implementation somewhere, I'm pretty sure that counts as "prior art" and would invalidate a subsequent patent by someone else, if it was basically identical to your work.

Note that I am not a lawyer and this does not constitute legal advice. It's just based on my layman's understanding after the copyright/free software/free culture scene for about 20 years.

@gzt @bgcarlisle If it's a method that you can implement in software, you can also release it under a free/open source software license _and_ publish about it.

That establishes your copyright and prior art via the code, the license determines what others need to do if they want to redistribute or build on it (e.g. nothing (permissive), just give you attribution, or share all of their changes (copyleft).

And the publication gives you academic glory!

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