Of un-patents and un-inventions

[David Webber (XML)]

I'm not sure if this is entirely 100% the obvious place to float this
idea - but here goes anyway.

Part of the underlying thread with licenses is this notion of non-IPR
and non-invention - and the potential threat from a USPTO issued
"invention" conflicting.

It suddenly occurred to me - that creating un-patents and un-inventing
is entirely possible - and indeed we could create a review board 
and repository to receive these.  These would be a powerful antidote
to any possible future claims - and also make nice references for
the license to cite the un-invention and un-patent and un-claims.

Notice I have two issued USPTO patents that I filed some years 
back - so I'm very familiar with the regular patent process.

In the course of any given year I probably have 10 or 15 notions that
would be highly "patentable" - and if I worked for Microsoft or IBM 
I'm sure they would file them - but frankly I'm not about to waste
$500 on each one and a bunch of effort doing so personally.  The 
irritating thing about this situation is that some twit could file a 
USPTO patent based on some variation of an idea that had become
public - and then hold a whole community hostage around that - or
so the story goes anyway.

Example - the work I've just done on a trusted voting process:

http://drrw.net/backup/Trusted-Ballot-Processing-Nutshell.pdf

But just as the USPTO issues patents - an authorative body such
as OSI / OSD could receive un-patents and un-inventions, have
peer review boards review same for accuracy and completeness - 
and then log them into a Wiki or similar for public access.

The beauty of this - since its an un-invention - its does not matter
if someone else already has another un-invention that is broadly
similar, that merely reinforces the un-invention again.  This makes
the review boards job much easier. 

Since the USPTO does not seem to ever read public specifications
or open sourced licensed components - this would also give the
USPTO a convenient means to check the un-invention Wiki 
before taking the stupid step of issue one of their own 
software invention licenses.

OK - shoot this idea down for me!?!

DW