See if this works
1bf9119e-1b07-4002-ab3a-c05f9219aec1
Christopher
Robert
Wirz
crwirz@gmail.com
PO BOX 743
Great Mills, MD 20634
https://www.chriswirz.com
8dd1f53f-ccd8-444a-99c5-814aa3b27d1f
Mustafa
Rabie
mustafa.rabie@gmail.com
invention, disclosure, blockchain, ipfs, public disclosure
The Disclosure Sys invention disclosure system is a search engine optimized system which uses IPFS and blockchain to reliably and publicly disclose novel inventions; thus giving users a trusted way to take advantage of the United States year grace period between public disclosure and patenting. For a public invention disclosure to hold in a court of law the disclosure must have a trusted timestamp and be shown that the information was easily accessible, such that an inventor patenting a similar object would have been able to easily find the invention’s prior art. The system’s timestamps are trustworthy through use of the blockchain protocol, and the use of the IPFS and search engine optimization make the information readily available to all. This system can then be used by inventors to protect their intellectual property through reliable public disclosure.
The invention presented here pertains to the field of the public disclosure of inventions. Its purpose is to allows individuals to publicly disclose their inventions in a way such that they can take full advantage of the protections provided by U.S. government's one year grace period from disclosure to patent.
A few similar services are available but they lack some of the features which make the the Disclosure Sys truly unique. The Bernstein company offers a service to store information on a blockchain which can be used as proof of ownership of information. But the information stored by this company is completely private and the service is a paid subscription where information is no longer stored when the subscription is no longer paid for. This system is thus not compatible with being an open and free public disclosure system.
Additionally the Bitcoin Notary service provides a similar platform as the Disclosure Sys but is missing some key features. While the Bitcoin Notary system does allow users to publically add documents to a blockchain and therefore timestamp ownership of the information, the system does require a nominal fee and therefore is not completely free. Additionally the downfall of this service as a public disclosure system is that the information stored is not easily found. If one submits a patent for an invention which is significantly similar to one that has been publicly disclosed within the last year, but it can’t be shown that the patent filer could have reasonable found the prior art, then the case for ownership by the creator of the original public disclosure is significantly diminished.
There are additional systems of similar purpose but they all suffer from similar deficiencies at accomplishing the desired requirements, which the system presented here does not.
US Patent: US6298327B1, Expert support system for authoring invention disclosures
This patent is for a system to create formatted patent documents for the United States patent system.While this is not the focus of our system we do provide similar functionality as the Disclosure Sys will generate a public disclosure document based off of a fillable form.But as of now the rights for this system have expired.
The Disclosure Sys is a novel system for inventors to publicly disclose novel inventions of their own, with a verifiable time stamp. This system uses blockchain technology to publicly store timestamped hashes of the documents submitted to the system. It then uses IPFS and search engine optimization to associate the document with the hash on the blockchain and make sure that the disclosures are easily and publicly accessible. Performing these two actions meets the requirements of having proof of a public disclosure of an invention and therefore allows users to take advantage of the United State’s year grace period of the singular right patent an invention once it has been publicly disclosed.
Figure 1 shows the process of adding the hash of a document onto the Ethereum blockchain.
Figure 2 shows how the document and its hash are connected to both the IPFS and the World Wide Web.
The drawing in Figure 1 demonstrates the process of adding a hash to the Ethereum blockchain. First the document is hashed using the SHA2-256 algorithm. This hash is then added to the next available Ethereum block using the Ethereum Smart Contract feature. Once the block has become full and the associated computational problem has been solved it is added to the Ethereum blockchain.
Figure 2 shows how the documents generated from the invention disclosures made using the Disclosure Sys are added to both the IPFS and the WWW. Once the document is created it hashed, then this hash and the document are added to the IPFS.The hash of the document is then associated with the document on the IPFS and can be used to locate the document within the IPFS.The document is additionally accessible on the traditional WWW through the Disclosure Sys website.
The United States of America allows for novel inventions to be publicly disclosed and for inventors to keep their right to patent for up to a year after this disclosure. In opposed to first to patent systems, where the first person to patent an idea has the complete rights to it, in the U.S. system having proof of a disclosure within the previous year can act as a protection against others patenting the idea. Thus having a system which can provide truly visible and highly trusted time stamps would be beneficial to those who wish protect their intellectual property, while publicly pursuing things such as funding or help with the patenting process. The invention disclosure system presented here meets all of these requirements.
The Disclosure Sys invention disclosure system is a blockchain and IPFS based data timestamp and storage system which is search engine optimized to provide highly visible invention disclosures which are accurately and credibly time stamped.
The system starts with a webpage on which users can create an account and then fill out a form which constitutes an invention disclosure.Once the form is filled the user can then choose to publicly disclose their invention.At this point the Disclosure Sys will take over and perform the following actions to achieve the desired quality of disclosure.The system will first create a hash of the information which makes up the disclosure.This will be done using the standard IPFS multi-hash system which uses SHA2-256 to hash information.Once this hash is generated it will be added to the Ethereum blockchain, this is done using the Ethereum Blockchain smart contracts feature. Smart contracts allow users to perform a variety of actions among which is the ability to store information on blocks within the Ethereum blockchain; this is the function that will be used here.Since there are limits to the amount of information which can be stored on a block, the previously generated hash, not the document itself, will added to the next available block on the Ethereum chain.
Since each block in the chain is timestamped through the blockchain protocol and the workings of this protocol make it a trusted way to time stamp information the hash has thus been given a reliable time of creation.This is as for blockchain miners to gain the right to add a block to the chain they must prove that they have solved a problem which is naturally generated from the previous blocks in the chain, thus adding a block locks the previous results in place.As changing them would be instantly noticeable because the problem generated and therefore the result calculated would not correspond with the previous blocks.Once a problem is solved every miner verifies that the solution is correct and then adds the new block to their copy of the chain.The longest chain is always considered to be the valid chain.
The system is thus reliant on the pooling of resources by the users to create a chain of incorruptible information due to changing previous blocks or adding errant blocks would require computational power greater than that of all users combined.This is as the malicious party would have to be able to solve the naturally generated problems faster than all other users combined could, so this malicious user could then create a chain which was longer than the legitimate chain and therefore cause others to mistakenly recognize it as the legitimate chain.
A hash generated by the Disclosure Sys can then be used to add the corresponding document to the IPFS network.On the IPFS network the hash is then associated with the created invention disclosure and will be stored on an IPFS node which will be publicly accessible.The IPFS network will then be able to resolve the hash to the document itself and the general public can then access the disclosure document.Additionally the document will be accessible through the search engine optimized Disclosure Sys site.This greatly increases the visibility of the disclosure and thus adds to the protection of the intellectual property contained within. The use of blockchain, IPFS and search engine optimization results in a system which has the desired capabilities of providing accessible presentation of information with trusted timestamps.
Possible improvements could be made to the system through use of multiple blockchains to provide a redundantly certified timestamp. Improvements to the user profile system could be accomplished through additional security features such as two-factor identification. Additionally features which allow eased communication between parties interested in the disclosures and the owner of the disclosure could be implemented. These should all fall within the scope of this disclosure.
This system is beneficial to society by providing a way to publicly disclose an invention that is trustworthy and accessible enough that another party attempting to patent a similar invention would have difficulty arguing that they were unable to find the prior art published on this system. Additionally since the use of the system is free it will be of disproportionate benefit to inventors of lower economic means. This is as it will allow them to gain the protection of public disclosure for free and simultaneously give them a platform to pursue funding or assistance with patenting process.
Our system is reliant on use of hashing, blockchain and the IPFS protocol. Specific instances of these concepts will be used in our implementation, but creation of any similar system using different hashing algorithms or a different blockchain would still infringe on our system. This is as trivial changes would be required to adapt our system to variations of these technologies. Additionally the use of IPFS was merely a design choice best suited to provide the intended services, any implementation of the above system with use of the TCP/IP protocol or any similar internet communication protocol would still be within the scope of this disclosure.
Our system is reliant on use of hashing, blockchain and the IPFS protocol. Specific instances of these concepts will be used in our implementation, but creation of any similar system using different hashing algorithms or a different blockchain would still infringe on our system. This is as trivial changes would be required to adapt our system to variations of these technologies. Additionally the use of IPFS was merely a design choice best suited to provide the intended services, any implementation of the above system with use of the TCP/IP protocol or any similar internet communication protocol would still be within the scope of this disclosure.
A system and method for drafting, editing, and publishing invention disclosures to a Search Engine Optimized BlockChain where
The storage format for a human readable block is HTML.
The block content is immutably stored on IPFS.
The computed hashes are stored on various main-stream chains (such as Ethereum).