Patents, intellectual property, & copyright

[roon]

Is copyright legally robust enough to qualify as prior art?

Is copyright a suitable alternative to patents if one doesn't have the money or resources to apply for a patent?

Have you ever experienced plagiarism in an engineering, design, or IP context?

If you the reader have patents under your name: how much did applying/filing cost you?

When one lacks a manufacturing base, would you consider publishing images & text to be the best option available for introducing product into the public domain?

[Greg Locock]

Getting a patent in one country is not very expensive if you do it all yourself. This is not necessarily a bad way of documenting a design so that you can claim prior art. Getting a valid patent that will provide meaningful protection worldwide is very expensive (tens of thousands of dollars plus ongoing fees). And to enforce it again you will be paying tens of thousands of dollars, and you might get some money.

The patent system is reasonably broken.