New invention, would you patent & sell, or give away?

Hypothetical question.

I believe free energy is out there, waiting to be discovered, if we are only clever enough to find it.

Now lets say that you have come across it, and have a 100% rock-solid, provable energy-creating device. It is simple, easy to build, and does the job.

What do you do?

Let's assume the patent office will let you patent it, and then you could make billions. Would you patent it?

Or, let's assume you can't get it patented because people making money from selling energy have enough money to buy the lawyers, judges, and people working for the patent offices.

Would you just give it to the world, out of an act of charity, good faith, and kindness to humanity? Put it up on youtube, or something like that?

What would you do?

Free energy has already been discovered, what do you think is flying around out there? Otis Carr and Ralph Ring supposedly flew in their own craft based on free energy. They said the government came and shut them down...

You have in your title "patent and sell" as if they are joined. They are not necessarily. The best thing for a game-changing concept is to wrap up the IP. I would patent. But that doesn't equate to selling my patent to some one who would hide the technology.


[edit on 11-12-2007 by Valhall]

I mean, patent it to protect the commercial rights. Assuming that it is something that with worth billions, commercially.

Originally posted by dionysius9
I mean, patent it to protect the commercial rights. Assuming that it is something that with worth billions, commercially.

Unfortunately - the odds are pretty good that you would be offered an enormous sum of money for the patent by one of the large oil companies, and it would be subsequently filed away for eternity.

Every person has a price. "For the good of humanity" is a great line, until they hit that magic dollar amount that makes your eyes go a-flutter and your heart race.

You'd be hard-pressed to find anyone who would give it away - however you might find some hero who would have the entrapreneural spirit to develop the patent and build a business of their own based on the technology.

-Ry

yeah, you have to patent it to control what happens to it

the rub is how you get it to the people. Companies won't spend money for you to develop it, package it, and give it away.

I think you'd have to make a deal with the devil so to speak, get it up and going, buy charging for it initially, and then when it reaches a sort of business critical mass, drop the prices dramatically or make some sort of arrangement to allow other entities to offer it for free or whatever.

its over simplistic to think you could just say, here it is, it's free, go nuts.

it obviously depends on how you "deliver" the energy. if it will go over wires, you need to maintian those wires, and pay the employees, etc

if we're talking tesla's wireless electricity, you could probably do it extremely cheaply, but I think free is really hard to do, at some point you have to make hardware or maintain a facility in some fashion


.02

i would patent,give away,then sell to whoevers stupid enough to pay.