The world of patents can be complicated, and even controversial at times. According to those who advocate the patent system, patents serve to facilitate innovation: Patent protection not only ensures that inventors are able to recoup the investments needed for research and development (allowing them to continue to be innovative), but also provides companies with sufficent incentive to get involved with commercialization. In addition, awarding patents makes the details of new technologies publicly available – if nothing else, inventors won’t take their trade secrets to their graves, and inventions can be exploited freely once the patents expire.

Patent law, however, has a dark side as well: While the application process is so costly that some simply cannot afford it, others acquire existing patents for the sole purpose of strong-arming rivals and extorting license fees from unsuspecting developers. Massive patent portfolios are a source of overwhelming power and rarely facilitate innovation – rather, they are a weapon used by large corporations to choke possible progress, crush the competition and gain monopolistic control. Mistakes by patent examiners, as humanly understandable as they may be, don’t really help the situation either: While in theory, patents that are overly broad or cover the obvious can always be fought in court, year-long litigation is really something for deep pockets only, and not a realistic option for most individuals (or other small entities).

Comparing a world without patents to the patent world itself, it may come as a surprise that the core issue in both scenarios is pretty much the same: Instead of being shared with others, inventions are often held back or restricted, progress is therefore hindered and in the end, a good many inventions benefit only a small minority. Most remarkably, however, the very remedy that has been proposed to fix the problem – patent law itself – is failing in these very aspects and contributing little or nothing to the solution.

Upon closer examination, it is difficult to avoid the impression that patent law was never designed to solve the issue of sharing in the first place: Patent law seems to be based on the assumption that the main driving force behind innovation is money, and therefore primarily paves the path for money. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but while focusing on the ability to monetize on inventions may be fantastic for some situations, it is hardly an approach that fits all people and all possible goals. The actual danger of patents therefore lies in generalizing their underlying principles: by turning a one-goal-fits-all approach into a de-facto imperative, the notion that anything novel and useful must either be patented or surrendered to the competition leaves little or no room for rationalities that cannot be made to fit this mold.

This is where Wikinventions comes into play: Wikinventions is a platform dedicated to sharing inventions and placing them into the public domain. Publishing detailed invention information on Wikinventions turns the underlying invention into prior art, thus ensuring that it can no longer be patented. Proof of existence is established by submitting hashes of all submitted text and imagery to the Bitcoin blockchain, while proof of publication is established via the Internet Archive. (For more details on how the process works, see here.)

In addition, Wikinventions is also a place for collaboration and development: Wikinventions hosts an array of forums, custom tools and applications to assist inventors in discussing ideas, plotting ground-breaking schemes and ultimately releasing the results of their work into the public domain.

Seems utopian? Indeed, if something like Wikinventions could truly work, then so could professional software that is open and free for all to use, or possibly even a collaboratively written free-content encyclopedia. But then again, they do – so with that in mind: enjoy Wikinventions!