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Management and publication of ideas for inventions accumulated in a computer database

Management and publication of ideas for inventions accumulated in a computer database description/claims

The present application is a continuation of U.S. application Ser. No. 10/309,384, filed Nov. 25, 2002; which is a divisional of U.S. application Ser. No. 10/072,071 filed Feb. 8, 2002; which is a continuation-in-part of U.S. application Ser. No. 09/980,654 filed Oct. 25, 2001; which was the National Stage of International Application No. PCT/US01/25317, filed Aug. 10, 2001; which claims the benefit of U.S. Provisional Application No. 60/224,944, filed Aug. 11, 2000, and U.S. Provisional Application No. 60/227,687, filed Aug. 24, 2000. Each of the above-referenced applications are incorporated by reference in their entirety.

Embodiments of the present invention pertain to management and publication of ideas for inventions accumulated in a computer database. The accumulated ideas may include needs, problems, solutions, requirements, discoveries and/or inventions and/or be systematically accumulated prior to filing patent applications for inventions derived at least in part from the accumulated ideas. A discovery of a problem, need or requirement calling for a solution is commonly an integral idea-component of an invention.

In one embodiment there is a computerized method of managing ideas for prospectively patentable invention, comprising accumulating idea contributions for prospectively patentable inventions in a computer database; establishing contractual obligations by at least some contributors of the idea contributions to the database to transfer property rights to inventions derived at least in part from the contributed ideas to a transferee; publishing at least one of the accumulated idea contributions for one of the prospectively patentable inventions prior to filing any patent application for the invention; and facilitating transfer of some of the property rights to a customer who obtains property rights to one or more of the prospectively patentable inventions, wherein subsequent to the publishing, at least one patent application for the one or more inventions is filed.

The foregoing method may be performed by one party or by different parties in concert with one another.

Additional features of the present invention are described with reference to the detailed description of certain embodiments.

FIG. 1 is a diagram illustrating various aspects of the present invention.

FIG. 1A is a diagram showing in greater detail some of the “contractual obligations” by idea contributors shown only generally in the diagram of FIG. 1.

FIG. 1B is a diagram showing four alternative embodiments of the “enable viewing” function shown only generally in the diagram of FIG. 1.

FIG. 1C is a diagram showing in greater detail the “listings” shown only generally in the diagram of FIG. 1.

FIG. 2 is a diagram of an exemplary embodiment of the organization of an integrated idea in a computer database, wherein problem ideas are indicated by squares and solution ideas are indicated by circles.

FIGS. 3 through 60 are views of various screen displays provided from a website to a user upon accessing an idea database in accordance with the present invention, wherein FIGS. 19 through 42 are related to browsing the exemplary embodiment of the integrated idea that is organized as shown FIG. 2. Views of screen displays overlapping two sheets of drawing are identified by a common FIG. number and A and B suffixes.

• Provisional Patent
• Utility Patent

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