RE: [really OT] patents / copyright / trademarks

["Hawes,Timothy Edward \(GEG\)" <haweste@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Jonathan,

Firstly, I'm no lawyer, but I'll offer my opinion anyway as I have a
little patent experience (and I won't charge you ;-)  ). You should
really take proper legal advice before you go too far, however.

>From my understandings...it depends how similar your idea is to the
supermarket/petrol/airline frequent flyer etc. schemes that currently
exist. What could be argued is that your scheme is really no different
to those current schemes (i.e. the "prior art") and therefore you
should
not be granted a patent for it. UK patent law also differs from US
patent law and the granting of a patent depends on all sorts of things
like prior art, whether the idea is "obvious", whether the idea
has
already been offered for sale or publicly disclosed, etc. A patent also
cannot be granted for ideas that are deemed too broad, you do have some
leeway however (I can't think of a suitable example right now, but a
patent lawyer should be able to help).

It's hard to be anymore definite without knowing what your idea is, but
then for you to disclose it may not be best for you.
What you should do immediately is record all details of your invention,
including the date/time/place you first thought of it, who else you may
have told etc. Also include any variations on the idea you may have
already thought of.

One resource you may find helpful is: www.ip.com I'm aware of the site's
existence but I don't know if it's purely US-centric, or takes a more
worldly view of things.

HTH, I'm happy to offer further suggestions, but maybe we'd better take
it off-list?

Cheers,

Tim.



> -----Original Message-----
> From: JT @ Home
>
> Apologies for the wildly off topic posting, but I seem to be
> going around in circles at the moment trying to find some
> information, I'm not sure if I'm searching for the right info either.
>
> If you shop at tesco's / morrisons etc they give you 'points'
> which you save on a card and then later redeem for money off
> your shopping. What I'm after is, does anyone know if this
> system is patented / copyrighted etc.
>
> I've got an idea for something similar and I'd like to
> 'register' my idea so I can license it and earn a few quid
> (well, that's the plan anyway).
>
> I wondered if anyone may be able to offer some advice on how
> or where I'd find some more information on this subject, I've
> been searching the patent office and cannot find anything
> that matches my idea exactly, but I don't know whether to use
> a patent (its just an idea and a process to go with it)
>
> Kind regards,
>
> Jonathan