Development of Creative Commons licenses

["Branko Collin" <collin AT xs4all.nl>]

On 3 Jan 2005, at 14:58, Greg London wrote:
> Rob Myers said:

> > I'd imagine this is because the CC licenses are designed to cover
> > cultural works, not software, which is the only kind of "writing"
> > that can be both copyrighted and patented.
> 
> If someone drew out the working design of an invention with sufficient
> detail that it could be implemented and put that drawing under
> CC-ShareAlike, would that be enough to prevent anyone from patenting
> the invention?
> 
> I'm not sure how patent law works in this situation.
> 
> It would be good if it prevented patentability of that invention.
> 
> It wouldn't prevent patentability of derived inventions,
> since that would require patenting the original idea,
> but patenting would require money, so preventing the patent
> of the original invention for free would be better than nothing
> at all.

I am not a CPT lawyer.

>From what I understand, though, patents need to be published to 
constitute prior art. A work may be copyrighted (depending on the 
wording of your copyright law) before being published. Also, your 
local patent office may interpret the meaning of the word "published" 
differently from your copyright judge.

-- 
branko collin
collin AT xs4all.nl