Priority Interrupt by Steve Ciarcia Intellectual Property

Circuit Cellar contest participation is truly an international affair. On average, 50% of the entries and 50% of the prizes go to international participants. Following a recent contest, I contacted one of our international winners from China to tell him the good news. After getting to know the winner via e-mail and phone calls, it occurred to me that he could help me reach out to other Chinese engineers interested in our design contests. I’m happy to say that I now have a new Circuit Cellar contest coordinator for China. He directly promotes our contests to the Chinese technical community, but, more importantly, he now does the physical sample distribution for China.

In accomplishing his new role, he is setting up a Chinese web site. Primarily in English (because contest entries have to be submitted in English), the site is structured very much like you’d expect a contest promotion site to look. It also includes an in-depth Frequently Asked Questions section to help explain our design contest concept to Chinese engineers. I’ve been writing the answers for many of these FAQs myself just to make sure there is nothing lost in the translation.

This morning I got another FAQ to answer that I found very interesting: How do I protect the intellectual property of the entry? Will I lose the intellectual property of the project if the circuit charts and source codes are exposed publicly?

My first reaction was to chuckle. Someone from the one place on Earth with the greatest problem of copyright piracy wants an FAQ answered on how to protect his intellectual property (grin). In all fairness to my friend in China, however, this was an unfair and fleeting thought. The best answer I could give to quell any nervousness was to explain exactly how we treat contestants’ intellectual property. Only by demonstrating that you believe in protecting the IP of others do you create a system that protects your own.

One of the prime tenets of a Circuit Cellar-conducted contest is that the contestants always retain the intellectual property rights to their projects, even if they grant us publishing rights or win prizes. When it comes to this contest FAQ, however, I don’t think the answer should deal with the legality of protecting design IP. Rather, it should convey a practical understanding of what the real intellectual property is in a contest project.

One of the hardest things for engineers to understand is that their ideas usually aren’t unique. Most designs aren’t instantly commercialized and put into production simply because of their sheer existence. Even if you patent a design, it doesn’t keep someone from using that design for personal use. It is only in the realm of commercial exploitation of patented designs where there is potential protection (to the limits of your legal budget).

Posting a project complete with schematics and source code doesn’t mean you’ve instantly given away your intellectual property rights. I’m not a lawyer, but I believe there is a certain window of time between presenting something publicly and it being considered public domain. In fact, the presentation itself often certifies the invention date should the design really have some commercial value.

The more practical value of posting design projects is that it is a public exhibition of your competence as an engineer or programmer. A number of contestants have sent us testimonials about how they have received job offers, consulting positions, and manufacturing opportunities after we posted their contest projects.

In all deference to people who think their ideas are unique and need to be protected from theft, it doesn’t happen that way. Any honest manufacturer wants a documented design trail before investing big dollars to put something into production. Companies are interested in reducing design-to-manufacture time and costs, not stealing designs. The way that virtually all of them do this is to either hire the entrant who designed the project or license the concept from him to eliminate potential conflict later on. Ninety-nine out of 100 times, the company will still redesign whatever it was, but you’ll have gotten the job or some other tangible benefit from exhibiting your capability.

Posting a contest project provides exposure and opportunity. The real IP in a contest isn’t the schematics and code, but rather the knowledge and expertise you bring to the table.