Patenting our script.

Well, i was wondering the current script on our site is planning to be released on single license. We want to create a patent for it. I was wondering if anyone here could guide me in do this.

I would like to find out more information about writing the license, terms and policies everything that is neccessary so people dont edit our script.

The help is greatly appreciated.

 

You can get official copyright protection, but patenting it is not going to happen.

 

What exactly are you patenting?, your CMS looks like phpnuke and the million other clones out there.

 

As others have said, patenting is not an option here really unless your CMS has some really unique, unheard of and useful inventive feature. It might do, but - no offence intended - I doubt it does simply because CMSs are pretty standard stuff without that much room for wildly new concepts to appear.

In most countries you will automatically get copyright on anything you create - you can usually register this too to get an "official" record that you created it at a certain date, but its generally not required.

 

This is the information from the U.S. Copyright office on registering the copyright of computer programs:
http://www.copyright.gov/circs/circ61.html

 

You cannot get copyright for the entire thing, just for what can be copyrighted.

 

Well, what i am actually looking at is a patent, because we dont want to make our script to be open source or edited in any way possible. What is the right action we should take and what sort of license would be needed to accomplish this. I am just trying to be secure.

 

I'm not sure why you need a patent. A registered copyright protects your software against, well, copying, as well as the creation of derivative works. A restrictive license can be written that severely limits what people can do with the software (for an example, just read the licensing agreement for Windows or other major software products).

A patent is probably only worth pursuing if your software is completely novel - it does something no other software has done, or it solves some sort of programming problem in a completely novel way. If you really want to pursue it, you need to hire a patent agent or patent attorney who will first do a prior art search to make sure your software is completely novel. Here is the standard of patentability: http://www.uspto.gov/web/offices/pac/doc/general/index.html#whatpat

If it does appear to be patentable will then write and file the patent application for you (and it isn't simply a form to fill out, it's a written document in a specialized language that mostly just looks like English). The process is relatively expensive (especially compared to copyright registration) and can take years. You can learn more about patents here: http://www.uspto.gov/main/patents.htm

Note that if you already have the software on your web site or have talked about the software or publicly disclosed its existence, you may have already shot yourself in the foot patent-wise, if, indeed, it is patentable. The way it should be done is to file for the patent before revealing the information to anyone. It's extremely unlikely, however, that your software is novel enough to patentable at all. (And, in the end, probably not what you want - a patent covers what the software does, copyright registration covers the code itself)

I recommend reading some actual patents to get a feel for it. Here is one for Microsoft Exchange-related patent . Read the claims, starting here. The claims describe what is protected by the patent,

That's what the patent protects - not the code itself, but what the code does. Note also that the patent application was filed in 1999, but only issued in 2006.

 

Patents are not for this purpose. A patent is "protection for an idea" - i.e. to prevent others from using the same "idea", even if they create a completely independent implementation. For example had I patented the idea of a watch (i.e. something you wear that tells you the time), no one else would be allowed to make a watch - even if mine was a normal watch and someone else invented a digital watch; this is because the patent would cover the "idea" of something you wear to tell the time irrespective of how it works.

You wont be able to get a patent on a CMS as its already a well known and well used "idea".

What you want is copyright - this will prevent people "copying" the code or making derivative works without prior authorisation from the copyright owners. Note that if you have based your CMS off of something else already out there (e.g. PHP Nuke) you are on pretty dodgy ground elgally if you start imposing your own copyright and stuff on the whole thing, particuarly if the original thing has a license similar to GPL or CC-SA