Yeah, thank you very much for pointing this out. I'm not like everyone else. I place a high amount of emphasis on how I might contribute to the learning of culture. While I do have a priority date (that most probably will be used for PCT filing), the functions I'm speaking of here are not the patentable functions concerned in my invention per se, but merely aspects helpful for certain implementations. These are concepts that basically could be innovated on by others. IOW I'm not one to patent innovation regarding sound processing. There are skilled people around Fractal to do so - and I might love to work with some.
But I'm more motivated by education to the broad public in regards to discoveries concerning natural phenomena. The development approach I foresee requires a patent as a benefit to investors. How much licensing control is decided on by owners is a future I cannot see - hopefully Linux users can have an open source embodiment for non-commercial purposes.
AFAIK a patentable function or set of algorithms specifically is one that is novel (new), non-obvious (not just a re-combination of known concepts), useful (functional to the benefit of commerce/industry), and original (the patent applicant has originated it), over the prior art ( the prior art includes patents that are relatively unknown or known only to certain contractors - so none of us can really know if our inventions are truly patentable).
You are absolutely correct that its a landmine as far as requirements of due diligence - perceived give aways, offers for sale, (some people lose their rights inadvertently by simply having a university student touch it for a moment
) . Many people have tried to steer me away from the patent route and there are a lot of excellent reasons why they're largely right. Getting this far was something on the order of a 20,000 hour research project (and 48 signed NDAs or so later) so I would like to cover some of that expense in licensing if I have to - its not traditionally a field that one or two guys could afford to enter so if you're wandering why I don't just set up a shop and write the chip code - this is why. As I looked at the level of promise, I became more convinced that the approach should be very completely developed - so the public would gain an understanding - and that in my mind it would not truly reach fruition without also providing funding that educational aspect - getting people to understand the potential technical array of concepts. Until I filed a few months back I was so careful that until I had NDAs signed I didn't speak about even having such an idea. It is a very delicate situation internationally because not every nation is covered by the Patent Cooperation Treaty.
To recap, for those nations that are covered under the PCT, the patent priority date for my invention exists.
Smaller companies often think of patents as a waste of money since they could never be certain of an outcome, and could probably never defend a patent in court anyway. There are a few larger companies I am being introduced to - and they are the ones that care about patents - and rightly they would not want to be involved unless the inventor has been exceptionally diligent. But they also won't participate until they're absolutely sure of an exact application within their current goals as an enterprise. Therein lies the needle we're threading at the moment - the applications that are most simple are still remunerative; in fact maybe more so. Purportedly a single computer game earned more revenue in a year than any music tour or film event.
https://www.quora.com/Is-the-Video-Game-industry-bigger-than-the-Film-and-Music-Industries
Musical and aesthetics and visual aesthetics are related in some ways, and obviously apparently quite distinct in others - What if there's a mathematical language that nature evolves with. What if our perception of the harmony of sound and the harmony of color is mathematically comparable in some way? What if this works out to be a music-like language that is mathematically understandable?
Roses are red,
Roses are red,
Roses are blue,
Roses are white,
Genetics.
