19. Invention, intellectual property and income¶

This week, we had to think about Intellectual Property and the dissemination plan of the final project.

I am not really interested in patents. Peopel have told me several times in the past that I could patent several of my previous works. So I take a deep look to understand that system. As explained by Neil, they are certain criterias to be able to create a patent. It is time and money consuming. If you want to have a real protection, you will need to spend a lot of money to translate the patent and to nationalize it in differents countries.

But most of all, you will need to indentify infringment and spend a lot of energy and money in court…

I consider my final project more as a masterpiece showing different process learn during the fabacademy than as a finished product.

Creative Common¶

On the other part, I want to be recognize as the author of my final project. So copyright should cover most of my needs.

Is it a consumer product ?

For this final project, I am limited by the size of the vacuum forming device available. So it’s a small scale seed sprouter. I think a really usefull device should be 1.5 the size of this model.

I will share all the plans to build the device under Creative Common BY NC ND (Attribution , NonCommercial, NoDerivatives). https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/2.0/

It means I want to be recognise as the author, I do not want other making it for commercial purposes and I do not want peopel to be able to modify it.

It will not be easy to reproduce : You have to mill several molds and then vaccum form the elements. So you have to have access to a vacuum forming machine, big milling machine, 3D printer, PCB fabrication.

But as you have the mold, you can produce easily several copies. I design it with that idea in mind.

So I think I will produce on a small scale several models and sell them for cheap.

Then I will produce a biger version with a smarter interface. Their I will really think about dissemination.

Presenation slide¶

I work on a draft of the presentation of my final project.

Presentation video¶

The final project is not fully buit so I will make the video later.

A draft Script :

0:00 -> 0:10 The Title and a picture of the actual object in full frame.

0:10 -> 0:15 My hand open the object by lifting the top-cover.

0:15 -> 0:20 I remove the seed tray and lay some seeds.

0:20 -> 0:40 I place the seed tray in position, put back the top cover and artificially launch a fogg.

Illustration example.

0:40 -> 0:55 A TimeLapse of 3-4 days of working to see the seedsprouting.

0:55 -> 1:00 Some sprouted seed in a sandwich (or another meal to understand it should be eaten).

Final project progress¶

Milling a mold¶

Milling of a mod to vacuum form.

The fixture for the CNC are not big enough. I had with a colleague built really big one to be able to mill a big piece of wood that we found outside (part of a roofing that had fallen).