Unfortunately, someone else can come along and patent a trivial, supposedly non-obvious "next step" invention, and the original inventor would have to pay to license the slightly improved version to remain competitive. With a patent on the main technology, they could probably negotiate a reciprocal deal at the very least.
What are rules for such a publication? I guess that something published in IEEE shouldn't be patentable and have my doubts about publishing on a blog, self-hosted, in Romanian. Where is the line according to the US law?
To be sure, you submit the provisional patent application, and never file the utility. It's only $260 to file. After 1 year the provisional dies and you have a permanent record of the prior art.
In this case there is a provisional patent from 2014, and this application follows from that provisional.
I've been reading more about this. Public disclosure vs. provisional.
In the US you get a year after public disclosure to file even a provisional. But not so if you want non-US patents. So you are closing some doors but keeping others open with public disclosure. Also, you are starting a 1 year clock.
A provisional is private; it does not count as public disclosure. A provisional is nothing more than a priority date, assuming what you have disclosed in the provisional itself is sufficient, and novel. You can even refile the same provisional every year as long as you believe the subject mater is still novel, but you get a new filing/priority date each time.
As for preventing a 3rd party from patenting the subject matter, either one is sufficient. However, if you publically disclose, only then you also get protection from a 3rd party who builds on your work. So in that case public disclosure is better than the 'secret' provisional.
Better yet, just timestamp the document in the blockchain.
Chances are that before you get your thing published on IEEE, someone else will start and finish writing an application and maybe even get the patent granted...