Ask HN: Is it a coincidence someone patented my MVP?

[athrowaway1]

Throwaway. I publicly posted my MVP on a tech forum, and a few days later a tech company filed a patent for the same thing. I'm assuming it's a coincidence, and that we were both working on the same thing at the same time. Had anyone experienced this before? And is it feasible someone could pull together and submit a patent in less than a week?

[simonblack]

Coincidence.

It happens all the time. Even with things that seemingly arrive 'out of the blue'.

Both the Germans and British invented jet engines within months of each other. They also both invented radar at around the same time.

I have invented things that were later patented by others, too. This was my most important, I invented it about 10 years before it was patented, but (stupidly) did nothing with it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CjTa3SeKuaE

Millions of people have the same background knowledge that you do. Any one of them could have done the same as you. The thing about one-in-a-million chances is that when you have ten million opportunities you will very likely get ten hits.

[athrowaway1]

Yes in hindsight wish I got a patent in sooner. Lesson learned! Also very cool product your thought of.

[forgotmypw17]

Probably a coincidence, in my opinion. How long ago did it happen?

When did you actually see that it was filed? If you saw it come out of the patent office a few days later, it was probably filed much earlier than your forum post.

If you saw it later but it was filed several days after your post, I think it is feasible, perhaps with the aid of someone like GPT-3, to put together a patent application that quickly.

[athrowaway1]

Thanks, I found out about the patent 6 weeks after I posted the MVP, and the patent was dated 5 days after my post. I'm defaulting to coincidence, but I guess there's a possibility it isn't.

Edit to answer your first question this happened between Nov & Jan.

[NonEUCitizen]

If your post was earlier, it constitutes prior art and some of the patent claims can be invalidated.

Was your post archived at archive.org prior to that patent being filed? Or is there some other proof that you published before they filed?

Note that their claim being invalidated does not mean you get to patent it, since you did not file prior to publishing (via your post).

[athrowaway1]

Thanks for this. I can definitely evidence that the post was prior to the patent submission and I have a live website which I can evidence too (also live prior to the patent). I think I'll need to speak with a patent attorney for advice.

[itronitron]

If the tech company had filed other (related or not) patents previously then it is feasible that they authored and submitted the patent in less than a week.

They may also have been working on the same thing at the same time as you, and then needed to accelerate their patent application after your MVP posting.

The only thing that really matters is the claims section of the patent, so if you can access those be sure to read them to determine how much it overlaps with your stuff.

[athrowaway1]

Thanks for this. The company his filed many many patents so it sounds like it's possible for sure. There is a lot of crossover in the claims section. Good point on then seeing the MVP and patenting first if they've been working on it already. My feeling is there's probably not much I can do if they've patented first.

[itronitron]

Also, you mentioned that this happened a few months ago so there is no way they could have an actual patent yet.

When you meet with the patent attorney you should ask them how you can establish/archive prior art for your previous post on the MVP and also ask them to go over the claims for you. Typically the claims are written in a very general fashion and then they will get more specific sub claims to narrow the patent. It would probably be useful for you to know how narrow the claims are.

[athrowaway1]

Thanks for this, appreciated!

[phendrenad2]

Software patents are a disaster. If you see someone make something, you can just patent it and steal it from them, because you can afford a patent and they can't.

[athrowaway1]

I imagine it's a sharp business strategy some people/orgs use, it's quite a cynical one in my view of course!

[athrowaway1]

Update for your interest I'm meeting a patent attorney and if there are any valuable findings or lessons learned I'll share them here.(EDIT disclaimer purely for interest - not as actionable legal advice for anyone to use!)

[iordachej]

Where did you look for finding that your idea was already patented ?

[imtu80]

I'm not an attorney or don't know much about patents but if you prove your idea/product existed before the patent was filed doesn't it protect you?

[athrowaway1]

I do hope so. But I've read that US patent law favours 'first inventor to patent' rather than 'first inventor'... will soon find out.