[irjustin]

You have to show that you were already working on it independently which is effectively establishing prior art and you are literally it.

How do you do that? beyond my pay grade.

[zaroth]

Simple - You keep a notebook, or send yourself emails.

If you want more definitive timestamping, there are services that will do that, like OpenTimestamps, an actually a decent use case for blockchain.

[hughesjj]

I'd say thank God for git history but I suppose they were using perforce back then