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OSIC overview: Explanation of Service Details
Introduction – the proposed website name The term OSIC stands for Open Source Invention Community and is used as such in this document. Variations upon this intended acronym are already registered by other users and hence not easily available. However OSIC is a concept, and other wellknown “hot-house” invention identities could equally well serve e.g. www.yourdragonsden.com or www.gapinthemarket.com Introduction – the OSIC concept One grand deficiency of the Internet is that there is no general open discussion area for inventors to meet. There are newsgroup forums, the most established being “alt.inventors”. But all such existing groups are also the hunting grounds for patent lawyers, keen to secure payments from naïve inventors with expensive patent services. Equally there are activists within these forums, alerting inventors to the dangers of paying for such services. This means that there is actually very little open discussion of actual inventions because of pressure from both sides, one seeking legal protection of ideas and the other urging everything to be kept secret. The OSIC concept, taken from the success of the Open Source Community in software development (e.g. Linux) is that like software developers, inventors want to collaborate free of lawyers and legal pressures. That in following a successful development cycle from an initial concept to the final product, that there is more at stake than just profits. That success is equally about reputation and the satisfaction of seeing the outcome or solution in use, rather than a simple objective of profit maximisation. Especially in the short-term, profit goals can create sub-standard developments and leave developer’s unhappy with the proposed features. OSIC – How will it work? The basic framework of the OSIC program is to enhance and deploy the popular and now much respected EBay feedback system. The majority of inventors (particularly in the techno-gadget arena where OSIC aims to concentrate efforts) will already use EBay on a regular basis to buy components (new, used or broken with the intention to repair). Hence the website coding challenge for OSIC is to create “onion layers” of intellectual property right protection through a feedback system that denies or grants members access to inventions. The basic EBay points system of POSTIVE, NEGATIVE and NEUTRAL will be kept. However rather than just one rating, there will be three. The symbols also used will also be CUPS rather than Stars, based on “First Cup” concept - man’s first invention being a stringed shell to drink from streams. These three rating categories correspond to three possible functions of OSIC users as: 1. Inventors 2. Entrepreneurs 3. Professionals
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Page 2 of 6 Hence any user with the community will have a feedback score in the following format: User id: Davidtech10 Feedback: 34 (98.7%), 25 (97.2%), 86 (100%) This corresponds to each user’s 3 ratings as an Inventor, Entrepreneur and Professional. Feedback is given in the same way as in EBay, which is by other users. However feedback is generated by forum participation activities and not by the buying or selling of auctioned goods as it is with EBay. The purpose of a feedback scoring system is to enhance confidence in OSIC participation for reallife inventors. Low feedback scores will prevent users from gaining access to those forums closer to the centre of the “onion rings” through which inventions move as they develop. It does not support the legal trading of physical property. OSIC administrators will also have the power to override feedback scores with much greater ease and regularity than on EBay, since opinions on the value of written contributions are more subjective than the objective trade in goods EBay supports. The weeding of feedback scores will also be necessary to exclude manipulation of the scoring system. To this end OSIC will also employ full-time patent lawyers and with the co-operation of community volunteers ensure that third-party patent professionals are excluded from interfering within the OSIC forums. OSIC – More than just inventors welcome While the first function category of Inventor is self-explanatory, the second (Entrepreneur) and third (Professional) needs clarification. The “Entrepreneur” category describes the contribution of OSIC users when it is designed to enhance, modify or improve the inventions or business plans of other inventors. Each forum is governed by a single inventor, and feedback allocated to their score accordingly. Other users participating in any one inventor’s invention forum, do so either for the feedback value of “Entrepreneur” or “Professional”. Inventors may have as many different invention forums as they wish, but OSIC administrators will combine different forums together when it is considered there is no substantial difference in the nature of the inventions being proposed by the same inventor in different forums. The “Professional” category describes the contribution of OSIC users when it is made to recommend normal business services to turn concepts into final products. The only business service excluded from participating within this category are the legal ones, including all patent or “intellectual property right” services. Any such professional activity within the legal field is handle directly by OSIC itself within the guidelines of its constitutional charter. Immediate action will be taken against users infringing this principle, although informal, independent and nonprofessional legal advice may be contributed to forums when it falls with the scope of the “Entrepreneur” category. However to repeat that already stated further above:
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Page 3 of 6 “OSIC will also employ full-time patent lawyers and with the co-operation of community volunteers ensure that third-party patent professionals are excluded from interfering within the OSIC forums.”
How does OSIC benefit and pay-for-itself? OSIC is not intended to be a non-profit company and if it is successful in establishing an Open Source Invention Community, it will seek stock-market flotation. However OSIC is essentially a forum for the open discussion of inventions, where forums are only closed once the inventor plus his forum participators decide to apply for “star-birth” status. Only at that moment, once OSIC derived inventions enter the market-place, can OSIC benefit financially. For this to happen, in discussion with the OSIC’s legal team, the invention around which the forum was constructed must be transferred out of the OSIC website and into the domain of a newly registered limited company. OSIC then earns its revenue from negotiating at that point a percentage share allocation agreement in the formation of this new limited company. Only once an agreement has been reached will OSIC delete all history of the invention’s evolution within OSIC’s forums. Once that is done, OSIC’s future involvement with the newly “born” invention is only as a minority-only share-holder within the written procedures of the limited company established by the departing group. OSIC will offer a variety of share options to those considering limited companies formations under the “star-birth” status to meet the longer-term development objectives, rather than in short term plans to see immediate financial returns. OSIC is also committed to the evolution of inventions, enhancing ideas and business to be considered carefully within the feedback protected environment of OSIC’s forums before actual “star-birth” is sought. A high percentage of OSIC “born” inventions are hoped to generate profits over the long-term (once initial repayments of risk capital have been made). However OSIC is prohibited from within its constitutional charter from making any financial investment in any invention itself, to enforce independency and impartiality on OSIC’s governance of the community. OSIC secures its funding from taking a non-secured share holding in the future profits of start-ups, taking the risk that while some may never generate any profits that some will eventually generate significant profits. OSIC – when will it happen? For OSIC to launch, it will need itself “seed” and “venture” capital. The nature of the service is such that the biggest expense for OSIC will be in securing the highest quality patent lawyer professionals to shelter the “freedom to exchange ideas” within the “onion-ring” gated-community. There will also be legal costs to develop the OSIC constitution and the variety of clauses within which it must operate to ensure OSIC is constituted to survive as independent. This will evolve an equal need to develop the enhanced feedback system sufficiently to ensure that the natural anonymity afforded by the Internet does not compromise security and confidence concerns for inventors.
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Page 4 of 6 The OSIC concept depends, as it does in the Open-Source software community, upon the acceptance that some inventors just wish to develop outside of conventional business models. That is a trade-off since such participation means some “intellectual property theft” is inevitably going to occur occasionally. However the OSIC feedback system coupled with the already respected spirit of “open source” should allow that this community will quickly be largely selfregulating as EBay is. Section end
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OSIC overview: Entry-barriers to copy-cats
Will “copy cats” simply copy OSIC? Concerns over the nature of the “barriers to entry” to competitors into any new market are very important ones. Acquiring enough users to create the “critical mass” for an internet service to succeed is the prime objective and the most desired “barrier to entry” in the dotcom world e.g. eBay’s success. This first “barrier to entry” of creating any “critical mass” is not of much use to the future of OSIC. There are however several other barriers in play amongst the dotcoms. From the existing alternative “barriers to entry” amongst the dotcom modes that are already demonstrated, perhaps Yahoo or Hotmail is the most appropriate model. It is inertia or “profile inertia” that encourages members not to move away into alternative services. With Yahoo users have invested effort to create profiles containing photograph albums, share portfolio tracking and individual homepages. While Gmail is committed to free POP3, Hotmail ended this as a free service some time ago. Yet for many Hotmail users the alternative of changing email address and ensuring all contacts update their records is a prohibitive challenge. This “profile inertia”, the labour cost of losing one profile and building another, is a significant barrier to entry in the dotcom world. OSIC’s long-term protection and main barrier to entry to the copy cats is a 100% “profile inertia”. The principle IP (intellectual property) value of OSIC will be in developing an EBay style model of feedback, but a more mature and sophisticated model. The planned user feedback score consisting of numerous variables (but no comments) will be for users a significant profile asset. In order to access the inner discussion rings of OSIC, users must have accumulated feedback scores from previous contributions made only within OSIC and made by other users. That is the profile built up with time and effort, from which inventors can make an informed decision on whether to accept or reject individual participation requests. It is a different type of method for creating a profile value to that of Yahoo and Hotmail but strong “profile inertia” barriers will apply. No rival will be able to allot value to OSIC feedback scores in an attempt to snatch away the OSIC user base. This is because there is no possible method for any rival to ensure that OSIC’s user base would not join up with the rival simply discredit it. The continuity of relationship between a feedback score (history) and a user’s future intentions is 100% system-sensitive in application of this category "peer review model”. The concept of OSIC is that inventors can share their “secrets” in the relatively secure knowledge that those with high feedback scores have proved they are not just participating for the intention of stealing ideas. Any rival just simply validating OSIC profile scores would probably encounter this potentially ruinous practice rather quickly and be abandoned by all those with any invention worth protecting. The “devil is in the detail” and so too will the design of the OSIC feedback system become a complex challenge. It must protect, be intuitive, comprehensive but largely automated. EBay’s success continues almost in spite of its clumsy feedback system, because it has a critical mass that creates a genuine trading environment. As most EBay regulars know, the authority of this feedback system is mainly a legacy of the past. It survives from the time when it was more of a trusted “community of enthusiasts”. While the EBay feedback design is simple to understand and use, it
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Page 6 of 6 suffers from “tit for tat” negatives and from “loading”. The feedback system of OSIC will be completely different, both more complex and more fool-proof. The principal long-term IP value (intellectual property) of the OSIC model will be in the software property of the feedback system coding itself. Hence OSIC will seek patent protection of its software code where possible and therefore create a further barrier of entry to “copy-cats”. One desired and profitable exit strategy from the OSIC business project could be to finally sell the OSIC feedback software code to third parties, including potentially even EBay itself. Lastly, OSIC is protected by an unusual factor not common amongst dotcoms. That is the capability of any rival in the future to copy-cat the OSIC website would depend on securing original "product supply". This unique “barrier to entry” does not apply to the majority of dotcoms or businesses. There can not be a shortage of “second-hand goods” to sell on EBay or a lack of holiday destinations to fly to. However the formation of good invention ideas is similar to the market in original art or champion horses. No amount of money invested can guarantee the same precise product or continuity of supply. A potential copy-cat would not only have to design a significant improvement in the feedback scoring system but also would have to source for their website launch a brand new collection of inventions to discuss within that website. Especially in the short-term, a very significant “barrier to entry” to competing with OSIC is thus “product supply” or more specifically locating a supply of “original products”. As a proposing founder of OSIC I have accumulated notes on 20 to 30 “inventions” developed over the last 5 years that would be decanted into the OSIC website upon start-up. All my attention is given over to the strength of the protection system that my “inventions” might enjoy within the OSIC environment, rather than thoughts of protecting the OSIC website itself from copying. I had not given much previous thought to the potential threat of rival copy cats emerging to OSIC. Do other inventors think OSIC might be of use to them? Would any patent experts recommend that I patent OSIC itself? No. OSIC, like the ideas it intends to protect and enable, requires effective team-work of usability and marketing professionals to launch a brilliant website that will grow rapidly from a content membership. Section end
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