It’s not easy to patent in Portugal if the subject matter is not Chemistry or Mechanics.

YDreams’ first effort to get a patent started in 2005. We submitted a text with ‘claims’ that basically described augmented reality. Such claims were undisturbed until an International Search Report quoted the Azuma paper ‘A Survey of Augmented Reality’ as a direct prior art. We realized that our claim had to be corrected.

The Virtual SightSeeing ® device was then described in more detail, and 2007 saw YDreams get their first patent granted. In the wake lay many hours of programming, design, quality control, and sheer will. Paramount to any patent effort is time. Lots of it. That seminal patent still awaits approval in some countries, and YDreams proceeded to file application after application, with some decisions taking a bit longer than we had hoped.

With the disparity in legal systems, the long-standing struggles about software patents, and more recently business method patents, what policy is a small company with a big heart to take in regard to IP?

When researching or trying to convince oneself that something really is new and original, thoughts are sometimes mingled with a vague ancestral image that the logic has been done before and one is just applying it to new ends, just as answers to some questions are found in old books holding Latin mottos like est modus in rebus.

Tags: augmented, patents, portual, reality, sightseeing, submission, the world, virtual

This entry was posted on Friday, November 21st, 2008 at 18:03 and is filed under Business & Management, Products & Projects, Science & Technology. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.