Copyrights may protect certain aspects such as the source code or the layout, but not the actual idea. Likewise, trade secrets may also protect the source code and a few other software variables. Although neither provides total protection, they can offer a layer between your software invention and your competitors.
Amazon one-click is a great example of a method, that was patented in the US among a couple of other places… and this is just buying things, with one click… Nothing that special compared to what can probably be found in the gossip protocol.
You cant just change the variables, its not that easy, if you patent a key method, within the protocol, something that cant be replaced with something else… Or at least that the replacement would be inferior.
Patent is perhaps the worst thing you could do to protect your codebase. Copyright is better but still not perfect.
In a space that moves so fast do you really think a startup will have time/resources suing everyone and their dog for patent infigement? Once the code is out in the open you might as well distribute it for free and compete on other attributes.
“Software patents have a short shelf life. Software is unlike other inventions simply because of how quickly the old can be replaced with the new in a matter of a few short years. The real deal is that a patent application for software can take up to four years to complete. Typically, the commercial lifespan is long over by then.”
Its not patenting the entire thing… You patent key operations within… Key operations that you NEED to make the gossip protocol work… That if you cant do it this specific way, you cant make the protocol work… That is how you want to protect it.
Amazon one click is a great example… If you were building a product that could only be build with one click as a part of it, to make it work, and that was patented, then you couldn’t do it…
It doesn’t matter how you change the code, if it is the same result in regards of method and what it does, it is protected.
Amazon one click was very very simple, nothing that complicated or “unique” about it… imagine what you can find within the gossip protocol.
But again, you may end up being right, that it cant really be protected, and that it is worthless.
I dont know how these things work from a code perspective, so I dont know what can be done and what cant be done. But this is the general idea of how to do it…
Leman said he had worked on a specific problem for many many years… and couldn’t solve it… so I assume whatever he solved, is very proprietary. If there was a ton of solutions to this problem, it prob wouldn’t have taken that long.