Prior art and material published online

Question

If an "idea" website states that anyone can go ahead and patent an idea they posted? Will I technically still be able to? Wouldn't it conflict with "prior art"?

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Answers: 2 public & 0 private

Steven weinrieb
Patent Attorney

You cannot patent an idea - period. You have to have an enabling disclosure as to how you are going to do something in order to obtain a patent - think of time travel - you cannot get a patent for time travel because no one has come up with an actual machine for achieving time travel, so just the idea of time travel is not patentable.

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