Member Commentary on announcements and staff logs thread

[Abaddon_ire]

Did I miss an important Drich subplot?

Was it an invention?

At one stage Drich (apropos of nothing and totally off topic, it was in the thread where WinterHold was claiming he was being discriminated against because we weren't repping him or kudosing his posts) claimed that he invented this amazing new power converter.  Ranjr asked him about it and it quickly transpired that Drich was full of shit. To keep digging further Drich claimed that he had a patent for his invention but he couldn't reveal the patent number because he sold his idea and "commercial confidentialit".  He then said he would reveal the patent via PM, Abbadon_Ire took him up whereupon Drich PMed Abbadon with a large number of intrusive and offensive questions about Abbadon's personal life.  At his banning Drich was still claiming his patent and promising to reveal the patent number to members who pmed him their emails and whom he thought passed his personal threshold of trustworthyness.

The End.

Just to be clear on this, I used a burner email because I knew up front that it would be bonkers. Patents are public domain. Drich had NO reason to conceal any patent he may have had or sold to anyone. Any such patent would remain public domain regardless of whoever he might have sold it to. Having been through the process myself, I knew he was talking a big load of bollocks. The whole point of patents is to be public about whatever idea is patented. That makes nonsense of his NDA claim. Nobody can NDA a patent. Ever. The whole point of a patent is to be public. I posted one of mine up thread.

I guess he thought (and possibly got away with elsewhere) that he could claim an NDA meant he could not reveal his claimed patent. That claim might fly on crank websites. But it is utterly false. A patent is intended to be public for obvious reasons. If I or anyone wants to patent anything at all, I or anyone would need to check if it is already patented by somebody else already. 

Patents are necessarily public domain.