Consideration for my IP

Almost a year has past since I registered a PCT about my concept. The outcome looks like becoming as real as my cynical deliberations a year ago had predicted.

The thing about using the patent system to protect IP is that it does involve risk. The length of time within which one has to prove whether the risk will pay off is in many cases insufficient for that risk to be assessed. Additionally, a risk also involves a probability of failure, and those who may choose to back a risk take on the consequences of the failure as well as any consequences of success. Unfortunately, it appears, the investment necessary to register national phase patents in some jurisdictions (viz Europe - $20 thousand AU) is too costly for any potential investor to to carry - even if the risk an investor may carry is only the money they would lose if the concept failed.

So, although I have three national phase applications in progress (Australia, New Zealand and the United States), I have no European registration, and this considerably compromises my market position, and saps my motivation. I have told the university as much, and although I intend to commence my study in July, think I might see things go on in the marketplace that will help me neither complete the programme nor apply myself fully to it. This may be all for the fact that I couldn't get a European registration because I couldn't afford the cost and couldn't find anyone to back me who could.

Although my concept becomes prior art, software leviathans may muscle in to the innovative territory staked out by my concept, and provide a solution that uses my concept in their product without paying consideration to me, the person who came up with the concept. I might observe this and conclude that this must be competition. This must justify the malaise that results in the cynicism that pervades an inventor's intentions. This must be the type of social justice in the society all of us want, because the evidence suggests that this is the type of social justice we all have.

Those who have the money to pay for expensive national phase patents stand a better chance of claiming ownership of their ideas than those that cannot. I can stand as testament to the way current secular philosophy can crush the individual as innovator; very possibly to promote the individual as consumer. Its better to kill the fox in us so to feed the pig in us. We've made this route so much less expensive and safer for everyone.

I have a disability support pension, so on disability support I will stay to do my consumer duty until my life is complete. Lay your hands on me oh life. Tuck me in.

A Clique Space(TM) generates a social homunculus.

In a very general way, a homunculus is often used to describe the way a nervous system maps the organism it represents. In much the same way, a Clique Space provides an environment that maps the goings on of a social network. I believe it is fair to say that Clique Space is a social nervous system, and like any nervous system, needs a way to map the body of the organism that the nervous system has control over - the social network over which the Clique Space has administrative dominion.

I think that's a fair conclusion to draw.

Clique Space(TM) and my opportunity.

When the world starts to think that modelling real-time ad-hoc collaborative activity by individuals is valuable, I'm hoping that it might pay me some respect for having adopted the "clique" as the basic the idea of tracking the ways collaborations over distinct media form, grow, contract and disband.

Clique Space(TM) progress report.

Indeed, I feel vindicated. My confidence in the strength of this concept has been steadily growing since I decided to give it a go back in January 2008 - three and a half years after it was conceived by me while jogging.

It appears as though the administrator Client Device and the Agent Device are working well together. Because of this, I am now thinking about moving my code base to an SVN installation on my IBM desktop running Ubuntu that I bought from my "work for the dole" employer last year, and running instances of the Agent and Client Devices on separate hardware after I replace the hard-coded reference to localhost from both to a true IP address.

Utterly wonderful.

I'm still using a console interface for the display of both Agent and Client Devices, and I imagine I will be for some time yet. Still, I imagine that the console interface will prove a valuable permanent component at least for the administrator Client Device. Any GUI will assist operators checking out the activity of the devices they control, and the devices others control as long as those others have given them permission to do this, but the console feed may be seen as being too convenient to let go of.

Anyway, I think I'm soon to have an environment that I will be able to present to others which will make some sense. I'm going to see if I can schedule a presentation of Clique Space at Wollongong uni after I get the Agent and Client Devices to work on separate hardware. In my presentation, I'll use my laptop at the podium to run one of two Client Devices. I'll start the other Client Device on one of two PC's inside the presentation room. On the other PC I'll start an Agent Device. My podium laptop and the two PC's will be networked together, and both Client Devices will be connected to the Agent Device. My laptop will be displaying the output of the Client Device through the projector that I will have run my presentation on, and the two presentation room PC's will be displaying their output on their own display.

I have been considering what other devices I might start developing Media Profile customisations for. Skype and an IRC client are good candidates. I'll do some more investigation on this. I also have my upcoming M.InfoSys research degree to consider this and other Clique Space related questions in. I have to contemplate some design theory related research directions for my degree, and indeed, I will get round to doing this before the degree starts in July.

While, from the above diatribe, it can be seen that I'm upbeat about the implementation, I'm perhaps a little philosophical about patent licensing.

I am in the process of finalising national phases for Australia, New Zealand, and the United States, but I do not have any more money to pay for registration in other jurisdictions. This is unfortunate, because I feel that a wider scope protection (Europe if possible, India if possible, China, Russia, Canada, Africa, and South America as some of the major ones) may only increase the attractiveness for business investment. But then, the collection of royalties from three jurisdictions would see me living in relative comfort; hence the philosophical disposition. I wonder if I'd still be recognised as the concept's inventor for the jurisdictions in which I didn't secure licensing...

Still, the PCT expires 15 July. That still gives me a bit of time to find finance, and I've still got a few lines of enquiry to follow...

Time will tell on Clique Space's future...

Clique Space(TM) progress report

What can I say... more good news.

As I write this, believe I have just stabilised the second of the three access levels (Connection, Active Affiliation, and Participant) available in Clique Space. These access levels have relevance to every device that uses a Clique Space, but their use is most obvious to the administrator Client Device because this device, being a device that a Clique Space administrator would use, needs to transfer through each of these levels manually as required by the administrator.

Generally, for devices of any medium...

Connection access allows a device to be seen by a Clique Space, but does not allow other devices (other than possibly those devices that have obtained a Clique Space Participant using the same account) to observe the given device. As I've said before, this is used as a very convenient way to facilitate remote authentication amongst perhaps a few other things that I can't recall right now.

Active Affiliation access allows a device to be seen within a Clique Space, but that access does not give the given device the ability to observe and engage others from within the given Clique Space. Because a device can collaborate with other devices through its device specific way regardless of whether it is connected to a Clique Space or not, it is envisaged that most devices would need only an Active Affiliation to collaborate with any other device for which they are able to engage. Besides that, giving participant access to a device that has no ability to view, and therefore engage other devices through, a Clique Space is redundant, and could subject the Clique Space users to undesirable consequences.

Clique Space Participant access is granted to a Client Device if the associated device possesses a view of the Clique Space. Such devices are usually equipped with a view of the Clique Space to which they have connected, and can actively interact with other devices using the Clique Space system. This interaction may include with those devices that make up the Clique Space.

Alternatively, the operator of a device obtains a Participant for a Client Device whenever the associated device collaborates with another device over some medium. While a device possessing only Active Affiliation access cannot engage another device from within the Clique Space system to which it is connected, that device may be able to engage similar devices in accordance with its own media protocol. If these other devices are likewise connected to the same Clique Space, the Clique Space will model this interaction as a Clique between the two individuals known to the Clique Space or federated Clique Spaces concerned as the devices' operators. Should one of the given devices not be connected to a Clique Space, the collaboration may still be modelled as a Clique between two Participants; one of the Participants is shown as anonymous.

This whole idea is so powerful that it's applicability may far outstrip my ability to describe it.

It is without any coincidence whatsoever that these access types are used to model collaborations going on in any medium by any number of individuals. This access "backbone" is part of the technology that has been developed around the core inspirational concept; the unaltered inspiration I had in 2004 whilst jogging between Bellambi and Bulli. The backbone is made up of three vertebrae (four if you want to be more technical and include the Media Profile) which I have envisaged are central to the Clique Space implementation.

Clique Space(TM) progress report.

My goal of modelling in real-time, interactions between individuals, anonymous or otherwise, that involve any device, any medium and any affiliation is farther along today than I thought myself worthy of. Two years ago, I had thought that the idea sounded good, but that possibly, there was a deep flaw somewhere in it. While I had rather cynically perhaps anticipated that there had been undocumented records of others who followed the path I am now on, I'm getting more confident about how this is shaping up with every passing day. It really appears to be efficacious.

Note, that my posting history should disclose the fact that I believe Clique Space is like nothing else currently conceived by anyone else - as far as I have been able to tell. I've already mentioned in a previous blog-post how Clique Space isn't middleware. I've already mentioned how Clique Space isn't a Multi-User Virtual Environment. I have already delineated the quintessential difference between Clique Space and other products like Google Wave. However, I'll reiterate it here just to make it clear:

• Clique Space(TM) models collaborative encounters by individuals.

That's it. How these collaborations function is up to the hardware doing the collaborating. Hence, Clique Space isn't a middleware system. It also isn't a Google Wave because Clique Space leaves the question of what "content" of a collaboration is modelled unanswered. Ultimately again, this is a question that must be answered by the media being modelled. Clique Space simply provides an environment in which the activity state of connected devices is used to depict coordinated collaborative activity between the devices' operators. Clique Space is more than a Role-Based Access Controller for no RBAC system I have seen asserts that it can create a device-independent model of the collaborative encounter of two or more participants (Participants), each of which are represented by one or more individual users, or are anonymous.

While a Clique Space might require a suitable Media Profile to be installed before it can model a particular medium, a Media Profile does not realise collaborations' underlying mechanics, nor does it instruct Clique Space how to physically realise the underlying machinery of the medium's implementation. The Media Profile simply exposes the existing components of this machinery to the Clique Space system in a manner that serves the intersection of the intents of the individual or organisation responsible for the Media Profile, the Clique Space's administration, and the individuals who make use of the Media Profile and a given Clique Space when they connect a device through the Media Profile to the given Clique Space using an Affiliation that identifies a role to an Account that identifies the individual.

Through this model, collaborative instances (Cliques) may be controlled and audit logs may be taken in accordance with every connected user's ability to do these things. I assert that Clique Space is the first contrivance of its type.

Does anyone have a differing opinion?

UOW approves Masters by Research on Clique Space(TM).

This morning, I received an email from (who is now) my assigned research supervisor giving their approval for a research masters degree with Clique Space as the subject matter.

Excellent stuff. This university (my Alma Mater - because I live here) is a good one. I am hoping this will give me a good incubation environment where the concept's efficacy can be tested. Should this idea prove successful, I hope the university will be able to reduce obstacles to commercial development.