Sometimes I am grateful that I live in Europe where software patents are <i>not</i> a thing.<p>Ish. A shame the US courts chose to interpret the laws as licensing software patents.
I know that software patents and licenses are a murky field, but I was wondering if anyone knows of any licenses or ideas that fit a situation I am in. I can't go into much detail but this is a general description of my situation:<p>I am working on a startup idea that has a component that I would like to 'defend'. I am trying to improve a process for developers and I think this new component is a big piece of solving the problem. The component is a unique/new part of a pipeline, but there are already established companies working on pipelines to solve the same problem. This component executes on the client side, so it can not be kept as a secret process that happens server side. I know that once it is viewed by competitors, they could reimplement the idea without directly using the 'source code' and add it to their pipeline/product. I want to be able to distribute my project to potential users and allow them to use it freely while also preventing competitors from copying the ideas into their own products.<p>I know that patents were originally created to incentivize innovation by preventing established competitors from simply copying ideas/processes from new competitors, and I feel that I am in that situation.<p>One idea I had is to separate the unique component into its own library then give my own project the right to license/distribute the library, but I do not know if there are any off the shelf licenses that support that.
Would it be possible to have a non-profit organization that exists only for patenting obvious things and "open sources" all of these patents?