

Ask HN: Cryptographic timestamp? - zackmorris

I have a few dozen ideas for various inventions and algorithms that are potential game changers but probably too big for me to pull off myself.  So I would like to post them to my website and sign them somehow to prove that they were released on a specific date for prior art, to prevent them from being patented.  I found this:<p>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trusted_timestamping<p>But I'm not really sure where to go from here.  Can anyone recommend an app to do this?  If it's relevant, I'm on a Mac running 10.7.  Most of the ideas require on the order of $5000 or more in living expenses and materials to explore over a couple of months, but they are not technically complicated, just abstract.  I'm hoping eventually to see a kind of github/kickstarter for inventors so they can get the small funds to tinker on their projects and then release them into the public domain.  Any ideas/suggestions there would be much appreciated.  Projects like the windbelt and electric multicopter come to mind.  There are so many relatively easy ideas that could move us into the 21st century but most of us are still trying to make rent each month...<p>Thanks!
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arethuza
A number of CAs can supply certificates under Adobe's Certified Document
Services scheme:

<http://www.adobe.com/security/partners_cds.html>

As far as I know these all include the use of a RFC 3161 compliant
timestamping service:

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trusted_timestamping>

I've used GlobalSign to obtain the relevant certificates and associated
hardware (for personal use this is a small USB token):

[http://www.globalsign.com/document-security-
compliance/adobe...](http://www.globalsign.com/document-security-
compliance/adobe-cds/)

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cd34
The old way of doing this was to put it in a sealed envelope and mail it to
yourself - with the postmark being the timestamp.

As for your ideas, there are several projects on kickstarter et. al. that do
handle things like that. One of the more recent ones was the Global Village
Construction kit.

Try it out, see if you can get funding.

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ig1
Just file a patent application for them, as you don't care about actually
patenting them you won't need to shell out for patent lawyers, so you just
need to pay a relatively small filing fee.

Plus it makes it much more likely that your patent will turn up in prior art
searches.

