Should one openly discuss one's new, dramatic or, for arguments sake, shattering and important discoveries. Conversely,would it be more advisable to rush to protect, patent or otherwise publish first?
If you are a professor, write a paper about your discovery; submit the same paper to your Technology Transfer Office and inform them your intended submission date of the paper; after hearing back from your Technology Transfer director who should tell you the date you can submit the paper, submit your paper to Nature/Science/Cell on or after the agreed-upon date.
If you work in industry, talk to your patent attorney.
If you are a student, talk to your supervisor.
If you are an individual inventor, file a provisional patent application yourself (if you know how to write one); then find some money to hire a patent attorney to evaluate your discovery.
Risk of publishing paper first: if you do not follow up with a patent application within one year of your publication, you will lose the patent protection of your invention. Benefit: publish or perish for professors.
Risk of filing patent application first: if your discovery is worthless or your patent attorney is not competent, you may waste thousands of dollars for patent prosecution and end up with a worthless patent or a rejection letter. Benefit: if the invention can be converted into some tangible and profitable product, you will be rich and the society will gain from your discovery as well.
We thank you for your thoughtful answer. Now we need the government perspective!
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