To publish or to protect

Like many others, I have a few ideas that I am constantly playing around with. And like many others I even think that some of these ideas may one day be materialized into releasable products. It appears that one should worry more about waiting too long before publishing an idea than about having the idea “stolen”.

My Concept Watch

Below is the first quick sketch that I made of watch concept back in 2002. It is hardly a beauty in this first rendering, but the point here is the concept itself. I have not done anything with it since then, so I guess I deserved what I had coming…

Research

A little research told me that the idea of presenting time in this fashion is nothing new. I found Mark Newson’s ingenious version of the same general concept. This is a wall mounted clock where tiny magnetic balls indicate the time.

Newson’s watch put me off the idea a little at first, but I still felt that my own concept added something to this because it was a wrist watch without any glass. The idea was that it should be made entirely out of metal. But I did not give up on the watch entirely, and I was planning on pursuing the idea after finishing a couple of other projects I am working on in my spare time.

Recent Events

I was quite disappointed to find this post the other day. It is basically the same thing, but obviously taken a lot further in the visualization process:

Preparing for the Future

Fortunately, this was not my favorite among my three concept watches. But this certainly makes me think. Ideas are volatile entities that pop up where you least expect them, and it is just a question of time before someone else comes up with a similar thought.

I would be very happy to hear some thoughts on this. Is it best to publish the idea and hope that nobody grabs it from you? Should the idea be patented first? Is it better to try to sell it as soon as possible?

I guess the answer to the above is whether one is doing it for fun, fame or fortune. But who says you can’t have them all