Dear CH,

I own a lot of premium domains that need to be developed. If I would submit a business Idea for developing a website with the intention to use one of my domains for hosting and branding this website, what will happen with the rights to that particular domain?

To what extend are by submitting a business idea my Intellectual property rights automatically transfered to the CH-community and how would such a transfer affect my domainownership?

I am asking this, because I do not fully understand the scope of what is said below.

Who owns the work done within Cambrian House?
When you accept the terms and conditions and submit assets to the business, you are assigning all rights and interests, including intellectual property rights to that business.

I like to know when exactly my ownership of domains would become an issue. Let's say that for example I want to talk about my ideas for developing the domain elevatorpitch.tv, would it be safe for me to just start a thread on the Ideas&Warz forum (without endangering myself of automatically loosing certain ownershiprights)?

Hope to hear from you soon.

Regards,
Freestate

Posted: November 24, 2007, 5:21 pm

CH takes no ownership of your idea or business.
If you post an idea or create a business on CH, it's yours.
You can offcourse give out royalty points to share dividends with fellow members of your business team or even go outside of the scope of CH and give out stock from your business to members of your business team.

Posted: November 24, 2007, 6:27 pm

On November 24, 2007, 7:27 pm zentropy said:

CH takes no ownership of your idea or business.
If you post an idea or create a business on CH, it's yours.
You can offcourse give out royalty points to share dividends with fellow members of your business team or even go outside of the scope of CH and give out stock from your business to members of your business team.

Thanx a lot zantropy, you've just earned yourself a buck and a tip of my hat with this answer.

I plan to use CH for crowdsourcing a lot of projects and really needed some reassurance about my Intellectual Property Rights.

Could anyone from CH please confirm this explanation of zentropy and/or add additional helpfull/reassuring information on the subject of Intellectual Property Rights in general or Domainownershiprights in particular.

Thanx
Freestate

Posted: November 25, 2007, 3:19 am

On November 25, 2007, 4:19 am Freestate said:

On November 24, 2007, 7:27 pm zentropy said:

CH takes no ownership of your idea or business.
If you post an idea or create a business on CH, it's yours.
You can offcourse give out royalty points to share dividends with fellow members of your business team or even go outside of the scope of CH and give out stock from your business to members of your business team.

Thanx a lot zantropy, you've just earned yourself a buck and a tip of my hat with this answer.

Thanks Freestate!

Posted: November 25, 2007, 4:32 am

zentropy is correct, that neither Cambrian House the company nor Cambrian House community is claiming ownership over any ideas submitted to our site.

Having said that, I don't believe any idea can be owned by an individual or company. Processes can be patented, but once you state your idea, you're essentially "throwing it out there" to the world.

By sharing your idea, you receive constructive criticism, a measure of how interesting it is to people, and find people who are interested in collaborating on it.

I'm not sure a good starting point is good domain name. Domains are good to own, but as far as interesting developers in a project, the domain itself is not going to be of much interest. CH does not register domains, or take ownership of them. But its usually wise to have registered a domain for yourself BEFORE you submit an idea or biz to CH. As we've seen submitted ideas named after unclaimed domains result in squatted domains.

Posted: November 26, 2007, 8:55 am

On November 26, 2007, 9:55 am GordonMcDowell said:

Having said that, I don't believe any idea can be owned by an individual or company. Processes can be patented, but once you state your idea, you're essentially "throwing it out there" to the world.

Thanx, it is the answer I am looking for. I totally agree with you when you're saying that ideas can't be owned, and that's exactly why I value domains and trademarks so much.

On November 26, 2007, 9:55 am GordonMcDowell said:

By sharing your idea, you receive constructive criticism, a measure of how interesting it is to people, and find people who are interested in collaborating on it.

Especially, when you want to share your business idea in order to tap into the wisdom of the crowd, registering one or more domains/trademarks that capture the essence of your idea, might be the only way to protect your self just a little. I am not saying that it will always be possible to come up with trademarkable domainnames that would accurately reflect your future business, nor I am suggesting that when branding your business one should always choose for a brandname that reflects your business, but I it's always wise to register some generic domains too (if still available). Don't you agree?

On November 26, 2007, 9:55 am GordonMcDowell said:

I'm not sure a good starting point is good domain name. Domains are good to own, but as far as interesting developers in a project, the domain itself is not going to be of much interest .

Correct! I experienced that the hard way. I know developers usually are not very interested in domains, and the same holds for a lot of Dutch people who call themselves marketeer, but since I own a lot of premium domains I cannot think of better starting points.

For example, there are 1001 ideas about websites helping entrepreneurs implement a business idea. However, whatever idea you might have to pitch, essentially it all comes down to the same basic idea as starting point and before you know you end up explaining what makes your idea so different from similar ideas and how do you prevent crowdmembers to steal your idea after you've invested a great deal of time and money to make the idea complete?

I don't want to deal with that kind of problems. I just take having domains like for example: businesscenter.eu, elevatorpitch.eu, businessplan.eu as startingpoint, think up some business idea myself or ask the crowd to come up with a good idea to come up with an idea that they like to implement for me in return for cash or shares. This way, I don�'t have to be afraid that the crowd steals my idea about a vlog for elevatorpitches, because if I always can “steal” it back and brand it with domains like elevatorpitch.tv or vlog.eu.

Okay, I am satisfied with your answer, and will soon submit my first idea.

Thanx Gord

By the way: I noticed that in the form for submitting an idea, that there is no special field for entering my elevator pitch? Do I have to submit that separately?

Posted: November 26, 2007, 1:20 pm

Ideas get rarely stolen though.(i think) What has happened a few times is that people posted an idea, let it sit there for a while and after some time someone else somewhere on the web actually made his own implementation of that idea. If you wait long enough with an idea, eventually someone somewhere will think up the same idea and implement it.
So i think a bigger issue than stolen ideas is being the first to implement a new idea.

This has been discussed a few times and someone gave quite a good argument to my opinion as to why ideas rarely get stolen.
To implement an idea you need the passion to work on it and finish it. Most often it's the original idea creator himself/herself that has the most passion and motivation to realize the idea.

Your idea getting stolen can happen, but those cases are probably exceptions.

However do as you feel most comfortable. Don't feel pressured to post an idea if you're in doubt.

Posted: November 26, 2007, 4:14 pm

On November 26, 2007, 5:14 pm zentropy said:

So i think a bigger issue than stolen ideas is being the first to implement a new idea.

You are so right about that. The best protection of an idea is being the first to actually implement it:-)

And that�'s exactly why i am here

Posted: November 27, 2007, 8:46 am