"Jonathan Cobb claims that during his work for Google as contractor he posted a complete description of Google Sky in an internal Google discussion group."
Who knows what kind of contract work he was doing, but I'll bet there's a clause in his contract from Google that states "All your base are belong to us." Besides, it was posted in an internal discussion group. The ideas there already belong to Google by default.
I don't know where this "Ideas belong to no one" concept comes from, but I don't quite understand the logic behind it. Please explain. (This is confusing to me because by this logic the person can't sue Google because Google didn't take "his" ideas, since the idea doesn't belong to anyone.)
If it is an internal company blog, it is assumed to be used exclusively by Google insiders to collaborate and share ideas. If this person posted his ideas there, either as part of his contract work or not, it is assumed that Google has the authority to act on information presented there, unless poster didn't have the authority to post the information there.
derefr pretty much hit the nail on the head as to the reality of things. See http://money.cnn.com/2008/02/12/smbusiness/patent_website.fs... for the quote from the US PTO. But he didn't explain the logic behind that reasoning. The theory is that patents are given for things that are non-intuitive: in order for a firm to recoup the "sunk costs" of R&D that led to the creation of the patent in the first place.
Second, you don't understand what constitutes suing. You can sue anyone for any reason (with rare exception). I'm just indicating that he'll lose, if all he said was, "Hey, we should have a Google Maps for the sky!" he doesn't stand a snowball's chance in hell of winning.
Third, if he shared patentable information, that doesn't automatically become Google's. Some employers (Radio Shack, for instance) have you sign a contract when you're hired saying that anything you invent as a consequence of your work there belong to them as a result. Some schools require it if you do research there. But if I posted the draft of a patent application to a discussion group, it wouldn't then be available for anyone to try and patent. Even if it's a discussion board at work.
You're absolutely correct about the suing remark. I should have said "He can't have a valid basis for suing..."
If he shared Patented information, Google would not have free access to use it. A great deal new ideas are patentable (though I hear the process can be a nightmare), but whether or not the Google Sky concept was patented is not the issue.
Like I said before, I am pretty sure Google would have had some sort of clause that allowed them to use anything this contractor came up with as a consequence of working at/with/for Google. And if he used an internal Google discussion board (presumably used by those working for Google to share information) to discuss the concept, then Google should and probably does have a legally defensible right to use those ideas for its own purposes.
Patents aren't ideas. Patents are descriptions of implementations of ideas, but that doesn't make them ideas. The ideas themselves do indeed belong to no one, and never have. However, their particular implementations may be owned.
Even their particular implementations may not be owned, only patented and patents may be owned. A patent is a temporary monopoly granted by the state, in exchange for the release to the general public knowledge of the mechanism and best practice of the implementation.
http://www.oreillynet.com/onlamp/blog/2005/08/ideas_are_just...