At my previous company, we had a patent lawyer who would always ask around if anything we developers did were patentable. I would always downplay what I was doing and come up with things that might be prior-art.

My thinking is this: Even though the company would only use it for "defensive purposes" (which I believe), you never know who owns the company tomorrow. And you are not going to work there tomorrow either, so you might be the one being sued.

Instead, I would try to get permission to blog about it, so it is available for everyone -- including my future self.

I recommend everyone else do the same!

(Throw-away account - I'm not sure future employers want this)

It's amazing that for fear of future repercussions, someone would create a throw-away account to express a sentiment such as this.

It's an excellent justification for allowing throw-away accounts.

Although one could have a "make throwaway account" link from the account page.

Or like Slashdot, and have a "post this anonymously" checkbox.

allow posting anonymously could work too, but that could open up a whole new can of worms.

> we had a patent lawyer who would always ask around if anything we developers did were patentable.

Easy answer: "of course there's nothing patentable here--it's software!"

That's just legally inaccurate, but I suppose you could equivalently answer, "Nope, I'm mainly working on algorithms at the moment."

I guess it depends on where you work? Or doesn't it?

What a fantastic position to take.

If RMS were your cube mate, the lawyers would run in fear. They might walk around asking these sort of questions once but never again.

Yes, they would only ask him once: after which he goes on a violent tirade, leading to his quick and immediate .. departure.