[unclebilly]

One the technical article side here is one more reason to publish, this is to block competitors from filing patents on a particular method or subject matter.

At my previous employer, if we felt that filing a patent might result in a weak patent, we would instead publish a paper at a technical conference. This would prevent others from filing a patent (already in the unlucky domain) and give us license to practice said invention.

We don't do this enough in my current field, instead everything is filed and because the patent examiners have a really poor understanding of he oil tach, nearly everything gets allowed. This results in multiple entities having nearly identical patents and a legal nightmare.