When your wheel finally works, spinning continuously, with nothing more than the force of gravity enabling its action, what will you do, how will you proceed? Your options would appear to include sharing the secret freely or patenting the design, or finding a sponsor to help develop the machine into a commercial project.
I suppose it depends on whether you want a lot of money, or just enough, or if you dont need any - and when do you want it, immediately or can you wait a couple of years? Also do you want fame, or just acknowledgement for your achievement, or are you content to remain anonymous?
These questions fill the minds of all those hundreds of people who have and still are seeking the solution to Bessler’s wheel. You only have to look back at the history of the search for perpetual motion to discover that the same concerns occupied their minds from the earliest times. So what is the answer?
I have never liked the patent system for this device. It costs money to patent and yes, you may say that you will receive many times it’s cost over the years, even if you have to wait a couple of years. But there are more concerns; such simple technology invites copycat machines, patent infringements and patented improvements, each of which can leave you in the starting blocks, while your competitors rake in their rewards. Policing patent infringements is a costly and lengthy task with little chance of financial compensation, even if you only go for a limited patent protection instead of worldwide patent protection.
Licensing the use of a patent is a possibility but could still fall foul of patent infringements and patented improvements. A patent licensing agreement is a legal contract that grants the licensee certain rights regarding the use or sale of your patented invention. Licensing agreements can be: exclusive - giving the licence holder the sole right to exploit the patent.
So what’s the best course of action? I have my own optionse and there are numerous possibilities for anyone who wants sufficient financial rewards to live comfortably and help out members of his or her family. The worldwide media is hungry for stories and will pay for them,. The term "media", includes print media (books, magazines, newspapers), television, radio, movies, video games, music, cell phones, various kinds of software, and the Internet. All of these mediums are like a voracious animal and each requires feeding many times, and they pay well.
So my advice is avoid patents and share the information you have, as widely as you can. What ever design you make public, will always be improved upon, so thinking that by publishing the design, no one can patent it, doesn't necessarily apply to any improvement, but at least the basic concept will be out there and cannot be unpublished.
JC
