Someone stole my idea, published on newspaper
 

Before everyone starts flaming, I'd like to state that I'm just wondering about possible outcomes.

So at the beginning of 2010, me and a couple friends had a presentation of a proposal as a part of Eng 112 class. The prof gave us a hypothetical million dollars and we had to propose an idea to make the world better with it. We proposed to change the recycling system of Metro Vancouver to volume based pricing, and suggested that we buy or build a new landfill to build a recycle centre.

The whole project was just for marks of course, but we recently found a news article of a group of students actually putting this idea in action. They're proposing the same volume based pricing system in the same location with a new landfill designed to collect waste.

Is there a way we can sue them saying they stole our idea from our in class presentation? LOL it sounds funny, but I wanna know if it's possible. We've had private google docs of our research, which was also presented on a website for a period of time, etc.

Also, volume pricing won't work because the volume of garbage changes alot when its dumped because of how things not fitting together properly to fill the void spaces.

:facepalm:

:bowrofl: :bowrofl: :bowrofl: :bowrofl: :bowrofl:

Ok, just needed an outside opinion as we were jokingly talking about it. You can proceed to posting unrelated gifs in attempts to be funny now...:s

my answer would have been spend $1 million on bombs and destroy everything expect canada!... I wonder what grade i would have gotten.

Even if you went to court with the intellectual claim, it's impossible to prove that the idea is completely yours. Switching a recycling program to wholly "volume based" is borderline arbitrary, and can pretty much be dreamed up by a lot of people. So can pricing by mass, product, time of day etc...

Although the steps in the "implementation" of your idea is probably similar, it's not unlikely that it's completely coincidental - unless they have documents word for word that matches yours, it's pretty hard to prove it's a "copy" of your idea

But if you have the money, try it. Make sure to post results

probably zero since the prof had an absurd obsession towards third world countries in africa. she thought that teaching african kids how to play soccer would have made the world better than recycling or planting trees etc

WTF? i gave my students hypothetical millions dollars as well, who's your teacher? i want to sue them too.

I just thought it was funny that the guy came up with the exact same volume based pricing system in the same location in Metro Vancouver, referring to the success it had in Asia as we had done in our research, with the same proposal to buy an existing landfill to convert it to a recycle centre. I also thought that the fact that he was also from UBC was suspicious... lol :P

Spoken by a true garbage man

^lol

You did not state that in your original post. In a court case you would have lost already. It's suspicious, but if you have all the evidence, go for it. Although you have to keep in mind that all work you do at UBC belongs to UBC the day you submit it.

so your idea isn't all that unique either. imagine the kid from asia sues u --

I believe if your ideas are not patent, then it is free for all to use it.

Anyone watch Inception recently?

That ^

i believe this is how it works.

companies keep their research and ideas a secret until they obtain a patent

does anyone remember this episode?
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedi...esterEliza.png

^gave me a good chuckle ^.^