Invention Disclosures for Software Engineers

Not legal advice. Coordinate with counsel for domain-specific nuances.

Typical Software Scenarios

  • Algorithms (ranking, scheduling, compression, ML training/inference).
  • Architectures (microservices, event streams, consistency models).
  • Systems (caches, databases, security controls, distributed coordination).

What to Emphasize

  • Data flows and state transitions; include sequence/state diagrams.
  • Complexity and performance characteristics; include p50/p95/p99 under load profiles.
  • Concurrency, failure handling, retry/backoff, idempotency.
  • Security boundaries: authN/Z, key management, threat model and mitigations.

Artifacts to Attach

  • API specs (versioned), proto/IDL files, schema migrations.
  • Benchmarks and dashboards (exported), reproducible scripts (k6, Locust, JMH).
  • Design docs and change logs, commit hashes for major components.

Reproducible Embodiment Template

  • Inputs: traffic model, dataset snapshot, config parameters with ranges.
  • Steps: deployment topology, initialization, workflows.
  • Outputs: KPIs and acceptance thresholds; error budgets.

Open Source and Licensing

  • Call out third‑party libraries and licenses; note any copyleft implications.
  • Identify internal code you plan to open source to avoid conflicts.

Security and Privacy

  • Data minimization, encryption in transit/at rest, PII handling, retention.
  • Include security test results or references to threat modeling.