Paris — Technology innovations in digital imaging are stymied because there is very little opportunity for engineers to "air their ideas" with others in public, according to consultant Jean Barda.

Barda, previously president of Netimage (Gargilesse, France), knows his way around the topics of innovation and intellectual-property protection. He has participated in ISO standards development as head of the French delegation to the International Organization for Standardization for more than 10 years. As a hardware engineer, he has registered some 10 patents. His inventions are used in TV production, in France's Minitel network and in various coding processes.

At PMA 2007, a Photo Marketing Association International-sponsored trade show convening next week in Las Vegas, Barda will announce the rules for participation in a digital-imaging "idea" contest dubbed the 6Sight Innovation Framework. Scheduled in tandem with the 6Sight Conference to be held this fall, the contest seeks to provide a forum where concepts can be introduced, discussed and judged by an independent panel.

The contest is for individuals, not companies. Barda said he hopes the event will open the door to "native ideas with no business plans," adding that the absence of a business plan should not be a concept killer.

The notion of public disclosure of new ideas seems counterintuitive in a fast-changing industry that's fiercely protective of its IP. Open, nonconfidential conversations about a concept could end up being defined as "prior public disclosure." That could prevent an inventor from an exclusive claim to his invention or could trigger denial of a patent.

But Barda counters that every good idea deserves an airing, with peers providing feedback, reality checks and information on whether anyone else has done something similar. The industry needs a forum where individuals can exchange ideas without worrying about losing their IP rights, he said.

He pointed to his own experience collaborating with researchers at Columbia University in 1990 on technologies to display large images. At one point, Barda told his colleagues he had come up with an idea for solving a certain problem. As soon as he uttered the word "idea," Barda said, he was advised to say nothing more. He was asked to document the idea and to record the date and time of its proposal. Three witnesses were brought in to listen to Barda explain his concept. They took notes, which were kept as a record.

An attorney based in Washington, D.C., who spoke on the condition of anonymity because his firm doesn't work at the patent creation level, said Barda's experience is standard procedure. Before a patent application is filed, he said, "there must be some [internal] means to discuss and experiment with patentable ideas both to establish an invention date and to maintain confidentiality." While no "specific" documented evidence of an invention's date is required under law, he said, "I understand that 'best practice' is for the inventor to describe the invention in a bound laboratory notebook with numbered pages, signed and dated by the inventor, and signed and dated by two corroborating witnesses who read and understand the invention disclosure."

The attorney warned of a "greater likelihood that an idea can be argued to have been invented by another party or to have been in the public domain previously as a result of public exchanges of ideas among engineers." Such ideas might not be patentable, he cautioned.

But as the pace of technology development accelerates, Barda countered, the exchange of ideas should become more open.

Alexis Gerard, founder and president of market research and technology consulting firm Future Image (San Mateo, Calif.), agrees. Future Image will host Barda's contest at its next 6sight Conference. "There are innumerable good ideas being hatched in our industry about how to bring new value to customers," Gerard said. "We know from experience that many are not 'born in the home' that is best suited to their growth and fruition."

The goal of the framework, Gerard said, "is to provide industrywide visibility to the best of these ideas, such that they can be moved to where there is the greatest interest in bringing them to market, with fair compensation to all value providers."

Jacques Kauffmann, president of Imaging Management & Communications, noted that the 6Sight framework initiative is "particularly targeted at the wireless imaging and digital convergence area." Fostering innovations for inter-industry cooperation is key, he said.