The Mind Mine
Welcome Inventors
Create a timestamped record for your ideas, document your contribution, and prepare your work for review, licensing, or future protection.
What is The Mind Mine?
The Mind Mine is a place to timestamp ideas, collect supporting material, run an early prior art screen, and create a durable authorship record. It is not a replacement for legal advice or a magic patent machine. It is a practical first step for people who want their contribution documented before it gets lost, ignored, or absorbed into someone else's process.
Get StartedFounder note
Why I am Building The Mind Mine
I am Steven Shafer, the creator of The Mind Mine.
I have been through the patent process.
I have also been part of an organization where "innovation" often felt less like protecting inventors and more like harvesting ideas from young employees who did not fully understand the value of what they were giving away.
That experience changed how I look at patents, invention disclosures, and idea ownership.
The current system favors people and institutions with lawyers, budgets, and process knowledge. The person who actually had the idea is often the least protected person in the room.
I do not believe every idea should be locked away behind a patent. I also do not believe inventors should be treated like disposable raw material.
The Mind Mine exists because there should be a better middle ground.
A place where people can publicly timestamp their ideas, document their contribution, establish authorship, and create a record that is harder to erase, ignore, or quietly absorb into someone else's portfolio.
This is not about killing innovation.
It is about making idea ownership more honest.