Solo founder. 10+ products across unrelated domains. BFA grad turned AI-powered dev. The synoptic mind is the superpower. Weekly essays from the intersections.
Everywhere, on purpose
Joined March 2026
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"My IP" is several things. A name is a trademark question. A confidential process can be a trade secret, only while it stays secret. Art and code are copyright questions, judged piece by piece.
There's no single shield called "my app idea."
scatteredonpurpose.substack.…
Scattered on Purpose retweeted
What can be protected is the human part: your own expression still perceptible in the output, or creative arrangements and modifications you made.
Not the number of prompts. Not the hours.
Effort matters to me. The law asks what human expression is actually there.
🤖 Made with AI
OpenAI and Anthropic both say roughly the same thing about what you build with their models: you own the output.
It sounds wonderful. But I hear three promises in that sentence, and it only makes two.
Part 2 of a four-part series on AI, originality and ownership.
Scattered on Purpose retweeted
So the useful question isn't whether an idea is all mine or all collective.
It's what I contribute that gives the product its direction: the audience I chose, the suggestions I threw out, the decisions I can explain.
scatteredonpurpose.substack.…
Scattered on Purpose retweeted
Or another way of phrasing this: is my data being used to train these LLM models.
Scattered on Purpose retweeted
This is a new ‘tool’ and with every new breakthrough comes the obsolescence of the replaced.
So the useful question isn't whether an idea is all mine or all collective.
It's what I contribute that gives the product its direction: the audience I chose, the suggestions I threw out, the decisions I can explain.
scatteredonpurpose.substack.…
A 2024 study in Science Advances: writers given AI story ideas produced stories rated as more creative and better written.
Those stories were also more similar to each other.
A tool that makes each of us better can nudge all of us toward the same place.
And copyright protects expression, not ideas. A spec I write can be protected. A rearrangeable bookshelf with a candle on it can't.
The U.S. Copyright Office says prompting alone doesn't make you the author of what comes out.
So the useful question isn't whether an idea is all mine or all collective.
It's what I contribute that gives the product its direction: the audience I chose, the suggestions I threw out, the decisions I can explain.
scatteredonpurpose.substack.…
It feels like collaboration. I bring a direction. The model offers options. I reject some, combine others, and revise.
What I can't see is the other side. OpenAI says its models learn from public internet data, partners, and material from users, trainers, and researchers.
Let me say it once, clearly. I don't know if there was any connection. Someone could have spotted the same opportunity. The product may have existed first.
Similarity isn't evidence that anyone saw my work.
But it left a harder question: how much of what AI gives me is mine?
