PUBLIC INVENTION

We challenge the notion that inventions should be reserved for patents and profits. Rather, we invite fellow builders of the future to use their skills for humanitarian purposes. We want to make the future better for everyone. To do this, we remove, rather than add, legal barriers to the free use of our inventions. All work done with Public Invention is free and open to all under share-alike public licenses.

Public Invention is an open-source engineering and scientific initiative dedicated to creating practical technologies that address real-world human needs. Its mission centers on developing freely accessible designs for tools, devices, systems, and methods that can improve quality of life, particularly in areas where proprietary technology is inaccessible, expensive, or impractical.

At its core, Public Invention operates on the philosophy that innovation should be collaborative, transparent, and broadly accessible. Instead of concentrating innovation in proprietary environments, the organization promotes open development models similar to those used in open-source software. These models allow engineers, scientists, makers, programmers, designers, and subject-matter experts to collaborate across disciplines to create technologies that serve the public good.

Public Invention projects are structured around practical problem-solving. Rather than focusing solely on theoretical research, most initiatives aim to create buildable, testable, and deployable solutions. The projects span a wide range of domains, including healthcare, energy, sanitation, agriculture, machines, computation, art, and scientific instrumentation. Each project includes defined skills, levels of difficulty, and status categories that help volunteers identify ways to contribute effectively.

These projects are typically shared publicly through repositories such as GitHub, allowing contributors from around the world to participate. The open-source nature of these projects also enables reuse, modification, and improvement by other groups, thereby accelerating innovation.

The breadth of Public Invention’s project list demonstrates its commitment to multidisciplinary collaboration and practical impact.