Is it 'too late'? or not?

What you need to know

I am gung-ho!!! ‘Cos my cousin has just won a National Level competition conducted by Microsoft. No mean task! And this was a competition conducted at three levels! First at the college level at Amrita College, CBE they were asked to present papers. After being selected for a zonal presentation they had to come to Chennai, compete with some 30 odd teams and they came out trumps. I was there when these guys presented their ‘Automatic Call Taxi – Detector and Router’ project. Arun if you remember it was on your laptop this was presented! :D

Next they get selected for this National level presentation at Hosur Road, Bangalore which was held yesterday. They had to compete here with 20 teams from all over the country. And they present this [the one titled iTRUST- An End to End Trust Based Model for Access Control]. And guess what? They win it hands down! The Prof from IIT-B, who was top panelist congratulates them on this achievement. One Ms.Sheila, second only to Gates in MS as my gullible cousin put it [and I think I might be wrong here], presided over the function and gave over this cool cash prize of 75k to the team of three. Great going Chicha and friends!!! KUDOS!!! AWESOME!

What I need to know

Just when I got this sms from my cousin saying he won it, the first thing I told him is – ‘guys, this ain’t something simple. Please leave any other work you guys have and find out all the procedures for patenting this stuff. Let the 75k go towards that. ‘Cos I know anyway that you guys don’t booze! LOL’

And that’s when he told me similar sentiments were displayed by all and sundry! His HOD had asked them to patent this stuff way back when they presented his to him. But probably my guess is that even he did not know how much he meant it. Now that this has won the prize it becomes utmost priority for it to be patented immediately. Even the IIT Prof and many other corporate people who attended the seminar shared similar views.

My Question

The hitch here is, MS clearly states that they will video tape the whole event and will use any or all parts of the presentations. So how will this affect these guys patenting the stuff? Will the patent hold? I am a bit at sea regarding this patenting stuff. So am finger-crossed and waiting to hear more from my cousin. People reading this tell me what you think.

PS:

Dei Chicha, nee thaanda intha kathaila hero! Go on and put your comments here telling what all you did throughout this journey to the top! ;) oru periya kathai sollu paapome

PS2: ---- [for those who dont read the comments section only]

i got some facts wrong on top...so here's the correct version, from my cousin himself.....


hi guys n gals....actuallly he had mixed up the whole stuff...here is the real stuff..to start wit..this competition is Microsoft Student Proj..for more info visit www.msapp.net or www.microsoft.com ..last yr we presented a proj by name"Radio Taxi Management System".it carried us to south India level where we had to giv it up coz at the time of review we had exams n so cud not finish code.still after the exams we completetd the proj n got the certificate too from microsoft.now this yr bein the final yr we planned to do a proj tat was feasible within tis sem for the final univ review as well as for Microsoft specifications.so this time we did iTrust-An end to endtrust based access control.for info on this view www.msapp.net n click project exhibition link.so here the first level had 7000 teams fallin into the fight.from there we moved to the next level of competing wit 600 shortlisted teams.from there it was the India finals in banglore yday where we had our stal for exhibition among 20 best proj in the country.finally after a lot of hot judging n reviewing n exhibiting n panicking n sweating n waiting n questioning n.....there it was announced..around 6:30evenin we were told we were to present our proj o stage.still we tht its just to entertain the crowd.wat we had in store was just amazing.it was sosimilar to any film fare award festive(i mean the set up..the call for the team..the focus light on the presenters....)we did our [presentation n took our seats in the crowd.n finally wen the prize distribution came.we held our breaths only after our team werre announced the best proj team n we were offered a cheque(a big one like for the man of the match in cricket)of a small amount Rs.70000.so tat was the whole thing.