&gt;&gt;For any chunk of knowledge, except for very unlikely ties, there was a first person who had that knowledge, and for that person, then, the claim is false.<p>For practical purposes, if you want to make anything resembling a business out of your knowledge, you are going to need time. And chances are people in the field would have been aware of what interesting things there are in that field, and would have some idea of what you&#x27;ve come up with. They may not have some very specific things like particular implementations, but they will nonetheless have a good idea of what&#x27;s up and down in the field.<p>Obviously you are the only person writing your code, but should you assume that someone with a similar background could not come up with something quite similar if he wanted to research it?