Reddit’s owners are getting in on its IPO before trading starts:In January, the social media platform announced its plan to go public in March, and in an “unusual” move, will be offering a large portion of its IPO to its most prolific users. The company is reserving an undetermined number of shares for 75k of its most loyal Redditors to buy before the shares begin trading, reports The Wall Street Journal, citing sources close to the matter.

Institutional investors are conventionally the first pick to purchase shares in an IPO, as banks worry that individual retail investors are less predictable and more likely to sell off their shares “at the first sign of weakness.” But Reddit insists on offering its reserved shares at initial public bidding price before the stock starts trading to its users alongside institutional investors, as it hopes to secure loyalty among its user-shareholders.

The company has a lot to fear: While companies going public hope that their shares will rise once trading starts, the US’ primary market has underperformed over the past two years, with the majority of new listings trading below their IPO prices, the Journal notes. Reddit is also taking a chance on its community, which is typically vocal and has a history of boycotting the platform when big changes they disagree with are implemented.

Google’s got a secret: To avoid patent infringements, Google has developed an under-the-radar site, TDCommons, that the company has owned for nearly a decade, says Wired.On TDCommons, Google and other companies like Visa and HP can share their ideas that are not (yet) ground-breaking enough for a full-on patent. The platform allows these companies to throw out their concepts and nitty-gritty details in an effort to establish what they refer to as “prior art” to ward off any potential intellectual property disputes for any similar ideas, explains the article.

TD Commons is still a bit of a wallflower: So far,the website needs more activity before it can compete with more comprehensive idea archives, says Google’s head of patent policy Laura Sheridan. The industry is competitive and can make it difficult when it comes to giving credit for ideas, and since TDCommons is still small, the US Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) might not see content on the site as a legitimate testament to ownership.

Why did Google do this? Back in the 1950s, the patent game was strong, with IBM and Xerox publishing in journals they called technical disclosures, and sending them to patent offices to plant their flag. Fast forward to today, 84% of patent rejections by USPTO owe something to this “prior art” — those early disclosures. Eventually IP.com became the main big player — charging big bucks for uploads and viewing. Even the USPTO is one of IP.com’s biggest clients, the company says, utilizing most of IP.com’s 9.2k examiners and supervisors, explains the article.

Google was not too keen on patents at first, but changed their tune as they faced patent disputes. They started filing more patents and launched TDCommons in 2015 — a spot for freesharing of defensive publications, or dpubs, for short, according to Wired.

Growing TDCommons might not be so easy. Sheridan pointed out that companies don’t want to use a non-essential reading website. The website also still hasn’t made USPTO’s list of official research resources despite trying for years, so companies are more likely to turn to websites that are on the list and perform better in searches.

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