[Christ]

Like the submission steps for Technical Papers submitted to SAE and similar organizations? It's free to submit, and there's a peer review process that you go through.

Of course, it still has to be filed and presented according to their standards, but it's not as bad as patent filing. (According to US law, patents can be had without filing. Intellectual property can be claimed against any invention without proof of a patent, as long as it can be proven that said property was part of an intellectual invention or description made by the claimant, before said property was in use, thought of, or patented by the defendant.) This would constitute a patent for the person who could prove intellectual property, but does not require filing or fee payment.