This was one of the first ideas posted on the site--seecolored salt.

Hard to see how to patent. My guess is that this is something for Mortons to do. If we tried it and succeeded, we'd just be doing their test marketing.

You can't patent anyway once you have shared your ideas on here can you?

I believe you can still patent it even after you've printed it somewhere as long as you can still prove that you were the first one to come up with the idea. In engineering, we use dated books that are signed by colleagues to testify as to the dates of inventions.

Still, once you've given away an idea here, if someone else wants to use it or even patent it, you're likely to either be in a race against them or be in a position of having to sue them to prove that it was your idea first.

Also, in a patent application, there is a period where the lawyer does a patent search to prove that the idea wasn't patented or even thought of before. Many simple ideas--like colored salt for instance, aren't that technical or earth shaking and I imagine people have been coloring salt for centuries somewhere.