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Inventor says Google is patenting work he put in the public domain

arstechnica.com

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Re: Inventor says Google is patenting work he put in the public domain

#121

Post by laumars »

monochromatic wrote: post #117
laumars wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> That is completely wrong. That maybe true but without any more detail your comment is still unhelpful.

All right. The patent office does search for prior art.

Fair enough. When the Apple / Samsung countersues were all happening I thought I read on one news site that the US patent office had stopped checking for prior art. Which certainly did seem to be the case at that time too. But I cannot find that original article yet now finding other sources that agree with your statement so it seems they do check.

Thank you for the correction :)

Re: Inventor says Google is patenting work he put in the public domain

#122

Post by ajb »

maire wrote: post #89
ajb wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

enedil is correct. To expand on that: MIT and Apache2 grant a licence to copyrightable expression. But the literal code is not what is patented, the idea is. Granting a license to the code doesn't automatically prevent someone else from patenting the idea. MIT doesn't say anything about patents. Apache2 additionally grants a licence to any patents which the author has which cover the work, and also tries to prevent s…

So - prior art is no longer good enough? I was at Xerox when they were fighting a patent on their ideas. At that point in time all you had to do was prove prior art on the idea. Xerox used their notes during software development plus the code to prove prior art. Similarly I was at Apple when they fought a basic patent on color matching. Apple succeeded in fighting the patent then proactively started patenting everyth…

I certainly hope prior art is still good enough. The GP was asking whether the licence under which you publish your prior art should make a difference - I don't think it does.

Re: Inventor says Google is patenting work he put in the public domain

#123

Post by delbel »

DennisP wrote: post #52
delbel wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

did we switch from prior art to first to patent a few years back?

We switched from "first to invent" to "first to file," but published prior art still invalidates a patent. The change just means that if two people try to patent something that they've invented privately, then the one with priority is the one who filed first.

Oh ok thanks, I honestly got mixed up in concepts. Glad to clear this up.

Re: Inventor says Google is patenting work he put in the public domain

#124

Post by freedomben »

evrydayhustling wrote: post #90
bingoboingo33 wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The only solution to put an end to the current patent system is to overload it. The equivalent of a DDos attack. Companies should file as many frivolous patent as they possibly can. Eventually, we'll have all the IP lawyers at 100% CPU and the world will be a much better place.

100% CPU -> 100% billable hours -> IP law is now an incredibly attractive profession -> more capacity for patents / lawsuits... and that's essentially how we got here.

Exactly. They'll scale up horizontally by adding more and more instances until supply == demand, at which case we'll be really, really sad we followed this road.

Re: Inventor says Google is patenting work he put in the public domain

#125

Post by ajb »

mcbits wrote: post #42
ajb wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

enedil is correct. To expand on that: MIT and Apache2 grant a licence to copyrightable expression. But the literal code is not what is patented, the idea is. Granting a license to the code doesn't automatically prevent someone else from patenting the idea. MIT doesn't say anything about patents. Apache2 additionally grants a licence to any patents which the author has which cover the work, and also tries to prevent s…

That sounds backwards if I'm reading you right. An idea can't be patented (well... in theory), but a new invention based on an idea can. Google apparently thinks they've got a new, non-obvious invention based on Duda's public domain work, which may itself have been patentable but wasn't. That's one reason why companies rich enough to spam the patent office tend to do so. Company A invents X. If they don't patent it,…

Yes, in saying an idea is patented I was technically incorrect - in theory, an idea can't be patented, an invention is only patentable if it 'teaches' how to implement it. Nevertheless, what is patentable is still a lot more abstract that an actual implementation.

So we have:

idea > teachable invention > implementation

(where '>' is 'more abstract than')

The GP seemed to by conflating the invention and implementation, in asking what difference the licence of made. That was the distinction I was trying to draw. Duda put the invention in the public domain, not an implementation - it's not clear you can apply the MIT or Apache licenses to an invention at all.

Re: Inventor says Google is patenting work he put in the public domain

#126

Post by tdb7893 »

amelius wrote: post #24
tdb7893 wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Their main goal is to not get sued. As long as no one else is granted the patent they probably won't be too unhappy. As a large tech firm just not patenting anything doesn't seem practical given the current patent law even if you don't plan on suing people for them. Once you get a patent another company can't get a patent for the same thing (and if they do it's easy to invalidate) and also the more patents you have t…

> Their main goal is to not get sued. So there's no practical way to demonstrate prior art without filing a patent?

It's not the only way to get prior art but prior art isn't the only reason a tech company wants to try to get patents so I'm a little unclear on your point.

Re: Inventor says Google is patenting work he put in the public domain

#127

Post by tehabe »

jonathanyc wrote: post #95
blattimwind wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Blue prints are absolutely covered by copyright.

I think that’s what they meant. See “only.”

I mistyped, I wanted to say, that you can create your own blueprints by studying a machine. But when your invention is patented this implementation is protected. But in software it is not about the implementation (because that's already protected via copyright) it is about the idea behind the implementation. Which even prohibits different implementations.

Re: Inventor says Google is patenting work he put in the public domain

#128

Post by throwaway37585 »

xfs wrote: post #108

Read this reaction from xiphmont: https://xiphmont.dreamwidth.org/84214.html It paints a quite different picture.

I see nothing substantive in the post you linked to. Can you clarify why you think it “paints a quite different picture”?

Re: Inventor says Google is patenting work he put in the public domain

#129

Post by allenz »

xfs wrote: post #108

Read this reaction from xiphmont: https://xiphmont.dreamwidth.org/84214.html It paints a quite different picture.

This comes off as rather dismissive. Xiphmont simultaneously claims that Jarek's work is useless ("the performance claims just don't hold up") and that Google needs a defensive patent on it.

As someone on encode.ru pointed out, "if Google genuinely wanted this as a defensive patent, then the right approach is to work with Jarek and pay for him to file a patent on ANS itself blocking as many of the spin-off patents as possible." They didn't even talk to him before patenting his work.

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