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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

#191

Post by Nomentatus »

jeffreyrogers wrote: post #176
hamami wrote: post #131

I think it would be useful if there was a patent type for "free for anyone to use", something like the MIT License in open source. This would make it easier for patent officers to discover and reject applications conflicting with prior free to use patents and offload the burden of keeping track of this from the inventor to the patent office.

You can just publish your invention and how to make it if you want it to be part of the prior art. Then, in theory, the patent examiners should find it when examining patents. Of course, making sure they actually find the relevant prior art is part of the problem.

False. Publication is no longer enough, the prior art or publication has to be sufficiently well known to practitioners, now. Recent U.S. decision.

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

#192

Post by Nomentatus »

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,…

The kernel of truth is that results can't be patented, but methods can be. But here Google doesn't seem to have added anything significant, and is copying a method, not just obtaining a similar result.

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

#193

Post by Nomentatus »

DennisP wrote: post #82
fma wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We (USA) and are a first to patent country now. https://techcrunch.com/2013/02/16/first-to-file-a-primer/

Yes but that just means if two inventors are working on something privately , the first to file gets priority, instead of the first to invent. Public prior art still invalidates the patent.

No, recent court decisions say public isn't enough - the invention has to have become fairly well known to practitioners of the art. Mere publication is nothing now.

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

#194

Post by Nomentatus »

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.

Only if the publication/art is rather well known to practioners. Mere publication is ignored now.

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

#195

Post by Nomentatus »

dpark wrote: post #46
gregatragenet3 wrote: post #45

The US used to have a great First-To-Invent patent system. It disappointingly switched to First-To-File in 2013 and these patents you are seeing are the result. With FTI Google could use the compression technique without filing because if someone else later filed Google could show that they had reduced it to practice first. However with FTF, any technology Google might potentially use in the future, they must file a…

This is not how FTF works. Prior art still trumps the patent filing.

Only if well known. Recent decisions in U.S. courts.

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

#196

Post by brandmeyer »

kyle-rb wrote: post #106

This reminds me of the "pull to refresh" patent that Twitter owns, but has promised to only use defensively. Optimistically, Google wants a similar thing so they can defend the use of this technique if someone tries to seek royalties for use of this video encoding technique. A little less optimistically, Google wants it so they can pull the license from a specific party if that party tries to sue them for an unrelate…

The fundamental problem with defensive patents is that you have to do more than merely trust the patent holder's current management. You have to trust the next 20 years of the patent holder's management.

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

#197

Post by falcor84 »

Nomentatus wrote: post #187
bdowling wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A public disclosure by a first inventor prevents a later inventor from receiving a patent on the same invention. Even if that publication happened only one day before you file your application and you had no chance to be influenced by it at all, you will not get a patent (or it will be held invalid). Saying that first-to-file means a non-inventor can lawfully obtain a patent is also wrong. It seems to imply that a ne…

False. A recent U.S. decision holds that such a disclosure must be well known to practitioners of the art, not just known to a few! Publication is no longer sufficient. You do have to lie and say you thought of it independently; something impossible to disprove. The number of people who'd lie for big money is... innumerable. You can patent ideas thousands of years old - if they're not well known to practitioners.

Could you please link to this decision?

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

#198

Post by DennisP »

Nomentatus wrote: post #193
DennisP wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes but that just means if two inventors are working on something privately , the first to file gets priority, instead of the first to invent. Public prior art still invalidates the patent.

No, recent court decisions say public isn't enough - the invention has to have become fairly well known to practitioners of the art. Mere publication is nothing now.

Can you reference that? Recently I both consulted an attorney on this stuff, and did my own research, and that's the exactly opposite of what I've found.

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

#199

Post by monochromatic »

Nomentatus wrote: post #195
dpark wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is not how FTF works. Prior art still trumps the patent filing.

Only if well known. Recent decisions in U.S. courts.

Prior art has to be well known? Please tell me what court said that.

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

#200

Post by Nomentatus »

monochromatic wrote: post #199
Nomentatus wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Only if well known. Recent decisions in U.S. courts.

Prior art has to be well known? Please tell me what court said that.

I have in mind a case noted by the ipwatchdog site, I believe. The following isn't the case I had in mind, which was more extreme still, and much more recent, but here's a start:

A reference “is ‘publicly accessible’ upon a satisfactory showing that [the reference] has been disseminated or otherwise made available to the extent that persons interested and ordinarily skilled in the subject matter or art exercising reasonable diligence, can locate it.” Bruckelmyer v. Ground Heaters, Inc., 445 F.3d 1374, 1378 (Fed. Cir. 2006). … For instance, in Electronic Frontier Foundation, the Board determined that when a reference was only temporarily publicly available via a URL but no longer exists at that URL, the petitioner must show that the reference can be found through another source not including the URL. Electronic Frontier Foundation v. Personal Audio, LLC, IPR2014-00070, Paper 21 at 22 (PTAB Apr. 18, 2014) (Decision, Institution of Inter Partes Review).

http://www.ipwatchdog.com/2018/02/23/patent-owner-disqualify...

[Note that the information being up somewhere where most people wouldn't be able to find easily enough doesn't suffice. "Reasonable diligence" isn't defined, but clearly isn't intended as a high bar.]

Printed publications can be an exception - but both those words are highly subject to interpretation.

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