Url changed from https://www.cnet.com/roadshow/news/waymo-uber-lidar-patent-e... , which points to this.
This URL referenced by CloudYeller is a much better story than the Ars one: https://www.wired.com/story/eric-swildens-uber-waymo-lawsuit...
Vigilante engineer stops Waymo from patenting key lidar technology
21–30 of 156 posts
Re: Vigilante engineer stops Waymo from patenting key lidar technology
#22I have actually reviewed this man's supposedly vigilante's submission to the USPTO and it is clear that this story is not what it seems. The document is a highly professional 95+ page document of complex legal argumentation that only a law firm with a small team of lawyers with a lot of prior experience doing this could have put together. It contains lots of lawyer speak and contemporary argumentation that a lay person would simple not have knowledge of. As much as people are keen to believe the vigilante narrative, there is zero chance that is what happened here. Instead, he was used as a 'strawman' by a company with much deeper pockets to attack Waymo's key patent. I estimate that this actually cost around $100k to prepare and file.
Re: Vigilante engineer stops Waymo from patenting key lidar technology
#23> He then spent $6,000 of his own money Who on earth has that kind of scratch just lying around to spend on something like this? I mean good for him for doing it but wow!!
Luckily for the engineering community, it's somewhere around > 1
Re: Vigilante engineer stops Waymo from patenting key lidar technology
#24Interesting that Google/Waymo is one of the companies that boasts about not filing for bs patent portfolios and yet... :(
All patents are BS.
Re: Vigilante engineer stops Waymo from patenting key lidar technology
#25I have actually reviewed this man's supposedly vigilante's submission to the USPTO and it is clear that this story is not what it seems. The document is a highly professional 95+ page document of complex legal argumentation that only a law firm with a small team of lawyers with a lot of prior experience doing this could have put together. It contains lots of lawyer speak and contemporary argumentation that a lay pers…
Perhaps thats where the $6000 of his own money was spent, having a lawyer/lawyer friend edit his document into legal speak?
Re: Vigilante engineer stops Waymo from patenting key lidar technology
#26It's sad that Google has become part of the problem rather than the solution.
So much for "Do no Evil".
Re: Vigilante engineer stops Waymo from patenting key lidar technology
#27Props to this guy. I just took a look at the patent (highly recommended), and it's fairly ridiculous. It's a 101 design to control a diode with a transistor.
It does look that way but then if that's the case why didn't anybody at Uber point that out during the lawsuit? From the article:
>The patent describes how a laser diode can be configured to emit pulses of laser light using a circuit that includes an inductor and a gallium nitride transistor. That chance discovery helped spark a lawsuit in which Waymo accused Uber of patent infringement and of using lidar secrets supposedly stolen by engineer Anthony Levandowski.
>In August 2017, Uber agreed to redesign its Fuji lidar not to infringe the 936 patent.
If "some guy" with $6000 lying around could overturn most of the patent why couldn't Uber? That's the part that baffles me.
Re: Vigilante engineer stops Waymo from patenting key lidar technology
#28Earlier quoted context omitted.
I agree. Just like how engineers certify building plans to ensure the laws of physics are respected, patents really should need to go through some sort of peer certification review - at the submitter's expense - before it gets in front of an examiner!
The review will never be enough. It's better to eliminate the presumption of validity. Without that presumption, there is no need to bother with review, and patents become little more than certified timestamps.
...with R&D price tags attached. Then everyone who uses something a court considered similar must pay his contribution to the price of the oldest patent involved.
Re: Vigilante engineer stops Waymo from patenting key lidar technology
#29Earlier quoted context omitted.
"Random engineer", or guy who sold a company for $130M after a patent-induced nightmare? https://www.wired.com/story/eric-swildens-uber-waymo-lawsuit...
Doesn’t matter - he saw something anyone with EE101 should’ve spotted from the rewrite, stuck with his guns for no personal gain and won. I would love to have that much attention to detail (or even in the interest in reading through the patent).
It matters. Of all possible patents to invalidate, why this one?
Uber - one of the world's most valuable private companies, doesn't need help with patent law.
Re: Vigilante engineer stops Waymo from patenting key lidar technology
#30So, the last year, Waymo claimed that Uber infringe this patent and Uber claimed they redesign it so it didn't infringe the patent now.
And then, the same patent is concluded to be "impossible" and "magic".
What kind of nonsense is this? How do you use or redesign to avoid using the impossible magic tech?