Vigilante engineer stops Waymo from patenting key lidar technology • Hacker News Board

Re: Vigilante engineer stops Waymo from patenting key lidar technology

#21

Post by franga2000 » Tue, Oct 02, 2018, 6:44 AM UTC

Retric wrote: post #12

rfrey wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Make the bounty $10000 * sqrt(# patents owned by applicant)

Trolls will often have one patent per company all owned by a 2nd company. That's really hard to stop.

How about making it travel up the tree? Find the "root" company, then count the patents of all of the companies directly or indirectly under them. (yes, I like graph theory. Is it that obvious?) Use that to increase the fee. It would not only make trolling harder, but make it easier for small companies/inventors to have one or two crucial patents, which is what the system was designed for. Of course, as with most things that make sense to me, it would never pass as law.

Re: Vigilante engineer stops Waymo from patenting key lidar technology

#22

Post by franga2000 » Tue, Oct 02, 2018, 6:46 AM UTC

The very least the courts could do here is make the patent owner pay back the 6000$ the engineer spent on the challenge. Of course, IMO they should get a big fine to go with that too.

Re: Vigilante engineer stops Waymo from patenting key lidar technology

#23

Post by sitkack » Tue, Oct 02, 2018, 9:37 AM UTC

raverbashing wrote: post #10

rb808 wrote: post #5

> He then spent $6,000 of his own money to launch a formal challenge to 936. Either he has a lot of spare time and money or this isn't the full story.

People spend more on cars, fancy PCs and such, I don't think 6k would be hard for someone making, let's say 100k/yr if they were really determined

We have social norms that say it is ok to "waste" money in certain areas, like buying a 40k BMW is Ok. But buying a 5k car and spending 30k on a piano is weird or stupid.

This guys use of 6k is inspiring.

Re: Vigilante engineer stops Waymo from patenting key lidar technology

#24

Post by true_religion » Tue, Oct 02, 2018, 10:09 AM UTC

Retric wrote: post #12

rfrey wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Make the bounty $10000 * sqrt(# patents owned by applicant)

Trolls will often have one patent per company all owned by a 2nd company. That's really hard to stop.

Not really. Perversions of the intent of law are easy to stop... just make it clear that the intent is what matters, and judges will force people to declare their corporate heirarchy or be held in contempt of court.

No lawyer will play games when intent is more impprtant than the letter, sonce you cam be held in jail for contempt indefinitely based solely on the judges reputation.

Re: Vigilante engineer stops Waymo from patenting key lidar technology

#25

Post by tychomaz » Tue, Oct 02, 2018, 1:35 PM UTC

“Waymo's lidar firing circuit showed current passing along a wire between the circuit and the ground in two directions—something generally deemed impossible. ”

It’s almost as if science said, “Give me one free miracle, and from there the entire thing will proceed with a seamless, causal explanation.”’17 The one free miracle was the sudden appearance of all the matter and energy in the universe, with all the laws that govern it. Rupert Sheldrake, The Science Delusion: Freeing the Spirit of Enquiry