Patent: Electronic flashcards (2013) • Hacker News Board

Re: Patent: Electronic flashcards (2013)

#51

Post by graphpapa » Thu, Jan 02, 2020, 6:46 AM UTC

tzs wrote: post #49

save_ferris wrote: post #2

What does this mean for apps like Anki (assuming they’re not the ones who own this patent)?

How much has Anki's handling of flashcards changed since it was first released? Anki was publicly released well before this patent's priority date, and so nothing Anki was doing then can infringe. It's possible that newer feature of Anki infringe, and so worst case they might have to revert those, but the basic Anki functionality is safe.

If Anki or other existing flash card programs are attacked because of this I would consider that quite evil

Re: Patent: Electronic flashcards (2013)

#52

Post by ww520 » Thu, Jan 02, 2020, 6:55 AM UTC

The claims in this patent are too broad. It's likely that it will get invalidated with prior arts in the court.

Re: Patent: Electronic flashcards (2013)

#53

Post by hnuser123456 » Thu, Jan 02, 2020, 8:26 AM UTC

I wrote a flash card program in 2011 to help me study French. I should charge licensing fees to anyone who uses this in a product.

Re: Patent: Electronic flashcards (2013)

#54

Post by ReverseCold » Thu, Jan 02, 2020, 5:04 PM UTC

Hnrobert42 wrote: post #32

ReverseCold wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It looks like it's a person (not a company) that owns the patent too, so unless this person is a m/billionaire a court case doesn't even sound that bad.

All patents are granted to people not companies. The people may then assign to a company the right to enforce the patent.

Oh, I actually didn't know that. Thanks!

Re: Patent: Electronic flashcards (2013)

#55

Post by Hnrobert42 » Sat, Jan 04, 2020, 7:26 AM UTC

gyc wrote: post #42

Hnrobert42 wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My friend was a patent clerk. She is pretty sharp. She explained that rules make it much more time-consuming to deny an application than to grant it or coach the applicant on changes they need to make in order to win a grant. Something about needing to explicitly refute each claim. Further, clerks are given quotas on how many patents they must review a week. It’s a pretty crushing load, so the system favors grants.

> Something about needing to explicitly refute each claim Seems like a wholly reasonable rule, no? We don't want the government to arbitrary grant or deny something without applying the same rules to everyone?

Sure, but to grant a patent, you just have to say “approved.”

Re: Patent: Electronic flashcards (2013)

#56

Post by lbatx » Mon, Jan 06, 2020, 12:43 AM UTC

Geimfari wrote: post #37

lbatx wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There seems to be a weird bug on the Google Patents site. I've noticed that the expiration date of a patent is always the day I visit the site, even for patents I know expired a while ago. This may be something like that.

It's not wrong but it is confusing – it's showing you what its current status is, which should be shown somewhere else than in the timeline.

Ah, thanks. As in Expired (date). Where date is every day from the day it expires until forever. Not Expired on date, but currently expired. Makes sense now.

Re: Patent: Electronic flashcards (2013)

#57

Post by bszaboky » Tue, Jan 07, 2020, 10:22 PM UTC

The lady who owns the rights is Vicci Tucci. Here is a link to her company's website: https://tuccionline.com/company/

Here is also a video on how her flashcard tech works: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FFOm9oM_-A4&feature=share

If you look under "Products", you can see that she has a flashcard app called Fluency. However, I can't seem to find the app on iOS or Android app stores.

Also, I still can't seem to find the novel aspect of this patent? The first claim literally denotes the functionality of every current flashcard application.