Don't patents examiners receive bonuses based on the number of patent applications they process? And isn't accepting a patent basically checking a box, while rejecting one requires an argumented memoir and a lengthy back and forth discussion with the applicant and an appeal process? The patent system is skewed by design towards accepting patents too easily. I don't believe that patents are entirely harmful, but I think they actually hinder progress in 95% of the cases. The system works like this by design, and a lot of interests rely on it. It will be very hard to fix.
SparkFun Hooks a Patent Troll
91–100 of 186 posts
Re: SparkFun Hooks a Patent Troll
#92Earlier quoted context omitted.
In a reasonable world, benefit of the doubt shouldn't be given to the patent holder when there is genuine confusion. It should be incumbent upon the filer to describe their invention in a way that is clear to experts in that relevant field. Sadly I suspect the world we live in isn't so reasonable.
The patent holder didn't receive their patent by accident. It was reviewed by an examiner in the patent office. Patent examiners are skilled technical researchers who are trained to comprehend the matter they are examining. Once a patent has been granted, indeed, there is benefit of the doubt that the patent is valid. However - when it comes to whether the patent applies to a given invention, that's a matter of debat…
That’s certainly a good description of how the patent registration process is designed to work. Unfortunately reality, as represented by the broad proliferation of exceedingly moronic patents, begs to differ.
Re: SparkFun Hooks a Patent Troll
#93Me: software engr, retired; also patent agent who worked in Google Patent Litigation. A rookie mistake is reading the TEXT of a patent. A pro looks only at the claims. The text is only there to "support" the claims, which boils down to using the same words. Cynical, I know. Claims unfortunately look like gibberish if you're unschooled, but "construing" them is an early step in a trial, and often if you get a bad clai…
> I'll read those claims a little later this evening. I'll save everyone the trouble and tell you without reading them: they're bullshit and so are most software/computer patents. We really need to come together as an industry and fight this crap. Huge props to SparkFun for taking on these bottom feeders.
The paper in [1], which I wrote in 2014, was rejected (in a slightly different version) by CACM. The referee was a Microsoft researcher, who knew nothing about patents and relied on some "expert" who told him "the patent law has changed." This was completely bogus because the law on obviousness hadn't changed at all.
So the big companies, e.g. IBM and Microsoft, are not on our side at all. Neither are ACM and IEEE. I've been on this issue for a long, long time, and it really WILL take a bottom-up revolution. We will get no support whatsoever from the people who should be leading.
[1] https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2399580
Re: SparkFun Hooks a Patent Troll
#94Earlier quoted context omitted.
In a reasonable world, benefit of the doubt shouldn't be given to the patent holder when there is genuine confusion. It should be incumbent upon the filer to describe their invention in a way that is clear to experts in that relevant field. Sadly I suspect the world we live in isn't so reasonable.
The patent holder didn't receive their patent by accident. It was reviewed by an examiner in the patent office. Patent examiners are skilled technical researchers who are trained to comprehend the matter they are examining. Once a patent has been granted, indeed, there is benefit of the doubt that the patent is valid. However - when it comes to whether the patent applies to a given invention, that's a matter of debat…
In think you are grossly overestimating the effort and expertise being applied in patent approval.
Or more specifically, I think you’re overestimating the expertise of the examiner in the relevant field.
Re: SparkFun Hooks a Patent Troll
#95I do not want to go in the details of particular case. My opinion is that in general the paten system had outlived its purpose since some time and is now nothing but a detriment to society. It only benefits big corps at the expense of everybody else.
I can say that it is not possible for a regular person to do anything without breaking some patent. Mostly obvious and not deserving being granted in a first place. The only reason said person is not always sued is because of being too small of a fish. The minute a couple of bucks is made all of the vultures come down.
Re: SparkFun Hooks a Patent Troll
#96I like SparkFun and I don't like patent trolls, but I have to say that SparkFun's mockery of the patent doesn't make sense. It is pretty clear that this patent was written by an engineer describing their actual system in great detail followed by one fairly narrow claim. I've seen many patents that are mostly written by lawyers, and I don't see any influence of lawyers in this patent. SparkFun's criticism is kind of p…
Most likely: Kens runs a site on reverse engineering and the first result is a arduino. Ken is advising/writing/a part of the suit somehow.
Re: SparkFun Hooks a Patent Troll
#97I like SparkFun and I don't like patent trolls, but I have to say that SparkFun's mockery of the patent doesn't make sense. It is pretty clear that this patent was written by an engineer describing their actual system in great detail followed by one fairly narrow claim. I've seen many patents that are mostly written by lawyers, and I don't see any influence of lawyers in this patent. SparkFun's criticism is kind of p…
Most likely: Kens runs a site on reverse engineering and the first result is a arduino. Ken is advising/writing/a part of the suit somehow.
Let me state that this[*] is 100% not true. I have no connection at all with this suit, except seeing it on HN like everyone else. It's a bit bizarre to appear in some sort of conspiracy theory.
[*] i.e. the second sentence. I do have a blog on reverse engineering.
Re: SparkFun Hooks a Patent Troll
#98OK - so I vaguely skipped through the patent looking for claims - mostly it's a description of some guys possibly novel media processor architecture, remember the description is not the patent, the claims are. I could only find a short claims section at the end (1.5 pages out of 56). This doesn't read like most patents which tend to be lower on the details, and longer on the claims, I suspect that this was either wri…
nVidia and Sony actually cited this patent I'd think you'd need to look further back. I'd guess Cray? This seems like something they would have patented very early on with the Cray1.
Oh there's lots of prior-art way before Crays (B5500, CDC6700 - mid sixties for example)
Again the idea of sharing main memory between more than one CPU is very old (and arguably 'obvious to an ordinary practitioner of the art' who had taken a few comp sci classes)
I mentioned nVidia/Sony et al because they're the ones selling multicore CPUs right now and have the most to lose to this sort of predatory troll
Re: SparkFun Hooks a Patent Troll
#99I wonder whether I could get GPT3 to write patents for me so I can be lazy patent troll? hmmm
Re: SparkFun Hooks a Patent Troll
#100Earlier quoted context omitted.
They may have been so into their own bellybutton lint that they were very concerned about the difference between bound quarks on a QCD lattice compared to just elmer's gluing 2 free neutrons and 2 free protons together or something like that.
Yes, I have heard a lot of times how atom nuclei and alpha particles aren't made of protons and neutrons. It's always on this sense. Some times the difference is relevant (and people dealing with radioactivity see those times more often than others), but some people insist on the pedantic distinction even when it isn't.
The binding energy of protons & neutrons into nuclei is less than 1% of their mass, so the energy required to separate a nucleus, like an alpha particle, into all its constituent protons and neutrons, is negligible in comparison with the energies required for interactions so intense that they would generate any other hadrons except protons and neutrons, for example pi mesons, which would expose the inner structure of protons and neutrons.
This is an important feature of nature, whose consequence is that the most convenient way of understanding the world is that the first approximation, which is useful for almost all practical purposes, is to consider everything as composed of protons, neutrons and electrons, which are bound by strong, electromagnetic and gravitational forces and that there are also positrons (antielectrons), which can be generated in sufficiently intense interactions and which will annihilate with electrons.
Only for few purposes it is necessary to go beyond this and take into account that there are many other hadrons composed of quarks, besides protons and neutrons, and that there are also other leptons.
The distinction between these 2 level of approximation is important and whoever likes to think that alpha particles as not being made of protons of neutrons fails to get it.
Of course, for many purposes you can ignore the strong nuclear forces and you can consider the surrounding world as being made of electrons and of a little less than 300 kinds of long lived nuclei, which are bound by electromagnetic and gravitational forces.
At this other level of approximation, you should ignore the proton-neutron composition of any nucleus, but when you talk about alpha particles, you normally mean helium nuclei having a kinetic energy high enough to not be negligible in comparison with the binding energies of nuclei, so you are not in a situation when you can ignore the nuclear compositions.
In any physical model, it is important to specify clearly which is the level of approximation at which it works. Mixing randomly various levels of approximation of the structure of things is usually a bad strategy.