"technology"
yeah, like one control to adjust the volume on MORE THAN A SINGLE SPEAKER AT A TIME.. I think that feature is also on.. every single piece of audio equipment I've ever owned.. making it wireless is not even an innovation.
Google doesn't want to pay Sonos for technology it copied
291–300 of 302 posts
Re: Google doesn't want to pay Sonos for technology it copied
#292Earlier quoted context omitted.
The core problem is that for someone knowledgeable in the field, everything becomes straightforward, but the further away you are from the field, the more novel it becomes -- this is true across the board. Even the great accomplishments where people win Nobel prizes, often it can be argued that it was going to happen anyhow because it was the next step in scientific progress given the context. Thus defining "non-obvi…
I think the test is simple: give a bunch of experts the claims in the patent and not how the patent implements the claim. If the experts can find a way to implement the claim in a relatively short period, then the claim is obvious and should be rejected. Of course it is possible that a more specific claim is not obvisous. For example, if there are specific performance requirements. If the initial claims are obvisious…
that's not really going to work though.. there have been (and must still be) tons of "obvious" solutions to well-known problems..
So if you could simply "give a bunch of experts the claims in the patent" and have them actually come up with something.. Well, then it'd be trivial to simply rewrite existing unsolved problems in "claim of method to solve problem" and they'd magically be able to solve it?
The problem is that obvious solutions become obvious only when they arrive, and not before.
Even framing a problem so that it can be solved is an example of this.. There are lots of problems that only appear after their solution. Before the solution, they weren't problems, but simply "how things are". Like, right now, we've not solved death, so for most people, it's not really a problem, it's just how things are.. If we solve death, future people will look back at us in disbelief: (You try to tell me people just DIED? and the entire world didn't unite to fix that? what the fuck was wrong with them? guess they got what they deserved..)
Re: Google doesn't want to pay Sonos for technology it copied
#293Earlier quoted context omitted.
The core problem is that for someone knowledgeable in the field, everything becomes straightforward, but the further away you are from the field, the more novel it becomes -- this is true across the board. Even the great accomplishments where people win Nobel prizes, often it can be argued that it was going to happen anyhow because it was the next step in scientific progress given the context. Thus defining "non-obvi…
I think the test is simple: give a bunch of experts the claims in the patent and not how the patent implements the claim. If the experts can find a way to implement the claim in a relatively short period, then the claim is obvious and should be rejected. Of course it is possible that a more specific claim is not obvisous. For example, if there are specific performance requirements. If the initial claims are obvisious…
I like this idea, but the pro-patent argument says that some things become obvious only after you see them. Once a company starts selling a product with the new idea, everyone will figure it out, and it will become part of the set of things that are obvious to experts.
Re: Google doesn't want to pay Sonos for technology it copied
#294Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think the test is simple: give a bunch of experts the claims in the patent and not how the patent implements the claim. If the experts can find a way to implement the claim in a relatively short period, then the claim is obvious and should be rejected. Of course it is possible that a more specific claim is not obvisous. For example, if there are specific performance requirements. If the initial claims are obvisious…
I like this idea, but the pro-patent argument says that some things become obvious only after you see them. Once a company starts selling a product with the new idea, everyone will figure it out, and it will become part of the set of things that are obvious to experts.
In my opinion that's not what patents are about. Patents are about how to do something. The obvious purpose is that revealing your patent advances the state of the art.
Otherwise, why would the community grant a relatively long term (about 20 years) of monopoly? It doesn't make sense to do that just for a clever business idea.
Re: Google doesn't want to pay Sonos for technology it copied
#295Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think the test is simple: give a bunch of experts the claims in the patent and not how the patent implements the claim. If the experts can find a way to implement the claim in a relatively short period, then the claim is obvious and should be rejected. Of course it is possible that a more specific claim is not obvisous. For example, if there are specific performance requirements. If the initial claims are obvisious…
that's not really going to work though.. there have been (and must still be) tons of "obvious" solutions to well-known problems.. So if you could simply "give a bunch of experts the claims in the patent" and have them actually come up with something.. Well, then it'd be trivial to simply rewrite existing unsolved problems in "claim of method to solve problem" and they'd magically be able to solve it? The problem is t…
I'm just saying, that if your claims have obvious solutions, then the community has no need for your patent. The patent has to solve something that is not obvious.
For the community, it is only worth granting a patent if the community gets something back in return. And that is, solving a problem we don't know how to solve. Obviously, that can be with efficiency parameters. If the simple solution is 50% efficient and the patent claims 90%. That may be worth the patent. And everybody else can keep using the 50% efficient solution.
In your example, if you now come up with a patent that solves death, then no expert will be able to find a solution in reasonable period.
If you can then show a working version that solves death, even if it is completely obvious in retrospect, it is worth a patent.
Re: Google doesn't want to pay Sonos for technology it copied
#296Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm having trouble thinking of examples of what you mean. It's not like people invent new branches of math to make a patent like with revolutionary ideas in physics. Do I get 6-12 months (or even more) working on the same problem and subject to the same constraints and available technologies the inventor had? A really "prophetic" idea can probably be identified as such because it's far too ahead of its time to get pa…
It is a hard idea to correlate since you can't unwind knowledge. I think your idea around giving a person X time to come up with solution could work if the patent office could afford that. Maybe take a 3rd party who is unaware of the patent/novel idea and then asking them how to solve for some generalized version of the problem that a patent states it is solving and see what happens. Similar to black boxing that comp…
I've been in the same niche for years and can certainly tell you what I could and couldn't figure out. There's no magic in what I do, else only 23 year-old geniuses who think outside the box would be dominating all the patents. Even nobel prizes are on average awarded for work done at middle age.
Just do peer review and get experts' opinions. Don't tell them how to make it work, just tell them what it does. E.g. make the inventor provide a carefuully-worded abstract. By the way patents that claim the category of problem itself as the invention (as opposed to the specific method for solving the problem) are another big problem that needs to be eliminated. Those broad first claims are the ones shot down in challenges. For example "use a computer to processs transactions", or even "use a convolutional network to classify faces". These are not inventions; they are problems that still need to be solved, and it can be done many ways.
Anyway if you're uncertain about 6-months, how can you justify giving them 20 years of monopoly?
Re: Google doesn't want to pay Sonos for technology it copied
#297Earlier quoted context omitted.
I’ve just started searching for completely local voice assistants, and had only found Mycroft. Thanks for mentioning Rhasspy, that looks like exactly what I want (my search skills failed me yesterday). And I completely agree about HW costs. Just getting a decent mike and speaker peripheral gets you close to the price point of the echo dot. I’m curious how much researching you’ve put into HW options, and if you’re cur…
Rhasspy is amazing! It supports everything I want: central processing with several satellites, multi-language requests (while I want to keep everything English, I also want to request bands not in English), pre-defined commands, fine-tuning. For the microphone, I want to go with the ReSpeaker mic array in a case [0] for when I need multi-directional far-field recognition (living room, bed room), and probably the ofte…
That all makes sense. I have an old laptop which I'm currently using as a central server, and I _think_ will be powerful enough to run the server, so my main goal will be figuring out the satellites.
Seems like just getting a pi zero is going to be the first main challenge.
Re: Google doesn't want to pay Sonos for technology it copied
#298Earlier quoted context omitted.
I like this idea, but the pro-patent argument says that some things become obvious only after you see them. Once a company starts selling a product with the new idea, everyone will figure it out, and it will become part of the set of things that are obvious to experts.
In my opinion that's not what patents are about. Patents are about how to do something. The obvious purpose is that revealing your patent advances the state of the art. Otherwise, why would the community grant a relatively long term (about 20 years) of monopoly? It doesn't make sense to do that just for a clever business idea.
I basically agree with you. The counterargument says that some innovation simply doesn't happen for centuries, until it finally occurs to someone. You want to incentivize those kinds of innovations as well, to get people to revisit old issues. For example, the stirrup. Evident once you see it, but a big innovation, or it would have shown up centuries earlier.
Re: Google doesn't want to pay Sonos for technology it copied
#299Earlier quoted context omitted.
Young companies typically aren’t aggressive on their patents because they are seeking growth. When their growth stalls out that’s when a shift to monetizing their patents occur. I’m starting to understand the capitalism is cancer arguments. Infinite growth is unsustainable. So inevitably companies that were once great need to use tactics like this to continue their infinite growth trajectory.
Young companies with 'great patents' will leverage them both offensively and defensively if it makes sense to do that. Sonos, in this case, is 'kind of' a younger company. They're not making huge profits and 'free cash flow from a giant' would be huge for them. Mostly, patents are used defensively, so that companies big and small, don't get sued by trolls or steamrolled.
I think Sonos proves my point. My understanding is that their growth has stalled out. So, that's why they are shifting to patent licensing. And maybe to your point that's fair assuming their patents are truly innovative inventions that Google is unfairly using.
Re: Google doesn't want to pay Sonos for technology it copied
#300Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm pretty sure I can, as long as I'm not selling it. A patent doesn't ban an object from existence.
You can probably sneak by under the radar/because it is bad PR to go after individuals, but legally you are not able to do that and can be sued. You are probably also not worth the expense of a lawsuit.
> legally you are not able to do that and can be sued
I'm not a lawyer, but I think this depends on jurisdiction. In some jurisdictions, patent law has exceptions for private and/or non-commercial use. UK patent law has such an exception, but US patent law does not.
https://www.wipo.int/patents/en/topics/exceptions_limitation...