I wonder if a first line of defense could be to license the work as AGPL. Google would then probably not use it AFAIK
Google Tried to Patent My Work After a Job Interview
141–150 of 510 posts
Re: Google Tried to Patent My Work After a Job Interview
#142There's a subtle-but-sneaky way to play this game. Put in a patent application. Abandon it. Congratulations, your patent is now going to come up in any competent patent examiner's initial search as "potential prior art". Patent the core technology (the "you have to do it this way" stuff), but salt the earth around it so nobody can get a patent on the sub-optimal alternatives. Also leave subtle but important details o…
How much does such a strategy cost?
Re: Google Tried to Patent My Work After a Job Interview
#143Earlier quoted context omitted.
He also ‘railroad others and use people as stepping stones to your way to the top‘ so that’s not a counter argument.
I think the argument was that he did precisely that. Yet history paints him as a great inventor (he was, and filed a lot of patents), and most people likely think of him as a "good/nice guy" which he may or may not have been.
Yea, I realized that might be the case after posting. But, it’s an ambiguous statement in context.
Re: Google Tried to Patent My Work After a Job Interview
#144Re: Google Tried to Patent My Work After a Job Interview
#145Regina Dugan is a former head of DARPA as well as ATAP. She has an impressive resume. Why would she do something like this? For a not particularly important patent, LED popup books? It seems bizarre. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regina_E._Dugan
Someone needs to add this incident to her Wikipedia page.
Agreed. If you’re an asshole let’s make sure some shit you do sticks to your name.
Re: Google Tried to Patent My Work After a Job Interview
#146Regina Dugan is a former head of DARPA as well as ATAP. She has an impressive resume. Why would she do something like this? For a not particularly important patent, LED popup books? It seems bizarre. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regina_E._Dugan
Probably because she’s been doing it to lots of people for her whole career. People don’t usually get caught the first time they shoplift.
Re: Google Tried to Patent My Work After a Job Interview
#147The story in the article about Jill MacKay stealing their LED sticker idea then trying to sell them the patent for $5m is infuriating. Goes to show you can get scammed by some jeweler in Colorado just as fast and easily as by huge Corp like Google. I suppose it's possible she had the idea, saw their kickstarter then submitted a patent to CYA. But then why back the kickstarter? Just feels fishy.
That makes me sick. What a disgusting parasite. And you don’t see anything condemning her actions. I wish that was the first result when you search her filthy name. Would hopefully impact her jewelry business.
Re: Google Tried to Patent My Work After a Job Interview
#148There's a subtle-but-sneaky way to play this game. Put in a patent application. Abandon it. Congratulations, your patent is now going to come up in any competent patent examiner's initial search as "potential prior art". Patent the core technology (the "you have to do it this way" stuff), but salt the earth around it so nobody can get a patent on the sub-optimal alternatives. Also leave subtle but important details o…
Sorry, but I don't think you fully understand how the patent system works. Examiners generally look at published patents and patent applications. Even though they theoretically can, they don't look at abandoned patents that were never published (generally called secret 102(e) art). Also, filing a true patent application is pretty expensive, minimum $5k to do it properly. There are inexpensive options, such as provisional patent applications which can be as low as ~$100, but examiners don't look at those either.
If you're worried about someone patenting something you created, and you don't care about getting your own patent protection on your invention, you'd likely get more mileage from publishing a detailed blog article than filing a patent application.
Re: Google Tried to Patent My Work After a Job Interview
#149Something very similar happened to me. When I was at university studying CS I was running a Arduino fansite and a fansite for a videogame - both of whom made most of their money from affiliate revenue (a couple hundred bucks per month). I thought it would be cool to work at Reddit (was close to graduating), and I had read blog posts from here and various other sites and IRC about how hiring managers liked projects. I…
> I talked about this in the interview and suggested they could make around 2 million per month if they hired me and used my script.
Obviously I don't know how the rest of the interview went, but the way you put it in the retelling makes it sound a lot like it was distracting from all the other reasons to hire you.
"How about that two million guy?" - "We hire developers, not libraries"
It might have been that they not only picked up the idea from the interview, but on top of that also did not hire you because of misplaced conditions. If that part came over more like "you can't if you don't", then it would be seen as a challenge: "sure we can". I think that just telling them that you have previously worked on link monetization and wrote a library about it would have been a much better interview strategy than dangling some made up number in front of their faces. As an interviewer I would fear that a candidate arguing like that would be prone to taking their regular salary as granted and renegotiate something on top for every quantifiable contribution.
Re: Google Tried to Patent My Work After a Job Interview
#150Regina Dugan is a former head of DARPA as well as ATAP. She has an impressive resume. Why would she do something like this? For a not particularly important patent, LED popup books? It seems bizarre. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regina_E._Dugan
> She has an impressive resume.
> Why would she do something like this?
Because the latter may be the reason for the former