Inventor says Google is patenting work he put in the public domain • Hacker News Board

Re: Inventor says Google is patenting work he put in the public domain

#151

Post by DannyBee » Sun, Jun 10, 2018, 6:40 PM UTC

allenz wrote: post #145

DannyBee wrote: post #98

"a view largely endorsed by a preliminary ruling in February by European patent authorities" If one clicks through, you discover it says literally nothing of the sort, it just says they will include that email exchange as a possible prior art reference (along with a lot of other things). It actually doesn't express any opinions at all, except on the priority claim, which is not related to this part. It is literally a…

I think you missed the other seven pages. Page 2 paragraph 6: > The present application does not meet the criteria of Article 33(1) PCT, because the subject-matter of claim 1 does not involve an inventive step in the sense of Article 33(3) PCT.

The PDF it gives you on mobile is indeed one page. But reading all the other pages it still doesn't change my view.

The part you cite is about whether that claim is patentable at all in view of the paper, it's unrelated to the prior art emails. If that is upheld it would mean the person complaining here could not get a patent either. They've made no determination that what is in the emails is relevant to anything that I can see. It would also be par for the course since examination tends to take a while.

Re: Inventor says Google is patenting work he put in the public domain

#152

Post by elliotec » Sun, Jun 10, 2018, 6:42 PM UTC

wb36 wrote: post #150

trhway wrote: post #148

>A Google spokesperson told Ars that Duda came up with a theoretical concept that isn't directly patentable, while Google's lawyers are seeking to patent a specific application of that theory that reflects additional work by Google's engineers. and this is how you do it, children. You patent a straightforward implementation and application ("additional work by engineers") of the idea, and thus you effectively prevent…

You can't patent an idea, only an implementation of an idea.

But I think the point is that if there is really only one viable implementation of an idea, they’re effectively patenting the idea via the implementation.

Re: Inventor says Google is patenting work he put in the public domain

#153

Post by dick_sucker2 » Sun, Jun 10, 2018, 6:42 PM UTC

wb36 wrote: post #150

trhway wrote: post #148

>A Google spokesperson told Ars that Duda came up with a theoretical concept that isn't directly patentable, while Google's lawyers are seeking to patent a specific application of that theory that reflects additional work by Google's engineers. and this is how you do it, children. You patent a straightforward implementation and application ("additional work by engineers") of the idea, and thus you effectively prevent…

You can't patent an idea, only an implementation of an idea.

Aren't drugs patents ideas and not implementations?

Re: Inventor says Google is patenting work he put in the public domain

#154

Post by allenz » Sun, Jun 10, 2018, 6:45 PM UTC

kevmo314 wrote: post #147

allenz wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This comes off as rather dismissive. Xiphmont simultaneously claims that Jarek's work is useless ("the performance claims just don't hold up") and that Google needs a defensive patent on it. As someone on encode.ru pointed out, "if Google genuinely wanted this as a defensive patent, then the right approach is to work with Jarek and pay for him to file a patent on ANS itself blocking as many of the spin-off patents as…

That doesn't sound like the right approach. Google has the resources to actually defend the patent. While ideally/ethically Jarek should be the one with the patent, if the patent is only being used defensively, Jarek probably isn't the right entity to actually defend it.

Google could also buy the patent from Jarek. At minimum, they should have talked with him.

Re: Inventor says Google is patenting work he put in the public domain

#155

Post by Bjartr » Sun, Jun 10, 2018, 6:49 PM UTC

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #144

ttul wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Absolutely. The first to file system greatly disadvantages individual and/or poorly funded inventors, because for big corporations, the cost to file is no great hurdle.

Flip side: first to file arose because first to invent is inherently ambiguous. The fixed cost of a filing was deemed better than the large and unknowable cost of determining who invented what when through the courts.

How does copyright handle that problem since copyright is automatic?

Re: Inventor says Google is patenting work he put in the public domain

#156

Post by [deleted] » Sun, Jun 10, 2018, 6:51 PM UTC

Bjartr wrote: post #155

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Flip side: first to file arose because first to invent is inherently ambiguous. The fixed cost of a filing was deemed better than the large and unknowable cost of determining who invented what when through the courts.

How does copyright handle that problem since copyright is automatic?

[deleted]

Re: Inventor says Google is patenting work he put in the public domain

#157

Post by randyrand » Sun, Jun 10, 2018, 6:52 PM UTC

wb36 wrote: post #150

trhway wrote: post #148

>A Google spokesperson told Ars that Duda came up with a theoretical concept that isn't directly patentable, while Google's lawyers are seeking to patent a specific application of that theory that reflects additional work by Google's engineers. and this is how you do it, children. You patent a straightforward implementation and application ("additional work by engineers") of the idea, and thus you effectively prevent…

You can't patent an idea, only an implementation of an idea.

Implementations are ideas too.

The distinction does not make sense.

Re: Inventor says Google is patenting work he put in the public domain

#158

Post by jjeaff » Sun, Jun 10, 2018, 6:52 PM UTC

wb36 wrote: post #150

trhway wrote: post #148

>A Google spokesperson told Ars that Duda came up with a theoretical concept that isn't directly patentable, while Google's lawyers are seeking to patent a specific application of that theory that reflects additional work by Google's engineers. and this is how you do it, children. You patent a straightforward implementation and application ("additional work by engineers") of the idea, and thus you effectively prevent…

You can't patent an idea, only an implementation of an idea.

While that may technically he the case, the USPTO has allowed the "application" of ideas to be so broad as to effectively be just a patent on ideas.

There are a million different ways you could implement a "one click checkout" yet the USPTO granted a "one click checkout" patent to Amazon. And countless similar parents exist today. (podcast patent, online shopping cart patent, a patent on making 'toast' and on and on)

Re: Inventor says Google is patenting work he put in the public domain

#159

Post by allenz » Sun, Jun 10, 2018, 6:58 PM UTC

DannyBee wrote: post #151

allenz wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you missed the other seven pages. Page 2 paragraph 6: > The present application does not meet the criteria of Article 33(1) PCT, because the subject-matter of claim 1 does not involve an inventive step in the sense of Article 33(3) PCT.

The PDF it gives you on mobile is indeed one page. But reading all the other pages it still doesn't change my view. The part you cite is about whether that claim is patentable at all in view of the paper, it's unrelated to the prior art emails. If that is upheld it would mean the person complaining here could not get a patent either. They've made no determination that what is in the emails is relevant to anything tha…

> it's unrelated to the prior art... they've made no determination that what is in the emails is relevant to anything that I can see

Paragraph 6.1: "The author of D1 [Jarek] provided in January 2014 in an on-line discussion forum information that would allow a skilled person to reach the invention without having to apply any inventive skills."

Paragraph 6.2: "In particular, it has been proposed in the on-line discussion forum to use ANS in video compression "like VP9" (D5)..."

The patent court is saying that Google's patent on ANS in video compression is invalid in light of Jarek's prior art, exactly as Jarek claims. The report cites Jarek's emails (documents D5 and D6) as prior art over and over.

Re: Inventor says Google is patenting work he put in the public domain

#160

Post by DannyBee » Sun, Jun 10, 2018, 7:02 PM UTC

allenz wrote: post #159

DannyBee wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The PDF it gives you on mobile is indeed one page. But reading all the other pages it still doesn't change my view. The part you cite is about whether that claim is patentable at all in view of the paper, it's unrelated to the prior art emails. If that is upheld it would mean the person complaining here could not get a patent either. They've made no determination that what is in the emails is relevant to anything tha…

> it's unrelated to the prior art... they've made no determination that what is in the emails is relevant to anything that I can see Paragraph 6.1: "The author of D1 [Jarek] provided in January 2014 in an on-line discussion forum information that would allow a skilled person to reach the invention without having to apply any inventive skills." Paragraph 6.2: "In particular, it has been proposed in the on-line discuss…

You are confusing a whole bunch of things

(sorry, i can't edit my original response on mobile fast enough to correct a few errors. I think you took the wrong thing away from the "unrelated to the prior art" sentence).

1. This is not a court :)

In fact, the rejection is specifically not binding.

"(1) The objective of the international preliminary examination is to formulate a preliminary and non-binding opinion on the questions whether the claimed invention appears to be novel, to involve an inventive step (to be non-obvious), and to be industrially applicable."

2. As i said, they are saying claim 1 is not inventive, regardless of those references anyway. See 6.13.4

D1 is Jarek's original paper, a reference Google gave, not Jarek.

You are right that they have a long discussion of these emails, but then decide they don't matter anyway to claim 1 in 6.13.4. Perhaps you missed that. They even explicitly say that D5/D6 do not matter in practice. The rest is just random examiner prognostication.

You'll also see they are not cited in reference to any other claims.

Jarek (and the author's) claim was the emails are important and that he told them what they patented. As you can see, the preliminary ruling was in fact, that they are not really relevant or important to the patentability of the claim. In this case, they so far have explicitly decided it would be unpatentable regardless of whether he had ever sent the emails at all!

(The claim they are patenting ANS, i have no opinion on. I highlighted a fairly small portion of the article i believe is shoddy reporting, and i still believe that)