Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Facebook’s patents show a commitment to collecting personal information

nytimes.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

161–170 of 173 posts

Re: Facebook’s patents show a commitment to collecting personal information

#161

Post by cwojo »

beefield wrote: post #135
rjtrickett wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Has the idea of a patent tax ever been explored? Basically, increasing the cost of filing patents incrementally to regulate excessive patenting and encourage companies to be more selective.

I have thought of a scheme where the first couple of years of IP are free and after that heavily progressively taxed over time ( e.g 1000 usd on third year and doubling each year after that. Once the ip holder does not pay the tax, IP becomes automatically public domain. Unfortunately Berne convention has been written in a way that basically does not allow any kind of taxation of IP in arts and literary works. Which,…

I think this thread drastically underestimates the impact of removing incentive to protect their intellectual property. People will simply file their IP in the EU, China, and elsewhere internationally, ultimately deterring people from operating in the US market entirely.

Re: Facebook’s patents show a commitment to collecting personal information

#162

Post by skykooler »

pritchardgelman wrote: post #86
TaylorAlexander wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m becoming more of the opinion that all intellectual property law is immoral on the grounds that it creates artificial barriers to prosperity for individuals who don’t receive the benefits of the patents. I work hard on personal projects (robots) that I think would be useful to others and I share them all CC0 or BSD licensed. I think it would be useful for economists to consider the way patents exacerbate inequalit…

>intellectual property law is immoral on the grounds that it creates artificial barriers to prosperity for individuals who don’t receive the benefits of the patents It is also a wealth transfer from the poor to the wealthy: the justice system protecting IP capital is financed by taxpayers, the hard majority of which hold no patents.

Especially as filing a patent costs several hundred dollars. If you have an idea but not much money, you can't afford to patent it (or might have to make the choice between buying a patent or marketing your invention).

Re: Facebook’s patents show a commitment to collecting personal information

#163

Post by maym86 »

itronitron wrote: post #114
homero wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If your name is on a patent, can you use it anytime? Like if you change jobs?

Typically no, because employees 'sell' their rights to the patent to their employer when filing the patent application. It is customary for the employees to get a silver dollar as a token that has monetary value (hence the sale) and we can thank Richard Feynman for forcing there to be an actual transfer of money :) I should also add that usually the inventor can't take the patent to their next job but if the inventor…

I don't think this is necessary. You can sign the rights away without a transfer of money.

Re: Facebook’s patents show a commitment to collecting personal information

#164

Post by bogomipz »

dominotw wrote: post #154
bogomipz wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You didn't look very hard then. There are plenty: https://www.nytimes.com/2014/05/23/technology/facebook-offer... https://gadgetwise.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/04/27/facebook-sti... https://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/25/opinion/25tue2.html

> Where was this level of scrutiny before Fact that you had to look very hard and go all the way to 2010 to find examples proves my point not yours. Going back to 2010 doesn't mean plenty .

If by looking hard you mean that I had type into a Google search box then yes it was very hard.

I simply posted the first few result that were returned by my search query.

And publication dates and volume of articles are completely orthogonal.

Re: Facebook’s patents show a commitment to collecting personal information

#165

Post by jashkenas »

dominotw wrote: post #87
jashkenas wrote: post #56

Hey folks, I helped out a little with this piece. Aside from being happy to answer questions — I want to share a few bonus interesting Facebook patents that didn't quite make the final cut: In "Systems and methods for directing messages based on social data" ( https://patents.google.com/patent/US20180041464A1/en ), Facebook talks about creating "user influence scores" as a metric of your reputation on the social netw…

Do you have similar patent analysis on other social media companies like twitter, google. Curious to see what other companies are doing wrt to user privacy.

I'm afraid I don't have a link to one — but I'd certainly love to see a piece that focuses on Google's portfolio. Even better would be a bigger, more comprehensive project that compares Facebook's patents to Google's, qualitatively. Both companies stand apart from the rest of the tech giants in their possession of enough personal data to exploit these patents — it would be fascinating to see if a trend or a significant difference could be discovered in the types of personal surveillance they're describing.

Re: Facebook’s patents show a commitment to collecting personal information

#166

Post by brlewis »

gsnedders wrote: post #58
QML wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Should we allow for algorithms to be patented though? To reserve something so abstract would be near equal to claiming a mathematical formula for oneself. If IBM had patented the fast Fourier transform, where would signal processing be?

I used to be absolutely against software patents on those grounds, but I nowadays actually think it's a weak argument. We don't see people arguing we shouldn't patent physical machines because ultimately each operation is a simple physical movement, so the sum of everything is just a sequence of physical movements. Yet we see people arguing we shouldn't patent software "machines" because ultimately each operation is…

>I still strongly think far too many patents get issued

Then you are against software patents.

If millions of people carried machine shops around in their backpacks, you would be against mechanical engineering patents, because far too many patents would be issued.

At the core of patent law is "presumption of validity", which places the burden of proof on the accused, rather than the accuser. Anything that multiplies the number of patents the PTO has to examine makes that presumption less reasonable. At some point it's arguable that a party accused of patent infringement is not getting due process.

Software patents. Presumption of validity. Due process. Choose any two.

Re: Facebook’s patents show a commitment to collecting personal information

#167

Post by brlewis »

Someone wrote: post #29
QML wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Should we allow for algorithms to be patented though? To reserve something so abstract would be near equal to claiming a mathematical formula for oneself. If IBM had patented the fast Fourier transform, where would signal processing be?

Patents on mp3 and RSA didn’t prevent them from being used everywhere. I guess a patent on FFT (which, by the way, was considered at the time, according to Wikipedia) wouldn’t have stopped its adoption either. Also, IMO, a formula , which tells you what to compute, is essentially different from an algorithm , which tells you how . FFT would be patentable because it is non-obvious, even when given the formula for doin…

>Patents on mp3 and RSA didn’t prevent them from being used everywhere

When the people who spread adoption ignore the law, sure patents don't prevent anything, e.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MP3#Internet_distribution

If you take a different example, say, improvements to JPEG, it's a lot harder for camera manufacturers to ignore patents. You're at the mercy of the patent holders, whose terms apparently haven't been reasonable enough for anybody to improve the compression in digital photos beyond what we had decades ago.

Re: Facebook’s patents show a commitment to collecting personal information

#168

Post by hulton »

rjtrickett wrote: post #122
citilife wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As someone who has multiple issued patents from large companies.. It's a pretty complex issue. I personally think software patents should be outlawed, as I don't know a better solution. On the one hand, I have several patents for project(s) that took years to develop. The processes are unique, very difficult to replicate, and should be offered some protection (if we agree that motor designs should be protected). The…

Has the idea of a patent tax ever been explored? Basically, increasing the cost of filing patents incrementally to regulate excessive patenting and encourage companies to be more selective.

Why do so many "solutions" always involve someone suggesting to tax and to get government coercion involved?

Re: Facebook’s patents show a commitment to collecting personal information

#169

Post by mnw21cam »

beagle3 wrote: post #102
IncRnd wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have several patents I created and assigned to my company. The main reason is to allow the company to work in those ways without restriction. For example, without a patent granting rights to do operation XYZ, then a competitor may say that the company is doing something forbidden and needs to stop. We can look at all the claims for stolen IP with the various self-driving car companies to see examples. This is a for…

Patents are strictly an offensive measure: They only allow you to sue/stop someone else from using them. They do NOT give you approval to do something. Some people mention "defensive" patents; They are only defensive in the sense that "the best defence is an offence" - that if someone attacks you, you have something to attack them back with. But that's not actually useful against entities that aren't practicing, such…

A patent can be invalidated by identifying prior art. If you're being sued by a patent holder, a prior patent that you own that covers the technique would be a very good demonstration of prior art. I think that would be classified as a defensive use of a patent.

Re: Facebook’s patents show a commitment to collecting personal information

#170

Post by mnw21cam »

davidhyde wrote: post #143

My problem with patents is that they all have the same expiry. Some industries move faster than others. A 5 year software patent would be less stifling to innovation but would give the inventor enough of a head start to get going.

Thing is, you would then get legal wrangling over the category that each specific application should go in. The applicant would obviously want it to go into a category that has a longer validity, and some creative rewording may occur.
Post reply on HN