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Patent Owner Insists the “Integers” Do Not Include the Number One

eff.org

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Re: Patent Owner Insists the “Integers” Do Not Include the Number One

#21

Post by monochromatic »

veraEFF wrote: post #10
harryjo wrote: post #2

EFF is being smartass here. I don't know the merits of the case, but the EFF is intentionally mischaracterizing it. The original patent used "integer" in a place where the mathematician's Z can't possibly be what they meant, and the dispute is over whether the patent covers the "n=1" case or only the "n>1" case. From the legal files: > Here, the “integer multiple of transmission time interval” (or “n times TTI”) desc…

hi there! no intentional mischaracterization at all. I posted below but I'll mention it again. The patent owner actually originally, at the outset of the litigation, included "1" in their definition of "integer." Later, they changed it to be only "n>=2." https://twitter.com/vranieri/status/647179711563431940 I've seen this before (on BOTH sidees, to be clear): someone changes a plain meaning of a term to avoid losing…

If they changed their position, that seems more telling to me than the "hurr, durr, they think integers start at 2" tone of this article. (Although it may simply have been that it wasn't given much thought initially.)

In any case, the EFF loses credibility when it overstates the position to make someone look more ridiculous than is warranted.

Re: Patent Owner Insists the “Integers” Do Not Include the Number One

#22

Post by monochromatic »

veraEFF wrote: post #6
thelema314 wrote: post #3

This is quite exaggerated; looking at the actual document [1], it's clear that they're claiming that in the context of the specification, "integer multiple of transmission time interval" doesn't include negative multiples, or 0 or even 1 * transmission time interval. As much as I don't like patent trolls, I see pretty clearly that the intent is 2, 3, 4, etc. times the transmission time interval. [1] https://www.eff.o…

Hey there, Thanks for the comment. While I agree that the negatives and zero would not make sense, the interesting case is "1" in particular. Although it's not in the post, the patent owner actually originally accused n=1 as being part of the infringing apparatus/method. I don't know when/why that changed, but presumably it was because they realized they wouldn't win if that was true. It is this sort of game playing…

If the usual meaning of "integer" clearly doesn't make sense in this context, then we're already into the territory of coming up with a non-standard definition (unless it's just indefinite at that point). So in that case, why is {1, 2, 3, ...} OBVIOUSLY more sensible than {2, 3, ...}?

Re: Patent Owner Insists the “Integers” Do Not Include the Number One

#23

Post by contravariant »

harryjo wrote: post #2

EFF is being smartass here. I don't know the merits of the case, but the EFF is intentionally mischaracterizing it. The original patent used "integer" in a place where the mathematician's Z can't possibly be what they meant, and the dispute is over whether the patent covers the "n=1" case or only the "n>1" case. From the legal files: > Here, the “integer multiple of transmission time interval” (or “n times TTI”) desc…

They phrased it somewhat confusingly though. They could have just said that while "an integer multiple" technically includes the case 1, 0, -1, etc. those cases are clearly excluded by the rest of the patent. There's no need to change the definition of the word "integer".

Re: Patent Owner Insists the “Integers” Do Not Include the Number One

#24

Post by kazinator »

Article is a complete strawman. The patent troll's arguments are that a specific integer parameter in question cannot be less than two, not that all integers are not less than two. I.e. that in some specific narrow context, because of other features of the specification, it is to be understood that even though the number is referred to as an integer, that just rules out fractions and real values, and doesn't mean other constraints on the value have gone out the window.

Evidently there is a history of some waffling in that 1 had been included previously (probably because the 1 case turned out to infringe on something, so they wanted to exclude it). Regardless, they had excluded zero and the negative values from the beginning, it appears.

Re: Patent Owner Insists the “Integers” Do Not Include the Number One

#25

Post by throwawaykf05 »

larrys wrote: post #15
cperciva wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly. They're not redefining "integer", they're saying that in the context of talking about an "integer multiple" of a time period it should be obvious that they mean double, triple, or higher integer multiples.

This is actually pretty scary. It's as if they are stretching the truth for their own political purposes. Kind of like politicians do all of the time. Kind of like Rolling Stone does when playing loose and fast with the facts. It's unfortunate (assuming you and the gp comment are correct I didn't read the documents) that EFF is doing this type of thing.

This is not new behavior for the EFF. Some previous comments calling this out:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9472613

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7974446

Re: Patent Owner Insists the “Integers” Do Not Include the Number One

#26

Post by monochromatic »

veraEFF wrote: post #19
thelema314 wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems clear that they used the word "integer" to clarify that only whole number multiples were allowed, and not 1.5, 2.7, etc. As to whether 1 is allowed, that's not determined one way or the other by the use of the word "integer". As to the patent owner originally accusing n=1 being part of the infringing apparatus/method, I agree that they shouldn't have done this if n=1 doesn't make sense in the context of thei…

Yes, the problem is for whether 1 is allowed or not -- do you infringe if integer includes 1? The point of the article is to show how words--even words with very well understood meanings--are often not clear. This is a problem for someone who reads this patent. How can they be sure whether what they do is in or out side of reach of the patent claims? The patent owner, if they intended to only claim {n>=2 |n e N}, cou…

The problem is that people aren't willing to pay very much for a patent application, and so the drafter doesn't really have enough time to scrutinize every single word.

It's not at all uncommon to spend 100 times as many lawyer-hours litigating a patent as you spend drafting it.

Re: Patent Owner Insists the “Integers” Do Not Include the Number One

#27

Post by kazinator »

veraEFF wrote: post #6
thelema314 wrote: post #3

This is quite exaggerated; looking at the actual document [1], it's clear that they're claiming that in the context of the specification, "integer multiple of transmission time interval" doesn't include negative multiples, or 0 or even 1 * transmission time interval. As much as I don't like patent trolls, I see pretty clearly that the intent is 2, 3, 4, etc. times the transmission time interval. [1] https://www.eff.o…

Hey there, Thanks for the comment. While I agree that the negatives and zero would not make sense, the interesting case is "1" in particular. Although it's not in the post, the patent owner actually originally accused n=1 as being part of the infringing apparatus/method. I don't know when/why that changed, but presumably it was because they realized they wouldn't win if that was true. It is this sort of game playing…

But exclude n=1 from the patent just reduces the scope of the claims. The n=1 case turned out to be infringing on something, right?

If a patent has some parameter space, and some values of that space infringe on something, where others do not appear to, then it makes sense to exclude those values.

> They chose that word, but it seems that they don't like the implications of that word.

But, out of context, the word has implications of denoting 0, -1, -2, ... those were present and clear when they initially chose the word.

Anyway, how about that C language, redefining integers to be between INT_MIN and INT_MAX! And what to make of these "unsigned integers". That's a total oxymoron; I mean the C constant 5U is positive. Positive is a sign. So, not unsigned! :)

Re: Patent Owner Insists the “Integers” Do Not Include the Number One

#29

Post by Pyxl101 »

strommen wrote: post #20
veraEFF wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hey there, Thanks for the comment. While I agree that the negatives and zero would not make sense, the interesting case is "1" in particular. Although it's not in the post, the patent owner actually originally accused n=1 as being part of the infringing apparatus/method. I don't know when/why that changed, but presumably it was because they realized they wouldn't win if that was true. It is this sort of game playing…

There are lots and lots of ridiculous patent and patent claims occurring in the US. I'm glad that the EFF is fighting against them. But this particular paragraph in this particular claim is by no means an abuse of patent law. The patent is about an "integer multiple" of a time period, which obviously excludes 0 and negatives, and arguably excludes 1. If there's something else going on here, then please add it to the…

I don't think it's obvious that an "integer multiple" of a quantity necessarily excludes 0 or 1. I could accept that it excludes zero if from the context that would make no sense. But to presume that it excludes 1 is a bit too much.

I'm not sure if I agree with the EFF's position completely, but I see where they're coming from.

Let's say that I was implementing linear backoff. I do this by multiplying my base delay time by an iterator i, where i starts at zero and count upwards. Sleep time = delay + delay * i. So after the first failure, we sleep "delay", and after the second failure we sleep "2 * delay", and so on. If I was describing this in words, I might say that I was multiplying the delay constant by the integer multiple i. In this context, it clarifies that the number is a whole number as opposed to a fraction.

Re: Patent Owner Insists the “Integers” Do Not Include the Number One

#30

Post by Natsu »

monochromatic wrote: post #22
veraEFF wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hey there, Thanks for the comment. While I agree that the negatives and zero would not make sense, the interesting case is "1" in particular. Although it's not in the post, the patent owner actually originally accused n=1 as being part of the infringing apparatus/method. I don't know when/why that changed, but presumably it was because they realized they wouldn't win if that was true. It is this sort of game playing…

If the usual meaning of "integer" clearly doesn't make sense in this context, then we're already into the territory of coming up with a non-standard definition (unless it's just indefinite at that point). So in that case, why is {1, 2, 3, ...} OBVIOUSLY more sensible than {2, 3, ...}?

> why is {1, 2, 3, ...} OBVIOUSLY more sensible than {2, 3, ...}?

Because that's the definition the patent holder originally asserted when suing, only to suddenly change their tune when there turned out to be prior art for n=1.

People spend a lot of time making sure that all the words in a patent are exactly so. You'd think they'd have made it a tiny bit clearer on exactly which set of numbers they were including (or not including), as they patent actually says they've patented even negative multiples of a time interval when that's self-evident nonsense.

We can sorta figure out what they probably meant, but that's a really bad idea for essentially the same reason that having a compiler that decides "I really think you meant to put a semicolon there" is a bad idea.

When we all know that a sane compiler should reject all garbage input. If you don't say what you actually mean, nobody actually knows what has been patented any more than we can claim to know the results of undefined behavior in a C program for all possible systems.

And these are comparable situations because they both involve the errors inherent in trying to interpret incorrectly written statements in a formal language.

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