Prison Company Patents VR to Give Inmates Brief Taste of Freedom
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Re: Prison Company Patents VR to Give Inmates Brief Taste of Freedom
#2What a crappy patent. We really need patent reform. This is basically a patent troll (or they plan to be a gatekeeper and make money from the companies that make VR).
This company has about a 0% chance in the next 20 years of producing high quality VR. There is already prior art here.
So many ways to make patents better, including: - making it more expensive, with annual fees - increase the cost over time - just generally setting a target to reduce acceptance by 50%
Patents are ok in theory, when they promote true, material innovation via government enforced monopoly. However, the cost to society is high, so the cost should be high. And patents floating around more than 5-10 years are the ones with the most damage.
The only main counterexample is pharma. But here, it's also broken because most patents are not for groundbreaking drugs. We can also incentivize in other ways, like grants and contests (e.g. first person to cure X disease gets $1B, second person $500M).
Re: Prison Company Patents VR to Give Inmates Brief Taste of Freedom
#3I can imagine Charlie Brooke frantically taking notes for the next season of Black Mirror.
Re: Prison Company Patents VR to Give Inmates Brief Taste of Freedom
#4What a crappy patent. We really need patent reform. This is basically a patent troll (or they plan to be a gatekeeper and make money from the companies that make VR). This company has about a 0% chance in the next 20 years of producing high quality VR. There is already prior art here. So many ways to make patents better, including: - making it more expensive, with annual fees - increase the cost over time - just gene…
Allowing nullification by demonstrated lack of effort to utilize the patent, relative to the means of the patent holder is my personal belief.
Re: Prison Company Patents VR to Give Inmates Brief Taste of Freedom
#5LOL, I suppose that if I send an inmate a FB VR computer(if allowed in) I will soon join the inmate for infringement?
It it has been tried before, patent any old thing -'with a VR helmet', or 'with a computer' is not patentable.
Sadly many of these bad patents are granted and the patent troll ecology flourishes on...
Re: Prison Company Patents VR to Give Inmates Brief Taste of Freedom
#6The patent is little more than VR call in "controlled environment". Which presumably would also apply to schools. Or bowling alleys (been to several with VR setups). Or anywhere other than in homes.
1. A method for personalizing a virtual reality session, the method comprising: receiving, from a device located within a controlled environment, a request to initiate the virtual reality session, wherein the request includes user information for a user associated with the device; receiving a second user request for a second device to join the virtual reality session; responsive to receiving the request, initiating a registration process for registering the user to participate in the virtual reality session; responsive to completing the registration process, retrieving a profile associated with the user information, wherein the profile includes first user preferences for the virtual reality session; retrieving a second profile associated with a user of the second device, wherein the second profile includes second user preferences for the virtual reality session; retrieving session initiation information and the first user preferences from the profile; detecting a conflict between the first user preferences and the second user preferences; determining, based on the conflict, a higher priority preference between the first user preferences and the second user preferences; and initiating, based on the session initiation information and the higher priority preference, the virtual reality session.
=> A VR call in a "controlled environment" using shared hardware.
...
11. A method for initiating a virtual reality session within a controlled environment, the method comprising: receiving, from a device located within the controlled environment, a request to initiate the virtual reality session, wherein the request includes user information for a user associated with the device; responsive to receiving the request, initiating a registration process for registering the user to participate in the virtual reality session; receiving a second user request for a second device to join the virtual reality session; responsive to completing the registration process, retrieving a profile associated with the user information, wherein the profile includes first user preferences for the virtual reality session; retrieving a second profile associated with a user of the second device, wherein the second profile includes second user preferences for the virtual reality session; retrieving session initiation information and the first user preferences from the profile; detecting a conflict between the first user preferences and the second user preferences; determining, based on the conflict, a higher priority preference between the first user preferences and the second user preferences; transmitting authentication information to a monitoring system; receiving, via a network, an approval message from the monitoring system based on the authentication information; and initiating, based on the session initiation information, the higher priority preference, and the approval message, the virtual reality session.
=> A monitored version of 1.
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19. A non-transitory computer-readable medium having instructions stored therein, which when executed by a processor in a wireless device cause the processor to perform operations, the operations comprising: receiving, from a device located within a controlled environment, a request to initiate a virtual reality session, wherein the request includes user information for a user associated with the device; responsive to receiving the request, initiating a registration process for registering the user to participate in the virtual reality session; receiving a second user request for a second device to join the virtual reality session; responsive to completing the registration process, retrieving a profile associated with the user information, wherein the profile includes first user preferences for the virtual reality session; retrieving a second profile associated with a user of the second device, wherein the second profile includes second user preferences for the virtual reality session; retrieving session initiation information and the first user preferences from the profile; detecting a conflict between the first user preferences and the second user preferences; determining, based on the conflict, a higher priority preference between the first user preferences and the second user preferences; and initiating, based on the session initiation information and the higher priority preference, the virtual reality session; transmitting session information to a monitoring center; and receiving, from the monitoring center, an alert associated with the session information.
=> Monitoring system plus alerts.
Here's the patent:
https://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO1&Sect2=...
Re: Prison Company Patents VR to Give Inmates Brief Taste of Freedom
#7That's disgusting.
Re: Prison Company Patents VR to Give Inmates Brief Taste of Freedom
#8What a crappy patent. We really need patent reform. This is basically a patent troll (or they plan to be a gatekeeper and make money from the companies that make VR). This company has about a 0% chance in the next 20 years of producing high quality VR. There is already prior art here. So many ways to make patents better, including: - making it more expensive, with annual fees - increase the cost over time - just gene…
We have zero power to reform anything. This isn't a democracy. The sooner we get that through our heads, the closer we'll be to having that power.
Re: Prison Company Patents VR to Give Inmates Brief Taste of Freedom
#9A brief taste of freedom may be more cruel than kind, though I doubt it's cruel enough to trigger the eighth amendment. On the other hand, it does meet the standard of "unusual".
The Pythons pioneered the "comfy chair" torture technique, which was supposed to be a joke. But if got the brief use of a comfy chair then had to go back to a hard bench it would be worse than before.
Re: Prison Company Patents VR to Give Inmates Brief Taste of Freedom
#10A brief taste of freedom may be more cruel than kind, though I doubt it's cruel enough to trigger the eighth amendment. On the other hand, it does meet the standard of "unusual". The Pythons pioneered the "comfy chair" torture technique, which was supposed to be a joke. But if got the brief use of a comfy chair then had to go back to a hard bench it would be worse than before.
Just like work from home vs returning to the office.