Slashdot Mirror
IDCT Approximation: Worth a Patent?
Between 1804 and 1807 Jean Fourier discovered the
Fourier
Transform: a means of transforming any function into its
frequency
components. He initially used it to study the
propagation of heat in solids. Since then the Fourier transform has found a
myriad of applications such as the JPEG, MPEG and MP3 formats... It's even been used to multiply polynomials. The main computational cost of the Fourier
transform are the N^2 multiplications it requires. In 1903 Runge noticed that
the number of multiplications required could be reduced to N.log(N) by using
trigonometric symmetries. In 1965 this was applied in computers by Cooley and
Tukey: the fast Fourier transform became
popular. Since computers represent numbers in binary, multiplications and
divisions by powers of 2 are commonly implemented by shifting bits left and
right. Multiplications by constants are easily optimized using the same
trick. In 1999 Trac
Tran of Johns Hopkins University found an
approximation to the
DCT which causes very little error, yet uses only 13 shifts and 31
additions for N=8. Given the recursive nature of the FFT, this transform could be used as part of an FFT with N>8. Apparently, he
has applied for a
patent for this approximation. Do you think this is worth a patent? Do you know of prior art?
Because it's boring if everyone agrees it's not.
No one here is intelligent enough to make these types of decisions. We all know, it, were just to afraid to admit it. The idea of patenting a mathematical concept would have been silly in 1800, but today it's critical. The only ones proclaiming that software patents are bad are those Open Source Zealots who are simply too stupid come up with there own ideas.
Its sad really, when a bunch of brain-dead "Computer Scientists" who graduated from the likes of Hope Collage get together, and proclaim to know anything. Just look at how crapy slashdot's engine is. It takes weeks to implement a feature, and its all written in crapy perl. And yet it's these people who claim to believe that they have any amount of intelligence necessary to make these kinds of decisions.
Remember, this is the same "Segan" jackass who tried to post is anti-US-UK spam while disabling comments when we bombed that Islamic Fundi-fuck Sadam Hussein (now if only we would bomb the xian fundi's who deserve it just as much, to bad none of the presidents (political whores) would ever do that. Gah.
But I digress. This is ludicrous. The "average" intelligence level on slashdot is low and steadily declining. It wont be long until it is nothing more then a vat of psychos screaming "HOT GRITS, and ELLIAN GOZOLAS NAKED AND PETRIFIED" at the top of there lungs.
ah, everyone remember the infamous sengan story? "US and UK Unilatitary Attck Iraq"? heh. the first slashdot story to pass 750. ahh.. welcome back sengan
The question is, who invited him back?
Yep, tons.
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Personally I think all patents are bunk. The tendency on slashdot to differentiate between software/algorithm and hardware makes no sense to me, whats the difference between implementing an algorithm on a general purpose processor an fpga an ASIC or custom VLSI? They could even all have the same source code.
BTW how do you do a FFT with just a DCT? Does his method apply to DST too?
I know it might be hard to read the entire site linked to (all those PDFS)...but its worth it. 20.1 (Diagnosing Machine Parameters) deals with the so called "secondary Fourier transform", the brother of the fast Fourier transform. MP4 compression is based (to a degree) on this idea, and several embedded chipsets in various RTOS machines are starting to ship with the secondary Fourier transform algorithms programmed in to aid on data compression.
Also, 6.7 Bessel Functions of Fractional Order, Airy Functions, SphericalBessel Functions deals with the general funkiness as a result of N=5 (This article deals some with N=8) - lossy compression, failed bubble sorts, etc.
obviously you missed the rest of his stories, such as the one that got him banned from slashdot
If we had to pay royalties to his heirs (or maybe to the newton corporation!)
Patents only last 17 years, idiot. I can't belive you don't know that!!!!
Integer libraries from the big DSP companies have had integer FFT routines for at least the last 20 years. Even an old DSP book I own has an integer FFT code example. Now optimizing multiplies into shifts and adds is something any junior DSP engineer would do, heck gcc will that automatically for you with the -O options. Now the only time this opt is done is when the number of cycles for a multiply is way more than that of an add, which is almost all processors!!! The exception are some of those single cycle MAC DSP processors.
Did you really think your 'a=b*7' code did an integer multiply? Heck no, any decent compiler will turn that into shifts and adds. Do a gcc -S and look at the assembly code. And this isn't just a software trick either, hardware guys do this in silicon all the time.
So Tran's patent is nothing new, heck, it is not even a new idea. His patent is only an integer FFT with constants for the multiplies complied with gcc -O. Engineer's have been doing exactly this since the dawn of the microprocessor.
erik
what story was that? And how was he banned if he's still posting stories?
Not really prior art to his specific implementation, but given that patents usually try to cover all bases it probably is prior art to the general patent.
"An approach to fast transform coding in software
Allen JD
SIGNAL PROCESSING-IMAGE COMMUNICATION
8: (1) 3-11 JAN 1996
Abstract:
Techniques for fast image transform coding on 32-bit processors are described. The Reparameterized Suehiro Transform is used to avoid multiplication; then two 16-bit arithmetic computations are accomplished simultaneously with 'paired arithmetic'. This reduces the effective cost of the 8-point DCT-III to about 11 additions, 9 subtractions and 15 shifts. With these techniques the Sun Sparcstation can perform JPEG compression and decompression at rates of 45 and 80 million pixels per minute respectively."
I only looked for one but theres probably a lot more multiplaction free DCT transforms. So even if this specific one gets a patent theres plenty left.
Please run your post through the demoronizer so the rest of the world (non-MS-using) can read it.
VHDL is a programming language IMO.
There's a post on prior art a bit farther down posting an abstract to just such a beast.
yeah, Sengan bit it on that one. What a jerk he was. Maybe he should be taken out back and shot.
Suck my fat clit, ass munky. I'll post in whatever format I want, you fundi-fuck.
wow, dude. you are cool. the way you are on the front line fighting for patent reform is awesome. I will now log off because I am an idiot, as you have adroitly pointed out, and will leave serious discussion for you. please email me and tell me how I should think on this and other topics.
thank you.
There's a nice policy argument for allowing patents on asymptotic complexity improvements in an article called "Computational Complexity and the Scope of Software Patents," which appears in the ABA tech law journal Jurimetrics.
Those who ignore history are doomed to repeat it.
We MUST take a lesson from classic Hollywood. Let's think back THE MOST popular, influential, and critically-acclaimed Motion Picture of the 20th Century. A Motion Picture that changed the way we THINK about the world. It caused us to laugh, to cry, to wonder why. I'm talking, of course, about the Motion Picture that changed the WORLD.
I'm talking, of course, about Mannequin 2: On the Move. In a world where just ONE film about people becoming mannequins and mannequins becoming people isn't enough... make way for Mannequin 2, film of the century!!!
Anyway, as we ALL know, Mannequin 2 features a very spiffy magic necklace that would cause the wearer (throughout most of the movie, open-source hottie KRISTY SWANSON) to become a mannequin, which as we all know, is a form of statue.
Sadly, as we ALL know, this necklace is patented, copyrighted, undistributable CLOSED-SOURCE technology. As we can't pass-produce and market these necklaces, we are being ROBBED of a fun, fast, and easy way to mannequinize the cute actresses of the world.
Natalie Portman, for example. I'm sure everyone would love to see Natalie Portman transformed into a sleek plastic statue. All one would have to do would be put one of the Mannequin-2-style necklaces on her. However, since it is CLOSED SOURCE technology, Ms. Portman is being ROBBED of the opportunity to be transformed into a mannequin.
THIS IS AN ABOMINATION. We, the Open Source community, MUST rectify this problem.
As OSS greats have done before, we must band together to create an OPEN-SOURCE ALTERNATIVE to the EVIL CLOSED-SOURCE TECHNOLOGY.
In this case, we must create an open-source alternative to the necklace used in Mannequin 2: On the Move.
Features of the open-source necklaced:
-Open-source, copyrighted, and undistributable
-Fully feature-compatible with the original necklace featured in the critically-acclaimed Mannequin 2: On the Move.
-NEW FEATURES
-Enhanced Graphical Interface
-25% firmer mannequinized buttocks
-Fully IIPS (International Institute for Petrification Standards) 3.1 compliant, with proprietary incompatible extensions!!!
-MUCH, MUCH MORE
If YOU would like to be involved in the development of this exciting open-sourced mannequinization project, and help to ensure that ALL the cute people of the world, male AND female, are transformed into mannequins, statues, and other immobile forms, PLEASE SIGN UP.
Here's how you can help:
-Submitting ideas
-Suggesting features
-Submitting bug reports
-Becoming a developer
-Submitting a name for this project
Please do as many of these things as possible! THE DREAM OF A MANNEQUINIZED NATALIE PORTMAN IS ALIVE, AND WE WILL HELP REALIZE IT.
Thank you!
DISCLAIMER: We are equal-opportunity petrifiers and do not discriminate based on gender, age, sex, religion, race, gender, stupidity, ethnic background, OS preference, or gender. THANK YOU.
Can someone please post a pointer to the actual text of some of the patents he has on his home page. I searched the ibm and uspto patent sites, and couldn't come up with a matching title.
My lawyer and I are applying for patents on the following:
You should be NAKED and PETRIFIED. Anybody who posts in MS-HTML should be TRANSFORMED into a NUDE MARBLE STATUE.
To any potential feminazis out there, let me point out that that includes females AND males, so don't *EVEN* try to play the "sexism" card. "Naked and petrified" does *NOT* discriminate.
Only YOU discriminate, feminazi zealots.
Hmmm...let's see here...
-------------------------------------
their (thâr)
adj. The possessive form of they.
-------------------------------------
there (thâr)
adv.
- At or in that place: sit over there.
- To, into, or toward that place: wouldn't go there again.
- At that stage, moment, or point: Stop there before you make any more mistakes.
- In that matter: I can't agree with him there.
pron.- Used to introduce a clause or sentence: There are numerous items. There must be another exit.
- Used to indicate an unspecified person in direct address: Hello there.
adj. Used as an intensive: That person there ought to know the directions to town. n. That place or point: stopped and went on from there. interj. Used to express feelings such as relief, satisfaction, sympathy, or anger: There, now I can have some peace! [Middle English from Old English thr, thr; see to- in Indo-European Roots.]-------------------------------------
to (too)
prep.
-
- In a direction toward so as to reach: went to the city.
- Towards: turned to me.
-
- Reaching as far as: The ocean water was clear all the way to the bottom.
- To the extent or degree of: loved him to distraction.
- With the resultant condition of: nursed her back to health.
- Toward a given state: helping minority women to economic equality.
- In contact with; against: their faces pressed to the windows.
- In front of: stood face to face.
- Used to indicate appropriation or possession: looked for the top to the jar.
- Concerning; regarding: waiting for an answer to my letter.
- In a particular relationship with: The brook runs parallel to the road.
- As an accompaniment or a complement of: danced to the tune.
- Composing; constituting: two cups to a pint.
- In accord with: job responsibilities suited to her abilities.
- As compared with: a book superior to his others.
-
- Before: The time is ten to five.
- Up till; until: worked from nine to five.
-
- For the purpose of: went out to lunch.
- In honor of: a toast to the queen.
-
- Used before a verb to indicate the infinitive: I'd like to go.
- Used alone when the infinitive is understood: Go if you want to.
-
- Used to indicate the relationship of a verb with its complement: refer to a dictionary; refer me to a dictionary.
- Used with a reflexive pronoun to indicate exclusivity or separateness: had the plane to ourselves.
adv.- In one direction; toward a person or thing: owls with feathers wrong end to.
- Into a shut or closed position: pushed the door to.
- Into a state of consciousness: The patient came to.
- Into a state of action or attentiveness: sat down for lunch and fell to.
- Nautical. Into the wind.
-------------------------------------too (too)
adv.
-------------------------------------
Source: www.dictionary.com
The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Third Edition
Copyright © 1996, 1992 by Houghton Mifflin Company.
Published by Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved.
haha. yes, a troll, but still funny.
My lawyer has applied for patents on the following: The Binomial Theorem The Pythagorean Theorem The Piano (sp?) Postulates The Principle of Mathematical Induction Any of the following operations: =, +, -, x, / I am giving notice that henceforth if you use any of these, I will expect a small royalty to be paid directly to me. Otherwise we will SUE! and SUE! and SUE!
Transmeta didn't get a patent on JIT, they got some patents on types of cache and interrupt handlers for speeding up JIT.
I wasn't aware that a "community" could think ANYTHING.
As far as I knew, only PEOPLE could have an opinion.
how can this guy's comment be redundant when it was the first comment? granted, his comment was devoid of any content and was obviously an attempt to get first post (he probably didn't even check any of the links) but that doesn't mean he should be moderated down incorrectly. He should have been moderated down as Overrated.
mathematical formulas are specifically unpatentable, according to the law. Fortunately for big business, their expensive lawyers convinced some idiotic judge that algoritms are not math. Once the precedent was established, all bets were off.
I vote we send all judges ruling on computing patents through a decent CS program, so they can't be so easily swayed by non-factual arguments.
dumbass insular dorkweed - no_they_dont last 17 years everywhere. go back under the miserable rock in the small garden in which you live
You're right. He's just like politicians. They don't do anything either. Goverment sucks. Lets go get our guns and storm DC. We know better.
You can have any opinion you want. Just note that your opinion has no value in the rest of the world beyond the closed minds of the unthinking herds of the typical slashdot fanatic.
Spout off any opinion you like. No one would give you a dollar for it, though.
No, all that would happen is that all the cool stuff would start coming out of European + Asian states that don't like silly american patent law.
err. 31+13=44, while 8^2=64. Geez guys. Let him patent it. We are not talking ORDERS of magnitude better here are we ?. Yeah - yeah. Its scalable...etc: I know. But heck. If you want to do FFT quicker would you: (a) recode your nice (understandable) FFT code (modified from 'numerical recipes' - of course :-P) to get 30% fewer ops. OR would you (b) just run it on a faster machine !. Hell - can you see any decent FFT toolbox being rewritten. Its all still in Fortran77 for christsake!. Nah. Given the dv/dt in processor speed (Bottoms Law) then you would be better off just waiting 12/12 and getting a faster machine.
Nope.
We're not going to let you leverage an ignorant distorted interpretation of what Al Gore said in a speech come off as some clever form of humor.
Lame, dude, lame.
I'd like to see some nude marble statues having sex.
Sorry, stupid.
Those are all things that could have been patented by their initial discoverer. Then the patent would have run out and we'd all share in the returns on it.
Well, here's the advice they give us here at the chemistry dept. of an Ivy League school. When in doubt, patent. Filing a patent is cheap. Patenting gives you control over how your discovery is used. If, in your judgment, the patent should be sold for big bucks, you can try to sell it. If you think everyone should have access to what you did, you can make sure your newfound knowledge remains free. If you want to charge for industrial use but let it be used freely in academia, you can do that, too. Lastly, patenting makes sure someone else won't patent it later. You may think patents suck since information should be free (or for whatever other reason), but if you hold the patent, that's a non-issue since you can decide how free the information is.
Except he didn't advocate State Socialism what he was advocating was more along the line of anachistic socialism.
Anyway I'm not sure if being against intellectual property as opposed to any property can rightly be considered socialist.
Bradley
I my opinion are mathematical truths discoveries not inventions and should therefore not be patented. You could argue that they are inventing an implementation, but the mathematical principle behind this idea is discovered, not invented, and should thus not be patented.
I don't like the idea of a mathamatical patent!
No, life is not a zero sum game.
Capitalism results in animosity and ecological destruction. Look at the US's ecological problems. Now look at the ecological problems any eastern block country has. The US is far, far better ecologically than them.
I guess they did their research real well this was done at the Univ Missouri back in 1990 and there is a masters thesis about it.
It seems to me that many of the people commenting on the evils of this patent are also the same ones salivating over Transmeta's new processors.
Perhaps someone could explain why not a single person has raised a stink over Transmeta's patents? If fact they are not just patents, but the greatest of all evils SOFTWARE PATENTS!
Maybe if someone could provide a good, logical explanation as to the double-standard, I might be inclined to take these frequent patent-bashing discussions more seriously.
So you couldn't patent anything that involves adding two numbers? Yeah, good call. I think I prefer the current system, thanks anyway you leech.
C'mon, I like Linux and use it every day, but it's hardly an "invention". It's just a reimplementation of old ideas.
Id rather delay public use by 6-12months and have it duplicated by effort by someone else if it means 20years of patent free use.
After all, if any one tries hard enough they can 'rediscover' the same thing. Its just needs someone to put the time and effort into it.
Simply being the first is not good enough for a patent.
Only if lots and lots of people try by fail and you are the only successful one then you deserve a patent. But if you say put 20 scientists to work on X project and 12 of them succeed, then big deal, no patent.
BULLSHIT, i use it a lot to optimize lame compilers output! and back in the 80s i used it heaps too in asm code.
LSR/RSR is your friend.
No wonder we need P700s if everyone writes shit lame slow ass code. Make your code 50% faster and your machine runs like a P1200, thats worth it with ZERO hardware cost for millions of machines.
btw GOre is a big tiem POT smoker, so the stopthedrugwar.org say
Not necessarily! To "escape" a patent, as you put it, it is mandatory that you do not infringe upon ANY of the the claims of the patent. Each claim is separate and infringing any one of them infringes the patent.
So, even if you do not "store" the data in your implementation of LZW, you may very well still infringe the patent.
And, it still stands that no one in this forum, as of yet, has produced a single example of an LZW implementation that is free from encumberance of the patent. Anyone have an example?
Disclaimer: I am not a lawyer and I'm willing to bet you aren't either.
If you'd ever tried to do any scientific research yourself, you'd know that the time and resource committment necessary to really do anything is far beyond what weekend kernel hackers put it.
Not even close. Compared to all the slavering anti-patent losers on Slashdot...
Yeah. Is this confusing?? It is the standard dictionary abbreviation for the word, "pronoun". A pronoun is a standard part-of-speach in the English language.
He's my academic advisor. I'll ask him.
HTML formatting has let you down (preview, preview, preview). BTW how do you get the less-than symbol to show up?
:-)
grep should search for '>>|less-thanless-than'
2.2.14 has 21817 lines that have at least one bit shift operation. Adding in lines (*.5) that have 2 bit shifts (all 4 permutations) increases the total to 22623. Counting those lines with more than 2 would take more time than I want to spend.
No, radix sort assumes that you know the base of the numbers. You just do a sort on each digit of them. Try that with a bunch of base 2 numbers.
Why do you want to become rich for? If you do not have any ideas, it is not worth it. And if you have some, you are worth as long as you share them.Sharing is social solidarity, something removed far from socialim.
FYI, those who decide to devote themselves to pure fundumental science rarely get more than 40 grands after finishing their PhD. I'm talking about postdoc positions in the US. FYI #2. Computer science bachelor can easily get 50 grands in the the same country. By the time s/he reaches the age of a postdoc, s/he may earn up to 100 grands a year. Conclusion: I understand the guy. Let him get a patent! Or, send him money as a sing of appreciation of his genius and continue to screem about harm of patents on slashdot after you've done that. I address all this to all but those who does programming for fun. Last thing I want to just quote (not exactly tho). "Physicists will do their job even if you stop paying them" --Feinman. Sincerely, Alexei
"Thank god somebody finally pointed out that not everyone here is qualified to make the sort of off the cuff remarks about issues being "obviously" one way or the other."
Everyone is qualified to make off the cuff remarks, whether about what is obvious to them or anything else. I can't even imagine what sort of qualification you think is required.
Hey, don't forget Cornelius Laczos invented the FFT as a numerical method long before there were any useable computers. J W Cooley, Lanczos and the FFT : a discovery before its time, in Proceedings of the Cornelius Lanczos International Centenary Conference (Philadelphia, PA, 1994), 3-9.
Agreed never can tell if something is "end tech ".
We need two licenses.
1.) GNUish copyright with the following
stipulations:
1.) Agreeing to this copyright gives free
reign to use and implement tech that
has been patented in this manner.
2.) Ownersship of patents that are not
GNU licensed makes one ineligable to use the
GNU tech.
They want to play by their rules, lets make
our own. I can guarantee our tech will leapfrog
theirs exponentially. As an added bonus, we
can sue the shit out of corporations when
they infringe on the "GNU IP".
This would be protected technology, something
the world needs anyway.
houstan advanced research center... university (especially the engineering college) partners with industry to get rich off its inventions ... a guy from there is the dean of U of OK college of engineering now and thats his basic plan... his plan is to do this to 1. create more jobs in state and 2. break the dependency between the politics/legislature and the engineering college i think there are lots of unanswered problems about intellectual freedom there but what the hell, the cold war wasnt that great for freedom of research either... anyways i think alot of places (research triangle park, north carolina) are going to try to make their colleges 100% privately funded and since, well, go read upside.com alot of businesses dont even make products they just build patent portfolios and sell them to other companies to use in their legal war-chests and/or their own patent packages used for trade w other big companies... you say they are 'reasonable' but i just dont believe you on that point ...
The original point of the patent system was to encourage people to share their designs rather than keep them as trade secrets, in return for 17 years of guaranteed ownership. The arguments I'm seeing on Slashdot aren't taking this into account.
Zif
to have patented it. You'd also see that if you lookup his press page.
Speach = speech
Are patent attorney standards getting dumber than dumb thesedays, or is going through the motions par for the course. Obviously not delisting the LCM'. And I've said it before - the lazy schmucks are not even reading foreign patents or papers. Maybe the patent office can FINE those submitting below par applications.
Sure, they invented the spreadsheet. But when some guys who were working for Visicalc at the time, suggested some improvements, management laughed at them. Software patents might have prevented Lotus 1-2-3 from coming into being. And Excel, too. I think Excel is one of the few good things which has come from Microsoft.
Somebody moderate this up!
P.S. Your exposition of the construction of the real number field sucks.
I think it can be patented precisely because it is an approximation and not the actual math.
Actually NOT Quite.
First everyone likes to black and white things. Capitalism good, social/commun isms bad. Well sorry , doesn't work that way. We are for the most part through our evolutionary history an altruistic being ( by necessity -- like wolf packs ), which can be both capitalistic or solcial/communistic depending on your point of view and arguement but generally could be more associated with socialism.
The general problem with Capitalism and its emerging bastard offspring "corprotism" (borrowed from Katz ) and this is particularly an american thing ( though its spreading ) is the ME FIRST individuallism that allows for the rampant greed that is becoming all to common place today. Corporations are horrible for this because legally they have standing in the courts as if they are human beings in terms of protection etc but have very little responsibilities especially for the people running them who can hide behind the corporate vale to pretty much condone any behaviour ( ie firing 2000 workers to boost stock prices by $0.25 ). There is a very interesting article at the US house website ( house.gov ) about how there currently is no economic reason ( ie foreign pressure ) to remain lean but that what has been seen is that after large companies lay off or eliminate large portions of their staff the stock prices go through the roof making the CEO etc, who made the decision very wealthy... ya thats an unbiased non conflicted decision. here's the link
And this is how all this relates to patents. Everyone is so money hungry today, with an at all costs attitude ( ie the ends justifies the means ) that people are trying to have absolute control over everything. To own it. If you can patent it, its the first step to being a Bill Gates.
Science in any form sould not be patentable, however I do understand the need to afford so protection to the people who did the work that way these 2 bit vulures who hang around waiting to co-opt any idea they can get their hands on, yet never provide anything of value back to society. Patenting of this stuff however just leads to the same behaviour with the roles reversed. Maybe this sounds idealistic and naive, but carry the behaviour patterns out to their logical conclusion. If science is patentable you start to break down the free exchange of ideas and peer review. without that serious problems and as basic science becomes less of a focus in order to perfom applied science so that you can make the quick buck well 100 years from now ( if not sooner ) its likely we'll be in serious decay.
It's the former non-capitalist countries that are totally devastated. Capitalism makes profits from ecological preservation just as well as from destruction, it depends only on which laws the people enact through their democratic governments.
I would kinda disagree here. The history of capitalism is not necessarily a pretty one. The rape and pillie of africa for its resources until we were finished, setting up puppet governments in the process and then pulling out when they were of no ore use leaving things in ruins ( west africa is a perfect example ) is capitialism. Homelessness and poverty. Unfortunately one of the problems with capitialism is that in order for the rich to get richer and profit someone has to be poorer. Life may not be a zero sum game but its simple "as the top of the class gets higher and higher marks the class average shifts and someone has to be below it." Poverty is the same. This is where socialism/comunism (marxism) was a noble idea if not perfect. My point has been shown very nicely by the fact that the top 5% in the US has more money than the bottom 50%.
Capitilism is not what it started out to be. The father of modern capitialism saw the potential problems with his own theories and warned against them...
"Our merchants and master-manufacturers complain much of the bad effects of high wages in raising the price, and thereby lessening the sale of their goods both at home and abroad. They say nothing of the bad effects of high profits. They are silent with regard to the pernicious effects of their own gains. They complain only of those of other people."
Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations
Smith realised that without a human ( humane ) element to work including people who may not be necessary is vital to the economy and society and should not be done merely for profit alone... Otherwise all it really is, is GREED.
>(michaelangleo was a great of science?)
/. knowitall spouting bullshit libertarian propoganda.
He's not bright enough to know the difference between Michelangelo and Leonardo da Vinci (both of whom, by the way, lived on the charity of their patrons). Maybe if he had actually spent some time out of his "real world" in a university, he'd know the difference. As it is, he's just another
(It may be flamebait -- but it's still true.)
--
No matter how hard you work to make something idiotproof, someone will always come along and make a better idiot.
>Look at LZW -- no one really benefited from that >patent, but it sure as hell made life very >difficult for many, many people. On the other hand, patents give people an incentive to look for *Different* solutions. Look at GZIP - a different and beter algo... The problem is with the stupid GIF format. But look at the stupid comunity of users that accepted GIF as a standard !!!
This just sounds like the Winograd transform extended to 2D. Since it is extended, I guess that makes it novel in the eyes of the PTO. If someone has a reference to Winograd's original work, maybe he actually mentioned the possible in for more dimensions than 1.
IIRC, the plain bog standard DCT doesn't need trig functions per se. It turns out that sin/cos is only evaluated at certain values, and thus is easily implemented as lookups.
The value added of the patent is apparently that he's come up with an approximation of the DCT that is significantly easier to calculate. Ie, you don't calculate DCT, but something which looks alot like it.
So the speed up is not in removing sin/cos but rather removing operations in general.
You can't patent the hardware for bit shifting... it's in every microprocessor ever made, more or less. You shouldn't be able to patent an algorithm, because it's pure mathematics... So the only thing that he could /reasonably/ hope to patent would be a complete hardware implementation, of more or less the whole algorithm... and preferably a really dinky one - anything else is either just maths or has been done before and to death. arcus
Good Gawd, I hope I'm not a shareholder; my (64 year old) Mom would disown me right before I threw myself off a bridge. In most cases, the people who get laid off during these ritual bloodlettings don't have obsolete skills; those left behind often have to work twice as hard to take up the slack. In industries such as meat processing worker injuries go up as people make stupid mistakes trying to keep up pace with half the workforce. If by "tragedy of the commons" you meant the carving up and exploitation of Africa by European nations run amuck, I would agree with you, but idoubt that was your meaning. Too bad you haven't spent more time studying history and current events.
He sounds like an attorney, so what did you expect?
I'm so sick of the holier-than-thou attitude I see from people with a legal background on this forum. Regardless of educational background, people are entitled to their opinions.
Fucking lawyers.
Hehe werdna - whata fuckwit...
Thanx. I knew it didn't look right after I submitted it.
One last thought: This is an APPROXIMATION, so it loses precision, albeit in a way that the inventor would like us to beleive is inperceptable to the user. But it's still just a way of getting the result faster provided you don't mind getting the WRONG result (sort of like the Pentium FDIV bug). Personally, since silicon is cheap and fast and getting cheaper and faster all the time, I'd rather have an MPEG playback device that does the full, stupid, bruteforce transform every time. since the cost is negligible, I'd rather have the real thing, not an approximation, thank you very much...
As a scientist, I couldn't agree more. And if his research were supported by public money, this patent application would seem even more distasteful.
But this is what is going on at the major U.S. research universities now. This patent craze is seen as benefitting the universities (by assignment of rights) at a time when their financial problems are both acute and chronic. At least many of these institutions are loathe to execute exclusive licenses, and their licensing demands can be reasonable.
Those who think that these patents can occasionally inhibit academic progress are probably correct.
Just a few comments: This is likely to have a rather limited range of applications. I haven't read the paper, but if this method scaled easily beyond 8 point transforms, it would have been mentioned clearly on the web page. Academics like to play up the applicability of their ideas. There would be fairly direct applications of 8 point transforms in image processing, but I doubt this achieves more than a factor of 2 increase in performance. For longer transforms this could be used as a core operation after the longer transform has been broken down to the 8 point level; but then the performance increase would be a lot less (a lot of the computation will be in breaking the transform down to that level). There are quite good FFT codes out there that don't do anything special with short length transforms. This is a marginal advance at best and the open source community can probably do without it.
Regarding prior art: There are people working on FFT approximations (I don't know how the methods apply to the DCT). Check out:
http://epubs.siam.org/sam-bin/dbq/article/31626
However these methods use some pretty heavy mathematics and are intended for transformation of LARGE amounts of data. The applications are different and the methods are different. A patent on this sort of thing would be much more limiting.
History: Gauss actually used the FFT idea for astronomical calculations in the early 19th century. Unfortunately he didn't publish. The idea has been frequently rediscovered. I'd be surprised if Runge even has second place.
There are other fast methods for short length transforms. Check out the book Arithmetic Complexity of Computations by Shmuel Winograd (also published by SIAM). The punchline of the FFT chapter is that the multiplications can be made O(N) if you are willing to accept more additions. For short transforms this is often a good trade-off. Length 8 sounds a bit long for this sort of thing (the number of additions grows VERY quickly with transform size using the Winograd approach). But still it would be interesting to make a comparison. Maybe I'll do it later.
Regarding patents, this seems to be intended for VLSI implementation. Patenting a new VLSI design seems like the sort of thing patents are traditionally intended for. IMO we should be fighting the extension of patents to software algorithms. Unless you are against all patents, this probably isn't a battle worth fighting. And the dangers of the anti-software-patent crowd looking like crackpots if they go after patents for hardware is substantial. We'll get farther if we are fighting extensions of patents to new areas instead of trying to abolish the entire patent system. So let the baby have his bottle.
Finally, don't use Numerical Recipes code as suggested by another poster. Download something from netlib.org. The Numerical Recipes code is notoriously buggy. It's distributed under a more restrictive license than most (perhaps all) of the netlib code. And I've heard of particular problems with the FFT code (although this might have been fixed in later editions). In many cases Numerical Recipes is based on code available on netlib. The only "value" they add is in the exposition and references and in the bugs they introduce. Read the book, but don't use the code.
It's not that shifts aren't done in software. It's that no one would bother doing shifts in software if they weren't made more efficient by the hardware.
Two reasons:
1) Slashdot posters have no problem commenting on something they know nothing about.
2) Slashdot moderators have no problems giving points to comments on something they know nothing about.
The result is that uninformed posts go straight to the top if they sound halfway reasonable. It's like peer review by a bunch of monkeys. Sure it's been reviewed, but that doesn't really give the content any more validity.
You know, that's something strange here. Did Newton, Leibnitz, Koshi, Weierstrass, Fourier et. al. (sorry for spelling of the names - have no book around to see the right one) - all who made current differential/ingegral mathematics - did they all apply for patents on any single fact they found? What would we have instead of current science if every single theorem that was invented for last 2000 years would be patented and everyone who wanted to use any practical result of it would be demanded money?
I don't say that said matematician shouldn't have something for his work - I just call you to see and think, would this promote common good (I mean not welfare of one scientists' family, but the level of all science) if one should pay for every scientific result? Wasn't science based on free ideas exchange once? Or am I missing something vital here?
And my usual question goes here - who funded the research? Obviously, if someone did and this gets patented, patent revenues should go to funder, not?
-- Si hoc legere scis nimium eruditionis habes.
The light bulb was invented by Swan. Read up on
Edison a little. He was "responsible" for a whole
bunch of stuff (records, movies, etc ) but he invented almost none of it. He abused his staff, and took every ounce of credit for himself, vindictively destroying the lives of former employees who dared point out their own roles in inventions. He truly was the Gates of his day, but this is unfair on Bill, who isn't quite as unfair as Edison was.
Tesla was a poor business man for sure, but you would probably object if someone told you Gates invented the computer.
http://rareformnewmedia.com/
--
If you are against software patents generally, but allow "non-obvious" patents, your argument against patents degenerate into debates about opinion, creativity, and what "obvious" means, basically you will fail to convince anyone with a brain that software patents are bad.
You can't go half-hog on this, you are either against software patents or you aren't - I am disappointed that more slashdot readers don't see this.
--
I did some work on the DSP field (mostly mpeg-audio, mp3 for the kidize), and by no means am I an expert, but this algorithm doesn't look much diferent from the text book butterfly aproaches.
Looking at it quickly and without checking the math looks like something you could submit to a conference and get published in the procedings but not actually patent material, even if i was to agree with patenting such algorithms.
And before you call that a knee-jerk reaction, consdier that the original purpose of the patent law was to encourage inventors ro disseminate their techniques widely instead of keeping them as trade secrets.
I thought the original purpose of the patent system was to allow people to maintain control of their inventions so that they could profit off of them without having to worry about someone stealing their inventions. It wasn't to encourage people, it was to protect them. And that is still why people file patents today. It's not to keep other people from getting their hands on the technology, but to obtain the right to market the invention. Patents were never supposed to benefit the world at large. They were merely for the individual.
We must modify it so that it distinguish between intellectual property belonging to humanity in general, and intellectual property that has been genuinely created, and thus can be owned, for a time, by an individual.
How do you make this determination, and who do you get to make it? Thomas Edison patented the light bulb. Do you know where we would be today without the light bulb? Modern day society would be lost without it. Most American office buildings don't even allow natural light in past about 10 feet from the walls. It's a technology that certainly humanity can claim a right to, but one man patented it and held the rights to that product for 17 years. That didn't prevent the adoption of the invention, nor did it ever prevent people from using the light bulb. Your wallet analogy is completely off base. People don't just "find" algorithms and techniques. They work hard to develop them. As far as I know, no one has yet patented at "mathematical truth", either, as your whole post is based. Algorithms are not "truths" like "1+1=2" and "x*1=x". They are inventions. No one can patent light, but they can patent a light bulb. And they can develop a process whereby ordinary light can be reflected to increase its brightness 10 times (hypothetically speaking; this probably can't be done in actuality). The latter is certainly something that could be done in nature, but it took a man to figure out how.
And what's even worse is that the subject of this article isn't even patenting an algorithm, he's actually patenting a hardware implementation of that algorithm, which is completely within his right.
The only people who are miffed by the patent system are a) people who didn't think of it first and b) people who want everything to be freely available. As for the rest of us who live in a capitalist world and rather like it, patents serve only to reinforce that system and give people rights within it.
Last I checked, a mathematical equation couldn't be patented under US law. Granted, that didn't stop RSA (I won't even go into what I think that should stand for), but this one's more clearly a mathematical equation than a piece of software. I doubt it'll be granted the patent.
I looked at the title and read the description of the story and thought Ohmigosh!! sengan must be back. Where have you been man? The content on Slashdot has somewhat gotten away from the more "hardcore" aspects of science and technology. This is just the type of stuff that you used to post to Slashdot quite often. Did you take a long sabatical? Glad to have you and your type of stories back on Slashdot.
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"Great spirits have always encountered violent opposition from mediocre minds." - Albert Einstein
Co-founder and designer at Music Nearby: http://musicnearby.com
From the looks of things this is a valid patent, I don't really have the inclination to look for relavent prior art but there are other fast approaches to the cosine transform. This would represent at the very least an incremental improvement over an existing procedure.
Now, as far as some of the comments that I've seen stating "No, don't patent this" most of them are based on a pretty wild abuse of what is being patented.
This is not like Einstein patenting relativistic effects. This is so wrong I can't even draw a parallel. Slashdot poster credibility goes "Boink".
This isn't like patenting a form of arithmetic. There are patents on fast ways of doing various arithmetic operation, you're still free to do arithmetic. What you're not free to do is to use that particular method of speeding operations. For the average person it doesn't matter. For somebody designing circuitry for fast computer hardware maybe it matters. If so you license the patent, or you hire your own mathematicians or you just use some other method.
Now, is the patent worth much? Probably not. There are other fast discrete cosine transforms. I used to work/share an office with one of the leading experts on that particular transform. Consider that even if this invention is two fold faster than the preceding state of the art Moore's law means the present state of the art will be as fast as this new transform in 18 months. So for this particular operation if there was a 2 times performance increase some company could say they were 18 months ahead of the competition. Big deal since there are enough other factors that are more important to determine performance for most applications. Expecting a 2X improvement is also terribly optimistic. He compared his algorithm to the short hand notation for the DCT/IDCT. In reality a lot of the multiplications would be handled by shifts anyway and there are already other fast implementations.
I disagree. The fundamental question is:
Do we want patent law in the realms of mathematics?
I don't have to be able to judge the claims of that transform author, it is simply that I want to keep the freedom of doing mathematics without having to be a lawyer at the same time.
The situation with compression (LZH, mp3, ..) is ridiculous enough.
All those claim on the ground that their algorithm could be implemented in hardware and then apply patent laws, that originally came from the domain of engineering. Heck, since we have those all purpose computers available, this reasoning would gather any mathematical procedure. Only no one has been barefaced enough to claim very fundamental algorithms yet (maybe except that patent on run length encoding).
As the free software community is about freedom to code and share, no wonder that these issues make us angry.
But nonetheless I try to answer:
(1) without seeing a claim, how can you possibly know what is the subject matter of the patent?
Why do I have to consider the patent at all in the first place? That is my point.
I rather want to keep the freedom to use whatever method I am capable of using and sharing that, than have those economic benefits that the patent advocates promise.
This is a cultural choice, I don't try to argue for the best economic way.
(2) How do you define the "realms of mathematics?"
As that canon of theorems and techniques that is commonly associated with it. Of course this can be only characterized and not be defined with rigour.
Precisely what are your particular subject matter objections to patents concerning compression technologies on this "pure mathematics" ground?
Like I wrote, I have a problem with the idea of patenting itself. It seems not possible to me to seperate ideas from a field into patent worthy ones and those who aren't. Add to that the fact that the state of the art procedure from today is in the standard texts tomorrow. And all this should be handled by the patent lawyers? Have a look at the Usenet FAQ on compression. It is full of cases where they goofed. Like patents on simple algorithms and cases where several patents were granted for the same idea. Very hard to accept that a simple scheme still has implications, like with the Unisys patent on GIF format.
Exactly how does it stop you from the "freedom of doing mathematics without having to be a lawyer."
I can't use and implement the tool what I want and share it as I want. And don't tell me mathematicians don't need this. (I might point you to a lot of software packages from PDEs to algebra in that case)
With all due respect, to this lawyer/mathematician, your argument sounds more like attempting to "lawyer" away the patent law than to argue for the virtues of pure science.
I don't intend to argue or "proof" that my way is better than yours, as I deem it a matter of belief in the principles of free exchange. I think it is a choice (software patents or not) and I don't want them. Luckily the EU so far seems to agree with me.
This looks like a case of yas/.spa.
Yes, the trick of using shift-and-add to do multiplies is well known. Yes, using it in the context of a FFT (or DCT, as in this case) is obvious. But that's not what they've done here.
It looks to me like they've invented (or discovered) a new transform which is similar to the DCT, and shares many properties with the DCT, but is not simply an approximate DCT. In other words, you'd use this for designing a new video coder in which high processing speed is more important than compression ratio (they take about a 1dB hit in compression, my brain is too fuzzy convert this into percent right now).
The transform has some other interesting properties, such as the fact that the transform and its inverse are in fact exact even when you use limited-precision arithmetic, unlike DCT. This would seem to imply that repeatedly compressing and decompressing aren't going to lead to any quality degradation. Also, it might make for a more efficient lossless coder. Neither of these is a very big deal, but still interesting.
So it looks like what we have is something new, interesting, and primarily useful for video compression in hardware. I don't see a compelling reason why it shouldn't be patentable, and it certainly seems well within the scope of what the current patent system allows. Believe me, I've seen far worse in issued patents.
Lest you think I'm defending the patent system, I'm not. It's badly in need of reform. A very large fraction of issued software patents are simply bad patents. I actually believe that no software patents at all would be better than the current system, although I'm idealistic enough to hope that fixing the patent system to prevent abuses would be even better. I'm just saying that if you're going to pick on an invention, choose a better scapegoat than this one.
Finally, a shameless plug: since the discussion of patents and intellectual property on Slashdot seems to be as misinformed as it is lively, one of the explicit goals for my new site, Advogato is to host intelligent discussion of these issues. From the discussion so far, I have reason to be encouraged.
LILO boot: linux init=/usr/bin/emacs
As of this post, the only things scored 3 or above are in favor of the patent, and the score 2 posts are pretty well reasoned (and cautious) in both directions.
But of course, none of that matters. By saying that "Poster credibility went boink" you get to feel superior to the average ignorant slashdot reader, don't you?
It is my understanding that this does not apply in the US. Their patent laws do allow for patents on mathematical formulas.
This is contrary to what is allowed in Canada, and most of the rest of the world.
Claude Angers
...so some would say it can be patented.
Apparently, just "fame and glory" is not enough for scientists and academic people these days. I can somewhat understand the man: this thing can be the basis for next-generation speed leaps. If the patent is granted, this could mean lots-n-lots of money.
And yet, somehow the notion of patenting pure mathematics (or algorithms, for that matter) strikes me (and apparently, most of the Slashdot readership) as wrong.
- Tal Cohen
People write up their results, and submit it to a peer-reviewed journal. After a paper has been printed anyone can use the results (although citing the original reference is generally considered polite). This method is how nearly every significant scientific discovery has been introduced for the past 150 years or so.
I have to wonder if this recent trend towards patents isn't because the patent departments seem to be considerbly more gullible than journal referees. Things can be patented that would never make it in a journal
The Egyptians didn't have the Pythagorean Theorem. They only had 3-4-5 triangles made of rope with knots tied in it.
Pythagoras, and his followers, were Greek. They came later.
--Joe--
Program Intellivision!
Even what seem like simplistic VLSI architectures are very much patentable. There are already many issued patents on similar DCT architectures. Here is an example. If you would like to see more then search for "Chen transform" on www.patents.ibm.com. I don't believe the Chen Transform ALGORITHM is patented, just specific mplementations. Ideas are not patentable, but processes are.
If this were the case, then why should I bother to give my hypothetical intellectual property away? Can't you tap this "infinite resource" yourself? Intellectual property is a finite resource -- you don't extract it with drills and smelters, but with time and money. After all, if you're smart enough to think of an idea no one else has, isn't that valuable?
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Earth first? Oooh, and I was thinking of paying the rent.
IMO, it is socialist -- in the sense that what's yours can be mine, merely because I need/want it. After all, suppose you'd spent ten years and millions of dollars developing the Magic Water Carburetor. No one else could have done it. The question is, who does the MWC belong to?
Captalist answer: It belongs to You.
Socialist answer: It belongs to The People.
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Earth first? Oooh, and I was thinking of paying the rent.
Ah, yes. Share and share alike. "From each according to his ability, to each according to his need". Of course, we'd need a State Science Commitee to oversee this, with State Science Police to benevolently enforce it. What would you do to an enemy of the People who wouldn't share his idea? Re-education? Liquidation?
The patent office should issue Invention-credit certificates or something that says "Look it, I invented this. See give me credit. If you find it useful, I'd like to put food on my plate." - kind of like the old shareware lisence.
They do issue something that lets you eat off of what you invent -- it's called a patent. Unfortunately for your Utopian fantasies, it still allows someone to (shudder) own something.
Just for drill, can you name three things that Scientific Socialism invented?
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Earth first? Oooh, and I was thinking of paying the rent.
I'm not prepared to comment on whether this deserved a patent under the existing criteria - because, as you rightly point out, I (like most of the posters here) don't have the background knowledge to do so.
However, I don't believe that it is *right* to patent this kind of thing. I don't believe society benefits from this kind of patent. I believe that patent law should be changed to avoid these patents, and the opportunity for wider re-examination of the patent system taken.
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo
--Andy Finkel (J. Klass?)
Edison could spend his time inventing new things because his life was paid for by the things he'd invented previously. If he didn't know that he would achieve a financial pay off from his efforts, I doubt he would have done what he did
I think he would. Most scientists don't do their work with the sole goal of profit in mind. They do it for the love of their work.
Yeah, but the point is, even if he had been willing to do it for free, he wouldn't have been able to. Edison, keep in mind, basically created a prototype for modern R&D processes, according to a basic plan, something like this:
1) Obtain working capital (personal funds, venture capital, etc.);
2) Invest money in researching and developing new ideas;
3) Invent 999 new things (processes, goods, whatever) that are worthless in and of themselves (or unpopular, or impractical, or otherwise flops);
4) Given hard work, a good idea, and a little luck, invent one thing that's revolutionary and instantly valuable to others;
5) Take profits from this one invention and return to step 1.
It is important to notice that the one profitable invention has to subsidize ALL your work.
The point is, without being able to own and realize the profits from your work, your work can't be self-sustaining. Those VC guys that sink money into new startups only do that because they expect to see a profit from it someday--they don't fund research out of the goodness of their hearts. And if the people they fund don't own their own work, and can't profit by it, neither can they. And then what is the incentive to provide seed money to anyone?
Now, don't get me wrong--I think patents of mathematics are silly and wrong. But, there is a reason to protect intellectual property in general--it provides an incentive to inventors to invent, and eventually EVERYONE profits from this...
ABSURDITY, n.: A statement or belief manifestly inconsistent with one's own opinion.
24314
This is for kernel 2.2.14pre16.
Have a nice day!
I don't think such things should be patented.
The DCT is an important thing, and shouldn't be ignored, but what about wavelet transforms? Wim Sweldens, the CREW people and others have looked at integer implementations. Wavelets discussed by the CREW people can be implemented with shifts and adds, as the DCT described above. I haven't heard of any patent problems with JPEG 2000, which will be based the wavelet transform, and will use integer transforms in some cases.
Assuming an omniscient God, then all any scientist is doing is rediscovering knowledge. A patent then is a bit pretentious.
themel@sophokles:/usr/src/linux > find . -name '*.c' -o -name '*.h' | xargs egrep -e '(>)' | wc -l
17959
That about my kernel, though it's only 2.2.7. Yeah, qualifies for rarely done.
--
"The use of COBOL cripples the mind.
Its teaching, therefore, should be
Yeah, I hope he posts an article and then disables commenting. That would be really great...
Scuttlemonkey is a troll
And before you call that a knee-jerk reaction, consdier that the original purpose of the patent law was to encourage inventors ro disseminate their techniques widely instead of keeping them as trade secrets. We never had that problem in mathemetics, computers science or any number of other scientifici disciplines to which patent law is now being implied. In other words, in these areas, the law is fixing something that wasn't broken.
In fact, the patent laws are doing a lot of damage to society in general. As we all know, there is more than one way to get rich, and trying to get rich by hording the rights to mathematical and scientific techniques that are rightfully the property of the humanity is just plain wrong.
The patent system has become a mockery of its former self, has outlived its usefulness, and now needs to undergo some major surgery. We must modify it so that it distinguish between intellectual property belonging to humanity in general, and intellectual property that has been genuinely created, and thus can be owned, for a time, by an individual. If I "find" your wallet on the ground, does that make it mine? No, and if I take it I'm a thief. A government that would enact a law to make finders of wallets the rightful new owners of said wallets would only be acting in the interests of thieves, and it's actions would have to be corrected by right-thinking citizens. If I "find" a mathematical truth, it's not mine either - it belongs to the world, and I'll get my reward by being respected as it's discoverer, not hated as the man who sat on the thing, milked it, and kept it from being widely used and benefiting society for 17 years.
Life's a bitch but somebody's gotta do it.
Quicksort is not that great of an algorithm. At least the normal quicksort...it can be as bad as insertion sort in some cases. Deterministic quicksort is as good as you can get...
Are you sure about that? Last time I looked into this (many years ago) I looked at Knuth's analysis in the Art of Computer Programming where he convinces himself that there is no efficient algorithm for picking medians such that the worst case does not degenerate to O(n^2), albeit with vanishingly low probability. It was enough to convince me to use some other algorithm in any system where the worst case result could possibly be harmful. Note that merge sort has the same performance as qucksort, though it operates on lists, not arrays.
Life's a bitch but somebody's gotta do it.
There is a pretty easy way to pick out the median in linear time. But the deterministic quicksort goes like this: divide array into five-element lists, find the median of each of those lists == O(n) time, recurse
But the only advantage quicksort has over, say, heapsort, is a better K. They are both O(NlogN). Doesn't this affect K?
Life's a bitch but somebody's gotta do it.
It is certainly not trivial...
Whether or not it is _obvious_ is an open question, but once pointed, out, it looks pretty simple (as with many elegant algorithms). All he's done is convert the coefficients used in the transform to rational numbers with power-of-two denominators and numerators with few bits set. This makes it practical to use shift-and-add cheats to do multiplication less expensively.
It's important to note, though, that the algorithmic order remains the same. You'll still need, for an n-FFT, order (n log n) operations. Also, your approximations during conversion make this unsuitable for high-fidelity applications (the approximations introduce noise and distortion). This algorithm _would_ be well-suited for embedded applications with a high premium on power and space, as less power and silicon is needed than with full multiplication.
Floating point arithmetic is replaced with fixed point or integer arithmetic. Multiplies and divides are replaced with shifts, adds and subtracts. Constants are rounded off to an integral power of two. Complex functions are replaced with lookup tables or simple approximations. The trick is knowing how much can be discarded while still getting acceptable results.
Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
Which is why, of course, I think that current patent law is in error. I thought I made that point clear.
algorithm is still an abstract concept that can be described free of any hardware context and that can be implemented on an abacus, by pencil and paper, on a Babbage machine
And nobody would ever have dreamed of granting a patent to an algorithm's "implementation on an abacus", or "implementation using a pencil". A Von Neumann computing system is simply a general purpose tool, and should be considered just like an abacus for these purposes.
However, since you have only a patent on the implementation, and not the algorithm, I am free to make an improvement in the algorithm, and then use it in any way I wish - and thus escape your patent.
Sorry, but that's simply incorrect. If I make an improvement to LZW or RSA (and this has been done), I still can't use it in a software program. Counter-examples are welcome.
Computers are our main tools for computing algorithms. To grant a patent to the implementation of an algorithm on a ubiquitous general algorithmic device is tantamount to granting a patent on the algorithm itself. Yes, I think the courts really screwed up here.
When calculators were first introduced to the public, nobody thought they could patent the idea of "square roots implemented on a hand-held electronic device", or "using electronic calculators in a store to sum purchases". But that's exactly the kind of thing we're seeing now.
I don't believe that the combination of LZW and a digital computer is a technical advance over the LZW algorithm itself, and I don't believe you can reasonably argue that it is.
If you disagree, let me ask you this. If unisys didn't discover LZW, if they simply found it in a textbook, should they have been allowed the patent?
The new law of tribology is not patentable, but a new lubricant designed to make use of it certainly is. Even if the lubricant is the only possible practical use of this law.
Exactly. But what is software, and more specifically a single algorithm in software. Is it like a developing a chemical or building a machine? Or is it like re-writing the algorithm in a different language? I believe the latter, as do most programmers, and I think the courts got this one wrong. In other words, I honestly don't think of software as a "physical context", or more specifically not a single physical context.
Anyway, I think you misunderstood the "implementation using a abacus" analogy. The courts would have said that the abacus was not a new context for the algorithm. Abacuses rather are general purpose tools for performing algorithms. Stating that "we performed this algorithm on an abacus", or "we performed this algorithm on a computer" means nothing more than "we discovered this algorithm".
How is this really any different to granting a patent on a piece of computing hardware that uses an algorithm in a new manner?
Because you've granted the patent not to *a* piece of computing hardware, but to *all* pieces of computing hardware for all applications. Because a computer is no more an "application of an algorithm" than a pencil is. A computer program *is* the algorithm.
Let me put that another way. Give me a new natural law in tribology. First I type the process into my computer so I don't forget it, then I go out and use that process to build a better car engine. I can patent that. Now give me an natural mathematical algorithm. First I type it into my computer so I don't forget it, then... Wait, I'm done. I haven't "applied" it anywhere. I just wrote it down in algorithmic symbols (like fortran, or C).
And the truth is that this is being more and more understood by the courts, and the precedent is forcing them to simply accept patents for business processes and algorithms. The State Street case pretty much came out and said that.
Here's a good test: give an example of a non-patented software application for lzw where you'd be "perfectly free" to use it. You can't. The basic problem here is that the USPTO and the courts have accepted the idea that software itself is an "application".
But there's such a fine line between the statement of an algorithm in mathematical symbols and the statement of an algorithm in computer language that for all intents and purposes the algorithm itself has been patented. 100 years ago, nobody would have seriously considered a patent for an algorithm's "implementation with pencil and paper", but the USPTO now regularly accepts patents for algorithms "implemented with an electronic digital device".
IAW, if you invented a better algorithm for some common mathematical process 100 years ago, clerks all over the world would use it immediately using the tools at hand, and some might improve it. But today you can effectively prevent that because clerks all use computers, and implementation with a computer is patentable.
Much of the slashdot-type thoughts on software patents come from the way software is viewed. Is software a concrete "thing" like hardware, or is it the virtual manipulation of symbols like math? The public, seeing only the final product, views software the first way, but most programmers see it the second way. The source code is the application; compiling it is only a detail.
Just because there are some patents out there that are rather shaky, I don't think you should throw the entire patenting system out the window. Patents are there to protect inventors. If they hadn't ever existed, one would wonder if we would even have the wide spread of computers that we have today. Edison could spend his time inventing new things because his life was paid for by the things he'd invented previously. If he didn't know that he would achieve a financial pay off from his efforts, I doubt he would have done what he did.
The utopian society that you suggest doesn't exist. In this day and age of shrinking bottom lines, if paying royalties for using an invention of someone elses becomes optional, then most companies will simply not pay the royalty and gain a few more dollars in profit.
Perhaps is this were a socialist system, where governments would fund inventors of something so they could live and follow their pursuits, your hope could work. But then from everything I've heard, it sounds like that may not be the way to go.
Dumb patents suck. But lots of inventions exist that are worthy of patents. And lots of other things exist that exist only because patents were available to protect them. Inventors still need to be protected... But the patenting system should be competely revamped.
Current patents last for a term of 17 years, after which the patented thing becomes free for all to use. Thus, there is no danger of causing harm to future generations or irrevocably damaging human progress, just slowing it down a little bit.
Mod down posts with a "Free Mac Mini/iPod" sig, they're spam!
How often do you shift bits using software? I think its fair to say that you don't do it very often, if at all. There's nothing here to suggest you'd want to do this in anything BUT hardware, simply because it would not truely have an optimized purpose. There's absolutely nothing wrong in my mind with this man getting this patent. He discovered a more optimal function for a specific purpose. He should be able to benefit from his hard work.
Look, this won't effect anything, because there are alternatives to his optimized algorithm. The difference however is that you do not have the most optimal choice to choose from unless you're willing to pay.
No, this is exactly what a Slashdot story _shouldn't_ look like.
;-)
Irrelevant to what the site is about, and not giving enough info to stop lots of people spouting off in a knee-jerk sort of way on a subject they know nothing about.
OK, I'll grant you the links and lack of editorialising are both good, but the entire story shouldn't be here in the first place.
Just my £0.02
Gerv
I Can't agree more. This is as dumb as Patents for genes.
Sherm
your intent here is false. newton, as i'm sure you know, was tenured at cambridge. in fact, he held the chair of the mathematics department. if you look at the history of mathematics, you'll see that almost everyone who contributed anything worthwhile had a similar situation -- either at a university or by a wealthy benefactor. gauss, euler, fourier, artin, etc. physicists too.
even those who didn't make a career of it worked for their own enjoyment in their own free time, not for an employer. for instance, fermat.
i don't understand why you would be so critical of the university. it works, apparently. also, they're not all publicly funded you know.
(michaelangleo was a great of science?)
Piano == Peano
Giuseppe Peano, Italian Mathematician
This isn't the same as one click shopping or the other stuff we've seen on slashdot. There is real inginuity in this one. A REAL invention...
But this invention still breaks down into math and logic. It's patentable by the old rules..
By the old rules I mean... about 90% of all the patents we see today would have NEVER been granted 30 years ago. Today however we see a lot of garbage. This one however had the patent been filed 30 years ago it would have been granted and hold in the corts.
So why do I say it's a bad patent?
Ok this is the kind of bad patent we have lived with for a long time. It's manifest in the intelect. If you build an engen thats a phisical reality.. build a CPU thats a phisical reality, a soda, a disolvent, a new wepon of mass distruction.. but things like this manifest in the intectect. The real work is wiring it into a chip or coding it into software not coming up with a neat new logic...
However there are FAR greater prioritys than dwelling on 30+ year old flaws in the patent office.
I don't actually exist.
My mind fails to comprehend how the patent office could err enough to grant a patent on this. (That said, I bet that they will.)
If the patent office grants this, it could perhaps be the most bogus patent they have yet awarded. This approximation is an eternal mathematical truth, and, as such, I hardly think it qualifies as being anyone's sole intellectual property. For God's sake, it's truth doesn't even depend on the existence of the material universe! This would be more ridiculous than allowing Newton to patent F=ma.
The problem with that is that it perpetuates the existence of the patent office. It is in the patent office's own interest to grant as many patents as they can, because that keeps the bureaucracy pushing paper around, which means the officer's jobs are secure. This process happens in most government offices, not just the patent office - they tend towards big, inefficiently run lumps, because that way, they support more layers of otherwise useless middle managers.
Much better to let the patent office wither, and push to have software, algorithmic and genetic patents either rendered unenforceable, or reduced to a realistic lifespan of, say, 1.5 to 2 years ( a figure obtained by scaling the 17 year span by the depreciation of an automobile compared to the depreciation of a computer( ca. ten times as fast))
Choice of masters is not freedom.
Just search for "sorting" on www.patents.ibm.com, and marvel at the number of patents that come up, some of which even have to do with computers and are basically just descriptions of their algorithms.
I'm surprised quicksort isn't patented.
Glückwünsche, haben Sie Slashdot ermordet, indem Sie zum korporativen Druck beugten und Subskriptionen einlei
See US and UK unilaterally attack Iraq. He didn't allow comments to be posoted until Malda enabled them. At any rate, this and others like it got enough people mad at him that he was kicked off. But that was over a year ago.
Maybe things have changed. Maybe they haven't. We'll see.
~~~~~~~~~
auntfloyd
And he is condemning us for being so critical of the patent without having any of the facts. The patent application was not available, so who are we to judge it?
I would be surprised if there were many patent lawyers on Slashdot who are actually knowledgable about this sort of thing, rather than simply jumping to conclusions.
~~~~~~~~~
auntfloyd
Reread my posting. You raise precisely my point!
I wasn't responding to you, but to the other guy, 'vectra'. My point was to restate what you had said.
Precisely what "sort of thing" would you have me be knowledgable about?
Whether this could be a valid patent legally. You can argue all day long whether it is right or wrong, but non of that matters legally. For reference, see any of the other patent articles.
How long have you studied patent law
I haven't. Which is why I haven't made any claims as to it's leaglity.
~~~~~~~~~
auntfloyd
I never said that you have no right to have an opinion. What I did say is that we don't have enough information to make a truly informed decision.
But what I will say is that your opinion has no effect on whether a patent will be granted or not. See any other patent reported on Slashdot (ie, one-click shopping) for proof.
~~~~~~~~~
auntfloyd
Ok. I'm listening.
1) Educate me. Tell me what I'm missing.
2) Tell me what your colleagues have done to improve patent law.
3) Tell me what I can do to improve patent law.
4) Tell me what you think the worst/best aspects of current patent law are.
5) Tell me what you think would be the optimum way of handling patents, assuming you were dictator of the US.
But there's such a fine line between the statement of an algorithm in mathematical symbols and the statement of an algorithm in computer language that for all intents and purposes the algorithm itself has been patented. 100 years ago, nobody would have seriously considered a patent for an algorithm's "implementation with pencil and paper", but the USPTO now regularly accepts patents for algorithms "implemented with an electronic digital device".
You may think this distinction is trivial, but in the case of patent law it is very important. Since you are patenting an apparatus, or implementation of the algorithm, but not the algorithm you are only granted coverage of the implementation. Under patent law if I make an improvement on a patented invention I may not be able to practice the invention because I am still practicing the art you have patented. However, since you have only a patent on the implementation, and not the algorithm, I am free to make an improvement in the algorithm, and then use it in any way I wish - and thus escape your patent.
As for your example of a software implementation of the LZW algorithm that does not infringe the Unisys patent, the LZW basic patent includes in claim 1 a requirement for a storage device for the data. This means that it is quite possible to avoid the LZW patent with an implementation that accepts the data uncompressed, and then transmits it compressed, so long as the data is not stored in the compression apparatus. It may be inefficient to do so - but there it is.
Ultimately software on these machines is in fact an implementation of an algorithm, not the algorithm itself. It is implemented in a very specific form of translation, and on stored-program electronic computing hardware - the importance and wide applicability of which has nothing to do with the fact that the algorithm is still an abstract concept that can be described free of any hardware context and that can be implemented on an abacus, by pencil and paper, on a Babbage machine, or any other of many possible instrumentalities. The fact that a digital computer is currently the favorite of these choices is an objection that does not overcome this fundamental, non-fungible distinction.
Which is why, of course, I think that current patent law is in error. I thought I made that point clear.
There is a very severe conceptual problem with the assertion that the implementation of an algorithm on a specific piece of hardware should not be patentable. Algorithms are considered conceptually equivalent to other non-patentable material such as laws of nature in the frame of patent law. I think most people would agree with this classification. The problem comes because the fact of the matter is that all patentable technology is derived from implementation of natural laws in some physical context, be it a digital computer using a particular algorithm, a manufacturing process providing a cheap conversion of crude oil to gasoline, or a new discovery in tribology that leads to reduced engine wear in your car.
The new law of tribology is not patentable, but a new lubricant designed to make use of it certainly is. Even if the lubricant is the only possible practical use of this law.
The fact that a particular law of nature has only one practical application does not preclude the granting of a patent for that application. While it may prevent others from using that law to their own benefit, there is no provision in patent law, nor should there be that requires a law of nature have multiple applications before one particular application can be patentable. Such a distinction would seem absurd to me. Either you allow patents on implementations, or you do not.
And nobody would ever have dreamed of granting a patent to an algorithm's "implementation on an abacus", or "implementation using a pencil".
This can be read a number of ways. One should consider the fact that many algorithms as implemented on a digital computer have far more utiliity than the same algorithm as implemented on an abacus. Certainly not too many people are going to find RSA or LZW beneficial when used with a piece of paper. The combination of LZW and a digital computer is certainly a technological advance, and under the concepts of granting patents for such advances there is a strong argument that such an implementation should be patentable.
We routinely grant patents for devices that use natural laws to benefit us. Even if such a device is the sole practical implementation of this law. How is this really any different to granting a patent on a piece of computing hardware that uses an algorithm in a new manner? The fact that the computing device + algorithm is by far the most important such use of the algorithm should actually strengthen the argument that it is worthy of a patent, for some of the main criteria for granting a patent are that the invention should have novelty and utility.
A practical application of a new law of nature (including algorithms) has to be one of the strongest cases for being granted a patent. For not only have you advanced technology in a fundamental way through this basic development, but you have immediately put it to beneficial use. And on top of this you are sharing your invention by public disclosure of the technology in the form of a patent filed with the USPTO. If we are going to deny this sort of patent, then what if anything would qualify?
Sorry, but that's simply incorrect. If I make an improvement to LZW or RSA (and this has been done), I still can't use it in a software program. Counter-examples are welcome.
Take a look at the LUC algorithm.
Not necessarily! To "escape" a patent, as you put it, it is mandatory that you do not infringe upon ANY of the the claims of the patent. Each claim is separate and infringing any one of them infringes the patent.
Ah grasshopper, I see you have no understanding of patents. Patent claims are NOT separate. Claims are stuctured with the most general claim first, and the following claims are in fact more specific cases. The later claims are in fact called dependent claims. Patent claims are structured in this manner for a variety of reasons, the most important being that if the most general claim is found to be invalid either during application of subsequent legal action, more specific claims may be upheld. Normally when you file a patent you claim the entire sidereal universe as claim one, and work your way down to very specific yet important commercial applications as your later, fall-back claims. Often the structure will fork; that is there will be multiple branches in the tree of claims. In some kinds of patents you may have two or three trees, however those are rare - and generally the patent office makes you didvide those into separate applications.
If you do not infringe on the primary claim, you will in fact be free of infringement of the patent since the dependent claims are special cases.
Was there ever a forum anywhere that had less of a clue regarding patents than Slashdot? I doubt it. I wish Rob Malda and friends would implement some reasonable standard of journalism to weed out these speculative and clue-less stories.
Let's look at this story from a factual basis (I know it's a bit much to expect from slashdot, but we can try):
Apparently, he has applied for a patent for this approximation.
Apparently is the key word here. The author is engaging in rank speculation and rumor-mongering.
Unfortunately there is no actual text to the application to review, only a speculative statement and a journal publication. What can we say about this from known law?
The first is:
1. YOU CANNOT PATENT A MATHEMATICAL ALGORITHM.
Yes Virginia, despite the wild statements by many contributors to this forum, US Patent law contains a specific provision that includes a ban on patents of mathematical laws and algorithms. There are in fact no valid patents of mathematical algorithms in existance.
This rules out the speculation of the article statement.
2. IT IS POSSIBLE TO OBTAIN A PATENT ON PRACTICAL APPLICATIONS OF MATHEMATICAL ALGORITHMS
Such cases are well know, such as RSA for encryption applications, and LZW for image compression. THESE ARE NOT PATENTS OF ALGORITHMS, MERELY AN APPLICIATION OF THE ALGORITHM you are perfectly free to use RSA or LZW algorithms in non-patented applications for the algorithms themselves are not the subject of the patent.
If in fact the author is filing an application as speculated by the article author on the approximation, it will be quickly rejected by the USPTO. HOWEVER, if the author is filing on an application of the algorithm to some common problem, say deconvolution of Fourier Transfor Infrared Spectra, then I think there is a good chance that the application will become a patent.
Time will of course show what is the actual case here.
how is "pure science" not a "unique invention"? even engineering equations can be patented and often are. in aircraft construction, even the curves that describe the shape of wings are patented and protected by copyright. how come mathematical work is any different? it may well be solving the same problem, but in a more general/formal way.
the patent should be granted -- the guy does deserve credit for his work. it is the patent law that needs to be revised because it often allows misuse of ownership. like patenting something, waiting until some company gets rich, and suing them for alleged use of patented technology.
I was thinking of how to intentionally fail my drug test... It would make a good memoir story someday.
I sincerely hope you are not referring to the US President as 'leader of the free world' because I can assure in 99.5% of the world's countries, people usually couldn't give two shits about the President, and his or her leadership skills don't really matter a lot here.
If you weren't, well... :-)
Open Source. Closed Minds. We are Slashdot.
Couldn't I write a shared library then that implements various patented algoritms, but not applying them to any particular problem. Oh, I then write another shared library with the same abstract interface, that uses some other (probably far less efficient) algorithm.
Then someone else comes along and uses the non-patent library to implement compression, or encryption or whatever.
Then yet another person comes along and grabs the applications but links them against the patent shared library.
Presto! I've just started breaking a patent, possibly even without knowing it. Can this be a loophole? If not, who would be the patent breaker?
We should try to get an interview setup with this guy to see if he can actually defend his position. We always tear down everyone who patents ridiculous things like this, but this guy would probably be willing to open himself up to some (intelligent, not degrading) questions. I'm not asserting that he won't come off looking like an evil anti-open source, copyright-mongering, greedy person, but at least we'll be able to come to that conclusion through reasonable means rather than making assumptions.
Maybe (big maybe) he patented his idea so that it could be used and distributed freely to prevent a company from patenting it and charging licensing fees. Who knows? Certainly, none of us do.
It's worth a shot, in my humble opinion.
I find the icon very appropriate for headlines like "Car salesman granted patent for breathing air", but not for "Legit company sues bunch of assholes for stealing non-obvious patented ideas". Perhaps another more appropriate icon for patents that are not as obviously-ridiculous?
I don't care what patent law allows, I don't think mathematical functions (nor procedural algorithms) should be patented.
After all, mathematical equations are specifically unpatentable. As Knuth says, "algorithms are math".
Maybe this will finally be the example so ridiculous that something is done about it.
Very useful. The question is, can we viably extend mathematics should this "thing" be patented. This is the same thing we have to evaluate in Artificial Intelligence -- does someone get to benefit from having patents in AI, when in fact, giving these patents out practically undermines any further research in that particular direction, overall inhibiting the growth of that field.
It's not my place to say, but I'm quite sure that this is a very, very bad thing. Look at LZW -- no one really benefited from that patent, but it sure as hell made life very difficult for many, many people. It's fine to patent something if it's a specific end-process, but if it is a *foundation* for furthering a field, then patenting it cause undue harm to the exploration of that field.
So, my opinion is, if this thing is an "end process", as in unable to extend the field further, then it being patented should be of no harm. However, my understanding of this leads me to believe that patenting this thing will hinder the furthering of mathematics.
We cannot afford to put up barriers in mathematics, there is too much to explore, and we know too little, to put up artificial anthropocentric monetary induced barriers.
Thank god somebody finally pointed out that not everyone here is qualified to make the sort of off the cuff remarks about issues being "obviously" one way or the other.
There's nothing wrong with stating your opinion on an open forum, but all to often on here it starts sounding like a Papal decree or a state of the union address.
More humilty, less vitriol!
Hotnutz.com
Incredible, but it works. /.
The knee-jerk reaction of posters and moderators is very anti-patent. The subject matter is very unfamiliar to most slashdotters. (With an MS in Math, I'm lost.)
Well done
yes. it becomes prior art since its in the public domain. of course the companies can always patent up the surrounding stuff or other applications of it...
Y'all have been talking about algorithms, math,etc. But a quick look at the guys page clearly shows the focus on design for VLSI implementation. He doesn't need to patent math ...he's patenting the circuit.
Yes, he deserves a patent
And he is condemning us for being so critical of the patent without having any of the facts. The patent application was not available, so who are we to judge it?
Reread my posting. You raise precisely my point! "Who are we to judge" a patent application that we haven't seen! NO conclusion may be drawn concerning a patent application based solely on a general understand of the subject matter to which it is related. It may be valid, it may be invalid, and you simply don't have a clue.
Nevertheless, we listen to nothing but vitreol about the patent system, the patent examiners and patent lawyers concerning the "obvious" invalidity of this application. Nonsense.
I would be surprised if there were many patent lawyers on Slashdot who are actually knowledgable about this sort of thing, rather than simply jumping to conclusions.
Precisely what "sort of thing" would you have me be knowledgable about? I did my undergraduate work in applied math, my graduate work in computer science, published software for a dozen years.
Now, let me turn the question around. How long have you studied patent law.
so you're saying that by the slashdot community (who is obviously not fighting any sort of real battle for patent reform and is horribly uneducated in this matter) discussing it in an open forum, we're reducing the possibility of change?!?
That's your straw man. Its not what I said. On the other hand, if you want change, its time to do a bit more listening and learning. You can preach to the choir on slashdot all you like, but nothing will be accomplished and you will have learned nothing.
On the other hand, some of our colleagues are offering real knowledge and information about the system. Read up, listen up and think hard about these issues before spouting mere pabulum, and you will in time see change.
Spout the "party line," march in lockstep, and you will be ignored.
I my opinion are mathematical truths discoveries not inventions and should therefore not be patented. You could argue that they are inventing an implementation, but the mathematical principle behind this idea is discovered, not invented, and should thus not be patented.
There is little disagreement on this point in theory. Indeed, the preceding remark is a reasonable statement of law. Recent cases still hold that "[u]npatentable mathematical algorithms are identifiable by showing they are merely abstract ideas constituting disembodied concepts or truths that are not 'useful.'" The cases agree with your proposition that "to be patentable an algorithm must be applied in a 'useful' way." But distinguishing between the "idea" itself and an implementation is where the real heat lies. Under present cases, all that is necessary is to be able to argue that the claim is directed to a "practical application of a mathematical algorithm, . . . [by] produc[ing] 'a useful, concrete and tangible result.'
So, how would you refine your statement to distinguish the present state of the law?
I'm not prepared to comment on whether this deserved a patent under the existing criteria - because, as you rightly point out, I (like most of the posters here) don't have the background knowledge to do so.
Well, my point is not that you don't have the knowledge to do so, but rather than *NONE* of us (myself included) do. Speaking about a patent we haven't seen is foolish -- we are merely speculating what should and should not issue.
However, I don't believe that it is *right* to patent this kind of thing. I don't believe society benefits from this kind of patent. I believe that patent law should be changed to avoid these patents, and the opportunity for wider re-examination of the patent
What "kind of thing"? Which "these patents"? We simply don't know what was claimed. I just applied for a patent on a new trebuchet design. From that statement alone, do we decry the application because it is based on the law of gravity? Until we have seen the patent or the application, we just don't know. We cannot evaluate the scope of your "kind of thing" or "these patents" statements in the abstract. Let's keep it real.
On the other hand, I agree completely that broader reexamination is necessary to avoid the harm of bad patents. I would go futher -- I think the presumption of validity should be relaxed when a patent is challenged for art not considered during examination that raises a substantial new question of patentability.
I think that these proposals would substantially reduce the harm from bad patents issuing, and moreso, would have a fair chance of actual passage in view of recent movements in the Congress. More important, if played right, it could get some of these broader issues on the table. This would be a result I think all slashdotters could get behind.
I am putting together a more detailed proposal on these latter proposals now. I'll be sure to publish it here, if there is any interest.
Ok. I'm listening.
1) Educate me. Tell me what I'm missing.
The most fundamental of patent issues: the claim (the numbered paragraphs at the end of the specification) is the thing. The claims determine the entire scope (the metes and bounds) of the patent grant. Unless you look at what is claimed, you cannot say anything important about the scope of a patent.
A claim can be directed generally to well-known art, but have some subtle distinction buried in all those words that makes it patentable (and generally harmless). Patents issue every year or so on paper clips, yet none seriously threaten the marketplace for clips, even though most of the words of the claims are directed to what you would expect in a paper clip.
You can't tell if a patent is good/bad/indifferent without seeing the claims. Knowing only the general subject matter, the title or the abstract is meaningless.
Thus, if you don't have a claim to talk about, you can't answer any questions about whether the patent can or should issue.
2) Tell me what your colleagues have done to improve patent law.
A number of provisions passed this year in the awkwardly entitled "American Inventors' Protection Act." Unsurprisingly opposed by many patentholder lobbies, this bill provided some limited broadening of the scope of third-party patent reexaminations. Also, and most interesting to the present discussion, it provided prior user rights for defendants accused of infringing a patent directed to a method of doing business, if the user had been practicing the method before the patent had issued.
3) Tell me what I can do to improve patent law.
Boy is there a long way to go. But we need to do it in small steps. IMHO, we should: (1) try to further strengthen third party patent reexamination, so that an inexpensive means exists to bring meaningful prior art to the attention of the patent office to take wrongly issued patents out of circulation; and (2) try to weaken the presumption of validity of a patent when a defendant raises new prior art not considered by the PTO, if the new art raises a substantial new question of patentability.
These steps have a chance of passage, and the arguments concerning the impact of bad patents on e-commerce and software arts will begin to get these issues on the table. Far more important, there are existing lobbies (in particular the American Intellectual Property Law Association) who are presently fighting for patent reform.
I wrote: With all due respect, none of us, myself included, can comment on the validity or propriety of an application for a patent until we have seen what in fact is claimed.
The reply: I disagree. The fundamental question is:
Do we want patent law in the realms of mathematics?
This answer is downright silly: (1) without seeing a claim, how can you possibly know what is the subject matter of the patent? (2) How do you define the "realms of mathematics?"
Precisely what are your particular subject matter objections to patents concerning compression technologies on this "pure mathematics" ground? Exactly how does it stop you from the "freedom of doing mathematics without having to be a lawyer."
Please identify a patent infringement single case involving the "freedom of doing mathematics."
With all due respect, to this lawyer/mathematician, your argument sounds more like attempting to "lawyer" away the patent law than to argue for the virtues of pure science.
Just as I have criticized those who have claimed, without more, that a theoretical "application" based on a general subject, was valid, I take issue with the propostion that the patent was valid?
You simply cannot determine the validity of a patent (or its invalidity) based upon its title, its abstract or even the langauge of its specification. The claim is the only meaningful basis by which such a patent can be determined. Period.
Likewise with respect to the commercial value of the patent.
Having admitted you can't know what is the subject matter of the patent, and that you don't care what is the subject matter of the patent, you can never know whether it is actually limiting any of the freedoms you claim to be defending. You just don't know one way or the other.
Even assuming that your definition of "mathematical patent" is well-defined and that your normative conclusions are accurate, you can say, "hey, it is a mathematical patent," and I could gainsay you on the point, with neither of us being able to agree or not on the question -- because we don't know what is claimed. Both are at present nonfalsifiable propositions. Accordingly, you cannot conclude whether or not the application is worthy of a patent.
Q.E.D.
if its a software patent, presuming that the notion itself is well defined. I understand that some folks have a "knee-jerk reaction against a software patent" because they deem that "all software patents are bad." But without seeing the claim, you will never know if the claims are broadly directed to what you consider a software patent, or whether it is directed to some hard-wired apparatus for curing cancer. You just can't know.
While I agree that the argument, "assuming all software patents are bad, and assuming that the described patent is a software patent, we may conclude that the described patent is bad." On the other hand, "knee-jerk" assumptions about the major hypothesis, and uninformed conclusions about the minor hypothesis, doesn't really make claims to the consequent very interesting.
What is interesting is the following suggestion:
You can't go half-hog on this, you are either against software patents or you aren't - I am disappointed that more slashdot readers don't see this.
Perhaps the writer will suggest why he thinks this is the case? Why can't someone be consistently opposed to the issuance of any proper subclass of software patents? Why can't someone argue to the contrary that "you can't go half-hog on this, you are either against patents generally or you aren't." The reason few readers "see this" is because it isn't an argument at all -- its just a slogan, pabulum for trying to move uninformed masses to a conclusion.
Many of us have more respect for those slashdotters who actually make arguments on behalf of their position, regardless of how they come out. Those who instead prefer to "lobby" to an easy audience are, well, wasting bandwidth.
Think about it, exactly how far do you think you would get trying to make a real change by arguing to the Senate Judiciary Committee, "Look Senator Hatch, you can't go half-hog on this, you are either against software patents or you aren't?"
To be frank, this is the fundamental problem -- an ideological movement that is to make a difference must be founded on more than slogans -- it must have a solid core philosophy, and a strong logical basis for its being. You must persuade not only those who "see this," but those who don't and are willing to listen. You must endeavor to make change -- which means changing minds.
Otherwise, you are not engaging in debate or discourse: you are simply whining.
Well, no offense, but if the patents coming out lately are typical, you and your colleagues are doing a terrible job reforming the patent system.
Are they? I have read every patent-related article in Slashdot in recent months and have yet to see a single patent subjected to anything close to an invalidating analysis.
While you may enjoy the lawyer-bashing, and the suggestion that we somehow all "dance to corporate marketing jingles," nothing is proved by that. While you are wrong about me, personally, that is wholly beside the point. Even if I were in someone's pocket, how would that make my arguments more or less valid? Why would the ignorance and naivete of the attacks made on the patent system by those who have not studied the law be any more meaningful or correct?
Come off it. No one can reasonably suggest that a person is qualified or unqualified to discuss patent policy merely because he or she is a lawyer. That's just another straw man in defense of the naive attacks. I am suggesting that one who *DOES* attack the patent system should first undertake to learn something about how it works.
Apparently that is too controversial a point to raise in this forum.
The slashdot community thinks that an invention is unworthy of a patent -- all without seeing a single line of any specification or claim. With all due respect, none of us, myself included, can comment on the validity or propriety of an application for a patent until we have seen what in fact is claimed.
Nonetheless, we have already seen posted here vitreolic remarks suggesting USPTO incompetence, unreasonable conduct by the applicant and general remarks about unnamed "abuses" of a Patent system.
I have obtained and enforced patents for clients, and invalidated patents of others. I know what it takes to meet the tremendous burden of showing a patent is invalid, or even the burden for an examiner to make a prima facie case to refuse a claim. Several remarks made here do not come close, and, to be frank, would appear ignorant and empty to any educated student of the patent law.
Several of use who are fighting the fight for real patent reform have had our battles made more difficult, not less, by the conduct of those who randomly assault the USPTO without cause. Such remarks ultimately (and properly) get ignored, and the Office begins to turn a deaf ear to all arguments made for change -- even when they are sound.
The bottom line is this: some patents are valid, and others are not. The determination is made on the merits -- there either is or is not an adequate specification; and there either is or is not invalidating prior art. The very reasonable news story asked for meat, but regrettably all we have seen thus far are whinings, rejecting legitimate arguments of validity as mere "legalese."
For those of you who have undertaken to educate yourselves about the subject of patents and comment on this subject, I regard your comments and cricicisms highly -- you have taught us a great deal, and even where we have disagreed, I have been both enlightened and educated by the discourse. I hope that in time your colleagues will follow your example.
Yeah, but the Fourier Transform uses complex, not real, numbers.
F(s) = Intergral(exp(-i*s*t)*f(t)*dt)
or something like that, where i is sqrt(-1).
Which reminds me, I should go do my math homework. Stupid Laplace transforms...
I was just giving you a hard time :)
I agree that mathematical processes shouldn't be patentable, but from what I can tell, this guy wants to patent his VLSI implementation of the algorithm. In this case, I think a patent should be applicable, since he's working on a physical invention, not an abstract process.
-ElJefe
n time, consumes about 4n space (including the linked-list overhead).
cyano
Don't like my sig? I don't either.
That's not necessary true. Trade for example is normaly a win-win situation, both parties gain from trading. One party usualy makes profit (meaning cash) and the other party gains some service or something like this. Both parties make profit from trading otherwise they wouldn't trade. (Just for completness: Of course there are situations when one is forced into trading etc. but this is not the rule)
Gee, this seems remarkably similar to what has happened with the RSA patent, or the LZW patent. And those are mathematical formulas too...
Even in this case, a patent is a bad idea.
Copyright law should be enough to protect this software!
Unlike mechanical aparatus, whose workings are apparent, software's workings are inherently more complicated, and harder to reverse-engineer.
Furthermore- both copyright and patents have durations which are much too long for modern times.
Creation of intellectual property is at an all-time high, and the fact is that future knowledge is based off of current.
THis means that our society is dependant more and more on the sharing of knowledge and ideas and less and less upon production.
(i.e. we are becoming a service based economy)
Patents and elongated copyright durations serve only to inhibit the growth of this industry! I can understand a patent or copyright duration of a decade and a half, but the current copyright regulations are ludicrous! Why extend copyright? (esp. for corporations!)
The only good argument for it (and the reason that these laws were enacted) is to ENCOURAGE invention and the creation of new things.
Patent law is having the opposite effect.
Copyright law is also having the opposite effect.
(i.e. software, the DCMA, etc.)
I think that OSS is the best example of this-
the OSS community is a meritocracy, based upon individual AND group prowess. This sort of organization profits by the share of ideas- one's reputation is made by it. (this is an example of copyright WORKING)
Leibniz would probably have something to say about that...
This is what a Slashdot story should look like. Interesting story. Replete with links to background information. Sans alarmist, condescending, pandering drivel (are you listening Katz?)
Keep up the good work.
Hates people who have stupid little sigs
I believe I've heard the same thing. Gauss was a brilliant guy--he dabbled in a lot of things that weren't even really useful back in his time (way before computers). IIRC, Runge's work was independent, and Gauss's work on the topic had been forgotten by that time.
I know that feeling of simply creating to create something cool - but it is a feeling easily forgotten amidst pangs of hunger! Patents help to enable the "selflessness" of which you speak; they help to make paychecks real so many of us can aspire to these virtuous goals.
So how does open source fit into this equation? Companies ARE beginning to profit from Linux - but not because they change and keep their source, Linux simply enables the machines they sell to meet customers needs. Will Linux see a return on this profit? YES! Albeit indirectly.
What fuels Linux (besides hatred of Bill)? Developers who contribute ideas back to the open source base. How do these developers put food on their tables? The companies (some of them) work for gain value from the application of Linux to the company's specific markets. The ideas are free, the application of the ideas feeds the kids.
We are experiencing an ever stronger shift towards a service oriented economy. Software too is loosing its value as a an entity and becoming simply a method for getting a job done. It is in the service to others where we are consistently rewarded.
Patents and the USPTO can follow this trend by continuing to recognize significant application of ideas instead of the ideas themselves. I understand this has increasingly been their intent.
good to see you sengan!! :)
I don't think anything mathematical or intellectual can[except legally] or should be patentable. I think a great problem with our society is how it is so individualist that if anyone's right to have independant thought is midly infringed upon they can screw several other people out of that same right. An ideal society (a utopia perhaps) would have everyone -pool- any and all ideas they had for peer review and total acceptance and widespread usage. To loosely quote someone's sig (from a while ago?), if you horde it, it just smells bad.
; }return(0);}
The patent system is generally abused nowdays and no attention is payed to anything but legalese. IIRC someone several years ago tried to patent the binary counting system and binary math. This should not be.
The patent office should issue Invention-credit certificates or something that says "Look it, I invented this. See give me credit. If you find it useful, I'd like to put food on my plate." - kind of like the old shareware lisence.
#include <signal.h> \ #include <stdlib.h> \ int main(void){signal(ABRT,SIGIGN);while(1){abort(-1)
OFTC: By the community, for the community
Hey wait.. wasn't linux invented in a social-democracy?
; }return(0);}
And yes I -would- like some Marx with that. I'm tired of American Capitalist Fascism and greed. Profit, by its very nature, means taking more then you give back to the community. In order for you to profit, you have to take more then what you sold was worth, and by marketing, brainwash people into thinking what garbage you have to offer is a life necessity.
A utopia, by definition, is an unatainable goal.
Socialism would work if there was no capitalism constantly trying to break into the socialist markets. Capitalism results in animosity and ecological destruction. Just the world I want to live in.
#include <signal.h> \ #include <stdlib.h> \ int main(void){signal(ABRT,SIGIGN);while(1){abort(-1)
OFTC: By the community, for the community
I'm a chemistry major and math minor by training. Most of the important lab processes are named after their inventors (Kjedhall nitrogen analysis, Benedict's solution, Tollen's test, etc) and quite a few mathematical theorem are named after their discoverer. (Green's theorem, Stoke's theorem, Kepler's laws, the Bernoulli equation). The way I see it, patenting this is leading to a world of trouble:
... who knows?
1: How are we supposed to teach future generations this technique? Are we going to have to license the formula in a textbook on a per usage basis? Readers (University printed textbooks, in a binder) are expensive enough with all the copyright royalties.
2: If someone used a similar process to calculate FFTs, or do derivative work on the theory (which is the very basis of science - taking existing theory to model new ones) how the HELL are we going to do work with patents on something that basic?
Personally, I never expect to get a nobel price (or Field Medal (?) for mathematicians). If I get a chemical process named after me, to be printed in man pages and chemistry books, I'd die happy. And for most scientists I think that's one of the ultimate honor.
Conversely, I'd never want to go down in history book as the S.O.B. that patented something basic and spent the rest of his life suing people for patent violations. Or hiding secrets from others (a notable example of that would be Hooke, who discovered Hooke's law. He didn't publish it because he stood to benefit from being the only person to mathematically model springs. It wasn't until his death when he made references to where the equations were hidden).
Of course, I'm not saying that he will be running around suing people for patent violations. But then
-=- SiKnight
PS: Ever wonder why mathematicans don't get Nobel prizes? Alfred Nobel's sweetheart ran off with one. That's why. Honest.
I like the idea of compiler-genrated prior art stomping on foolish patents.
Unfortunately, I think what the article was originally about was an approximation to the DCT algorithm, not just an optimisation of it.
Fixing copyright
Having said the above, if the actual patent is for a specific hardware design, as some have said, then this may be a good case for a patent. My concern lies in the concept that one might patent pure mathematics. Depending on the actual claim of the patent, which is purportedly unavailable, I may the support this patent.
I support the principle of patents, but there are some problems with current law. If pure mathematics is patentable, it is time for the revolution.
This point of contention demonstrates the root of my critique.
Fourier transforms are usually framed in the complex field, but in real-world applications, one starts with a real function, and ends with a real function. The fact that our sine and cosine functions are intimately related to the properties of complex numbers shows how many parts of mathematics are equivalent, and therefore unpatentable.
Wiles used a problem in algebraic topology to prove the seemingly unrelated property of integers that x^n + y^n != z^n, for positive x, y, z and n > 2.
MUSCATINE, Iowa, Jan 22, 2000
In a campaign promise yesterday, Al Gore promised that, if and only if he is elected president, he will continue to allow the world to use the internet, despite infringement on his patent.
When questioned about his outlandish claim to hold a patent on all forms of network traffic, Gore looked shocked and stated that "I don't think that the American public will second-guess me after I singlehandedly fixed the Y2K bug!."
In 1872, Dedekind and Cauchy published constructions of the Real numbers. All properties of our numbers are derived from the fact that there is exists unique ordered field containing the rationals that has no gaps (eg. sqrt(2)). The no gaps axiom is formally built as the existence of a least upper bound for every set bounded above. We call this set the Reals. (Check an analysis book if you're interested in this).
An interesting fact about mathematics is that all the properties of our reals are a consequence of this definition. While the patent law allows for the patent of discoveries and inventions, mathematics is quite different, for one simple reason: there's nothing new here.
Allowing a patent on a detail of an already-well-known system of numbers allows for impossible legal paradoxes. Assume that y = 6x is patentable. Someone gets a patent, and I decide that I want to get a patent on y = instantaneous rate of change of 3x^2, after discovering that it has some of the same useful properties. Another person comes along and patents the y = the second derivative of x^3, one the same premise.
This seems ridiculous, but the pharmaceutical companies do something very similar constantly in patent cases: they invent similar drugs that use slightly different chemicals. It's not the effect that's patentable, but the exact structure. Mathematics is all the effect of its basic axioms, so there must be no patent on pure mathematics.
Why should what is basically a refinement of a mathematical algorithm be patentable? Most mathematical algorithms are not. An algorithm is not a physical machine, it is an idea or discovery.
If the link you showed was to Werdna's bio, and your intent was to attack his credibility ad hominem, you failed. At least, if people followed the link and actually read about the man who has spoken so eloquently here today.
Read all the way to the bottom- the guy you pointed us to has a BS in engineering and a Ph.D. in computer science from a very good school, as well as a law degree. And it looks like he's handled some very interesting patent cases, in addition to his aforementioned hooters trademark case. He's "been there, done that" in the computer industry, creating a classic video game series, and he contributes to the open source community. Yet you only felt compelled to list the single bullet on a three page bio that could conceivably be considered derogatory? I think you are dealing with some serious intellectual integrity issues here. What you did is similar to someone linking to your web page and mocking your interest in bestial sexuality.
If I was in a position to need legal advice from someone regarding intellectual property, I think I would be in good hands with this man. If I am looking for information about xml or the mating habits of camels I might ask you.
Thank you, Dr. Greenberg, for taking your time to try to help us understand a complicated issue. It is a shame some of the obviously highly intelligent people here are incapable of extending simple courtesies into their internet discourse; this could be a great site.
Rev. Neh
... and there is no doubt, that one day he will be
where the eye of his telescope has already been
To hear yet another "expert" as far as the patent system is concerned to be slamming Slashdot readers for having an opinion.
A better question would be why do you have to be a patent expert in order to have an opinion? The poster who's remark ranked a five seems to think that "ordinarly" people don't have the right to an opinion. Isn't that what the patent system is supposed to do, or not do? Only grant patents on "non-obvious" inventions? If it's obvious to non-experts that this patent shouldn't be granted isn't that a valid opinion? Some people may be sick of Slashdot posters jumping to conclusions because we have better things to do than become experts in patent law and prior art. But I, and I would think a large percentage of others, are sick of people implying that we don't have the right to an opinion just because we are not part of the system. Anyone else agree?
Edison could spend his time inventing new things because his life was paid for by the things he'd invented previously. If he didn't know that he would achieve a financial pay off from his efforts, I doubt he would have done what he did
I think he would. Most scientists don't do their work with the sole goal of profit in mind. They do it for the love of their work. Why do all the Linux kernel hackers work so hard in their work? Becase they love doing it. Just the fact that they exist tends to make your argument patently false.
In this day and age of shrinking bottom lines, if paying royalties for using an invention of someone elses becomes optional, then most companies will simply not pay the royalty and gain a few more dollars in profit.
If some company is going to take someone else's work and make a profit off of it, then I think they should pay a royalty or other form of payment. That is, if the inventor allows their work to be used for profit. Linux is different, because while it allows companies and others to use the technology it forces them by way of the GPL to share any improvements. So, companies are not profiting directly from using Linux. Rather they are profiting from their own value add, be that services or support or custom programming or whatever. I don't think that individuals should be forced to pay royalties or any other form of payment for patented works as long as they don't profit from others by using it.
Perhaps is this were a socialist system, where governments would fund inventors of something so they could live and follow their pursuits, your hope could work. But then from everything I've heard, it sounds like that may not be the way to go.
But my understanding is that a large percentage of patented works do come from work paid for my governments. Universities receive research grants and the scientists who are paid by the universities invent something. Is it right for them to patent those inventions then? They were the direct result of "socialist" funding by the government.
There used to be a simple way to make this sort of distinction - many years back you used to have to produce a working model of your invention and submit it along with the patent - the patent office eventually discontinued this practice (I think I heard they couldn't afford the ballooning warehouse space :-).
Of course if you have a working model of chip it's pretty hard for a patent examiner to actually look at and judge how it works (probably another reason why it's no longer feasible to require working models).
What I'm really trying to say here is that it's easy to patent small ideas - but often hard to tell when your patent is being violated. Conversly it's hard to patent big ideas (because it's hard to think up something that's truely revolutionary) - but easy to track down violators. So maybe there is some little justice in the patent world :-)
Actually I think that this is exactly the sort of thing that should be patentable - he's not patenting the IDCT per-se - he's patenting a particular implementation of it.
This is exactly like patenting a better machine for (say) canning food rather than patenting the concept of canning food, or a new way to sell canned food. This is what the patent system was set up to do.
Having said all that I personally believe that it's become way too easy to patent little stuff, I firmly believe that patents as they were a hundred years ago were a worthwhile concept - I hold a number of patents on my work over the years - none of them come close to the patents that were granted to Edison - back then people patented 'big ideas' not all the little things that we invent day to day to get our work done.
Over the years my various employers have encourage me to patent lots of stuff I've invented - but frankly I'm only really proud of one of those inventions - and much prouder of other stuff I've done (whole chips, big software systems etc) that in themselves are not patentable.
I think your patent on the Highhiker's Guide infringes on my "trilogy in n (where n != 3) parts" patent. Please cease and decist your usage of this patent. If you ban rap music (as you hold the patent on it), I'm sure I can overlook your use of our non-obvious "trilogy in n (where n != 3) parts" patent, and give you a licence.
In another side deal, I'll let you in on my "conics" patent if you let me in on the trig identities..
---
--
Internet Explorer (n): Another bug -- that is, a feature that can't be turned off -- in Windows.
My cs professor told me about the origin and "evolution" of the FFT, which is quite interesting. It's true that FFT (not called FFT then of course) was found on Gauss' notebook, but Gauss believed that such an algorithm was so trivial that he didn't bother to publish it. Of course, he didn't have computers then, and so it seemed FFT had no practical use.
Fast forward to more modern time. There was a little conference about developing the software for a little weapon if I recall correctly. One of the main algorithms required either fourier transform or polynomial multiplication (the two are actually the same thing), but the only known algorithm, to those people, was the naive O(n^2) algorithm, and it's just too expensive for the task at hand. At the conference, there happened to be this statistics professor, and he said it could be done in O(nlogn) time. The professor said he taught this to students all the time, and he thought it's a very trivial idea coincidentally. The IBM people there, who were developing the software, weren't so convinced then, so they asked a programmer (argghh, sucks that I don't remember all the names) to implement the algorithm, and to their surprise, it worked flawlessly.
That was the beginning of a revolution.
^H^H^H^H^HAnonymous Coward
Did anyone notice that Andover.net holds several purely-algorithmic patents? This is ridiculous! What do my fellow human readers think? And what could the be using these for?
United States Patent 6,906,450
Malda, et al. 27-Nov-1997
Method and implementation for phony discussion posting and moderation
Abstract:
A computer implemented process for detecting stories already posted to existing news wires by extracting HTML meta information to determine article. Relevant facts and debates are determined by querying random information from search engines and recondstructing information into text based follow ups. Quality of posts can be determined by additional evaluation or manual random assignment.
Could an algorithm/mathematical relationship be protected under GPL? When software is GPL'd, it does prevent other companies from patenting it for profit (though I don't know if this requirement has been tested in court..)
If thhe guy that came up with the more elegant formula decided to find a unique way to APPLY his formula (e.g. some kind of software app) that is totally different than anything out there... then yes he should be able to patent a unique way to give it a productive use. But if the y start giving patents for concepts such as mathematics then I think I'm going to get a patent on the colors blue and yellow. And thinking of that, wouldn't I get a patent for the color green because it is a secondary product of my patented concepts? :^)
Pythagorian Theorem
Distance Formula
Volume of a sphere
The trig identities
The Spanish Language
Differentiation
The Product Rule
The Quotient rule
L'Hospital's Rule
Rap Music
The 6 String Guitar
Magnetic Data Storage
The Hitchhiker's Guide Trilogy-(screw doug adams!)
And hey- here's a good one! The internet.
Yeah, whatever.
Just try and prosecute someone for using a mathematical formula.
Pythagorian Theorem
Distance Formula
Volume of a sphere
The trig identities
The Spanish Language
Differentiation
The Product Rule
The Quotient rule
L'Hospital's Rule
Rap Music
The 6 String Guitar
Magnetic Data Storage
The Hitchhiker's Guide Trilogy-(screw doug adams!)
And hey- here's a good one! The internet.
Hey, the bottom line for me here is- Isn't it good enough to just name the thing after him? I would feel as though I had given birth, if I had just advanced a math system to the next level. Free information, maybe that's liberal- But trying to stop people from using a new math formula is ludicrous. As soon as we all know what it is and that it exists, its only so long before someone else approaching his abilities stumbles onto the same thing.
This is a good point - the patent system is an attempt to encourage publication, rather than 'security through obscurity' by granting a time-limited monopoly. For mechanical inventions, a 17-year expiration is probably reasonable; now we are living on 'internet time' an accelerated decay seems highly appropriate, to prevent someone buying up patents to supress their use.
How about:
Mechanical invention: 17 years
Medical: 15 years (Given the FDA approval lag)
Circuitry: 8 years
Software Algorithm: 4 years
Internet Business Model: 1 year
Then, add a clause that lets you challenge for non-exploitation, like the Trademark one Linus cited, and we're closer to what we need.
Ugh! Edison might have screwed up in believing that DC power was superior to AC power, but does that invalidate his previous work? That "primer" is completely biased and uses third graders as pawns. Edison did start the electric revolution. Even if his original invention, the light bulb ran on the wrong type of current, it was the first practical invention that required electricity to run. Also, despite what that third grade teacher says, many people do know that while Edison invented the light bulb, his DC current system was a failure. However, this doesn't invalidate a lifetime of work or make him a theif. Teslar's biggest shortcoming was that he was a poor businuss man; he should never have sold his patents to George Westinghouse.
Sig goes here
Whence can I download this so-called internet-dope? I only intend to use it for educational purposes. Drugs are BAD! Bad Bad Bad! Gotta go and clear out a couple of partitions so I can download a goodly amount of this highly interesting code.
The current Slashdot moderation system is made by gay communists!
Not being an academic, I'm unsure of this. But, if he's published this in any scientific/mathematical journal isn't his desire to get a patent moot? Plus if he's been working on this while at a university, etc wouldn't the school be the real owner of the patent?
The current Slashdot moderation system is made by gay communists!
I read a tech report sometime in 1997 or before that described an integer DCT with just shifts and simple constants (e.g., X * 5 == X + X 2). Maybe this is it, maybe it was prior art. I don't remember who wrote it or what organization it was. HTH
Cairo, Egypt (AP)
During a recent dig in the north of Egypt, archeologists discovered one more proof that the ancient Egyptian government was by far more advanced than any other at the time. The find: an ancient patent and copyright office, intact with records and samples. Scientists all over the world are flocking to the research station which has been set up in the area to review the findings, which according to lead researcher J'an Kueng is "very interesting". At the time of this printing very little has been translated, with exception to the remarkable find of a patent held by Pythagoras.
From what has been gathered thus far, it seems that the late mathematical wizard holds a 5000 year old patent on the algorithm commonly used to determine the length of a right triangle's hypotenuse. The Pythagorean Theorem, as it has been known for the last several millennia, is actually called "A System for Finding Lengths of a Right Triangle" according to patent #109. Apparently Pythagoras developed the system and licensed it's use to the government of the time, who used it in surveying the land. The system was also used widely during development of the pyramids, along with other later developments. The Egyptian government has assumed ownership of these patents, saying "since we cannot trace Pythagoras' ancestry to any reasonable number of individuals, we believe that this patent will be best used as a method of repaying the Egyptian government the millions pounds of wheat which the former holder demanded from us several years ago." The government said that it believes it will push for strong regulation of the system's use, along with heavy fees for any commercial usage.
Obviously this news has nearly everyone in the world quite upset, many have been quoted as saying "what the hell?!" while most lawyers have been reported "thanking God for His goodness."
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Do you even know anything about perl? -- AC Replying to Tom Christiansen post.
Sorry, I couldn't resist :-))
That's pretty absurd. Just think of all the math operations any kind of new product uses, whether it is electronic or not. No matter high tech it is, the product would either use some math for its operation or have used it during it's development.
Newton developed calculus. If we had to pay royalties to his heirs (or maybe to the newton corporation!) every time we took a derivative or modeled a process with a differential equation...we'd..we'd...well, i don't know what would happen, but it seems crazy.
Even though this IDCT approx is a new idea and could probably legally get patented, it totally shouldn't be. Another approx, the sterling approx, says that ln(x!)=xlnx-x. Every time this is used, no one pays anything, no one owns it.
A patent like this one truly scares me. Patenting mathematics could set a horrible precedent that would severely hinder future advances in all areas of science. Computer technology could be cribled the most severely. The cost of many products would also predictable increase. After having to pay licensing fees, companies would have no choice to pass the cost on to consumers. Where would the hard drive industry be today without Pharoah's Theorem?
--Brett
1) Patents expire. They expire because their purpose is to make sure that things continue to go forward. Patents are there to encourage people to share information. Expecting that patents (and even abuses) are going to make progress stop in it's tracks is a little ridiculous.
2) Without patents, many innovations of the past may not have been invented, or may not have been shared, so that we can take them for granted today. Having a system where entire categories of patents are restricted/unavailable is a little unreasonable. It seems a little naive to assume that innovation can't happen in just about anything.
3) The USPO doesn't really have an easy job. There is no doubt that some sort of reform is desperately needed, but we don't live in the same world that created that system. We need to look constructivly at recreating a new system, not just bashing the only one we have.
That said, I'd be interested in hearing how people think the patent system should be changed. What would you (or Brian Boytano) do to make it better. It seems to me that a logical place to start would be to simply make the application process more difficult, but what about having a graduated patent process. Lets face it, 17 years is an eternity in today's business. Maybe you should have to invent the wheel, or oxygen to get a 17 year patent, but maybe a patent on an algorythem should default to 5 years, or 1. And of course, to approve a 17 year patent, there would be some serious procedure to go through, including maybe some expert testimony or something, and a waiting period for people to show "prior art" to help prevent a false claim. I really don't know enough about the current patent system to even know if I'm already listing things that currently exist or not (I don't think so though).
I think that he should be granted a patent, and be allowed to profit from his invention/discovery, but I don't know enough about currently used processes to be sure. I don't think that he be granted unlimitted rights though. Some limitations of what kind of royalties he can demand, or the amount of time he gets to hold a patent like this should apply.
Claimed... :-) I think he is right. A 5 min search using google lead
/Cooley-Tukey and up to now, where efforts are made to
me to
http://www.jjj.de/fxt/fftnote.txt ,
which contains "Notes on the FFT" written by C. S. Burrus.
The note gives a thorough presentation of the FFT algorithm starting
with Gauss
discover a parallel algorithm. The first paragraph of text follows
below, wherin [1] is the reference:
[1] M. T. Heideman, D. H. Johnson, and C. S. Burrus,
"Gauss and the history of the FFT," IEEE Acoustics, Speech,
and Signal Processing Magazine, vol. 1, pp. 14-21, October 1984.
also in IEEE Press FFT Reprints, by P. Duhamel, 1995.
This is a note describing results on efficient algorithms to calculate
the discrete Fourier transform (DFT). The purpose is to report work
done at Rice University, but other contributions used by the DSP
research group at Rice are also cited. Perhaps the most interesting
is the discovery that the Cooley-Tukey FFT was described by Gauss in
1805 [1]. That gives some indication of the age of research on the
topic, and the fact that a recently compiled bibliography [2] on
efficient algorithms contains over 3400 entries indicates its volume.
An expanded version of this bibliography is published as a book [2]
with the references in a data base on a disk. Four IEEE Press reprint
books contain papers on the FFT [3,4,5,6].
-- A Mathematician is a machine for turning coffee into theorems. - Paul Erdös
First, if Transmeta deserves a patent for a JIT, where there is considerable prior art, then this guy who has *improved* the state of the art, deserves one.
Hats off to an original idea.
Most scientists don't do their work with the sole goal of profit in mind. They do it for the love of their work.
What a bunch of hooey that one is! Yes, there are people who should probably instead have gone into the priesthood who fill academia. Generally they are people who just can't get it into their head that the big scary world out there beyond the wall that surrounds their campus is reality. There's a need for basic research, but generally these 'selfless' people are more concerned about tenure than they are about science for the sake of science. Economic incentive will drive scientific progress far more than a peer-reviewed bunch of ninnies who can't get it into their heads that Graduation means finding a job.
"The Greats" of science in the past weren't tenured civil-servants. People like Newton and Michaelangelo were practical men of the world, as well as scientists.
The "patent crisis on campus" with state-paid researching patenting everything left and right is the symptom of a problem that has an easy solution. Tell the scientists to get out and find a job! Found a company if your ideas are so bloody valuable.
Campuses should be about learning. The staff should be involved in teaching the basics. Advanced research should be off-campus at private R&D facilities, and/or contract research firms.
A patent has no meaning aside from what I give it, what he gives it and what she gives it.
For all you people advocating free IP, why do you care what anyone else thinks or patents? Just do what you want to do.
A patent is a piece of paper. If a big powerfull group of people headed by a ruthless dictator (i.e. a corporation or government) desides they don't like you, you are going to have to do what the dictator wants anyway or deal with the consequences they wish to impose.
A patent makes you feel better about yourself and makes you beleive you have some small social advantage that will help your interests.
How does that compare with creativity? With creating something much better than the old?
If you want to talk about money and not creativity... well the rich have always had their ways of screwing the poor. Almost by definition. Exploit the system any way you can.
I think we are confusing the concept of an idea vs. the ability to dupe fellow human beings into paying you money
Take this personaility test.
OTOH, if he went after fellow researchers for using it in their algorithms, I see this as really holding back legitimate progress.
Ultimately, it is his call. Respect and fame or his name in mud. Kind of obvious choice really.
Edison could spend his time inventing new things because his life was paid for by the things he'd invented previously. If he didn't know that he would achieve a financial pay off from his efforts, I doubt he would have done what he did.
Edison did not invent. Edison stole. How did he steal? Patent laws. Do a little research. Here is a primer. I do not mean this as a flame, I am only trying to keep you from spreading ignorance and to dispel your own. Edison was the Bill Gates of the first half of this century. Don't make him out to be a hero.
Drop me a line at:
Key ID: 0x54D1D809
i would like to take this opportunity to extend an invitation to the "naked & petrified guy" to work with me on an open source transformation method. this formula could be used to transform cute teenage girls, hot young actresses, men and feminazis into stone.
this method would be orders of magnitude faster than using the scientifically proven magic petrification ray which is standard equipment on every aibo, thanks to the efforts of the "naked & petrified guy." not that the scientifically proven magic petrification ray is a bad thing... it serves its current purpose quite well. the thing is, who wants to wait for their hot young actress/cute teenage girl/man/feminazi to be petrified? i sure don't!
thank you... may all of your feminazis/men/cute teenage girls/hot young actresses be petrified!
Pure science, like math, should not be patented. Patents are for unique inventions.
-Colbey
I remember the class on Signals and Systems where instructor (a well-respected figure, one of the co-authors of widely used textbook on Signals and Systems) claimed that the origins of FFT were found in some works of Gauss.
Ahhh, wow! Too bad Isaac Newton isn't around today, he could've patented Calculus so that the advancement of every single technological step would be inhibitted. -andrew :)
Not a big deal. The IDCT implementations found in the JPEG distribution are aready fast and simple enough.
But this is a reminder that in the upcoming years we may see more Discrete Wavelet Transforms implementations patented.
I think at this point patents could be good if in the right hands. One should patent as much as he/she can before somebody else does it. Of course the owner of the patent should then not require any fees to who wants to use the patent.
ciaox
The nature of the study of mathematics is the discovery of numerical patterns and properties that have always existed. Because of this, they should not be patentable--just as one cannot claim a patent on, for example, a newly discovered form of deep sea life. I believe this should apply to all mathematics including numerical algorithms (data compression and encryption included), approximation techniques, etc.
First it was patenting gene sequences, now this? When will the madness end?
Patenting mathematical techniques is not only moronic, but it is definitely bad form. What will happen now? Every yahoo mathematician who develops a new numerical method patents his/her discovery, and gets royalties every time someone uses it on a scratchpad?
With this logic, Newton and/or Leibnitz could have patented Calculus, and they'd have died quite rich.
I think that if patents are allowed for breakthroughs that scientific research in general will be increased because right now most advances are done at Universities that lose money on all these programs. I'm not suggesting that basic mathematical or scientific principles should be patented, but specific applications such as in this case should be considered.
I agree, or wait...um. Shit I AM stupid! Thanks Anonymous coward!
Change the world through Trippy Trance!
The author doesn't seem to know much
r m.html
about the topic, for those interested
here is a much more accurate description:
http://mathworld.wolfram.com/FastFourierTransfo
If the patent request is for hardware, then the original post should be amended, since "... patent for this approximation" is therefore misleading.
I am surprised that the entertainment industry has not gone after Fourier transform for copywright infringement.
Remove NOSPAM for e-mail
This is Deja vu. If you'll remember the iterated system's founding patent. The patent centered around an alrorithm that transformed an image in to affine transformation coefficients. essentially a fractal transformation. What Barnsley of Iterated Systems found is a fast fractal transformation. Through implementation in software Barnsley (sp?) patented his mathematical insight. In one of the interviews he says that the key insight of the transform has to do with an operation on matrices, which backs up my claim it is mathematics. So I'm not surprised. Hopefully with tempered discussion we can find a succint boundary condition for patentability. (There is one but it was thrown out of the courts sometime ago) Hopefully the courts and patent office will establish new lines in this new age where most products will be intangible. One good step toward that is to contain the possibility of using patents as strategical weapons. Another step would be the banning of patent dumping and broad patents. Again there will be many difficulties.
Sure, a circuit (or computer) programmed according to this method is patentable subject matter (35 U.S.C. 101), as is a method of programming a computer, as is a disk containing software for doing the method. The bare idea, without any ties to hardware, is not patentable subject matter because it's a mathematical algorithm. Whether this is patentable over the prior art (35 U.S.C. 102, 103) depends on what's in the prior art ... but it sounds like the alleged inventor really did think of something new, so she (or he) deserves protection for disclosing it to the public. [We hardcore feminists appreciate these issues.]