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Microsoft Patenting IM Translation?
theodp writes "The USPTO just published Microsoft's patent application for a Method and system for translating instant messages, in which the software giant demonstrates how an English-speaking sender can type 'Hi' in an IM and it will be translated to 'Hola' for a Spanish-speaking recipient."
Now, that this is a patent grab exploiting a broken system, is fairly evident. However, two thoughts:
1. This patent is described as setting forth "A method and system translating instant messages between users who communicate in different languages"
Notice that it's only one method being patented; there's nothing stopping me from coming up with my own method. This is not a good patent, but there are worse (one-click shopping comes to mind).
2. This patent, if worded a bit differently, could set forth a way to transparently translate between the native languages of devices, not users, which would perhaps be a more interesting patent considering IPv6, pervasive intercommunication between devices, et cetera; did Microsoft drop the ball on this one?
I have gotten messages sent to me in other languages, and using every wonderful translator that I could find, I still have had no idea what the messages are actually about. If the translating method Microsoft is planning is like all the others I have found then there's really no need to fret in my opinion, because they will not make the messagung any clearer. But if it is more advanced then that's a totally different situation...
Is that not prior art?
Language translation is not exactly an innovative idea.
Anyone else care to list babblefish style plugins for their favorite IMs.
ACK
And the abstract of the one click patent is:
A method and system for placing an order to purchase an item via the Internet. The order is placed by a purchaser at a client system and received by a server system. The server system receives purchaser information including identification of the purchaser, payment information, and shipment information from the client system. The server system then assigns a client identifier to the client system and associates the assigned client identifier with the received purchaser information.
The important part is the CLAIMS, not the abstract. The first claim from the Microsoft translation patent:
1. A method for translating instant messages exchanged between two or more devices over a network by one or more users that communicate in different languages, the method comprising: establishing a user profile indicating at least one user language and one or more translation preferences of the one or more users; receiving a message as input composed by at least one of the users according to the user language; translating the message from the user language to at least one different language corresponding to the one or more translation preferences; and transmitting the message in translated form to at least one of the two or more devices.
This seems to cover pretty much all practical IM autotranslation schemes, if this claim is granted.
Translation between protocol suites is a very different problem and Microsoft and others already have plenty of IP there, which is why things are worded the way they are. I don't think anyone dropped the ball-- this is a very broad, desirable patent if granted.
Prior art doesn't appear to matter any longer. The patent office doesn't have the capacity, capabitlity or the subject matter knowledge to search for, find, and apply prior art. Just approve it and let the courts find the prior art.
as is the case with most computer patents, you have to -read- them to determine their fitness. the short description can't possibly hold all the pertinent details.
this pending patent covers their particular modular translation service, residing at a user-preference-designated network address (whether it be one device or a plurality of devices).
furthermore - the method states that a message comes from a sender, through the communication server directly to a recipient (no translation whatsoever to this point). the recipient's machine then automatically sends a translation request to the translation server specified in their stored preferences, and the result of that translation request is displayed.
the uniqueness of this system is that someone could set their preferences to point at a 3rd party translation service that perhaps gives better results than the stock german->japanese translation widget that MS might provide. the server passing along the traffic can remain willfully ignorant of any possible translation issues and keeps complexity of its logic down.
you may maintain this is a 'Bad Patent'(tm), and indeed babelfish is curiously close in function and it's use in procedure, to this patent.
in UO/PSO/etc the server handles translation without automatic user request.
therefore, those 'prior art' examples are not relevant.
remember, it's -procedure- and -method- that are patentable. not -functionality-.
you CAN'T patent 'translation' (and this patent isn't trying to). you CAN patent a non-obvious implimentation of it.
// "Can't clowns and pirates just -try- to get along?"
> My hovercraft is full of eels!
Hehe, I don't know why this isn't modded up, it fits in perfectly with the discussion. Maybe the mods just don't "get it."
As food for thought in considering whether the patent system encourages or discourages innovation, try to estimate what the cost would be of accurately determining whether or not a small commercial application (e.g. ~50k lines of code) violates any patents.
Given that patents grant the patent holder the right to prevent anyone from not only selling infringing goods, but from making or using them as well, what small developer could hope to develop anything without paying patent license fees to someone, particularly when patents are as incremental as this one is!
It seems to me that the only reason the patent system continues in its current form is that patents aren't enforced most of the time. The exclusion rights that patents provide are only worth enforcing when the target is sufficiently wealthy that they have something you want to take, or sufficiently popular that they threaten your business. Nevertheless, I don't like the idea of granting this kind of power - it's a bit like setting low speed limits everywhere so police can stop anyone they need to.
Getting back to my original point, the patent system simply doesn't scale:
Looking forward 30 years, this creates a pretty dismal outlook for inventors without significant backing.
Incidentally, didn't Ultima Online have a method for translating in-game player chats to other languages? Would this make the cut as prior art?
Also, this patent doesn't seem to specify 'natural languages' (which would exclude, say, XML dialects), so wouldn't this include any sort of translation, such XSL transformation?
Prior art doesn't appear to matter any longer. The patent office doesn't have the capacity, capabitlity or the subject matter knowledge to search for, find, and apply prior art. Just approve it and let the courts find the prior art.
This is why we need to change the system so that patents are published upon submission. The public can submit comments and prior art to the patent office and they can act more as administrators, like they are doing now. If a company doesn't want to risk giving up trade secrets in failed submissions, then they will only submit material that is worthy of a patent.
What the PTO needs is something similar to amicus curiae briefs in the Supreme Court so people who actually know about the technology involved can say something if there is prior art. The only problem with that is that the patents would have to be made public before they are issued, and if the patent is denied, then everyone already knows about the idea and can capitalize on it. I'm sure they could figure out a better system than what they have now.
This is why we need to change the system so that patents are published upon submission. The public can submit comments and prior art to the patent office and they can act more as administrators, like they are doing now.
In this case, the application has been published and this patent is likely two to three years away from approval (if ever). Of course this is only a voluntary process right now - and I wonder why MS has chosen this path - perhaps this is really just a "marketing patent" as someone else surmised (a quick Google search suggests that the "inventor" is a software test engineer - I wonder whether how experienced they are?).
As to submitting comments: certainly the USPTO has been posting jobs extensively in various technical magazines and journals targeting members of the slashdot set - I wonder how many of these new patent examiners are reading Slashdot right now? While far from a cure for this broken system, hopefully we'll start to see some savier decision made if these ads lead to hiring more computer literate (and perhaps even skeptical) patent examiners.
My next sig will be ready soon, but friends can beat the rush!
This is the kind of patent all big computer companies file a lot of: trivial technology and lots of related prior art, but nobody else has patented exactly this thing. Why is Microsoft doing this? To be able to achieve cross-licensing with other companies that have big patent portfolios. The effect is to keep small competitors from being able to enter any of their markets (because they will be stepping on some of Microsoft's patents), and to be able to have leverage against open source projects.
I think this is ultimately only fixable legislatively. It's important that the EU do not pass software patents--by having at least one large market where open source software can be developed without this nonsense, people will keep creating software even for functionality that's patented in the US. But in the long run, we really need to get patent reform in the US.
The effects of these kinds of patents are so hostile to business and competition that sooner or later, legislators must see the light.
This isn't granted yet, so there's no saying it is a lock for MS to be awarded the patent.
I am sure my friends at IBM will be very interested in reviewing what MS has put down and whether they have already patented technology which does the same type of things through their products (Lotus Instant Messaging [ie. Sametime]).
IM and associated technologies certainly are not a "MS only zone" -- and IBM among others have already done a bunch with this type of thing, especially geared to the corporate space.
Should be interesting to see how it plays out.
TGM.
you are certainly right that it is the claims that matter. However, one thing should be noted about the claim. A claim that is phrased this way means that ALL the components listed have to be included for the patent to apply.
A method for translating instant messages exchanged between two or more devices over a network by one or more users that communicate in different languages, the method comprising: establishing a user profile indicating at least one user language and one or more translation preferences of the one or more users; receiving a message as input composed by at least one of the users according to the user language; translating the message from the user language to at least one different language corresponding to the one or more translation preferences; and transmitting the message in translated form to at least one of the two or more devices.
Thus if you only change one of these parts you have successfully circumvented the patent. Long claims like these ones may seem powerful, but in fact the opposite is true. Generally it is the short ones that have the biggest coverage.
One thing that comes to mind is that the message must be transmitted in translated form. If you transmit it first with a language tag and have the other user translate it then you are OK. And since that solution has now been discussed in a public forum it can never be patented.
Tor
The patent was filed December, 2001. If Kopete didn't have it before then, it's not prior art, unfortunately.
To be an effective translator for IM's, proper spelling and grammar cann't be a requirement. Honestly, when was the last time you received an IM that had perfect grammar/spelling? I can't say I've ever gotten one like that in the 7 years I've used IM programs.
"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."
I can see why someone, in the business world, would want to instantly communicate, with translation, to someone who does not speak the same language. Obviously machine translation isn't good enough to translate documents with legal percision, but it's good enough for thing like warning the datacenter manager in Japan that the London centre has lost power and only's got 5 minutes of battery backup. Or any other of the gazilling things one might want to say to a foreign-language speaker in the business world.
It's also decent for customer support. Your firm may not be big enough to have support staff fluent in 10 languages, but with automatically translated IMs, there's some possibility to do this kind of thing.
The fact that Exchange can act as an MS Messenger (or whatever it's called, I forgot) server, suggests to me that MS is thinking of IM as a business tool, and not as a "casual method for communication"
Ecce Europa - Web Design for Business
13. A system for providing real-time communication over a network between two or more devices to support multiple languages, the system comprising: at least one source device coupled to the network for transmitting a message composed according to a source language; a content translation module having instructions for translating the message into a destination language; and at least one destination device coupled to the network for receiving the message from the content translation module.
This seems to cover any IM system where the translation is done on the server and then re-transmitted to the recipient. It doesn't require that the system have profiles, preferences, etc.
Hopefully this claim will be thrown out as overly broad, but knowing the USPTO it won't be. I know from experience: my name is on a fairly broad patent covering "web-bug" images. Fortunately it's owned by IBM and they're not enforcing it. I got a nice bonus for filing it back in 1996 or so. :-)
Laura
Patents must become increasingly absurd in order to make it clear to people that patenting ideas is not the best way to ensure that inventors receive credit for their innovations.
Perhaps instead we ought to have a public registry which new ideas may be entered into, and all prior art may also be seen and shown when it exists. Those with a truly novel concept would be clearly noted as such and those making use of their invention would voluntarily contribute to encourage the further development of science and progress.
Much like the Free Software movement, but as applied to all inventions.
Peace and love, y'all