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Sony UK Refused P2P Software Patent
blane.bramble writes "The Register reports that Sony cannot patent inventions in the UK that remove the anonymity of the peer-to-peer (P2P) user experience. Sony tried to patent a method of passing around user reviews of shared files, but the UK Patent Office rejected it, and then rejected it again on appeal. The article indicates the patents were rejected because the 'inventions' were not eligible for patenting. " From the article: "When a P2P user downloads a piece of content from another user's computer, be it a song or a game or a movie, he normally knows nothing about that user - or where that user obtained the content. Sony's proposal would change that experience. Sony describes a method for attaching a user history to content when it is shared among computers or other devices. When one user downloads a song, he can see who had it last and what he thought about it."
I think that would be a cool feature. I would like the ability to tag content with a review for others to read later on, add to or disagree with as they please.
Seems as though the UK has a more workable definition of an "obvious" idea than we do in the US. This is a good start.
Dammit Otto, you have lupus.
I'm assuming that they would try to patent this so they could block other companies from creating this sort of software. . .if Sony decides to go Pro-P2P the RIAA would shit themsleves.
If you are about to mod me down, keep in mind that this post was most likely sarcastic.
The article/summary should've focused less on that actual invention (it's a nice idea and it might be cool) and more on why the patent wasn't granted. The summary almost made it sound like "omgz s0ny haxxored lim3wire!!!11".
Anyone else think the comments just weren't rendering right before they turned off ABP and saw ads?
...first they invent CD malware to infect your PC, then they want to change the P2P system to identify file sharers.
Maybe we should all just give in and let Sony tell us what to watch, listen to, and buy as well?
FTA: "The patent application explains: "For example, the user, Clark Kent, may give a classic jazz music file a rating of '7' and include the user comment 'like cool man'. Also, instead of using his true identity ('Clark Kent'), Clark uses an alias, 'Superman.'" Clark may also choose to supply his email address."
Come on Sony, this is a flawed example, everyone knows that Clark Kent can hear everything with his super-hearing, and he doesn't need no stinkin' P2P applications!
He who knows best knows how little he knows. - Thomas Jefferson
This is a neat idea. However, if the MPAA and RIAA got their filthy hands on it they could track p2p downloads. Considering Sony's history of DRM, I'm sceptical of their motives.
No, the EU doesn't care whether or not a computer program is 'novel' or 'non-obvious'- the EU just forbids software patents, algorithms, and most other mathematical constucts from being patented. For instance, if Andrew Wiles wanted to Patent Fermat's Last Theorem he couldn't- not because it's obvious (it took mathematicians 350+ years to solve), but because it's a mathematical proof.
You are reading a copy of my copyrighted post.
The UK is party to the European Patent convention which clearly says that software, organisational rules and business methods are not inventions, not patentable subject matters.
In the past ten years the European Patent Office tried to establish case law which perverted the EPC and created the EU software patent mess. As we see now, patentability advocats are on retreat thanks to the intense lobbying of software patent critics. And the courts follow.
The major task is now to gain ground and continue advocacy. What Sony proposes here is no INVENTION. So no surprise that it is not patentable.
What will be further crucial is the US getting real and abolishing software and business method patents.
It is not surprising that the court has rejected the patent. Most EU courts reject software patents or business method patents even though the EPO (European Patent Office) will grant them happily (contrary to the text and spirit of the patent convention). So that court did its job and rejected something that should never be patentable in Europe.
However, this could change in the future: the EPO is lobbying for establishing a "(European) Community Patent" process and for having a single European patent court, which would rule in case of patent disputes like this one. Given that the judges in that new court would probably come from the EPO, there is a high risk that they would grant the patent.
Time to support the FFII and the FSF Europe...
-Raphaël
It seems that everybody is thinking Sony won't implement the idea. The fact that they cannot patent the very idea doesn't mean they can't go ahead and do it!
I would be suspicious of P2P from a media company. Especially one that gives the user more ... identity.
From TFA:
Then the RIAA could descend wrathfully on this supposed uber-pirate. Even if the guy used a psuedomym, like the article suggests, the system would probably have some sort of personally identifiable information on him that the RIAA could get the court to subpoena the information, or Sony could just give it to them.
I think the only way that I would consider this feature a good thing is if it had no "identity," which would only as useful as the comment metadata that you can already put on files you share in some systems. Either that, or if it was part of a system where you already had an identity, like that subscription thing Sony did with Playlouder that the article talkied about. This might be all that Sony was planning to do with this anyway.
Anyway, I would be hesitant to jump into this. I'm suspicious.
Also, I wouldn't want to have to deal with the implications of
This space reserved for administrative use.
Why was the first thing I thought "How are they gonna abuse it?"?
Instead of thinking that this might be a useful feature to actually discriminate between good and bad content, why was the first thing I was thinking about the question how Sony would use this feature to rip me off? The idea itself sounds quite interesting...
Riiiiiight! Defensive patent! If you patent it, nobody can implement it. Nobody could rate their fakes down into the basement when they try to poison the seeds of torrents and eMule.
gotcha!
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
"John Q. Public says: MUST SEE!!! h0t b3atch3s p7mp3d 1n 411 h0l3s!!!"
Since The Kid used the latest version of Jonny-Rev13wZ-it.EXE, each of your "reviews" will be unique of course. The time stamps of the reviews will be spoofed so that they are spread out over the last few years, starting with late night reviews, then adding in early morning reviews, then lunch hour reviews, then, finally, within the past few weeks, work-day reviews. Some of your reviews might even contain samples of phrases gleaned from your blog and other emails of yours floating around the internet, to add to the apparent authenticity. Then he anonymously reports you to the FBI, because undoubtedly some of those reviews are attached to material which would qualify you for special treatment in the Federal penitentiary where you will, most likely, live out your days. Unless, of course, you are lucky enough to be acquitted by a jury with a high tolerance for techno-babble.
Meanwhile, you won't be able to get a date with any girl savvy enough to Google you.
Unless you must first submit a notarized copy of your "review" along with your X.509 certificate and two forms of valid government issued photo identification at the county courthouse, No, thanks.
If you mod me down, I shall become more powerful than you could possibly imagine.
This is clearly a stealth attack on P2P. A wolf in sheep's clothing. By attaching a history to every file you've altered the file. That ends multi-homed downloads since every bit changed in a file changes it hash code and makes it not match any other version. As such, a file like this would only be able to be downloaded from one source, provided that they have the whole file, and stay on line long enough for you to receive it.
And just what evidence such a file on your machine might provide in court is equally dangerous. You would no longer be able to claim you ripped the file yourself, even if you were holding the CD in your hand, because their lawyer would point to its trail around the Internet in reaching you. Bad Move!!
Sony clearly does not have P2P user's interests at heart as they tout this as a must have feature for the future of P2P.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
I agree with you, but if it was really that cut and dry, then why was Sony pursuing the process in the first place? They must have been hoping to game the system, like another poster said, to essentially block others from using this technique of P2P by extracting the theory from the software. Well, the obviousness comes from calling a duck a duck. A patent "about a method that could be applied to software" is still forbidden, no matter how you slice it. I think this is good news, depending on the lasting effects.
Dammit Otto, you have lupus.
That actually IS exactly the difference. Everyone can implement a rating system. And many P2P Systems have one, as metadata, not attached to the file, but rather to the P2P info around it.
Thus, it is easy to label fakes, spam, viruses and so on. It makes it harder to "poison" the P2P system with fakes and questionable payload. You download something, label it crap if it is and the next person knows he needn't download it for it is a fake anyway.
Now, it ain't been too long ago that some studios had the brilliant idea to distribute fakes that only consisted of noise or insults to downloaders, named like the file you wanted. This was soon weeded out by the rating system of various P2P systems, simply because people labeled the crap as such and it didn't take long to find the "good" apples from the haystack of crap. In other words, it was worthless.
With the patent granted, these rating systems would have to vanish, because I highly doubt that Sony would grant a license to any P2P creators (and let's not even think about these licenses being free of charge). In other words, poisoning would work again, because you could not rate the files, it would be disallowed to use such a technology, since it's patented.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Emule lets you attach a "File comment" (some 60 chars) and "Quality Rating" (1-5 stars) to your files.
To attach a comment, all you need to have is the complete file.
To view a comment, you need to have it in your download list. You see each comment together with the (optional) rating, and the authors nick.
If a file has comments attached, a tiny green or red exclamation mark is displayed next to its name in the transfer window. A green icon stands for comments with positive or absent rating. A red icon indicates the presence of negative ratings.
Emule users tend to mark fakes with negative ratings, and you can spot them by the red icon shortly after the download has started.
This feature is implemented in Emule since at least 2 years (probably more).
Regards,
Marc
The comment/review sections would quickly fill up with spams attached to the typically long-gone junk IP/etc addresses typically used by spammers.
Where were you when the voynix came?
Most of the world follows a first to file policy rather than a first to invent, and even the United States is moving towards this. The primary justification for following a first to file policy is that there is a lot of difficulty in proving prior art, or more importantly proving LACK of prior art on unpatented inventions.
While it may seem unfair to inventors, going on a first to file policy is theoretically more fair and effective in the long run than a first to invent policy; If you think patent trolls and submarine patents are bad, imagine what someone (party A) could do by surreptiously inventing a tech, documenting the invention without releasing the information to the public, then waiting for someone (party B) else to invent the same tech, patent it and actually bring it to market. Party A could then retroactively coopt the patent and demand exorbitant fees from the Party B with a much stronger bargaining chip than they otherwise would have, as party B has already invested a lot of capital into manufacturing, advertising, supply chain, etc. With a first to file policy, there is a public record of the patent so party B would know in advance whether the tech is available or not, and therefore be able to know in advance what the costs involved with production (I.E. whether they will have to pay a liscensing fee on the tech.)
Although this brings up another odd conundrum with patents. They can be quite detrimental to innovation if the license holder does not bring the patented idea to market and does not actively shop out the patent to be licenced. Basically, if the tech is not in some product on the market, another party researching along the same lines would have very little way of knowing that what they are researching has been patented untill enough R&D has been done that they could independantly file a patent on the same idea. Without enough information to file their own patent, it would be difficult to search the available literature and listed patents to find if the idea has been patented yet, especially if the patent is written in an obfuscated (whether intentional or not) manner. If the tech has already been brought to market, it is likely that researchers in the field would be familiar with the competition and the workins of the competitors products and know at a much earlier stage whether the product they are developing is indeed innovative. If the patent holder is actively shopping the patent out, it is likely that the promotional materials presented would have a much more clear synopsis of what the patent actually covers than actually reading the patent itself.
I'll never make that mistake again, reading the experts' opinions. - Feynman
A few comments:
In the US, a prior inventor only gets priority over a later inventor (the later inventor filing the patent application first) IF the prior inventor worked diligently toward making the invention work and filing a patent application AND did not abandon the invention. So any kind of "waiting" is likely to ruin the patent claim of the earlier inventor.
First to file makes things simpler for the patent office and the courts, but I wouldn't say that the current US system is easy to abuse. Instead, first to file basically forces someone to file for a patent. Under the US system, if I invent something before you, I can use that invention even if I don't file for a patent application and you do. Why? Because I invented it first and that denies you a patent on it. With first to file, I would have to file for a patent.
When was the last time they got good press? What's next? "Sony CEO shoots man in face"?
Au contraire. Think of all the people that got identified -- some virus writers, but some ordinary joes -- thanks to Word's keeping track of who edited it. IIRC, the MAC address is a part of it, and most people didn't even know they were tracked, so they didn't even know what to spoof nor even that they needed to spoof it.
If Sony actually got the ball rolling, so every file you ever shared is for ever marked as downloaded from you, the RIAA would probably be in so much joy that they'd ejaculate in their pants. They'd just have to leech every single shared copyrighted song or movie, to have the complete history of who offered it for download, all the way to the original person who leaked it. Lawsuits, here we come.
The MPAA at least has been working hard to create just that: a means to identify who shared a preview of movie. In their case, by watermarking it. Sony's version is head and shoulders above that.
Seriously, identifying sharers is the RIAA's and MPAA's wet dream. It's the kind of wet dream where they don't just wake up to change their underwear, but the whole mattress and blanket.
And this one not only lets dolts go on record as having shared that file, but also conveniently lets them write a self-incriminating testimony in the form of that review. Want to bet that you'd see it coming back to haunt you in court, when Sony's expert comes and says "style analysis of the 500 word review says it's him who wrote it and shared our movie"? No more getting Scott-free out of court by blaming it on your 6-year old kid, no more blaming it on mysterious hackers that got into your wireless access point, no more nothing. It's not their style.
So I suspect that what Sony is trying to do here is _not_ to create a better P2P experience, but basically to coat a cyanide pill in chocolate and hope that enough dolts will swallow it. It's hoping that they can package it as such a cool feature as to get enough idiots to just stop thinking about the more sinister aspect of it.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
"With first to file, I would have to file for a patent."
This is a common mistake. You dont have to patent with first to file, you just need to publish it. Once it's been published, it's unpatentable as prior art, both by you yourself or anyone else.
With patents being the sad mess they are, at least in the USA, it's not like they even have any choice. Mind you, Sony isn't exactly the "good guys" in the first place, but even if they were, they'd have no other choice at the moment.
To use your car rental example, imagine this: so you have your car rental, as in your example, and you start letting users write reviews and rate the cars they drove. I'll also assume it's in a program (e.g., an internet site where the users can book cars ahead of time, for when they arrive in your city), so it's relevant to the software patents disaster. So you're a good guy and think to yourself, "self, wth, it's just a common sense extension of what already happens with books, movies, etc, and it's not even that useful anyway" and you don't patent it.
So two years from now, when you've made a fair bit of cash and maybe even expanded into a new city, some patent troll sues you on account that it infringes on their "user-review system for car rentals" patent. (Which the patent office gladly granted, since prior art was about books, movies, etc, not about car rentals. So obviously it's a great innovation to copy it verbatim to car rentals too.)
At this point it may not even matter whether you win or lose, since patent lawsuits are the most expensive kind. You can win it and still go bankrupt because of the expenses. But chances are good that you'll not even manage to win it, since someone had clearly patented it a good year before your site went online, and you have obviously infringed on their patent.
So what what everyone is doing is hoarding patents as an aggressive defense. In that:
1. If you patent that first, you can't be sued later.
2. If they sue you for something else, you hope that they infringed on some of yours too, so you can counter-sue them into the stone age. (Of course, this doesn't work against pure patent-trolls, who never actually have a product or service of their own.)
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
All they have to do is convince the US Patent and Trademark Office to patent the process of granting patents. Then the USPTO can go after those unscrupulous Brits who dare to abuse the God-given American right to patent the hell out of everything.
What? You don't think Tony the (paper) Tiger Blair would bend over for this?
Find environmentally and socially responsible products on http://buy-right.net
This is a common mistake. You dont have to patent with first to file, you just need to publish it. Once it's been published, it's unpatentable as prior art, both by you yourself or anyone else.
That's a good point. But, if publication can ruin patentability so easily, it would put a much greater burden on researchers and inventors to carefully screen the information they release. Currently, they have up to a year to file for a patent application even after publication of their invention. If the new system would work as you suggest I think that could be a major drawback.
Is this how other (first to file) countries handle publication? If so, how do researchers and inventors handle the publication bar?
I understand the process, but still they could be working on it and have a prototype. It appears to me they're not interested in the technology if they can't be the only game in town. It's not that I can't understand their position, it's more than I can't sympathize.
Note I'm not disagreeing with you or with grand-grandparent (who said it sounded like an interesting idea). I simply find that basing your business primarily on having a lock on the market by patents is not particularly "nice." They could pursue their idea despite having to actually compete with whoever wants to roll their own similar service, it's a big corporation after all.
To summarize, we have a company who has no particular business in the P2P sector filing for a P2P related patent. Are they really interested in pursuing a P2P business? I don't think so. PROBABLY if they could have a monopoly or an advantage granted by this patent. Big corporations are quite patent happy and that often leaves out of the game those who really are interested in working on it. Could also be they are trying to keep others from patenting or implementing the technology, whilst not very interested in doing jack sh** about P2P. I think patents should expire earlier if the proponent doesn't actually do something about them. It wasn't the spirit of patents to stop technology from being advanced, but that's a different topic altogether.
(I know this is the UK patent office, but with Blair being Bush's lapdog and all...)
I see you use the type of dog in the UK, rather than gender.
It's one of those things where they are trying to get patents on borderline computer programs- things that some people consider computer programs and some don't. If that succeeds, they can keep trying to patent things which are more and more obviously software, but if they have precedent they can probably get such things patented- until software patenting becomes legal. That's kinda how it happened in the U.S.- software wasn't patentable until 1989, but someone pointed out that you could patent a computer chip that had a program hard-coded into it, but you couldn't patent the same program in software, and managed to get the courts to allow software patents.
You are reading a copy of my copyrighted post.
Sony's patent agent, Dr Jonathan DeVile [..] said the examiners were wrong, that the inventions cannot be a program for a computer because, in operation, there are at least two computers involved, communicating over a network.
Dear lord, what interesting hoops that man's mind must be able to jump through to earn his paycheck. Doctor of what? Some bizarre form of n-dimensional logic where if you throw your bullshit far enough it comes back as the truth?
That's the way most countries work, but that has nothing to do with being "first to file" -- rather, it establishes a requirement for "absolute novelty."
Even if "first to file" comes about in the U.S., there is no guarantee that there will also be a new "absolute novelty" requirement -- we may very well keep the current 35 U.S.C. 102 novelty rules.
"That's not even wrong..." -- Wolfgang Pauli