Slashdot Mirror
Microsoft [to patent] Verb Conjugation
streepje writes "Here [to be] the latest egregious patent application. Microsoft [to be] [to apply] for a patent for [to conjugate] verbs. Future postings [to look] like this."
← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)
It's called a language-to-language dictionary, or a stack of them in this case. Futhermore, many websites and applications already offer complete translation, from single words to long texts (clearly not a secret) and the conjugation of verbs is intrinsic to this type of software so that context is preserved. All that the patent seems to offer is comprehension of strings like "present indicative of [verb]".
From the article:
For example, the user may input "present indicative of sein," "prasens indikativ von sein," "1st person plural of sein," and "erste Person Plural von sein".
I think this is a nonstarter.
FairTax baby!
Microsoft good.
I... er... um...
huh?
Can I submit my seventh grade Spanish book as an example of prior art? It has an interface (a table in the back) that allows the user to select verbs based on tense and person.
I dislike Microsoft's business practices as much as the next guy, but give me a break. If you actually read the linked patent, it isn't a patent on conjugating words. It's a patent on automatically providing all of the different possible conjugation forms of any verb on the fly, which is something I, for one, haven't seen before and think could be pretty useful...
-Grym
Yes, because they are actually patenting and charging almost the entire human race royalties to conjugate verbs.
Read it again.
Not even the US government is stupid enough to give M$ a patent for this.
can they do this without paying royalties to him?
In Soviet Russia, you [to suck].
Isn't "is applying" actually the conjugation of "to apply?" There would only be one conjugation there, therefore only one verb infinitive "[to apply]" should appear.
Prior art: expert systems.
Next.
+++ATH0
Me fail English? That's unpossible.
It's not stupid. It's advanced.
NJStar Japanese Word processor 5.01, released in 2004 (before filing date of the application). Note the features marked, respectively, "Instant English-Japanese/Japanese-English dictionary/translation" and "Japanese verb forms generator for Japanese study."
This post expresses my opinion, not that of my employer. And yes, IAAL.
Just to be safe, I'm going to go patent breathing before Microsoft gets that one too. I'll get it too because apparently you can patent things that you didn't invent that already exist.
now stop reading and go play Dance Dance Revolution!
To bad we can't used slashdot posters as prior art. For an example saw the children of this post.
----
Go canucks, habs, and sens!
It seems that slashdot routinely posts headlines claiming "Microsoft patents X!" Where X is something obviously nonpatentable. However, in almost every instance what Microsoft has actually done is patented a specific method or system of performing X. This is no exception. Microsoft has not patented conjugating verbs. They are applying for a patent for a specific type of system which helps users identify verb forms from verbs and vice versa. Again: patenting a method or system for performing X != patenting X. Can we get an end to all these misleading "Microsoft patents smiley faces!" type of headlines?
Then sues the world for infringing on it's newly acquired patent.
What next? Speak Pig-Latin to avoid future infringements?
They're not patenting the idea of Verb Conjugation, they're patenting the method they want to use to accomplish this with software. It's a method patent. Whether or not method patents are a good idea or not is another matter. But what they are doing isn't really all that unusual in the patent world. (IANAL)
OH NO!! [I SEE] GODZIRRA!!
Would this patent only cover American English, or would it cover Spanish (verb conjugation galore) or Danish (no verb conjugation at all) as well?
If you have been following recent history you will see that Microsoft have been sued for just about anything they do with software, and often they have lost for even things like including something like an interactive control on a web page.
Given this, it only makes sense for them, or any company for that matter, to patent any ideas for present or future functionality that they might have.
Software patents are here to throttle the rapid development of technology to the point that the powers that be can keep up with what's going on.
Australian running a company that does C# / C++ / Java / SQL / Python / Mathematica
In the spanish speaking world, unlike in english, there is an official academy of the language which monitors its development throughout all the spanish-speaking countries and updates the official Dictionary of the Academy accordingly. In their website they have a tool that does exactly the same as this patent describes. Would that count as prior-art or the fact that its in a different language might count as sufficient difference even though the process is about the same (if not more complex given that there are a lot more perks to spanish conjugation)?
+Raider of the lost BBS
It's embarassing to be associated with this kind of crap, even just reading it. Sure, the patent system is broke. Sure, Microsoft's business ethics have historically been just a hair above the mafia's.
/. editors didn't see it because it was so similar to submissions made in complete earnest.
/., but a more accurate appraisal is that it's a continuation of the decline. WTF are editors for, if not to ensure a high standard? If we want mindless mob mentality, we'll go to digg. What value add is there in slashdot's editorial structure if the lowest of the low makes it to the front page, with apparently no fact checking or even the weakest attempt at keeping things realistic?
But it's somewhere between bizarre and pathetic to distort facts so severely to justify moral outrage. Not a word of the topic is actually true. Maybe the original submission was meant as a joke, but our illustrious
What's next? Facetious "news" of Microsoft engaging in genocide? There's certainly room for that kind of zealotry in the world. I wish I could say that this was a new low for
-b
If I wanted a sig I would have filled in that stupid box.
While most of you obviously didn't actually READ the article and just had lots of funny stuff to say, I still think this another example of stupid software patents. So what, you came up with a good idea, are you really helping by copyrighting and making everyone else reinvent the wheel?
"Those who would sacrifice essential liberties for a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety." - BenF
Surely the works of Homer, or even Shakespeare are older than at least most of the employees at Microsoft.
In any case, I suppose this will give Microsoft the ability to sue the hell out of SCO for writing any emails to IBM ever.
At least they didn't patent the letter E.
Cwm, fjord-bank glyphs vext quiz
You're kidding right? Their policy is to automatically grant every patent application, and let the courts figure out validity later. Basically, in order to show that they've reduced their budget, they fired all their patent analysts and let them work as consultants to civil courts at one hundred times the overall cost, once you factor in all the legal costs associated with resolving patent disputes the hard way. In a reasonable enlightened nation, this would get the government officials responsible for this decision horsewhipped in a public square before being exiled. In America, the people responsible were instead paid hundreds of thousands of dollars for their efforts and will live some of the cushiest lives in the entire world, while the tax payer grapples the massive extra costs introduced by this monstrous decision (as well as paying for the officials' pensions, rather than for a few bullwhips and an exile-barge at a fraction the price). Nice, huh?
- German: inflection of the word "lernen" = "to learn"
- Russian: some verb forms of the word "idti" = "to go"
Other languages might be equally easy to find on the web.from the to-stupid-for-words dept.
You [to fail] at [to post] first, but I [to be] sure that you [to try] again in the near future.
This is due to the recent patent system 'overhaul' that the big companies have been pushing through - it's not 'first to invent', but 'first to file' that they are trying to move the patent system towards.
If this actually goes through (if it hasn't already), then all of the prior art in the world doesn't matter because the ruling goes to whoever files the patent first.
Basically adding yet another layer of bullshit on a completely broken system. The funny part is how companies like MS try to claim that first to file will help clean up the backlog of bs patents clogging the system.
Gekido's Lair
Conjugate? I haven't even kissed a girl.
D03s t3h 1337 c0unt as a t4rget l4nguage? C4n 1 st111 c0njug4te th1s w4y?
"Just because you're eloquent doesn't mean you aren't a fucking crackpot." -Wavebreak
That specific method here is "on a computer." This is exactly the type of patent that slashdot people get up in arms about. The patent application requests that they be the only ones allowed to conjugate verbs on a computer.
Though, I for one [to welcome] our new language [to own] overlords. (btw, way to go article submitter. you've made something dull into something interesting.)
//TODO: signature
That IsNot possible...
Will we still be allowed conjugal visits?
Cthulhu for President! Why settle for the lesser evil?
To be or not to be that is the question.
Ad infinitum
Ad litem
According to Archive.org, Verbix has been around since at least March of 2000.
I for one [to welcome] our verb conjugating overlord$!
by religning their administration to the original stated goals. We have to reevaluate what we have patents for. When the founding fathers put them in the constitution, it was to promote progress and the sciences. They stated this themselves.
Yet, during WW2, the government invalidated many radio patents to spur progress (and help the war effort) and radio considerably advanced in that period. Also, computer science advanced very nicely in the US until software patents showed up.
It seems that, if anything, patents hinder progress in many cases. It seems to me that patents help in situations where there is no market yet or is very research heavy (drug industry) and help funnel research in such an area, but once a competitive market is established, it only hinders progress in many instances.
So a blanket ban on patents seem unfeasible but perhaps there should be a ban of patent by industry. Industries with rapid progress should have no patents because the promotion of science and advancement is obviously not needed.
OTOH, where there is very little market or industry itself has a high upfront/continuing costs - an extra incentive is needed (protection at the marketplace) and thus patents are necessary.
In other words, patents will be considered almost like tax incentives.
The problem with patents today, in lieu of manufacturing going overseas, is that the US is trying to pad its economy with IP, so the government as a whole has no incentive to be sparing of patents. This path is problematic and will impoverish us all over time. We really need to overhaul the patent system.
I would be particularly interested in hearing the opinions of historians who have studied scientific revolutions/industrial revolutions/economic upheavals of the past and what their opinions about the environment/variables that time has shown truly promote advancement/progress.
To find it most unsettling to have to talk like a gargoyle in the future!
If a train station is a place where a train stops, what's a workstation?
What about this http://www.leconjugueur.com/?
First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win.
All in favour of the /. editor(s)/Admin pulling or correcting this bullshit "News" to reduce the amount of "prior art" crap coming from /.ers who don't RTFA say "aye".
I'm going patent the act of not RTFA'ing - I'll make a fortune...
dnuof eruc rof aixelsid
Who can forget when they patented 1's and 0's? Sorry, couldn't resist.
I suppose it'll make it easier to automate how Yoda talks.
I'm still waiting for them to surpass patenting "How to Tell When a Baseball Game is Exciting." or patenting their apple.
_________________________________________
It's going to take some work, although one never knows when opportunity will strike:
A local anchor once said, "...killed him to death..."
She left the city and returned (to a different station) and I was waiting for another one as she's also the "Health & Technology" reporter.
This time, however, it was the "alternative" anchor team (it's a mess) and the story was about acupuncture and overcoming issues in getting pregnant.
The anchor turned to her and said, "I guess it just takes a little prick, eh?". Deadpan.
If I'd have that taped, it would have been on YouTube about five minutes later, but alas...all I could do was change my boxers.
... targetted to clippy after U cut off his participle
Never trust something that bleeds for days and doesn't die...
--- I am known for the ones who want to find me on the net. Is that a privacy risk or a privilege? One might wonder..
We don't see the world as it is, we see it as we are.
-- Anais Nin
Because submitters hade AIDS when it comes to submitting patent articles. One pillar of journalism is investigating the story you report on. Either the submitter failed journalism or they are purposly omitting the fact that patent abstracts don't define what is patented, only the claims section does. Purposly slanting a story neither convinces nor reassures so I see very little reason to lie to your readers.
I get the joke, they're verbs!!
Good to know that we (Chinsees) don't have that in our language.
All your verbs are belong to Microsoft...
It don't matters for slashdot; nobody here cans doing it anyway.
Religion is what happens when nature strikes and groupthink goes wrong.
This is great news! When this is in full force, grammar nazis will be worthless. Anyone who uses english incorrectly will blue screen before clicking submit.
I am not a patent expert, but Verbix seems to be a good prior art candidate. So is this, and a score of other results of a simple search for "verb conjugation". I hope the application is thrown out.
I think some of you folks are missing a key claim in this patent:
Read it again. What I take this to mean is that I can type in a phrase like
and out comes associated verb forms such as
That is a powerful building block for a natural language processor and I don't think it is covered by prior art. For some reason the diagrams are not loading for me and I don't know if the background material provides enough detail to reproduce the algorithm that the researchers intended. I'm not an expert in the field so perhaps there is enough. Generally Microsoft likes to put its best foot forward in a patent application and not hide the best implementation. Any NLP researchers care to comment?
I suppose I should Google, but I have software somewhere that conjugates Japanese verbs...
Do you suppose that they're going to claim that they can have a separate patent for each language?
Prior art: the Cysgliad suite of programs (developed by Canolfan Bedwyr at the University of Wales Bangor http://www.bangor.ac.uk/ar/cb/cysgliad.php.en) do just this for Welsh and have done for some years: type in the infinitive and it declines the verb, type in a short form and it displays the infinitive with the option to decline.
On second thought, "Have a sandwich" would map to "Have", "Having", etc. Perhaps its not taking into account the other words at all? Argh, the legalese is so tedious and difficult to follow for folks with ADHD.
I learnt how to conjugate my ( Latin and English ) verbs about 52 years ago.
It looks as if M/S must have realised that the current generations of modern teachers are no longer able to teach much about grammar. Thus they have discovered yet another niche to fill, I didn't think there were any left, well good for them. That's ok but to be able patent it? Well, perhaps the next patent will be for the recognition of the glyphs and the deciphering thereof. a.k.a Optical Character Recognition and language analysis. That my dear friends means that reading text has just become a licenced activity. Kids, Get out Dad's check-book, and roll up for your Reading Licences, only $25 a pop, renewable every 10 years, no unlicensed reading allowed. Six rotan strokes, and a $1,000 fine for literacy pirates. You know, it might just eliminate illiteracy.
Artstechnica has a review (1 Sep 2006) on this. http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20060901-7646 .html
Don't really blame Microsoft (shock, horror - did I say that!) for what IMHO is stupidity, blame the Patent system.
Caution reading the patent will only give you a headache.
There ain't no such thing as proprietary standards only proprietary formats. Standards are by definition open.
There exists prior art in the form of almost any "teach yourself French" book. Somewhere towards the back, you will find a table of verbs, conjugated in several tenses. In French, the commonly-used ones are: present (I give), imperfect (I used to give / I gave), future (I shall give), conditional (I should give) and subjunctive (for me to give); plus the past (given) and present (giving) participles. Sometimes there will be an indication of whether the imperative (do that!) is taken from the present or the subjunctive, but the latter is rare enough that you're more likely to meet them all when the verbs are introduced. The future, conditional and imperfect all have regular endings, the "gotcha" being the stems. Some verbs are simply given a reference to another which conjugates identically.
Now, how improbable is it that some student with an interest in foreign languages, in some programming class somewhere when the topic got around to things like regular expressions and associative arrays, wrote for an assignment a little program that stored endings in a big associative array, indexed by infinitive, tense and person; and then used a regular expression match on an input verb to deliver a conjugation?
Je fume. Tu fumes. Nous fûmes!
http://encarta.msn.com/encnet/homework/languagever bs.aspx
Verbix is a verb conjugator software exactly as described in the patent so its clear prior art, even if the patent office no longer pays attention to the 'non-obvious' requirement for patents, they can't ignore the 'new and novel'.
Anyone else notice (or care) that the USPTO seems to have spelled Address as "Adress". Spelling-nazis are ten-a-penny, so you would expect the USPTO, of all organisations, to have one or two in their ranks!
Meta will eat itself
And no verb here either.
No problem.
Insert witty sig about inserting witty sig here, here.
No, it isn't.
That's correct. In fact, you can just disregard the entire abstract, because what defines the scope of the patent are the claims. Each independent claim (a claim which does not refer to another claim) is an independent patent monopoly. Claim 1 is usually the broadest, so let's have a look at it:
So the "method" they want to patent consists of asking a computer to translate the verb. That's it. The other claims simply add other words or different forms of the verb as input when translating, and allow for a user to select a different verb.
Donate free food here
Look at this website: http://www.leconjugueur.com/ For example: http://www.leconjugueur.com/php/newconjugue.php?la ng=fr&oblige=N&verbe=breveter (breveter = to patent :)
First the english language, then the world. This is just the first in many programs designed to make us pay for anything we do! Next is the: Microsoft ABC Word Replacer. Replaces random letters with ones you type to make words that micorsoft has patented.
I want to patent.. the Alphabet! I'll settle for the american english alphabet, A-Z. What do you think? [ END Sarcasm ]
We all understand that this is hardly novel, but what is the proper process for telling the USPTO that?
There was a brilliant foxtrot cartoon about a year or so back that went something like this:
(picture Jason sitting in his room, in front of his computer and with an evil twinkle in his eye...)
Andy: "What are you doing?"
Jason: "Composing digital music."
Jason: "This first song I call "Zero." This second one I call "One." Naturally, I'll hold the copyrights to both."
Jason: "Now anytime the record industry releases a CD, It'll constitute several billion instances of music piracy and I can sue them for trillions!"
Andy: "Remind me to keep you out of law school."
Jason: "Ah, to live in America." (rubbing hands, evil grin even bigger)
No trees were killed in the making of this post; however, many trillions of electrons were horribly inconvenienced.
It's funny post, slow [news] day huh?
-Seeing the problem is ½ of solution-
And Shakespear suffers only a minor setback. The only apparent side effect being that several of his tragedies are reclassified as comedies by the literati: "To be or not to be, that [to be] the question."
- what kind of tard writes like this? can i get a job at MSFT?:
quote:
From the foregoing, it will be appreciated that specific embodiments of the verb conjugating system have been described herein for purposes of illustration, but that various modifications may be made without deviating from the spirit and scope of the invention. One skilled in the art will appreciate that aspects of the verb conjugating system can be used for any type of language in which verbs are can be conjugated. Also, one skilled in the art will appreciate that the search system may not need the verb form table since the search table can map directly to the main verb table. One skilled in the art will also appreciate that the verb conjugating system may also allow a user to retrieve verb forms by inputting a description of a verb form. For example, the user may input "present indicative of sein," "prasens indikativ von sein," "1st person plural of sein," and "erste Person Plural von sein"." Alternatively, the verb conjugating system may allow a user to select from a list of verb forms. To support such retrieval by description, the verb search table may be modified to include a description plus the infinitive form in each entry. One skilled in the art will appreciate that the verb conjugating system may use a base and/or target language selected by a user. Accordingly, the invention is not limited except as by the appended claims.
The real issue here is that the US Patent Office grants stupid patents for obvious and trivial things. Given the broken system, companies have to file for stupid patents to protect themselves, because someone else will file the same stupid patent and then the patent trolls will sue and demand blackmail.
As long as the system, both the filing/review/grant system and the litigation part, companies have to file to patent things they use in their systems, even stupid things.
Don't be an idiot, this is a software patent, you can still conjugate your verbs without any problems.
PS: For the less intelligent, this post doesn't mean that I agree with software patents.
The AACS key is NOT 0xF606EEFD628B1CA427BEA93A9CA9773F
If you even read the first portion of the patent, you'd find that it says the following:
1. A method in a computer system for conjugating verbs in a target language, the method comprising: receiving a verb in a base language; identifying verb forms in the target language using a translation of the received verb from the base language to the target language; and displaying the identified verb forms in the target language.
It's pretty specific, and there are many other portions of it that make it even more so. I like bashing MS as much as anybody, but I only do so when it's warranted. This is perfectly fine, and it looks like MS is looking to create a translation program that properly conjugates verbs rather than displaying a direct translation (a Good Thing for a translator).
Screw the rules, I have green hair!
I too, am tired of these Microsoft patents X headlines.
I'm also tired of the pointless indignation that such articles cause.
It's time to actually do something about it. These bastards know they can get away with their malevolence because the rest of us, calm as Hindu cows, let them.
It's time to burn these fuckers out. Literally, burn these fuckers out.
You say "Big Whoop", but so what? Most patents would illicit derisive "Big Whoop" responses from people. That doesn't mean that they aren't unique ideas. You dismiss this particular idea because it uses a series of table lookups, "ad nauseum". But if it hasn't been done before, or even "officially" thought of before (by "official" I mean nobody has thought of it seriously enought to apply for a patent), then it's patentable. Doesn't matter whether it's a revolutionary idea or not.
-- "I never gave these stories much credence." - HAL 9000
Dear poster, RFPA (read the fricking patent application). Microsoft is not patenting conjugation, but a type of conjugation software.
Wordnik, a dictionary project which aims to collect
It doesn't matter whether other systems have had on-the-fly verb conjugation. It only matters if they used the same implementation as described in this patent. If the MS implementation is new, then it's arguably patentable. Most here seem to intentionally misunderstand that.
-- "I never gave these stories much credence." - HAL 9000
Well, if I read the application correctly it can do some of the functionality found in: http://www.euroglot.nl/en/index.html:
Euroglot gives the user: all conjugations and declensions
Conjugations and declensions: * EuroglotOnline also recognizes declined words!
Hmmm, it seems Euroglot has been violating this patent application at least since 1999.
Nyh
Take you pick of any relational data base. I mean no one seriously expects a patent for each and every different data type you can cross reference in a data base. You thought you had value in your relational data base patent, hah, I've patented actually using your data base to store information about every, noun, in any language, past, present, or future (no one ever thought to specifcally patenting the storage of nouns in a data base - I wonder why).
Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen
OK, but will it show all of the forms in Dr Dan Streetmentioner's Time Traveller's Handbook of 1001 Tense Formations?
Linguo is dead.
http://www.beiks.com/pocketpc/category.asp?CatID=1 9/
From the site
"It is important to know that most language plug-ins use rules and exceptions specific to the language to perform the conjugation. Because of that, they do not have clear way of identifying made-up verbs and will made up conjugations for them. Irregular verbs are usually taken into account. Write us if you find an omission!"
theres a mistaken belief that languages are essentially the same but with different words.
any use of babel fish soon should clear up that misconception. language isnt just words and grammar its a different way of thinking. concepts are not identical between languages. Often the scope of use of a word is vastly different between languages even when you think the two words match.
It is really weird to switch languages properly, basic 'holiday' translation is swop this word for that and then you can come up with a phrase in another language... generally gramatically incorrect and not meaning quite what you meant to say but usually close enough so a native speaker of that language will be able to guess what you meant.
I don't know how true this is for other people but as someone who attempts to speak two languages its kind of like having two minds. My English mind has to take a backseat while my Polish mind is conversing basically its like my polish brain takes the driving seat while my english brain takes a rest. My English thought processes slip away and my Polish thought processes take over. Maybe actors feel the same way I don't know. Interestingly enough what is really difficult is translation understanding in one language doesn't necessitate the ability to translate that understanding into a different language.
what i am trying to say that using a particular language utilises a similar but different thought process concepts are not necessarily identical. perhaps its a sense of identity.
I am really struggling to explain as I am not fully bilingual, ( my english mind likes to be in control).
my point is that good quality translation is very difficult to achieve and microsofts proposed patent puts a barrier in front of true innovation. Microsoft is highly unlikely to develop excellent linguistic software for more than a few languages. This is a task for highly skilled localised development but will this development take place when faced with Microsofts patent in place?
The only plus of this patent is that its effect will be limited to area's which recognise software patents. I wonder if there is going to be a growing software divide as european and asian developers are left free to inovate without threat of law suit and american developers are unable to produce equivilent or better software due to the shackles of software patents.
It surely is an amazing thing where american developers give a 20 year head start to the rest of the world in the software industry.
Blarney Quality Restaurant, Plants
This is one of the worst patent applications I've seen. Even though I know that the USPTO is very lax in awarding patents, Iwould still be very surprised to see this go through. In their background section they pretty much admit that almost everything they're claiming has been done before. The only things that they seem to be claiming as novel is the idea of passing the word through a spell checker before you search for it, deconjugating the verb before you search for it, and searching the word based on it's context in a sentence.
I admit I haven't seen software that does the spell check, but that's pretty duh... As for deconjugation (or deinflection), WWWJDIC has done that for ages. Searching for a word based on it's context in a sentence has also been done by many electronic/online dictionaries including http://www.alc.co.jp/
However, I kept reading the patent thinking that maybe they had a novel way of achieving these goals. But they don't even mention their techniques at all! My take on it is that they think each part is obvious to implement and that the conglomeration of techniques should be patentable.
I certainly hope taking 5 obvious (and already implemented) techniques and gluing them together *isn't* patentable. Because that's completely ridiculous any way you look at it (no matter what you think of software patents in general).
Verbix has been around for years (I've used it myself). What happened to prior art?
this [to make] me lol microsoft [to be] teh carazy [to program] companies.
Yes, but you have to provide your own MOTAS. If most Slashdotters were capable of having non-prison "conjugal visits" in the first place, they wouldn't have time to get in trouble. Well, they could hypothetically get into a different kind of "trouble", God help us all.
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
I wrote a system that does what the Microsoft patent is claiming in the Nightmare Mudlib over 10 years ago. I also ported some of it with additional features over to Java and released it for a time in the Meme distribution.
How to I bring this to light?
Is sueing for prior art, so no worries.
No they won't, at least if patent examiners do their job of considering prior art. The change from first to invent to first to file affects only patent vs. patent situations, not patent vs. published prior art.
When I was 13 years old, I wrote a BASIC program in a MSX to conjugate verbs in portuguese (which is much more complicated than in english). If I had patented that, I could be rich today!!!
So say we all
Further... you're a damn tool. Please stop helping "the man" destroy the industry for us lowly software developers. Thanks in advance.
Sticking feathers up your butt does not make you a chicken - Tyler Durden
The USPTO is obligated to publish patent applications 18 months after filing. Given their backlog of software patents, they usually don't address the merits of one until after 33 months or so after filing. That is why you might see some strange looking applications.
The basis of any machine translation is: finding the base form of a word (verb or what else), translate it and then bring it to the according form in the target language. This is basic stuff and anybody in the field of computer linguistics knows about it. You can read about it in any decent textbook covering this topic (and there you will also exactly find "how" to do it - which is not described in this patent). This has been around for decades. Building not a specific form but all is a no brainer once you have done the tool to create specific forms (actually my company for instance has exactly such a tool for internal purposes). Putting some kind of spell checking into the game is something I also would call "obvious".
...I beat them to it.
By the way, the entire English-speaking world now owes me a LOT of money...
Robert B. Marks
Author, Demonsbane in Diablo Archive
That is absolute bullshit, and you know it. You are intentionally (mis)assuming that the USPTO still works as it did in the past, which is entirely false; patents, especially software ones, have become extremely broad and often prevent alternate implementations today.
Sticking feathers up your butt does not make you a chicken - Tyler Durden
I'm finally one step ahead of the giant and have already submited my patent for the conjugation of nouns! Haha Bastage!
Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former. ~Albert Einstein
Really, how long before the USPTO grants a patent to someone that causes the USPTO itself to infringe upon a patent? Or are they (most likely) already infringing upon some? What are the odds that their massive IT system and web site system infringes upon some patent? (Note that I'm not saying worthy patents, just patents that the USPTO granted.) How long until some company sues the USPTO for licensing fees? (Or is that even possible...)
(I really don't know what I'm talking about here, but it makes you wonder. It sure would be ironic.)
"Those who consume the bulk of goods are those who make them. We must never forget this secret of our prosperity."
I'm reading the patent application. It sounds a lot like the Spanish Verb Conjugation engine.
This is a classic case of a software patent: it describes a system that does something that isn't especially novel. It's a database lookup with a spelling checker and a few other tools. It's a neat idea. It's great. It shouldn't be patentable.
Verbal Conjugations are used in contracts right?
MSX? Portuguese?!? Wow, that's the first time I've seen those 2 words in a sentence written by someone else! So I'm not the only one to have had an MSX in portugal. Wootness! :p
shana
So I'm not the only one to have had an MSX in portugal.
Maybe you are. I'm from Brazil! (Sorry)
So say we all
I now hold the patent on the internet
You all owe me $0.01 for each bit on your hard drive
Send funds to:
Thorkyl, USA
(dont worry the post office knows where to find me, after all they run my internet)
--
Stupid people are fun to play with...
-- I am the NRA, enough said...
i think http://www.priberam.pt/dlpo should sue Microsoft because site of Priberam already does portuguese verbs conjugation since many years ago.
Considering Microsoft supports the patent community review project. I wonder if Microsoft will allow this patent to be reviewed. However, most Slashdot users don't like the community review system . I would think they (USPTO) would get a flood of prior art examples.
"Future postings [to look] like this."
I [to fuck] [to hope] not...
"One skilled in the art will appreciate that aspects of the verb conjugating system can be used for any type of language in which verbs are can be conjugated"
Maybe they should use their vaunted grammer checker first?
As the project leader for the open source French Verb Conjugation Rules Database project at SourceForge, I hope Microsoft considers the prior art contained within it. The database contains RegEx expressions for conjugating and infinitizing French verbs. The database is in Microsoft Access because it easily handles Unicode. Algorithms were written in .Net.
http://sourceforge.net/forum/forum.php?forum_id=49 0001
The world needs more open source versions of similar databases and linguistic algorithms. Language processing databases and software are ideal global open source projects. I would greatly value an open source project that documents syntax forms and algorithms for the world's languages. I have not found such a project.
Debian / Ubuntu has had a program to conjugate verbs from the infinitive form for ages:
. really.3.0.beta4-9.1_all.deb
e ma m
[pjssilva@catirina:~]$ apt-cache show brazilian-conjugate
Package: brazilian-conjugate
Priority: extra
Section: universe/text
Installed-Size: 224
Maintainer: Rafael Laboissiere
Architecture: all
Source: br.ispell
Version: 2.4.really.3.0.beta4-9.1
Suggests: ibrazilian
Filename: pool/universe/b/br.ispell/brazilian-conjugate_2.4
Size: 64292
MD5sum: 64f1590f3d7122030d0f742316acb666
Description: Brazilian Portuguese verb conjugator
This package contains a interactive program (conjugue) capable of
conjugating portuguese verbs, as spoken in Brazil. The upstream version
is numbered 1.0, but as it is distributed together with the Ispell
dictionary for Brazilian Portuguese, it has the same version number as the
ibrazilian package for Debian.
.
Homepage: http://www.ime.usp.br/~ueda/br.ispell/
Bugs: mailto:ubuntu-users@lists.ubuntu.com
Origin: Ubuntu
Here is the example of conjugue in action:
[pjssilva@catirina:~]$ conjugue
Conjugue -- conjugador de verbos para a língua portuguesa
versão 1.1 (outubro de 99) por Ricardo Ueda Karpischek
envie correções, críticas ou sugestões para ueda@ime.usp.br.
Use por sua própria conta e risco.
Tanto o programa quanto o banco de verbos que o acompanha
são distribuídos sob os termos da licença GNU GPL. Isso
significa que podem ser livremente copiados e que trabalhos
derivados devem também ser disponibilizados através dessa
mesma licença.
"?" exibe um pequeno guia de utilização.
"n" exibe algumas notas importantes.
aguarde o término da leitura do banco...
lidos 83 paradigmas
lidos 3991 verbos
: amar
# paradigma: cantar (regular)
IS:amasse:amasses:amasse:amássemos:amásseis:amass
FI:amarei:amarás:amará:amaremos:amareis:amarão
TI:amaria:amarias:amaria:amaríamos:amaríeis:amari
II:amava:amavas:amava:amávamos:amáveis:amavam
FN:amar:amando:amado
PS:ame:ames:ame:amemos:ameis:amem
MI:amara:amaras:amara:amáramos:amáreis:amaram
IN:ames:ame:amemos:ameis:amem
IA:ama:ame:amemos:amai:amem
FS:amar:amares:amar:amarmos:amardes:amarem
PI:amo:amas:ama:amamos:amais:amam
IP:amar:amares:amar:amarmos:amardes:amarem
EI:amei:amaste:amou:amamos:amastes:amaram
d) all of the above
You want this link.
By the way, if you read a little bit on computational linguistics, you'll find that even the mapping from "Have a sandwich" to "Eat" is part of common knowledge among the people in the know.
:/
:p
Raising the hopes and dashing them. Ah well, twas fun while it lasted
shana
umm... www.conjugation.org
;-)
!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?
btw, I love the adsense ads on that page, looks like they get confused with "protein conjugation"
Refer: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Generative_grammar
The only reason why you - the reader - understand this is because of the "deep structure" in your mind is the same as that in mine.
When I use words I am using them to give expression to thoughts in my head. When you hear (or read) those words, you recreate my thoughts in your head. Regardless of whether I am using English, or German or Japanese, the fact that you understand my words (including my conjugation of verbs) means we have a common base for understanding each other. And that common base is the physical substrate of our minds:- the brain - and can pass through language differences. For certain simple phrases I can undertand you in the small number of languages besides English which I have passing understanding in. That is because we share a common ancestry.
In other words, language - including verb conjugation - is based in the deep structure of our minds, which because they are based on the physical substrate of our brains are derived from our DNA, which we share.
This is completely unpatentable. There is no invention, there is no novelty, and the prior art exists in the head of every human on the planet.
That actually translates shit right?
I am the maverick of Slashdot
Whitakers' Words is one example implementation of this patent.
These patents sadden me...
Microsoft cannot patent the process of using verbs. For a start, they didn't invent the English language.
Feel free to copyright source code in a program that does something, but for the sake of sanity stop trying to patent ideas. Patents are (or were) for safeguarding real inventions from theft. It's one thing to patent the electric light bulb, but another entirely to patent illumination.
The patenting system seems to be a common "prenuptial" process now for American corporations to lay down the foundation for frivilous lawsuits at some later date.
The new format...
"Here [to be®] the latest egregious patent application. Microsoft [to be®] [to apply®] for a patent for [to conjugate®] verbs. Future postings [to look®] like this."
Please enter your product ID to determine if you own a valid license to conjugate......
in french, at least, called Bescherelle. Prior art FTW!
Patents are required to be non-obvious to someone skilled in that art. For example, using an electrically sensitive dual polarized filter system to make light spots and dark spots for a display was not obvious, and therefore LCD's were patentable.
On the other hand, if you were to plop the problem of semi-automatic translation software down in front of someone, they system they would immediately describe would be exactly like that which MS describes in the patent. In fact, no matter how you're handling the system or the actual work-filled intracacies of really making the thing, it will behave almost exactly like the patent describes because the language is so tremendously broad and vague.
It's an "on a computer" patent. You know, like patenting playing back music "on a computer" or patenting shopping "on a computer." Having read the patent, it's clear they're patenting a multilingual verb conjugation book "on a computer." I happen to have about four of those things on the shelf behind me, all of which should serve as prior art... Though they don't need to, as computer-based language systems already exist.
Just because it could be useful doesn't mean it isn't obvious.
The ______ Agenda
...but for anyone with the patience to read the very short and readable one paragraph patent abstract it's pretty clear that the invention patented bears little relation to the description in the /. story. The /. story is, quite simply, a lie. But it's a lie about Microsoft, so I guess that's OK.
Doesn't it make you feel good to know that our freedoms are protected by politicans, lawyers and journalists.
From a lot of the comments there are a lot of people who bash microsoft even when the article is a complete lie. ANYBODY WHO KNOWS HOW TO READ WILL SEE THIS IS A PATENT ON A PROGRAM THAT CONJEGATES VERBS. not the actual process. People cant read these days.
Lernout & Haupsie made many programs for the language learning and translation industries. I was using L&H Simply Translating back in 1994.
Transoft, Starview were also around. And there are now a handful of very well known companies (SDL/TRADOS, Passolo, DejaVu, etc.) within the translation industry that continue to do this, as well as other more focused things, such as fuzzy matching.
In any case, most everything available from the early 90s foward has offered this.
Yup, click on a verb to display a relevant ad.
WWWJDIC does this for Japanese verbs. You can input a conjugated form of a verb, and it'll refer you to the dictionary (base) form, where clicking on a link will give you a full conjugation table for that verb.
The Firefox extension called Rikaichan also recognizes conjugated Japanese verbs, tells you which conjugation form it is, and displays the base form.
Don't forget the part where we exile them to the bottom of the Marianas Trench with only a tazer and an oily blanket. I've already worked out a cheap and effective transport system for getting them down there -- the CCBMD, or "Concrete Cinder-Block Marine Descender".
I think microsoft may be mocking the car and aircraft industries, whose patents and special interest laws prevent microsoft (and everybody else) from manufacturing both different cars and airplanes, and from manufacturing cars and airplanes that are the same. Patent law, when mixed with standards and 'code' laws, is kind of silly.
That's what I call user service! The good news:
So if you care about patents, better get a Mac, folks. (To see the whole PTO message, click on the "Images" button at the top of the patent, then try to see the images, then... ask for help.)
I just read
Unlike copyright and trademark registrations, patent applications cost a hefty chunk of change. If you want to put something firmly into prior art, publish a book or journal article about it; it's cheaper.
A U.S. patent expires only if the assignee does not pay the renewal fee or the final renewal term expires (filing + 20). What you're thinking of is estoppel by laches, and it's much more limited (per infringer rather than per patent).
At least my Spanish class [to be] easier...
You, sir, are correct, sir.
Whoever "moderated" this with some kind of "-1" is a fucktard -- just another overly-rich pampered and "protected" backstabbing fleck of shit floating in a drop of cum at the tip of satan's dick, this bitch would not get the time of day from me in an actual --- read: "not virtual" --- interaction.
Can I patent verbs daddy?
Although I have to admit the patent states that this method would give you the choice of different meanings in other languages, so this dictionary doesn't do "exactly the same as this patent describes" as I said before and that last +1 Informative I got is undeserved I'm afraid =P
+Raider of the lost BBS
P.S.
I'm American.
Doesn't matter whether it's a revolutionary idea or not.
Actually, yes it does! One of the criteria for a patent is that it must be non-obvious.
To fight the war on terror, stop being afraid.
"There's no way to rule innocent men. The only power any government has is the power to crack down on criminals. Well, when there aren't enough criminals, one makes them. One declares so many things to be a crime that it becomes impossible to live without breaking laws."
-Ayn Rand
quia potentia mens mentis
Lol, America and its patents... Europe, Asia and Oceania should ally to rule USA patents illegal and happily ignore them, then if they threaten to take any measures, we can threaten them to do the same with their copyrights.
I was about to say 13256278887989457651018865901401704640, but it appears this number is private property.