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 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?
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)
So it's a patent on looking up information in a file and presenting it on the screen. Now I'm sure I've seen that done somewhere before...
Every bloody emperor has his hand up history's skirt [Peter Hammill/VdGG]
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?
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
Yes, that is true, but that doesn't make it any less straightforward and simple.
>"which is something I, for one, haven't seen before and think could be pretty useful..."
I, for one, have created a simple Perl-module which conjugates a given Latin verb in all tenses and forms. Let me tell you: conjugating a verb "on the fly" is trivial. Exceptions to every rule do, however, mess things up a little, but the exceptions themselves build up very simple and trivial rules.
Prior art? Hell, yeah!
Non-obvious? Hell, no!
Lemon curry???
What about this http://www.leconjugueur.com/?
First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win.
Verbix supports a total of, and I quote, "Total: 389 languages."
Windows XP supports 92 languages (had to count) http://support.microsoft.com/kb/292246/. Do we really want a company like Microsoft patenting this so-called method?
FairTax baby!
You very likely don't work in natural language processing. People have been generating whole paradigms for a long time. For a set of published examples, check out the Xerox Finite State Morphology software and textbook. The software provides ways of describing the morphology and lexicon of a language and compiling it into an efficient finite state transducer. Once you've got the transducer, you can run it in either direction, that is, you can parse, or you can generate. A common test, and exercise in courses on doing this, is to generate the entire paradigm of a particular word or set of words.
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'.
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
Actually, there is a big change.
I have made a couple of inventions, which I did NOT want patents for. I want the general public to benefit from them (besides, filing for a patent is too expensive for my meagre budget).
Now Microsoft (or another evil big company) reads about my research, and files for a patent. The consequence is that they will get a patent for my work, which I did not allow them to get. And the main reason is that there is NO WAY to apply for NOT getting a patent. The only thing I can do is to publish my invention, and hope that it takes Microsoft more than one year to discover that publication. One year after first publication a patent cannot be applied for anymore, so that would make my invention safe.
It happens quite often that I present research at conferences, and someone in the audience gets up and asks with a gleam in his eye, "Did you apply for a patent yet?" I know what that guy is thinking.
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
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
It has everything to do with this. This is an obvious patent to strike down unmercifully. The patent itself says that verb conjugation has been around online and that the only major difference is that this method *might* detect spelling errors (gee, like *that* hasn't been done) and would allow a person to imput their native verb to get conjugations in another language (not novel in the least). If the USPTO can't even pass basic common sense tests, why should they be allowed to issue anything that could lead to million dollar court battles?
Why can't anyone on slashdot understand what a patent is? Are you all F*&%$&^ morons? Just because person A patents a machine to harvest cotton doesn't mean that we havn't been harvesting cotton for a long f*&^%$ time. It means it's a new way of doing it. You wanna harvest cotton? Do it the old way or a new way. But If you want to do it person A's way.. pay a license.
Everytime there's a patent everyone thinks they have prior art. And their even more of a super-genius if they can draw parallels between the new way and the old. Whoop-dee-doo. Read more than the title and the summary.