Slashdot Mirror
Will Patents Make NCAA Football Playoffs Impossible?
An anonymous reader writes "Mark Cuban recently announced plans to create a college football playoff system, which many people (including President Obama) have been claiming has been needed for years. However, after doing so, Cuban received an odd email, claiming that he'd better watch out, because a college football playoff system is patented and anything he did would likely infringe. The patent wasn't named, but Techdirt believes it has found the patent in question, along with another pending patent application (which has some amusing errors in it — such as an abstract that says it's about a boat fender, rather than a sports playoff system). So is it really true that some random guy in Arizona is the only person who can legally set up such a college football playoff system?"
Yes.
No, no sig. Really.
ThePromenader
Reform of a field of sports for an entire nation is dependent on the whim of a random individual somewhere.
no no. patent system isnt something that cannot work. surely. it can work. maybe. on some occasions. if, and when.
until it works, maybe, sometime in future, youth wont be able to play in a reformed sports arena. because, well, just 'because' it spurs innovation.
Read radical news here
Perhaps not impossible, but impossible without the 'idea-holder' holding his 'idea' hostage in exchange for loads of $$$$.
No, no sig. Really.
ThePromenader
Ever wondered why your country is getting it's ass kicked in every sphere known to mankind except the number of lawyers per head of population?
You should stop trying to use long words. You would actually sound smarter if you used mos' def' instead.
Why supposedly educational institutions keep teams of what is essentially professional entertainers and let this business overshadow education? At the extent of admitting "special" (as in "short bus") students and pretend to educate them, spending budget on things 99% of students can never use, hiring a coach who is paid more than any other person working for the school, etc.?
Contrary to the popular belief, there indeed is no God.
The patent is on "A method for conducting championship playoff", not on conducting championship playoffs. There's a difference. Do the same general thing in a way that isn't covered by the patent and you're safe. Honestly, I can't see any reaon you have to use the weighted result of polls.
There are already NCAA football playoffs. Just not the FCS division, formerly known as Division I.
And for all of us, which consider sports to be the bane of evil (except e-sports), I ask on behalf of the community -
HOW THIS MATTER TO NERDS (as per your byline?)
The money burnt every year on 'sports' (grown men playing with a ball. If you can call that a sport.).
Could fix the planet several times over.
Truth. And yet since i have expressed a view that isn't YAY FOOTBALL! This will be modded so far down it will vanish into a black hole.
As exemplified by the summary, there's a pervasive misunderstanding on Slashdot on how patents work. Just because someone is able to patent one method in the field of X does *not* exclude others from practicing in the field of X.
Don't get me wrong - method patents like this stink worse than the NY Giant's defense in the 4th quarter, but they are generally pretty easy to avoid by simply doing one step differently. Rival companies do this all the time with ligit process patents.
Isn't it lucky that the guy has got the patents system to enable him to innovate on how to organise playoffs
Bin Laden family has taken a patent out on the concept of the USA winning a war against and Islamic state. The US troops have been instructed not to fight too hard in case they infringe this patent.
http://www.clevescene.com/64-and-counting/archives/2010/12/22/absolutely-epic-1974-letter-from-cleveland-browns-to-a-fan
What the hell is a playoff system?
Is it a way of taking lots of team & play them against each other & narrowing them & finally 2 of them play in a Final match to decide the winner?
If so, don't tournaments around the world in other sports already do this?
For eg.
In the last cricket world cup help in 2007
- 16 teams played
- 4 Groups each with 4 teams. Each team played the other team in the group once.
- 2 top teams chosen from each group. So 8 teams left out of 16.
- The 8 teams now played round robin against each other team in the group of 8 except the team which was from their group. They had already played this team in group stage - so their result against this team was carried forward & added to the result of their other 6 matches.
- Four top teams emerged from the 8.
- Team 1 played Team 4 in one semi final & Team 2 played Team 3 in the other.
- The Winner of the two semi-finals played in the final.
Is this a playoff system? Did I infringe any patent by posting this?
Is this a playoff system? Did I infringe any patent by posting this?
Certainly. There is no activity that cannot be construed to infringe a patent. E.g. you just infringed on my asking-if-this-infringes-a-patent-patent. As a precaution, I've already patented patenting-asking-if-this-infringes-a-patent-patent.
The patent application mentioned in TFA went abandoned 17 August 2009. Importantly, all of the claims were rejected under 35 USC 101, i.e., they were determined not to be patentable subject matter. The examiner in that case also noted that the prevailing judicial wisdom on 101 had changed over the past few years, which was why they were able to cite an issued patent as prior art.
It's also notable that, in a general sense, the claims of the issued patent mentioned in TFA are not structurally dissimilar from the rejected claims in the abandoned application. That doesn't necessarily mean that a court would hold the claims of the issued patent to be invalid, but it does provide some insight into what might happen if a lawsuit came out of this.
"Is this a playoff system? Did I infringe any patent by posting this?"
(1) Yes. (2) Maybe not; now you get to argue about specific claims in the patent.
For example, in the granted patent, it has specific claims on two polls that would be used to establish initial placements, a weighting formula for the polls, a primary tournament with specifically 12 teams, a secondary tournament held on different days from the primary tournament, initial games scheduled the week after Thanksgiving, championship game held on New Year's Day, and a bunch of other stuff. I'm not seeing that you infringed any specific claims -- I just scanned it briefly and I'm not a lawyer of any sort, but that's my initial guess.
Still immensely stupid that patents for business methods of any sort are granted, especially stuff like this.
We know where leadership by an anti-intellectual "strongman" who scapegoats minorities and likes boisterous rallies goes
This is not an error, this is called a "submarine patent" were one intentionally writes an abstract which different from the claims. As a typical patent search returns hundreds of patents, reading the whole patent is not feasible, so people either don't bother with patent search at all or read just the abstracts. Having abstract different from the claims makes the patent "invisible", i.e. impossible to find - hence the "submarine" term.
No, the GP is absolutely right.
If you've never seen one of these patent lawsuits, they start by going through each claim (that the petitioner claims infringement), and identifies how the infringing technology contains each element of the claim. The easiest way to have such a suit dismissed is to have at least one element different (or missing) in the supposedly-infringing technology. In the case of method claims, as the GP says, just do one step differently.
As an example, the issued patent (6,053,823) has only one independent claim, which has the elements (steps) of:
--------
- adding the rank of each participating team from a first poll to the rank of each team in a second poll to obtain an initial overall rank; [element 1]
- assigning a final rank for each team, with the lowest sum of the initial overall rank constituting the highest rank, and the highest sum from the initial overall rank constituting the lowest rank; [element 2]
- conducting a championship tournament with at least the three teams having the highest final rank, comprising the steps of:
- conducting at least a first round of events to determine the two teams to play in a championship game; and
- conducting a championship game with the two teams determined from the previous round of events, to determine a champion. [element 3]
--------
So to start out we see that this method requires adding the rank of each team from a couple of polls. Don't use polls? No infringement. Don't add the rankings from the two polls to establish the initial overall rank? No infringement.
Secondly, a final rank for each team must be calculated, with the highest and lowest ranks determined as described. Don't have a final rank for each team? No infringement. Determine highest and lowest differently? No infringement.
Finally, a championship tournament must be held with at least the three teams having the highest final rank, which must also have the two steps of (1) a first round of "events" to determine the two teams to play in the championship game, and (2) playing the championship game. Have only two teams in the tournament? No infringement. Don't have a first round of events? No infringement.
As I hope you can see, there are lots of ways (I've identified only a few) to have a playoff that avoids this patent. What the headline to the linked article should say is, "One Method of College Football Playoffs Patented."
The question is how you choose the teams to play. Take a look at the two top 25 lists on this page. Notice that while they contain mostly the same teams, the order does vary a bit. The many historic conferences (see here vary quite a bit in difficulty - and since a large part of your schedule necessarily consists of in-conference teams, the difficulty of the schedule can vary quite a lot. For example, 6 of the 12 teams in the Southeastern Conference and 5 of 12 in the Big 12 are in the top 25; only 1 of 12 in Conference USA is. Going strictly by win/loss record doesn't account for this.
>>Why is this [sports] allowed?
Because 20,000 people won't buy tickets to watch a meeting of the Princeton Math Club.
Because CBS isn't interested in buying the broadcast rights for the Dartmouth Glee Club's next season.
Because rich alumni don't donate millions to keep their alma mater's Medieval History curriculum competitive.
A playoff system is the idea that sport teams, based on their record of merit for the season, get one last chance to show they are the best (I have not cleared any of these words with my lawyer in terms of trademark)
So the theory might go: Draw the topmost teams participating from a lottery system (I have not cleared with my lawyer if there is a patent on "draw names from a hat") where the top 16 teems get matched up (I have not cleared with my lawyer if "game", "team" or "matched" is restricted) and the winners of that first round ("Round" and "Tier" may be restricted terms) are then matched with the winners of the first games ("Matched" might be a restricted term) and so on where winning teams progress until there are 8, 4, 2 (Disclaimer: The number "2" may now be a protected term. I have not cleared this with my lawyer) Those last two teams play a "Final" (trademark unknown) game where the winner is considered the "Top" (trademark unknown) "Team" (trademark unknown) for the "Season" (I really should have my lawyer on speed dial, but I can't afford the legal advice for this post)
Personally, I don't care about this sport or if any college team "wins"
If you don't agree, can I at least ask you for legal certification that you got proper review for stating your idea?
Think the system isn't broken yet?
Now, what is needed is to push this in the face of all of these congressmen that supported method patents. It was an evil that MUST BE DESTROYED. It is destructive in the software industry most of all, but all businesses will suffer due to it. Then we can get ppl back to focusing on building things rather than gov. protected services.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Cheerleaders are prior art.
Seven Days with Ubuntu Unity
We have playoffs here as well. The problem is that this is a method patent that was granted by either some Indian or Chinese inspector, since W's admin outsourced all of that. Between the fact that CONgress supported the concept of method patents and then W outsourced to ppl who are NOT experts in any field here in America (physics does not prepare one for knowing prior art in America), they have allowed millions of patents that should not have been allowed. As it is, I will probably have to fight against one which had prior art in the 70's. Had it been done by a person in America, they would likely have recalled it. Sad.
The more that W outsourced to his buddies, the more that it has costs America. This is no different than when reagan killed the move to metric. Had we done that back in 1981, then we could have competed better. Now, everything is more expensive coming in here, because of lack of thought for the nation, only for a few friends in large business.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
I just find it fascinating how posters on this story are blasting the patent system and the entirety of the United States itself based on a single, solitary email from some unknown guy. I don't know how any reasonable person would assume with such 100% certainty that this single patent proves anything about any fact other than "once upon a time some guy managed to obtain a bad patent."
I don't know what happened with the application but here's the real boat patent: http://www.google.com/patents/about?id=cPMTAAAAEBAJ. It's a much better read than the playoff ones IMHO.
Anyways, would copying the abstract be considered patent infringement or copyright infringement? Either way, boat guys need to get their act together to protect their abstract IP.
Because 20,000 people won't buy tickets to watch a meeting of the Princeton Math Club.
So?
Because CBS isn't interested in buying the broadcast rights for the Dartmouth Glee Club's next season.
So?
Because rich alumni don't donate millions to keep their alma mater's Medieval History curriculum competitive.
Now we hit on the real problem: rich alumni who never really appreciated the value of an education. Of course, that implies that at one time, the school accepted people who were not really interested in receiving an education, likely an ongoing problem. Really, the core problem is simple: higher education is not really about "education." With a tiny handful of exceptions, becoming an educated person is more of an optional side effect of going to college, rather than the primary aim.
So of course those rich alumni would like to be able to say, "Yeah, that's my school!" while they are watching college football with all their friends, and could not care less about whether or not their degree actually represents anything.
Palm trees and 8
If there truly is a patent for the playoffs, then why not use a system that is already in existence? NCAA basketball tournament seems to be non-infringing. Nobody says you have to start with 64 teams. Take the top sixteen BCS teams, pair them like in the basketball tournament and let them have at it. It adds a total of 15 games for the public (not much different than the current bowl system) and a total of 4 more games to the season for whomever makes it all the way to the championship game (only 1 more game if you lose in the first round). If that is too many, then start with the top 8 teams.
16 teams played
...
The Winner of the two semi-finals played in the final.
Is this a playoff system?
No.
The slightly longer, but still short version:
Figuring out *which* 16 teams go to the playoffs and *how they're matched* is the meat and bones of a playoff system.
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
Now we hit on the real problem: rich alumni who never really appreciated the value of an education.
Who said they didn't appreciate the value of an education? If they didn't, they obviously wouldn't donate any money to the university at large. And anyway, most people appreciate the value of an education these days. Look at all the students with outstanding student loans. They appreciate the value of an education because they know how much it's costing them. Besides, beyond the drinking, the parties and the sports, I think that most people appreciate the value of an education - that is, the money they want to make because they have a degree.
Freedom is drinking a beer in the park when you're supposed to be at work.
I hear incessantly that any system that doesn't have a playoff can't crown a champion, and that playoffs are inherently more fair.
A couple years back in the NFL, the Patriots went 11-5 in a very tough division and still stayed home while a 9-7 team in a weak division went to the playoffs. Pundits calls that team perhaps the weakest team to ever make an NFL playoff. That said team got lucky during the playoffs and made the Super Bowl. Clearly, it wasn't one of the two best teams in the league, but it got lucky for a couple of games.
I'm in the minority here, but I really love college football the way it is. Every Saturday is tense and means something. People keep clamoring for a playoff system that would send conference winners to a playoff. Non-conference games would literally be rendered meaningless and no one would schedule a tough non-conference game again. No more Texas/Ohio State games. Be prepared for more Texas/Wichita State games.
While a playoff is possible, it isn't instant magic. No one can agree on what the best playoff format is, or which one is the most fair. College football is still insanely popular currently and I don't see why you should destroy the regular season (the best part) to try and appease the people who don't like college football, and in turn alienate the people who do like it.
http://blindscribblings.com - Tasty pop-culture in conceptual fashion.
What do you mean, so? It's a source of money for the school. Are you suggesting that schools should not try to raise money? Money that can be used to pay for non-sports programs?
SSC
in China.
Look at this email again:
You should also consider that the playoffs are already owned by someone, as in, the patent for resolving the FBS championship by way of a playoff was issued long ago. It's called a method patent, so be careful not to infringe it.
Anyway, if you want to know who owns assets in this field, let me know. I can put you in touch with one of my attorneys who can let you know what you're in for. It's much more complex that it's commonly understood to be.
Time to end this "contact my attorneys" bullshit! Time for a constitutional reform!
...screw with football. It will be the ONLY way the know-nothings that comprise the majority of our population will even take of the major issue of patent trolling...
If someone actually granted that as a patent, then what constitutes a patent?
Just because I do something different than my neighbor I am not an inventor.
Otherwise I just build a random tournament generator and every schedule it throws out which is not played anywhere yet is patentworthy.
These colleges should privatize and sell off these teams. They could even keep an equity stake. That would probably be more profitable all around. And it would sidestep most of those pesky rules. The teams could "incentivize" (bribe) players and others with hookers and blow. Sounds great to me!
Some quick googling found me the following article from 2006, http://money.cnn.com/2006/01/04/commentary/column_sportsbiz/sportsbiz/. One pertinent line is "USC's profit as a percentage of revenue is just 43 percent, below the average of 48 percent for all the reporting bowl teams [55], even when you include the 11 schools which lost money on their football programs. The top 20 football programs in terms of revenue have profit margins of about 60 percent, on average." And even these stats leave out secondary benefits, such as increased enrollment, donations, ...
I read the patent but I'm not a lawyer, and it seems easily avoided. He makes specific claims. All the claims 2-? seem to be defined in combination with claim #1. None of them seemed to have any novelty aside from combination with claim #1, so claim #1 is probably what really matters.
Claim #1 specifies two things: a way of combining polls, and a playoff of 3 or more teams. From my non-lawyerly standpoint, I'd say that he's proposing exactly what they're doing now for 2 teams and extending it to 3+. For the non-Americans in the audience, the NCAA has a system of combining multiple polls, choosing the top 2 teams, and letting them play for the championship. So he turns that 2 into 3+.
First problem is that indeed it seems obvious. This idea probably occurred to anyone with a pulse who watched college football over the last few decades. What's more, the NCAA has more lawyers than he does. So does Mark Cuban.
If 'death by lawyer' is not enough, tons of journalists have been clamoring for exactly what's patented - namely, form a playoff from the final rankings basically as described. Go find somebody who published an article prior to the patent describing the same basic thing.
Other than that, just avoid claim one and the whole thing seems to fall apart. One might use a method of combining polls to seed the teams as he describes. Absent that, I don't know what's left besides a single-elimination tournament as you mention, for which ample prior art exists going back, oh, thousands of years probably.
I don't think it should be hard to avoid stepping on this patent. Currently, the NCAA uses a committee to select the (at large) teams that play in the basketball tournament, which they've been doing for many decades.
So despite Mr. Patent Troll's assertions, there are probably a number of ways around this patent, in my non-professional opinion.
Many of the schools with division 1 teams also have top rated law schools. Looks like they all have a project for the spring...
Now we hit on the real problem: rich alumni who never really appreciated the value of an education. Of course, that implies that at one time, the school accepted people who were not really interested in receiving an education, likely an ongoing problem. Really, the core problem is simple: higher education is not really about "education." With a tiny handful of exceptions, becoming an educated person is more of an optional side effect of going to college, rather than the primary aim.
To a certain extent an "education" is more than just about books and tests and degrees. Ideally it's also about being exposed to new ideas and people and experiences. It is a stepping stone from adolescence to adulthood without having to jump into the "real world" right after high school: you're in a semi-controlled environment but more independent.
An education is what you take away after you've forgotten all the lessons from the classroom.
It's also the fact that the social settings and celebrations of these sporting events are a bonding experience. Humans are (for the most part) social creatures, and many people getting together for some kind of sporting event is more memorable than a bunch of lectures on Thucydides for most people.
I'm sure that a lot of alumni do value an education, but they remember with nostalgia the joy and excitement they experienced at these sporting events, and want to allow others to have that experience as well.
yes, i see it now. it was a non-issue. we successfully discovered that this was a non issue. this means the patent system works !
Read radical news here
You know, all three of those responses lead to exactly the same thing: A college gets more money by getting a sports team than by producing better degrees.
Stop whining and deal with it. There are plenty of colleges without sports teams, go to one of them.
We already have championship playoffs for NCAA Div I (FCS), Div II, Div III and NAIA. They've been around for decades.
"A plan fiendishly clever in its intricacies"- Homer Simpson
This wouldn't even be the system I'd use. My system would take the champion/team with best record from each FBS conference, and the top 5-ranked teams that don't fall into this category.
It is an aberration in sports. All professional sports in the US, and as far as I know the world, do a playoff system like you talk about (with all kinds of variations of course). So do other college sports like basketball. In fact, so do other level of college football. See universities are put in divisions based on size and money and that kind of thing. Makes sure that you don't have tiny little schools getting stomped all the time by big ones. 1A are the big schools, the ones that play on TV all the time. Well 1A college football does NOT do playoffs. Instead they have something called the BCS, Bowl Championship Series. Teams play a regular season, and then people from the BCS decide which teams play in what bowl games using a secret system. All teams in the bowls go and play one bowl game and then are done, that determines standings. There is no elimination, no rounds, you play your one game and finish either higher or lower ranked.
None of this addresses the stupidity of the patent, just to help you understand what the system is.
20,000 people?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_American_football_stadiums_by_capacity
The division formally known as Div I-A is now called FBS (Football Bowl Subdivision). The championship game (and a few other high-profile bowl games) for this subdivision are organized by the BCS (Bowl Championship Series).
The division formally known as Div I-AA is now called FCS (Football Championship Subdivision) and it does have a real championship playoff.
Mmmm.. Donuts
Well, if President Obama says its needed, we'd better hop to it, because He is the expert in all things.
You'd like to see them both lose. You don't want to root for either of them.
In this corner: The patent system. The outcome of years of rent-seeking by corporations, which has twisted it into a sick caricature of its intent. The idea that it promotes anything except incumbent lockin is long since passed.
In this corner: The NCAA. The modern incarnation of a plantation system, holding out hope of progress to "student atheletes", most of whom are barely students and many of whom fail as atheletes. They're left with long-term life shortening injuries. In the inner-city, millions of youth look to this system for hope. The plantation masters rake in $billions in profits. One of the few places where we could actually use a union, we don't have it.
When watching a fight between two evil things, you know it's not possible; but you wish they could both lose.
This isn't a machine, it's not a chemical process, it's not Einsteins formula. Why should this be patentable? I think the patent clerk who approved this should be legally liable for his negligence. If we could sue the patent clerk (or the patent office, better yet) then this rubber stamping of invalid patents would stop.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
Yesss, preciousssss ... I too have invented a new, unique, and absolutely wunnerful football playoff system. In fact I did it in ... 1936! Yes, 1936! That's the ticket!
So sue me already! Morons.
1. Patent college football playoff system.
2. Sit on it so nobody else can.
3. Create the BCS.
4. PROFIT!
Why, oh why, didn't I take the Blue Pill?
You would think that making use of the enemy country's resources would be another act of war at most, just another drop in the bucket.
I listen to both RIAA and non-RIAA stuff if I like the music, tangential business/politics nonwithstanding.
How could the PTO allow the patenting of a college playoff system, when there was clearly many decades of existing art -- the Division II and Division III playoffs have taken place for decades. Further, there have been multiple versions of playoffs for NCAA basketball. It's about time that Congress reign in this ridiculous organization.
No. None of the schedules would be patentable (for several reasons), but the methodology of your random tournament generator might be. (I would hope not, but who the hell knows!)
The problem is basically this: In NCAA football, unlike pretty much every other sport, there is a quirk. Most playoff systems function where the top N teams by record get in and then play against each other in elimination rounds, usually with team 1 playing team N, team 2 playing team N-1, etc. But not NCAA football.
Instead they have the BCS (Bowl Championship Series) system. It's basically a secret formula that assigns a score to each team, then they pair teams off to each play in a single "bowl" game. No secondary rounds. Record is part of the formula, but only part. It's more important WHO you play and the result than it is what your actual record is. For example, playing strong teams is weighted more highly than playing weak teams, beating a team you're "supposed" to beat means less than beating teams who are supposed to beat you, absolutely dominating an opponent means more than squeaking by with a win, and, though they try to hide it and obscure it, the reality is that big schools with metric crap-tons of money get higher ratings than small teams. It's controversial, because it often results in teams who have better record not making it or being rated in worse places -- which means they play in a worse bowl game, get less potential revenue, less exposure, etc etc, and because to the best of my knowledge they don't actually tell you what the formula is. Each week they simply release a new set of numbers and that's the ranking.
What would be patentable (and might be patented) is their formula; the specific way they rate the teams to determine who gets in and at what position (and thus what bowl game). So would alternate methods of determining that. You could try to patent the regular old "top N records get in" system but it would fail and also require all sorts of tie-breaker conditions. (Oh god do I hope it would fail.) Somebody is proposing an alternate system to the BCS, and a third person is claiming that he already holds a patent that would apply to it. Is it true? I don't know. Would it hold up in court? I don't know. But that's where we are.