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Google Asks USPTO To Reexamine Four Oracle Patents

Posted by timothy on from the seriously-your-honor?-seriously? dept.

An anonymous reader writes "Google leaves no stone unturned in its defense against Oracle's patent and copyright infringement allegations. eWEEK reports on the latest development: Google has asked the USPTO to reexamine four of the seven patents asserted by Oracle. Patent watcher and skeptic Florian Mueller believes 'the world would be a better place without those virtual machine patents,' which he considers excessively broad and not really technical inventions. He also reports on a Google letter to the court, asking for permission to file a motion to throw out Oracle's copyright infringement allegations as soon as possible, without further discovery."

11 of 122 comments (clear)

  1. Obvious things by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Insightful

    like computer code, etc, shouldn't be able to be patented. Period! It would be better for Google to ask USPTO to re-evaluate more than just those 4 and throw them out and deny all the new coming.

    1. Re:Obvious things by bluefoxlucid · · Score: 1, Insightful

      This is always dumb. A computer implementation of existing inventions should never be patentable, for example most of the code that goes into graphing calculators is just mathematics. However, a new encoding algorithm is a novel invention. Specific new methods in MP3 and AAC were new inventions when created: new methods of doing things. A patent is a set of instructions: make this bore, bend this sheet, combine these materials, bolt here, and you have an engine. If you designed a novel mechanical process (i.e. otto cycle instead of diesel cycle, rotary instead of reciprocating), you just invented a whole new class of engines.

      I see no good reason why the inventor of Spectral Band Replication, for example, couldn't patent his work and license it for use in AAC. And if the inventor worked at a software company that happened to create AAC, then why not? If they don't patent it, then Ogg Vorbis v2 gets much higher quality at lower bitrates (Xiph has, in fact, lusted after SBR for a while, but the patent hasn't expired); that indicates that they did indeed just create a new, non-obvious invention.

      Most of all patents are crap. Software patents especially. Still, I don't see how software can't be an invention.

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    2. Re:Obvious things by Darkness404 · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Um... so in other words, you are saying that if you were a (high ranking) employee at a profitable company like Google you would risk being sued, losing your job and all other job offers, simply because you think that releasing code increases "freedom of information"? Look, I can admire the people who leaked information about abuses to Wikileaks because people deserve to know where their tax dollars are going and that is the only way they can make informed choices. On the other hand though, releasing something like Google's code does really no good while putting you/your family in financial ruin.

      --
      Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
    3. Re:Obvious things by Eponymous+Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Software or an algorithm shouldn't be patentable because they aren't inventions, they are ideas or mathematics. Inventions are patentable, ideas are not.

    4. Re:Obvious things by FuckingNickName · · Score: 1, Insightful

      The world is full of martyrs. I fear most the institutions which lack them.

    5. Re:Obvious things by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Of course, doing something USEFUL with the mathematics is what is patented, not the math itself. You may as well say that all mechanical or electronic devices are 'just physics', drugs are 'just chemistry', etc.

    6. Re:Obvious things by mug+funky · · Score: 4, Insightful

      i suspect they chose the 4 weakest patents that they know are bunk and have the highest chance of being overturned.

      this will set a very good example for all those other pesky patents they're being sued over.

      TFA misses a very important point of strategy - Google aren't filing patents like mad because that's not a game they are playing. they are massive innovators, but their business model is not technology so much as advertising. the patents aren't as valuable to them as they are to Oracle, and if Google lose 576 patents it'll be nothing to the many thousands that other companies stand to lose if they are ever challenged.

      Google can afford many lawyers, and these 4 patents might just be the tip of the wedge that they plan to drive into ALL software patents.

      here's hoping. the MPEG-LA are already shitting bricks at Google's VP8 e-penis.

    7. Re:Obvious things by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful

      >valuable algorithm

      Algorithms are unpatentable in the entire world.

      >more than full disclosure.

      Have you read some "computer-implemented method" loophole patents? They usually don't even include a reference implementation.

      As for secrecy, there's no way for algorithms to be kept secret. If it's important (and most are not), someone will "reverse-engineer" (i.e. read) it, or just rediscover the same algorithm by himself. It's just mathematics.

      And nowadays reverse compilers get you almost the original code back, automatically.

      As for putting stuff into hardware, fine, vote with your wallet (also, it's still in there and can be read).

      Patent protection for computer-implemented inventions are worse than useless. There's copyright already and the pace of the computer industry is so fast you don't need patents (which is why we don't have them, I guess). If your competitors want to copy something, let them. In the time they take to copy it you are at version 93953539 and they are at version 0.1. How does this even become an issue?

      On the other hand, some weirdos who think they invented fourier transform (only a few hundred years late) would be making signal processing a minefield.

      And don't forget that pure software shops are the minority of all programming jobs, why have special protection for 0.1% of the programmers (and of these, they would mostly block each other with trivialities), blocking the other 99.9% from doing their work (since everything would be a patent minefield)?

      I really wonder where this damn elitism comes from, it's not that there's a lot of missing stuff in computer science anyhow. We've figured out how to program computers, now we program computers.

    8. Re:Obvious things by bit01 · · Score: 3, Insightful

      I don't see the fundamental difference between the arrangement of cogs, springs and rods (say), and the arrangement of conditionals and loops.

      Artificial scarcity anyone? One is copyable/usable by 6,900,000,000+ people at little or no cost. The other isn't.

      The onus is on any patent proponent to show why billions of people should be blocked from using an idea, their free speech, to give a small number of people additional profit, for every single area of technology. Not for anybody else to prove that patents are not applicable.

      Patents are a damaging, unnatural monopoly and by default should not exist unless there is compelling, scientific evidence, not anecdotes, that patents actually help rather than hinder in every single area of technology where they may be applied.

      Particularly since there are vast swathes of ideas that have no patent protection and those areas of technology work just fine. Everything from cooking recipes to math to locating businesses to business organization to artistic ideas to political ideas to ...

      The whole patent edifice is based on handwaving about what it means to say two ideas are the same or different (fundamental to deciding whether something is original or not). They can't even cope with the difference between inventing new words and inventing new ideas. The PTO's depth of thinking is atrocious.

      ---

      "It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his job depends on not understanding it." - Upton Sinclair

  2. Re:Not going to happen. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

    It's lobbying game now, actually. The one who pulls the right strings wins.

  3. Patent-trolling by sageres · · Score: 3, Insightful

    As a Sun admin I have found that ever since Oracle bought Sun, they have dropped support and development for number of products, and asserted their "big brother" control over others. Oracle has since bullied many (including Google) for the patent code. I keep wondering... Is Oracle becoming a patent-trolling company? It is obvious that only Google at this time can go head-to-head with Microsoft in every area of the Market... why can't Oracle do what it did best... continue working on the databases? Otherwise, I do not think the computer industry can afford another SCO to hinder innovation and development being threatened by the patent-holders.