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Facebook's Broad Patent On Digital Media Tagging

Posted by CmdrTaco on from the keep-cashing-the-checks dept.

bizwriter writes "Facebook has done well with the Friendster patents and patent applications that it acquired. Just last week, a patent application for passing personal info between users based on degrees of separation became public. Now, thanks to the Friendster IP purchase, Facebook pretty much owns the technology for publicly identity-tagging digital media of any sort in a database."

12 of 61 comments (clear)

  1. bullshit by jsepeta · · Score: 4, Informative

    I've been tagging people in photos in iphoto for years.

    but we've been zucked.

    --
    Remember kids, if you're not paying for the service, YOU ARE THE PRODUCT THAT IS BEING SOLD.
    1. Re:bullshit by blair1q · · Score: 2

      If you legally collect the rent on something, you own it. That's pretty much what own means. You have the right to chase other people away from your property, and to give it, sell it, lend it, or lease it to someone else. A patent is temporary ownership of a technology.

    2. Re:bullshit by interkin3tic · · Score: 2

      We can be sure that at least one of the following is true:
      -No one at the USPTO has ever used iphoto
      -No one at the USPTO has any understanding of his or her job

    3. Re:bullshit by MokuMokuRyoushi · · Score: 2

      Just to enlarge upon your "temporarily" in your final sentence, isn't everything we own temporarily owned? After all, its not ours after death.

      --
      Humans are terrible replicators of Godly things.
    4. Re:bullshit by blair1q · · Score: 2

      No. You, at your death, have the right to give it to someone else. You own it until you give it away, even after you're dead. Nobody else owns it until you give it to them. It's possible for things to remain in your estate and owned by you for decades until the legal issues are wrung out in probate court.

    5. Re:bullshit by demonbug · · Score: 3, Funny

      Just to enlarge upon your "temporarily" in your final sentence, isn't everything we own temporarily owned? After all, its not ours after death.

      I'm a corporation, you insensitive clod!

  2. Re:Patent this... by MischaNix · · Score: 2

    Metapatents lead to metametapatents and so on. Don't do that, or the loop police will come to your house and kill you.

    Just sayin'.

  3. Nothing new to say by GameboyRMH · · Score: 2

    Software patents retarded. Idea obvious. Prior art exists. And so on and so forth...

    --
    "When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
    1. Re:Nothing new to say by JaredOfEuropa · · Score: 2

      Facebook's lawyers disagree, and they are well-paid and prepared to fight for the bitter end. Are you prepared to take them on, knowing that being right in these cases very rarely matters unless you have your own army of lawyers to back you up?

      --
      If construction was anything like programming, an incorrectly fitted lock would bring down the entire building...
  4. Access Control Group? by Rivalz · · Score: 2

    Isn't this the same concept as being a member of a group and gaining a variety of access permissions?

    How is this not the same just changing the naming semantics of the general idea?
    I mean can i just patent any idea and substitute a previously defined terms with my own made up one?

  5. Re:Good. by blair1q · · Score: 4, Funny

    No, it just makes you the one covered in shit and pointing a finger.

  6. What are the intention? by jascat · · Score: 2

    Some companies get patents for defensive purposes to ensure no one else patents it and uses it against them. I had a serious knee-jerk reaction when my employer sent out an email advertising our patent program. The explanation I got was that we weren't going to be patenting stuff to keep others from doing those things, but to patent them before others do so that we can't be sued. Facebook could be doing just that. In that same email, I was told that the company despises the state of IP and have active lobbying efforts to change things. I felt much better about my employer after hearing all of that.