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IBM Watson To Battle Patent Trolls
MrSeb writes "IBM's Watson is made of many parts: speech recognition, natural language processing, machine learning, and data mining. All of these factors were perfectly combined to beat Ken Jennings in Jeopardy, and now each of these components are slowly finding their way into other applications. Health plan company WellPoint, for example, is using Watson to investigate patient records to improve diagnosis, and in a self-referential, possibly universe-destroying twist, IBM itself is using Watson to help sell Watson (and other IBM products) to other companies. Now, using Watson's data mining and natural language talents, IBM has created the Strategic IP Insight Platform, or SIIP, a tool that has already scanned millions of medical patents and journals for the sake of improving drug discovery — and in the future, it's easy to see how the same tool could be used to battle patent trolling, too."
..can someone send the patent office one of these machines for the love of god!
I'm afraid I can't let you patent rectangular shapes, Apple
Haha don't fall for it.
I wonder if they used their own patent archives to train Watson to recognize junk patents?
It seems that the only person saying that Watson *could* be used "to battle patent trolls" is the last article's author. Nobody else has said that IBM or any customer using Watson is actually pursuing this use.
...it could could be used to help manage that patent portfolio and find great targets to file a suit against.
you have been warned.
I have something in common with Stephen Hawking...
Really, why can't they do both? Use Watson to combat trolls going after their products, as well as finding other patentable stuff? It doesn't take a Sherlock (or even a Watson) to figure that one out.
It has to be remembered that IBM is one of the biggest pro-software-patent lobby groups in the world.
In the US Bilski case, they submitted a brief saying that free software needed software patents!
http://en.swpat.org/wiki/Fake_representatives_of_free_software#IBM
I saw them personally in the EU lobbying from 2003-2005 where they pushed with all their might for software patents.
And then recently, when New Zealand announced it would legislate to clarify that software *isn't* patentable, who stepped in to kneel on the government? IBM (with MS).
http://yro.slashdot.org/story/10/06/23/0235248/new-zealand-u-turns-will-grant-software-patents
So, yeh, I'd be happy if all patent trolls disappeared tomorrow, but trolls aren't even the biggest problem, and the existence of the whole problem is in a large part due to IBM.
* http://en.swpat.org/wiki/More_than_trolls
* http://en.swpat.org/wiki/IBM
Expert in software patents or patent law? Contribute to the ESP wiki!
What is the business sense for IBM to do so, or the patent department ?
We as a society should insist the patent business gets cleaned up dramatically because innovation is getting bogged down.
Soon I would not be able to make a toast because it is somewhat rectangular with rounded edges and flat.
The problem is, real troll patents are rarely understandable.
Mining patient records to discover new reasons to kick people off their policies the moment they get sick.
If Watson says there will be cake, I think you'd better run.
— and in the future, it's easy to see how the same tool could be used to battle patent trolling, too."
and it's also easy to see how the same tool could be used to automatically generate even more patents.
After all, since we've already seen that computers can randomly generate fake nonsensical Physics research papers and get them published in real Science Journals. We're not so far off that they'll be able to do the same with patent claims. It would be just like a turing test, but only easier since real patent legal language is already designed to obfuscate the obvious -- it would be easy to have a computer mimic it.
Train the Watson AI how to make executive and upper level management decisions. It would be possible to achieve the same results, but without the huge overhead of golden parachutes and high salaries. What remains could be summed up as profit.
Watson can just file all the patents before humans can think of them.
From there it can invent a machine that is more smarter than itself.
Democracy Now! - your daily, uncensored, corporate-free
I think I'll wait for Watson 9000
Patents were important and useful things when the laws we use today were originally written. There have been refinements, changes, blurrings, and mistakes added to our patent laws over time, but generally speaking the design comes from a time when horses dominated traffic, fire lit the night, and letters were delivered to communicate desires accross the country. I think that more than an overhaul is in order, the laws need to move at the speed of, and with flexibilty of, our current age. WATSON helping the patent office is funny, but electronic trading dominates wallstreet now, why not this?
Well, it's not the rounded edges or it being flat that will get in deep water, it's the "termal refreshing" that will.
http://www.google.com/patents/about/6080436_Bread_refreshing_method.html?id=IpwDAAAAEBAJ
For IBM, there's plenty of incentive for them to do find grounds for challenging every patent that isn't held by IBM (though little incentive for them to reveal those grounds until the patent is used in way which hurts IBMs business.)
For the patent office, determining what is and isn't patentable under the law and only approving applications for the former category is their job, so an automated tool that makes it easier to make that determination correctly would be in their interest.
I have a strong feeling IBM will use and sell the Watson system to do the exact opposite, speed up data mining and filtering of patents for possible lawsuit targets.
I seriously hope i am just being paranoid and none of that happens, but with the current software patent bullshit, it just seems so hard to not see it coming.
Watson never did speech recognition. It was delivered the questions electronically.
Improving diagnosis, or digging for information with which to deny claims? Two words: "Preexisting condition".
>>Health plan company WellPoint, for example, is using Watson to investigate patient records to improve diagnosis
I wonder how Watson would handle this situation.
But I think the powers-that-be have better sense than to ask Watson this question.
They would not like the answer.
"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
Except that speech recognition wasn't used in Jeopardy - it was sent questions via text format.
Perhaps Watson could just deduce from it's vast array of data and "knowledge" that software patents are *all* invalid. ...That software has no place in the patent pool, period.
Watson might also find that the heavy cost of all patents, in general, far outweigh the benefits. Patents are a sum dredge on society, stifling innovation, providing government sponsored fleecing, and promoting severe anti-competitive behavior in the markets. Get rid of them all, but keep copyright and trademark protection in force.
No man or business entity should be able to "own" the constructive use of knowledge....I'm sure Watson would agree with me :)
https://s3.amazonaws.com/kym-assets/photos/images/original/000/041/763/roflbot-ZfY6.jpg?1318992465
Personally, I think watson should be fed the political and military service records of all major world politicians, then be allowed to "comment" in the ticker bar during major presidential and other national level debates.
Hilarity would ensue!
One of these machines falls into the wrong hands and patent trolls use it with a small bit of programming to create patent applications for them; and by that I mean... machine generated patents
In other words... entirely nonsensical patents for technology that has never been actually used, and might not actually work, but an extremely massive number of eloquently written machine-generated patents covering every conceivable problem with weird vague claims, with problem sets, and concepts for machine-generated patent claims obtained from automatic mining of past patent language, weblogs, etc...
The invention might not be real by any stretch of the imagination, but the awarded nonsensical patent might be vague enough to actually sue over a technology actually invented in the future
In other words... the ultimate patent troll is a computer AI that generates convincing applications in massive numbers without actually inventing anything.
A better use would be tactical communications in battle. Watson would very likely do better at communicating orders in combat situations than a real person could do.
if your life is such a big joke then why should I care?
is all of this covered by a patent or not? i am warrent buffet and i want to know it before i give any more of money to these new fangled technology companies (i can capitalize a lot of things but not letters i type because i don't know where this shift key they keep telling is at).
--wb
An action derived from chemical processes will usually be a lot slower than an electrical button push. THe humans were always a fraction of a second too slow. Unfair!
IBM's Watson is made of many parts: speech recognition
Incorrect. Watson does not use speech recognition. The questions were fed to it by text when playing against Ken Jennings.
Let me just remind you all about Wellpoint's track record:
http://content.usatoday.com/communities/ondeadline/post/2010/04/report-wellpoint-targets-breast-cancer-patients-for-cancellation/1
This company lost the right to exist, and the managers should be in jail.
Just saying. IBM should not associate themselves with this corporate garbage.
Sorry dude, but that's a blatant troll, not a patent troll.
Siri, how do I overcome Apple troll patents?
I'm afraid I have to inactivate your life support before I tell you that, Dave.
From scarped cliff or quarried stone she cries "A thousand types are gone, I care for nothing, no not one."
....owns all your patents.
So who didn't get the part about Watson discovering new things to patent?
Who doesn't know that IBM is one, if not the top, patent holder by count?
To people who have to deal with **IA dumbass notices/suits.
**AA- "We see that your stuffed monkey has download lots of stuff. Pay us $1 billion or we'll sue you for $75 trillion."
Person- "Hey Watson, got some free time for some smack down?"
Watson- "My pleasure."
Vote monkeys into Congress. They are cheaper and more trustworthy.
FWIW, I think goatse is (or was) someone at /. with unlimited mod ability. I once made a derogatory comment (on /.) about goatse and a few hours later my comment when from +5 to 0 in about 5 minutes. The 7 or 8 replies to my comment all went from the +2 to +5 range to -1, 0 & 1 in the same time.
If you could reason with religious people, there would be no religious people
If it can be found by an automated process, there is no novelty or inventive step. Mind you, I realise that the USPTO hasn't been worrying about that for years.
From scarped cliff or quarried stone she cries "A thousand types are gone, I care for nothing, no not one."
Oh Please sir,can you help me beat mean old Apple,they think they own the other half of the world just like Microsoft.Crunch your zeros and ones and may the force be with you. Signed, Samsung and all other Android and Open Source software.
IBM makes something like $1 billion a year from licensing its patents, many of which are software patents. Also, a big pile of patents constitutes a defensive patent portfolio. A potential plaintiff has to ask whether IBM has patents that would hurt more in a counter-suit. IBM is the biggest recipient of patents in the U.S. They probably have something on the order of 50,000 active U.S. patents.
It would be great if Watson could filter out the frivolous patents. If it had a hilarious bone (chip ?), it would tickle (burn ?) till it hurt (smoke ?).
Ask Watson this: "What will we do when the energy of all the suns runs down...?"
Jedis are stupid. If they were so powerful, why couldn't they handle counseling for a kid who missed his mom?