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Google Awarded Driverless Vehicle Patent
theodp writes "On Tuesday, Google was awarded U.S. Patent No. 8,078,349 for methods and devices for Transitioning a Mixed-mode Autonomous Vehicle from a Human Driven Mode to an Autonomously Driven Mode. From the fast-tracked patent application, which was filed last May and kept under wraps at Google's request: 'The autonomous vehicle may be used as a virtual tour guide of Millennium Park in Chicago. In the example embodiment, the vehicle may have an instruction to drive to the Cloud Gate (Silver Bean) sculpture at Millennium Park. When the vehicle arrives, the autonomous instruction may tell it to wait in the location for a predetermined amount of time, for example 5 minutes. The instruction may then direct the vehicle to drive to the Crown Fountain at Millennium Park and again wait for 5 minutes. Next, the instruction may tell the vehicle to drive to the Ice Rink at Millennium Park and wait for another predetermined amount of time. Finally, the vehicle instruction may tell the vehicle to return to its starting position.'"
AutoAuto's?
???
I guess my question is: Why?
The application is in. The patent is on the way. Once its granted, it will be published for all to see. So the only thing this prevents is public inspection and comment during the review process. Not that the patent examiners pay attention to public comment in all cases. But if they would, this is only an end run around someone calling "Bullsh*t!" on the application.
Input from practitioners in the art are the best way to shut down worthless patent applications. Before the patent is granted and it will cost someone massive legal fees to challenge.
Have gnu, will travel.
What Google did was make a request for confidentiality under 35 U.S.C. 122(b)(2)(B). Normally patents are kept confidential for 18 months after filing, whereupon they are published by the Patent Office. A 122(b)(2)(B) request keeps the application confidential so long as the applicant doesn't file in another country or make a Patent Cooperation Treaty filing that requires publication at 18 months. Essentially it's confidentiality at the expense of not being able to go international. In this case, it wouldn't have made a difference because the patent issued about 7 months after filing. Even without the 122(b)(2)(B) request the application would not have been published before the patent issued.
Get a Google driverless vehicle and you can talk on your cell phone all you want. (Ref: http://yro.slashdot.org/story/11/12/13/1845259/ntsb-recommends-cell-phone-ban-for-drivers)
Dream come true for drunks, too.
yssh shhirr I've p_ssed me pants, sh_t me drawers an' c'n not stannup, thss why me carss takin' me home. *hic*
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
Take a look at this patent ..... It could as well be the instructions someone gives to their son/daughter to go to the grocery store and back. it is only THAT complicated and specific/technical. And yet, it is granted as an 'intellectual property' in usa now. It has gone down to basic logical algorithms.
Read radical news here
... you don't even have to tell it where to take you - Google already knows.
Check your premises.
No one should have the right to prevent someone from using a solution or an idea. The problem isn't with patents existing, it is with their restrictions on re-use and elaboration by other people.
When someone claims to have invented something, they're just hiding their sources of inspiration. If we all made our sources open, then we would have so much more to "invent".
Anyone should be able to use anything and profit. Instead of it being about ownership and theft, it should be about free redistribution, transparency, and paying it backwards to those you owe credit.
It's pretty much a patent on software. Software for controlling a vehicle, but software nonetheless. Claim 15, for example:
An article of manufacture including a tangible non-transitory computer-readable storage medium having computer-readable instructions encoded thereon, the instructions comprising: instructions for detecting a landing strip with a first sensor responsive to a vehicle stopping; instructions for detecting a reference indicator with a second sensor, responsive to the first sensor detecting the landing strip; instructions for identifying reference data associated with the detected reference indicator, wherein the reference data comprises an internet address; instructions for wirelessly retrieving the autonomous vehicle instruction based on at least the reference data; instructions for switching a vehicle to autonomous operation mode; and, instructions for performing the autonomous vehicle instruction.
This claim format is known as a Beauregard claim. Such claims have long been used as one of several ways of claiming software-implemented inventions, though their long-term viability is somewhat suspect (hence all the "tangible non-transitory" hedging language). The other claims are to a method (also basically software) and to a vehicle running the software on a control module (since Google didn't invent the car, that's basically another software claim).
Nothing in the patent says "car". Just vehicle. I'm not an expert, but it looks to me like this is a patent for "what aeroplane autopilots have done for decades, but not mentioning the word aeroplane". It even says "landing strip" in claim 1! How the blazes did this get granted??
The patent is publicly available. There's a link right in the summary. The application was confidential, but it was confidential for less time (7 months) than patent applications are by default (18 months) before it was granted. Damages for patent infringement can include time during which the application was pending, but only if the infringer has notice of the application. Since the application was confidential, that doesn't apply here.
Fast forward ten years when we are all driving driverless cars. No matter who makes them, they need to get permission from Google to make such a vehicle even if they never use any google product in its production. The fact that technology will have easily progressed far enough by that point to allow fully automated vehicles, google will still be getting a huge chunk out of any car made or sold without ever having any part its design, construction, or sale, besides being the first ones to do it.
This is like all software patents. Trying to patent mathematics and language. And we are going to have a whole generation of wasted potential because there is no way to fix it, because the only ones that can change it love the way things are now.
the driverless car is an idea, so it's not patentable.
the implementation of that idea is what is patented.
my guess is google have made it as broad as legally possible to maximize protection of the patent.
i can't be bothered to read it though.
personally, i don't think this is too bad, as driverless cars are an egg that mankind has been trying to crack for quite a while. patenting that doesn't seem too evil.
I think the consensus* will be that the DARPA Challenge constitutes Prior Art as many of those vehicles were converted from human to fully autonomous.
I also think the consensus* will be that the patent will make it impossible for DARPA to continue running its challenge, as having Google demand royalties from every entrant would make it impossible for highly innovative/inventive colleges or individuals from taking part as these are not the kinds of groups that will have money to spare for paying off Google.
*consensus here is defined as "the view of the actual geeks and nerds on this site".
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
But the summary doesn't mention an implementation of a driverless car. What they mention is methods and devices for Transitioning a Mixed-mode Autonomous Vehicle from a Human Driven Mode to an Autonomously Driven Mode... in other words, Google has patented the switch.
When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!
See this is why I hate software patents. It's not because they are software, but because I haven't seen a single software patent that comes close to alluding how to actually implement the invention in the patent. If you take a patent for a mechanical device, it's usually described in such a way (using diagrams and such) how one who is skilled in the field would actually construct the mechanical device. When it's a software patent, they don't give any source code, pseudo code, or even allude to how one would actually program such a thing. So, even when the patent does expire, anybody wanting to take advantage of the invention in the patent has to come up with their own implementation from scratch. Sure you know the end goal of the program, but if there are no instructions on which algorithms one would use to create a driverless car, then the patent is useless. So Google gets a monopoly on driverless cars for the next 17 years, And after that, we all get nothing because we have no more information on how to implement said driverless car, because all the source code is locked up in copyright and trade secrets.
Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
More likely to protect it from immediate attacks by product handling robot vehicles as used in many factories. Vehicles that move, wait, are loaded, unloaded, depending upon product to be loaded or unloaded and then move on http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automated_guided_vehicle.
So google has been awarded a patent based upon substituting the word 'car' for vehicle and 'human' for product. Looks like the US should win the award for the most bullshit patents awarded.
So yeah it's already been done, all over the bloody place by whole lot's of companies. So did google actually invent anything new hardware or did they just use other people's hardware and tack on a bit of software, define a susbset of possible product to be moved and vehicle type to be used (talk about bloody obvious).
Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen