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Google Wants Patent On Splitting Restaurant Bills
theodp writes "In a classic example of parody coming to life," writes GeekWire's Todd Bishop, "a newly published patent filing reveals Google's ambitions to solve one of the most troublesome challenges known to humanity: Splitting the bill at the end of a meal." In its patent application for Tracking and Managing Group Expenditures, Google boasts that the invention of six Googlers addresses 'a need in the art for an efficient way to track group expenditures and settle balances between group members' by providing technology that thwarts 'group members [who] may not pay back their entire share of the bill or may forget and not pay back their share at all.'
It's probably a part of Google space efforts. I've heard they've funded some research into bistromatics.
Ezekiel 23:20
Picture in your mind for a moment, that someone actually typed this shit up, had lawyers obfuscate the inanity within and filed this application in the name of em.... "innovation". 'nuff said?
I think Douglas Adams worked this one out a while back:
http://hitchhikers.wikia.com/wiki/Bistromathics
The third and most mysterious piece of nonabsoluteness of all lies in the relationship between the number of items on the check, the cost of each item, the number of people at the table and what they are each prepared to pay for.
You'd have thought that Google, of all people, would have checked to see whether there was an app for that already...
http://lmgtfy.com/?q=restaurant+bill+app
"She's furniture with a pulse"
Douglas Adams' Bistromathics - prior art?
This isn't just "splitting the bill". The patentable part of Google's code is how it stores the information on who ordered what, who paid what and who got screwed by ordering water to drink while everyone else ordered from the bar ... and sends all of this info immediately to Law Enforcement agencies.
If you get pulled over the cops already know how much you've had to drink. If you're questioned by the FBI they already know where you where, when and with who. The NSA, well, they already knew everything because they used your phone as a listening device.
Oh, and one more thing: prior fucking art.
Does this imply we get the bistronomics engine and thus also open up the era for space travel? -- stitch
... they're on to something big.
In a lot of places in Europe, the waiter/waitress does it for you. Like in Germany, for example.
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
This is a perfect example of why patents should be abolished. Maybe in the 19th century they had some value but that time is long, long past. Now patents are a block to innovation.
One of my ex-colleagues years ago came up with a fancy excel sheet for this purpose. You fill in the bill items and amounts, taxes and surcharges, fill in the names of the participants, then mark how many shares each person has of each item. People can have more than one share in each item e.g. 2:1:1:1 split. Then fill in how much has already been paid by each person, then you'll see how much is left to be paid by each person, or how much each person has to be paid back. You send the sheet to everyone and people can see for themselves that the calculations are correct.
The main issue is in very large groups it can be hard to figure out who ordered what and some people often forget too. And there's also the group party thing where people order jugs of beer and other stuff to be shared - might be hard to know who drank from which jug. I doubt Google's patent will help with that.
And despite whatever fanciness Google's patent handles, in practice if you pay by card the staff in the establishment are going to be very unhappy if you try to split the bill amongst more than one card in addition to cash. So in practice it's either cash or single card payer.
I suppose Google's patent is different because it'll be "online"?
Evil I tells ya. Eeeeeeevil!
These kind of bullshit patents spring up when a company incentivizes it's employees to generate as much IP as possible during their day to day development, so as to mine the path for any other company trying to reimplement the technology and follow the same (obvious and non-innovative) path.
I don't know how Google does it, but my company offers a 2000$ monetary bonus for each submission that reaches the filling stage, the vast majority of which are accepted by the patent office. That's right, anything from inventing public key crypto to splitting the bill is patented and squirreled away in the defensive portfolio. The innovatory aspect does not even matter any more, it's all about quantity, they set up all sort of "innovation targets" that entail reaching a certain number of patents. A patent per year is required for any senior wanting to get a good year-end rating.
This is the most anti-competitive, anti-science and anti-progress way to do R&D that I can imagine.
I already use a voice recognition/voice activated app for this. It uses a two word 'trigger' phrase.
When the waitperson is within range, any party at the table faces them and say the trigger phrase: "separate checks."
When the meal is done, multiple bills arrive that are delivered to each dining party, with the amounts for each of their food & beverage items listed, tax and total. Each party can calculate a gratuity based on their own opinion of the individual service they received.
This app also allows for the parties to arrive, and leave, at staggered times.
This is fairly advanced tech, so don't expect to see it on phone/tablets for a while...
http://www.ifc.com/portlandia/videos/portlandia-professional-tipper
This is in fact how PayPal came to be. These four guys would go out to eat often, and when it came time to pay, one guy would cover the meal, and the other three would reimburse him by whipping out their PDAs and transferring the funds to his bank account. They quickly realized that this concept of quickly and easily transferring money electronically was the wave of the future, formed a company called Confinity, and launched this product called PayPal a year later. Within only a few months, Confinity was bought out by some guy named Elon Musk.
I just wish Google would buy out PayPal and have it all under one damn roof. Plus, how cool would it be if Google made space ships? :D
In Soviet Russia, dot slashes YOU!
I'm going to patent waking up in the morning. And if I do this I deserve to post as Anonymous Coward
then most patents are the result of individual efforts, rather than some overarching corporate vision. Some guy at Google has an idea, good or bad. Either he thinks it will actually help Google's business, or he thinks having a patent on his resume/job description will help his career, or he just like the feeling of having a patent. So he submits it to Google's patent/IP branch. There the lawyers decide if it's worth patenting. If they reject it, they run the risk of dealing with one unhappy patent submitter, possibly with high-up connections in the company, for all they know. So they lean towards approving the patent. Thus you occasionally end up with all sorts of patents being approved, including some that make you think "Why on earth would the company care about this?"
Oh! And after that, I'm going to patent dying in your sleep!
I'll be the first to admit I don't get joke son the internet but its very easy to split the check. I have worked for a POS company. We could split by meals, actually split a dish, or split the whole check by seats. It isn't hard and its been done.
If you're running a company and you don't file an idiotic and utterly ridiculous patent like this, one day you'd be sued by another company which choose to do it. Stop blaming the companies for what they're forced to do.
Patent abuses and trolls are all the fault of the patent offices and the mindless idiots inside them.
Only preparing to be evil, soon.
Seriously. Why support Google. They've been working hand-in-crotch with the CIA/NSA for years now. We KNOW they 'do evil'. Why do people put up with them? They have, for a very long time, obviously been just another BS corporation corrupt as hell.
There are alternatives to MANY of their services. What services there aren't alternatives to... Those 'services' probably didn't exist 5 years ago, how vital can they be?
A Dutch bank already has this built into their mobile banking application stack. One person foots the bill and the app takes care of splitting things up and billing the individuals that are splitting the bill. It also tracks their payments and helps send out reminders.
I was promised a flying car. Where is my flying car?
A patent for patenting. Sure there's prior art, but when has that stopped anyone from trying?
The quality of German tapwater is highly monitored and thus the water usually is microbially and chemically at least as clean as bottled water. There is dispute whether it is even monitored /better/ than bottled water.
The risk of contaminating it with a filter is way higher than drinking it directly from the tap. You might have some issues with lead piping in old houses if you have soft water, though.
Concerning taste YMMV, some places have harder water, some temporary add some chlorine after heavy rain, but usually it's tasty.
Over all your warning is complete bollocks.
They haven't simply patented a mundane activity in life but a way to help people remember to pay and share the bill probably using voice commands, their google wallet and gmail combined which is specific and reasonable.
Yes. I paid for your share. Yes, my cybernetic brain allows me to match this pattern against your past actions to deduce it's your turn to pay. I also sense that you are trying to weasel out of paying. I see it. I recognize the pattern well. But I am a good friend. You are there for me when I rant incessantly about the uselessness of organic life. I will pay your share because we all have our faults, and what you owe in mere currency, you have repaid countless times over with kindness.
"An automatic service charge of 18% will be added to groups of 8 or more."
From what I get from the summery (Can't be bot herd to RTFA) this is about people who are not paying their part in the bill. We all know that person and if you don't, you are that person. Knowing how much he ows does not mean he will pay.
However those people are unwilling to pay the bill. I once went out with a group and he ordered a more expensive drink then the rest of us, except when he ordered the drink. Then he suddenly did not want anything.
So one time when we knew he did not have money on him (also happened more then once) we ordered all a shot, poured it down and left. That was the last time he did that.
Now when a person has financial problems and informs us, we will order something cheaper AND he will not go with us as much.
Now for the subject: This is something I learned from my mom: Counted sheep are eaten by the wolfs as well.
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
Everything changed when the USPTO started being permitted to keep a portion of the fees from every patent they issued (I believe this was around 1988). Before that time, they had a fixed Congressional budget (or so I recall).
As a consequence, there was no "organizational incentive" to issue more patents. In fact, they were years behind, as they spent the necessary time reviewing the patents.
After the rules were changed, they built out a huge facility, hired thousands, and got to work growing into a monster spewing out random property rights...
So the game works like this: the more patents, the more fees. No penalties for errors. So no limits to growth.
The USPTO has essentially become a bacteria colony, and they're currently building a new vial to live in...
I think that lot's of the POS software has stuff like in it and it has been there likely for years
Math
Didn't last very long.
The actual problem are the passive-aggressive douchebags who make it a contest to see who gets to pay for everyone's meal, and later whine about how some people never pay for everyone's meal, so that they can be both the altruistic Christian hero and the exploited supply-sider hero.
i imagine most even coded it themselves.. billmonk, splitwise, or even my own implementation at https://tabsplit.net/ to name a few ;-) maybe it's just me, but nowadays there are dozens of services out there, even mobile apps of some bank institutes start adding this functionality to remember social debts & split bills. it got quite crowded after billmonk has been down every few minutes and ultimately got sold..
Find me at http://herbert.poul.at
Another attempt by Google to win over self-proclaimed geeks by being cutesy with patents. Meanwhile, they are attempting to use the FRAND patents from Motorola to shut down both Microsoft and Apple throughout the world.
Still have my code and website. We (6 guys living together in atlanta) used it to track group expenses and settle up periodically via paypal. Sounds identical.
dpk
What is a better way to show that the patent system is broken, and that software patents are really stupid but by pushing a bunch of really obvious stupid ones thru?
It probably costs less then they are paying for litigation with current software patent wars, and if they can show the system is broken and flawed, and that software patents are bogus, wouldn't it make things easier for them?
Be seeing you...
So I'm supposed to believe that Google is trying to patent basic math? Seriously, what's next?
Only the dead have seen the end of War. - Plato
this isn't about splitting a single dinner bill as the headline (Google Wants Patent On Splitting Restaurant Bills) suggests.
it's a little more complicated.. where, say, 5 people hang out together for a week, where multiple bills are paid individually by different people over the duration of the vacation or whatever and you need to "settle up" when you get home.
Yes, no matter how you slice it, it's just math (so whether or not you should be able to patent it is arguable) - but, if the patent is for the means by which it's tracked, and the design of the (i assume) app that you use to solve the equation, then a patent may have some merit.
You can solve this using Excel, but a dedicated app to to track the scenario mentioned in the original piece could be very useful to some.
"As an example, assume that a group is created to track and manage the expenditures of four friends (Friends 1-4) while on vacation in Miami. While on vacation, one of the days only three of the friends (Friends 1-3) go eat lunch at a restaurant because Friend 4 is not hungry at the time. The bill for lunch is $60 and Friend 1 pays the bill using a mobile payment service available on his device 104. Friend 1 adds the lunch as an expenditure of the group. When the form is presented to Friend 1 for the lunch, Friend 1 indicates that the lunch should be allocated to Friends 1-3. The lunch is not allocated to Friend 4 because Friend 4 did not participate in the lunch. Further, Friend 1 provides the following amounts of allocation in the form: Friend 1 $25, Friend 2 $16, and Friend 3 $19. In this example, the amount of allocation for each friend is based on what each friend ordered during lunch."
could be further "complicated" if your group of friends has vegetarians (where entrees are usually less than those with meat), and people who don't drink - so the cost of that bottle of wine should be split between the 4 of 6 in your party who actually had some. if someone brought their kids, that introduces yet another variable.
it'd be pretty cool to be able to take a picture of the itemized receipt and assign each line item to a person (drinks and entree), or the group (shared desserts, appetizers) - whatever is appropriate.
Banks are getting in to person to person transfers (using nothing but a mobile number or email address).. https://clearxchange.com/
the natural evolution of paying each other is to be able to request money FROM each other.. so i can use my credit card to pay for lunch, then send a note telling my friends they owe me $.
google couple potentially integrate with clearxchange, and card.io (take picture of CC instead of entering the number manually) to settle up once the costs are calculated.
this isn't a patent for a system to do math (addition, subtraction and division). this is a patent on a system that makes it so you don't have to think about the math.
Growing up amongst my friends (and in general) we had a rule that he who picked up the bill and looked at it (at least without discussing it first with the other people at the table) was on the hook for the whole thing. It was more or less a courtesy. If I went with someone who was older than me (ie. my grandma) and she brought me out to lunch it would be very rude of me to look at the bill that I'm not going to pay.
So if Google wants to get in the middle of my restaurant bill payment, well...
Easy solution: We abolish splitting altogether and Google just pays for everyone.
It's called splitmytab.net, and I never thought it was original.
Often at business meetings we would go out to dinner. Usually when the bill came we would have everyone chip in including tip the amount of money they felt they owed. Some folks had drinks, wine with dinner, and desert. Others may have had only a salad. It was a good judge of character to see who was honest about it. Since this is Slashdot I should mention that we were scientists and engineers so we could do the math. Most the time we would end up with a few extra dollars which would just go for a bigger tip. Occasionally we would be short, and someone would have to fess up about not putting enough in. Good way to see who is trustworthy.
You go out with someone that doesn't pay his share?
Never invite that person again.
Problem solved.
If someone starts nagging about the extra coke you drank, never go out with that person again.
See the trend here?
You don't need technology to fix this. Just stop hanging out with assholes.
scred.com does the arthmetic for you, also for cases where people have already pitched in parts of the cost.
One day, we got to talking about how it might be unfair if you tended to end up having it be your turn to buy the meal when you were someplace cheap, and issues like different numbers of people being present, and eventually concluded that all solutions to these problems consisted of reinventing money.
So we came up with the real solution: Fuck it, it's not worth the time to worry about it. We roughly take turns and no one cares.
My blog: http://www.seebs.net/log/ --- My iPhone/iPad app: http://www.seebs.net/seebsfrac/
While I don't like paying for water, why should you not be allowed to sell it for profit?
It is an ancient law in the UK which there is no reason to change. It is hardly a big problem for these places. It is a bit like motorway service companies being obliged to provide free toilets to all comers,.
Canada, just like everywhere else I've been, this depends.
At least in some restaurants in Vancouver, if you ask before you order, they might be reasonably accommodating. If you ask after the bill came the first time, you'd end up waiting 2 hours for your bill... Go to a high-volume restaurant with a high-end point-of-sale system**, life is much easier...
Same is true in the USA.
In most places in Asia, you'd generally get a blank stare.
In the UK, in some of the better restaurants, you would get a blank look... Don't have much other experience. Never tried this on the continent...
Other places, well, don't know...
** Because of the change to HST for restaurants in BC in 2010, many high-volume restaurants took the opportunity to modernize their point-of-sale systems which makes stuff like check-splitting stuff easier for the wait-staff, but not all restaurants did this and not all wait-staff are well versed on their restaurants pos systems...
Similarly restaurants in other countries may or may not have modern point-of-sale system, but unlike Canada they probably didn't have a recent legal change that stimulated a technology upgrade cycle.
The main comment categories on patent articles are:
1) Did not read past abstract. Subsets are did not read past title, and did not read past inflammatory submission to Slashdot.
2) Knee-jerk rejection all patents. Subset is knee-jerk rejection of just software patents.
3) Claim of prior art that does not apply. Subsets are prior art that meets different claims and prior art that postdates the patent.
It is probably too late to patent that idea. It the same idea as microcredits, which have been around for a while by know.
Seems like prior art would be Nolan Bushnell's uWink restaurants. They were around the LA area, and had macs built into the tables you could order from. At the end of the meal you could select which of the items on the bill were yours and swipe a card to pay your share. Food was pretty weak, though!
ralphbarbagallo.com
funny. i wrote exactly this app in php/mysql in 2002 to help me and my housemates split shared expenses (cable bills, internet, groceries, etc). thought it was useful at the time but stopped using it when we all moved on in life. web server is offline now (was utilities.slothlovechunk.org), but maybe I should dig that code up just to send over to the PTO.
http://www.dynamicpatents.com/2008/12/ibm-patents-device-to-split-the-bill/ So.. who is winning in court..
What's really amusing is that my group has been doing exactly what the patent says for the last 4 years. We track our charges on ... Google drive! Beyond that we also have a mobile application for the same job.
Prior art? I can show it to them if they driver over from their nearest datacenter.
What a load. Serve included this as as base feature.
deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.
.
2. Application publishes and is spotted by I-ANAL geek Web site which, not understanding what it's reading, pumps out a hack piece citing the application as further proof that the patent system (or intellectual property in general) is "broke."
3. Equally ignorant and/or confused I-ANAL Slashdotter posts story on /. with ironic comment. In some cases, there's no link to the actual application, making it difficult even for an IAAL figure out what the applicant was actually trying to patent.
4. Equally ignorant I-ANAL Slashdotters post comments that comprise: i) a terse pun; ii) "See, I told you the patent system (or IP in general) is broke!"; iii) A detailed, carefully reasoned analysis of an irrelevant detail of the patent; iv) A strange, off-topic, or unintentionally funny authoritative statement. (My favorite: "A design patent is basically a trademark.")
5. In many cases, a few IP or patent attorneys attempt to correct another poster's sillier misconceptions. Generally, the attorney's remark ends the conversation or, worst case, provokes an "anybody who knows what they're talking about is not to be trusted" kick-to-the-curb.
Just sayin'.
I've seen this episode before.
This is another good example of why software patents should only be good for 1 year. Software companies and patent trolls are playing the patent system. It's time for reform!!!
My karma is bad. Don't get too close!!!
This is just like the group expense tool from Travefy. Multiple people can pay multiple people.