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Pending Apple Patent For 'Inferring User Mood'
theodp writes: "Apple has recently disclosed a pending patent for Inferring User Mood Based on User and Group Characteristic Data, which has received surprisingly scant attention from the press even though it ups the ante for privacy intrusion. The brainchild of iAd team members, Apple boasts its invention will make it possible to 'charge a higher rate for mood based content delivery' by scrutinizing 'channel characteristics, demographic characteristics, behavioral characteristics, spatial-temporal characteristics, and mood-associated characteristics.' Apple further explains: 'Mood-associated physical characteristics can include heart rate; blood pressure; adrenaline level; perspiration rate; body temperature; vocal expression, e.g. voice level, voice pattern, voice stress, etc.; movement characteristics; facial expression; etc. Mood-associated behavioral characteristics can include sequence of content consumed, e.g. sequence of applications launched, rate at which the user changed applications, etc.; social networking activities, e.g. likes and/or comments on social media; user interface (UI) actions, e.g. rate of clicking, pressure applied to a touch screen, etc.; and/or emotional response to previously served targeted content. Mood-associated spatial-temporal characteristics can include location, date, day, time, and/or day part. The mood-associated characteristics can also include data regarding consumed content, such as music genre, application category, ESRB and/or MPAA rating, consumption time of day, consumption location, subject matter of the content, etc. In some cases, a user terminal can be equipped with hardware and/or software that facilitates the collection of mood-associated characteristic data. For example, a user terminal can include a sensor for detecting a user's heart rate or blood pressure. In another example, a user terminal can include a camera and software that performs facial recognition to detect a user's facial expressions.' Your move, Google!"
Oh no... Trying to patent an idea! It's almost like that's what patents are designed for!
Eyes: Shifty
Likely contemplating act of domestic terrorism. Dispatch Ministry for State Security
...if it lets advertisers know how much ads piss me off.
Your Move Patent Office. Are they trying to patent an idea again?
yes
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
In a quick skim of the patent I didn't see a definition of mood, so can almost any user tracking be considered mood inference? Suppose I bought something yesterday at Amazon, then something similar today, now if Amazon raises the prices for me on similar items tomorrow - is that an infringement because Amazon detected that I'm in the "mood" to buy similar items?
... only a few years ago we would have considered this creepy and vaguely criminal.
Oh, wait! It is creepy and vaguely criminal.
a ring. Next big thing you know: throw away your watch, the e-moodring is here, coming to a finger near you.
Development is programmable; Discovery is not programmable. (Fuller)
Have gnu, will travel.
I have had a growing suspicion that has reached a level of almost certainty that the worlds first world and self-aware AI will be borne from technologies developed for data mining and advertising applications.
Brought to you by Carl's Junior.
" Mood's a thing for cattle and love play, "
Your Move Patent Office. Are they trying to patent an idea again?
Well, yeah, that's what patents are for.
More precisely, an overly broad, idea that would be fairly trivial to implement using existing hardware.
A steam engine is pretty easy to build. Hell, you can 3D print one at home now. Does that mean they should never have been patentable? Difficulty of implementation has never been a requirement for patentability in the statutes... if you disagree with that, then contact Congress, not the patent office, because only the legislature can add a new requirement.
Given that, do they have even a working implementation?
Most likely, but even if they don't, prototypes haven't been required for decades. That's a good thing - it makes it easier for small inventors with brilliant ideas but no capital to get protection for their invention and then sell it to large companies who have the ability to implement it. Say, for example, you come up with a great idea for a new, super-efficient and secure file system architecture. Are you going to write your own OS? And try to make it in the marketplace as a brand new OS, competing with Apple and Microsoft? You'd never get past .01% market share. But if you could sell it to one of them and it gets implemented in their next OS release, your idea would get used by a much greater portion of the population. Isn't this a good thing for society?
These are real questions, I haven't read TFA. These are the kind of patents that need to stop though.
How do you know, if you haven't read TFA? We already know that you're wrong about the requirement for difficulty of implementation, the requirement of prototypes, and the requirement that something not be an idea. Why should we think you're right when you haven't even read the article?
Copyright the implementation of your algorithm and move on.
Copyright will protect you from people making exact copies of your algorithm, from your source code. If they reverse engineer it and remake it - like say one of those OS companies and your file system architecture - it's not copyright infringement. Copyright only protects things where having the specific thing is important - it protects movies, because you want to see "The Hulk", and not the Mockbuster "Angry Green Man" knockoff, or you want to rent "Drop Kick Panda" instead of "Chop Kick Panda". It protects art because you want a Warhol original, not the selfie I just took of me holding a soup can. It protects books because you want OSC's "Ender's Game" and not "Fighting Kids in Space".
But it doesn't protect software, because you don't really care about the specific thing, you want the general concept - you don't care whether you use TaxAct or TurboTax; you don't care if you play Farmville or Farmtown; or Tiny Tower vs. Dream Heights; or Candy Crush Saga vs. Candy Link Epic. It's only useful where someone is locked into a particular implementation due to lack of compatibility - you have to use Microsoft Word because you keep getting .doc files with proprietary formatting, etc. And those are bad things for consumers.
Basically, copyright is useless for most developers, unless they're leveraging a monopoly power to lock people into their software.
/*Mood Alarm Trigger Event*/
If mood=="horny" and activeApplicationType==browser
AlertMaritalUnit()
... infer use mood! I thought it was interfere with user mood.... That's got lots of prior computer art....
I know what copyright is for, but you're not allowed to patent algorithms. This more than most software patents is an algorithm with how to create a result from set of common existing sensor inputs. It should not be patentable based on that alone.
Apple patents hundreds I'd not thousands of things every year, like any large company that does any r&d. They probably don't implement even 10% of them in actual products though. This may also be more about keeping Google from being able to implement this process as it is Apple actually wanting to implement this process.
Sorry for posting this off-topic but there is no other place to post this, so...
The mobile site:
- lousy view and navigation - confusing display of mod points
- no way to view normal site... mobile site is mandatory
- doesn't remember my login
- moderation doesn't work
- can't change view by mod points (outstanding, etc. categories are broken)
Breaking news! Now, just added!!! "popover" ads that won't go away!!!
I had an obnoxious ad for a survey overlay the site. Won't close.
In desperation, I even clicked on it to take the survey (and entered bogus information to screw up their responses) but still the ad won't go away!
(I'm using Chrome browser on Nexus7... if that makes any difference).
I don't read your sig. Why are you reading mine?
I dunno. I first encountered it in ELIZA.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
THIS! a hundred times. I do not see how the patent office is going to let this massively overroad patent see the light of day. What the hell is the "invention" here? is it a machine? device? Apple stinks.
Computers can be helpful, but they can also annoy. Depending on my mood, a beep can be annoying, or it can be informative. A spoken warning can be more informative or irritating when I'm a bit snippy.
For some reason, probably having to do with the raised button on its current case, my ipad will , out of the blue, occasionally wake from sleep, and inform me that "Siri" [is] "not available".Because it's a wifi model, this is not entirely unexpected.
But if it could somehow understand that this normally useful message is inappropriate, that would be lovely.
What the hell is the "invention" here? is it a machine? device?
It's a method patent for integrating inputs and building a profile about a person. Same as the way Google has many such patents for building interest profiles based on input data it has about a user.
Apple stinks.
Ah. And there we get to your basic motivation. It must be so hard to maintain such pointless and arbitrary nerdrage.
I know what copyright is for, but you're not allowed to patent algorithms.
You're allowed to patent processes, and isn't an algorithm just a process? Specifically, you're not allowed to patent mathematical algorithms. Algorithms that are not purely math, such as a string of commands executed by a processor, are not just mathematical algorithms. Basically, if you can do it on a pad of paper with a pencil, then it's not patentable... but if the claims expressly require a processor, then by definition, paper and a pencil isn't enough, and it is patentable - and doing it with just the paper and pencil wouldn't be patent infringement. It doesn't remove the mathematical algorithm from the public domain, just the computer implementation.
This more than most software patents is an algorithm with how to create a result from set of common existing sensor inputs. It should not be patentable based on that alone.
Didn't you say in your first post that you hadn't read the article? How do you know that this "more than most software patents is an algorithm" if you haven't read it? Plus, as noted above, processes are patentable - see 35 USC 101. The fact that this is a process doesn't make it not patentable.
Ok, look. I know it's popular on Slashdot, especially with some submitters, to paint certain companies in as negative a light as possible and Apple is one of those companies but, good gawd, this is NOT NEWS!!
Here's a pro tip - companies the size of Apple, who invest billions (let me say that again - BILLIONS) of dollars into R&D also file for a LOT of patents. A vast majority (by a very wide margin) go nowhere other than the filing cabinet. They are patented because someone came up with an invention and, well, we live in a world where you patent inventions. Apple does it. Google does it. Microsoft does it. IBM. Samsung. HTC. The list goes on and on and on.
Implying that anything nefarious is happening because of one patent filing is absolutely, over the top, useless. If you are doing it for one company, you are very clearly and obviously trolling because, like I said, THEY ALL DO IT. I guarantee - I am willing to bet a year's salary - that if you look at every patent filing from the top 20 tech companies, you will find a notable number which are "nefarious" or "alarming".
In other words, THIS ISN'T NEWS. I don't care if it's Apple or Google or Samsung or whatever company you'd care to name. Filing a patent is not news. IMPLEMENTING a patent is news. Filing one is just business as usual.
That's the Ministry of State Love to you!
Sleep your way to a whiter smile...date a dentist!
And how does ELIZA make you feel?
Sleep your way to a whiter smile...date a dentist!
You couldn't do this in Windows 8, because the function would return "total rage meltdown" with every call.
I still read it as "Apple Patents Pissing Off Users, Nonusers, Onlookers and Passers-by."
Seems more plausable.
*Repent!Quit Your Job!Slack Off!The World Ends Tomorrow and You May Die!
Computers use the binary system to represent everything. Tell me again how manipulating strings using a computer process isn't mathematical.
Crimey
Computers use the binary system to represent everything. Tell me again how manipulating strings using a computer process isn't mathematical.
Why would I do that? I never said that it wasn't mathematical. This is why Slashdot has a "quote parent" button.
Rather than making you repost, I'll simply fix your post for you:
You're allowed to patent processes, and isn't an algorithm just a process? Specifically, you're not allowed to patent mathematical algorithms. Algorithms that are not purely math, such as a string of commands executed by a processor, are not just mathematical algorithms.
Computers use the binary system to represent everything. Tell me again how manipulating strings using a computer process isn't- and now I see that you wrote "purely math" and "just mathematical algorithms", but actually require hardware, and hardware isn't just math, even though it may use math, and now I realize that I should have probably read your entire post carefully before responding, and at the least should have quoted it. Sorry.
No problem. Cheers.
It protects books because you want OSC's "Ender's Game" and not "Fighting Kids in Space"
spoiler alert!
Like anyone can even know that
I worked on some aspects of this over 15 years ago and can prove it. There is nothing original here and therefore this should not a valid patent. These ideas have been openly discussed many times before.