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Inventor Says Google Is Patenting His Public Domain Work (arstechnica.com)
Rob Riggs writes: Jarek Duda, the inventor of a compression technique called asymmetric numeral systems (ANS), dedicated the invention to the public domain. Since 2014, Facebook, Apple, and Google have all created software based on his breakthrough. Google is now trying to patent a video encoding scheme using the compression technique. The inventor is fighting Google in the European courts and has won a preliminary ruling. The fight's not over and Google is also seeking a patent with the USPTO. A Google spokesperson says Duda came up with a theoretical concept that isn't directly patentable, "while Google's lawyers are seeking to patent a specific application of that theory that reflects additional work by Google's engineers," reports Ars Technica. "But Duda says he suggested the exact technique Google is trying to patent in a 2014 email exchange with Google engineers."
Or if that seems out of date, don't be greedy dirtbags.
All inventions are built on the complex work of others. But you cannot preclude someone from inventing new things using your public domain technology. For example, if you publicly dedicate a machine screw, you cannot preclude engineers from making a time machine with your screws, even if they could not have made a time machine without them. Duda appears to have disclosed an encoding scheme, but not the universe of inventions that might leverage it to achieve a new purpose.
There's a lesson here. If you have a good idea, don't fucking tell Google about it! Don't put it on your android phone, don't discuss it in email, don't type more than you have to in the search bar.
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
Glad they changed their motto from "Don't be evil"...just in time too.
Something about this reminds me of HBO's Silicon Valley, Season 2, http://www.coderag.com/underdog-pied-piper-wins-lawsuit-against-tech-behemoth-hooli/
Patent examiners only look at prior patents for prior art. They don't have the time to look else where.
If you share an invention that isn't patented, someone will find it and apply for a patent. It it really is novel and nothing like it has been patented before it will be granted. They will then use it to sue everyone you shared the information with. Starting with the little guys who can't afford a decent lawyer.
It's extremely time consuming and expensive to invalidate a patent.
Then how the hell did it get anywhere near a patent office?
"Nine times out of ten, starting a fire is not the best way to solve the problem." - my wife
The USPTO is now a "first inventor to file" system and not "first to invent".
Prior art can only invalidate a patent if said prior art was itself patented.
That is indeed a claim. It'll be interesting to see how a judge or jury decides after looking at the evidence.
How is there no story on the front page about this at the time of writing?
It's is serving the opposite purpose it was supposed to, it stiffles inovation and shuts people out of the "free market", it is anti-social and anti-human., end it all now, copyright, patents, all of it , if you invent something and don't want people to know.. Keep it secret, take some responsibliity don't expect the violence of state to do it for you loser!
Be Evil. Why not? Don't be evil is not in the code of ethics any more! (Was it ever?) Now Google is just dropping all pretense.
When all you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a thumb.
This is just not how they work. You can only patent concrete implementations.
(stolen from DaBum) I am dyslexia of borg - your ass will be laminated.
It be interesting iffff...
Stfu
It is not interesting when a bunch of corp lawyers get in a for with other lawyers.
It's f3cking stupid and delays real progress.
F3ck the system, f3ck the corps. Honestly, f3ck you for buying into this s7it. No one wants an arm chair professor of nothing sharing their opinion on s7it the are inky possessing cursory knowledge of.
F3ck you k4nt.
Naa, my bonus is tight.
Never happened. True story.
At first Google was simple, and cute
Then Google got larger and larger, with it, they came out with the 'Do No Evil' promise
When Google gets too large to handle by original owners they hired an Indian manage it for them
Amongst the first things that Indian did was to remove the "Do No Evil" edict, and then, to pitch their AI capability in helping DoD to kill more human beings.
And now this.
Google has turned bad, and getting worse.
If you have nothing original to say you look up an article on Reddit or Arstechnicha or Techdirt and post to Slashdot.
Slashdot editors aren't pros. They are people like all of us and they say "Oh wow this is of interest" and publish it. Except that's not publishing. It's rehashing what someone else actually researched.
Lazy ass slashdot contributors -- if all you can do is rehash Reddit, Arstechnica, and Techdirt posts... please don't.
Lasdhot editors (lol) - if the "author" adds NOTHING ORIGINAL and is merely reposting, stop rewarding that.
I really love reading new stuff in Slashdot. This rehash stuff is not.
E
So far, this is following a 'Silicon Valley' plotline. Wonder if the compression technique was originally conceived in the same manner!
As a service to anybody still confused by the encryption scheme used above, here is the decoder ring:
3 -> u
7 -> h
4 -> u
I read it as 4 -> a. Because Immanuel Kant can get fucked.
If we can google slashdot, maybe we can slashdot google.
Table-ized A.I.
Is that the code used by a lot of meth users, or just that one?
So the US is in a first to file mode now and prior art doesn't mean a thing to invalidate a patent. Only a previous patent can.
Wow. You really need to read your own link, because that’s not at all what first-to-file means. From your linked article’s second paragraph:
[...] early disclosure under the FITF provisions is an absolute bar to later EPO patent.
Or, in English, an inventor who discloses their own invention before filing will never be able to patent that invention in Europe. Their own (non-patented) disclosure acts as prior art that invalidates the application.
First-to-file deals with who has the right to the patent, but most nations lack any form of grace period, so if the invention was already disclosed they will say that no one has the right, regardless of who did the disclosing and whether it was patented. Moreover, had you read your link, you’d have realized that the page spends quite a bit of time describing the distinctions between the first-inventor-to-file system that the US uses, which extends some grace to inventors who disclose their own inventions before filing, and the systems used in most of the rest of the world. Either way, however, filers aren’t protected from anyone else’s prior art.
"No, he can't. Not anymore. Ever again." God
Would it really be so terrible?
It would be the time that would be most expensive to use something.
Like if I want to get a specific part to old device or so, all that I should be able to do is to take the part somewhere that makes a 3D model, then go to other place with model to get it done. If I can find the original blueprints/designs for the part, I could just request someone to do it.
If someone invents something new, there is not really so many who would start to use it and then conquer the world with it.
If people really want so much competition, then everything should be free and open as it is about teamwork, but you would so really get that competition as well you want as no one would be there stopping others to do better or using it.
There are things that should be protected, like the human genes, DNA etc. As someone starting to replicate someone else DNA makes possible to do crimes in their names etc.
Anyone got a link to the PR firm Google uses to astroturf Slashdot? Sunlight is a great disinfectant.
Let's see if we can find a pattern here:
1. Creating a general algorithm that can be applied to many different problems - No protection since math is neither patentable nor copyrightable.
2. Apply the algorithm to a specific problem - Patentable. 25 years of protection.
3. Writing a shitty almost off-topic post on slashdot in a thread about the algorithm - Copyright. Life + 70 years!
So, the less important the creative work is to society is, the more protection it gets.
Hmm.. when they wanted us to vote on a new central EU patent court, we were explicitly told that software could not be patented. Lies? Wouldn't suprise me.
They won't consider reforming the patent system until it affects them even more negatively than the current costs of defending patents.
If there are any living descendants of the Chumash, I hope they patent the idea of living in California and kick the tech companies out.
yes, that can be expensive, at least in the US, but then he could have freely licensed it and have an easier time preventing other from patenting his idea. if it gets rejected as not patentable, that also helps prevent others from trying to patent his idea later since there would already be prior art.
I'm a consultant - I convert gibberish into cash-flow.
If you invent something and release it in the public domain without getting a patent, you're pretty much inviting others to do whatever the hell they want with it. If you don't want that to happen, you get a patent. That much seems clear to me.
So buddy here doesn't get a patent, but sues Google just as if he did. So that's the point of anyone getting patents then if anyone can sue just the same?
So that would be all about "do not evil", or have I missed already this phrase becoming a meaningless slogan?
Google: Do Know Evil.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
That show is coming across surprisingly prescient for a stupid late-night comedy.
I thought Hooli bought the rights to the method, a couple seasons ago.
...the U.S. Copyright Act of 1790 and model an international law on it. Let everything not explictly registered and before 1990 be public domain!!!
Classic example of availability bias.
The vast majority of inventions are lost to the world because the person who thought it up (in a form that was by no means complete and practicable unto itself) failed to solicit enough outside involvement to fully move the idea forward.
It's simply human nature that ideas die when not shared around and chewed collectively.
This has a lot to do with fueling the lone genius myth, because only weirdos like Tesla (and he was very weird) have what it takes mentally and emotionally to go it alone.
Most clever monkeys who select your recommended door #A seriously overestimate their intestinal fortitude, wherewithal, and life course. Then we tremendously celebrate the few who prevail over these dim prospects. Probably in most cases, clever monkey is far better served by selecting door #B: ensconce the idea into the public domain as quickly, and vigorously, and thoroughly as possible. Definitely mention all the ways the idea might play out or become applied in a practical scenario.
If the idea seems to gain any kind of social or economic traction, patent some lucrative corner case. I don't counsel against withholding some narrow, special tricks. If you've invented anything substantial enough to be worth this conversation, you've probably accumulated in your (years worth of) preliminary thrashing more than few exceedingly narrow, special tricks.
So You Want To Write Your Own Language? — January 2014 by Walter Bright
No, I didn't look that up before writing the above. And it was on the first page of links that came up in a Google search "inventing a computer language difficulty".
Over the years, as the world has become ever more social, I've become increasingly convinced that this antisocial stiff-upper-lip door #A is tragic advice, 99 times out of 100.
If you're Walter Bright, YMMV. But Walter certainly wasn't reading Slashdot for prudent counsel. He was entirely of his own mind from the get go. The bright solitary lights tend to come fully equipped with a blanket-armour disdain for the rubes around them (sometimes graceful, sometimes polite, sometimes neither).
Moral of the story: if you need to ask, you can't afford it.
This is actually a good thing he is doing. Mr. Duda could have patented his work himself and became financially very successful in a short period of time. But instead he is spending money to ensure the technology is available to everyone at no cost, simply improving everyone's products. He would much rather say I improved upon Huffman and walk away. Presumably not in a solid gold Lambo.
I hate those fags
(it may even be entertaining).
If someone wants to do what Duda wants to do with his discovery/invention, which is to make it patent-proof or un-patentable, then in the future simply publish it in China.
- Hayao Miyazaki