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Inventor Says Google Is Patenting His Public Domain Work (arstechnica.com)

Posted by BeauHD on from the patent-free dept.

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."

4 of 164 comments (clear)

  1. Re:FIRST TO FILE by voss · · Score: 3, Interesting

    First to file only protects against a competing patent. It does not prevent a patent from being invalidated because someone else invented it prior to disclosure,

  2. Re:It's called Prior Art by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Which is no longer novel or non obvious. Google should not be granted a patent. Even on the derivative use.

    The problem is: How do you know some other company won't patent it, and the USPTO or courts won't allow it? If so, they can sue Google for using it.

    If I were Google, I would file the patent. If it gets rejected, then there is a paper trail showing that the invention is not patentable.

  3. Re:It's called Prior Art by PPH · · Score: 3, Interesting

    This is a good point. And many companies do this with no intention of milking obvious patents for profit. They just don't want some patent troll to cause them problems in the future.

    --
    Have gnu, will travel.
  4. Re: It's called Prior Art by LostMyBeaver · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Ok... I just read up on ANS. It was quite an enlightening read and it's humorous because I remember thinking of a similar pattern when working with arithmetic coding 10 years back.

    Here's the thing. The simplicity of ANS is elegant in its nature.

    It's also extremely obvious in hindsight, though I'll be absolutely shocked if anyone in the courtroom except for Duda will understand that.

    I would however say that because ANS is effectively so amazingly simple in its nature, if Duda's argument is to keep Google from patenting their extensions as opposed to trying to file for a patent himself later, I believe it would be much easier to suggest that the base math as well as the extension are non patentable under the pretense that they are not as much algorithms as opposed to mathematical discoveries or formulas.

    There are some catches to this.

    The probability distribution S may justify the math as an algorithm rather than as a formula.

    But I would say otherwise that no part of this compression should be able to be patented under the same grounds that a Taylor series couldn't be patented. And while I haven't become an expert on the math yet for ANS, it reminds me of a generalized infinite sum problem.

    So... call me crazy, but I'd imagine that pretty much anyone with a masters degree in some form of math should be able to act as an expert witness to simply say that this is a discovery and not an invention and therefore is not patentable.