> Sure, but automatically deleting temporary files ?!?
Is every book entitled "Pirate Adventure" about the exact same story?
You can't just read the title - you have to read the claims. There's a whole lot more specific detail in the independent claims than "automatically deleting temporary files."
> The USPTO is supposed to support itself with fees [uspto.gov]. The largest fee is for reexamination, creating a financial incentive to grant bad patents (which are likely to be reexamined).
That makes no sense when you look at the statistics. About 1,000 reexamination cases are filed every year. By contrast, the USPTO receives about 500,000 new patent applications every year. The total revenue from reexamination wouldn't even put a dent in the examination process.
Here's how it actually works. When you file a new patent application, you pay an examination fee. That examination fee gets you a little ways down the road (typically two office actions), and if the case isn't allowable by then, you pay another fee for a Request for Continued Examination, which gets you another two office actions. Etc. If you reach the point where the application is ready to be issued, you pay an issue fee, and you get your patent.
In other words - the USPTO funds itself by charging you every time it needs to do something for you, and the costs line up with the amount of work required by the PTO. It's exactly like a car mechanic, right? A mechanic has no interest in doing bad work now in the hope that you'll come back with more expensive work later. It just charges you, today, based on the service that you're asking for, today.
> There's a fine line between clever and stupid. If an average programmer reads the explanation, and "Doesn't get it", it could be either. Most patents are very poor explanations for what they are about.
But the "average programmers" here aren't motivated to try to understand it. They are motivated to find that the patent is worthless, because that's what the submitter wrote about it, and that's what they are predisposed to believe. So they are prone to glance at the application and say, "well, the claims have been mangled by lawyer-speak, but it's basically something about deleting temp files, which has been known since the 70's."
> When someone advocating a position lies to me, as this submitter did, I figure the reason they are lying about the issue is because they realize that the truth doesn't support their position.
I don't think it's flat-out lying. I think it's an example of the echo chamber effect.
The community believes that patents suck, that patent examiners are inept, and that patentees are using clever tricks to patent things that aren't new. So upon encountering any new patent, the submitters here don't do the hard work of reading the patent, parsing through the difficult claim language, and determining what it's all about. Instead, they read the title, maybe glance briefly at the abstract and the claims, and come up with a "basically, it's (something really simple)" summary, and post it as evidence of their beliefs about the patent system. A bunch of commenters then accept that summary without consideration, since it's yet another example of "bad patents," so they post a supporting rant about patents and increment their mental "bad patents I've seen recently" counter by one.
Of course, that process is flawed if the summary is an oversimplification of the claimed technique. Like this submitter concluding that the very specific technique presented in the independent claims is "basically, it's deleting temporary files," or "basically, it's deleting temporary files based on a modification date." But it's accepted without question because it supports the beliefs of the group. Hence, echo chamber.
> If you had a distributed file which kept a timestamp on each of several separate chunks, how would you go about deciding when to automatically delete it? My guess is that the solution you would come up with quickly is basically the one in the patent.
Well, there are several ways you could deal with that problem. Here are some of them:
* Deal with each chunk separately. Just let each machine decide when to delete its chunk.
* Consider all of the chunks to have been modified as of the latest modification date on all of them. Sort all of the temp filed by modification date, and cull the oldest ones first.
* Consider all of the chunks to have been modified as of the earliest modification date on all of them. Sort all of the temp filed by modification date, and cull the oldest ones first.
* Consider all of the chunks to have been modified as of the average of the modification dates. Sort all of the temp filed by modification date, and cull the oldest ones first.
* Consider all of the chunks to have been modified as of the file date listed in the shared filename. Update the modification dates accordingly, and then let each machine deal with its chunk independently of the others.
* Consider all of the chunks to have been modified as of the file date listed in the shared filename. Update the modification dates accordingly, sort all of the time files by modification date, and cull the oldest ones first.
...etc. There are many, many variations on this technique that you might imagine. The one described in this patent is different from all of them:
deriving a file time to live for the file from the path name; determining a weighted file time to live for the file by reducing the file time to live by an offset, where the offset is determined by multiplying the file time to live by a percentage of memory space storage quota used by the user profile; selecting a latest modification time from the modification times of the plurality of chunks;...
If by "that" you mean the invention described in the title - "Automatic Deletion of Temporary Files" - then, no.
Patent titles are as meaningful as book titles: you wouldn't assume that two books entitled "Pirate Adventure" relate the same story, right? It's the same with patents: a completely new type of automobile engine might have the title, "Automobile Engine."
If by "that" you mean the invention described in the independent claim, which is this -
1. A computer-implemented method comprising: selecting a file having a path name in a distributed file system, wherein the file is divided into a plurality of chunks that are distributed among a plurality of servers, wherein each chunk has a modification time indicating when the chunk was last modified, and wherein at least two of the modification times are different; identifying a user profile associated with the file; determining a memory space storage quota usage for the user profile; deriving a file time to live for the file from the path name; determining a weighted file time to live for the file by reducing the file time to live by an offset, where the offset is determined by multiplying the file time to live by a percentage of memory space storage quota used by the user profile; selecting a latest modification time from the modification times of the plurality of chunks; determining that an elapsed time based on the latest modification time is equal to or exceeds the weighted file time to live; and deleting all of the chunks of the file responsive to the determining.
...then presenting that invention as "new" seems legitimate. There are several details in here - dealing with a temporary file as chunks across several file stores, each chunk having a different modification time; and determining the "weighted file time to live" based on the last modification time and the percentage of consumed file quota - that seem completely new.
The author of this Slashdot post appears to have glanced at the claims, reached the conclusion that "basically, it's about deleting temporary files," and posted this rant about how the patent office granted a patent for "deleting temporary files," inspiring yet another wave of diatribes about the patent office based on a faulty assumption. Not surprising - this kind of tilting at windmills, based on factually incorrect interpretations of patents, is a daily occurrence here.
> "If none of the consoles can play used games I could see the price of games coming down. AAA titles may come out at $45 or $50 instead of $60."
:lol: Right. Because when publishers eliminate the only legitimate source of price competition for their titles, they will become benevolent toward their customers and cut the price out of... good-naturedness? Rather than, you know, jacking up the rates for Halo XVIII through the roof, because they know that customers would sell a kidney to play Master Chef again?
Let me get this straight: You're asserting that because email is susceptible to flaws, it's de facto inferior to handing in a hard copy?... which is apparently flawless?
At least the vulnerabilities of email can be addressed. If the university's mail system is applying some false positive spam rules to legitimate email sent within the mail system, that flaw is demonstrable, repeatable, and correctable. By contrast, there is simply no solution for "yes, I turned it in / no, you didn't."
Coincidentally, this was posted two hours after my EE lab TA asked us to ignore the directions at the end of the lab assignment about submitting it to Blackboard, and instructed us NOT to submit it via email. Instead, we were directed to submit it via hard copy.
To be clear, these lab assignments involve programming in a $200+ mathematics package. And these instructions were given in the computer lab, surrounded by tons of machines that have internet access... but no printer.
I can't even begin to imagine the logic behind that decision. I mean, Blackboard sucks, but isn't email submission (using the GMU email system that that we are required to use for classes) more convenient for everyone, more environmentally friendly, AND verifiable?
Mid-2011, I was driving through the Rocky Mountains in Colorado along a road that would around the outside of a canyon. My GPS told me to take a right turn onto "Route 82d." You know what was off to my right? Nothing. A steep degrade, through a bunch of trees, and ending up in the canyon maybe 50 feet down.
I was so shocked by it that I turned around, drove the route again, and captured it with my phone: link
:) Thanks for the suggestion. No plans to do that any time soon. I believe quite strongly that my work makes the software industry a better place for consumers. Also, I really enjoy what I do, and I'm really good at it.
What about DRM in a voting machine that restricts the processor from executing any code that's not signed by a trusted source? Or in an ATM? Those scnearios seem indisputably white-hat to me.
This article makes a mistake that I've seen a hundred times before on Slashdot: confusing "the patent says...", and "the patentee intends to..."
I write software patents for a living. (I didn't write this one.) Let me describe how the patent drafting process goes.
A client comes to me with a simple invention - we'd like to do (A), (B), and (C) to achieve result (X). I talk to them at length about what (ABC) is, and what critically sets (ABC) apart from every similar example. I ask questions about how each of (A), (B), and (C) could be varied; what other elements (D), (E), and/or (F) could be added; and whether (ABC) could also be used for results (Y) or (Z).
And when I write up the patent application, EVERYTHING goes in there. (ABC) is described as the base invention, but all of the other material about (D), (E), (F), (X), (Y), and (Z) is also included as optional extensions or uses of (ABC).
Now, here's the critical thing: I haven't fully considered whether (D) is a desirable feature, or whether (Y) is a desirable result. My client doesn't even know, or says, "we don't really intend to implement (D) or do (X)." None of that is relevant. All that matters is: They are all logical, valid extensions of (ABC), so, typically, they all go in. Anything that could make the basic technique more valuable, appear more useful, or might more fully distinguish (ABC) over known techniques is helpful to add to the specification.
I read this patent the same way. The basic invention is: "Use a camera to count and identify people interacting with a device." Now, you can't just stop there - you haven't said what that information might be used for, and the patent office typically rejects applications that look like, "The technique is: Generate some data." So the patent discloses several uses of that information. That doesn't mean that Microsoft has any interest in using that technique - only that it's logically achievable from the basic techniques.
Look, we all agree that technology is neutral, right? For example, DRM has been *used* for lots of obnoxious purposes (including limiting fair-use rights), but the basic technology of DRM is neither good nor bad - it just is. The same principle applies here.
> You can bet the farm that because of this all major online retailers have already started work to change their registration and ordering systems to implement a clickthrough rather than ticking a checkbox that says 'I agree'.
Ah, but many of those ToS'es include terms that are supposed to apply to activities that don't require registration or ordering - e.g., ToS restrictions on copying content to another site, linking to the site without permission, or suing the company due to information presented on the website.
So, coming next: Visitng ANY major site, even anonymously, will present you with a click-through ToS before you get ANYTHING from them. And to ensure that it remains legal and binding (especially as ToS frequently change), the selection will not be persisted in a cookie; you'll have to complete the ToS click-through at the start of every new session with the website.
The initial impression is that he's describing a computer with a TV-tuner that does X, Y, and Z that are common functions already present in common software packages and/or as built-in OS features.
Every invention is a combination of previously known parts. What makes it an invention is a combination in a new way that provides new advantages. The first airplane was a combination of a known type of engine and some known aerodynamic structures.
Certainly, having video editing software in a TiVo-like device is a desirable feature (a quick Google search turns up a lot of people asking about it around 2006... four years after this patent was filed), and that combination hadn't been made yet. That makes it a patentable invention.
That's what it describes, at any level, so that's all I needed to read.
You're free to assert that "this patent should not have been issued based on my understanding of the prior art." (And then we can have a discussion about what constitutes prior art.)
But you're not free to assert incorrect statements about "what the patent covers," which you gleaned by failing to read the claims. That is factually incorrect, and blatantly disregards how the patent system works. Worse, it's a very common mistake at Slashdot - other people in this very same thread are arguing, "the only thing that matters in the patent is the abstract / brief summary; the claims are irrelevant."
If you really want to criticize a system, you should try to understand its basic operation first. Pretty simple stuff.
> Actually, that's not true. Yes, the claims are used in court. But the full description of the patent, not the claims, are the basis for the PTO's approval or rejection. The claims are simply checked for accuracy -- are they properly descriptive of what's contained in the main body of the patent or not.
That's just horribly wrong. It's practically the exact opposite of reality.
Patent prosecution focuses ALMOST COMPLETELY on the content of the claims - and specifically the independent claims. The entire rest of the patent application - the title, background section, brief summary, detailed description, figures, abstract - exist primarily to support the claims (in addition to a few other minimal requirements - the written description requirement, the enablement requirement, and the "best mode" requirement).
I talk to examiners at the Patent & Trademark Office several times a week. In most cases, our conversation is ONLY about the claims. And in many cases, I feel quite certain that the examiner has only read the claims - the examiner often has ignored or misunderstood the invention and the field of art. I have to explain the invention to them by reiterating the content of the specification, because they didn't read it; they just read the claims. And that's because the claims are really all that matters in the patent.
> 1. You can be relatively certain from the summary.
No, you can't. You have to read the claims. The summary section has nothing to do with the scope of the patent, and is often very different from the claims. Many patents don't even HAVE a summary section, because it's not required.
If you HAD read the claims, you'd have come across this: "wherein the system controller module provides a user-selectable option of editing one or more sections of the one or more video files..." Does your TiVo allow you to edit sections of video files? No? If so, then the patent isn't "essentially a TiVo."
The takeaway message from this hopefully humbling experience is simple: FOR THE LOVE OF GOD, READ THE INDEPENDENT CLAIMS BEFORE YOU JUMP TO ANY CONCLUSION ABOUT WHAT A PATENT COVERS. Don't just read the title, or the abstract, or the background, or PART of the independent claim. READ THE WHOLE INDEPENDENT CLAIM. Slashdotters are horrible about this, and they get these types of patent issues wrong over and over and over again.
> I'm sorry, but I shouldn't have to RTFA just to understand the key word in the summary ("memristor"). It's sloppy writing not to explain it.
>
Couple with that the title "U.S. patent officer." There's no such thing.
Blaise Mouttet is a former patent *examiner* for the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office. The USPTO currently employs over 6,000 patent examiners, each of whom is expected to be of "ordinary skill in the art." There's no indication that this individual's opinion is any more significant than that of any other electrical engineer.
Either it's an error, or the title was sexed up to fabricate an aura of expertise. Can anyone explain why this article made it to the front page of Slashdot?
> If there is a piece of software, hardware, a technique, etc., I want to know everything about it. On the contrary, nearly all of my coworkers resent it and refuse to even acknowledge it, let alone learn about it.
I doubt that they resent *your* interest in learning about new technology. There's nothing wrong with that in isolation, and it's difficult to imagine your colleagues resenting your enthusiasm by itself.
Also, you mention "nearly all of my coworkers" - that implies many people. In any social conflict of one vs. many, what are the odds that all of the many are wrong?
I'd like to suggest three alternative explanations that seem more plausible:
(1) Because of your interest, your colleagues must raise their research or risk looking inadequate by comparison. In other words, your interest is pushing them to put more into their jobs than before - probably without additional compensation or even recognition by their employer.
(2) Your efforts to bring fresh tech into the area are creating additional work (e.g., transitioning to new hardware or software to achieve the same task) and/or causing problems (e.g., switching to bleeding-edge technology before learning of its flaws, whereas tried-and-true methods would have worked fine).
(3) Your enthusiasm comes with some attitudes that the (many?) others find unpleasant.
The bad news is that all of these problems are not simply "their resentment," but real effects of your behavior. The good news is that when your behavior is the problem, the solution is simply changing your behavior. It's fully within your control. You can evaluate the adverse effects of your actions and find alternative behaviors with less adverse effects.
And submarine patents do exist; there's much FUD by MPEG-LA members being spread about the possibility of Vorbis infringing yet unknown patents.
That's not a "submarine patent," which has a very specific meaning in this field.
What you describe is just MPEG-LA spreading FUD. And the standard response here is: "patent app serial numbers or STFU." Either MPEG-LA can point specifically to the applications which (if they actually mature into patents) it believes are being infringed - or it can't, and its accusations of infringement are meritless. It's that simple.
What we really need is compulsory licensing at some percentage of the per head sale price.
Even looking past the obvious question ("How does this point relate at all to anything in this thread?")... compulsory licensing suggestions have a common problem: who establishes the pricing, and based on what data and guidelines?
Usually, what people mean by these suggestions is: "Let's craft a body that's allowed to grant licenses to patented technologies for $cheap!" The problem with all such suggestions is that if you establish a body that (based on applicants' estimations) consistently underprices the value of those licenses, applicants will simply abandon the patent system - and keep their inventions as proprietary trade secrets. No more industry coalitions, no more industry standards like 802.11 and USB and HDMI... every company will make its own protocols, just like back in the 80's. Is that your notion of an ideal computing industry?
Maybe this "World Wide Web" technology will catch on some day.
Ah, but what did Facebook bring us over Geocities and personalized web pages?
Standardized profiles - information is put in the same places on everyone's profiles
Searchability - a very easy ability to find someone's profile by name, city, etc.
Centralized news feeds - this is Facebook's killer app, really: the presentation of a single page featuring status updates by all of your friends, and the ability to handle status responses in a threaded manner
Metadata - the ability to tag friends in photos (and have those photos aggregated into albums for each of your friends), to "like" statuses, to tag friends in notes and to republish others' notes, etc.
The ability for non-technical users to create an account and an entire page in an extremely easy-to-use and non-technical way
And... well, that's about it, really. Other innovations (Facebook apps, in particular) are neither new nor particularly interesting or useful.
In exchange for these features, Facebook has imposed a whole swath of misuses and abuses, including (but hardly limited to):
The privacy violations documented in the parent post
Targeted advertising based on private information ("hey, I see you've written an email about a trip to Boston, here's an offer for a rental car while you're there...")
Taking control of users' data (the inability to archive your profile, the heavy compulsion to use Facebook's (terrible!) email system, etc.)
Extreme control over the arrangement of a user profile, either by the user or by a visitor... e.g., cluttering up the page with Facebook's advertising widgets and non-removable apps
In short - the social network and information delivery advantages that Facebook offers us are beginning to not be worth the costs that Facebook is extracting as the owner of that social network.
Yes, the author is right - we need a free, open, non-centralized alternative to Facebook.
Of course, it can't be a return to the Geocities model. We do need the advantages of Facebook - discoverability, standardization of information, message delivery, and a clean and easily prepared presentation. But requiring everyone to buy web space, learn HTML or a CMS, and design and deploy their own profiles is just not a viable solution.
So what do we need? I propose the following:
A standardized personal information representation - probably an XML schema that holds all of a user's personal information in a standardized way. With the right renderer, the presentation of this information can end up looking exactly like Facebook's. But even better, the viewer of the information - i.e., the visitor of the user's profile - has complete control over the layout of this information, and can render it in a more pleasing way if desired. Better still, the standardization promotes automation - e.g., the automated synchronization of each user's contact information with your contact info database. (No more "my cell number changed, please update your records" email messages!)
A centralized database with pointers to user profiles (e.g., to the XML files of various users posted at various points on the net.) This really needs to be *one* registry. However, it serves a very specific and narrow purpose: if you want to find the guy named Joe from Ypsilanti who you met at an event last week, it needs to point you to his representation (if it's public.)
A security mechanism. Look, this one's much easier than anyone thinks. We've had RSA for over 20 years. Identifying certificates, and techniques for encrypting select pieces of information for access only by specified individuals, are quite well-conceived. We just need automated protocols that incorporate these techniques. If done well, this model vastly surpasses Facebook's security models - you have exquisite privacy control over *every* piece of information: ev
...any patent infringement claims against H.264 must be made known within 6 months of the passage of this law.
I don't think that's what the OP means. Here's what he wrote:
any patents that contribute to an industry-recognized standard were unenforceable in the application of that standard.
I think he means that any patents contributed to an industry standard consortium (like the WiFi Alliance) can't be enforceable. You're suggesting something about patents not contributed to the standards body being enforced against implementations of the technology that are authorized by the standards body. Or something.
Honestly, I'm not entirely sure what either of you mean, or why. And IAAL - in fact, I practice in this area every day.
Is this about making sure that technologies issuing from the standards body are freely available for use by anyone? That's the whole point of the patents owned by the body - to ensure that implementations follow the guidelines of the standards body (particularly about compatibility.) So you're lobbying to allow people to implement standardized technologies in non-compatible ways - i.e., in favor of "embrace, extend, extinguish?" I don't think anyone wants that.
Or maybe you're arguing that if a company has technology and patents verging on the subject matter of an industry standard - e.g., a technology competing with WiFi - but chooses to keep it proprietary, then the company can't assert its patents against implementations issuing from the standards body. That's also a bad idea - should we really force the entire industry onto one standard? Doesn't that deter the advancement of technology through the development of alternative standards that might be better? Bluetooth was first conceived as a potential competitor for WiFi, but it has its own niche and is widely implemented for headsets and such. Under this type of rule change, Bluetooth would have been scrapped as soon as WiFi took hold.
As an aside - the "submarine patents" cited by the author of this post haven't existed for decades, because (1) the patent term calculation was changed to be measured not from the date of issue, but from the date of filing, and (2) most patent applications are published at 18 months.
This is a complex field. It's easy to get confused. But the field suffers from a wide range of folks who don't understand it, and yet still want to "fix" it. Hence, this post, and many like it on Slashdot and elsewhere.
"As soon as something becomes routinely doable by a computer, it is no longer considered a sign of intelligence; it's a mere mechanical activity."
I don't think that's a fair comparison.
"Intelligence" isn't just being able to solve a particular problem, regardless of its difficulty. If you throw the smartest chess algorithm in the world at a map, it won't be able to tell you how to get from point A to point B.
Obviously, "intelligence" involves many of the meta-qualities of problem-solving: inductive logic and generalization, deductive logic, the development and use of heuristics, the recognition of general problems and solutions in different domains - flexibility, spontaneity, personality, predictiveness, humor, semantic language skills, self-awareness, curiosity, intellectual growth, the development of goals...
We might be able to develop an algorithm to tackle one, or even a *few*, of these skills - but only in a narrow domain. Even our best language translators typically understand very little linguistic comprehension, and then only in a specific language or topical domain. Yet, the average five-year-old child demonstrates ALL of these capabilities.
Even at a basic level, these skills are what we would consider "intelligence." When we have a machine that demonstrates even a very rudimentary set of these capabilities, it will be considered intelligent. The rest will just be refinement and scaling up.
...also that software by itself, as the pure mathematical abstraction that it is, is not patentable and has never been considered to be so. Software must be coupled with a physical device...
Sorry, that's completely wrong.
You're reading the context, right? - i.e., "constant holdings in the range of varying CAFC decisions?" And not just your wished-for rule?
First, the CAFC has never held that "software by itself, as the pure mathematical algorithm that it is, is not patentable." Maybe Gottschalk v. Benson arguably involved this position (back in 1972!), but none of the decisions since then more recent decisions do.
Even under Bilski (prong #2), I can easily patent "software, as a pure mathematical abstraction"... as long as that software relates to the manipulation of data involving a real-world article. This is patentable even though the article isn't part of the patented invention.
What you're thinking of is the EPO's current rule - that "software as such" is not patentable, but that a solution to a problem is patentable, even if it is implementable as software. But no such principle has even been in force in the U.S.
===
Software must be coupled with a physical device...
No, it doesn't. Have you read In re Bilski? There's this whole second prong that has to do with patentable software - as a "mathematical abstraction," as you put it - that manipulates data related to specific, physical articles.
Next time, before you wade into a discussion of the legal history of patentable software (or any other topic), please consider reading the actual cases, and not just guessing or making stuff up to suit your position.
===
It's no more arbitrary than the difference between the words on your screen "Mt. St. Helens" and an actual volcano in Washington.
First - you do understand that patents cover concepts, right? And not specific, physical articles? A patent on a "machine" does not actually cover a unique machine, but rather an operative concept of a machine - e.g., a minimal set of parts that interoperate to achieve a desired result. So it's not the "actual volcano," as you put it, but an entire class of volcanoes that happens to have a particular feature. Not quite such a bright line, eh?
Second - and even worse for your position - "methods," as a class, are patentable. (This is in 35 USC section 101. You may want to read that now... I promise, it's short.) Yes, the "method" needs some grounding in pragmatism - and not just a mathematical formula or a scientific principle. But a "method" - a "process," as a set of actions - is a wholly non-physical concept, even if the consequences happen to be physical.
===
The Turing Machine was not and could never have been patentable...
Wow. Where to begin?
I might recommend that you Google "Turing machine" at this point. It is not an actual machine, you know. It is a concept - an argument about functional power, about the class of problems that may be solved by a theoretical machine having a minimal set of capabilities.
If you understand this, and re-read my post, you might discern that I was not suggesting patenting the "Turing machine," which is, uh, nonsensical.
I was, and am, arguing that if one devises a logical solution to a problem that can be performed by a device, there are very, very many ways of implementing that exact logical solution. There is actually no technical difference in these technical embodiments - they all perform the exact same method and solve the problem in exactly the same logical way. Thus, attempts to partition these embodiments into unpatentable "abstract" embodiments and patentable "non-abstract" embodiments are logically flawed and, frankly, a waste of time.
===
Math is not patentable. Software is math. There is no debate...
"The USPTO replied by defining non-mathematical software to be patentable while purely mathematical software is not."
Huh? This is completely wrong.
The USPTO has been arguing against the patentability of software since, well, software was first invented. And its main rationale is that the USPTO is ill-equipped to examine software patent applications. Of course, that argument is quite laughable these days, since it has been obligated to examine software patents since State Street Bank v. Signature Financial Group (1998)... it raises many more questions about the USPTO's recalcitrance to get with the times and meet its legal obligations... i.e., the sharp incompetence and chronic failure of the USPTO administration in managing the day-to-day operations of the organization.
The only "definitions" that have been applied to the field were created by the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (CAFC), the appellate court that is solely empowered to hear appeals of district-level decisions in patent cases. That body (and its predecessor, the Court of Customs and Patent Appeals (CCPA)) have issued many different tests over the patentability of software. None have been satisfactory.
There is only one constant holding in the range of varying CAFC decisions over the years: software cannot be categorically rejected as a class of patentable subject matter. This would be a flat contradiction of 35 USC, the body of federal law that empowers the USPTO to issue patents.
But getting to the deeper problem: Software inventions cannot be categorically excluded from patentability because the technological spectrum of "method"-type inventions has a very smooth gradient. Consider:
An abstract solution to an abstract problem;
An applied solution to a specific problem;
A particular algorithm;
Specific code, runnable on a range of hardware;
Code embedded in memory of various volatilities (volatile RAM, flashable memory, static ROMs);
Configurable hardware (FPGAs) configured to implement a particular method; and
Circuits designed by automated processes to implement a solution specified (as software) with a circuit design tool.
Everyone seems to agree that a particular circuit is, and should be, patentable. And everyone seems to agree that a completely abstract solution to a completely abstract problem is not, and should not be, patentable. Fair enough.
The logical problem arises when someone (particularly opponents of software patents - Knuth, Stallman, etc.) try to draw a bright line in this list and say, "Everything above this list should be categorically excluded." The problem is that all of these embodiments accomplish the exact same thing in essentially the same way. Sure, there may be various ancillary advantages: cost of implementation, reconfigurability, speed, etc. But technically, they are completely fungible - they are technically equivalent. It is nonsensical and against the logic of technology to try to draw lines in the sand.
Shame on anyone who attempts to invent arbitrary distinctions in this field. In attempting to warp the business of software to suit your ends, you ignore the conclusions of Turing that form the basis of your area of technology.
Slashdot Mirror
> Sure, but automatically deleting temporary files ?!?
Is every book entitled "Pirate Adventure" about the exact same story?
You can't just read the title - you have to read the claims. There's a whole lot more specific detail in the independent claims than "automatically deleting temporary files."
> The USPTO is supposed to support itself with fees [uspto.gov]. The largest fee is for reexamination, creating a financial incentive to grant bad patents (which are likely to be reexamined).
That makes no sense when you look at the statistics. About 1,000 reexamination cases are filed every year. By contrast, the USPTO receives about 500,000 new patent applications every year. The total revenue from reexamination wouldn't even put a dent in the examination process.
Here's how it actually works. When you file a new patent application, you pay an examination fee. That examination fee gets you a little ways down the road (typically two office actions), and if the case isn't allowable by then, you pay another fee for a Request for Continued Examination, which gets you another two office actions. Etc. If you reach the point where the application is ready to be issued, you pay an issue fee, and you get your patent.
In other words - the USPTO funds itself by charging you every time it needs to do something for you, and the costs line up with the amount of work required by the PTO. It's exactly like a car mechanic, right? A mechanic has no interest in doing bad work now in the hope that you'll come back with more expensive work later. It just charges you, today, based on the service that you're asking for, today.
> There's a fine line between clever and stupid. If an average programmer reads the explanation, and "Doesn't get it", it could be either. Most patents are very poor explanations for what they are about.
But the "average programmers" here aren't motivated to try to understand it. They are motivated to find that the patent is worthless, because that's what the submitter wrote about it, and that's what they are predisposed to believe. So they are prone to glance at the application and say, "well, the claims have been mangled by lawyer-speak, but it's basically something about deleting temp files, which has been known since the 70's."
> When someone advocating a position lies to me, as this submitter did, I figure the reason they are lying about the issue is because they realize that the truth doesn't support their position.
I don't think it's flat-out lying. I think it's an example of the echo chamber effect.
The community believes that patents suck, that patent examiners are inept, and that patentees are using clever tricks to patent things that aren't new. So upon encountering any new patent, the submitters here don't do the hard work of reading the patent, parsing through the difficult claim language, and determining what it's all about. Instead, they read the title, maybe glance briefly at the abstract and the claims, and come up with a "basically, it's (something really simple)" summary, and post it as evidence of their beliefs about the patent system. A bunch of commenters then accept that summary without consideration, since it's yet another example of "bad patents," so they post a supporting rant about patents and increment their mental "bad patents I've seen recently" counter by one.
Of course, that process is flawed if the summary is an oversimplification of the claimed technique. Like this submitter concluding that the very specific technique presented in the independent claims is "basically, it's deleting temporary files," or "basically, it's deleting temporary files based on a modification date." But it's accepted without question because it supports the beliefs of the group. Hence, echo chamber.
> If you had a distributed file which kept a timestamp on each of several separate chunks, how would you go about deciding when to automatically delete it? My guess is that the solution you would come up with quickly is basically the one in the patent.
Well, there are several ways you could deal with that problem. Here are some of them:
deriving a file time to live for the file from the path name; determining a weighted file time to live for the file by reducing the file time to live by an offset, where the offset is determined by multiplying the file time to live by a percentage of memory space storage quota used by the user profile; selecting a latest modification time from the modification times of the plurality of chunks;...
> This is supposed to be new....
If by "that" you mean the invention described in the title - "Automatic Deletion of Temporary Files" - then, no.
Patent titles are as meaningful as book titles: you wouldn't assume that two books entitled "Pirate Adventure" relate the same story, right? It's the same with patents: a completely new type of automobile engine might have the title, "Automobile Engine."
If by "that" you mean the invention described in the independent claim, which is this -
1. A computer-implemented method comprising: selecting a file having a path name in a distributed file system, wherein the file is divided into a plurality of chunks that are distributed among a plurality of servers, wherein each chunk has a modification time indicating when the chunk was last modified, and wherein at least two of the modification times are different; identifying a user profile associated with the file; determining a memory space storage quota usage for the user profile; deriving a file time to live for the file from the path name; determining a weighted file time to live for the file by reducing the file time to live by an offset, where the offset is determined by multiplying the file time to live by a percentage of memory space storage quota used by the user profile; selecting a latest modification time from the modification times of the plurality of chunks; determining that an elapsed time based on the latest modification time is equal to or exceeds the weighted file time to live; and deleting all of the chunks of the file responsive to the determining.
The author of this Slashdot post appears to have glanced at the claims, reached the conclusion that "basically, it's about deleting temporary files," and posted this rant about how the patent office granted a patent for "deleting temporary files," inspiring yet another wave of diatribes about the patent office based on a faulty assumption. Not surprising - this kind of tilting at windmills, based on factually incorrect interpretations of patents, is a daily occurrence here.
> "If none of the consoles can play used games I could see the price of games coming down. AAA titles may come out at $45 or $50 instead of $60."
Let me get this straight: You're asserting that because email is susceptible to flaws, it's de facto inferior to handing in a hard copy? ... which is apparently flawless?
At least the vulnerabilities of email can be addressed. If the university's mail system is applying some false positive spam rules to legitimate email sent within the mail system, that flaw is demonstrable, repeatable, and correctable. By contrast, there is simply no solution for "yes, I turned it in / no, you didn't."
Coincidentally, this was posted two hours after my EE lab TA asked us to ignore the directions at the end of the lab assignment about submitting it to Blackboard, and instructed us NOT to submit it via email. Instead, we were directed to submit it via hard copy. To be clear, these lab assignments involve programming in a $200+ mathematics package. And these instructions were given in the computer lab, surrounded by tons of machines that have internet access... but no printer. I can't even begin to imagine the logic behind that decision. I mean, Blackboard sucks, but isn't email submission (using the GMU email system that that we are required to use for classes) more convenient for everyone, more environmentally friendly, AND verifiable?
Mid-2011, I was driving through the Rocky Mountains in Colorado along a road that would around the outside of a canyon. My GPS told me to take a right turn onto "Route 82d." You know what was off to my right? Nothing. A steep degrade, through a bunch of trees, and ending up in the canyon maybe 50 feet down.
I was so shocked by it that I turned around, drove the route again, and captured it with my phone: link
Bottom line: Don't blindly trust your GPS.
Please remove yourself from the human race
DRM is bad.
What about DRM in a voting machine that restricts the processor from executing any code that's not signed by a trusted source? Or in an ATM? Those scnearios seem indisputably white-hat to me.
I write software patents for a living. (I didn't write this one.) Let me describe how the patent drafting process goes.
A client comes to me with a simple invention - we'd like to do (A), (B), and (C) to achieve result (X). I talk to them at length about what (ABC) is, and what critically sets (ABC) apart from every similar example. I ask questions about how each of (A), (B), and (C) could be varied; what other elements (D), (E), and/or (F) could be added; and whether (ABC) could also be used for results (Y) or (Z).
And when I write up the patent application, EVERYTHING goes in there. (ABC) is described as the base invention, but all of the other material about (D), (E), (F), (X), (Y), and (Z) is also included as optional extensions or uses of (ABC).
Now, here's the critical thing: I haven't fully considered whether (D) is a desirable feature, or whether (Y) is a desirable result. My client doesn't even know, or says, "we don't really intend to implement (D) or do (X)." None of that is relevant. All that matters is: They are all logical, valid extensions of (ABC), so, typically, they all go in. Anything that could make the basic technique more valuable, appear more useful, or might more fully distinguish (ABC) over known techniques is helpful to add to the specification.
I read this patent the same way. The basic invention is: "Use a camera to count and identify people interacting with a device." Now, you can't just stop there - you haven't said what that information might be used for, and the patent office typically rejects applications that look like, "The technique is: Generate some data." So the patent discloses several uses of that information. That doesn't mean that Microsoft has any interest in using that technique - only that it's logically achievable from the basic techniques.
Look, we all agree that technology is neutral, right? For example, DRM has been *used* for lots of obnoxious purposes (including limiting fair-use rights), but the basic technology of DRM is neither good nor bad - it just is. The same principle applies here.
Ah, but many of those ToS'es include terms that are supposed to apply to activities that don't require registration or ordering - e.g., ToS restrictions on copying content to another site, linking to the site without permission, or suing the company due to information presented on the website.
So, coming next: Visitng ANY major site, even anonymously, will present you with a click-through ToS before you get ANYTHING from them. And to ensure that it remains legal and binding (especially as ToS frequently change), the selection will not be persisted in a cookie; you'll have to complete the ToS click-through at the start of every new session with the website.
Ugh. The web is about to become uglier.
The initial impression is that he's describing a computer with a TV-tuner that does X, Y, and Z that are common functions already present in common software packages and/or as built-in OS features.
Every invention is a combination of previously known parts. What makes it an invention is a combination in a new way that provides new advantages. The first airplane was a combination of a known type of engine and some known aerodynamic structures.
Certainly, having video editing software in a TiVo-like device is a desirable feature (a quick Google search turns up a lot of people asking about it around 2006... four years after this patent was filed), and that combination hadn't been made yet. That makes it a patentable invention.
That's what it describes, at any level, so that's all I needed to read.
You're free to assert that "this patent should not have been issued based on my understanding of the prior art." (And then we can have a discussion about what constitutes prior art.)
But you're not free to assert incorrect statements about "what the patent covers," which you gleaned by failing to read the claims. That is factually incorrect, and blatantly disregards how the patent system works. Worse, it's a very common mistake at Slashdot - other people in this very same thread are arguing, "the only thing that matters in the patent is the abstract / brief summary; the claims are irrelevant."
If you really want to criticize a system, you should try to understand its basic operation first. Pretty simple stuff.
> Actually, that's not true. Yes, the claims are used in court. But the full description of the patent, not the claims, are the basis for the PTO's approval or rejection. The claims are simply checked for accuracy -- are they properly descriptive of what's contained in the main body of the patent or not.
That's just horribly wrong. It's practically the exact opposite of reality.
Patent prosecution focuses ALMOST COMPLETELY on the content of the claims - and specifically the independent claims. The entire rest of the patent application - the title, background section, brief summary, detailed description, figures, abstract - exist primarily to support the claims (in addition to a few other minimal requirements - the written description requirement, the enablement requirement, and the "best mode" requirement).
I talk to examiners at the Patent & Trademark Office several times a week. In most cases, our conversation is ONLY about the claims. And in many cases, I feel quite certain that the examiner has only read the claims - the examiner often has ignored or misunderstood the invention and the field of art. I have to explain the invention to them by reiterating the content of the specification, because they didn't read it; they just read the claims. And that's because the claims are really all that matters in the patent.
No, you can't. You have to read the claims. The summary section has nothing to do with the scope of the patent, and is often very different from the claims. Many patents don't even HAVE a summary section, because it's not required.
If you HAD read the claims, you'd have come across this: "wherein the system controller module provides a user-selectable option of editing one or more sections of the one or more video files..." Does your TiVo allow you to edit sections of video files? No? If so, then the patent isn't "essentially a TiVo."
The takeaway message from this hopefully humbling experience is simple: FOR THE LOVE OF GOD, READ THE INDEPENDENT CLAIMS BEFORE YOU JUMP TO ANY CONCLUSION ABOUT WHAT A PATENT COVERS. Don't just read the title, or the abstract, or the background, or PART of the independent claim. READ THE WHOLE INDEPENDENT CLAIM. Slashdotters are horrible about this, and they get these types of patent issues wrong over and over and over again.
>
Couple with that the title "U.S. patent officer." There's no such thing.
Blaise Mouttet is a former patent *examiner* for the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office. The USPTO currently employs over 6,000 patent examiners, each of whom is expected to be of "ordinary skill in the art." There's no indication that this individual's opinion is any more significant than that of any other electrical engineer.
Either it's an error, or the title was sexed up to fabricate an aura of expertise. Can anyone explain why this article made it to the front page of Slashdot?
I doubt that they resent *your* interest in learning about new technology. There's nothing wrong with that in isolation, and it's difficult to imagine your colleagues resenting your enthusiasm by itself.
Also, you mention "nearly all of my coworkers" - that implies many people. In any social conflict of one vs. many, what are the odds that all of the many are wrong?
I'd like to suggest three alternative explanations that seem more plausible:
The bad news is that all of these problems are not simply "their resentment," but real effects of your behavior. The good news is that when your behavior is the problem, the solution is simply changing your behavior. It's fully within your control. You can evaluate the adverse effects of your actions and find alternative behaviors with less adverse effects.
And submarine patents do exist; there's much FUD by MPEG-LA members being spread about the possibility of Vorbis infringing yet unknown patents.
That's not a "submarine patent," which has a very specific meaning in this field.
What you describe is just MPEG-LA spreading FUD. And the standard response here is: "patent app serial numbers or STFU." Either MPEG-LA can point specifically to the applications which (if they actually mature into patents) it believes are being infringed - or it can't, and its accusations of infringement are meritless. It's that simple.
What we really need is compulsory licensing at some percentage of the per head sale price.
Even looking past the obvious question ("How does this point relate at all to anything in this thread?")... compulsory licensing suggestions have a common problem: who establishes the pricing, and based on what data and guidelines?
Usually, what people mean by these suggestions is: "Let's craft a body that's allowed to grant licenses to patented technologies for $cheap!" The problem with all such suggestions is that if you establish a body that (based on applicants' estimations) consistently underprices the value of those licenses, applicants will simply abandon the patent system - and keep their inventions as proprietary trade secrets. No more industry coalitions, no more industry standards like 802.11 and USB and HDMI... every company will make its own protocols, just like back in the 80's. Is that your notion of an ideal computing industry?
Maybe this "World Wide Web" technology will catch on some day.
Ah, but what did Facebook bring us over Geocities and personalized web pages?
And... well, that's about it, really. Other innovations (Facebook apps, in particular) are neither new nor particularly interesting or useful.
In exchange for these features, Facebook has imposed a whole swath of misuses and abuses, including (but hardly limited to):
In short - the social network and information delivery advantages that Facebook offers us are beginning to not be worth the costs that Facebook is extracting as the owner of that social network.
Yes, the author is right - we need a free, open, non-centralized alternative to Facebook.
Of course, it can't be a return to the Geocities model. We do need the advantages of Facebook - discoverability, standardization of information, message delivery, and a clean and easily prepared presentation. But requiring everyone to buy web space, learn HTML or a CMS, and design and deploy their own profiles is just not a viable solution.
So what do we need? I propose the following:
...any patent infringement claims against H.264 must be made known within 6 months of the passage of this law.
I don't think that's what the OP means. Here's what he wrote:
any patents that contribute to an industry-recognized standard were unenforceable in the application of that standard.
I think he means that any patents contributed to an industry standard consortium (like the WiFi Alliance) can't be enforceable. You're suggesting something about patents not contributed to the standards body being enforced against implementations of the technology that are authorized by the standards body. Or something.
Honestly, I'm not entirely sure what either of you mean, or why. And IAAL - in fact, I practice in this area every day.
Is this about making sure that technologies issuing from the standards body are freely available for use by anyone? That's the whole point of the patents owned by the body - to ensure that implementations follow the guidelines of the standards body (particularly about compatibility.) So you're lobbying to allow people to implement standardized technologies in non-compatible ways - i.e., in favor of "embrace, extend, extinguish?" I don't think anyone wants that.
Or maybe you're arguing that if a company has technology and patents verging on the subject matter of an industry standard - e.g., a technology competing with WiFi - but chooses to keep it proprietary, then the company can't assert its patents against implementations issuing from the standards body. That's also a bad idea - should we really force the entire industry onto one standard? Doesn't that deter the advancement of technology through the development of alternative standards that might be better? Bluetooth was first conceived as a potential competitor for WiFi, but it has its own niche and is widely implemented for headsets and such. Under this type of rule change, Bluetooth would have been scrapped as soon as WiFi took hold.
As an aside - the "submarine patents" cited by the author of this post haven't existed for decades, because (1) the patent term calculation was changed to be measured not from the date of issue, but from the date of filing, and (2) most patent applications are published at 18 months.
This is a complex field. It's easy to get confused. But the field suffers from a wide range of folks who don't understand it, and yet still want to "fix" it. Hence, this post, and many like it on Slashdot and elsewhere.
I don't think that's a fair comparison.
"Intelligence" isn't just being able to solve a particular problem, regardless of its difficulty. If you throw the smartest chess algorithm in the world at a map, it won't be able to tell you how to get from point A to point B.
Obviously, "intelligence" involves many of the meta-qualities of problem-solving: inductive logic and generalization, deductive logic, the development and use of heuristics, the recognition of general problems and solutions in different domains - flexibility, spontaneity, personality, predictiveness, humor, semantic language skills, self-awareness, curiosity, intellectual growth, the development of goals...
We might be able to develop an algorithm to tackle one, or even a *few*, of these skills - but only in a narrow domain. Even our best language translators typically understand very little linguistic comprehension, and then only in a specific language or topical domain. Yet, the average five-year-old child demonstrates ALL of these capabilities.
Even at a basic level, these skills are what we would consider "intelligence." When we have a machine that demonstrates even a very rudimentary set of these capabilities, it will be considered intelligent. The rest will just be refinement and scaling up.
- David Stein
Sorry, that's completely wrong.
You're reading the context, right? - i.e., "constant holdings in the range of varying CAFC decisions?" And not just your wished-for rule?
First, the CAFC has never held that "software by itself, as the pure mathematical algorithm that it is, is not patentable." Maybe Gottschalk v. Benson arguably involved this position (back in 1972!), but none of the decisions since then more recent decisions do.
Even under Bilski (prong #2), I can easily patent "software, as a pure mathematical abstraction"... as long as that software relates to the manipulation of data involving a real-world article. This is patentable even though the article isn't part of the patented invention.
What you're thinking of is the EPO's current rule - that "software as such" is not patentable, but that a solution to a problem is patentable, even if it is implementable as software. But no such principle has even been in force in the U.S.
===
Software must be coupled with a physical device...
No, it doesn't. Have you read In re Bilski? There's this whole second prong that has to do with patentable software - as a "mathematical abstraction," as you put it - that manipulates data related to specific, physical articles.
Next time, before you wade into a discussion of the legal history of patentable software (or any other topic), please consider reading the actual cases, and not just guessing or making stuff up to suit your position.
===
It's no more arbitrary than the difference between the words on your screen "Mt. St. Helens" and an actual volcano in Washington.
First - you do understand that patents cover concepts, right? And not specific, physical articles? A patent on a "machine" does not actually cover a unique machine, but rather an operative concept of a machine - e.g., a minimal set of parts that interoperate to achieve a desired result. So it's not the "actual volcano," as you put it, but an entire class of volcanoes that happens to have a particular feature. Not quite such a bright line, eh?
Second - and even worse for your position - "methods," as a class, are patentable. (This is in 35 USC section 101. You may want to read that now... I promise, it's short.) Yes, the "method" needs some grounding in pragmatism - and not just a mathematical formula or a scientific principle. But a "method" - a "process," as a set of actions - is a wholly non-physical concept, even if the consequences happen to be physical.
===
The Turing Machine was not and could never have been patentable...
Wow. Where to begin?
I might recommend that you Google "Turing machine" at this point. It is not an actual machine, you know. It is a concept - an argument about functional power, about the class of problems that may be solved by a theoretical machine having a minimal set of capabilities.
If you understand this, and re-read my post, you might discern that I was not suggesting patenting the "Turing machine," which is, uh, nonsensical.
I was, and am, arguing that if one devises a logical solution to a problem that can be performed by a device, there are very, very many ways of implementing that exact logical solution. There is actually no technical difference in these technical embodiments - they all perform the exact same method and solve the problem in exactly the same logical way. Thus, attempts to partition these embodiments into unpatentable "abstract" embodiments and patentable "non-abstract" embodiments are logically flawed and, frankly, a waste of time.
===
Math is not patentable. Software is math. There is no debate...
There most certainly is debate. Sorry you don'
"The USPTO replied by defining non-mathematical software to be patentable while purely mathematical software is not."
Huh? This is completely wrong.
The USPTO has been arguing against the patentability of software since, well, software was first invented. And its main rationale is that the USPTO is ill-equipped to examine software patent applications. Of course, that argument is quite laughable these days, since it has been obligated to examine software patents since State Street Bank v. Signature Financial Group (1998)... it raises many more questions about the USPTO's recalcitrance to get with the times and meet its legal obligations... i.e., the sharp incompetence and chronic failure of the USPTO administration in managing the day-to-day operations of the organization.
The only "definitions" that have been applied to the field were created by the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (CAFC), the appellate court that is solely empowered to hear appeals of district-level decisions in patent cases. That body (and its predecessor, the Court of Customs and Patent Appeals (CCPA)) have issued many different tests over the patentability of software. None have been satisfactory.
There is only one constant holding in the range of varying CAFC decisions over the years: software cannot be categorically rejected as a class of patentable subject matter. This would be a flat contradiction of 35 USC, the body of federal law that empowers the USPTO to issue patents.
But getting to the deeper problem: Software inventions cannot be categorically excluded from patentability because the technological spectrum of "method"-type inventions has a very smooth gradient. Consider:
Everyone seems to agree that a particular circuit is, and should be, patentable. And everyone seems to agree that a completely abstract solution to a completely abstract problem is not, and should not be, patentable. Fair enough.
The logical problem arises when someone (particularly opponents of software patents - Knuth, Stallman, etc.) try to draw a bright line in this list and say, "Everything above this list should be categorically excluded." The problem is that all of these embodiments accomplish the exact same thing in essentially the same way. Sure, there may be various ancillary advantages: cost of implementation, reconfigurability, speed, etc. But technically, they are completely fungible - they are technically equivalent. It is nonsensical and against the logic of technology to try to draw lines in the sand.
Shame on anyone who attempts to invent arbitrary distinctions in this field. In attempting to warp the business of software to suit your ends, you ignore the conclusions of Turing that form the basis of your area of technology.
- David Stein