Algorithmic Patenting 85
An anonymous reader writes: Venturebeat reports on companies using software to "create" patents. They say a company called Cloem will use the software to "linguistically manipulate a seed set of a client's patent claims by, for example, substituting in synonyms or reordering steps in a process, thereby generating tens of thousands of potentially patentable inventions." The article says, "There is reason to believe that at least some of its computer-conceived inventions could be patentable and, indeed, patents have already been granted on inventions designed wholly or in part by software."
A good strategy (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:A good strategy (Score:5, Insightful)
This is a strategy for demonstrating the absurdity of the current patent regime, right?
Unintentionally, no doubt. On the bright side the more absurdly and widely abused the system is the more ammunition for reforming it. I hope they cause a real mess spamming the USPTO with every possible patentable combination of words. Maybe they'll replace the USPTO staff with an infinite number of monkeys with typewriters to process them.
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I would think you could take a written text and work backwards from the word-order to generate the "state" of the brute force operation to figure out at what year in the future the patent would have come out of the monkey type-writer.
My point is: if you set the dominoes in motion to brute force every possible patent, that monkey type-writer could be argued to be prior art for ANY patent with the "state" fast-forwarded through time to demonstrate that ANY written text would have been eventually produced by i
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Well, based on what I've read anyway. I don't actually work at the patent office or know anyone who does.
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I wonder why nobody come up with an algorithm generator to spam software patents already. Seems like the goal is the wording and not the substance all along.
Well, the whole problem is that it's not supposed to be. Form over substance was never supposed to be the point of patent applications. But generations of lawyers and government patent examiners have made it so.
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Maybe they'll replace the USPTO staff with an infinite number of monkeys with typewriters to process them.
An easier solution is a large rubber stamp with the work REJECTED on it. Just run each patent claim through one of those programs that colleges use to detect plagiarism. Have some minimum wage office worker stamp each one that is too similar to another. If several patents are flagged as being too similar you start fining the attorneys filing them.
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> staff with an infinite number of monkeys with typewriters
Wow, you just defined "government bureau"!
Re:A good strategy (Score:5, Informative)
In true Slashdot style, I haven't read TFA, but TFS sounds like Venturebeat is stirring up a good old-fashioned angry mob.
Historically, patent lawsuits have been won or lost based on careful wording. A good synonym can mean an enormous financial difference for an inventor (or inventor-funding company).
Patents must be specific enough to describe a particular set of implementations of an idea, rather than just the general idea itself. Despite Slashdot's love of the phrase, "on a computer" does not a patent make. Rather, the patent must describe exactly how the computer functions with regard to the invention itself. Yes, sometimes that means describing the only reasonable mechanism, but it's still specific.
On the other hand, that specificity can be problematic when it comes time to actually use the exclusivity a patent provides. A car-analogy patent might have been worded to refer to driving on asphalt, but there are some roads that are paved with concrete or bricks. Hiring a specialist to find such trivial loopholes might be a very good investment for an applicant trying to write their patent. Any realistically-equivalent implementations can be added to the patent as additional claims.
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Having now read TFA, I must partially retract my previous statement. Venturebeat isn't raising the angry mob, but Slashdot is.
TFA is actually mostly focused on the effect such almost-the-same claims would have on the concept of inventorship. Currently, it's straightforward: If someone discovers an alternate implementation, they get credit. However, if an inventor gives a seed patent to Cloem's software, and the software produces a list of almost-the-same implementations, who gets credit for those? The inven
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However, if an inventor gives a seed patent to Cloem's software, and the software produces a list of almost-the-same implementations, who gets credit for those? The inventor of the seed patent? Cloem's software engineers? The computer itself?
My guess is which ever one signs the checks to the patent attorney. ;P
So probably the computer
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Having now read TFA, I must partially retract my previous statement. Venturebeat isn't raising the angry mob, but Slashdot is.
No, it's not just Slashdot. It's also whoever came up with this line (either VentureBeat or the company's marketing department):
First, substituting synonyms doesn't really work. Within a patent's claims, different words are presumed to have different meanings (i.e. if you meant the same thing in two places, you would have used the same word). So if you have one
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Quantity has a quality all its own, as one Mr. Stalin is alleged to have said.
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Not only does "on a computer" make a patent, "on a machine readable medium" (Beauregard claim) is quite sufficient.
Doctrine of equivalents.
Stop apologizing for the patent syste
Re:A good strategy (Score:4, Interesting)
Even better, if the patent examiners don't just crack under the strain, then they do the job of distinguishing vaguely worthwhile patents from algorithmic word salad for you!
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Isn't there a fee for filing a patent application? Maybe it should be exponential, with the cost doubling for every patent a company files that month. That would discourage excessive patent filing, but still be worth it to anyone who really did invent more than a few dozen genuine inventions per year.
If there is no fee or it is very low, someone should do a Kickstarter to raise funds to auto-generate millions of time wasting patents and file them. Break the system, force reform.
Re:A good tragedy (Score:3)
I think you may have meant this is a tragedy for demonstrating the absurdity of the current patent regime. Just a typo, I'm sure.
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Screw it, let's just do straight up Markov chains to generate patents, see if anyone notices.
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It's also real life imitating art, because the protagonist of Charles Stross' novel Accelerando ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ [wikipedia.org]... ) uses this technique and becomes persona non-grata in the US. The book came out in 2005.
I believe that Cory Doctorow [wikipedia.org]'s protagonist used this technique at one point in Eastern Standard Tribe [wikipedia.org] as well.
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I'd take it. Your "logical" conclusion is no different from abolishing patents altogether, minus a 20 year wait which, in the grand scheme of things, is pretty inconsequential.
How about making patent reviews like PhDs? (Score:2)
Just riffing here... but what if you have a patent issued one of the inventors listed on the patent had to explain and defend it to a patent investigator/committee?
Obviously it wouldn't be at nearly the same level of detail as an oral defense, but at least it would mean someone has to understand the patent - someone other than the lawyers and/or software employed to make it as unreadable as possible.
Re:How about making patent reviews like PhDs? (Score:5, Interesting)
> It is judge, I have it running on my smartphone.
Really? Let's see, name Random Global Search And Replace Thesaurus Based Script Bot For Patents. That's a rather long name for a person, as well as a rather odd one. What were your parents named Mr Patents?
> I'm sorry judge, but it doesn't have patents, it's a piece of software.
Software? So you mean it's one of those AI thingies? A sentient machine like C3PO? Able think, imagine, and create new ideas?
>Ummm... Not as such. It just changes words with other synonyms and sometimes reorders the steps in a sequence of steps.
So let me get this straight. You patented someone elses work, after making minor modifications to it with something that has no more creativity or understanding than throwing random words into a jumble and expect to invent this despite patent laws requirement for it to be something that an expert in the field would not find obvious and yet "running an app" is something that anyone can do, even my two year old daughter that can't read, and absolutely in no way reaches that simple, though often argued over, benchmark?
>I, uh, wouldn't put it that way your honor...
Well I did. Patent revoked. In fact, all "patents" submitted that are creations of that stupid script are hereby revoked, and don't try it again or I'm going to throw the book at you for wasting everyones time you stupid little troll!
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(Ok, I'd expect everything after the word "revoked" would just be in the judges head, but the thought counts, right?)
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I think it will be more like:
Alright sir, I see you are here to defend patent XJ82934952H28354. Why isn't the inventor here?
> I'm right here, your Honor!
Someone said you used a computer program to write this patent. Is that true?
> It sure is, your Honor! But then again, most everybody uses a computer program to write patents these days. Microsoft Word, for example.
Ah, I see. Carry on!
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Clearly, people who are bad at extemporaneous speaking don't deserve patents.
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I think we already have the answer to that question in the form of companies like Elsevier. Or was that not the peer review process you were talking about?
Thesis defense style would break down pretty quickly, as people tend to like to get work done instead of spending every day on a review panel.
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I think we already have the answer to that question in the form of companies like Elsevier. Or was that not the peer review process you were talking about?
No, journal reviews have nothing to do with oral defenses. And besides, Elsevier is a private company, we are talking about a public process. Who knows, the actual review process could be public (actually, SHOULD be public), even if in a "read only" sense (maybe with the ability to file prior art claims, etc).
Thesis defense style would break down pretty quickly, as people tend to like to get work done instead of spending every day on a review panel.
This is the 21st century. This doesn't have to involve a bunch of people sitting in a room all day. Could be video conference, could be asynchronous Q&A, etc. And the reviewers can be PAID to r
Simple Fix - Eliminate Patent System (Score:4, Insightful)
It is time to eliminate the patent system. The only reward should be delivering the product to customers and making the sales.
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So this. Meantime, patents should only be defendable if the INVENTION is a: ready to market at the time of filing and b: ON the market when the filing is processed.
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Which means that only rich people will be able to ever invent anything, thus completely ruining the spirit of the patent system.
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the fuck are you on about?
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Do you work for Zynga?
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Do you work for Zynga?
Do you know the difference between a patent and a trademark?
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Eliminate it for software, certainly. Why does the US have software patents in the first place?
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Just in case (Score:5, Interesting)
anyone needed another proof that the patent system is FUBAR.
Fees are a limiting factor (Score:1)
Unlike telemarketing, in which calls are "free," there are fees associated with excess claims on a patent. Unless you're quite certain these aspects of your "invention" are worth something, you'll lose money; unless, of course, you're a patent troll, and the facts of the matter are not important.
Riiight (Score:1, Insightful)
"There is reason to believe that at least some of its computer-conceived inventions could be patentable and, indeed, patents have already been granted on inventions designed wholly or in part by software."
Right. And according to Fox News, "It is SAID BY SOME that Obama isn't a native citizen. Not that *we're* saying it, mind you, so we can't be held accountable. It's just, you know, THEY said it was true. Who's THEY? Well, we can't tell you, and we can neither confirm nor deny that we're using 'they' in
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"it is said by some" or "critics say" is a tool used by all journalists. you cant say that is only a fox news thing.
One can use this tool, in good faith, to summarize well-known opinions and form questions in the context of an interview.
One can also use it to spread innuendo, in the way that the GP illustrated: by giving unwarranted exposure to false ideas and presenting them in a disingenuous way, while at the same time disavowing any connection to them.
Fox tends to do the latter.
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The problem would be that they'd simply change their patent holdings to shell companies. Each shell company would hold about 4 patents.
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Ignoring the economics (Score:3)
Obtaining patents isn't free. One would have to look at the zillions of generated patent applications and decide which ones, if any, were worth the application and prosecution fees -- not to mention the attorney's fees. (It wouldn't be a very high percentage.) This is a pointless exercise.
My advice is to roll over and go back to sleep.
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Bad article title (Score:3)
If so.. (Score:2)
Sedgewick and Knuth et al. would be billionaires.
So... (Score:2)
But can you patent the software that gens patents? (Score:3)
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I don't see why not (so long as software patents are allowed), but once you have your patent application, you'd better run the software on it and also submit all the variants it comes up with, before someone else does.
Algorithm #47 (Score:2)
Here's a patent-generating algorithm inspired by the "business process" nonsense of receiving patents just for automating long-known manual processes and/or putting them "on the internet":
Always wondered about this (Score:2)
Monkey typists, monkey photographers... (Score:2)
Um, I have prior art for that ... (Score:2)
Back in 2009 I proposed a very similar system but for the purpose of generating prior art to thus invalidate as many troll patents as possible. I even posted it here on Slashdot. funny, I got no responses. Here's a link to my blog post about it: http://www.ideationizing.com/2... [ideationizing.com].
Yes, I know. My method is not similar enough to invalidate their patent, which I am sure they will get despite their method being an algorithm. But this is Slashdot, the home of misleading headlines.
Almost anything algorithmic expansion creates is (Score:1)
Caveat lector: "My understanding is that," are "weasel words" that indicate I am not a lawyer and I am not giving legal advice an