Vigilante Engineer Stops Waymo From Patenting Key Lidar Technology (arstechnica.com) 65
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: A lone engineer has succeeded in doing what Uber's top lawyers and expert witnesses could not -- overturning most of a foundational patent covering arch-rival Waymo's lidar laser ranging devices. Following a surprise left-field complaint by Eric Swildens, the US Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) has rejected all but three of 56 claims in Waymo's 936 patent, named for the last three digits of its serial number. The USPTO found that some claims replicated technology described in an earlier patent from lidar vendor Velodyne, while another claim was simply "impossible" and "magic." The 936 patent played a key role in last year's epic intellectual property lawsuit with Uber. In December 2016, a Waymo engineer was inadvertently copied on an email from one of its suppliers to Uber, showing a lidar circuit design that looked almost identical to one shown in the 936 patent.
The patent describes how a laser diode can be configured to emit pulses of laser light using a circuit that includes an inductor and a gallium nitride transistor. That chance discovery helped spark a lawsuit in which Waymo accused Uber of patent infringement and of using lidar secrets supposedly stolen by engineer Anthony Levandowski. In August 2017, Uber agreed to redesign its Fuji lidar not to infringe the 936 patent. Then, in February 2018, Waymo settled the remaining trade secret theft allegations in exchange for Uber equity worth around $245 million and a commitment from Uber not to copy its technology. "This includes an agreement to ensure that any Waymo confidential information is not being incorporated in Uber hardware and software," said a Waymo spokesperson at the time. That redesign now seems to have been unnecessary, says Swildens, the engineer who asked the USPTO to take a closer look at 936. "Waymo's claim that Uber infringed the 936 patent was spurious, as all the claims in the patent that existed at the time of the lawsuit have been found to be invalid," he said. Uber told Ars that despite the ruling, it would not be redesigning its lidars yet again. Swildensj, an employee at a small cloud computing startup, reportedly "spent $6,000 of his own money to launch a formal challenge to 936," reports Ars. "In March, an examiner noted that a re-drawn diagram of Waymo's lidar firing circuit showed current passing along a wire between the circuit and the ground in two directions -- something generally deemed impossible. 'Patent owner's expert testimony is not convincing to show that the path even goes to ground in view of the magic ground wire, which shows current moving in two directions along a single wire,' noted the examiners dryly."
"As I investigated the 936 patent, it became clear it was invalid due to prior art for multiple reasons," Swildens told Ars. "I only filed the reexamination because I was absolutely sure the patent was invalid."
The patent describes how a laser diode can be configured to emit pulses of laser light using a circuit that includes an inductor and a gallium nitride transistor. That chance discovery helped spark a lawsuit in which Waymo accused Uber of patent infringement and of using lidar secrets supposedly stolen by engineer Anthony Levandowski. In August 2017, Uber agreed to redesign its Fuji lidar not to infringe the 936 patent. Then, in February 2018, Waymo settled the remaining trade secret theft allegations in exchange for Uber equity worth around $245 million and a commitment from Uber not to copy its technology. "This includes an agreement to ensure that any Waymo confidential information is not being incorporated in Uber hardware and software," said a Waymo spokesperson at the time. That redesign now seems to have been unnecessary, says Swildens, the engineer who asked the USPTO to take a closer look at 936. "Waymo's claim that Uber infringed the 936 patent was spurious, as all the claims in the patent that existed at the time of the lawsuit have been found to be invalid," he said. Uber told Ars that despite the ruling, it would not be redesigning its lidars yet again. Swildensj, an employee at a small cloud computing startup, reportedly "spent $6,000 of his own money to launch a formal challenge to 936," reports Ars. "In March, an examiner noted that a re-drawn diagram of Waymo's lidar firing circuit showed current passing along a wire between the circuit and the ground in two directions -- something generally deemed impossible. 'Patent owner's expert testimony is not convincing to show that the path even goes to ground in view of the magic ground wire, which shows current moving in two directions along a single wire,' noted the examiners dryly."
"As I investigated the 936 patent, it became clear it was invalid due to prior art for multiple reasons," Swildens told Ars. "I only filed the reexamination because I was absolutely sure the patent was invalid."
Vigilante? (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re: Vigilante? (Score:2)
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Adolph, is that you?
This is the real innovation (Score:3, Funny)
> current passing along a wire between the circuit and the ground in two directions
Now we can finally get rid of all those nasty high voltage wires and use only ground to transmit power everywhere.
How many years will patents delay self-driving (Score:1, Insightful)
How many years will patents delay self-driving cars? 5? 10? 30? How many preventable road deaths will happen in the intervening period?
I am not a health and safety fanatic, but there comes a time when you have to question whether the USPTO should wield as much power as it evidently does.
And yes, I am aware that the USPTO, on this one occasion, did reject a large number of spurious patents.
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Or is it a question that without patents at all would companies have invested so heavily in new technology to the extent that we can even imagine self driving vehicles today.
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One could ask how many years will corporate trade secrets and obfuscation delay pie-in-the-sky-hypetech?
Or something of that nature. Patents only last for a limited time, and then become a gift to humanity.
I know it isn't popular to acknowledge that here, and my exposition of this reality will be hammered to pieces by the 'wits' who hang out in these discussions....
Sometimes current flows both ways (Score:3)
Like if the circuit oscillates. I didn't see it but they did mention an inductor and "pulses"...
Re: Sometimes current flows both ways (Score:1)
You missed the diode
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Diodes are also always capacitors.
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All components are always all passives. In most applications the effect is insignificant and can be ignored.
Sometimes you have to take into consideration that resistors are inductors and capacitors, most times you don't.
Sometimes it really matters that PCB-traces are all three.
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Diodes are always capacitors in a significant way. It isn't a little parasitic amount.
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Yeah but it still happens in only one direction at a time.
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Page 15 of this document: https://www.documentcloud.org/... [documentcloud.org]
The examiner is right, it's nonsense. They are trying to build some kind of charge pump buy turning a FET on and off, but their "replenishment current" is coming from ground. Ground is shown both sinking and sourcing current.
Maybe they build some clever supply system that they are referring to as ground here, but in that case it's rather odd that they used the standard symbol for ground and not something else. In either case it's a glaring mistake.
This is fixable (Score:3)
Patent owner's expert testimony is not convincing to show that the path even goes to ground in view of the magic ground wire, which shows current moving in two directions along a single wire,' noted the examiners dryly.
"We'd like to submit an amendment: ... moving in two directions along a single wire over the Internet."
"Oh, that makes much more sense now. Patent upheld. Sorry if we sounded dry about it earlier."
Hero! (Score:2)
Maybe the other self driving car companies should write him a cheque - he saved them millions.
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In an ideal world ... maybe. In our world: "what would the shareholders think of us paying someone who did us some good for free ?"
Patent bullshit (Score:2, Insightful)
Build a working prototype or GTFO.
Congress: Make it so.
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Kind of makes you wonder (Score:3)
How many patents are out there that are also bullshit magic that didn't get noticed ?
USPTO asleep on the job (Score:5, Insightful)
Not news I know, but there was someone who's job it was to investigate these patents, to understand them and look for prior art.
The fact that a third party had to commit $6000 and a huge amount of personal time comes down to the fact that the patent examiner clearly didn't do their job.
While the work of Swildens should be celebrated, we shouldn't lose sight of the failings of the USPTO which required it.
Re: USPTO asleep on the job (Score:2)
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Thousands of employees who review patents for the federal government cheated taxpayers out of at least $18.3 million as they billed the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office for almost 300,000 hours they never worked, according to a new investigation by the agency’s watchdog.
The report released Wednesday determined that the full scale of fraud is probably double those numbers. Investigators said they interpreted the data they gathered conservatively, often giving empl
New review system (Score:2)
I think that the ability to file a request to have a patent reviewed is very new. And good. There are still restrictions, I think there is a short time limit for such reviews.
Previously, I think the only way to have a patent reviewed was to have the owner sue you, and you lose everything if the jury in E. Texas rules against you.
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Thousands of employees who review patents for the federal government cheated taxpayers out of at least $18.3 million as they billed the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office for almost 300,000 hours they never worked, according to a new investigation by the agency's watchdog.
Out of an annual budget of ~$3.6 billion, that means about 0.05% if I counted decimal places correctly. I dare you to name an industry where you think there's less than a tenth of a percent of overbilling of work hours.
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Sounds like a relaxation oscillator (Score:2)
"The patent describes how a laser diode can be configured to emit pulses of laser light using a circuit that includes an inductor and a gallium nitride transistor."
Every time I read stuff like this, I can only think I spent my life doing it wrong. I should of been figuring out how to get patents on stuff everybody knew about and was using anyway. Wow when a laser diode goes forward biased it will drain the stored energy from an inductor SMH.
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You actually should have been learning the difference between "have" and "of".
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You actually should have been learning the difference between "have" and "of".
Shame you are almost correct, a little more thought an you wouldn't be wrong. That would be should've vs should have.
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There is no meaningful difference between these. The one is just a contraction of the other.
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There is no meaningful difference between these. The one is just a contraction of the other.
Once again almost correct but that is still wrong. Tell me did you have rough potty training ? You seem rather anal.
Really - soem sort of reverse recovery circuit? (Score:2)
It looks like they are using the reverse recover charge in the diode. as an undergrad I though I discovered the effect in 1983, but soon learned that it was well known. (used it to trigger a krytron for a pockels cell driver). (one small diode and inductor to make a KV pulse).
People who do pulse power systems know about a wide variety of tricks.
If they are looking for a fast (ns), high current (~100A, 100V), switches, there are much better tricks these days. We just dusted off an old 1KV, 20A, 100ps rise
checking when challenged not when applied? (Score:2)
From the article:
Swildensj, an employee at a small cloud computing startup, reportedly "spent $6,000 of his own money to launch a formal challenge to 936,"
The USPTO found that some claims replicated technology described in an earlier patent from lidar vendor Velodyne, ...
Shouldn't it be the job of the patent office to check new patent applications against existing patents or publications, like ... when applied and not when challenged?