I read a perspective from a patent attorney where he said he’d be STUNNED if Google got away with this. His view was based on a couple of things: 1) it’s an algorithm-centric invention that patent examiners are being trained to reject, and 2) under 35 U.S.C. 101. it explicitly says that whatever is hoping to be patented has to amount to, “significantly more than the abstract idea itself,” otherwise it is not patentable.
Aaannd it turns out this attorney was correct according to a newer piece. “With the backing of Jagiellonian University he (Duda) contacted the US Patent and Trademark Office asking for the application to be rejected, which eventually happened.”
I think neither Google nor this guy invented this as it's probably in practice long before either party. If Google is trying to do anything regarding this on VP9, that's because VP9 is so far behind other media standards (in terms of patents).
Patent-wise, if you can prove your work is available, it's hard for the party to act on it. There's really an art regarding patent writing: you want to maximize protection without being too general.
It's not a surprise for me. They did it with Terravision 20 years ago to create Google Earth, even being a totally private code. You can see it all about in "The million dollar code" on Netflix.
So if they do it with public code, I'm not surprised at all. They've been doing this for the entire life.
This doesn't surprise me to see. Google has been exploiting works in the public domain for years because it is essentially making every "public" on the Internet.
Its search and videos products are the foundation of a massive profit machine that benefits from everything being on the Internet — whether it's supposed to be public or not. This is not to mention the other sketchy stuff it's been associated with.
"Ben Edelman, a professor at Harvard Business School, estimated that Google has earned over $1 billion dollars from ads that appear adjacent to videos promoting illegal activities."
I wonder why he didn't patent it himself originally. In the same way that Google now licenses open source codes, he could have done the same! I appreciate he wanted his invention to be freely available to the public, but it seems like a huge financial benefit to pass up. Could he be he only realized what he had done years after? i.e. he didn't realize there was anything to patent? Either this or he's a saint...
Could be many reasons – maybe he's already making a healthy living, maybe he didn't want to screw around with defending the patents, maybe he's just altruistic – but lots of folks have done this. Jonas Salk didn't patent the Polio vaccine even though it would have made him a very, very wealthy man.
The thing is, can you patent a methodology? ANS is a compression technique, and Google, Apple, Facebook etc aren't looking to patent the ANS technique, but the thing they've invented using ANS themselves...
you can patent a methodology. But also difficult to 'act' on it. Someone just need a slight change and this patent won't apply. It's difficult to patent on software. It's easier to patent on mechanical designs
You can't patent a business method by itself, but you can patent a technical invention. The article explains that:
The only way to use patents, therefore, to protect business method inventions, is to patent the technological inventions required to make the business methods work. These inventions will be patentable since they will “improve the functioning of the computer itself.”
I read a perspective from a patent attorney where he said he’d be STUNNED if Google got away with this. His view was based on a couple of things: 1) it’s an algorithm-centric invention that patent examiners are being trained to reject, and 2) under 35 U.S.C. 101. it explicitly says that whatever is hoping to be patented has to amount to, “significantly more than the abstract idea itself,” otherwise it is not patentable.
Aaannd it turns out this attorney was correct according to a newer piece. “With the backing of Jagiellonian University he (Duda) contacted the US Patent and Trademark Office asking for the application to be rejected, which eventually happened.”
I think neither Google nor this guy invented this as it's probably in practice long before either party. If Google is trying to do anything regarding this on VP9, that's because VP9 is so far behind other media standards (in terms of patents).
Patent-wise, if you can prove your work is available, it's hard for the party to act on it. There's really an art regarding patent writing: you want to maximize protection without being too general.
i have seen this tv show before
that's too bad
It's not a surprise for me. They did it with Terravision 20 years ago to create Google Earth, even being a totally private code. You can see it all about in "The million dollar code" on Netflix.
So if they do it with public code, I'm not surprised at all. They've been doing this for the entire life.
That's bad.
That's serious 😳
I’ve seen this TV show before…
This doesn't surprise me to see. Google has been exploiting works in the public domain for years because it is essentially making every "public" on the Internet.
Its search and videos products are the foundation of a massive profit machine that benefits from everything being on the Internet — whether it's supposed to be public or not. This is not to mention the other sketchy stuff it's been associated with.
"Ben Edelman, a professor at Harvard Business School, estimated that Google has earned over $1 billion dollars from ads that appear adjacent to videos promoting illegal activities."
https://martech.org/google-pockets-ad-money-youtube-videos-hawking-stolen-credit-cards-says-watchdog-group/
I totally agree with you.
I wonder why he didn't patent it himself originally. In the same way that Google now licenses open source codes, he could have done the same! I appreciate he wanted his invention to be freely available to the public, but it seems like a huge financial benefit to pass up. Could he be he only realized what he had done years after? i.e. he didn't realize there was anything to patent? Either this or he's a saint...
Also if he put it on public domain before Google patents it. It's not like Google can do much about it.
Could be many reasons – maybe he's already making a healthy living, maybe he didn't want to screw around with defending the patents, maybe he's just altruistic – but lots of folks have done this. Jonas Salk didn't patent the Polio vaccine even though it would have made him a very, very wealthy man.
The thing is, can you patent a methodology? ANS is a compression technique, and Google, Apple, Facebook etc aren't looking to patent the ANS technique, but the thing they've invented using ANS themselves...
you can patent a methodology. But also difficult to 'act' on it. Someone just need a slight change and this patent won't apply. It's difficult to patent on software. It's easier to patent on mechanical designs
According to this:
https://www.ipwatchdog.com/2019/09/03/want-protect-business-method-reframe-technical-invention/id=112875/#:~:text=The most effective way to,a business method by itself.
You can't patent a business method by itself, but you can patent a technical invention. The article explains that:
The only way to use patents, therefore, to protect business method inventions, is to patent the technological inventions required to make the business methods work. These inventions will be patentable since they will “improve the functioning of the computer itself.”
That's exploitation and unlawful.
Yes, it's unlawful.