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Comment by pxeger1 | Hacker News Reader

This does indeed seem to work for me, but the repeated emphasis on the patents and trademarks makes me suspicious. It looks like a company who cares much more about patent royalties than about their invention - whom I would never be willing to give my money to. Having seen the principle, I could write a browser extension in an hour. I suppose I'll have to wait 25 years (or whatever the French patent expiry length is), though.

If you want to read the patent (in French), it's here: https://data.inpi.fr/brevets/FR3052587. I couldn't find the German patent (10 2017 112 916.2), but I'm guessing it's the same substance.

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Yes, I agree. I guess this technology isn't for everyone. This is a real bummer. They did not have to patent and trademark this method, which in principle is such a basic mechanism. Just had to productize their service really well so they'd take the lead in monetizing.

I am alone and I put all my money, time and work into BR. Visible is only a small part. But I think everyone decides for themselves what is best. But thank you for the critical feedback.

Thank you for responding. Despite my criticism I'd like to say that the method is really working for me. So as an invention it is great.

I thank you for your criticism. This is the only way to move forward and I take it very seriously. Therefore I thank you!

Best regards from the Alps Renato

You put all your money, time and work into bolding the first few letters of a word?

Did you think of it? The author spent money, time, and work in R&D for a process that seems simple but is novel.

I disagree 100%.

This is amazingly innovative.

We have seen letter switching examples and how the brain will try to fill in the gaps.

This is superbly unique and justifiably a patent and trademark.

The demo works.

The rules may be simple. But as the old boat repairman story says, sometimes you need to know where to hit the hammer.

Please, please don't use this for evil.

Thank you very much for your answer. No, I will definitely use it for good. For sure.

Best regards from the Alps Renato

The only way to use a patent “for good” is to prevent someone else from patenting it and exploiting it.

If you’re serious, then release a copy-left license for the patent (but not necessarily your implementation/product/sdk)

Otherwise, just add your commercial licensing terms to your website already so people aren’t misled into thinking they’ll be able to do anything with this idea unless they pay you.

Agreed. I don’t think this deserves to be shown to HN given that most people here are strong supporters of free and open source

I agree with the criticism and this response! Glad to see you engaging in here. Go go go!

Plus without a patent it would be very easy to capitalize on this without compensating the guy for all the research and tuning his put into it. I think patents are ideal for new ideas that are super easy to steal/copy, right? Sure Academics working at the bleeding edge should patent for example but they're likely to have a little advantage by being the expert and actually knowing how to do the thing. But in this case the result may look simple but took ingenuity and time to produce just the same.

Just FYI, as I detailed in my top-level comment: While it is a really nice tool, it is already a few years old, so I'm not sure if it qualifies as innovative. See: https://web.archive.org/web/20190119032121/http://br.craftwo...

More info detailed at my top-level comment.

There's an English language family member of this granted patent that was filed in the UK. English specification starts around page 30: https://patentimages.storage.googleapis.com/96/4d/2b/749f7a4...

The rules are more clearly depicted on page 4, with different variations depicted on the pages following that.

Looks fairly straightforward to implement. Until this is more widely available "officially", I'll probably just hack up some Chrome extension for personal use and try it out.

> I suppose I'll have to wait 25 years (or whatever the French patent expiry length is), though.

Is that how patents work in general?

I always thought (and could be very wrong here) that if a patent exists for something but you've developed an alternative something in total isolation without seeing the patent then you would have free reign on how to design and develop your thing without violating the patent.

The opposite is true, in fact - a patent is a monopoly on the patented technology, no matter where alternative implementations come from. You might be thinking of “clean room” techniques which protect against claims of copyright infringement.

> You might be thinking of “clean room” techniques which protect against claims of copyright infringement.

Ah yes, that's what I was thinking of -- thanks. Specifically a scene from an episode of Halt and Catch Fire (I won't describe it due to spoilers).

That's a real bummer for patents though and makes me wonder how something like Amazon's 1-click checkout was able to be patented. I wonder how "save billing details for future use" can be considered a novel idea.

I believe those scenes were an amalgamation of Tim Paterson’s clean room implementation of DOS from the CP/M manuals [0] and Compaq’s IBM compatible BIOS implementation[1].

They are a some of my favorites, and are fun to watch.

[0] https://dfarq.homeip.net/did-microsoft-steal-dos-from-cpm/

[1] https://dfarq.homeip.net/first-compaq-computer/

> Amazon's 1-click checkout

For a long time, software patenting law was famously lax. You could basically patent anything software-related if you knew the right legalese. The situation has apparently gotten better after a 2014 SCOTUS ruling, but in the '90s and '00s it was pretty dire.

https://www.eff.org/issues/stupid-patent-month https://www.infoworld.com/article/2608772/the-battle-against...

What's the thing where you have to license your patent? Like when it's used in a standard or something?

You might be talking about "Essentially Patents"?

> Standards organizations, therefore, often require members disclose and grant licenses to their patents and pending patent applications that cover a standard that the organization is developing. > https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Essential_patent

Please not that this is less of a "You have to offer licenses or else" and more of a "Hey please do that."

𝐈 𝐜an'𝐭 𝐫ea𝐝 𝐭h𝐞 𝐩anten𝐭. 𝐖ha𝐭 𝐚bou𝐭 𝐬om𝐞 𝐯arian𝐭? 𝐃oe𝐬 𝐭hi𝐬 𝐭ex𝐭 𝐫ea𝐝 𝐛ette𝐫 𝐨𝐫 𝐰ors𝐞?

𝐖𝐡a𝐭 a𝐛ou𝐭 𝐭𝐡i𝐬 𝐭e𝐱𝐭? 𝐖ou𝐥𝐝 a𝐧y𝐭𝐡i𝐧𝐠 𝐰o𝐫𝐤 𝐛e𝐭𝐭e𝐫 𝐭𝐡a𝐧 𝐬i𝐦𝐩𝐥e 𝐩𝐥ai𝐧 𝐭e𝐱𝐭?

Definitely worse. It's the starts of words that are important.

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