Inventor says Google is patenting work he put in the public domain (2018) | Hacker News Reader

Inventor says Google is patenting work he put in the public domain (2018)

arstechnica.com

47 pointsddtaylor15 comments

Is it not possible -- even probably -- that Google had a legitimate legal claim on the work?

Aside from the argument re whether it is morally right, it's not uncommon for software companies to assert ownership over the intellectual output of their employees, whether the creative process takes place on or off the clock.

Joel explains it better than I can:

* https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2016/12/09/developers-side-pr...

Was Jarek Duda employed by Google when he invented this? Or ever? Google is claiming they deserve a patent because applying the technique to video constitutes an inventive step (the EU patent office disagreed), and that the original idea is too abstract to patent. They are not claiming they own the idea because they employed Duda - at least, I couldn't find such a claim.

Thanks for the correction.

I should hold off on commenting until I'm well caffeinated.

The simplest solution is to take a copy of any public disclosure and send it to the US Patent Office with the request that it be put in the file wrapper for the patent. If the patent ends up being insignficant -- as most patents do -- no one will spend any time on it. But if the patent ends up being the focus of litigation, the people who need the prior art the most will have a copy right in front of them.

Relevant news: Microsoft has patented it afterwards [0]

[0] https://www.theregister.com/2022/02/17/microsoft_ans_patent/

Why isn't it invalidated by prior art? How does it work anyway?

Prior art is a sugarcoat invented to give the illusion checks and balances.

Patent Office operates as if it doesn't exist, and then even if a prior art is established after a long and expensive judicial process, only partial claims of a patent is invalidated, and it's trivial for the patent owner to change it slightly and get it reapproved

Usually these things clear up until there's litigation involved.

It's always been possible to patent a sufficiently good improvement on existing things. Otherwise nothing at all would be patentable.

Taking a piece of software (or even a well-defined algorithm, really) that's meant to compress data, and then claiming that using it to compress video is novel is stupid though. Any type of digital asset is, in fact, "data".

Yes, if that is all they had done, then it would not be defensible. However, what you simplify is not what they patented (and subsequently dropped).

I am getting patents for compressing cats videos and black cat videos right away!

Damn his cv

>Short CV:

2015- Jagiellonian University, Institute of Computer Science, assistant professor,

2013-2014 Purdue University, NSF Center for Science of Information, Postdoctoral researcher (webpage),

2006-2012 Jagiellonian University, Cracow, PhD in Theoretical Physics (thesis)

2004-2010 Jagiellonian University, Cracow, PhD in Theoretical Computer Science (thesis)

2001-2006 Jagiellonian University, Cracow, MSc in Theoretical Physics (thesis)

2000-2005 Jagiellonian University, Cracow, MSc in Theoretical Mathematics (thesis)

1999-2004 Jagiellonian University, Cracow, MSc in Computer Science (thesis)

Holy

Is one way to avoid this issue (in the US) to file a provisional patent and then let it lapse?

For possibly 95% of HN, as long as they are using it for AV1, it is ok.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com