In-Line Images in Messages – Facebook Patent Application | Hacker News Reader

In-Line Images in Messages – Facebook Patent Application

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51 pointsloser77740 comments

Author here, or as they say, “Principal Inventor”. This started out as an Easter Egg John and I put into Facebook Chat in 2012. It was very simple: if you typed the ID of a Facebook object in double brackets, like [[zuck]], it would display Zuck's profile photo instead.

Months later Reddit found the egg, and did all sorts of fun things with it like construct composite troll faces from strategically-placed profile photos. It even made the tech news rounds on what had to have been a very slow news day.

http://techcrunch.com/2011/12/24/a-christmas-miracle-faceboo...

http://www.reddit.com/r/WTF/comments/np3qi/you_can_make_rage...

The lawyers said they wanted to see me. Not to pat me down before being escorted off the premises. No. They wanted to get the details in order to file for a patent!

I could not refuse. My employment contract said I was to make reasonable effort to assist in the creation of patent applications that resulted from my work. I've done a lot of stuff I'm proud of. But it seemed that my landmark contribution to human knowledge was going to be what TechCrunch dubbed "extended rageface support".

So when the lawyers asked me to provide illustrations of “example uses", I did the only reasonable thing. It was the first and probably last time that a troll face was relevant in a patent.

Can you tell me how this is significantly different from what instant messaging systems have been doing for decades, whether its through image embedding, or smiley faces that turn into images? Is it because you put the word "social graph" in there?

It was not my decision to pursue this patent application, so you're asking the wrong person.

You were the one to "invent" the "technology" and you don't even know if it's different than the smileys used in every forum around the internet? Was there someone else who formulated your application? Have you even read it?

I'd imagine this is Facebook's lawyers trying to guarantee they don't leave a door open for patent trolls if they ever decide to use this as a feature. I very much doubt they'd enforce it at all.

I have to admit, seeing a troll face in patent images makes me laugh. At least you made the best of it.

I won't pretend to understand how patents work, or comment on the general absurdity of the claim overall, but it did strike me as peculiar that Facebook would attempt to claim ownership of the invention of (this embodiment of) a 'composite image' that can (with evidence you kindly provided) be attribute to members of reddit.

Also, I can only assume Facebook's patent lawyers charge by the word!

(And bravo on the troll-face image! The irony will not be lost should this patent be granted and FB attempt to assert it...)

To be fair, they didn't attempt to claim to invent the 'composite image'. While there is a picture of a composite image and it is mentioned in the description, nothing about composite images is in the claims. The claims themselves seem to be specifically about using a text identifier on a social-network messaging system to display in-line images. The composite image figure is simply an example of multiple in-line images used together in a single message. This is also just an application, so there's no guarantee the claims will stay the same before it is accepted (If it ever is)

That said, I'm not a patent lawyer so take that with as much salt as you want.

> My employment contract said I was to make reasonable effort to assist in the creation of patent applications that resulted from my work.

While this is true, you must also be aware of the damage that software patents are doing to the industry, and by extension, your professional peers. How do you reconcile that morally? Is your current job and standing in your company worth the damage you've done by assisting in the creation of this [seemingly] obvious patent that [seemingly] ignores prior art[1] and could be used to stifle innovation?

[1] The Textual IRC client, for example, has been inlining images and other URLs since at least as far back as 2011. I'd guess Hipchat has been doing it for longer.

(I hope this is the right tone to take for this kind of comment. Please advise if not.)

Edit: It's pretty rare that you get a software patent author answering questions in an HN thread. I don't currently know anyone who's written patents, that I'm aware of. I'm actually interested in the answers to these questions, and I'm not just taking jabs to bring someone down.

Don't assume that everybody shares your opinions, even if those opinions are popular. The OP could be a fan of robust intellectual property regimes, including software.

Clearly he/she has a different opinion. I'm asking for clarification. For example, one possible valid response is "I helped write this patent because I believe it isn't actually harmful and serves my personal interests."

However, if the authors were aware of the image inlining features in other products before writing the patent, it does strike me as dishonest to then pretend to the USPTO that they didn't exist. I can't claim to know what the authors were or were not aware of, so I can't make any judgements on that issue.

To clarify: the patent authors are lawyers, and were almost definitely not aware of any of what the patent covers. They would have spoken to the inventors to get a very specific set of answers that they were looking for, specifically not including 'is this super obvious with lots of prior art that would make it invalid?'

Or, for a cynical view: for companies churning out tons of patents, it's optimal to churn out as many patents as possible. The more patents the USPTO has to deal with, the less effective they are at their jobs. The less effective they are, the more mistakes they make; the false positives (i.e. rejected applications) can be clarified to be non-infringing, and the false negatives… well, now that's one more patent in the war chest.

A lot of silicon valley companies get patents to use defensively (basically how you have to play the game). If I worked at FB and had insider knowledge that the company was generating patents for only defensive purposes it wouldn't bother me that much.

That’s a fair question. Quitting at the first mention of patents would be hard to justify to my wife and family, and in any event would not avoid the situation. IIRC John had left Facebook while this was in process and was still obliged to sign, per the terms of the employment contract he agreed to when he started.

Whether an employee would actually be fired or sued for failure to cooperate is doubtful. But if you wish to avoid any possibility of taint, the only option would be to boycott all patent-holding entities. That would severely limit your employment options in this industry. That's RMS territory.

I don't really have an opinion beyond that. Patents, like lawsuits and depositions, are a non-zero risk if you do programming for a living. But they are rare things day-to-day. Deus volent.

Fair enough. I do think there's a middle ground between "actively seeks to write new patents" and "full RMS." It's not typically realistic to avoid working at places that hold software patents, but in my (limited) experience you can at least avoid adding to the problem. Ideally, you could negotiate for the patent clause to be removed from the employment contract before you even begin the job. I understand that's not always possible.

I used to work at a company that started out without any software patents, and at some point management decided to encourage the engineers to help generate some. I politely informed my manager that I wouldn't be participating, a few others did the same, and as far as I know none of us were penalized. Sometimes it's possible to just say "I'd really rather not" and have that be the end of it.

I realize I'm speaking from a position of privilege, in that I have only myself to support and I live in an area full of employment opportunities. But I do think it's valid to encourage people to put some thought into the outcomes of their actions in this area.

Regarding another comment in this thread about Facebook's patent attitude being purely defensive: that may be the case now, and I do believe it is, but in five years, who knows who'll be running the company?

How does this patent APPLICATION harm anyone? It discloses some technical information (though clearly this is already a well known idea), and Facebook will never be awarded a patent for this. The public benefits from dud patents because they disclose in fairly precise (though esoteric and overly longwinded) language some technical idea while the applicant does not gain anything when it is eventually rejected.

Also, it occupies the patent lawyers' time and tilts the cost/benefit analysis ever so slightly in a direction that disfavors silly patents.

> How do you reconcile that morally? Is your current job and standing in your company worth the damage you've done by assisting in the creation of this [seemingly] obvious patent

'Why did you leave your last job?' 'They wanted to file a patent on some work I did and I refused, even though it was in my employment contract to help.' 'Well, thanks for coming in. We'll let you know.'

> that [seemingly] ignores prior art[1] and could be used to stifle innovation?

Lots of patents ignore prior art. It's easier to plead ignorance that way, and you get a chance at getting a patent that no one realizes is infringing. There's no incentive for a patent applicant (or rather, a team of patent lawyers on retainer) to do any prior art research. Better to dump that on the USPTO and hope they can't figure it out or don't bother.

Everything wrong about software patents is summed up in this patent.

1) A guy was just randomly writing some code, and some lawyers found it interesting, so they made him file a patent. He didn't need the encouragement of the patent to write the software ... it was going to happen anyway. This wasn't even some dedicated Facebook research. It was a random Easter Egg. Why do people need a 20 year monopoly for a random Easter Egg?

2) The author probably doesn't even know what this patent says. Its a lot wider scope than his embedded image idea. He probably has no idea how it will be used to sue other programmers like him in a few years.

3) No insult to the author, but this "invention" is kind of BS, and not the "complicated" stuff laymen probably think requires a software patent. If people actually knew the trivialities that are being patented and used as roadblocks against their competitors, they would be shocked.

> Everything wrong about software patents is summed up in this patent.

The cited document is a "patent application". It is not yet a patent.

The application was rejected on 2014-03-24 (look up the publication number [20130093828] here: http://portal.uspto.gov/pair/PublicPair then click the "Image file wrapper" tab to open up the document that rejects the application.

Good. I was about to write that this parent is unenforceable.

Note that the owner still has a chance to respond to the rejection. So the process has not yet terminated for good. It is just beginning the process.

It's not permanently rejected. It has received what is called an office action.

Trust me, Facebook eventually wins almost all office actions after some trivial claim modification and/or clarification.

Worse patents than this get through the USPTO. The people with the expertise to reject such patents don't work at the USPTO.

> The people with the expertise to reject such patents don't work at the USPTO.

It's true, but they can always visit Ask Patents[1] and contribute that way.

[1]http://patents.stackexchange.com

"invention" ? This is basically how wiki markup languages work. I don't see anything new here.

You should lobby [[zuck]] to use the Innovators Patent Agreement developed by Twitter legal found here: https://github.com/twitter/innovators-patent-agreement

“Imma let you finish, but ...” this should not be patented, thus the application should die with fire! Don't get me wrong, I'm all for creativity and patent holding for unique innovations, but this is ridiculous.

How about I go ahead and patent my own "innovative" technique:

`:) @2x`

A high-resolution inline-image metacommunicative pictorial for multi-platform & multi-devices. (aka a "smiley" with large anti-alias font)

^ this made me giggle

My web browser has been doing this for ages. When I type in a resource identifier, surrounded by some markup like <img, it fetches the resource and renders it! Amazing!

This is in the context of messages between two users, so probably forum [img] tags win this one in terms of prior art.

To be clear, UPSTO hasn't issued a patent from this application yet.

Yeah, the title of this article should be changed to reflect that this is a patent application, not a patent.

Thanks; changed.

What, issue a patent in under two years? Puh-leaze!

It is impressive to me that the system is simultaneously far too generous in handing out patents, yet is also so miserably slow that if you actually needed the protection afforded by a patent, the infringing business would have time to be born, infringe like mad, profit, and die again before it gets issued.

I wonder when we hit the crossover line where by the time the patent is issued, it has already expired?

Is this for real? How can people patent stuff like that!

Doesn't this already basically happen when text smiley-faces are replaced with image ones?

the troll is a freudian slip? or a hidden request for help?

I found it apt given the type of patent.

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