Hacker News Reader

Comment by meric | Hacker News Reader

I think the author of the algorithm implementation would have benefited more from a patent than a BSD copyright notice.

"I think the author of the algorithm implementation would have benefited more from..."

Well obviously the meta argument, taking a step back, is if the community insists on porting to ruby, doing all the work for him, such that the happy and cooperative leader can now collect sweet support contracts from MORE corporate users and increase the resume fodder value of his original product...

What looks better on dude's resume:

Author of a Java library with 1000 users resulting in $50K/yr support contract revenue

Author of a multiplatform Java and Ruby library with 2000 users resulting in $100K/yr support contract revenue

Author of a Java library, got into a fight with the ruby community mostly because I don't know the difference between licenses, copyrights, and patents, and now I've only got 500 users and $25K/yr of revenue

Considering the last comment on github, the patent office would probably deny the application.

Are you talking about iand's comment [0]? How does it indicate that?

[0] : https://github.com/threedaymonk/text/issues/21#issuecomment-...

Is this the patent for the algorithm in question?

http://www.google.com/patents/US20090043584

Certainly looks like it, or at least closely related. Can someone who is not served a localized copy of Google see if it is in fact a patent? (I see "status: application", loosely translated, but that's not something I can check the juridical meaning of.)

If you are able to view this, it is a "United States Patent Application Publication" that is found by following the `view pdf` button on the above link:

https://drive.google.com/viewerng/viewer?url=patentimages.st...

Searching on the USPTO website returns no related patents:

http://patft.uspto.gov/netahtml/PTO/search-bool.html

The indication, to me, is that the patent has not made it past the application process.

USPTO's PAIR website indicates that the application was rejected for non-patentability. I'd link it but PAIR doesn't do permanent links. Go to the main page at [1] and type in the application or publication number.

[1] http://portal.uspto.gov/pair/PublicPair

Hardly. Alice v CLS only throws out claims based on "performed on a general purpose computer". Mostly, that is enough to refute the remainder of the claims, as they apply to generic mathematical algorithms.

Systems such as this, however, have enjoyed patent protection in the past (Soundex, notably), and his own metaphone and double metaphone systems are cited in several other patents. Google patent search is your friend here.

Snarky comment: The USPTO has a habit of not denying any applications.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com