5 ms·

https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20141115/07113529155/patent-troll-kills-open-source-project-speeding-up-computation-erasure-codes.shtml https://www.techdirt.c

by fdej 10y ago

https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20141115/07113529155/patent-troll-kills-open-source-project-speeding-up-computation-erasure-codes.shtml https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20141115/07113529155/paten...

ianai 10y ago
Makes my blood boil.
- the8472 10y ago
  at least mirrors of the code exist, so at least projects that do not have to concern themselves with patents can still benefit from it.
  - mac01021 10y ago
    For my own edification (I'm not an expert on IP law), what kind of project is free to disregard patents? Is it just a matter of whether or not the project is a commercial product?
    - wtallis 10y ago
      It's a matter of not operating in a jurisdiction that hands out software patents. Europe is generally much more sensible in this respect.
      - ape4 10y ago
        Can a program legally do: if (country == usa) { workSlowPatentFreeWay() else { workScreamingFastWay() }
        the8472 10y ago
        things like ffmpeg can be configured to exclude various kinds of code based on licences. I assume similar build-time flags could be set to exclude patent-encumbered code. The source would include the code, but binaries could be shipped with and without it.
        dom0 10y ago
        What do I (a German) care about some u-boat patents some American may or may not or whatever have on some technique I use in my software?
        JoshTriplett 10y ago
        The usual approach: uncompiled source code implementing a patented algorithm doesn't directly violate the patent, for the same reason a paper describing a patented algorithm doesn't. So, you can ship the necessary source code, and a compile-time option to build with or without it. Freetype used to do this with bytecode hinting. Various media libraries do this as well.
    - zardo 10y ago
      The patent is for calculating erasure codes, if you want to do Galois field arithmetic for any other reason the patent does not apply.
ChuckMcM 10y ago
Time to file an ex-parte review/challenge.
- rch 10y ago
  The founder, president, and CEO of StreamScale, Michael H. Anderson, seems to have 'over a dozen granted patents in the storage field', some listed here: http://www.streamscale.com/cgi-bin/complex2/showPage.plx?pid=34 http://www.streamscale.com/cgi-bin/complex2/showPage.plx?pid...
- CalChris 10y ago
  Time to file an ex-parte review/challenge. That's gonna cost about $20-40,000 although it'd be somewhat less for a micro-entity.
CalChris 10y ago
How is StreamScale a patent troll? They're most definitely not an NPE, non-practicing entity. They developed their technology and they sell it. Simply because they're asserting their patent rights for technology they've developed doesn't make them a troll. I can understand, even if I don't agree, that some people are anti-patent altogether. Fine. We part ways. But if you're going to incent inventors+developers with patents to take risks then you're going to have cases like this. And folks, everything looks obvious after the fact. Is what StreamScale did novel? Apparently yes. If you have a counter-example to novelty then an ex-parte review will probably be a slam dunk. Also, the paper passed the Usenix papers committee review and they kinda like novelty. Is what they did non-obvious? Intel announced these instructions in 2007 and, by the Usenix authors' own admission: >I have verified that StreamScale's solution is faster than GF-Complete or Jerasure in at least some respects. There's more to non-obviousness than performance but I'm only looking skin deep at this. GF field theory ain't my thang. What it does look like is that the Usenix paper, of which one of the authors works for a competitor of StreamScale, can't even replicate what would be supposedly obvious. StreamScale filed their patent Dec 30, 2011. The Usenix paper is from 2013. Troll is not the word I'd use. This just looks like a first to file patent.
- davidtgoldblatt 10y ago
  Saying that "patent troll" is synonymous with "NPE" is more restrictive than its common usage; for example, wikipedia defines it as "a person or company that attempts to enforce patent rights against accused infringers far beyond the patent's actual value or contribution to the prior art". If you take a minute to read the patent in question (https://www.google.com/patents/US8683296 https://www.google.com/patents/US8683296), it's like a caricature of "what's wrong with the patent system". It describes using matrix blocking and vector instructions to do the matrix mulitplication step of (e.g.) Reed-Solomon. It's a very old matrix multiplication speedup. If a particular technique for a problem isn't novel, then using that technique when you encounter that problem in a particular domain shouldn't count as novel. By contrast, the Usenix paper described an actual mechanism of implementing the arithmetic using vector instructions for table lookups, something the StreamScale patent never did. After reading the StreamScale patent, I came away with no new insights on implementing ECC. After reading the Usenix paper, I did. The arguments you make for why StreamScale's things don't make any sense to me. It seems like they are: - No one's fought the patent legally - The author was threatened into issuing a notice with a super weak statement that StreamScale is sometimes faster than his one-man-shop academic code. - One of the authors of the paper (though not the software in question as far as I can tell) works for a StreamScale competitor? Not really sure why that was relevant. But of course no one wants to get into an expensive legal battle merely to advance the public good in this instance; no one is incentivized to. The fact that no one has doesn't mean that the patent is a good thing. Of course the author can be threatened into a non-apology apology with vague wording. That he did so doesn't mean all of those statements should be accepted uncritically. A lot of times with patents, copyrights, trademarks, we get into a weird sort of cognitive dissonance. We (society) create a new type of property right (here, ownership of IP) in order to incentive people to engage in some type of behavior (here, inventing things). It's then easy to forget that the property right isn't necessarily the thing society wants to protect; it's a means to and end. But in cases like these, it's plainly obvious that the patent is stifling rather than encouraging innovation. The world is a worse place with Professor Plank threatened into removing his code.

by fdej 10y ago

ianai 10y ago

Makes my blood boil.

the8472 10y ago
at least mirrors of the code exist, so at least projects that do not have to concern themselves with patents can still benefit from it.
- mac01021 10y ago
  For my own edification (I'm not an expert on IP law), what kind of project is free to disregard patents? Is it just a matter of whether or not the project is a commercial product?
  - wtallis 10y ago
    It's a matter of not operating in a jurisdiction that hands out software patents. Europe is generally much more sensible in this respect.
    - ape4 10y ago
      Can a program legally do: if (country == usa) { workSlowPatentFreeWay() else { workScreamingFastWay() }
      - the8472 10y ago
        things like ffmpeg can be configured to exclude various kinds of code based on licences. I assume similar build-time flags could be set to exclude patent-encumbered code. The source would include the code, but binaries could be shipped with and without it.
      - dom0 10y ago
        What do I (a German) care about some u-boat patents some American may or may not or whatever have on some technique I use in my software?
      - JoshTriplett 10y ago
        The usual approach: uncompiled source code implementing a patented algorithm doesn't directly violate the patent, for the same reason a paper describing a patented algorithm doesn't. So, you can ship the necessary source code, and a compile-time option to build with or without it. Freetype used to do this with bytecode hinting. Various media libraries do this as well.
  - zardo 10y ago
    The patent is for calculating erasure codes, if you want to do Galois field arithmetic for any other reason the patent does not apply.

ChuckMcM 10y ago

Time to file an ex-parte review/challenge.

rch 10y ago
The founder, president, and CEO of StreamScale, Michael H. Anderson, seems to have 'over a dozen granted patents in the storage field', some listed here: http://www.streamscale.com/cgi-bin/complex2/showPage.plx?pid=34 http://www.streamscale.com/cgi-bin/complex2/showPage.plx?pid...
CalChris 10y ago
Time to file an ex-parte review/challenge. That's gonna cost about $20-40,000 although it'd be somewhat less for a micro-entity.

CalChris 10y ago

How is StreamScale a patent troll? They're most definitely not an NPE, non-practicing entity. They developed their technology and they sell it. Simply because they're asserting their patent rights for technology they've developed doesn't make them a troll. I can understand, even if I don't agree, that some people are anti-patent altogether. Fine. We part ways. But if you're going to incent inventors+developers with patents to take risks then you're going to have cases like this. And folks, everything looks obvious after the fact. Is what StreamScale did novel? Apparently yes. If you have a counter-example to novelty then an ex-parte review will probably be a slam dunk. Also, the paper passed the Usenix papers committee review and they kinda like novelty. Is what they did non-obvious? Intel announced these instructions in 2007 and, by the Usenix authors' own admission: >I have verified that StreamScale's solution is faster than GF-Complete or Jerasure in at least some respects. There's more to non-obviousness than performance but I'm only looking skin deep at this. GF field theory ain't my thang. What it does look like is that the Usenix paper, of which one of the authors works for a competitor of StreamScale, can't even replicate what would be supposedly obvious. StreamScale filed their patent Dec 30, 2011. The Usenix paper is from 2013. Troll is not the word I'd use. This just looks like a first to file patent.

davidtgoldblatt 10y ago
Saying that "patent troll" is synonymous with "NPE" is more restrictive than its common usage; for example, wikipedia defines it as "a person or company that attempts to enforce patent rights against accused infringers far beyond the patent's actual value or contribution to the prior art". If you take a minute to read the patent in question (https://www.google.com/patents/US8683296 https://www.google.com/patents/US8683296), it's like a caricature of "what's wrong with the patent system". It describes using matrix blocking and vector instructions to do the matrix mulitplication step of (e.g.) Reed-Solomon. It's a very old matrix multiplication speedup. If a particular technique for a problem isn't novel, then using that technique when you encounter that problem in a particular domain shouldn't count as novel. By contrast, the Usenix paper described an actual mechanism of implementing the arithmetic using vector instructions for table lookups, something the StreamScale patent never did. After reading the StreamScale patent, I came away with no new insights on implementing ECC. After reading the Usenix paper, I did. The arguments you make for why StreamScale's things don't make any sense to me. It seems like they are: - No one's fought the patent legally - The author was threatened into issuing a notice with a super weak statement that StreamScale is sometimes faster than his one-man-shop academic code. - One of the authors of the paper (though not the software in question as far as I can tell) works for a StreamScale competitor? Not really sure why that was relevant. But of course no one wants to get into an expensive legal battle merely to advance the public good in this instance; no one is incentivized to. The fact that no one has doesn't mean that the patent is a good thing. Of course the author can be threatened into a non-apology apology with vague wording. That he did so doesn't mean all of those statements should be accepted uncritically. A lot of times with patents, copyrights, trademarks, we get into a weird sort of cognitive dissonance. We (society) create a new type of property right (here, ownership of IP) in order to incentive people to engage in some type of behavior (here, inventing things). It's then easy to forget that the property right isn't necessarily the thing society wants to protect; it's a means to and end. But in cases like these, it's plainly obvious that the patent is stifling rather than encouraging innovation. The world is a worse place with Professor Plank threatened into removing his code.