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I was wondering about a similar issue for zstd compression library. It has a similar BSD+Patentsfile thing. There is an issue with a related discussion about i

by rdtsc 9y ago

I was wondering about a similar issue for zstd compression library. It has a similar BSD+Patentsfile thing. There is an issue with a related discussion about it going for more than a year: https://github.com/facebook/zstd/issues/335 https://github.com/facebook/zstd/issues/335 Last update is interesting. Someone did a search and looked for any patents FB filed for and couldn't find any in last year. So somehow based on that they decided things are "OK". To quote: --- US allows to patent up to a year after the publication, allowing to conclude that ZSTD remains free of patents (?) - suggesting this "The license granted hereunder will terminate, automatically and without notice (...)" from PATENTS file has no legal meaning (?) --- Anyone care to validate how true that statement is?

geofft 9y ago
IANAL but I have a couple of software patents (now assigned to Open Invention Network). The line "A year has passed, but searching patents with 'facebook compression' suggests no patent application regarding ZSTD has been filled" is not very convincing to me for a few reasons, primarily that the word "compression" may not show up at all in the patent document. When I got the text of the patent application back from the lawyers, after describing to them in engineering terms the thing we'd invented, I could hardly understand what it was talking about. Patentese is its own dialect of English, and there's no reason to assume that it'll say in straightforward terms that it's a compression algorithm.
FRex 9y ago
I have no idea but another case is RakNet (another Facebook property, via Occulus). It even uses the older, more controversial wording: https://github.com/facebookarchive/RakNet/blob/master/PATENTS https://github.com/facebookarchive/RakNet/blob/master/PATENT... And I'd find it highly unlikely it contains any patents too. Occulus was bought in March 2014 by Facebook and RakNet was bought in April 2014 by Occulus and there is only a handful of commits on GitHub that don't seem substantial at all and are just maintenance and cleaning up the repo. RakNet operated for years before that so it's unlikely they happen to have had a patent in it at the time of its purchase or they'd be nuked by Facebook before. Then again, there are/were patents for some bit tricks and Carmack's Reverse so anything is possible.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
beagle3 9y ago
They do not have to publish. The USPTO will publish patents (provisional or full) 18 months after filing, so -- at the very least -- one has to wait 18 months. It is also quite possible that facebook collects patents under a different name, e.g. "faceless intellect llc", a wholly owned subsidiary of Facebook. Or they may have bought patents that are essential for ZSTD from someone else who filed them independently. The conclusion that "zstd remains free of patents" is baseless and made by someone who is not familiar with patent practice.
- Nullabillity 9y ago
  > They do not have to publish. The USPTO will publish patents (provisional or full) 18 months after filing, so -- at the very least -- one has to wait 18 months. Holy shit, what?! The US patent system means that you can infringe on patents that you had no way to know even existed at that point in time? How the fuck can someone look at this policy and think that it's in any way reasonable?!
  - beagle3 9y ago
    They also publish at grant of course. It's just that it rarely takes less than 2 years from filing to grant so first publication by USPTO is usually pre-approval, 18 month from filing

by rdtsc 9y ago

geofft 9y ago

IANAL but I have a couple of software patents (now assigned to Open Invention Network). The line "A year has passed, but searching patents with 'facebook compression' suggests no patent application regarding ZSTD has been filled" is not very convincing to me for a few reasons, primarily that the word "compression" may not show up at all in the patent document. When I got the text of the patent application back from the lawyers, after describing to them in engineering terms the thing we'd invented, I could hardly understand what it was talking about. Patentese is its own dialect of English, and there's no reason to assume that it'll say in straightforward terms that it's a compression algorithm.

FRex 9y ago

I have no idea but another case is RakNet (another Facebook property, via Occulus). It even uses the older, more controversial wording: https://github.com/facebookarchive/RakNet/blob/master/PATENTS https://github.com/facebookarchive/RakNet/blob/master/PATENT... And I'd find it highly unlikely it contains any patents too. Occulus was bought in March 2014 by Facebook and RakNet was bought in April 2014 by Occulus and there is only a handful of commits on GitHub that don't seem substantial at all and are just maintenance and cleaning up the repo. RakNet operated for years before that so it's unlikely they happen to have had a patent in it at the time of its purchase or they'd be nuked by Facebook before. Then again, there are/were patents for some bit tricks and Carmack's Reverse so anything is possible.

deleted 9y ago
[deleted]

beagle3 9y ago

They do not have to publish. The USPTO will publish patents (provisional or full) 18 months after filing, so -- at the very least -- one has to wait 18 months. It is also quite possible that facebook collects patents under a different name, e.g. "faceless intellect llc", a wholly owned subsidiary of Facebook. Or they may have bought patents that are essential for ZSTD from someone else who filed them independently. The conclusion that "zstd remains free of patents" is baseless and made by someone who is not familiar with patent practice.

Nullabillity 9y ago
> They do not have to publish. The USPTO will publish patents (provisional or full) 18 months after filing, so -- at the very least -- one has to wait 18 months. Holy shit, what?! The US patent system means that you can infringe on patents that you had no way to know even existed at that point in time? How the fuck can someone look at this policy and think that it's in any way reasonable?!
- beagle3 9y ago
  They also publish at grant of course. It's just that it rarely takes less than 2 years from filing to grant so first publication by USPTO is usually pre-approval, 18 month from filing