7 ms·

This is written so broad... facebook basically has just patented statistical classification if its output are socioeconomics? How can this be legal? Facebook d

by zwaps 9y ago

This is written so broad... facebook basically has just patented statistical classification if its output are socioeconomics? How can this be legal? Facebook did not invent machine learning. How can they patent it?

_rpd 9y ago
This is not a patent. It is an application for a patent. The claims may be rejected during the application examination process, for example, if the examiner determines that the claims are obvious in light of the prior art.
- paulie_a 9y ago
  Let's be honest, the patent will be granted. Patents are easy to get. Then everyone else ignores the vast majority of them in the real world.
  - _rpd 9y ago
    It depends on the art unit processing the application[0]. If your application is classified as a 'software-related business method', your chances drop dramatically. [0] http://www.ipwatchdog.com/2015/05/21/hardest-easiest-art-units/id=57864/ http://www.ipwatchdog.com/2015/05/21/hardest-easiest-art-uni...
  - Lionsion 9y ago
    > Let's be honest, the patent will be granted. Is there any kind of public comment period where the patent's claims to novelty could be disputed? I feel like a lot of the worst patents may be granted because no one else was watching. You might even be able to find prior art someplace you don't expect, like some sociology academic paper.
    - aqme28 9y ago
      I'm not if it's at all effective, but Stack Exchange has a product for that https://patents.stackexchange.com/ https://patents.stackexchange.com/
  - 3pt14159 9y ago
    That was once true about software patents, but it's no longer true. I've seen some legitimately interesting / intellectually surprising software patents get denied not because they weren't novel or industrially useful, but because they lacked an inventive step. Inventive steps are hard to come by if math isn't patentable and the fundamental principles of software creation aren't really changing.
  - bitwize 9y ago
    Even if it gets granted, there's prior art. The big TV and movie analytics firms have been extrapolating socioeconomic data from viewing patterns since at least the early 2000s
- sandov 9y ago
  How money does it cost to apply for a patent?. Because if the cost is negligible, then an exploit would be to flood the patent system with dumb patent application until one of them is accepted. Hell, maybe a machine learning algorithm could be trained to produce trillions of gibberish pdf files, until one of them makes sense, then you can claim the invention.
  - ada1981 9y ago
    My patent cost about $10k all in. I filed the provisional application myself; then I found an investor who bankrolled hiring a lawyer. I recently did not renew the patent and have allowed it go into the public domain.
  - Retra 9y ago
    The patent system requires people to review the patents before they are accepted. Overloading patent reviewers with garbage patents isn't going to do you any favors. It'd be a bit like DDOS'ing yourself...
citilife 9y ago
It hasn't been challenged yet, and it likely wont be. Basically, Facebook (and other companies) patent stuff so if they are sued they can counter sue. Essentially, causing a kind of nuclear war for the companies (think Apple and Samsung). The whole point is to avoid conflict. Even if it's not enforceable it might cost a few hundred thousand to million dollars to fight it.
- dilap 9y ago
  and non-nuclear-powers (companies w/o a large portfolio of patents) just get arbitrarily fucked? what a system!
  - PurpleBoxDragon 9y ago
    The best solution, given these nukes are artificial, is to get rid of them. With real world nukes, you can't put the genie back into the bottle, but in this case you can remove the government distortion that is causing this arms race.
    - jdavis703 9y ago
      Having legal "nukes" can also be a good thing, even for David when they're going against Goliath. I was recently involved with a legal dispute with a large corporate landlord. I was able to line up enough potential illegal civil and criminal acts that I'm pretty sure their lawyers just decided it would cheaper to settle with me.
      - black_puppydog 9y ago
        that's nice. doesn't really inform the decision on software "nukes" though, does it? it might be that regulation/'distortion' is appropriate in one case, but not the other...
  - MichaelMoser123 9y ago
    I think these companies just don't get involved in nuclear confrontations of this kind - it's a costly buiseness; this is a game for the big suckers. You still might want to get a few patents of your own in order to prop up your own valuation. (If you want to be bought out by a bigger player)
bsbechtel 9y ago
Broadness is not a bar to patentability, as long as that breadth doesn't read on other claimed art or is obvious. There might be other reasons to invalidate the patent, but that's not one of them.
- hn_throwaway_99 9y ago
  Given that the parent said "facebook basically has just patented statistical classification if its output are socioeconomics?", I think the commenter's point is that the breadth does include things that have massive amounts of prior art and are thus obvious.
jeffreyrogers 9y ago
You're supposed to write a patent as broadly as you can while still being a non-obvious improvement over the prior-art. That lets your monopoly apply as broadly as possible and make it more likely that you can successfully prosecute an infringer.
rayiner 9y ago
You can patent specific applications of existing technology. But this particular patent may not pass the Section 101 abstract idea hurdle. “Use machine learning to determine socioeconomic status” is pretty abstract, and could be unpatantable under the Supreme Court’s Alice case law. Under that case law, something seemingly directed at an abstract idea may be patantable if it has an inventive concept (reflected in the claims) that goes beyond the abstact idea. If the claims pointed to specific features and specific processes that gave you more reliable determinations than prior-art methods, that'd probably be patentable. (Leaving aside whether it should be, it probably would be). But machine learning presents an odd situation. With machine learning, you don't iterate on an algorithm, improving it until it generates reliable results. You feed data to a machine learning algorithm, which then infers e.g. which features are particularly probative of the desired classifications. I would wonder whether even specific applications of machine learning would be patentable under Alice, since the computer rather than the patent applicant makes the inventive inferences.
- nerdponx 9y ago
  "Use machine learning to determine socioeconomic status" is basically the prompt for every econometrics term paper. This is analogous to patenting image classification, in the abstract. It's completely ridiculous. Patent a very specific model for determining socioeconomic status? Sure. Patent the process in general? No fuckin way.
  - rayiner 9y ago
    > Patent a very specific model for determining socioeconomic status? Sure. Patent the process in general? No fuckin way. That's my point. If you're using machine learning, isn't the "specific model" just the output of the machine learning algorithm? And if so, even that may not be patentable, because the applicant didn't create the inventive parts, the computer did.
    - nerdponx 9y ago
      Not necessarily. I'm not talking about the weights of a neural network per se. I'm talking about something like a specific neural network architecture, or a specific feature engineering procedure.

by zwaps 9y ago

_rpd 9y ago

This is not a patent. It is an application for a patent. The claims may be rejected during the application examination process, for example, if the examiner determines that the claims are obvious in light of the prior art.

paulie_a 9y ago
Let's be honest, the patent will be granted. Patents are easy to get. Then everyone else ignores the vast majority of them in the real world.
- _rpd 9y ago
  It depends on the art unit processing the application[0]. If your application is classified as a 'software-related business method', your chances drop dramatically. [0] http://www.ipwatchdog.com/2015/05/21/hardest-easiest-art-units/id=57864/ http://www.ipwatchdog.com/2015/05/21/hardest-easiest-art-uni...
- Lionsion 9y ago
  > Let's be honest, the patent will be granted. Is there any kind of public comment period where the patent's claims to novelty could be disputed? I feel like a lot of the worst patents may be granted because no one else was watching. You might even be able to find prior art someplace you don't expect, like some sociology academic paper.
  - aqme28 9y ago
    I'm not if it's at all effective, but Stack Exchange has a product for that https://patents.stackexchange.com/ https://patents.stackexchange.com/
- 3pt14159 9y ago
  That was once true about software patents, but it's no longer true. I've seen some legitimately interesting / intellectually surprising software patents get denied not because they weren't novel or industrially useful, but because they lacked an inventive step. Inventive steps are hard to come by if math isn't patentable and the fundamental principles of software creation aren't really changing.
- bitwize 9y ago
  Even if it gets granted, there's prior art. The big TV and movie analytics firms have been extrapolating socioeconomic data from viewing patterns since at least the early 2000s
sandov 9y ago
How money does it cost to apply for a patent?. Because if the cost is negligible, then an exploit would be to flood the patent system with dumb patent application until one of them is accepted. Hell, maybe a machine learning algorithm could be trained to produce trillions of gibberish pdf files, until one of them makes sense, then you can claim the invention.
- ada1981 9y ago
  My patent cost about $10k all in. I filed the provisional application myself; then I found an investor who bankrolled hiring a lawyer. I recently did not renew the patent and have allowed it go into the public domain.
- Retra 9y ago
  The patent system requires people to review the patents before they are accepted. Overloading patent reviewers with garbage patents isn't going to do you any favors. It'd be a bit like DDOS'ing yourself...

citilife 9y ago

It hasn't been challenged yet, and it likely wont be. Basically, Facebook (and other companies) patent stuff so if they are sued they can counter sue. Essentially, causing a kind of nuclear war for the companies (think Apple and Samsung). The whole point is to avoid conflict. Even if it's not enforceable it might cost a few hundred thousand to million dollars to fight it.

dilap 9y ago
and non-nuclear-powers (companies w/o a large portfolio of patents) just get arbitrarily fucked? what a system!
- PurpleBoxDragon 9y ago
  The best solution, given these nukes are artificial, is to get rid of them. With real world nukes, you can't put the genie back into the bottle, but in this case you can remove the government distortion that is causing this arms race.
  - jdavis703 9y ago
    Having legal "nukes" can also be a good thing, even for David when they're going against Goliath. I was recently involved with a legal dispute with a large corporate landlord. I was able to line up enough potential illegal civil and criminal acts that I'm pretty sure their lawyers just decided it would cheaper to settle with me.
    - black_puppydog 9y ago
      that's nice. doesn't really inform the decision on software "nukes" though, does it? it might be that regulation/'distortion' is appropriate in one case, but not the other...
- MichaelMoser123 9y ago
  I think these companies just don't get involved in nuclear confrontations of this kind - it's a costly buiseness; this is a game for the big suckers. You still might want to get a few patents of your own in order to prop up your own valuation. (If you want to be bought out by a bigger player)

bsbechtel 9y ago

Broadness is not a bar to patentability, as long as that breadth doesn't read on other claimed art or is obvious. There might be other reasons to invalidate the patent, but that's not one of them.

hn_throwaway_99 9y ago
Given that the parent said "facebook basically has just patented statistical classification if its output are socioeconomics?", I think the commenter's point is that the breadth does include things that have massive amounts of prior art and are thus obvious.

jeffreyrogers 9y ago

You're supposed to write a patent as broadly as you can while still being a non-obvious improvement over the prior-art. That lets your monopoly apply as broadly as possible and make it more likely that you can successfully prosecute an infringer.

rayiner 9y ago

You can patent specific applications of existing technology. But this particular patent may not pass the Section 101 abstract idea hurdle. “Use machine learning to determine socioeconomic status” is pretty abstract, and could be unpatantable under the Supreme Court’s Alice case law. Under that case law, something seemingly directed at an abstract idea may be patantable if it has an inventive concept (reflected in the claims) that goes beyond the abstact idea. If the claims pointed to specific features and specific processes that gave you more reliable determinations than prior-art methods, that'd probably be patentable. (Leaving aside whether it should be, it probably would be). But machine learning presents an odd situation. With machine learning, you don't iterate on an algorithm, improving it until it generates reliable results. You feed data to a machine learning algorithm, which then infers e.g. which features are particularly probative of the desired classifications. I would wonder whether even specific applications of machine learning would be patentable under Alice, since the computer rather than the patent applicant makes the inventive inferences.

nerdponx 9y ago
"Use machine learning to determine socioeconomic status" is basically the prompt for every econometrics term paper. This is analogous to patenting image classification, in the abstract. It's completely ridiculous. Patent a very specific model for determining socioeconomic status? Sure. Patent the process in general? No fuckin way.
- rayiner 9y ago
  > Patent a very specific model for determining socioeconomic status? Sure. Patent the process in general? No fuckin way. That's my point. If you're using machine learning, isn't the "specific model" just the output of the machine learning algorithm? And if so, even that may not be patentable, because the applicant didn't create the inventive parts, the computer did.
  - nerdponx 9y ago
    Not necessarily. I'm not talking about the weights of a neural network per se. I'm talking about something like a specific neural network architecture, or a specific feature engineering procedure.