8 ms·
Patent: Electronic flashcards (2013)
- save_ferris 7y agoWhat does this mean for apps like Anki (assuming they’re not the ones who own this patent)?
- joshvm 7y agoIf I understand correctly this patent is only active in the USA. Anki is based on SuperMemo-2 and they freely admit it. SuperMemo (based in Poland) has pretty liberal licensing: https://www.supermemo.com/en/blog/licensing-and-copyrighting-of-supermemo-algorithms https://www.supermemo.com/en/blog/licensing-and-copyrighting... I can't see this patent holding up unless it's for a very specific flashcard system. There is prior art on flashcards going back to the 19th century.
- amelius 7y agoOnce a patent is granted, it is very hard to fight the patent using prior art as evidence.
- tzs 7y agoHow much has Anki's handling of flashcards changed since it was first released? Anki was publicly released well before this patent's priority date, and so nothing Anki was doing then can infringe. It's possible that newer feature of Anki infringe, and so worst case they might have to revert those, but the basic Anki functionality is safe.
- graphpapa 7y agoIf Anki or other existing flash card programs are attacked because of this I would consider that quite evil
- deskglass 7y agoWhat is the recourse here? Would it be reasonable to contact the person that approved the patent with information showing that plenty flashcard systems precede this patent? I imagine there is some more formal system.
- smnrchrds 7y ago> What is the recourse here? If you want to make a flashcard program, pray to gods Google will take pity on you and not enforce their patent. Otherwise, you better had set aside a couple of million dollars for the patent fight with Google. I mean, the patent will eventually get invalidated, but not before a decade in courts and millions of dollars in costs. EDIT: Ignore everything I said. I got confused. I apologize. I am not going to change the original comment so the context of the replies would be preserved.
- lern_too_spel 7y agoWhy would Google pay to enforce a patent it doesn't own?
- klipt 7y agoSomebody confused (Google's (patents search)) with ((Google's patents) search)
- ReverseCold 7y agoIt looks like it's a person (not a company) that owns the patent too, so unless this person is a m/billionaire a court case doesn't even sound that bad.
- kevin_thibedeau 7y agoUntil a troll buys the patent.
- Hnrobert42 7y agoAll patents are granted to people not companies. The people may then assign to a company the right to enforce the patent.
- 3fe9a03ccd14ca5 7y agoI’d love to see a charity formed for the sole purpose of challenging these patents in courts. Crowdfunding can go a long way, and strategic legal wins can go a long way in shaping precedence. Many organizations dabble in these challenges, but it needs a singular purpose.
- khc 7y agoIt's not the sole purpose but EFF does do a lot in this area: https://www.eff.org/patent-busting https://www.eff.org/patent-busting
- 3fe9a03ccd14ca5 7y agoI love the EFF but they have their pokers in a lot of (important) fires. I’d ultimately like to donate to both causes.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- gohbgl 7y agoThese joke patents are relatively harmless. The real problem is the "good patents" which can actually be enforced and used to stifle competition.
- thetanil 7y agoNot an organization for challenging in court, but "crowdbrain" support for people who do: https://patents.stackexchange.com/ https://patents.stackexchange.com/
- scottyelich 7y agoUnlikely to survive an Alice 101 challenge.
- username4567 7y agoHasn’t flash card software been around since the 80s or 90s?
- admax88q 7y agoHow brain dead or just checked out are patent office clerks that patents like this are granted.
- ceejayoz 7y agoI'd imagine there's an art to making the application wordy and confusing enough to slip through.
- admax88q 7y agoIf a patent clerk is confused by the patent, then it should be rejected not granted. The whole premise of the patent process it that you disclose your invention for the good of the population and in return you are granted a temporary monopoly over your invention. I would never, ever, reference a software patent in order to implement a patented invention. They do not serve as any usable guide for the so called "invention." Therefore they are a perversion of the patent process and should not be granted.
- kranner 7y ago> If a patent clerk is confused by the patent, then it should be rejected not granted. I think GP means so confused they don't know they're confused.
- Taniwha 7y agoThe language used for describing patents is not quite English, in some ways it's a bit like a programming language, you can sort of create variables, arrays (the first X, the second X, ...), subroutine calls (even recursive calls provided they don't recurse infinitely, though that pushes the cost up) some words have different meanings ("or" for example is always exclusive or) etc etc
- Hnrobert42 7y agoMy friend was a patent clerk. She is pretty sharp. She explained that rules make it much more time-consuming to deny an application than to grant it or coach the applicant on changes they need to make in order to win a grant. Something about needing to explicitly refute each claim. Further, clerks are given quotas on how many patents they must review a week. It’s a pretty crushing load, so the system favors grants.
- femto113 7y agoI imagine there's plenty of prior art available. Certainly by the time the Apple II was in schools if not before.
- vortico 7y agoAs with any patent, read the claims before making statements about what the patent covers. Patent titles are useless. With that said, at a quick glance it doesn't appear that it claims a novel electronic flashcard method, but there could be something I missed.
- akersten 7y ago> at a quick glance it doesn't appear that it claims a novel electronic flashcard method I mean, there is no such thing. It isn't possible to create something like that. Computers only perform a specific set of actions, and it doesn't matter how you put them together to do the flashcard thing. Or anything. There's nothing novel to be found. It's just math. We should not grant artificial exclusivity over categories of functionality that computers were designed to provide. Destroy all software patents.
- achow 7y agoI'm with you on the sentiment. But comment on the rationale behind the sentiment.. > Computers only perform a specific set of actions, and it doesn't matter how you put them together.. More or less everything in this world is about understanding how 'elements' work and then how to put them together to invent a new thing.. Medicines (molecules), Design (lines and shapes), Art (colors and mediums), Yoga (Asanas), etc.
- akersten 7y agoThe nuance with software is that we made up the system in which all of these programs are put together. Just like in math, we made up the constructs and rules that define what an algorithm or a theorem or a function can be. Because there is a human-defined limited scope of what even constitutes a valid construct (i.e. an "upper limit" of novelty - "this is everything mathematics can do"), anything that exists within this sandbox is therefore less novel. We establish the baseline novelty of the entirety of mathematics as "really powerful, and world changing - and too important to the common good to lock behind a patent." So if that is the upper limit, no individual piece of it can be more novel. The patent office displays stunning clarity in correctly determining that therefore, any particular instance of maths cannot be patented. Their failure to apply this same reasoning to software (which is, and always will be, reducible to math) baffles me.
- shiftpgdn 7y agoAt this point we should just disband the patent office. Does it even serve a purpose in modern times? China, where most of our goods come from has no respect for the American patent system.
- oneplane 7y agoDoes anyone have 'respect' for that system?
- kbumsik 7y agoDon't look at the title. At a glance, the claims looks like a very specific implementation of a flashcard application, which does not seem to be relevant to the current flashcard apps. Did I miss something?
- teraflop 7y agoThe first three paragraphs of claim 1 describe every flashcard application ever made. As far as I can tell, the "novel" part of the invention being claimed is the fourth paragraph, namely the concept of displaying multiple cards on the screen at the same time. IMO, that's still an extremely broad concept to be granted a patent on.
- vortico 7y agoThis patent was filed 2007 and granted 2012, so the title should say (2012).
- jameslee50 7y agoThe patent page states it the patent became active 2020-01-01
- pwg 7y agoThe patent issued November 26, 2013 (see http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO1&Sect2=HITOFF&d=PALL&p=1&u=%2Fnetahtml%2FPTO%2Fsrchnum.htm&r=1&f=G&l=50&s1=8595637.PN.&OS=PN/8595637&RS=PN/8595637 http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO1&Sect2=H...).
- lbatx 7y agoThere seems to be a weird bug on the Google Patents site. I've noticed that the expiration date of a patent is always the day I visit the site, even for patents I know expired a while ago. This may be something like that.
- Geimfari 7y agoIt's not wrong but it is confusing – it's showing you what its current status is, which should be shown somewhere else than in the timeline.
- lbatx 7y agoAh, thanks. As in Expired (date). Where date is every day from the day it expires until forever. Not Expired on date, but currently expired. Makes sense now.
- Geimfari 7y agoThe page says that as of today (2020-01-01) the status is active. The wording is confusing.
- ConcernedCoder 7y ago"A method of writing a patent application whereby the most trivial and non-patentable ideas are made to seem novel and patentable."
- wolfgang42 7y agoThe patent has not “become active;” the reason it says ‘2020-01-01 Application status is Active’ in the timeline is because its current status (as of 2020-01-01) is Active. It actually became active on 2013-11-26 when it was granted and published. (If you look at any active patent it will show the same date, and if you look at this patent tomorrow it will show tomorrow's date instead.) This comes up every single time someone links to a Google Patents search; it's an incredibly misleading bit of UX design. [Edit: I'm glad to see that the title has been adjusted to remove the “becomes active” bit. It should probably still have (2013) added on the end, though.]
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- ww520 7y agoThe claims in this patent are too broad. It's likely that it will get invalidated with prior arts in the court.
- hnuser123456 7y agoI wrote a flash card program in 2011 to help me study French. I should charge licensing fees to anyone who uses this in a product.
- bszaboky 7y agoThe lady who owns the rights is Vicci Tucci. Here is a link to her company's website: https://tuccionline.com/company/ https://tuccionline.com/company/ Here is also a video on how her flashcard tech works: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FFOm9oM_-A4&feature=share https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FFOm9oM_-A4&feature=share If you look under "Products", you can see that she has a flashcard app called Fluency. However, I can't seem to find the app on iOS or Android app stores. Also, I still can't seem to find the novel aspect of this patent? The first claim literally denotes the functionality of every current flashcard application.