5 ms·
Facebook Wins Patents For Tagging in Photos, Other Digital Media
- piramida 15y agoHope they won't actually enforce this patent unless they start going out of business. This is going beyond ridiculous now, trivial ideas with trivial tech behind them have no value and should not be protectable with a patent - it's not like there is a face recognition technology involved, or anything an intern can't "invent" and code within an hour.
- ignifero 15y agoIt's interesting that face recognition is not covered, the tag must be done by a person
- tsumnia 15y agoInteresting, since Facebook is employs face recognition to to encourage users to 'tag' their friends in photos.
- tmarthal 15y agoActually, tagging photos was one of the 'killer features' that caused many people to migrate from Myspace. Like all great, yet 'trivial', ideas, it seems crazy that no one thought of doing it before them (or if they were, not at the same scale).
- smeatish 15y agoRight, but this is a trivial idea that's trivial to implement. Facebook would have created this feature with or without the patent system's existence, so the patent is a net loss for society.
- reader5000 15y agoThe patent system is not supposed to protect "first to come up with an idea".
- tomkinstinch 15y agoActually, that is precisely what the patent system is supposed to protect. (IANAL, but...) The deal with the patent system is that the creator of an invention gets an exclusive and time-limited right to production and sale (or if method, use) in exchange for openly disclosing the details of the invention with society. Society benefits by gaining knowledge, the inventor benefits by having a temporary right to what they have created. In the United States, the patent system is defined as "first-to-invent" (the alternative being first-to-file). By definition, it protects the "first to come up with an idea," as long as the idea is useful, novel, and non-obvious. The idea must also meet a statutory requirement, which is to say, patentable. This is where arguments can be made, as programs may be considered mere "descriptive material."
- piramida 15y agoAgreed that they were first to fully implement this particular "graphical" tagging with confirmations. However the technology is nevertheless too simplistic to be patented. Just saying that any business which is a leader in some new field comes up with similar inventions daily - not because they are ingenious or full of great ideas, but because nobody before even considered this path. It does not make them patent-worthy. If moon astronauts would have patented their first step, nobody would have followed (example is bad on purpose :) ). But anyway, still hoping that it was a defensive step. This whole system is so poisonous that it pushes well-intentioned companies into playing the stupid game to be protected.
- ignifero 15y agoFrom a quick scan it seems they patented the ability to send notifications on tags, not tags themselves. [edit] it seems they have tagging oo. I wonder what does flickr have to say about this?
- CWuestefeld 15y ago...or Amazon, with their product images that have hotspots to hover over. Wait a minute... Isn't this all just a fancy application of image maps? All of geocities is prior art!
- smackfu 15y agoClaim 1 is the primary part of the patent, and I don't see how it would apply to generic tagging. Flickr does have this same feature, but they only added it in October 2009. Before that they just had generic "notes" and I would guess they are not particularly happy with the patent. http://blog.flickr.net/en/2009/10/21/people-in-photos/ http://blog.flickr.net/en/2009/10/21/people-in-photos/
- neilk 15y agoI wrote a similar feature for Flickr as a Greasemonkey extension back in 2005. http://www.flickr.com/photos/brevity/10826112/ http://www.flickr.com/photos/brevity/10826112/ Granted, as a user script it didn't do anything to help you find all the pictures you were tagged in; that would require a database.
- ceejayoz 15y agoPrior art: anyone who's ever written names on the back of a physical photograph. Oh, wait. "On a computer." What magical words!
- mustpax 15y agoDon't forget its cousin: "on a mobile computing device."
- CWuestefeld 15y agoNo. According to the article, it's being able to tag discrete regions of the photo. What you describe is a tag applicable to the entire thing, not separate notes attached to, say, each face in the picture.
- yaix 15y agoTake a pen, circle a face, write "that's Bob" next to it. I believe somebody may have done that before.
- CWuestefeld 15y agoSo you're saying that there's 37 8x10 color glossies, with circles and arrows, and a paragraph on the back of each one?
- Vivtek 15y agoNot that the judge was going to look at them.
- CWuestefeld 15y agoOnce again proving that justice is blind. And that's for illegal dumping, or for IP.
- ceejayoz 15y agoI've done that on physical photos. I wrote the names of high school friends on the back in the locations they appeared on the photo.
- amalag 15y agoYet another argument for the destruction of software patents and/or moving to another country to start a software company.
- nhangen 15y agoAbsolutely. In the poll earlier this week, I was hesitant, but now I can agree with clarity. This is not constructive for the growth of our industry.
- btucker 15y agoI remember a site produced for WWW2004 (May '04) which had this functionality. The wayback machine has some of it: http://replay.web.archive.org/20041217231727/http://w3photo.org/photos/www2004/p1.ftw http://replay.web.archive.org/20041217231727/http://w3photo.... I haven't read through the actual patent, but it would seem like possible prior art. [edit] it was built with this: http://fotonotes.net/ http://fotonotes.net/
- smackfu 15y agoThe main claim in this patent is about you tagging a person and them being notified and allowing them to reject the tag.
- neilk 15y agoReally? I seem to recall that Facebook didn't allow you to refuse being tagged in a photo until recently. Flickr went out of their way to make their photo tagging privacy-friendly back in 2008-09. Is Facebook now claiming something Flickr pioneered? I don't know much about what FB was like at the time; I barely used it. I'm not accusing, just asking.
- earbitscom 15y agoMetadata in MP3s seems like a nice precedent too.
- mohsen 15y agoanother sad day in human history
- BasDirks 15y agoThey hire the best in the valley to come up with this kind of crap so they can patent it? bring on the downvotes, but f*, what a waste of resources.
- LiveTheDream 15y agoThey hire the best in the valley to come up with this <good feature> to <build their userbase and provide a cool feature to users>. Then, their lawyers patent it because a big patent war chest seems like the best defense in the patent infringement war. Sad, but a wise business strategy right now.
- smackfu 15y agoTagging people in photos (and other things) is a fairly brilliant way to grow the activity in a social network. You send people a notification that they were tagged in something, they are very likely to visit the site to see what it was.
- BasDirks 15y agoYeah it's wonderful until Annoying Facebook Girl[1] and all her girlfriends find out about these awesome features. 1. http://www.quickmeme.com/Annoying-Facebook-Girl/ http://www.quickmeme.com/Annoying-Facebook-Girl/
- deleted 15y ago[deleted]
- deleted 15y ago[deleted]
- Seus 15y agohow am i not surprised the least by this. maybe we need some programmers to become politicians to fix this crap.
- Luyt 15y agoWith so many patent trolls shooting out of the ground left and right, and having success with their business models, there is really nothing else companies can do than join the bandwagon and also aggressively start registering & acquiring software patents, however trivial and/or vapid those patents might seem. Because in the end it's not the actual stuff in the patent that counts, but the effective legal and financial leverage that can be had with it. Doesn't the American justice system have some safeguards against being misused for financial gain? You'd say some judges should be aware now how the legal system is gamed.
- nroman 15y agoCompanies that actually build things have two enemies when it comes to patent warfare. The first is competing companies that also build stuff. The best defense against them is obtaining a large patent trove. This creates a mutually assured patent destruction situation, shielding the company from competitors' patents. The second enemy is patent trolls. They don't actually build anything, so defensive patents are useless. Because of this, the most prudent thing for a company to do is aggressively acquire patents with one hand, and lobby for the abolishment of these patents with the other hand.
- deleted 15y ago[deleted]
- DisposaBoy 15y agoGuys, don't read the article, read the patent claim instead: http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO2&Sect2=HITOFF&u=%2Fnetahtml%2FPTO%2Fsearch-adv.htm&r=1&p=1&f=G&l=50&d=PTXT&S1=facebook.ASNM.&OS=an/facebook&RS=AN/facebook http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO2&Sec... I think it's more important because I can already see many bringing up writing on the back of a photo as prior art which according to the claim doesn't apply. As always IANAL but as far as I can see other claims of others doing it also don't apply because those claims to prior art are not within a social-networking context and does not include the subsequent notification of such tags to someone else other than the person doing the tagging. Fun Fact: last year I uploaded a photo that was taken of my class in 2001 where I marked the photo with lines mapping names to everyone in the photo. After uploading other friends then began to tag everyone in the photo, including myself... For the record, I'm in no way defending this patent. I just think it's often easier to just jump on the bandwagon( - it is Thursday after-all) and not stop to actually think about what one is arguing against.
- Meai 15y agoSeriously? So now I can't make a tagging feature for my own site..?! What the hell...related question: I don't live in the U.S, does that mean I'm A, fine B, fine as long as my servers are not in the U.S C, not fine in any circumstance
- neilk 15y agoFOAF had tagging for people in photos back in 2000 or thereabouts. I remember demos which even outlined shapes within photos. Facebook deserves credit for making it possible to do it all within one big system, rather than rely on a patchwork of URLs. But not for a patent on the idea.