4 ms·

Essentially yes. You can already do it very effectively for code.

orhmeh09 3y ago
Neat. Is there any way to thwart this? Edit: I suppose no more than you could prevent a human from trying to do the same.
- morkalork 3y ago
  Sure, stop issuing patents for software!
- pclmulqdq 3y ago
  Alice would like to have a word. That case (Alice Corp vs CLS Bank) makes it hard to have a software patent, particularly if that software has no physical effect on the world.
kazinator 3y ago
Code is a specific expression covered by copyright, not an incredibly broad claim that covers everything from toasters to spacecraft. If the code's algorithm is patented, you cannot get around the patent by using different function and variable names and perturbing the code organization.
- mort96 3y ago
  Worth noting that you can't just get around a piece of code's copyright by using different function and variable names and perturbing the organisation either. At least not if you're a human. I bet you're correct and we wont be able to use ML models to strip code of its patents the way we use them to strip code of its copyright protection. But I wouldn't have expected the copyright stripping trick to work either, yet here we are.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  - kazinator 3y ago
    You can't legally get around copyright with technicalities, because any bit string can be derived from any other bit string by a sequence of one bit edits, and according to the legal doctrine, if we start with a copyrighted work, each such edit is creates a derived work. You can disguise borrowed code such that, in the first place, nobody will suspect that it's derived from anything, and even then, they won't have evidence that it's derived. Changing a few names and superficial organization details, on a large and significant work, will likely not fool anyone. If it's a small module or just one function, quite probably easily so. You don't even have to understand how the code works; if you just know the paper from where the original author got the code, you can just say you implemented the detailed requirements there and validated it on the available test vectors.

Neat. Is there any way to thwart this? Edit: I suppose no more than you could prevent a human from trying to do the same.

morkalork 3y ago
Sure, stop issuing patents for software!
pclmulqdq 3y ago
Alice would like to have a word. That case (Alice Corp vs CLS Bank) makes it hard to have a software patent, particularly if that software has no physical effect on the world.

kazinator 3y ago

Code is a specific expression covered by copyright, not an incredibly broad claim that covers everything from toasters to spacecraft. If the code's algorithm is patented, you cannot get around the patent by using different function and variable names and perturbing the code organization.

mort96 3y ago
Worth noting that you can't just get around a piece of code's copyright by using different function and variable names and perturbing the organisation either. At least not if you're a human. I bet you're correct and we wont be able to use ML models to strip code of its patents the way we use them to strip code of its copyright protection. But I wouldn't have expected the copyright stripping trick to work either, yet here we are.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- kazinator 3y ago
  You can't legally get around copyright with technicalities, because any bit string can be derived from any other bit string by a sequence of one bit edits, and according to the legal doctrine, if we start with a copyrighted work, each such edit is creates a derived work. You can disguise borrowed code such that, in the first place, nobody will suspect that it's derived from anything, and even then, they won't have evidence that it's derived. Changing a few names and superficial organization details, on a large and significant work, will likely not fool anyone. If it's a small module or just one function, quite probably easily so. You don't even have to understand how the code works; if you just know the paper from where the original author got the code, you can just say you implemented the detailed requirements there and validated it on the available test vectors.