8 ms·

"All of these details are publicly available in patents, and were carefully written to not leak anything." This part makes me sad about patents and original id

"All of these details are publicly available in patents, and were carefully written to not leak anything." This part makes me sad about patents and original idea behind them. This actually is the opposite of original idea why people came up with the idea of patenting something. To spread the knowledge and to award inventors. Not to stifle the competition.

wil421 3y ago
It’s not the patent that’s preventing him from speaking it’s the NDA he signed with Apple.
- FabHK 3y ago
  The sad fact is not that the author cannot speak about the invention (because of the NDA), but that the patent was carefully written not to disclose anything substantial about the invention.
  - MichaelZuo 3y ago
    Why is that sad? Partial information seems better then remaining 100% a trade secret.
    - vkou 3y ago
      No, it's worse. The point of patent protection is that you teach everyone how to build the thing that's being protected, in exchange for a monopoly. Not actually teaching people how to build the thing that's being protected, but still having a monopoly on it is the worst of all worlds. If you aren't going to teach us how to build something, don't expect patent protection for it. I'd rather you keep it as a trade secret, good, go do it, it's a free country, but then we can just reverse engineer it. If I don't have an NDA with you, I have no reason to keep your trade secret... secret.
      - MichaelZuo 3y ago
        Well it seems like your opinion is in the minority.
      - 8f2ab37a-ed6c 3y ago
        Could the reason be that someone in China doesn’t have to abide by US patent law and will be free to reproduce the device, and sell it to the rest of the world? Are patents less useful once your competition is overseas?
        vkou 3y ago
        They'd do the same thing if China didn't exist. It's a bug in our patent law.
- justinator 3y ago
  To be honest, I think it's a little dangerous he's saying the things he's saying, esp. the part where he tells people, "hire me to talk more".
  - therein 3y ago
    I was thinking the same. The Apple I know, starting with the orientation, puts incredible amount of effort into telling its employees that people will be coming to you for consulting gigs, hoping to steal their intellectual property. Sounds like he cleared the post with Apple, though.
dilap 3y ago
well arguably here they are doing that -- w/o patent protection his NDA would probably completely stop him from talking about any of this (tho i personally still think the patent idea is probably misguided -- apple would develop this tech ANYWAY, and it will all become public knowledge once people play w/ the devices enough, so what are we really gaining here?) but still the argument can be made.
acomjean 3y ago
I worked at a large company with lots of patents. It was said some things they kept as "trade secrets" as to not alert the world to how they were doing things. Mostly I understood to have to do with the processes they were using for Chip Fabrication. I left long ago and they sold they're chip business...
majormajor 3y ago
If not for patent protection they'd be trade secrets inside Apple and if anything they'd talk about them less. Whether or not those trade secrets were likely to leak before or after the expiration of the patent... well... in theory the patents mean you get the info out there even for the failed companies where leaks wouldn't be interesting. In practice you've got patent trolls. I think it would make sense to shorten the patent length for certain things, based on how fast the state of the art in that industry is moving, but it would be hard to make everyone happy with whoever was in charge of deciding those terms.
- jiggawatts 3y ago
  Without patents: You are not provided any information, useful or otherwise. You can obtain this information any way you please, and use it. E.g.: reverse engineering. With patents: You are provided with useless information. Information that is literally deliberately designed not to be useful. You can't practically speak use it. If you do obtain the information in any other way, you'll be sued into the ground. You'll be sued even if you've never seen the patent. You'll be sued even if your own invention is only vaguely similar. You'll just be sued, let's leave it at that.
  - convolvatron 3y ago
    don't forget willful damages. a long time ago I used to read the patents to understand the landscape and make sure my novel work was not infringing. now we all have to _never even look_, because that might support someone's claim that you were aware of their patent and chose to violate it anyways - triple damages
c7DJTLrn 3y ago
Give away too much information and your technology will just be copied by some Chinese company.
evancox100 3y ago
I could be wrong, but I took that to mean the tweet thread was written not to leak anything that wasn’t already publicly available in the patents. Not that the patents were written to not disclose anything. In which case patent regime is working exactly as intended and promoting dissemination of ideas while still providing the (time limited) economic advantages to the inventor.
- justinator 3y ago
  As is written, the subject of what's, "carefully written" are, "the details [...] in patents".
  - bdowling 3y ago
    The "in patents" modifies "available", not "details". Had he wanted to state that the patents were carefully written, he would have written "which", not "and".
    - justinator 3y ago
      Again, original sentence, "All of these details are publicly available in patents, and were carefully written to not leak anything." I'll simplify: "Details available in patents, carefully written to not leak" What's been written? The patent. What is in the patent? Details. How are the details written to not leak? Carefully.
      - deleted 3y ago
        [deleted]
      - jameshart 3y ago
        Stop being obtuse. The author's intent is clear. What are we reading? A tweet. What does it contain? Details. What details? Ones that are publicly available in patents. How have they been written? Carefully, to not leak anything.
        3y ago
gumby 3y ago
Actually his statement is entirely within the spirit of patents: the secret sauce is disclosed in exchange for some limited monopoly; since it's been disclosed people can talk about it and learn from it. (None of this comment should be interpreted as a defense of the travesty that the patent system has become)
- pornel 3y ago
  But can they, really? The language of patents is an obfuscated legalese, further confused by many variants of the claims that may not make any sense. They're far far from anything educational.
  - jitl 3y ago
    I’ve found patents to be helpful despite the legalese.
avianlyric 3y ago
I’m gonna avoid opining on the value of the patent system in general. But one way of reading this statement is that the patents were written to avoid leaking anything about what the technology was going to be used for. It’s entirely possible that the patents created for the Vision Pro are good enough to recreate many of the individual components that have been patented, but don’t help you assemble the entire product. Which I would argue is entirely within the sprit of the patent system. Just because you want a patent an idea a receive a monopoly on it reproduction doesn’t mean you need give away the details of how your entire product works. Indeed you may probably wish to keep as much stuff a possible hidden a pure trade secrets, if you’re confident that they can’t be easily reverse engineered or replicated. But none of that diminishes the value of the knowledge shared in a patent. Nor does it inherently mean that the patents are written in a way to be entirely useless, they’re just extremely specific and don’t include broader context that isn’t needed to reproduce the specific thing being patented. For example you could patent “estimating human emotional intent from body worn bio-sensors”, without once mentioning its intended for use in a VR headset. Just because you intentionally avoid mentioning a VR headset doesn’t make the information in the patent useless.
- doxeddaily 3y ago
  >Which I would argue is entirely within the sprit of the patent system. I don't think so. The spirit of the patent system is you submit your product to them in the form of a working model. You get to patent that device. Tearing it apart into individual inventions to me is against the spirit. Of course none of this matters anymore, we are far down the rabbit hole.
  - avianlyric 3y ago
    > I don't think so. The spirit of the patent system is you submit your product to them in the form of a working model. On what basis? The patent system protects inventions not products. Not all inventions are sellable products in themselves, and not all products are inventions. How would you patent anything meaningful if you can only patent an entire product? It’s would be trivial to around just patents, just make a minor insignificant change to the design of the product, and bam, you’ve got something brand new and unprotected. Thus rendering the entire reason for getting a patent meaningless.
bdowling 3y ago
What he wrote was, "These details ... were carefully written to not leak anything." This is standard CYA language from an employee who doesn't want to get in trouble for leaking anything not publicly known (e.g., something not in a patent document).
swyx 3y ago
you have to wonder what the statute of limitations is on Apple's NDA blowdart. Surely 10 years after the work was done if its not being used people should be able to at least talk in broad strokes about their work without fear of repurcussion?

wil421 3y ago

It’s not the patent that’s preventing him from speaking it’s the NDA he signed with Apple.

FabHK 3y ago
The sad fact is not that the author cannot speak about the invention (because of the NDA), but that the patent was carefully written not to disclose anything substantial about the invention.
- MichaelZuo 3y ago
  Why is that sad? Partial information seems better then remaining 100% a trade secret.
  - vkou 3y ago
    No, it's worse. The point of patent protection is that you teach everyone how to build the thing that's being protected, in exchange for a monopoly. Not actually teaching people how to build the thing that's being protected, but still having a monopoly on it is the worst of all worlds. If you aren't going to teach us how to build something, don't expect patent protection for it. I'd rather you keep it as a trade secret, good, go do it, it's a free country, but then we can just reverse engineer it. If I don't have an NDA with you, I have no reason to keep your trade secret... secret.
    - MichaelZuo 3y ago
      Well it seems like your opinion is in the minority.
    - 8f2ab37a-ed6c 3y ago
      Could the reason be that someone in China doesn’t have to abide by US patent law and will be free to reproduce the device, and sell it to the rest of the world? Are patents less useful once your competition is overseas?
      - vkou 3y ago
        They'd do the same thing if China didn't exist. It's a bug in our patent law.
justinator 3y ago
To be honest, I think it's a little dangerous he's saying the things he's saying, esp. the part where he tells people, "hire me to talk more".
- therein 3y ago
  I was thinking the same. The Apple I know, starting with the orientation, puts incredible amount of effort into telling its employees that people will be coming to you for consulting gigs, hoping to steal their intellectual property. Sounds like he cleared the post with Apple, though.

dilap 3y ago

well arguably here they are doing that -- w/o patent protection his NDA would probably completely stop him from talking about any of this (tho i personally still think the patent idea is probably misguided -- apple would develop this tech ANYWAY, and it will all become public knowledge once people play w/ the devices enough, so what are we really gaining here?) but still the argument can be made.

acomjean 3y ago

I worked at a large company with lots of patents. It was said some things they kept as "trade secrets" as to not alert the world to how they were doing things. Mostly I understood to have to do with the processes they were using for Chip Fabrication. I left long ago and they sold they're chip business...

majormajor 3y ago

If not for patent protection they'd be trade secrets inside Apple and if anything they'd talk about them less. Whether or not those trade secrets were likely to leak before or after the expiration of the patent... well... in theory the patents mean you get the info out there even for the failed companies where leaks wouldn't be interesting. In practice you've got patent trolls. I think it would make sense to shorten the patent length for certain things, based on how fast the state of the art in that industry is moving, but it would be hard to make everyone happy with whoever was in charge of deciding those terms.

jiggawatts 3y ago
Without patents: You are not provided any information, useful or otherwise. You can obtain this information any way you please, and use it. E.g.: reverse engineering. With patents: You are provided with useless information. Information that is literally deliberately designed not to be useful. You can't practically speak use it. If you do obtain the information in any other way, you'll be sued into the ground. You'll be sued even if you've never seen the patent. You'll be sued even if your own invention is only vaguely similar. You'll just be sued, let's leave it at that.
- convolvatron 3y ago
  don't forget willful damages. a long time ago I used to read the patents to understand the landscape and make sure my novel work was not infringing. now we all have to _never even look_, because that might support someone's claim that you were aware of their patent and chose to violate it anyways - triple damages

c7DJTLrn 3y ago

Give away too much information and your technology will just be copied by some Chinese company.

evancox100 3y ago

I could be wrong, but I took that to mean the tweet thread was written not to leak anything that wasn’t already publicly available in the patents. Not that the patents were written to not disclose anything. In which case patent regime is working exactly as intended and promoting dissemination of ideas while still providing the (time limited) economic advantages to the inventor.

justinator 3y ago
As is written, the subject of what's, "carefully written" are, "the details [...] in patents".
- bdowling 3y ago
  The "in patents" modifies "available", not "details". Had he wanted to state that the patents were carefully written, he would have written "which", not "and".
  - justinator 3y ago
    Again, original sentence, "All of these details are publicly available in patents, and were carefully written to not leak anything." I'll simplify: "Details available in patents, carefully written to not leak" What's been written? The patent. What is in the patent? Details. How are the details written to not leak? Carefully.
    - deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]
    - jameshart 3y ago
      Stop being obtuse. The author's intent is clear. What are we reading? A tweet. What does it contain? Details. What details? Ones that are publicly available in patents. How have they been written? Carefully, to not leak anything.
      - 3y ago

gumby 3y ago

Actually his statement is entirely within the spirit of patents: the secret sauce is disclosed in exchange for some limited monopoly; since it's been disclosed people can talk about it and learn from it. (None of this comment should be interpreted as a defense of the travesty that the patent system has become)

pornel 3y ago
But can they, really? The language of patents is an obfuscated legalese, further confused by many variants of the claims that may not make any sense. They're far far from anything educational.
- jitl 3y ago
  I’ve found patents to be helpful despite the legalese.

avianlyric 3y ago

I’m gonna avoid opining on the value of the patent system in general. But one way of reading this statement is that the patents were written to avoid leaking anything about what the technology was going to be used for. It’s entirely possible that the patents created for the Vision Pro are good enough to recreate many of the individual components that have been patented, but don’t help you assemble the entire product. Which I would argue is entirely within the sprit of the patent system. Just because you want a patent an idea a receive a monopoly on it reproduction doesn’t mean you need give away the details of how your entire product works. Indeed you may probably wish to keep as much stuff a possible hidden a pure trade secrets, if you’re confident that they can’t be easily reverse engineered or replicated. But none of that diminishes the value of the knowledge shared in a patent. Nor does it inherently mean that the patents are written in a way to be entirely useless, they’re just extremely specific and don’t include broader context that isn’t needed to reproduce the specific thing being patented. For example you could patent “estimating human emotional intent from body worn bio-sensors”, without once mentioning its intended for use in a VR headset. Just because you intentionally avoid mentioning a VR headset doesn’t make the information in the patent useless.

doxeddaily 3y ago
>Which I would argue is entirely within the sprit of the patent system. I don't think so. The spirit of the patent system is you submit your product to them in the form of a working model. You get to patent that device. Tearing it apart into individual inventions to me is against the spirit. Of course none of this matters anymore, we are far down the rabbit hole.
- avianlyric 3y ago
  > I don't think so. The spirit of the patent system is you submit your product to them in the form of a working model. On what basis? The patent system protects inventions not products. Not all inventions are sellable products in themselves, and not all products are inventions. How would you patent anything meaningful if you can only patent an entire product? It’s would be trivial to around just patents, just make a minor insignificant change to the design of the product, and bam, you’ve got something brand new and unprotected. Thus rendering the entire reason for getting a patent meaningless.

bdowling 3y ago

What he wrote was, "These details ... were carefully written to not leak anything." This is standard CYA language from an employee who doesn't want to get in trouble for leaking anything not publicly known (e.g., something not in a patent document).

swyx 3y ago

you have to wonder what the statute of limitations is on Apple's NDA blowdart. Surely 10 years after the work was done if its not being used people should be able to at least talk in broad strokes about their work without fear of repurcussion?