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> Patents almost never describe processes and technology with sufficient detail to reproduce them (in fact many companies will purposefully not patent those thi

> Patents almost never describe processes and technology with sufficient detail to reproduce them (in fact many companies will purposefully not patent those things they consider central to their business, to keep them secret) and are instead written so broad as to just create a moat to prevent any newcomers from entering. That's pretty false. The requirement for a patent in the US is that it is detailed enough that an expert in the domain can reproduce the invention from the patent. Doing so efficiently and at scale is a different issues. Having dealt with patents personally, lawyers very much stress this point as a requirement for a patent that is not easy to overturn. You're confusing a patent being broad with it not being detailed. They are both. A patent is a detailed reproducible description that includes a ton of language to also cover other similar things. For example, "in one embodiment of this invention a silver coated aluminum substrate is used for part N." This is very specific in that it says what was used to make the invention (a silver coated aluminum substrate) but also broad enough to cover other substrates (one embodiment).

TimPC 3y ago
A very common pattern is to write a patent and a research paper after the initial patent filing. When the patent office doesn't do their job you can still usually learn the invention from the paper. They key thing is companies wouldn't let employees publish without the patent part.
michaelt 3y ago
Patents are in principle supposed to be non-obvious, and detailed enough that an expert in the domain can reproduce the invention from the description. I can assure you that in practice they are neither. There are merely a lot of people in the legal profession whose jobs depend on ignoring that fact.
- pclmulqdq 3y ago
  In my past experience, this is only true because many people's eyes glaze over when they try to read patent-ese. If you can penetrate the obtuse form of English used, "in embodiments, ... may be ... to name a few" for example (and the weird ordering of paragraphs, etc.), it's actually not that hard to understand patents. There are a lot of people whose job it is to read patents, too.
- marcinzm 3y ago
  > I can assure you that in practice they are neither. Having written some patents that has not been my experience. For example, this is one of the patents in the lawsuit: https://patentimages.storage.googleapis.com/67/67/7c/1299b0c9615e64/US7103640.pdf https://patentimages.storage.googleapis.com/67/67/7c/1299b0c... This patent includes network diagrams, actual C data structure, technical terminology galore, etc, etc. It's got a ton more implementation details versus, for example, a scientific publication on this topic. Like, seriously, it's got 20+ page of this technical implementation details and not bland lawyer jargon: >The second redirection mechanism, which is specified as a future extension of NDTP is having the server return an NDTP RDR RSP message in response to an NDTP request for which the NDTP server has no ownership of the supplied identifier string. Those skilled in the art will note that unlike the embedded redirection links mechanism, the NDTP RDR RSP mechanism applies to all NDTP requests, not just NDTP GET.
  - pclmulqdq 3y ago
    I didn't read this patent before making a sister comment, but looking through it, this one is actually really clear on exactly what is happening (which makes sense with everyone here saying "it's just DNS for data" - everything is obvious in hindsight) and relatively low on patent jargon. A lot of patents give you a bunch of alternative implementations and component definitions, which can muddy the waters a bit. On the other hand, the figures can help you a lot.
  - michaelt 3y ago
    > it's got 20+ page of this technical implementation details Yeah fantastic, like an entire page devoted to showing requests that have numerical identifiers. Groundbreaking stuff. And it's all completely irrelevant noise because you can infringe on the patent even if your implementation in no way depends on any of those details The only thing that matters is the claims, and they're written so broadly and interpreted by the courts so creatively that a subject matter expert cannot read the document and determine if something does or does not infringe on it. Seriously, how does Claim 1 not cover 99% of HTTP requests ever made given that people were using reverse proxies and passing requests between backend servers for decades before this patent was filed?
cycomanic 3y ago
> > Patents almost never describe processes and technology with sufficient detail to reproduce them (in fact many companies will purposefully not patent those things they consider central to their business, to keep them secret) and are instead written so broad as to just create a moat to prevent any newcomers from entering. > That's pretty false. The requirement for a patent in the US is that it is detailed enough that an expert in the domain can reproduce the invention from the patent. Doing so efficiently and at scale is a different issues. Having dealt with patents personally, lawyers very much stress this point as a requirement for a patent that is not easy to overturn. I have dealt with patents myself as well and in every instance the lawyers told me ok give me all the other ways of you can think of how to do things, no matter if it works or not. Also keep what you did sufficiently vague. > You're confusing a patent being broad with it not being detailed. They are both. A patent is a detailed reproducible description that includes a ton of language to also cover other similar things. For example, "in one embodiment of this invention a silver coated aluminum substrate is used for part N." This is very specific in that it says what was used to make the invention (a silver coated aluminum substrate) but also broad enough to cover other substrates (one embodiment). This is actually a great example. Often the implementation will only work with a specific thickness and quality of silver and the substrate has to be prepared in a specific way to get the correct properties. None of these would be mentioned in the patent, and would typically require large amount of experimenting (costly) to find out what actually works.

TimPC 3y ago

A very common pattern is to write a patent and a research paper after the initial patent filing. When the patent office doesn't do their job you can still usually learn the invention from the paper. They key thing is companies wouldn't let employees publish without the patent part.

michaelt 3y ago

Patents are in principle supposed to be non-obvious, and detailed enough that an expert in the domain can reproduce the invention from the description. I can assure you that in practice they are neither. There are merely a lot of people in the legal profession whose jobs depend on ignoring that fact.

pclmulqdq 3y ago
In my past experience, this is only true because many people's eyes glaze over when they try to read patent-ese. If you can penetrate the obtuse form of English used, "in embodiments, ... may be ... to name a few" for example (and the weird ordering of paragraphs, etc.), it's actually not that hard to understand patents. There are a lot of people whose job it is to read patents, too.
marcinzm 3y ago
> I can assure you that in practice they are neither. Having written some patents that has not been my experience. For example, this is one of the patents in the lawsuit: https://patentimages.storage.googleapis.com/67/67/7c/1299b0c9615e64/US7103640.pdf https://patentimages.storage.googleapis.com/67/67/7c/1299b0c... This patent includes network diagrams, actual C data structure, technical terminology galore, etc, etc. It's got a ton more implementation details versus, for example, a scientific publication on this topic. Like, seriously, it's got 20+ page of this technical implementation details and not bland lawyer jargon: >The second redirection mechanism, which is specified as a future extension of NDTP is having the server return an NDTP RDR RSP message in response to an NDTP request for which the NDTP server has no ownership of the supplied identifier string. Those skilled in the art will note that unlike the embedded redirection links mechanism, the NDTP RDR RSP mechanism applies to all NDTP requests, not just NDTP GET.
- pclmulqdq 3y ago
  I didn't read this patent before making a sister comment, but looking through it, this one is actually really clear on exactly what is happening (which makes sense with everyone here saying "it's just DNS for data" - everything is obvious in hindsight) and relatively low on patent jargon. A lot of patents give you a bunch of alternative implementations and component definitions, which can muddy the waters a bit. On the other hand, the figures can help you a lot.
- michaelt 3y ago
  > it's got 20+ page of this technical implementation details Yeah fantastic, like an entire page devoted to showing requests that have numerical identifiers. Groundbreaking stuff. And it's all completely irrelevant noise because you can infringe on the patent even if your implementation in no way depends on any of those details The only thing that matters is the claims, and they're written so broadly and interpreted by the courts so creatively that a subject matter expert cannot read the document and determine if something does or does not infringe on it. Seriously, how does Claim 1 not cover 99% of HTTP requests ever made given that people were using reverse proxies and passing requests between backend servers for decades before this patent was filed?

cycomanic 3y ago

> > Patents almost never describe processes and technology with sufficient detail to reproduce them (in fact many companies will purposefully not patent those things they consider central to their business, to keep them secret) and are instead written so broad as to just create a moat to prevent any newcomers from entering. > That's pretty false. The requirement for a patent in the US is that it is detailed enough that an expert in the domain can reproduce the invention from the patent. Doing so efficiently and at scale is a different issues. Having dealt with patents personally, lawyers very much stress this point as a requirement for a patent that is not easy to overturn. I have dealt with patents myself as well and in every instance the lawyers told me ok give me all the other ways of you can think of how to do things, no matter if it works or not. Also keep what you did sufficiently vague. > You're confusing a patent being broad with it not being detailed. They are both. A patent is a detailed reproducible description that includes a ton of language to also cover other similar things. For example, "in one embodiment of this invention a silver coated aluminum substrate is used for part N." This is very specific in that it says what was used to make the invention (a silver coated aluminum substrate) but also broad enough to cover other substrates (one embodiment). This is actually a great example. Often the implementation will only work with a specific thickness and quality of silver and the substrate has to be prepared in a specific way to get the correct properties. None of these would be mentioned in the patent, and would typically require large amount of experimenting (costly) to find out what actually works.