9 ms·

As a former patent examiner, I was struck by how low the payout for Project Jengo was. $125,000 for all people submitting prior art? (There were hundreds of sub

As a former patent examiner, I was struck by how low the payout for Project Jengo was. $125,000 for all people submitting prior art? (There were hundreds of submissions, so it's split among many people.) I would like to help out with such things and I think I have the experience to do it well, but even being a GS-7 patent examiner making $75,000 per year is a better deal! That's especially true given that Cloudflare's not only expecting people to find prior art, but to also write the legal arguments about why it reads on Sable's claims. If they're serious about their prior art bounty program, they're going to need to increase the bounties. Actual patent search firms charge a lot more money, and even lowly paid bureaucrats make a lot more.

tripzilch 2y ago
[flagged]
- btrettel 2y ago
  Your comments throughout this thread strike me as particularly off base. Both I and Gene Quinn agree that patent trolls are bad, but think that the problem has been exaggerated in the media. That doesn't make me a shill. I'm happy to see trolls defeated in court. And I don't work for a patent troll, or work for the highest bidder. (First job I took after quitting the USPTO was in academia and paid significantly less than the USPTO.) As I said in other comments, I haven't worked in patents since leaving the USPTO.
mikaeluman 2y ago
Given the result, it seems 125k was a bit too high since they got so many submissions so easily. The market sets the price, regardless of what we personally think is "fair".
benreesman 2y ago
I have this stubborn cognitive bias that CloudFlare is a good thing, I think it’s because OG hackers from HN started it: jgrahamc and that lot are the real deal. Time and time again it’s like: “CloydFlare discovers way to be evil that even Google didn’t figure out! News at 10.” Dear Jesus, all I want for Hanukah is that fly.io doesn’t end up like that.
neelm 2y ago
The payments could increase in the future as this approach becomes more successful and the ROI is better understood. Before this most companies would give into the trolls. Now there may be an increasing incentive to fight back. Few companies have the time, capital and governance freedom to do so.
TheRealPomax 2y ago
Note that this is the kind of reasoning that would also stop resources like wikipedia from existing. Why do for free what could be done for (good) pay instead? So it feels like you're telling people to not participate because a good payday is more important than doing good. That reasoning might work for your dayjob (why put in effort that your employer doesn't reward?), but this is not an employment situation, that line of reasoning simply does not apply to volunteer work: these folks did not put in the work to draw a check, they put in the work to combat patent trolling. And it worked: everyone who helped won. But then some folks even won an extra prize without any expectation of a reward beyond the one they did it for. How nice is that?
RevEng 2y ago
If it was about paying an examiner to dig up prior art, they could just do that privately. Crowdsourcing like this is typically much cheaper, but putting money aside, many people would be happy to help simply out of principal. There are lots of people who want to see patent trolls eliminated and they would spend their own time to do it without expecting to be paid for it. If you would only consider doing this as a form of employment, so be it, but many others are happy to do this just to try and make the world a better place for us all.
mmmlinux 2y ago
Just a big company pretending to be the little guy being picked on so they play up the little guy with no resources except crowd sourcing aspect. Some people that don't value their time but want to help the little guy that's "protecting the web". People here have an interesting duality of wanting the big 200k+ faang job, but also expect you to work for free on opensource projects.
tomhallett 2y ago
While I don’t disagree with any of your points, it seems like they are using a “platform/UGC/crowd” model to change the economics of the business model. In the same way that TV networks find/vet/pay for the supply of shows and take on the risk per-show, YouTube (at its core) doesn’t do any of that and all of the content creators do those things with the hope it will take off and a share of the ad revenue, while YouTube’s risks are related to the opex cost of the incoming supply/demand. Instead of cloudflare paying per examiner, they give a non-guaranteed slice to a bigger group of people.
- toomuchtodo 2y ago
  Strangely, this sounds like a great use case for LLMs? To just grind through entire datasets attempting to surface prior art. Edit: Found this with a search, so it can be done: https://xlscout.ai/novelty-checker-llm/ https://xlscout.ai/novelty-checker-llm/ (also, thanks Cloudflare! Keep on grinding patent trolls!)
  - btrettel 2y ago
    After I quit the USPTO, I tried using ChatGPT 3.5 for some basic patent examining activity out of curiosity, and I can say that it did an absolutely horrendous job. This wasn't prior art search, just analyzing the text to do a rejection based on the text alone (35 USC 112). And the AI search technologies I used tended to not be particularly good. They typically find "background" documents that are related but can't be used in a rejection. I don't anticipate LLMs being able to examine patents in general well. Many times a detailed understanding of things not in the text is necessary to examine. For the technologies I examined, often search was basically flipping through drawings. I'd love to see an AI search technology focus specifically on patent drawings. This can be quite difficult. Often I'd have to understand the topology of a circuit (electrical or flow) and find a specific combination of elements. Of course, each drawing could be laid out differently but be topologically equivalent... this surely can be handled with computers in some way, but it's going to require a big effort right now.
    - deleted 2y ago
      [deleted]
javajosh 2y ago
Cloudflare is shrewdly calculating that there is a lot of latent, unexpressed hate toward patent trolls but that most people don't want to make a career out of it, but might very well make a little hobby out of it, and so they get to take advantage of people who are motivated by something other than money. More deeply, the very idea of a "patent examiner" has never made sense to me. It requires being expert in all things, which is impossible. It makes more sense to take someone who is an expert in a field, and put a "patent examiner" hat on them for a little while. Ideally the patent system is not so complex that it itself requires as much or more study to be expert in than the actual subjects of the patents -- this would be a very bad sign.
- saratogacx 2y ago
  Patent Examiners do specialize in their fields. It isn't something that is just a common pool subject to any patent that comes into the pipe. From the USPTO[1] What kind of degree do I need to apply, and which vacancy do I need to apply to? The minimum degree required to be a utility patent examiner is a bachelor’s degree. There are dozens of STEM-related bachelor’s degree types that qualify, even if they are not the exact discipline listed in the title of the job vacancy. For example, professionals with bachelor’s degrees ranging from engineering, mathematics, astronomy, space science, geophysics, oceanography, or hydrology could all apply to the "Patent Examiner (Physics)" vacancy when it is open. To see more details about which degrees best fit with which patent examiner vacancies, view this chart[1]. You can also attend one of our upcoming webinars or office hours to chat with a current patent examiner, or email us at JoinUSPTO@uspto.gov with your specific question. [1] https://www.uspto.gov/jobs/become-patent-examiner https://www.uspto.gov/jobs/become-patent-examiner [2] https://www.uspto.gov/sites/default/files/documents/patent-examiner-degree-crosswalk-august-2024.pdf https://www.uspto.gov/sites/default/files/documents/patent-e...
  - codersfocus 2y ago
    There aren't any consequences to their decisions though. Patent examiner shouldn't be a civil servant's job. Rather, it should be a "bond" process given to private, accredited individuals / organizations. If your issued patents are found invalid, your bond (which would be in the millions) is raided to pay back damages.
eastdakota 2y ago
Having talked with several of them, most of the people who submit the prior art as part of Project Jengo would do so even if there were no payout. Several winners have actually asked that the payout be donated back to other organizations fighting patent trolls. This isn't intended to be anyone's full time job. It is intended to reward technical people with industry knowledge who may be able to help surface prior art and are as sick of patent trolls as we are.
- mdhb 2y ago
  That’s cool and all but don’t lowball people. This was the first thing Cloudflare has done in years that I didn’t associate with something shitty until I saw this. Just for once do the right thing rather than what you think you can get away with because overall this is a genuinely something to be celebrated.
  - lolinder 2y ago
    They clearly offered enough to be worth it to enough people to take out Sable. If being part of a successful effort to take down a patent troll is its own reward and Cloudflare successfully coordinated the work to make that happen, I'm really failing to see the problem.
    - mdhb 2y ago
      They offered enough to get some activity happening which viewed strictly through the lens of capitalism and quarter to quarter balance sheets is +10 points no question. That’s not what I’m talking about here though.
      - lolinder 2y ago
        That's not what I'm talking about either, so I'm glad we're on the same page.
- btrettel 2y ago
  Thanks for your comment. Personally, I value my own time well above my job's hourly rate, so I would expect to be paid more, not less, in the situation you describe. I suspect the same is true for many others as well. > most of the people who submit the prior art as part of Project Jengo would do so even if there were no payout I'd say this is due to selection bias. People who wanted a bigger payout didn't participate. You all's program is basically over now, but I think anyone considering a prior art bounty program in the future should check best practices for bug bounty programs. The two seem similar to me. Paying more will get more and better submissions, and it doesn't seem to be particularly expensive to me.
pg_bot 2y ago
It seems like it worked out quite well for Cloudflare. You typically only increase bounties if you aren't seeing the results you want.
dsjoerg 2y ago
There is an aspect of collective contribution to a collective good here. Patent trolls impose costs on everyone, not just Cloudflare. Making life difficult, expensive and unprofitable for patent trolls benefits everyone, not just Cloudflare. I expect that many of these people didn't see themselves as helping Cloudflare, but the community of everyone who might be targeted by patent trolls.
eastdakota 2y ago
The fascinating thing for me about this comment, and why I find myself weirdly obsessing over it, is how wrong it is about human nature and why we do things. There’s a small set of things we get paid for. There are a lot of other things we do, and even derive value from, that we don’t get paid anything for. Does that mean they have no value? Absolutely not. Every job I’ve taken is not the one that, on paper, I’d make the most from. Every term sheet I’ve accepted didn’t have the highest implied market cap. Am I an idiot? Perhaps. But it’s worked out. Lots of reasons people do things. Sometimes it’s about money. But those tend to be the most boring. Certainly in the short/medium term. I used to think missions were bullshit. Now I can’t imagine how you could ever possibly run a company without one. PS - we killed a patent troll. A bunch of you helped. How cool is that??! Thank you.
- btrettel 2y ago
  I think you're extrapolating a lot from my comment that wasn't intended. You should try searching for prior art some time to get an idea about why I'm not happy about the payment being low. Patent examining's a real grind, and by far the hardest job I've ever done. It's boring and extremely time consuming. I doubt many people do it for pleasure or a higher calling. If some people want to volunteer to find invalidating prior art, more power to them. I won't be joining them, though.
costco 2y ago
This comment is an example of why people are hesitant to publicly do good things. If a company donates to open source and writes a blog post about it, but it's not "enough," then they get a bunch of hate. If they never donated to open source in the first place, then there'd be no hate. Likewise, I've never heard of a company paying random people on the Internet to help fight patent trolls, yet Cloudflare did, won, neutralized the patents, and it's still not enough.
- cryptonym 2y ago
  The capitalistic view is that a company low-balled folks with knowledge to win a case. Both views are valid. It mostly depends on the intent of the company and you can't know that for sure. As their interest in that program is quite obvious, it's understandable that some people interpret this in two ways. Now it's not like they forced people into that program. You are free to not participate.
- tripzilch 2y ago
  [flagged]
- btrettel 2y ago
  Thanks. I upvoted your comment because it's a valid point that I had not considered that was stated without aggression. Many of the other comments here strike me as particularly aggressive or making false assumptions about what I believe and who I am.
- goric 2y ago
  There's an interesting blog post[0] that calls this concept The Copenhagen Interpretation of Ethics. [0] (the original no longer loads for me, so here's an archive) https://web.archive.org/web/20230105070226/https://blog.jaibot.com/the-copenhagen-interpretation-of-ethics/ https://web.archive.org/web/20230105070226/https://blog.jaib...
- dangitman 2y ago
  [dead]
scotty79 2y ago
"I could contribute to open source project that benefits millions, but I'm better off writing Java for a one mid sized company. I'm struck how corporate funded bounties for OS contributions are." Valid stance to take but not exactly unique. That's just the world we are living in.

tripzilch 2y ago

[flagged]

btrettel 2y ago
Your comments throughout this thread strike me as particularly off base. Both I and Gene Quinn agree that patent trolls are bad, but think that the problem has been exaggerated in the media. That doesn't make me a shill. I'm happy to see trolls defeated in court. And I don't work for a patent troll, or work for the highest bidder. (First job I took after quitting the USPTO was in academia and paid significantly less than the USPTO.) As I said in other comments, I haven't worked in patents since leaving the USPTO.

mikaeluman 2y ago

Given the result, it seems 125k was a bit too high since they got so many submissions so easily. The market sets the price, regardless of what we personally think is "fair".

benreesman 2y ago

I have this stubborn cognitive bias that CloudFlare is a good thing, I think it’s because OG hackers from HN started it: jgrahamc and that lot are the real deal. Time and time again it’s like: “CloydFlare discovers way to be evil that even Google didn’t figure out! News at 10.” Dear Jesus, all I want for Hanukah is that fly.io doesn’t end up like that.

neelm 2y ago

The payments could increase in the future as this approach becomes more successful and the ROI is better understood. Before this most companies would give into the trolls. Now there may be an increasing incentive to fight back. Few companies have the time, capital and governance freedom to do so.

TheRealPomax 2y ago

Note that this is the kind of reasoning that would also stop resources like wikipedia from existing. Why do for free what could be done for (good) pay instead? So it feels like you're telling people to not participate because a good payday is more important than doing good. That reasoning might work for your dayjob (why put in effort that your employer doesn't reward?), but this is not an employment situation, that line of reasoning simply does not apply to volunteer work: these folks did not put in the work to draw a check, they put in the work to combat patent trolling. And it worked: everyone who helped won. But then some folks even won an extra prize without any expectation of a reward beyond the one they did it for. How nice is that?

RevEng 2y ago

If it was about paying an examiner to dig up prior art, they could just do that privately. Crowdsourcing like this is typically much cheaper, but putting money aside, many people would be happy to help simply out of principal. There are lots of people who want to see patent trolls eliminated and they would spend their own time to do it without expecting to be paid for it. If you would only consider doing this as a form of employment, so be it, but many others are happy to do this just to try and make the world a better place for us all.

mmmlinux 2y ago

Just a big company pretending to be the little guy being picked on so they play up the little guy with no resources except crowd sourcing aspect. Some people that don't value their time but want to help the little guy that's "protecting the web". People here have an interesting duality of wanting the big 200k+ faang job, but also expect you to work for free on opensource projects.

tomhallett 2y ago

While I don’t disagree with any of your points, it seems like they are using a “platform/UGC/crowd” model to change the economics of the business model. In the same way that TV networks find/vet/pay for the supply of shows and take on the risk per-show, YouTube (at its core) doesn’t do any of that and all of the content creators do those things with the hope it will take off and a share of the ad revenue, while YouTube’s risks are related to the opex cost of the incoming supply/demand. Instead of cloudflare paying per examiner, they give a non-guaranteed slice to a bigger group of people.

toomuchtodo 2y ago
Strangely, this sounds like a great use case for LLMs? To just grind through entire datasets attempting to surface prior art. Edit: Found this with a search, so it can be done: https://xlscout.ai/novelty-checker-llm/ https://xlscout.ai/novelty-checker-llm/ (also, thanks Cloudflare! Keep on grinding patent trolls!)
- btrettel 2y ago
  After I quit the USPTO, I tried using ChatGPT 3.5 for some basic patent examining activity out of curiosity, and I can say that it did an absolutely horrendous job. This wasn't prior art search, just analyzing the text to do a rejection based on the text alone (35 USC 112). And the AI search technologies I used tended to not be particularly good. They typically find "background" documents that are related but can't be used in a rejection. I don't anticipate LLMs being able to examine patents in general well. Many times a detailed understanding of things not in the text is necessary to examine. For the technologies I examined, often search was basically flipping through drawings. I'd love to see an AI search technology focus specifically on patent drawings. This can be quite difficult. Often I'd have to understand the topology of a circuit (electrical or flow) and find a specific combination of elements. Of course, each drawing could be laid out differently but be topologically equivalent... this surely can be handled with computers in some way, but it's going to require a big effort right now.
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]

javajosh 2y ago

Cloudflare is shrewdly calculating that there is a lot of latent, unexpressed hate toward patent trolls but that most people don't want to make a career out of it, but might very well make a little hobby out of it, and so they get to take advantage of people who are motivated by something other than money. More deeply, the very idea of a "patent examiner" has never made sense to me. It requires being expert in all things, which is impossible. It makes more sense to take someone who is an expert in a field, and put a "patent examiner" hat on them for a little while. Ideally the patent system is not so complex that it itself requires as much or more study to be expert in than the actual subjects of the patents -- this would be a very bad sign.

saratogacx 2y ago
Patent Examiners do specialize in their fields. It isn't something that is just a common pool subject to any patent that comes into the pipe. From the USPTO[1] What kind of degree do I need to apply, and which vacancy do I need to apply to? The minimum degree required to be a utility patent examiner is a bachelor’s degree. There are dozens of STEM-related bachelor’s degree types that qualify, even if they are not the exact discipline listed in the title of the job vacancy. For example, professionals with bachelor’s degrees ranging from engineering, mathematics, astronomy, space science, geophysics, oceanography, or hydrology could all apply to the "Patent Examiner (Physics)" vacancy when it is open. To see more details about which degrees best fit with which patent examiner vacancies, view this chart[1]. You can also attend one of our upcoming webinars or office hours to chat with a current patent examiner, or email us at JoinUSPTO@uspto.gov with your specific question. [1] https://www.uspto.gov/jobs/become-patent-examiner https://www.uspto.gov/jobs/become-patent-examiner [2] https://www.uspto.gov/sites/default/files/documents/patent-examiner-degree-crosswalk-august-2024.pdf https://www.uspto.gov/sites/default/files/documents/patent-e...
- codersfocus 2y ago
  There aren't any consequences to their decisions though. Patent examiner shouldn't be a civil servant's job. Rather, it should be a "bond" process given to private, accredited individuals / organizations. If your issued patents are found invalid, your bond (which would be in the millions) is raided to pay back damages.

eastdakota 2y ago

Having talked with several of them, most of the people who submit the prior art as part of Project Jengo would do so even if there were no payout. Several winners have actually asked that the payout be donated back to other organizations fighting patent trolls. This isn't intended to be anyone's full time job. It is intended to reward technical people with industry knowledge who may be able to help surface prior art and are as sick of patent trolls as we are.

mdhb 2y ago
That’s cool and all but don’t lowball people. This was the first thing Cloudflare has done in years that I didn’t associate with something shitty until I saw this. Just for once do the right thing rather than what you think you can get away with because overall this is a genuinely something to be celebrated.
- lolinder 2y ago
  They clearly offered enough to be worth it to enough people to take out Sable. If being part of a successful effort to take down a patent troll is its own reward and Cloudflare successfully coordinated the work to make that happen, I'm really failing to see the problem.
  - mdhb 2y ago
    They offered enough to get some activity happening which viewed strictly through the lens of capitalism and quarter to quarter balance sheets is +10 points no question. That’s not what I’m talking about here though.
    - lolinder 2y ago
      That's not what I'm talking about either, so I'm glad we're on the same page.
btrettel 2y ago
Thanks for your comment. Personally, I value my own time well above my job's hourly rate, so I would expect to be paid more, not less, in the situation you describe. I suspect the same is true for many others as well. > most of the people who submit the prior art as part of Project Jengo would do so even if there were no payout I'd say this is due to selection bias. People who wanted a bigger payout didn't participate. You all's program is basically over now, but I think anyone considering a prior art bounty program in the future should check best practices for bug bounty programs. The two seem similar to me. Paying more will get more and better submissions, and it doesn't seem to be particularly expensive to me.

pg_bot 2y ago

It seems like it worked out quite well for Cloudflare. You typically only increase bounties if you aren't seeing the results you want.

dsjoerg 2y ago

There is an aspect of collective contribution to a collective good here. Patent trolls impose costs on everyone, not just Cloudflare. Making life difficult, expensive and unprofitable for patent trolls benefits everyone, not just Cloudflare. I expect that many of these people didn't see themselves as helping Cloudflare, but the community of everyone who might be targeted by patent trolls.

eastdakota 2y ago

The fascinating thing for me about this comment, and why I find myself weirdly obsessing over it, is how wrong it is about human nature and why we do things. There’s a small set of things we get paid for. There are a lot of other things we do, and even derive value from, that we don’t get paid anything for. Does that mean they have no value? Absolutely not. Every job I’ve taken is not the one that, on paper, I’d make the most from. Every term sheet I’ve accepted didn’t have the highest implied market cap. Am I an idiot? Perhaps. But it’s worked out. Lots of reasons people do things. Sometimes it’s about money. But those tend to be the most boring. Certainly in the short/medium term. I used to think missions were bullshit. Now I can’t imagine how you could ever possibly run a company without one. PS - we killed a patent troll. A bunch of you helped. How cool is that??! Thank you.

btrettel 2y ago
I think you're extrapolating a lot from my comment that wasn't intended. You should try searching for prior art some time to get an idea about why I'm not happy about the payment being low. Patent examining's a real grind, and by far the hardest job I've ever done. It's boring and extremely time consuming. I doubt many people do it for pleasure or a higher calling. If some people want to volunteer to find invalidating prior art, more power to them. I won't be joining them, though.

costco 2y ago

This comment is an example of why people are hesitant to publicly do good things. If a company donates to open source and writes a blog post about it, but it's not "enough," then they get a bunch of hate. If they never donated to open source in the first place, then there'd be no hate. Likewise, I've never heard of a company paying random people on the Internet to help fight patent trolls, yet Cloudflare did, won, neutralized the patents, and it's still not enough.

cryptonym 2y ago
The capitalistic view is that a company low-balled folks with knowledge to win a case. Both views are valid. It mostly depends on the intent of the company and you can't know that for sure. As their interest in that program is quite obvious, it's understandable that some people interpret this in two ways. Now it's not like they forced people into that program. You are free to not participate.
tripzilch 2y ago
[flagged]
btrettel 2y ago
Thanks. I upvoted your comment because it's a valid point that I had not considered that was stated without aggression. Many of the other comments here strike me as particularly aggressive or making false assumptions about what I believe and who I am.
goric 2y ago
There's an interesting blog post[0] that calls this concept The Copenhagen Interpretation of Ethics. [0] (the original no longer loads for me, so here's an archive) https://web.archive.org/web/20230105070226/https://blog.jaibot.com/the-copenhagen-interpretation-of-ethics/ https://web.archive.org/web/20230105070226/https://blog.jaib...
dangitman 2y ago
[dead]

scotty79 2y ago

"I could contribute to open source project that benefits millions, but I'm better off writing Java for a one mid sized company. I'm struck how corporate funded bounties for OS contributions are." Valid stance to take but not exactly unique. That's just the world we are living in.