Google Tried to Patent My Work After a Job Interview

If the author pops in here, I hope he takes a look at this patent, because it might be prior art: https://patents.google.com/patent/US8512151 I complained about it to the "Stupid Patent of the Month" attorney at the Electronic Frontier Foundation (here: https://www.eff.org/issues/stupid-patent-month) and got a nice response agreeing that it looks obvious.

I think the author is a she.

True, but I didn't see that she identified herself, or her gender, in the article. So what's a commenter to do? That's an honest question. Mangle to use "they"? Use some genderless pronoun that'll piss off x% of readers?

> Mangle to use "they"?

Mangle? "They" is perfectly fine to use in this situation, it's not mangling at all.

Alternatively you can write s/he I believe?

Anyway, "they" is probably the correct way.

In this case, you're right. Or at least, it's what I'd have done. Still, when I learned English, "they" wasn't singular. I guess that it's the norm now, but it still feels odd. And sometimes using it does require mangling. I'd rather have a set of gender-neutral pronouns, but hey.

Singular they dates back over 600 years, while the criticism of it dates back only a hundred or two.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Singular_they

> when I learned English, "they" wasn't singular

Did you learn English before 14th century? Because that's when it emerged.

> True, but I didn't see that she identified herself, or her gender, in the article. So what's a commenter to do?

Simple.

1. Assume an ostensibly correct pronoun of your own choice (like you did)

2. If someone corrects you, optionally acknowledge the correction and apologize if applicable, then use the correct pronoun henceforth

3. Ignore the overly gender-obsessed people who tell you that you should have used ugly or cumbersome constructs such as "they" or, even worse, "s/he" and variants thereof.

4. Don't worry too much about it; everybody can make an honest mistake.

True, but it has no bearing on what this person was taught when they learned English. It's entirely plausible that some English teachers, influenced by the criticism that arose in the 19th Century, teach that singular they is to be avoided.

> "So what's a commenter to do"

Simply don't assume? It's not hard.

1. Use “they”

2. Take the time to use a search engine to look up her name, which is referenced at least two times in screenshots of emails she provides.

3. Click-through to the blog post she links, also written by herself: https://patentpandas.org/stories/crowdfunding-backer-patente...

It’s ironic to argue that an author’s identity doesn’t really matter, in which an author describes an eregious attempt by a company to steal credit for her work.

I used to work in the online slot machine business and saw some of the patents related to slots. Most of them seemed trivial but it did affect how we could design our games. Certain features of the reels bouncing or paylines being awarded were patented. There were other ideas like connecting players to each other that seemed like they shouldn't be patent-able.

With that perspective, this board game patent actually looks very good. It certainly isn't an idea that I've thought of before or seen.

Calling "they" an ugly or cumbersome construct seems like a reach. I am a native english speaker, and the use of that word to describe people with unknown characteristics (such as criminal suspects and people with obscured features or seen from a distance) has been very common even before the gender-obsessed people took root. It is merely english.

I'm sorry, don't see the connection you are trying to make.

In the context of her story, gender is not relevant; she apparently didn't think so either, since the only way I could tell from the article was her hands shown in the last picture.

Fair enough, point taken. In my native tongue it doesn't work at all. I was mostly referring to the "s/he" abomination (and its variants) anyway.

Sure, I'm not attempting to say that this person was not taught that singular they was not a proper usage, just that it has been a proper usage for longer than any of us have lived.

Her identity is important, and gender is one part of her identity. She didn't state her name either in the article, does that make it OK to refer to her as "Richard Stallman" until she explicitly demands credit?

I learned English in the context of a native language with lots more structure about genders, forms, cases and tenses. So I guess that it was something my teachers missed. And I went from that to immersion in American culture.

Yes of course, if someone mistakenly believed that it was Stallman that wrote the article. Conversely it's also OK for others to point out that said assumption is incorrect.

There's no reason for anyone to get worked up about it.