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Google Tried to Patent My Work After a Job Interview

(patentpandas.org)
1798 points jerryX | 4 comments | 30 Nov 18 05:25 UTC | HN request time: 0.833s | source
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gammateam ◴[30 Nov 18 07:03 UTC] No.18567313[source]▶
> More importantly, sharing work publicly keeps the project can alive and inspires others to continue developing!

Which a patent does too, just with a license or 20 years later. It keeps people from reinventing the wheel and gives the disclosure rights even if they didn't have the infrastructure to create or monetize on their own. This isn't one of those nefarious software patents where the whole thing would be obsolete within 5 years, this is LED books, which simply becomes more feasible as transistor sizes shrink and battery technology improves, perfect for a 20 year exclusivity period before falling into the public domain where it can be vastly more practical to create in 2033.

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TheDong ◴[30 Nov 18 07:41 UTC] No.18567442[source]▶
> [a] patent [keeps thhe project alive] too

> perfect for a 20 year exclusivity period

So for 20 years, if I wish to create and sell a book with transistors I have to license the idea from google (that is if they're even willing to give me a license)?

And somehow having to go through that legal loophole will keep the art of creating LED books alive? You seriously believe that?

Does the patent have complex details which would take longer than 20 years for someone to independently discover about creating LED books? If so, people do save time by waiting 20 years and then reading the patent, but that seems extremely unlikely.

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gammateam ◴[30 Nov 18 08:12 UTC] No.18567543[source]▶
> So for 20 years, if I wish to create and sell a book with transistors I have to license the idea from google (that is if they're even willing to give me a license)?

No. Google wasn't supposed to try and patent it.

I responded to a very specific piece of the article which seemed to ignore that patent applications functioning as prior art is available to subculture enthusiasts too.

The whole concluding paragraph was about making ideas that other people can build from, it wasn't about LED books in general. They want ideas to be available for others to build from but don't want others to patent it, ignoring that attempting to patent it yourself also fixes this, no matter how you actually use the patent or failed/abandoned application.

(Although, I'll concede that patenting is an expensive bet that not everyone would have the money or risk tolerance for.)

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kbutler ◴[30 Nov 18 09:16 UTC] No.18567791[source]▶
The problems with patents as prior art for new inventions are manifold:

- The common advice is for practitioners to avoid learning about existing patents, because this knowledge increases liability in case you are found to infringe. This means that the body of patented work is really only useful for patent lawyers, rather than for inventors.

- Similarly, patents are not written in ways to instruct practitioners to use techniques, but instead crafted in legal terms to claim broad areas of application while skirting previously filed patent claims. This again makes the patent library only useful to lawyers.

- In areas where patents are not common, there is a green field for patent applications that patent common techniques. This happened in software and business methods, and the article suggests it is happening in the junction of enthusiasts and crafts.

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1. pbhjpbhj ◴[30 Nov 18 12:19 UTC] No.18568546[source]▶
Hmm, being aware that you're infringing a patent, and continuing to do it anyway, is of course bad legally speaking.

But inventors not using parent literature is catastrophically bad. So many applications are repeated, in some fields the same thing is "invented" over and over because people don't even makea cursory attempt to understand the technology in the field vs the products available.

Being unaware of infringement, but not by willful negligence, is actually a defence against an award of damages in the UK. Precisely to protect this fundamental tier of the patent system.

If people can't use the disclosures then the system serves virtually no purpose.

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2. kbutler ◴[30 Nov 18 14:19 UTC] No.18569244[source]▶
> If people can't use the disclosures then the system serves virtually no purpose.

That's not quite true - although disclosure is an often argued benefit of the patent system, there are very few inventions that cannot be copied once a working item is in someone's hands, so a formal disclosure is not necessarily required to be able to build upon and extend existing work.

But even without disclosure, when appropriate patents are granted, they can "[secure] for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries" even if the patent library is not useful for research.

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3. pbhjpbhj ◴[30 Nov 18 14:47 UTC] No.18569434[source]▶
Yes, I was a little terse there: what I meant was the system serves little purpose for the demos who maintain it. The deal is that the inventors get their monopoly in return for the disclosure. So, without any benefit on the side of the public then their would be no purpose in maintaining the system.

Of course it also serves the public to encourage inventors by giving them a limited exclusive use. But primarily when instigated the purpose is a mutual benefit that is best embodied by education of the public arena as to the mechanisms and working of an invention.

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4. kbutler ◴[30 Nov 18 19:02 UTC] No.18571636{3}[source]▶
> Of course it also serves the public to encourage inventors by giving them a limited exclusive use.

Yes.

> But primarily when instigated the purpose is a mutual benefit that is best embodied by education of the public arena as to the mechanisms and working of an invention.

This is the debate - how significant is the "education" aspect in promoting progress and public benefit? Is incentivizing new creation sufficient to promote progress without the (lacking) education aspect?

Then the whole question of whether the limited monopolies really create those incentives or just magnify profits that would already exist and open the door for abuse.