This is so typical in technology now, large corporations patenting everything they can possibly think of, including things that they've blatantly copied. It absolutely doesn't surprise me that a technology as fundamentally simple and foundational as LIDAR is covered by a load of bullshit patents. As the article notes what this is really about is using your patents to litigate competitors either to slow their progress or force them into expensive fights that drain their resources. Frankly, patent reform is yet another case where the large players have built themselves a moat.
What if patent applications required a fee that was added to a bounty fund to reward people that could demonstrate prior art during the examination period? Engineers like Swildens would then be more than interested bystanders, but have skin in the game and therefore incentive to do what he did just out of interest.
Bounty claims could also require an accompanying fee, to be refunded if the claim succeeds. The fees would discourage low quality patent applications and bounty claims.
I don't think this would work. If the fee was too high, then smaller companies and individuals would be locked out of patents. If the fee is too low, then it doesn't matter and large companies will continue business as usual.
How about making it travel up the tree? Find the "root" company, then count the patents of all of the companies directly or indirectly under them.
(yes, I like graph theory. Is it that obvious?)
Use that to increase the fee.
It would not only make trolling harder, but make it easier for small companies/inventors to have one or two crucial patents, which is what the system was designed for.
Of course, as with most things that make sense to me, it would never pass as law.
Not really. Perversions of the intent of law are easy to stop... just make it clear that the intent is what matters, and judges will force people to declare their corporate heirarchy or be held in contempt of court.
No lawyer will play games when intent is more impprtant than the letter, sonce you cam be held in jail for contempt indefinitely based solely on the judges reputation.
The important part is the payout to people finding prior art, less so the disincentive to file patents that don't hold up. So this could be financed through insurance: patent filers could insure against bounty payments.
tl;dr for those who don't want to read devys link (though you should. Good article):
> After a three-year battle in which he spent up to $1000 an hour on lawyers, Swildens ended up selling Speedera at a discount to Akamai for $130 million.
We have social norms that say it is ok to "waste" money in certain areas, like buying a 40k BMW is Ok. But buying a 5k car and spending 30k on a piano is weird or stupid.
This is really pissing me off as they can essentially patent anything and everything and squash all completion. It’s now an arms race of patents among the tech giants.
I remember reading here how Google was patenting neural network layers such as dropout etc.
It is tough for the small guys. It's not uncommon for a patent application to cost you upwards of 30k or so to file which is a definite barrier to entry to start with.
> describes how a laser diode can be configured to emit pulses of laser light using a circuit that includes an inductor and a gallium nitride transistor.
Did they seriously try to patent an oscillator? Galium nitride FET or a vacuum tube, this design is at least 100 years old. WTF.
The very least the courts could do here is make the patent owner pay back the 6000$ the engineer spent on the challenge.
Of course, IMO they should get a big fine to go with that too.
“Waymo's lidar firing circuit showed current passing along a wire between the circuit and the ground in two directions—something generally deemed impossible. ”
It’s almost as if science said, “Give me one free miracle, and from there the entire thing will proceed with a seamless, causal explanation.”’17 The one free miracle was the sudden appearance of all the matter and energy in the universe, with all the laws that govern it.
Rupert Sheldrake, The Science Delusion: Freeing the Spirit of Enquiry
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[ 3.0 ms ] story [ 66.8 ms ] threadBounty claims could also require an accompanying fee, to be refunded if the claim succeeds. The fees would discourage low quality patent applications and bounty claims.
No lawyer will play games when intent is more impprtant than the letter, sonce you cam be held in jail for contempt indefinitely based solely on the judges reputation.
Either he has a lot of spare time and money or this isn't the full story.
https://www.wired.com/story/eric-swildens-uber-waymo-lawsuit...
He probably has! https://www.wired.com/story/eric-swildens-uber-waymo-lawsuit...
And previous discussion on this: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15875685
> After a three-year battle in which he spent up to $1000 an hour on lawyers, Swildens ended up selling Speedera at a discount to Akamai for $130 million.
He can probably do this a few more times.
This guys use of 6k is inspiring.
I remember reading here how Google was patenting neural network layers such as dropout etc.
Did they seriously try to patent an oscillator? Galium nitride FET or a vacuum tube, this design is at least 100 years old. WTF.
It’s almost as if science said, “Give me one free miracle, and from there the entire thing will proceed with a seamless, causal explanation.”’17 The one free miracle was the sudden appearance of all the matter and energy in the universe, with all the laws that govern it. Rupert Sheldrake, The Science Delusion: Freeing the Spirit of Enquiry