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Poll: Have you learned a software technique from a patent database?

5 points by brlewis ↗ HN
For those who have used information sources such as books or the Internet to get algorithms or other software techniques, how many times have you found such a technique among software patents in the US patent database or another database? If you give an answer other than "never" please explain in a comment.

6 comments

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mojuba
Compression algorithms are patented and are interesting. Of course you can't use them directly but certainly you can learn something from them.

Einstein worked in a patent bureau for years before he started inventing his own stuff. This is not a coincidence.

brlewis
Can you relate a time when you went to the patent db to learn something about compression? And can you seriously postulate that good compression algorithms would be unknown without software patents?
mojuba
I learned about them somewhere else, not in the DB, but that doesn't matter. They are published because they should, no matter where and how.

PKZip was closed all those years when their patent was in the pending state. And no, I can't postulate that, because publishing vs. keeping secret would be left on companies' good will.

brlewis
According to wikipedia, since 1993 pkzip has used an algorithm thought to be free of patents.
mojuba
Wikipedia says nothing about Katz's patents, but I well remember PKZip displaying a message "patent(s) pending".