[lispit]

It's the "patent pending" part that sucks. They're trying to patent the idea of changing your video card's CLUT (color look-up table) to reduce eye strain, which is a fairly obvious and trivial thing to do once you know that blue light affects melatonin production.

[coldtea]

>It's the "patent pending" part that sucks. They're trying to patent the idea of changing your video card's CLUT (color look-up table) to reduce eye strain, which is a fairly obvious and trivial thing to do once you know that blue light affects melatonin production.

On the other hand, since nobody else has done it (or patented it yet), real life proves that it's not that "obvious".

Like the "egg of Columbus" some thing are obvious in retrospect: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Egg_of_Columbus

[lispit]

I said "obvious and trivial thing to do once you know that blue light affects melatonin production." In the past people did other hacks with CLUTs (like some early 3D games baking gamma correction into the CLUT so that proper linear lighting could be displayed without an expensive postprocessing pass). If you were aware of the blue light effect (I'm not a sleep scientist, I don't know how long they've been aware of it) and had some low-level graphics programming knowledge, I don't think it would require great leaps to come up with this solution. It's just that no one else was interested in or aware of this problem.

Regardless of whether it was obvious or not, I hate the idea of extremely simple solutions being locked up behind patents, keeping the world today worse for the sake of hypothetical future innovations. It seems especially scummy the way they're trumpeting over social media about the harm that blue light causes while quietly trying to profit over an extremely simple solution to it. More than likely they know that Apple will never allow this on their app store because of the potential for abuse the necessary APIs would provide, and their end game is hoping the angry mobs will convince Apple to implement this as an official feature (and thus, pay them royalties). And more than likely, Apple would have implemented this years ago, had f.lux been an open source student research program with no patent applications attached.

[coldtea]

>I said "obvious and trivial thing to do once you know that blue light affects melatonin production."

That doesn't change my argument. That too was known for ages, and still no light changing apps for it like flux (with the exception of a Linux app which I think came later).

[lispit]

>That too was known for ages, and still no light changing apps for it like flux

How is Joseph Programmer von Notasleepscientist supposed to know that a blue-light dimming filter is something that he might want before he sees the effect in action? I'll give some credit to f.lux for popularizing the idea, but once the idea is out there, there are only two ways you can implement it: postprocessing in software, or postprocessing in the CLUT. You wouldn't need to know anything about how f.lux works to come up with one of them yourself, once you are aware of the idea.

[SapphireSun]

This fact is in neuroscience and psychology text books. It has been well known for quite a while. That said, it's true that others haven't done this prior to f.lux coming out. From a business model perspective, they are making a utility that could have been bundled into the OS. It's a small feature, not a whole business, unless they can gain exclusive use of their invention.

Whether this patent protection incentive was necessary for them to try to get their product out there in the marketplace is a harder question to answer. Certainly, they have chosen a business model that relies on getting the public familiar with the technology and then licensing it to manufacturers. It does seem to me that many fewer people would know about flux if they were charging for it initially, but it also doesn't seem like a huge leap forward tech wise, though it may provide a lot of value. I'm kind of on the fence.

EDIT: I did a little digging. While I happened to have known about this fact for a long time, and am pretty sure it was in my textbooks as of around 2005 or 2006, it seems this may have been discovered around 2001. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/11487664

[upofadown]

Actually, the stuff about blue light and melatonin in humans was discovered by biologists in the 90s. They get all the credit here. Obvious applications of that knowledge would not normally be patentable, but the US patent office is pretty much batshit insane at this point.

[OopsCriticality]

In fact, a long felt and unmet need in the field would serve as a secondary indicia of non-obviousness.

[conistonwater]

Obvious or not is a bit of a red herring. The key test should be whether somebody would have done the same thing without a patent. If they would have, then a patent is unnecessary - the government shouldn't be in the business of granting arbitrary monopolies, only those monopolies that specifically promote something, for example, research. If a patent is granted for a thing that would have been done anyway, then that patent is a kind of a dead loss for society.

In the case of flux I think it's relatively clear that it would have been done without a patent, but maybe some people would disagree.

[CamperBob2]

There are only two real incentives that we, as a society, have to grant patent protection. One is to ensure that inventors have a fair chance to recoup their R&D investment. The other is to offer an alternative to trade secrets, where innovative insights are hidden from the rest of us, potentially forever, by a single proprietor.

Obviously, neither of these applies here. There is absolutely no reason for us to grant patent protection to f.lux. This is so "patently" obvious that the burden of proof falls on those who would argue otherwise.

[coldtea]

>There are only two real incentives that we, as a society, have to grant patent protection. One is to ensure that inventors have a fair chance to recoup their R&D investment. The other is to offer an alternative to trade secrets, where the innovative methods are locked up, potentially forever, by a single proprietor. Obviously, neither of these applies here.

I actually disagree with both -- let R&D happen by public research (e.g. universities) that competes for funds based on results, and then makes said results available for everybody (at least in the same country who did the paying).

But that said, I don't see why the people who did this "obviously" don't need a "fair chance to recoup their R&D investment". Does it say anywhere that the R&D investment must be huge? Because that's not the case with tons of patents -- some are just accidental inventions, like the fabled 3M's post-it notes.

>There is absolutely no reason for us to grant patent protection to f.lux. The burden of proof falls on those who would argue otherwise.

Actually if the patent office DOES grant them a patent, then the burden on proof falls on you.

[CamperBob2]

But that said, I don't see why the people who did this "obviously" don't need a "fair chance to recoup their R&D investment". Does it say anywhere that the R&D investment must be huge?

Rather than haggling over what constitutes a "huge" investment, let's generalize the question a bit. True or false: we'd be better off if everything that could be patented under the present USPTO rules was patented.

If your answer is "true," we're done here.

If your answer is "false," then you agree with me that the current criteria for patent grants are inappropriate and counterproductive.

Because that's not the case with tons of patents -- some are just accidental inventions, like the fabled 3M's post-it notes.

Correct, and we need to ask what we got in return for allowing 3M to patent Post-It notes. If something is that trivial and that inexpensive to develop, then there's no need to incentivize it. We already have an institution called a "market" that's well-suited to sort out the winners and losers.

[Spivak]

Somebody else has already done it. https://github.com/jonls/redshift has been by go-to for a few years now. It's my suspicion that Jon has no intention of patenting the idea.

[mangeletti]

This is also true (also called hindsight bias).

[upofadown]

The original stated intent of f.lux was to reduce eye strain by matching the colour temperature of the screen to your surroundings. The idea about circadian light came later, it was probably their users that came up with that.

... which would hurt my head except that I have concluded that software patents are just straight up insane. There is no point in trying to figure anything out with respect to them.

[mangeletti]

I was starting to feel confused about the anti-commercial sentiment I was seeing in here, noting that this is a forum created by one of the most successful venture capital firms in technology.

But, then I saw your comment. I can get on board with this comment. The fact that they're attempting to patent something so trivial puts them right up there with the likes of Intellectual Ventures, etc., IMHO.

[EarthLaunch]

Yes, HN is fundamentally more anti-intellectual than it is anti-commercial.

[mangeletti]

By chance, did you mean "anti-intellectual property"?

[morgante]

If it's so obvious, how come nobody else does it?

Also, to be clear, I doubt they're getting a patent on "changing your video card's CLUT (color look-up table) to reduce eye strain" but rather on the specific method they use for doing so.

[lispit]

How else would you reduce the amount of blue light emitted by a monitor using a CLUT except by changing it to reduce the amount of blue light emitted?

[elipsey]

Yep. They care so much about public helath that no one is allowed to be healthier with paying them. Classy move.

[pbhjpbhj]

Can't you level that complaint at all pharma firms though too?

At least if it doesn't encourage those behind f.lux to continue beneficial activities (promoting the benefit of redshifted screen use) then it should encourage others to develop health focussed apps in the hope of getting paid?

FWIW I use redshift.

[elipsey]

Pharma patents are less abstract. They patent a product, not the idea of making a product.

Changing a pallete was a solved problem. "Doing something when it's a time" was a solved problem. But if you change a CLUT "becuase it's a time" your software belongs to someone else. It seems like the only innvoation here is observing a need discovered by health researchers, and patenting the existing components of the solution before someone else does.

I'm would find it a bit suprising if someone on HN really thought that changing a CLUT because of the time is so hard that no one could figure out how without the promise of a government granted monopoly on the idea.

I will hasten to add that actually implementing, marketing, and maintaining a real life multi-platform proprietary solution sounds hard, in the sense of being plenty of work, and I think lots of people would gladly pay for that service.

The question we should be asking is: where is the public good in the government intervening to reduce competition in this space by creating a new abstract property right?

[pbhjpbhj]

>Pharma patents are less abstract. They patent a product, not the idea of making a product. //

All patents are for ideas, in order to acquire a patent you have to give details of how to perform it - how to create a product/device or how to work a system/method to use the idea - but patents are not given for products per se.

I'm not that familiar with pharma patents but the few I've seen were quite abstract, they make claims that cover many different chemicals rather than one "product" (this when attached to that group; this when attached to some other group; etc.).

That said I was specifically responding to the [paraphrasing] "you have to pay them to be healthier if they patent the medically beneficial method/technique/device/drug" - which is true for all companies holding healthcare patents that they don't give free licenses on.

WRT the particular product you do it a disservice - yes changing things at a time were known, yes changing colour palettes were known but there is synergy in the idea of removing blue light elements from a monitor gradually as dusk passes in order to prevent the negative effects of blue light on people and the method of changing a CLUT to achieve this end forms more than just a colocation of known ideas.

One argument in this sort of situation has always been quite powerful to me - if it was so obvious then it would have been done, the need was known, the individual concepts were available. Almost every idea seems obvious post hoc.

[elipsey]

>> in order to acquire a patent you have to give details of how to perform it

Software patents don't have to include code, and generally are not useful to a skilled practitioner in actually creating software. The are written in legalese by persons incentivized to seek as boad a claim as possible, while revealing as little usefully information as possible.

>> if it was so obvious then it would have been done

By this reasoning every new product should be protected by a monopoly. Sometimes how to do something is obvious, but no one wanted to do it before.

The question should be whether treating every new situation as an oportunity for government sponsored property grab is good for society, or just the first guy to file.

A huge number software developers get sued because they wrote software that violated a patent they had never heard of for a "business method" type of task, but "with a computer". There are hundreds of thousands of software patents, so it's not possible to read them all before selling software to make sure one hasn't infringed, assuming one could actually be sure without simply defending a trial. The reason there are so many lawsuites is because it WAS obvious, and lots of people did the same thing without ever hearing of the patent untill they got sued.

I'm guessing that your not a programmer who's read any software patents. I have never met one who has that did not agree that the contents of software patents were obfuscated and worthless for creating a storehouse of usefull knowlegde that benefits society, what is the constituionally mandated purpose of patents in the first place.