[osterbit2]

"Google's mission is to organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful"

(didn't dig too far into this but..) why y'all need to patent this then?

Patents can be beneficial to facilitate constructive competition, but think humanity is best served by neural nets becoming the new electricity rather than the new Apple-esque walled-garden...

[alangpierce]

I don't know what Google's reason is for this patent, but defensive patents are really common these days, and I think just about any big company has lawyers saying "patent everything you can, since you need a big patent portfolio for defensive purposes". Point is, just because Google is filing this patent doesn't mean they intend to stop others from using this approach. A link to a patent application isn't enough context to know.

[ocdtrekkie]

If Google intends to patent defensively, they should immediately pledge on this patent. One thing I find very unfortunate, is while Google claims they're only really intended to use their software patents defensively, they've pledged not to with only a tiny number of their patent library.

One quick change in business strategy could turn Google into the world's largest patent troll.

[unprepare]

Maybe that's their backup plan if the internet run by ads continues its decline

[Grazester]

Continues its decline? I thought that decline what only in a certain metric or ad type

[themartorana]

Maybe HTML in-browser ads, but native, in-flow software ads and demand-based "rewarded" ads basically prop up the entire mobile software (especially gaming) market. There's only growth there, no slowing.

[sangnoir]

> One quick change in business strategy could turn Google into the world's largest patent troll

Is there any big tech company for which this statement does not apply? Or do you hold Google to a higher standard?

[mattnewton]

I think google invites this standard with the mission statements of "organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful" and "Don't be evil"

[ocdtrekkie]

Most people do hold Google to a higher standard. As such, many people I know would hesitate to even recognize the possibility of Google doing this.

I, on the other hand, consider Google holding a patent not significantly different than Oracle holding a patent.

[fizx]

Twitter.

[jlg23]

> defensive patents are really common these day

I had a discussion about this with an IBM representative 15 years ago at a symposium at Heinrich-Boell-Stiftung in Berlin: IBM's point was that one can always join their patent-pool (of defensive patents) which means you give them a free license to use your patents and you are free to use their "defensive" patents. This is completely broken: You never know which patents become relevant and any new player already lost because one just cannot keep up with a company that can extort a free license from you and then dump a few (hundred) million into development based on that.

[mtgx]

I don't know if this is the reason, but I think Google started getting a lot more paranoid about hoarding patents when Apple and Microsoft started going after Android OEMs in the early years. Google didn't really have any "counter-offensive" patent strategy then, which is why it went on a patent buying spree back then, although most of the available ones also got bought by Apple and Microsoft through Rockstar and so on.

So best case scenario, Google doesn't want to be caught with its pants down regarding patents. Worst case, it wants to "own" deep learning, so that nobody can really compete with them. Although I think that would be a little in conflict with their strategy to open source tensorflow.

To really figure out on which side Google is now playing we'll have to see how they respond to future patent reforms, and whether they join Microsoft and IBM to once again kill those reforms, or support the reforms to abolish software patents or drastically reduce their damage.

[aab0]

> Worst case, it wants to "own" deep learning, so that nobody can really compete with them. Although I think that would be a little in conflict with their strategy to open source tensorflow.

Only a little. Releasing all the models and frameworks helps advance the field, helps with finding people to recruit, helps with integrating them into teams, and so on. This is why so many giants find it in their own self-interest to contribute to FLOSS these days.

Competition-wise, as is often said, Google has all the data. If for every deep learning advance they make $1 and the competitors make $0.95, they win. Patents here are quite helpful: you may make a neat translation app using some new tricks, and then discover when you go to commercialize it that oops, Google's patented 'using neural nets for translation'. Then you either quit, get sued, get bought, or give them most of your profits.

[jagtodeath]

I'd rather google patent them than some other sue-happy company who will abuse them. Who knows, maybe they will open source the patent.

[gknoy]

I felt similarly about Sun, but then Oracle bought them.

[sangnoir]

Hypothetical: in any alternative universe, would you have felt any better if Microsoft or IBM had sued a defenceless Sun into bankruptcy?

[TearsInTheRain]

Google has the largest market cap so that isnt a concern here

[misterbwong]

Google has the largest market cap right now so that isnt a concern here yet

FTFY

[sqeaky]

Sun's market cap was once one of the largest.

[nivla]

I rather no company patent them than any do-no-evil company. Besides why do you think they won't use/abuse it? The whole point of spending so much ridiculous amount of money on a patent is to get exclusive rights to be the only one to use it. Isn't competition better than stagnation by a single company?

[kailuowang]

so, how do you ensure no company patent them?

[mynewtb]

Write the same documents but instead of submitting them to the patent office, release them on the Internet.

[woodman]

Demonstrate prior art? There are a lot of ways to do that without releasing production code.

[breatheoften]

Given historical prescedent, is existence of prior art actually an effective way in practice to prevent the granting of a patent?

[woodman]

Nope, but that doesn't matter - as enforcement is the concern, and there prior art shines. If the motive is purely defensive (and I don't include the menacing of a portfolio in that category), then it is the ideal move to make - as bad actors waste more energy filing poorly researched and easily refuted patents.

[gregatragenet3]

Probably doesn't prevent the granting of a patent, however it makes it impossible to enforce the patent. Mike and I published this in 1998 http://www.rage.net/wireless/wireless-howto.html . A Cisco legal team found this in 2008 and contacted me because the owners of patent #7035281 were coming after them. Doing a simple write-up of what I thought was obvious at the time - stick a wireless card into a Linux PC and have it route packets - may have saved all of us from having the wifi router in everyone's home restricted by patents. So whatever ideas you implement, be sure to blog about them and make sure archive.org gets a copy.

[reddytowns]

The problem is that other people will just create one or more patents which are around using your breakthrough algorithm in different contexts. The famous amazon one-click shopping patent as an example. The internet is the breakthrough, but because there's no patent on that, its easy to surround with patents that should be too obvious to be patents, but have legal teeth even so.

If you patent the core idea, the other patents become a lot less useful. (Not that I think Google is thinking this way. It's just a PR problem to them. When no one is looking, I bet they do whatever they can to get as much money/power as they can.)

[woodman]

It is a terrible situation, and putting out prior art certainly doesn't fix that - but the alternatives courses of action are worse (assuming purely defensive interests). I think you're right though, if the internet was somehow patented then we wouldn't have one-click shopping patents... or much of anything really - we'd likely be having this discussion over a Minitel service.

[cronjobber]

Consider the development of Microsoft's attitude regarding software patents. There's no reason whatsoever to think these patents are in good hands with Google, especially considering that their Android licensing policies seem to be carbon copies of old Microsoft tactics.

http://arstechnica.com/business/2007/03/analysis-microsofts-...

[douchescript]

Their goal as it seems up to this point is to get a monopoly on the framework and technology with opensourcing of their framework. Good for hires and keeping the competition in check. A patent will tighten their grip on ai.

[wnevets]

>why y'all need to patent this then?

so someone else doesn't and trolls with it?

[kryptiskt]

A defensive publication suffices to make it unpatentable.

[mcbits]

Unfortunately, someone else can come along and patent a trivial, supposedly non-obvious "next step" invention, and the original inventor would have to pay to license the slightly improved version to remain competitive. With a patent on the main technology, they could probably negotiate a reciprocal deal at the very least.

[lrem]

What are rules for such a publication? I guess that something published in IEEE shouldn't be patentable and have my doubts about publishing on a blog, self-hosted, in Romanian. Where is the line according to the US law?

[nl]

Any prior disclosure invalidates any patents.

[zaroth]

To be sure, you submit the provisional patent application, and never file the utility. It's only $260 to file. After 1 year the provisional dies and you have a permanent record of the prior art.

In this case there is a provisional patent from 2014, and this application follows from that provisional.

[monochromatic]

> After 1 year the provisional dies and you have a permanent record of the prior art.

It's a permanent record, but it's not published. This is not a great plan.

[zaroth]

I've been reading more about this. Public disclosure vs. provisional.

In the US you get a year after public disclosure to file even a provisional. But not so if you want non-US patents. So you are closing some doors but keeping others open with public disclosure. Also, you are starting a 1 year clock.

A provisional is private; it does not count as public disclosure. A provisional is nothing more than a priority date, assuming what you have disclosed in the provisional itself is sufficient, and novel. You can even refile the same provisional every year as long as you believe the subject mater is still novel, but you get a new filing/priority date each time.

As for preventing a 3rd party from patenting the subject matter, either one is sufficient. However, if you publically disclose, only then you also get protection from a 3rd party who builds on your work. So in that case public disclosure is better than the 'secret' provisional.

Better yet, just timestamp the document in the blockchain.

[rhino369]

The problem with blogs is that 15 years later it's hard to prove what was really there and when. But having it published on IEEE is the gold-standard.

[lrem]

Chances are that before you get your thing published on IEEE, someone else will start and finish writing an application and maybe even get the patent granted...

[laxatives]

It is not enough to succeed; others must fail.