[piramida]

Hope they won't actually enforce this patent unless they start going out of business.

This is going beyond ridiculous now, trivial ideas with trivial tech behind them have no value and should not be protectable with a patent - it's not like there is a face recognition technology involved, or anything an intern can't "invent" and code within an hour.

[tmarthal]

Actually, tagging photos was one of the 'killer features' that caused many people to migrate from Myspace.

Like all great, yet 'trivial', ideas, it seems crazy that no one thought of doing it before them (or if they were, not at the same scale).

[smeatish]

Right, but this is a trivial idea that's trivial to implement. Facebook would have created this feature with or without the patent system's existence, so the patent is a net loss for society.

[piramida]

Agreed that they were first to fully implement this particular "graphical" tagging with confirmations. However the technology is nevertheless too simplistic to be patented.

Just saying that any business which is a leader in some new field comes up with similar inventions daily - not because they are ingenious or full of great ideas, but because nobody before even considered this path. It does not make them patent-worthy.

If moon astronauts would have patented their first step, nobody would have followed (example is bad on purpose :) ).

But anyway, still hoping that it was a defensive step. This whole system is so poisonous that it pushes well-intentioned companies into playing the stupid game to be protected.

[reader5000]

The patent system is not supposed to protect "first to come up with an idea".

[tomkinstinch]

Actually, that is precisely what the patent system is supposed to protect.

(IANAL, but...) The deal with the patent system is that the creator of an invention gets an exclusive and time-limited right to production and sale (or if method, use) in exchange for openly disclosing the details of the invention with society. Society benefits by gaining knowledge, the inventor benefits by having a temporary right to what they have created.

In the United States, the patent system is defined as "first-to-invent" (the alternative being first-to-file). By definition, it protects the "first to come up with an idea," as long as the idea is useful, novel, and non-obvious. The idea must also meet a statutory requirement, which is to say, patentable.

This is where arguments can be made, as programs may be considered mere "descriptive material."

[ignifero]

It's interesting that face recognition is not covered, the tag must be done by a person

[tsumnia]

Interesting, since Facebook is employs face recognition to to encourage users to 'tag' their friends in photos.