There’s another algorithm that doesn’t depend on knowing which value is larger, the U.S. patent for which expired in 2016:
unsigned average(unsigned a, unsigned b)
{
return (a / 2) + (b / 2) + (a & b & 1);
}
It shouldn't be, but the world of software patents is truly bizarre. I have several patents in my name that are completely meaningless to the point of being satirical (stuff like "system to show a list of options and dispatch and action to a web server", "validating information submitted in a web form and returning errors"). Each is 40+ pages of filing, complete with diagrams, and all of them approved. And we need to do it otherwise someone will sue us with an equally bogus patent and we will have no defense.
I have my name on a patent for an imaging pipeline.
I have no idea why it was granted. I sent it to headquarters as a design pattern description.
That’s pretty much the definition of “prior art.”
I guess they were able to reshape it into a form that the patent office wouldn’t laugh out the door. I never really looked at it. I hate reading patents; even my own.
Yup, my name is on two patents that IMO are just mundane semi-obvious stuff. But our investors insisted on building a portfolio of patented IP, so there you go.
It's more complicated than that. A patent troll will hold a patent for X and then claim you are violating that patent. You, the holder of Y, can then say "well you're violating Y so fuck right off". Or maybe there's another patent that could potentially indicate prior art, but it isn't your patent. Or you're just a really small player with a few patents in your portfolio trying to defend against a troll.
Companies pool their patents together, promising not to sue each other over patents, in order to collectively defend themselves against trolls.
the world would be better if more companies were able or daring enough to fight bullshit patents directly (with prior art, obviousness, etc defenses).
but instead every company chooses to defend themselves by deluging the patent office with more crap, and collective abuse of the patent system to patent stuff even the “inventor” thinks is obvious becomes accepted totally normal behavior.
Story time. I worked for a company who did prior art on something that was frankly fucking to obvious and is now ubiquitous (but as far as I know we did it first). At one point a patent troll sued us. Our clients were on our side and one of them (a very prestigious law school that rhymes with Barvard), offered their resources to help us fight the troll. The C level management decided to not risk it and just paid the troll. We were a 20 person company at the time and it wasn’t worth it I guess.
"The world would be a lot better if <very large group of people/companies> independently did xyz" can be applied to pretty much anything. Except tragedy of the commons is a real thing, and this is why you need governments to step in and regulate.
yes, you are right. meaningful voluntary collective change is unlikely.
however, i believe that individuals should respect the commons, and don’t believe in the tragedy of the commons as an excuse for individual actions that contribute to the problem.
I think Alibaba did this a little while ago - someone tried to sue them for infringing a one-click checkout patent and they did challenge them in court and won.
Algorithms aren't patentable. What's patented here is a specific circuit that implements this algorithm in order to calculate the average in a single instruction cycle.
I disagree. Not all the claims include the “single instruction cycle,” and IMO several of the claims are general enough that one could make a case that a sequence of instructions directing the operation of a general purpose data path would be covered by the claim. (Claim 3, for example).
this would require a lawsuit to find out, but this wording in the description suggests the authors’ intent with the claims was to patent this method of computing an average on any processor:
> A general purpose computer or processor with suitable circuitry can execute the invention in a single instruction cycle (as is preferred) or multiple instruction cycles.
Algorithms are not meant to be patentable, per alice[0], but that does not mean they are not patentable in practice. The theoretical intent of what is patentable certainly differs from what is enforcible as a patent in practice.
LZW compression[1] was patented, and Unisys actually had success extracting license fees with it[2]. In that sense, clearly an algorithm was "patented enough" that the patent was granted and used, even though the patent is literally just math. The MP3 patent is also just a mathematical algorithm which had even more legal success.
So, while technically algorithms are not patentable, in reality, the USPTO will grant patents for algorithms if you write enough legal gunk around them, and the difference doesn't really matter when a patent troll is sending threatening emails and your lawyers are demanding 20x the licensing fee to take the case.
Yeah you're right, it seems like the article is misleading. Still, unless I'm reading it wrong it seems like the patent is just describing the hardware translation of this algorithm, it's not really adding anything new. It's still dubious to me.
Yeah, isn't the translation to a circuit even more trivial than the algorithm itself? a / 2 and b / 2 just discard bits. a & b & 1 is just an and of the two low bits. Then we just route those values to an adder (with carry).
Any algorithm directly expressible as an electronic circuit is considered patentable in most countries due to this equivalence relationship. Technically, this includes all computing algorithms in practice, since there is no meaningful distinction between software and hardware.
However, this is also why business method algorithms like the Amazon "One-Click" are not patentable in most countries. There is no trivial theoretical equivalence between one-click shopping and an electronic circuit.
Edit: but back in the 70s the USPTO didn't have the search databases they had in the 90s or 2000s. It's more the XOR patent being wielded in litigation that was extra controversial
I've never come across this problem before, I read the headline and that solution came into my head immediately before I'd even clicked. I don't think I'm clever, surely half of HN feels the same way.
Yeah, when I read the article title, this is how I thought I would do it. Anything that obvious is not patentable in principle, but in practice, Samsung could still destroy any small business it wanted to by taking them to court over it. The patent system is awful
Exactly. I saw the title, thought "I wonder what other way there is to do this than the obvious one of pre-dividing by 2" and then opened the article and saw that the trivial way to do it was covered by a patent.
It is crazy. Can we get a computer program to spit out thousands of obvious simple programs, get FOSS to use them in various places for prior art to avoid this happening.