
Poland's oldest university denies Google's right to patent Polish coding concept - Jerry2
http://www.pap.pl/en/news/news,1037604,polands-oldest-university-denies-googles-right-to-patent-polish-coding-concept.html
======
CalChris
I'm not understanding how Google and employees is claiming to be the original
inventor here.

 _Each inventor must sign an oath or declaration that includes certain
statements required by law and the USPTO rules, including the statement that
he or she believes himself or herself to be the original inventor or an
original joint inventor of a claimed invention in the application and the
statement that the application was made or authorized to be made by him or
her._

[https://www.uspto.gov/patents-getting-started/general-
inform...](https://www.uspto.gov/patents-getting-started/general-information-
concerning-patents)

How is Google+Co the original inventor?

~~~
Nomentatus
The system has changed - it's first to the patent office, now, and vast
amounts of intellectual property is being legally stolen.

~~~
jaredklewis
Yes it is now first to file, but that is only to determine the inventor in the
case of multiple independent inventors.

As before, it is still illegal to file for a patent you did not invent without
the inventor's consent.

~~~
Nomentatus
You do have to claim you thought of it on your own, just a lot later, true -
but that's trivial to do, and impossible to disprove.

For example, it's perfectly okay to patent an idea in use a thousand years
ago, nowadays, as long as most people in that field haven't heard of it;
thanks to recently truly perverse judicial decisions.

------
nxc18
Wow, fuck Google. They really should consider re-adopting "Don't be evil" for
PR proposes at the very least.

(This isn't too say other companies don't pull the same shit; fuck them all
just as much)

~~~
justonepost
Has google ever filed a patent suit against someone other than in defense?
What's more is they have purchased licenses to defend public use of formats.

[https://www.google.com/amp/s/techcrunch.com/2013/03/07/googl...](https://www.google.com/amp/s/techcrunch.com/2013/03/07/google-
and-mpeg-la-sign-licensing-agreement-covering-googles-vp8-video-codec-
clearing-the-way-for-wider-adoption/)

~~~
mirimir
How is that relevant to an attempt to patent something that's in the public
record?

~~~
justonepost
Well, the us has moved to first to file. It could be they are just protecting
it from being patented by someone else.

Also, until you see the patent app, you don't really know what they are
patenting exactly.

~~~
kpil
...but ffs! The reason is that Google is encouraging their employees to file
patents, just as everybody else, since the patent system in regards to
software patents is really just a pissing contest - they need patents to hit
each other in the heads with, and it doesn't matter if it's obvious
implementations of things that people with a common sense will figure out in
10 minutes.

In this case it took a while to figure out the smart thing, and it took 10
minutes to find an application to patent.

I worked for a company that probably infringed on an existing telecom patent
that was more or less equivalent to looking in another sock drawer if you
can't find a matching sock, but as it was related to "an apparatus or method"
for "locating subscriber registry data" it was apparently novel enough to
require a patent.

It took me about 1 minute to come up with the solution as an obvious solution
to a simple problem so it was clearly just rubbish.

The patentee had about 2 million other patents, so if someone had actually
cared we could potentially have infringed on several more patents and run out
of money long before we could win.

~~~
sillysaurus3
But Google doesn't do that. That's worth something, right? It's easy to take
the moral high ground, but I wanted to point out how it looks to the quiet
objective people reading.

~~~
qu4z-2
My experience with Google is that the claim should probably be "Google doesn't
do that _at the moment_ ".

------
wmu
Side note. When I was preparing biographies of Abraham Lempel and Jacob Ziv
(the inventors of LZ77 and LZ78), I read an interview with Lempel. He was
asked why they hadn't patented their algorithms. And he replied like this:
we're scientist, our goal is to improve the world, not be rich. His answer
surprised me. They clearly knew that the invention is remarkable and would be
profitable, but deliberately made it free.

------
willvarfar
(For those interested in data compression,
[https://encode.ru](https://encode.ru) is very active. This thread covers the
rANS patent problems: [https://encode.ru/threads/2648-Published-rANS-patent-
by-Stor...](https://encode.ru/threads/2648-Published-rANS-patent-by-
Storeleap/page3) )

~~~
alecco
Please consider not showing that forum to people who are not working in
compression. It is a rare beauty that could easily fall into Eternal
September.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eternal_September](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eternal_September)

------
aaimnr
I stumbled upon this edit war concerning Huffman Coding article on Wikipedia
[1], where the ANS algorithm author (Jarek Duda) justifies his edits back in
2007 as a way to "shorten the delay for its [ANS] current wide use in modern
compressors, leading to unimaginable world-wide energy and time savings thanks
to up to 30x speedup."

Sounds dramatic, but today it seems like he had a point. The other guy
(guarding Wikipedia against self promotion) has a point too, though.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk%3AHuffman_coding](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk%3AHuffman_coding)

------
woranl
Today's Google is a sugar coated evil corporation. "Don't be evil"...
pathetic.

~~~
logingone
Along with the kiddie play-school design. Some creepy psych things going on
there.

------
alecco
#3 168 points 7h IOCCC Flight Simulator

#72 280 points 6h Poland's oldest university denies __Google __' s right to
patent Polish coding concept

(had to scroll to middle of 3rd page)

(and it's #1 on Algolia 24hs top)

Makes sense, perfectly explainable.

~~~
Jerry2
Any story that puts Google in bad light is heavily censored on HN.

------
kuschku
This is related to the ANS patent of Google, which was previously discussed at
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14751977](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14751977)

------
agsamek
This post had 251 points in two hours. It was no 1 post for some time and now
it was downgraded to 42ND position in the list. 2 hours after posting with
251points. How is it possible????

~~~
jacquesm
Google employees flagging it en masse.

~~~
sysdyne
This. Read some interesting comments that I agreed with only to see them
flagged after some time. Great work Gogglers. You "showed us" who is boss.

------
Cpoll
Can anyone explain Google's rationale here?

As I understand the US patent system, patent trolls can and do make these
sorts of patent filings all the time, and the legitimacy doesn't matter,
because their victims can't afford to defend themselves in court.

Isn't it irrational _not_ to file patents like these?

Or is Google planning to use this patent "offensively?"

~~~
jhall1468
Google has never used a patent offensively. Hell even Waymo was more about
theft than patents. But HN turns rabid in these situations rather than
understanding Google has to do this to prevent trolls from doing it.

~~~
Sylphine
>Google has to do this to prevent trolls from doing it.

So you believe that a company as powerful as Google deserves more consolidated
power. No, thanks.I will stick with the possibility of getting sued by a troll
than handing that power to Google.

~~~
jhall1468
No, but they've never used that power whereas trolls always use it for bad.

The fact that you'd rather have a troll own it than Google is literally
retarded. That's like advocating you'd prefer North Korea have nukes than the
US, because the US already has too much power.

Why would you rather be sued in real life over a theoretical fear? Is absurd.

~~~
Sylphine
>theoretical fear Profit is always the bottom line. Google isn't some
humanitarian project. Get your head out of the clouds.

------
informatimago
Google, the universal evil company.

(That's where you realise emojis lack a pinky finger, that could become
google's logo).

------
RandomInteger4
I don't understand how companies can be so bold as to file for patents on
things that are already in industry use by more than the filer of the patent.

------
654wak654
Does the article mean ENcoding and not just coding?

~~~
wolf550e
They mean "coding" in the information theory meaning of the word:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shannon%27s_source_coding_theo...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shannon%27s_source_coding_theorem)

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Huffman_coding](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Huffman_coding)

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arithmetic_coding](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arithmetic_coding)

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asymmetric_Numeral_Systems](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asymmetric_Numeral_Systems)

------
userbinator
It's interesting that arithmetic compression and its variants seem to be a
favourite of those looking for something to patent. From the description of
ANS, it looks very similar to the QM/Q-coder for JBIG/2, JPEG, and JPEG2000,
which was patented by IBM a long time ago (since expired.)

------
master_yoda_1
Someone should stop the monopoly of google in computer science and AI.
Otherwise its going to be dangerous.

~~~
gaius
It needs to be broken up like
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breakup_of_the_Bell_System](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breakup_of_the_Bell_System)

~~~
Sylphine
More than 90 % of its revenue comes from ads so I don't see a way they would
be affected. The only valuable brands are Youtube and the search
engine(android could even operate as a nonprofit funded by Google). Progress
but hardly a "win".

~~~
gaius
Make it spin off YouTube, Maps/Earth, Translate, its public cloud, GMail etc
etc.

~~~
Sylphine
Yes but most of those services gain traction from the search engine. Google2
could quickly use FOSS code to integrate similar products to those that they
would lose and even if they would be a MVP that would still do the trick. See
what I mean ?

~~~
gaius
Its the level of integration thats the problem, the way they can leverage
dominant positions in markets A, B and C to conquer market D.

------
mirekrusin
Why this news, posted 2 hours ago, slided from front page to 40th position in
about 2 minutes? It's got 251 points, 52 comments which is way more than
anything on the front page?

~~~
krzyk
Same here, I saw it at the top, after I read the comments and refreshed the
main page, it was gone I found it on the 46th spot.

------
e-beach
Sorry, but I wouldn't trust an article written by the Polish state media. The
title of the article, labeling the idea a "Polish coding concept", clearly
presupposes that Google's claim was baseless.

~~~
mieses
It is fair to bring up Polish state media and the tendency of Poles towards
nationalistic bias. If anyone didn't get that then this comment is useful.
Just bear in mind that Google PR is on the other side of the argument. It was
usually a safe bet to side with Google but given recent trends it may be a
good idea to look at the merits of the arguments.

