

YogaGlo Patent Dropped - toddwolf79
http://yogainternational.com/article/view/yogaglo-patent-dropped

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kens
I read the claims, and this patent really is as stupid as described - filming
a yoga class from the back. The only thing of interest in the claims is having
a "corridor" without students so they don't block the view of the teacher.
Prior art is basically anyone who ever said "Can you guys move out of the
way?"

Edit: The patent has a flowchart, which looks like a satire of patent
flowcharts. It's a two-page flowchart of how to film a yoga class with silly
steps like "Students arrive and set up their yoga mats", "Loaded into video
editing software". It doesn't even make sense as a sequence of steps.

This is a much worse patent than the Amazon "white background" patent which at
least describes a few things that aren't totally obvious to me, such as the
positions and brightness of the lights and the choice of lens. (These things
may be obvious to a skilled practitioner, though.)

Yoga patent:
[https://www.google.com/patents/US8605152](https://www.google.com/patents/US8605152)

White background patent:
[https://www.google.com/patents/US8676045](https://www.google.com/patents/US8676045)

~~~
tigeba
Regarding the white background patent, I'm by no means a professional
photographer but the majority of the items in their patent strike me as basic
if not incredibly obvious to a photographer that specializes in this type of
work. The first figure is a 4 point lighting setup, something that you could
find in hundreds of different textbooks. Their lens selection ( 85mm ) is in
no way novel. There is always some debate, but many photographers prefer
either an 85mm or 100mm for portraiture. If you look around you will find
groups dedicated to taking portraits with the Canon 85mm 1.2L. I'm having a
hard time finding how their claim does anything other than describe almost
every photography studio in existence. Many video and photo studios even have
a white cyclorama built right into the walls, it is almost their default
behavior to facilitate what the patent claims to be unique.

It is possible that their specific claims relate to some of their very
specific ratios and distances, but it seems like a stretch to me.

~~~
lotsofmangos
I've commented this before, but Amazon's white background patent stresses that
it achieves a seamless background with no need for post-processing.

There is a very good reason for this.

When this technique was developed, post-processing was done with a wand in a
darkroom and electronic computers were yet to be built.

edit - actually, if you replace the camera with an audience, the effect
predates photography. Infinity cycloramas being a popular set building
technique in 19th century German theatre.

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CapitalistCartr
The EFF named this "October’s Very Bad, No Good, Totally Stupid Patent of the
Month: Filming A Yoga Class".

[https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2014/10/octobers-very-bad-
no-g...](https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2014/10/octobers-very-bad-no-good-
totally-stupid-patent-month-filming-yoga-class)

~~~
pasbesoin
Is there no penalty for applicants and prosecutors -- especially considering
that for the latter patent prosecution is a part of their _licensed
profession_ (assuming they are attorneys) -- for such apparently deliberate
mis-representations?

It seems that as long as there is no or minimal cost for such abuse, it will
continue.

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toddwolf79
Also worth noting that the organization intends to continue a second
application under a slightly modified set of parameters.
[http://www.yogaglo.com/blog/2014/10/yogaglo-
update-2/](http://www.yogaglo.com/blog/2014/10/yogaglo-update-2/)

~~~
ipsin
Thanks for noting this. I'm hoping that a highly parameterized patent is also
struck down for the same reasons, _especially_ if it's a subset of their
previous patent.

It's funny how, knowing little about yoga, you can develop their scheme.

1\. It's a yoga class! Mats are often used, to provide traction and personal
space. Arrange the mats in the room.

2\. Camcorder on the floor... Who does that? So you put it on a tripod, a few
feet off the ground. Too high makes it unfamiliar for the viewer, like you're
looking down on everyone.

3\. Focus on the instructor! But... the instructor walks off to help a
student... Maybe try and capture more of the class by zooming out.

4\. Students stand up during poses and block your view of the instructor. Move
their mats out of the line of sight!

Simply tightening the parameters doesn't make this less obvious, and their
"look and feel" claim is nonsense.

~~~
langseth
The first patent wasn't struck down, yogaglo was granted the patent, then they
dropped their rights to it.

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RankingMember
This is perhaps one aspect of government that could use an additional layer of
bureaucracy. The patent application process needs an initial high-level review
step to quash silliness like this before it gets through to the queue for
nitty-gritty time-consuming review, which has been proven to repeatedly miss
the forest for the trees.

~~~
mannykannot
Part of the problem is that, thanks partly to precedents from earlier
decisions, 'obvious' and 'prior art' have taken on special meanings that do
not conform to either common usage or common sense.

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Bill_Dimm
The title is wrong and misleading. It should be "YogaGlo Patent Dropped." They
did not patent yoga; they patented a method of filming yoga classes.

~~~
spacemanmatt
Sounds similar to Amazon's patented white background photography.

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bhhaskin
This is a good example of why patent law is broken. I can understand patenting
manufacturing process or designs, but you shouldn't be able to patent and idea
such as an online shopping cart or a certain way to film something.

~~~
none_for_me_thx
It seems that this is the whole point of patent law. It's a subsidy to people
with access to money and power. That it may be used to some effect by smaller
interests is a "happy" by-product of the scheme.

Once you grant that ideas are property and should be protected in the same
way, it seems to me that this is the inevitable result.

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easytiger
> Needless to say, we were pretty shocked when on December 10th of last year,
> YogaGlo’s patent (U.S. Patent No. 8,605,152) was granted.

Anyone who knows software will not have been shocked at all!

~~~
freehunter
When you're trying to incite emotion, you never want to give the impression of
inevitability against your side. Even if you fully expected it to happen, you
are still shocked, and possibly even appalled. It helps to give your readers
an idea of what kind of emotions they should be feeling.

"Just as we expected, the patent was granted" \- Bummer. Wish there was
something I could do about it. Next article.

"Needless to say, we were pretty shocked when the patent was granted." \- Oh
my god! Even the experts think this needs to be handled! (I especially love it
with the 'needless to say' part... it makes it sound so much more obvious that
you should be outraged).

There's nothing wrong with writing like this (unless you're a serious
journalist, I guess). I'm just pointing out why they stated the obvious the
way they did. I'm pretty sure the EFF does the same thing in their patent
posts.

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jonifico
It was a stupid proposition right from the get go. What surprised me what the
time it took to drop it and the amount of attention it gathered, I mean, it
was just a matter of time before it flopped.

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aperture
Why not link this article without #disqus_thread ? As soon as it opened I
instantly went to the bottom of the page.

~~~
toomuchtodo
Mods: Can you fix the URL to drop the #disqus_thread target?

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kristiandupont
If I may play the devil's advocate for a moment here, what if the filer really
did come up with a new way of filming yoga classes that actually is much
better, which everyone then proceeded to copy? I don't know if that's the case
here, and I am not sure exactly how I feel even if it is. Should any idea be
free for anyone to copy once it's "out there"?

~~~
pizza234
This kind of patent is nothing more than what clever and dedicated people
could do. I'm sure that in the history of filming one could find such setup -
for how many decades have instructional videos be produced?

They just, as good weasels, found a weaselly way to patent an not-so-special
idea, and patented it, with the assumption that if somebody finds a similar
way of filming, say, 4 feet from the ground instead of 3, he certainly _not_
going to have a few million dollars to proceed in court - we're talking about
yoga, not android devices (ahem...).

Keep in mind, most importantly, that asserting that _this_ patent is
ridiculous doesn't equal or implies that _any_ idea should be free for anyone
to copy.

~~~
darkstar999
> nothing more than what clever and dedicated people could do

_All_ patents are "nothing more than what clever and dedicated people could
do".

I'm not defending this particular patent, I just wanted to refute that part of
your argument.

~~~
al2o3cr
Depends on what you read into "clever", I'd say. The standard for novelty that
the USPTO uses makes anything "obvious to a person having ordinary skill in
the art to which the subject matter pertains" non-patentable.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Person_having_ordinary_skill_in...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Person_having_ordinary_skill_in_the_art#United_States)

