

Support Vector Machine algorithm threatened by patent enforcement - reinhardt
http://svmpatent.blogspot.com/2011/07/patenting-algorithms.html

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parrisj
Wow, I'm torn between laughter and sadness. Laughter because svm's are used
everywhere, seriously google scholar returns 1.5 million papers mentioning
support vector machines. Good luck suing everyone of those. And sadness,
although unlikely, this could have a huge chilling effect on Machine Learning,
Computer Vision, NLP, etc.

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zkan
Anyway, I think Vapnik owns a patent for SVM.
<http://www.patentstorm.us/patents/5950146/fulltext.html>

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hardboiled
I thought mathematics couldn't be patented?

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zkan
I guess the algorithm can be. According to
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scale-
invariant_feature_transfo...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scale-
invariant_feature_transform), SIFT is already patented.

