
Google Tried to Patent My Work After a Job Interview - jerryX
https://patentpandas.org/stories/company-patented-my-idea
======
paul7986
I met/had a similar experience with Google ATAP in 2013 (was Motorala ATAP
then; Google recently bought them) though not for a job interview but to
discuss working together to build our tech SpeakerBlast into the Moto X.

They asked if we ever thought about selling our technology to them before the
meeting and at the meeting they baited us for how our tech worked saying we'd
like to work with you tell us how it works. Once we did they left the room
(Dugan's 2nd right hand man at the time and another) & 3 minutes later showed
us the door saying the "race is on."

They have since been awarded patents for audio syncing across phones.

Many here will say that's just how Silicon Valley works.... takes advantage
and stomps on the little guy innovators & their dreams. That's not
professional and I met with many other companies like Samsung who acted with
the utmost respect & professionalism towards us. Yet, Google whose motto is
"Don't Be Evil," can't act in the same fashion?

~~~
pmarreck
This is a level of douchiness I cannot fathom. What possesses these people to
act in this fashion and how do they sleep at night? How is this not seen as
clearly unethical behavior? A clear violation of Wheaton's Law, here.

I mean... I could easily take that lollipop from that naïve baby in that baby
carriage... but I don't, simply because I'm Not A Dick™.

Did all of Silicon Valley get the wrong takeaway from the Apple/Xerox thing,
or something?

~~~
everyone
Why do elite decision makers, CEO's, boards of directors, make decisions that
will certainly have adverse effects, that will literally _kill_ people (eg.
Trafigura), just to make more profit? Despite the fact that they are all
already individually multi-millionaires and could not really materially
improve their lives with more money?

I've ruminated on this.

I think the only reason that could explain such excess is competitiveness. To
them, it is like a game. Its not about getting another yacht, its about
beating the _other_ guy. I think its the same mechanism that will drive
someone to grind for many hours in an MMO or suchlike.

~~~
ufmace
I've tended to think that a lot of it is about different social circles. If
everyone you know makes $50-100k/yr, you feel fine making that yourself, and
may not even be sure what you'd do with a million dollars. If your social
circle is full of millionaires and multi-millionaries, all of the sudden
making a million feels like barely getting by and you think about all of the
cool stuff you see people around you getting that you could get if you had
tens of millions.

~~~
monocasa
I think it's different past ~$150k salary too (probably more like $200k-$300k
in the valley). At that point there's this weird net worth dick measuring
contest that becomes a lot of people at that level's xbox gamer score. As in
it's this number that they've attached a whole lot of identity to to be able
to compare to their peers. It has very little to about what they can actually
do with that number and more that they just want a bigger one than their
friends.

------
zawerf
She worded that way too diplomatically.

What google did here is one of the evilest things you can do.

They are taking open research and trying to close it off. Research that they
didn't even contribute to! Research that they didn't need patent rights for
because it's already free for them to use. But they can't allow anyone after
them to have the same privilege can they?

~~~
PurpleBoxDragon
These are just some of the reasons patents are fundamentally broken and the
patent system as a whole should be scrapped. Another big issue is that, like
most any law, enforcing it costs significant money, and that cost scales
depending upon who your opponent is. The cost for a little guy to enforce a
patent claim against google is vastly out of proportion to the cost of google
to enforce a patent claim against a little guy. This means that the patent
system ends up being another form of regulatory capture used to squash
competition. If we just removed patents, major corporations would be just as
free as today to steal from the little guys, but at least they couldn't then
weaponize their patents to crush the original inventors.

~~~
pitaj
Not just patents, but all intellectual property. Copyright is arguably even
more broken, lasting a century or more. It's ridiculous. My disdain for the
DMCA is immeasurable, and the upcoming EU directive looks even worse.

Not only are these systems broken in their implementation, but there is little
evidence that even in their most pure form they accomplished their supposed
intention.

~~~
namlem
Trademark regulations are fine. It's just patents and copyrights.

------
jackgavigan
IANAL, but 35 U.S. Code § 115 requires that _" each individual who is the
inventor or a joint inventor of a claimed invention in an application for
patent shall execute an oath or declaration"_ that they believe _" himself or
herself to be the original inventor or an original joint inventor of a claimed
invention in the application,"_ and acknowledging _" that any willful false
statement made in such declaration or statement is punishable under section
1001 of title 18 by fine or imprisonment of not more than 5 years, or both."_

So... How is this not _literally_ a crime?

~~~
hartator
This. Google should also probably take disciplinary actions.

~~~
2_listerine_pls
You are kidding right? They even encourage it by making you sign a visitor
agreement so that you have no right to the IP you discuss.

~~~
jacques_chester
Invention is not the same as assignment. You can sign away assignment, but
inventorship remains with the inventor(s).

------
mel919
Let us not forget when Google tried to patent an algorithm for Assymetric
Numeral Systems developed by an academic scientist with intent of making it
available in a public domain. Seems like this kind of practice is more common
with Google than one might think.

Here are some articles about that: [https://www.inquisitr.com/4935898/google-
accused-of-trying-t...](https://www.inquisitr.com/4935898/google-accused-of-
trying-to-patent-work-inventor-created-for-public-to-use-for-free/)
[https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2018/08/after-patent-office-
re...](https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2018/08/after-patent-office-rejection-it-
time-google-abandon-its-attempt-patent-use-public)

And a HN link:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14751977](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14751977)

------
Animats
Did you sign Google's visitor agreement? Did you _read_ Google's visitor
agreement. You give up some IP rights by signing that. This is a case where it
matters. When I visited Google, I refused to sign. They just give you a badge
that said you didn't sign.

~~~
londons_explore
Unless you've been visiting other offices from the one I've been visiting, the
agreement pretty much says:

* No taking photographs or video without permission.

* Don't disclose things you see in the office outside the office

It's literally 3 sentences, and they have handy little icons next to each.

I see nothing about IP rights assignment or anything of the sort.

~~~
dctoedt
But different companies use different forms of visitor NDA — and lawyers
purely _love_ to load up contract forms with "protective" language to show how
knowledgeable they are. This can be dangerous to counterparties; Stanford, in
effect, lost part-ownership of a patent for HIV diagnostic testing because a
Stanford investigator signed a visitor NDA that included IP-assignment
language [0]. The case went all the way to the (U.S.) Supreme Court (about a
tangential statutory issue).

The lesson: _Always_ RTFA before signing it (where the A stands for the
agreement), because sadly there's no such thing as an accepted, named
standard.

[0]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanford_University_v._Roche_M...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanford_University_v._Roche_Molecular_Systems,_Inc.#Dispute)

~~~
ubernostrum
Your comment is incredibly misleading. This wasn't the "you came by our office
for lunch" NDA. This was the "you worked here for a while, and we trained you
and taught you our techniques, which you later used in an invention" NDA.

~~~
dctoedt
> _This wasn 't the "you came by our office for lunch" NDA. This was the "you
> worked here for a while, and we trained you and taught you our techniques,
> which you later used in an invention" NDA._

Citation for the first assertion? Here's an excerpt from the Supreme Court's
summary of the facts: One Dr. Mark Holodniy [0], who had recently joined a
Stanford lab as a fellow, _" signed a Visitor's Confidentiality Agreement
(VCA). That agreement stated that Holodniy "will assign and do[es] hereby
assign" to Cetus_ [predecessor to Roche] _his "right, title and interest in
each of the ideas, inventions and improvements" made "as a consequence of
[his] access" to Cetus."_ [1] The trial court's opinion [2] states that
Holodniy signed the VCA "[a]t the time he began working at Cetus"; it wouldn't
be the least bit surprising if he did so without first getting the VCA
reviewed by the Stanford legal department, because after all it's just an NDA,
right?

Yes, the Stanford fellow worked at Cetus for nine months learning various
techniques — which were published — and, months later, used (at least some of)
the techniques when working with his Stanford colleagues.

The point is that a relatively-junior Stanford employee — as a result of
having signed another organization's "Visitor Confidentiality Agreement" — in
effect gave the other organization a get-out-of-jail-free card: The other
organization was allowed to infringe Stanford's patent on a _later_ invention
by _other_ Stanford investigators because the junior employee's own
contribution to that invention qualified as a "consequence" of the employee's
previous training at the other organization.

> _Your comment is incredibly misleading._

You're entitled to your opinion, of course. The lesson is still valid: RTFA
before you sign it — because otherwise you might be giving away valuable
rights months or years down the road.

[0] [https://profiles.stanford.edu/mark-
holodniy](https://profiles.stanford.edu/mark-holodniy)

[1]
[https://scholar.google.com/scholar_case?case=145195436028699...](https://scholar.google.com/scholar_case?case=14519543602869990622).

[2]
[https://scholar.google.com/scholar_case?case=776650368736548...](https://scholar.google.com/scholar_case?case=7766503687365482465)

~~~
ubernostrum
_Citation for the first assertion?_

You're making it sound like he just popped in one day and had a sandwich and a
chat with the people working there. Your own citation, though, is to "the time
he began working at Cetus". The "visitor" NDA there is more like "visit" in
the sense of "visiting professor" \-- someone who will be there for an
extended time, working alongside the other people there.

And your original link to Wikipedia's summary says:

 _The Stanford lab in which Holodniy worked had been working on developing
better HIV tests, and wanted to try the new PCR method, so Holodniy 's
supervisor had arranged for him to work at Cetus to learn the technique ...
[a]fter completing his training at Cetus, Holodniy then returned to Stanford
where he and other Stanford employees tested the HIV measurement technique._

If you work somewhere for a while and they give you training in the stuff they
do, they're going to want you to keep that confidential and probably want to
make claims on anything you develop as a result of what they taught you. You
are heavily misrepresenting the word "visitor" to make it sound like he was
only there for an office tour or something.

~~~
dctoedt
We're talking past each other here:

\- You're arguing that it was meet and right for Cetus to claim ownership of
anything that the Stanford fellow did, presumably _ad infinitum_ , as long as
it was a "consequence" of the training that Cetus provided to the Stanford
fellow. While I think that's a pretty aggressive position, I really don't
care, because it's a business decision for each party to make.

\- In contrast, I _am_ suggesting that the Stanford fellow probably didn't
realize the consequences of his signing a so-called confidentiality agreement,
and that the lesson is to RTFA, not to assume that the agreement is limited by
what its title says.

~~~
ubernostrum
_You 're arguing that it was meet and right for Cetus to claim ownership_

No, I'm claiming that it should not have been surprising that the agreement
for someone who worked there included such claims. How I personally feel about
it is irrelevant; it's a standard practice, and to be expected.

What I am arguing with is your repeated use of terms like "visitor", to make
it sound like the guy just popped in for lunch one day and they claimed all
his work. He worked there. They trained and taught him. While there are
contexts in which "visitor" can be the appropriate term for that (again, see
"visiting professor"), the usual connotation of "visitor" is incredibly
misleading here, and I wish you'd be more clear about it.

~~~
dctoedt
> _What I am arguing with is your repeated use of terms like "visitor", to
> make it sound like the guy just popped in for lunch one day and they claimed
> all his work. ... the usual connotation of "visitor" is incredibly
> misleading here, and I wish you'd be more clear about it._

"Visitor's Confidentiality Agreement" was the title of the NDA, for Pete's
sake; _that 's_ what makes it sound as though the guy popped in for a meeting.

And the trial court's opinion says that the Stanford fellow "commut[ed] daily"
to Cetus. This seems to suggest strongly that the fellow divided his time
between Stanford and Cetus — in effect, that the guy was a daily visitor to
Cetus, as opposed to being seconded to Cetus.

Again, the point: _RTFA_ — because hindsight opinions might differ about what
you should or shouldn't have expected.

~~~
ubernostrum
So he _worked_ there, and commuted to _work_ there, because of how he _worked_
there.

And you brought this up in a thread about something not even close to the same
situation, yet presented it as relevant. And doubled down despite being
contradicted by your own sources. He worked there. He knew he worked there. He
was not just popping in for half an hour that one time to have lunch with
them. He worked there and they trained him on their techniques while he worked
there. The fact that the word "visitor" was in there is not relevant and does
not make it be the same situation that this thread was about. It is not the
same situation. It is not a similar situation. It is not the same situation
because -- have I mentioned this? -- he worked there.

~~~
dctoedt
I turn over my king, sir ....

------
ilaksh
Its another example of why these types of patents shouldn't even be allowed.
There are always a large number of people who don't get credit and/or won't
get paid. And then all of the people who have very similar ideas or maybe the
same one who get blocked from bringing products to market.

If the patent system somehow made it so people like the author of this post
would actually make lots of money, that would be different. But it doesn't
work that way.

There was an application that I worked on. I figured out all of the hard
technical problems as the lead developer. Then when the guy got funding he
kicked me off of the project, hired his friends, and filed a patent. He was
"nice enough" to put my name on it but not as an assignee. Meaning I could
never own any of the hard work I did.

This is the type of thing that reminds me that the idea that we really even
have a civilization is a myth. Everything is just a game where the people who
start with the biggest advantages and stoop low enough for the best scams come
out on top.

~~~
jkeat
Patent law includes a provision for situations like this - it’s called
“derivation,” meaning basically that someone stole another person’s work and
tried to patent it. The rightful inventor can initiate a proceeding at the
patent office to invalidate the patent and get control of the work.

~~~
nerpderp82
If you add enough bling to an existing idea, you can patent that, if the bling
you add is an obvious and probably necessary path forward, you can still steel
ideas from the public domain.

------
setquk
It’s down to individuals rather than culture in these things. By purely
statistics, an organisation of any size has less than ethical people in it
even if they have the best outward impression. Unfortunately these sorts of
people tend to favour power and slowly work their way to positions that give
them that. Then the whole org is a bad apple.

Having been in a similar situation before, the correct answer is “I’ll get my
lawyer to contact you with our NDA process” or if you’re really worried “fuck
off”.

It’s probably better to file patent first though. The patent is what you need
to sell them.

~~~
StudentStuff
Repeated unethical behavior is not the fault of a few bad actors, but of an
organization designed to encourage that behavior. I wouldn't discount Google
as being at fault seeing as how we already have two instances of Google's ATAP
committing patent fraud despite little research and outreach being done.

One fun fact I stumbled across is any misconduct when filing for a patent
voids the entire patent application, not just the claims that the misconduct
occurred in:
[https://www.uspto.gov/web/offices/pac/mpep/s2016.html](https://www.uspto.gov/web/offices/pac/mpep/s2016.html)

~~~
setquk
Assholes hire assholes. Eventually the assholes all float to the top and make
asshole decisions. You can't win. This is a failure mode of every organisation
I have ever seen.

~~~
cloverich
My take on it is as long as there are instruments to abuse there will be
unethical people to do so. Patent law and drug prohibition are equivalent, to
me, in this way. They create unnatural economic sectors where unethical
behavior is favored.

~~~
nerpderp82
They give a legal framework for unethical people to prosper. They are
"hacking" the system. Highly moral societies are especially ripe for this kind
of victimization because many of the "laws" are social norms that everyone
just follows.

------
CalChris
Regina Dugan is a former head of DARPA as well as ATAP. She has an impressive
resume. Why would she do something like this? For a not particularly important
patent, LED popup books? It seems bizarre.

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regina_E._Dugan](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regina_E._Dugan)

~~~
ilaksh
People don't get to the top by being ethical. They get to the top of the org
chart by playing politics. Many of them are practically psychopaths.

~~~
speedplane
The good news is that very few people are at the top. Most are in the middle,
and it's entirely possible to be ethical and in a good middling position.

~~~
bitL
How can you justify your work in the middle as ethical, if it directly
supports a rotten apple at the top? Your life's work turned into a support
system for a beast, wonderful!

~~~
awakeasleep
Are you making reference to this?
[https://goo.gl/images/2UmYrg](https://goo.gl/images/2UmYrg)

------
taneq
I'm amazed at how relaxed their response is. If I told someone about some of
my work and then found out they'd tried to patent it, I would be _pissed_!

~~~
sneak
If you want your secrets to remain secret, you shouldn’t divulge your secrets.

~~~
cwingrav
If you want to protect your secrets, you should patent them so when someone
figures out your secret, or in this case your creative idea, you have a leg to
stand on. Otherwise, they figure out your secret or idea and you have nothing.
This is the entire purpose of patents and, despite many of the current issues
with patents, they are still effective in many cases.

While you can argue patents are only paper, a valuable patent is worth
defending. In this case, she was able to demonstrate prior art, meaning that a
patent could not be granted since they have no idea to protect since it's been
in the public domain (i.e. released to the world) and not an original/non-
trivial idea. This is why academic publication, or in the past the use of
laboratory journals, are useful in documenting time of the invention.

~~~
sneak
The patent system is just a mechanism that uses the threat of state violence
to prop up the idea that an idea is property that can be owned. This concept
is false, and the sooner people abandon that model the better off we will all
be. The state can’t use the threat of violence to make pi equal to 3, to make
a public domain codec a “google invention”, nor to deed title to the number
two. Remember, parents are just an industrial incentive mechanism propped up
by cops, nothing more.

~~~
monochromatic
You could say the same thing about any form of property.

~~~
mdpopescu
No, only about Imaginary Property.

~~~
monochromatic
No, it is literally true that the threat of state violence is what props up
the ability to own any property.

~~~
mdpopescu
This is so obviously wrong I have no idea how to continue.

~~~
monochromatic
What stops other people from taking your tangible property other than the
threat of state action?

Sure, there are plenty of people who would refrain from stealing anyway just
because it’s morally wrong. But there are enough people who don’t care that
the whole idea of property rights becomes meaningless in practice without some
way of enforcing them.

~~~
nybble41
> What stops other people from taking your tangible property other than the
> threat of state action?

Aside from morals, the threat of _reciprocation_ , not by the state
specifically but by the property owner who was harmed and anyone authorized to
act on their behalf.

Unlike actual property, IP isn't based on reciprocation. The penalties for
infringement go _way_ beyond simply losing similar forms of IP.

~~~
monochromatic
The penalty for stealing my TV might well include a bullet in the chest. I’m
not sure what your point is.

~~~
nybble41
That would simply be murder, not a just or reasonable response to someone
stealing your TV. In any case it still doesn't involve any state action, so we
appear to be in violent agreement that, contrary to your original assertion,
the state is not the only thing stopping other people from taking your
property.

------
nubb
The story in the article about Jill MacKay stealing their LED sticker idea
then trying to sell them the patent for $5m is infuriating. Goes to show you
can get scammed by some jeweler in Colorado just as fast and easily as by huge
Corp like Google.

I suppose it's possible she had the idea, saw their kickstarter then submitted
a patent to CYA. But then why back the kickstarter? Just feels fishy.

~~~
philpem
Probably the same reason some major companies (FTSE250/Fortune 500) do the
same thing. It's called a "competitor product teardown" \- the goal is to
identify things your competitors are doing, whether they're patented, and
whether you can do the same thing (or something similar) to improve your own
product.

It's basically the BigCo Inc. version of "that's a great idea, I'm glad I
thought of it". (and usually patented it too)

------
antymon
Similar story and time as Google ANS patent:
[https://arstechnica.com/features/2018/06/inventor-says-
googl...](https://arstechnica.com/features/2018/06/inventor-says-google-is-
patenting-work-he-put-in-the-public-domain/)

~~~
rasz
Duda might have won this one [https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2018/08/after-
patent-office-re...](https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2018/08/after-patent-
office-rejection-it-time-google-abandon-its-attempt-patent-use-public)

------
neil_s
I'm surprised this isn't mentioned, but there are a couple of possibilities
here: a) the Google folks listed did actually steal the patent, as described
b) the Google folks were working on this already, saw someone in academia that
was doing very relevant work, and called them in to see if they'd like to join
the team. Not clear how interview went. Unrelated to the interview, the team
filed a patent when significant progress was being made.

Correlation != causation, so unless there's evidence that the author had a
super specific take on electronics in popup books where the probability of
someone independently working on the exact same thing is very low, how can we
jump to the conclusion that it must be explanation A?

Disclaimer: I work at at El Goog, but these views are obviously my own. It's
entirely possible that explanation A is the truth in this case, but it seems
like people are taking it as a foregone conclusion

~~~
muraiki
Presumably because Google didn't communicate anything along the lines of "we
were already working on this". Even then, there's so much prior art in open
research that the patent was invalidated anyway.

------
raverbashing
Now interviewing at Google is not only an exercise in futility and alienation,
you can also have your ideas stolen as part of it.

Good to know

------
seshagiric
Not in any supporting this, but likely what happened was:

a. some googlers met Leah for casual/interview talk

b. Leah describes her ideas in detail

c. Said Googlers steal her idea and patent it thinking 2 years is long time

d. Leah comes to know and Google is caught with hand in cookie jar

This is very Google should have practiced the do no evil. Instead they tried
to salvage the situation.

------
jorangreef
Software patents need to be banned.

In the interim, employee incentives (ego, bonuses) to being listed as an
"inventor" while BigCompany remains the "assignee" could be ameliorated with a
"Software Patent Hall of Shame" (SPHS), which would list software engineers
complicit in software patents.

This would disincentivize software engineers from stealing ideas, from
allowing their work to be patented, or from signing agreements which would
force them to do so, since doing so would undermine their prospects with
future employers, who believe in free and open software and unencumbered
computer science research.

~~~
perfunctory
Not just software patents. All patents. What makes software industry so
special?

~~~
da_chicken
Software is also protected by copyright.

~~~
arfar
Copyright only protects against actual copying. It's quite a limited right in
comparison to patents. A patent can prevent others from
implementing/selling/making/importing/exploiting the same invention
independently created.

Copyright pales in comparison to the protection afforded by a patent.

------
MarkMc
Reminds me of this cartoon:

[https://dilbert.com/strip/2006-05-06](https://dilbert.com/strip/2006-05-06)

~~~
Gibbon1
First place I worked for had something like that except it was a supposed new
customer that took their technical sales documentation and gave them to a
competitor to develop a competing system. They also sent two of the
competitors engineers to training sessions.

------
_drimzy
Dang, it's incredible that google didn't fire the "inventors" listed on the
patent. This is blatant stealing.

~~~
perfunctory
Why would they fire somebody for following company's policy?

~~~
projektfu
It may actually be criminal.

------
JoeAltmaier
I've been named an inventor on several patents. If I read the applications, I
hardly recognize the 'art' we invented. Somehow the legalese gets derailed, or
they asked somebody else (not me) to help describe it. Anyway, the patent and
the idea (software organization) are hardly recognizable as related.

Note: I did not instigate the patent process. The company lawyers did. I
extricated myself from the process early.

------
perfunctory
Patents must be abolished.

Recommended reading: [https://www.amazon.com/Against-Intellectual-Monopoly-
Michele...](https://www.amazon.com/Against-Intellectual-Monopoly-Michele-
Boldrin/dp/0521127262)

~~~
pbhjpbhj
And replaced with?

Industrial secrecy doesn't seem like a better system. Perhaps you'd like
shorter term patents, or want to fix some other deficit?

~~~
Joeri
In software it is well known that nobody reads patents who does the actual
work in the field. Getting rid of them would not have a meaningful downside in
the dissemination of information. Most people in the industry agree software
patents are bad for the software industry and they should be abolished.

But, if that’s true for software, why isn’t it true for other fields? Simply
put: what evidence is there patents are a benefit to society instead of a
harm?

~~~
pbhjpbhj
We don't have software patents (as such! [lol]) in Europe.

Software is different, in that source and decompilation exist, you can't
really keep it secret.

~~~
pnw_hazor
EU has software patents. The same applications that are filed and issued in
the US get filed and issued in the EU too.

Also, there is no such thing as a software patent.

------
cannedslime
Aside from toxic corporate culture as exposed by James Damore, this is another
reason never to associate with "Alphabet Corp" as a professional. Good
riddance!

------
swiftcoder
You may be underestimating the sheer pressure to file patents at big tech
firms. Some companies have annual filing quotas, not just for patent
attorneys, but also for engineers. Not filing enough patent applications may
negatively affect your performance review.

I've had patent attorneys show up on a Friday afternoon with a case of beer,
to get the entire team to sit in a room and brainstorm patents. Anything goes
- doesn't matter if they relate to the field you work in, since the broader
company works in almost every field.

As an employee, you are specifically forbidden from googling patents, because
you might become aware of prior art. As long as you aren't aware... the
reasoning goes that it isn't strictly-speaking illegal.

I can't say I'm surprised that cultures like that result in the sort of thing
you experienced.

------
lagomorph
I'm not knowledgeable enough to talk about patents and corporations and prior
art, but I did want to mention that that tech is really neat. As the parent of
young kids, the intersection of storytelling, education and technology is
fascinating to me, especially in the era of Youtubers and Netflix and other
passive experiences.

Kudos for creating something engaging and interesting.

------
beautifulfreak
If the author pops in here, I hope he takes a look at this patent, because it
might be prior art:
[https://patents.google.com/patent/US8512151](https://patents.google.com/patent/US8512151)
I complained about it to the "Stupid Patent of the Month" attorney at the
Electronic Frontier Foundation (here: [https://www.eff.org/issues/stupid-
patent-month](https://www.eff.org/issues/stupid-patent-month)) and got a nice
response agreeing that it looks obvious.

~~~
neonate
I think the author is a she.

~~~
mirimir
True, but I didn't see that she identified herself, or her gender, in the
article. So what's a commenter to do? That's an honest question. Mangle to use
"they"? Use some genderless pronoun that'll piss off x% of readers?

~~~
depressedpanda
> True, but I didn't see that she identified herself, or her gender, in the
> article. So what's a commenter to do?

Simple.

1\. Assume an ostensibly correct pronoun of your own choice (like you did)

2\. If someone corrects you, optionally acknowledge the correction and
apologize if applicable, then use the correct pronoun henceforth

3\. Ignore the overly gender-obsessed people who tell you that you should have
used ugly or cumbersome constructs such as "they" or, even worse, "s/he" and
variants thereof.

4\. Don't worry too much about it; everybody can make an honest mistake.

~~~
Skrillex
Calling "they" an ugly or cumbersome construct seems like a reach. I am a
native english speaker, and the use of that word to describe people with
unknown characteristics (such as criminal suspects and people with obscured
features or seen from a distance) has been very common even before the gender-
obsessed people took root. It is merely english.

~~~
depressedpanda
Fair enough, point taken. In my native tongue it doesn't work at all. I was
mostly referring to the "s/he" abomination (and its variants) anyway.

------
75dvtwin
I have heard (so very anecdotal, not confirmed), but similar stories from
folks who worked with Google (not for Google).

Google would reach to incumbent telephone/infrastructure companies and tell
them that they want to use their services for some super project. To get well
integrated, Google, of course need to know the details/idiosyncrasy of the
existing protocols/work around conventions/etc.

So Google employees would receive all the documentation, knowledge/know-how
that they could extract.

Then the project would get 'cancelled'. And then, some time later, the
'service provider' would find that Google is implementing similar capabilities
that their service is providing, only as part of their some other global
initiative that aims at converting majority of infrastructure services to
Google.

Perhaps these stories are a reflection of the internal culture characteristic
of the 'Do-more-swindle' company.

I see people below recommend NDA/etc. Sure, but US/UK legal system is heavily
tilted towards who can hire better lawyers -- and the monopolies win there
easily....

------
rpmcmurphy
I was assigned as an inventor for a bullshit patent application our legal team
did not even understand. I did everything I could to undermine it. The whole
system is fucked and is all about who has more money for lawyers (who know
fuck all about the matters at hand)

------
greysonp
Google really pushes their employees to patent everything they can. During the
brief time I worked there, we had multiple "patent brainstorm" meetings where
we'd sit in a room and try to come up with things we could patent based on
what we were working on. On top of that, they pay you a decent sum of money
(low thousands, forget the exact number) for filing patents. I knew one guy
who worked with various teams to file dozens of patents a year and almost
doubled his salary.

That said, none of the people I knew at Google would blatantly steal other
people's ideas. This sounds like a very unethical cluster of employees.

------
onemoresoop
Here are details of the patents filed:
[https://patents.justia.com/inventor/ali-javan-
javidan](https://patents.justia.com/inventor/ali-javan-javidan)

------
blablabla123
Had this already 3 times that interviewers ask me out about _their_
Engineering problems, and how I would solve them. Initially I got good or very
good feedback but then afterwards was rejected. It feels weird, also if I
consider that they might do this with every person interviewed. Crowdsourcing
knowledge through interviews, yay ;)

Seems far more appropriate to get toy problems, if that is needed at all, or
to get scoped problems but then get reimbursed if it takes several hours.

~~~
Joeri
I don’t think there’s bad intent here, just a case of the interviewer wanting
to offer up a challenge and taking the one that is top of mind.

~~~
blablabla123
True...

------
iicc
[https://www.quora.com/Do-any-companies-give-a-bonus-for-
pate...](https://www.quora.com/Do-any-companies-give-a-bonus-for-patents-or-
trademarks-filed-If-so-how-much/answer/Sumit-Agarwal)

> Google paid generously for filing patents to help create a defensive
> portfolio.

> ...you would receive $1000 post-tax per person, up to $3k total

> I left Google in 2009 and the program may have changed since then.

(The events took place in 2014)

------
buboard
Silicon Valley S02E02 Brain Rape

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JlwwVuSUUfc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JlwwVuSUUfc)

------
ridgeguy
Can't read the article (in the air, data constrained).

But if you have what you think is a patentable invention, file a provisional
application before you interview. The USPTO gives you a filing receipt, which
might help here. Let your interviewer know you can talk about your invention
because you've got a patent pending. It costs $70 to file as a micro entity.
See Nolo Press for a good resources on how to do it.

------
kkarpkkarp
Google is a new patent troll, IMO. Another example: Google trying to patent
compression algorithm already dedicated to public domain by its inventor

[https://www.reddit.com/r/technology/comments/9c7kw6/google_i...](https://www.reddit.com/r/technology/comments/9c7kw6/google_is_trying_to_patent_use_of_a_data/)

------
jayd16
I'm really not surprised or upset. Its not like Google is known for using
patents to crush others. The patent system is fucked up enough that they have
to try to patent everything they work on and hope to either get the patent, or
as in this case, prove its unpatentable through prior art.

Its a fucked up system but I don't think its as sinister people are making it
out to be.

------
alexanderwept
Tossing this out - lost the comment this was a reply to:

I'm not sure about that - my N=1

I went to a State school and got an economics degree, I started my career as a
SQL-lackey for a B.I department in declining midwestern retailer, but I
treated my career like graduate school insofar that I worked hard at it.

About 4 years after my first day of professional work, I started as a data
scientist at a FANG. My team of 9 had 3 Ph.Ds (all science Ph. Ds). As I
understood it, the Ph.Ds do receive higher compensation but it's not that much
more (~18% higher base) and if I really kick butt, I can out earn them with
bonuses.

But I think my path was much easier and lucrative. I was able to save ~$100k,
I had a standard of living above that of a regular graduate student and I had
flexibility that they would dream of. I made 4 years worth of contacts of my
profession, I

I'm sure some Ph.Ds are worth it as investments, but if you're interested in
renumeration, get working.

------
Squids4Cows
I have often thought... "I have an idea; If I search using Google, and not
really find anything relevant, does 'google' ever look at everyones 'ideas'
and 'send these off to the labs to investigate further for possible patents?
How would you ever know?

I'm putting on my tin-hat now!

------
nerpderp82
This comes up a bunch and if researchers want to research w/o having people
sit on the sidelines and cherry pick obvious extensions to ideas, then you
need to basically brainstorm in public and do so aggressively.

I would suggest having a weekly or monthly brainstorming session over vide
chat, or have a wiki or emailing list with a meadow of ideas. Provide that
email list as an immutable publicicly indexed and crawlable content.

Put the minutes of those meetings on line, upload the video of the "idea jam
sessions" to Youtube, Vimeo, etc.

After a small amount of time, you will stake out ownership of enough avenues
of research that it will be hard to patent anything. You don't have to build
something to patent it, it doesn't even have to be buildable, meaning you can
actually patent "problems" instead of solutions.

Thoughts?

------
luord
This is awfully scummy. I'd seen it in Silicon Valley (the show) and I laughed
then; seeing it play out in real life is sobering.

~~~
mtarnovan
If you want to understand Silicon Valley, watch _" Silicon Valley"_ \- Bill
Gates

------
philpem
There's a subtle-but-sneaky way to play this game.

Put in a patent application. Abandon it.

Congratulations, your patent is now going to come up in any competent patent
examiner's initial search as "potential prior art".

Patent the core technology (the "you have to do it this way" stuff), but salt
the earth around it so nobody can get a patent on the sub-optimal
alternatives.

Also leave subtle but important details out of the application. Your
conductive ink is silver but has to have, say, palladium added to make it
stable? Forget to mention the palladium, and expand the claims to cover
mixtures of different metals. See if the examiner allows it.

~~~
nAwYz
What you describe is the standard in some industries. If a research team
discovers something new, lawyers will make a patent out of it that is broad /
vague enough to prevent any further research in that area by competitors. At
the same time they look at the patents of competitors and if they are too
specific they try to patent similar ideas.

~~~
speedplane
> If a research team discovers something new, lawyers will make a patent out
> of it that is broad / vague enough to prevent any further research in that
> area by competitors.

Not quite right. If an inventor creates something marginally useful at a large
company, there's no question that their lawyers will try to patent it. But the
purpose is not to prevent research in the area, in fact the opposite. Once a
company has a patent on something, they'd likely encourage further research,
knowing that they have a financial interest in the research going to market.

All big companies do this, and once the research matures enough to become a
product, all the companies have modest claim to it, but they all have an
interest to bringing it to market. In some cases, these companies fight who
gets what in court (e.g., CRISPR), but in others, they come together and agree
on a royalty scheme roughly proportional to their contributions (e.g., MPEG,
H.264).

The point is, no company patents something to stop research on that thing,
it's quite the opposite.

------
booleandilemma
It bothers me when there’s no author or timestamp on an article.

~~~
gumby
See the end of the article, not the top.

~~~
booleandilemma
She added that, probably in response to my comment and others like it.

------
hyperpallium
The intended conclusion isn't explcitly stated, so: _private_ sharing enables
this danger; _public_ sharing prevents it, aka _publishing_.

~~~
pacala
If only it were that easy. The largest cloud company has a core component of
their strategy monetization of open source. I haven’t heard them paying
royalties to the people that developed the software.

------
givinguflac
Why anyone can still stand up for Google as a company is beyond me. They are
just scum who got a foothold on the internet at the right time.

------
acd10j
Any Googler who is willing to comment on this here ?

~~~
spiderPig
They only show up in threads praising Google as a utopia.

------
pmarreck
What are the open-source licenses that would prevent someone from patenting my
ideas?

(or if a shorter list, what are the licenses that wouldn't?)

------
DyslexicAtheist
I wonder if a first line of defense could be to license the work as AGPL.
Google would then probably not use it AFAIK

~~~
rasz
Wont prevent them from trying [https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2018/08/after-
patent-office-re...](https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2018/08/after-patent-
office-rejection-it-time-google-abandon-its-attempt-patent-use-public)

------
swerveonem
Did the offer any moral or ethics explanation? How did they justify this on a
human level? That always interests me about this sort of decision, surely they
had many meetings on the topic, what would those minutes look like?

------
cronix
This sort of thing keeps me up at night as we shop for investors for our saas
product. They have the money to just implement our ideas and what we show them
from our beta, and most of them are in the same general space.

------
alecco
How is this thread at the bottom of the front page with 1535 votes and only
15hs?

Google brigade?

------
butterfi
I'm curious if this idea is that unique -- The Exploratorium published a book
called "The Art of Tinkering" in 2014 that has paper circuits that seem very
similar to the authors concept.

~~~
gumby
That's the author's point -- she was working in a field where there was plenty
of active work going on, but after meeting with google, the big G tried to
patent it.

~~~
butterfi
Well, if the Exploratorium published a book using paper circuits before Google
applied for the patent, is this prior art?

~~~
gumby
Infuriatingky, it’s pretty hard to use non-patent sources as prior art under
the US system!

------
duxup
>An inventor is the one credited with coming up with the idea for an
invention. The assignee actually gets the legal rights to the patent.

I assumed there was something like that but interesting to see it drawn out.

------
strikelaserclaw
stuff like this makes me so damn angry. It so scummy and is completely against
the spirit of innovation and sharing.

------
_Codemonkeyism
Right from the 80s Microsoft playbook.

------
Jnr
Google is also fetching ideas for code and patents from publicly streamed
hackathons around the world.

~~~
rasz
at least they arent murdering people for the code, yet, afaik

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antitrust_(film)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antitrust_\(film\))

------
deytempo
If you think they aren’t trying to steal your ideas if you use their products
you’re nuts.

------
NicoJuicy
What happened probably, interviewer wanted to credit himselve.

A company is made out of humans

------
patentpandas
Hi Everyone! This is Jie, the author of the original post on patentpandas.org.
Thanks for sharing your thoughts and experiences on this thread! I thought it
might be helpful for you all to know the full story and give some more
context:

The original post is actually one of TWO patent-related issues that
simultaneously happened to me.

The first one was when my crowdfunding campaign backer _successfully_ patented
our LED stickers product ([https://patentpandas.org/stories/crowdfunding-
backer-patente...](https://patentpandas.org/stories/crowdfunding-backer-
patented-my-project)) despite us having a successful crowdfund, lots of press,
research papers dating back to 2011 and an entire business by then.

And then it was about a month after I found out about the LED stickers patent,
I found out that Google ATAP was trying to patent work that I had shared
during the job interview ([https://patentpandas.org/stories/company-patented-
my-idea](https://patentpandas.org/stories/company-patented-my-idea)).

While I can understand why the google story is getting more attention, in many
ways it’s actually the other story that’s more problematic, because in that
case, the faulty patent application actually passed muster at the USPTO and
issued as a patent.

This all happened during my last year of grad school at MIT, in the months
before I defended my thesis and graduated. And it _absolutely sucked_!

But in the end, I was pretty lucky that both situations turned out okay(ish).
The most important bit was that I had support from all these law clinics, and
my own giant institution (MIT), to help me navigate. But I can already see
from this thread that many others out there aren’t so lucky.

The absurdity of these situations, and that they were happening to me at the
same time, got me to spend the next couple years learning about patent law at
the Berkman Klein Center
([https://cyber.harvard.edu](https://cyber.harvard.edu)). My hope was that I
could better understand how the heck all this happened, and to see if I could
do something to help other creators out.

That’s why I started Patentpandas.org - to have a place to share these patent
stories, to help by showing how others navigated their patent problems, and
(for folks like my former self) to show that it’s not so scary to work with
lawyers and wade into patent law! That’s also why we’re using panda comics to
illustrate patent law concepts. Pandas: definitely not scary :)

My hope is that if more creators out there better understand patent law and
are connected with pro bono lawyers when they need help, then patent trolls
and others who have more legal resources at their disposal won’t be able to
get away with things like this so easily.

BTW, I shared all this during my talk for the Patent Pandas launch last week.
In case you’re curious to check it out:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YfCYOWVQehA](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YfCYOWVQehA)

Thanks, Jie

------
DonHopkins
30 years ago, I implemented pie menus at the University of Maryland Human
Computer Interaction Lab, and the UMD Office of Technology Liaison wanted me
to patent them, but I decided not to, and I don't regret it. The patent would
have been assigned to a little patent trolling company that UMD has a
parasitic relationship with, and very little of the money would have ever
found its way back to me or the University.

[https://medium.com/@donhopkins/pie-
menus-936fed383ff1?source...](https://medium.com/@donhopkins/pie-
menus-936fed383ff1?source=your_stories_page---------------------------)

But that's not the worst problem patenting pie menus would have caused:

If I'd patented them, it would have effectively prevented me from using them
myself in subsequent proprietary and open source projects, like The NeWS
Toolkit, TCL/Tk, The Sims, SimCity, Unity3D, etc.

Convincing Sun or Electronic Arts or any other employer or client to license a
patented user interface interaction technique instead of using an inferior
freely available one would have been a non-starter, as would have been using
it in any open source projects.

It was only because I didn't file a patent that I was able to freely implement
pie menus for NeWS at Sun, and use them in SimCity and The Sims.

You're not always going to be working for the same company or attending the
same school for the rest of your life, so it's not a good idea to hand over
all the rights to your ideas to them, because you'll have to pay if you ever
want to use them again yourself. But if you give them away to everyone for
free, you get to use them yourself after you leave, and they're free for
everyone to use in open source projects.

>Open Sourcing SimCity: Chaim Gingold’s “Play Design” PhD Thesis: "Pie menus
play a critical role in The Sim’s user interface design, dovetailing perfectly
with the object and AI architecture. Objects advertise verbs to character AI,
so it is natural for the verbs to be arranged in a radial menu about objects.
I can’t imagine an alternate design that would have had the same widespread
usability, and therefore appeal, without them. It is difficult to imagine The
Sims without pie menus." -Chaim Gingold, Play Design PhD Thesis, Open Sourcing
SimCity

[https://medium.com/@donhopkins/open-sourcing-
simcity-58470a2...](https://medium.com/@donhopkins/open-sourcing-
simcity-58470a275446)

Unfortunately other people filed misleading patents around pie menus that
should never have been granted, because they tried to retroactively redefine
what pie menus were by ignoring published prior art, and coined a new term
"marking menu" which they defined by a straw man comparison to their self-
servingly gerrymandered misunderstanding of pie menus.

So they ended up patenting fictitious "differences" between "marking menus"
and "pie menus" that weren't really differences: obvious features pie menus
had always had, and that I'd written about and demonstrated in SIGCHI videos,
but they'd conveniently ignored, because they needed to trick the patent
office into thinking those properties were unique to "marking menus".

Then they misleadingly and systematically used those patents as FUD for
decades in their marketing brochures, advertisements, and word of mouth from
their sales people on trade show floors. They purposefully discouraged other
companies like Kinetix and open source projects like Blender from doing
anything remotely resembling pie menus, whether or not they actually infringed
on their patents.

[https://medium.com/@donhopkins/pie-menu-fud-and-
misconceptio...](https://medium.com/@donhopkins/pie-menu-fud-and-
misconceptions-be8afc49d870)

Huge Problem: Software Patents and FUD

Autodesk Advertisement About “Patented Marking Menus”: "Marking Menus. Quickly
select commands without looking away from the design. Patented marking menus
let you use context-sensitive gestures to select commands."

[http://images.autodesk.com/adsk/files/aliasdesign10_detail_b...](http://images.autodesk.com/adsk/files/aliasdesign10_detail_bro_us.pdf)

There is a sad history of people using software patents to make misleading
claims about obvious techniques that they didn’t originate, and constructing
flawed straw man definitions of ersatz pie menus to contrast with their own
inventions, to mislead the patent examiners into granting patents.

There is a financial and institutional incentive to be lazy about researching
and less than honest in reporting and describing prior art, in the hopes that
it will slip by the patent examiners, which it very often does.

[...]

The Alias Marking Menu Patent Discouraged the Open Source Blender Community
from Using Pie Menus for Decades

Here is another example that of how that long term marketing FUD succeeded in
holding back progress: the Blender community was discussing when the marking
menu patent would expire, in anticipation of when they might finally be able
to use marking menus in blender (even though it has always been fine to use
pie menus).

As the following discussion shows, there is a lot of purposefully sewn
confusion and misunderstanding about the difference between marking menus and
pie menus, and what exactly is patented, because of the inconsistent and
inaccurate definitions and mistakes in the papers and patents and Alias’s
marketing FUD:

"Hi. In a recently closed topic regarding pie menus, LiquidApe said that
marking menus are a patent of Autodesk, a patent that would expire shortly.
The question is: When ? When could marking menus be usable in Blender ? I
couldn’t find any info on internet, mabie some of you know."

------
CryoLogic
Something very similar happened to me.

When I was at university studying CS I was running a Arduino fansite and a
fansite for a videogame - both of whom made most of their money from affiliate
revenue (a couple hundred bucks per month).

I thought it would be cool to work at Reddit (was close to graduating), and I
had read blog posts from here and various other sites and IRC about how hiring
managers liked projects.

I took to it to build a JS library that converted links to affiliate links,
for example amazon and some other small retailers I had used.

Basically you just parse any URL you embed in the page with this library and
it would convert the existing (non-affiliate) links to affiliate links with
your signature attached so you got a revenue share.

In addition to this, I had done research on Reddit's traffics and crawled
reddit to see how many affiliate-capable links existed. I talked about this in
the interview and suggested they could make around 2 million per month if they
hired me and used my script.

\--> I was rejected after the interview, but a couple months later Reddit
announced it was experimenting with a new feature that would re-write links as
affiliate. They ended up implementing this feature that I am 95% sure I came
up with and someone else stole.

It was one of the shittiest experiences I have ever had interviewing,
especially since I didn't get a job out of it but I believe they have made
millions off of this idea so far.

I huge put off, but I've learned since then backstabbing and stealing ideas is
a big part of politics in most corporations. What a bummer.

~~~
anilgulecha
On the specific idea: The idea is not unique, and really low hanging fruit for
a mass site.

~~~
CryoLogic
At the time, I could not find a single social media site that was using link-
rewriting to make affiliate money.

Blogs and fan sites for niche products had been using this to make money for a
while, social media sites had not yet tried it.

The close proximity with the announcement and my interview is what really
bothered me. I have a strong feeling (but cannot prove) that someone I
interviewed with took the idea and ran with it. I had done a lot of research
into how much money Reddit would make off of this and how to implement it at
scale without breaking existing affiliate links and such.

I had literally planned it as my pitch for what I wanted to work on and why
they should hire me.

~~~
spullara
We did that at Bagcheck in 2010. It was super common. They may have taken your
idea and ran with it but it wasn't a novel idea. Generally though, at scale,
you run into problems with the affiliate programs and they cut you off.

~~~
StudentStuff
Is affiliate stuffing adding any value? In most cases, it doesn't seem to
drive more customers towards the business paying the affiliate commission.

~~~
spullara
It might. For example, it was one of the potential revenue sources for
Bagcheck to keep it running such that people could post their product reviews
to the service. Without that revenue it is possible it isn't feasible to run
the service and that would decrease the number of reviews pointing to them
which could reduce the number of sales they get.

------
PaulHoule
Didn't Google try to do this with ANS also?

------
harrumph
Addressing any shock and revulsion following this story:

Because capitalist organizations are literally founded upon the act of
constant appropriation of the surplus value created by their own employees,
it's not reasonable to expect these organizations to somehow indulge a higher
standard of treatment toward outside persons who aren't even their employees,
to persons who are just dropping by to share ideas and work. Such
organizations will seize with both hands whatever of value is presented to
them. They seize, that's what they do. All day, every day.

------
ripu_daman
Just because you are giant, isn't it!

------
gnarbarian
Don't be evil.

Oops

~~~
chasil
If you have to harm someone, is Google the best choice? Have they asked for
moral opprobrium?

The situation certainly seems like it.

------
jules
If your country has "democratic" in the name it's probably not democratic. If
your major has "science" in the name it's probably not science. If your
company has "don't be evil" in its motto...

~~~
armada651
So Computer Science is Engineering?

~~~
ouid
computer science is math

~~~
pas
engineering is math too, math is eating everything, oh noes!

but not really, that's software after all. engineering is applied math, so
largely software modeling, whereas CS is theoretical work. abstract problems,
pure solutions.

~~~
vonmoltke
> engineering is applied math

It's applied math _and_ applied science. The science informs how to apply the
math, since the math is a model of natural phenomena. In fact, most of the
math came to engineering via the science.

~~~
threatofrain
I would argue that CS and type theory explores the very foundations of math.

------
ronilan
Leah Buechley is the PhD advisor, Regina Dugan is Google ATAP, Joi Ito is
Media Lab but... who is the first person speaker of the text?

Am I missing something obvious or is it really omitted?

Edit: possibly (probably?)
[https://twitter.com/qijie](https://twitter.com/qijie)

~~~
mikekchar
It's very interesting that she is launching the PandaPatents site using her
story as the impetus to help people navigate patent law. I haven't had time to
look at it, but it sounds like an interesting idea.

~~~
Bartweiss
I hope this catches on - it looks like there's already a second good story on
the HN frontpage, about patent issues with crowdfunding.

I'm always impressed at how big a difference it can make to go from "people
know this is a problem" to "there's a central place to see what this problem
looks like and how much damage it can cause".

------
grappler
Headline says “Company”. Article says “Google”. Is this being softened in
Google's favor?

~~~
dang
I think it's the other way around? I don't know why the article says 'company'
but we changed the HN headline to 'Google' after it was posted here last
night.

~~~
grappler
yeah I didn't mean HN was softening it; the article itself was softening it.

------
gammateam
> More importantly, sharing work publicly keeps the project can alive and
> inspires others to continue developing!

Which a patent does too, just with a license or 20 years later. It keeps
people from reinventing the wheel and gives the disclosure rights even if they
didn't have the infrastructure to create or monetize on their own. This isn't
one of those nefarious software patents where the whole thing would be
obsolete within 5 years, this is LED books, which simply becomes more feasible
as transistor sizes shrink and battery technology improves, perfect for a 20
year exclusivity period before falling into the public domain where it can be
vastly more practical to create in 2033.

~~~
TheDong
> [a] patent [keeps thhe project alive] too

> perfect for a 20 year exclusivity period

So for 20 years, if I wish to create and sell a book with transistors I have
to license the idea from google (that is if they're even willing to give me a
license)?

And somehow having to go through that legal loophole will keep the art of
creating LED books alive? You seriously believe that?

Does the patent have complex details which would take longer than 20 years for
someone to independently discover about creating LED books? If so, people do
save time by waiting 20 years and then reading the patent, but that seems
extremely unlikely.

~~~
gammateam
> So for 20 years, if I wish to create and sell a book with transistors I have
> to license the idea from google (that is if they're even willing to give me
> a license)?

No. Google wasn't supposed to try and patent it.

I responded to a very specific piece of the article which seemed to ignore
that patent applications functioning as prior art is available to subculture
enthusiasts too.

The whole concluding paragraph was about making ideas that other people can
build from, it wasn't about LED books in general. They want ideas to be
available for others to build from but don't want others to patent it,
ignoring that attempting to patent it yourself also fixes this, no matter how
you actually use the patent or failed/abandoned application.

(Although, I'll concede that patenting is an expensive bet that not everyone
would have the money or risk tolerance for.)

~~~
kbutler
The problems with patents as prior art for new inventions are manifold:

\- The common advice is for practitioners to avoid learning about existing
patents, because this knowledge increases liability in case you are found to
infringe. This means that the body of patented work is really only useful for
patent lawyers, rather than for inventors.

\- Similarly, patents are not written in ways to instruct practitioners to use
techniques, but instead crafted in legal terms to claim broad areas of
application while skirting previously filed patent claims. This again makes
the patent library only useful to lawyers.

\- In areas where patents are not common, there is a green field for patent
applications that patent common techniques. This happened in software and
business methods, and the article suggests it is happening in the junction of
enthusiasts and crafts.

~~~
pbhjpbhj
Hmm, being aware that you're infringing a patent, and continuing to do it
anyway, is of course bad legally speaking.

But inventors not using parent literature is catastrophically bad. So many
applications are repeated, in some fields the same thing is "invented" over
and over because people don't even makea cursory attempt to understand the
technology in the field vs the products available.

Being unaware of infringement, but not by willful negligence, is actually a
defence against an award of damages in the UK. Precisely to protect this
fundamental tier of the patent system.

If people can't use the disclosures then the system serves virtually no
purpose.

~~~
kbutler
> If people can't use the disclosures then the system serves virtually no
> purpose.

That's not quite true - although disclosure is an often argued benefit of the
patent system, there are very few inventions that cannot be copied once a
working item is in someone's hands, so a formal disclosure is not necessarily
required to be able to build upon and extend existing work.

But even without disclosure, when appropriate patents are granted, they can
"[secure] for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to
their respective writings and discoveries" even if the patent library is not
useful for research.

~~~
pbhjpbhj
Yes, I was a little terse there: what I meant was the system serves little
purpose for the _demos_ who maintain it. The deal is that the inventors get
their monopoly in return for the disclosure. So, without any benefit on the
side of the public then their would be no purpose in maintaining the system.

Of course it also serves the public to encourage inventors by giving them a
limited exclusive use. But primarily when instigated the purpose is a mutual
benefit that is best embodied by education of the public arena as to the
mechanisms and working of an invention.

~~~
kbutler
> Of course it also serves the public to encourage inventors by giving them a
> limited exclusive use.

Yes.

> But primarily when instigated the purpose is a mutual benefit that is best
> embodied by education of the public arena as to the mechanisms and working
> of an invention.

This is the debate - how significant is the "education" aspect in promoting
progress and public benefit? Is incentivizing new creation sufficient to
promote progress without the (lacking) education aspect?

Then the whole question of whether the limited monopolies really create those
incentives or just magnify profits that would already exist and open the door
for abuse.

------
georgeek
Just a reminder that Google, or any company for that matter, has a fiduciary
duty towards their shareholders to file a patent for everything they have
learned about and that hasn't been patented yet.

~~~
kbutler
There's a common myth that companies have "a fiduciary duty" to make as much
money as possible (especially short-term), but this has no basis in law in the
US.

[https://caselaw.findlaw.com/us-supreme-
court/13-354.html](https://caselaw.findlaw.com/us-supreme-court/13-354.html)
"modern corporate law does not require for-profit corporations to pursue
profit at the expense of everything else, and many do not do so... a for-
profit corporation may take costly pollution-control and energy-conservation
measures that go beyond what the law requires. A for-profit corporation that
operates facilities in other countries may exceed the requirements of local
law regarding working conditions and benefits. "

[https://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2015/04/16/what-are-
co...](https://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2015/04/16/what-are-corporations-
obligations-to-shareholders/corporations-dont-have-to-maximize-profits)
"companies that maximize profits by firing employees, avoiding taxes, selling
shoddy products or polluting the environment can harm their shareholders more
than helping them."

~~~
philpem
Thing is, if a CEO doesn't pursue profit and shareholder dividends above all
else, they probably won't last long until the investors and board members vote
them out.

------
riotta
I and my friends had a similar experience too.

------
TheForumTroll
So now we are pointing fingers at Google every day? Are they the new Muslims
or Russians?

------
lkdjjdjjjdskjd
It could just be people independently working on the same things, as is common
in technology.

~~~
TheDong
For the purpose of a patent, that doesn't help.

"Independent creation" is a valid defense for copyright, but not for patents.

Something cannot be patented if prior art exists before the filing of the
patent. It doesn't matter if you knew about it. Even if you can prove that the
prior art is not something you were aware of at the time you filed for a
patent, your patent is invalid.

That's how patents are supposed to work; inventions must be "non-obvious" to
the point where no one else has ever created it nor described it before on the
entire planet.

If google knows that someone else has created such things (as they must have
after said visit), the only responsible thing to do is not file a patent,
regardless of if they independently worked on it.

~~~
pbhjpbhj
>If google knows that someone else has created such things (as they must have
after said visit), the only responsible thing to do is not file a patent,
regardless of if they independently worked on it. //

A job interview is not a public disclosure and so doesn't count as prior art.
So novelty is not affected.

However, the applicant must derive rights (employment, assignment) from the
inventor in order to apply for a patent.

In UK IIRC S.13 of the Patents Act allows an inventor to file to be named as
the inventor (or co-inventor) and for the patent to be reassigned accordingly.

Of course taking Google to court is going to be a hard slog.

------
perfunctory
> “oh there’s way too much prior art” and this patent can’t pass

afaiu, US patent office (as opposed to European) is much more relaxed about
giving away patents and relies more on courts to settle disputes after the
fact. That is an American patent is more likely to be revoked.

------
trhway
The story talks about a patent. The search on the first listed inventor brings
5 of his applications on various aspects of these electronically enriched
books all almost simultaneously (after he invented additive manufacturing) -
Google I suppose have nice bonuses for patents and skillful patent layers.

------
asmithmd1
I believe this was an honest misunderstanding and not an attempt to steal the
idea because if the patent had issued and become valuable, it would have been
easily invalidated.

If a company wants to steal your patent they will "surround" your idea with
other patents: method of manufacturing <idea>, method of using <idea> in
<industry>, <idea> used in adjacent use case. This is a legal but slimy way to
force the sale of your idea since now only they can profitably commercialize
it.

~~~
GenericsMotors
> I believe this was an honest misunderstanding and not an attempt to steal
> the idea because if the patent had issued and become valuable, it would have
> been easily invalidated.

"Easily", if you have deep pockets to foot all the legal costs.

Big companies know this, hence I don't think it was an innocent
misunderstanding. The fact that they wouldn't even add OP as an assignee on
the patent just reinforces my view that they were acting in bad faith.

OP was lucky to catch this before the patent was issued.

~~~
asmithmd1
There is no way a company would assign a patent they filed. Maybe they would
give a low or no cost license to use it

~~~
GenericsMotors
How generous of them!

------
titanomachy
On a certain level, it makes sense. Google wants to patent it to cover their
bases and make sure no one else does the same thing and blocks _them_. It's a
rational move in a shitty game.

~~~
hajderr
"Rational move". Think about that for a second. Morally wrong doesn't really
reach anyone's mind these days.

~~~
seangrant
How would it look if someone else got the patent and completely blocked
Google? It's not even a question for large companies. The issue is this
archaic patent and copyright system where someone "owns" an idea... Absurd.

~~~
bsaul
This type of argument doesn’t stand here. Since the truth is that there is
prior art, and the right thing to do is to make sure nobody got the patent,
google could have make sure _nobody_ get the patent.

Ironically that’s what they ended up doing, but i doubt it was on purpose.

------
thaumasiotes
> I was even invited to share my work directly with Regina Dugan, the director
> of ATAP at that time! I was excited, thinking perhaps I would be invited for
> a summer internship. It turned out they found my work so relevant that they
> offered me a job on the spot.

> It was a tough choice: I had just started the first year of my PhD and
> would’ve had to take a leave from the program to pursue this project. After
> asking many people, the advice was clear: stay in school. So I decided to
> turn down the offer and continue pursuing my PhD.

...this sounds like terrible advice? I have to wonder whether any of the "many
people" consulted weren't professors.

~~~
eksemplar
It’s almost always better to achieve for yourself instead of others. A PhD. is
infinitely more valuable than a couple of years working for any company,
especially if your subject is interesting enough to on-spot hire you before
you finish.

And I say that as a manager who’s hired a lot of people before they earned X
because their work was interesting. I don’t do it anymore, as a rule, because
it crushed a lot of those people with regret later and I have to live with
that.

~~~
ugh123
Why did it crush them? Shouldn't the job they agreed to take with you have set
them up for success? Or did they not perform well and find themselves
unemployed?

~~~
eksemplar
I think it’s easiest to explain like this.

You don’t get a lot of opportunities to earn a PhD, most people never get the
chance. By comparison almost everyone in CS get a lot of truly great job
opportunities in their lives.

That’s a PhD, we had a habit of hiring people before their finished they CS
degrees because skilled people were so hard to come by back in the day. They
have good careers as far as I know, but they would have had much better
opportunities if they had finished their degrees, and some of them haven’t
taken that well.

