

In-Line Images in Messages – Facebook Patent Application - loser777
https://www.google.com/patents/US20140101266

======
aristus
Author here, or as they say, “Principal Inventor”. This started out as an
Easter Egg John and I put into Facebook Chat in 2012. It was very simple: if
you typed the ID of a Facebook object in double brackets, like [[zuck]], it
would display Zuck's profile photo instead.

Months later Reddit found the egg, and did all sorts of fun things with it
like construct composite troll faces from strategically-placed profile photos.
It even made the tech news rounds on what had to have been a very slow news
day.

[http://techcrunch.com/2011/12/24/a-christmas-miracle-
faceboo...](http://techcrunch.com/2011/12/24/a-christmas-miracle-facebook-
chat-kind-of-supports-extended-rage-faces/)

[http://www.reddit.com/r/WTF/comments/np3qi/you_can_make_rage...](http://www.reddit.com/r/WTF/comments/np3qi/you_can_make_rage_faces_on_facebook_im_no_shit_im/)

The lawyers said they wanted to see me. Not to pat me down before being
escorted off the premises. No. They wanted to get the details in order to file
for a patent!

I could not refuse. My employment contract said I was to make reasonable
effort to assist in the creation of patent applications that resulted from my
work. I've done a lot of stuff I'm proud of. But it seemed that my landmark
contribution to human knowledge was going to be what TechCrunch dubbed
"extended rageface support".

So when the lawyers asked me to provide illustrations of “example uses", I did
the only reasonable thing. It was the first and probably last time that a
troll face was relevant in a patent.

~~~
stevejohnson
> My employment contract said I was to make reasonable effort to assist in the
> creation of patent applications that resulted from my work.

While this is true, you must also be aware of the damage that software patents
are doing to the industry, and by extension, your professional peers. How do
you reconcile that morally? Is your current job and standing in your company
worth the damage you've done by assisting in the creation of this [seemingly]
obvious patent that [seemingly] ignores prior art[1] and could be used to
stifle innovation?

[1] The Textual IRC client, for example, has been inlining images and other
URLs since at least as far back as 2011. I'd guess Hipchat has been doing it
for longer.

(I hope this is the right tone to take for this kind of comment. Please advise
if not.)

Edit: It's pretty rare that you get a software patent author answering
questions in an HN thread. I don't currently know anyone who's written
patents, that I'm aware of. I'm actually interested in the answers to these
questions, and I'm not just taking jabs to bring someone down.

~~~
jfb
Don't assume that everybody shares your opinions, even if those opinions are
popular. The OP could be a fan of robust intellectual property regimes,
including software.

~~~
stevejohnson
Clearly he/she has a different opinion. I'm asking for clarification. For
example, one possible valid response is "I helped write this patent because I
believe it isn't actually harmful and serves my personal interests."

However, if the authors were aware of the image inlining features in other
products before writing the patent, it does strike me as dishonest to then
pretend to the USPTO that they didn't exist. I can't claim to know what the
authors were or were not aware of, so I can't make any judgements on that
issue.

~~~
danudey
To clarify: the patent authors are lawyers, and were almost definitely not
aware of any of what the patent covers. They would have spoken to the
inventors to get a very specific set of answers that they were looking for,
specifically not including 'is this super obvious with lots of prior art that
would make it invalid?'

Or, for a cynical view: for companies churning out tons of patents, it's
optimal to churn out as many patents as possible. The more patents the USPTO
has to deal with, the less effective they are at their jobs. The less
effective they are, the more mistakes they make; the false positives (i.e.
rejected applications) can be clarified to be non-infringing, and the false
negatives… well, now that's one more patent in the war chest.

------
Ancient
“Imma let you finish, but ...” this should not be patented, thus the
application should die with fire! Don't get me wrong, I'm all for creativity
and patent holding for unique innovations, but this is ridiculous.

How about I go ahead and patent my own "innovative" technique:

`:) @2x`

A high-resolution inline-image metacommunicative pictorial for multi-platform
& multi-devices. (aka a "smiley" with large anti-alias font)

~~~
orliesaurus
^ this made me giggle

------
joeframbach
My web browser has been doing this for ages. When I type in a resource
identifier, surrounded by some markup like <img, it fetches the resource and
renders it! Amazing!

~~~
rtpg
This is in the context of messages between two users, so probably forum [img]
tags win this one in terms of prior art.

------
otterley
To be clear, UPSTO hasn't issued a patent from this application yet.

~~~
x1798DE
Yeah, the title of this article should be changed to reflect that this is a
patent application, not a patent.

~~~
dang
Thanks; changed.

------
orliesaurus
Is this for real? How can people patent stuff like that!

------
Apofis
Doesn't this already basically happen when text smiley-faces are replaced with
image ones?

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lucio
the troll is a freudian slip? or a hidden request for help?

~~~
lfuller
I found it apt given the type of patent.

