

Spritz forces takedown of Spree bookmarklet citing patents - technel
https://github.com/wpears/spree/commit/823b05c90bc417fe698107ab86bc796a9f36bd9d

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driverdan
Here's the patent:
[https://www.google.com/patents/WO2014011884A1?cl=en&dq=WO+20...](https://www.google.com/patents/WO2014011884A1?cl=en&dq=WO+2014-011884&hl=en&sa=X&ei=oZ2PU8n9OsiLqAbesYKgAQ&ved=0CCgQ6AEwAA)

It's pretty ridiculous. It's very obtusely written and clearly cites work from
others as the basis for their technique (primarily in description paragraphs
1-6). Then in paragraph 7 they claim "None of the previous research on word
recognition has been applied to RSVP."

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jawns
I don't think anybody familiar with the two services had any doubt that this
would happen, eventually.

Squirt.io is another service that does the same thing as Spree, and I can't
imagine that it won't soon be in Spritz's crosshairs as well -- especially
since in its Acknowledgements section, the first to be credited is "Spritz
Inc, the company whose patents are pending."

One thing I'm curious about is whether leaving the code publicly accessible,
but in a "commented out" state, ostensibly rendering the program non-
functional, is sufficient.

Like, suppose I wrote a small open-source text editor whose default text upon
startup is the entirety of "Fifty Shades of Grey." And E.L. James' people
contact me and say, "Hey, you can't do that. E.L. James holds the copyright to
that text." If I merely comment out the text, rather than wipe it from the
source code, have I really fulfilled my responsibility to not infringe on
James' copyright?

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darkarmani
> If I merely comment out the text, rather than wipe it from the source code,
> have I really fulfilled my responsibility to not infringe on James'
> copyright?

The difference is copyright versus patents. For copyright, you definitely need
to remove it. For patents, I think it was openssh that used to have patented
algorithms in the source that you could compile into your binary if you had a
license.

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matznerd
I really like the Spritz-style technology, which allows me to read with high
retention at 750+ WPM and skim casually at 900+ WPM, up from around 575 WPM
and 700 WPM respectively, with other technologies.

I don't like to see them stopping open source versions, but at the same time
they have little else to protect their algorithm, which brought some
significant advances in the speed reading (RSVP) space that hadn't changed for
years.

As screens get smaller with devices like smartwatches, this type of technology
becomes even more important and may even be a requirement for reading text
longer than a few sentences on such a small screen.

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pollen23
Am I the only one who doesn't see what's so innovative about Spritz? About ten
years ago or so, when people didn't create startups for every little side-
project they had, there were speed reading java applets that did just about
the exact same thing as Spritz.

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leohutson
Anyone know of an alternative to github that is hosted somewhere that doesn't
recognise software patents?

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Apofis
I just realized that this tech would be perfect for Smart Watches.

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aikah
Sorry but what is it about for people who know neither Spree or Spritz, what
patent did Spree violate( ELI5,tried to read the paper but did understand
nothing).

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Kiro
I'm building a Spritz-like application but I don't live in the US so the
patent doesn't apply. Is there anything else I should be worried about?

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desdiv
They also have a WIPO patent[0], which may or may not affect you, depending on
where you are.

Also, since Github is based in US you might want to look elsewhere for project
hosting (assuming that it's an open source project).

[0]
[https://www.google.com/patents/WO2014011884A1](https://www.google.com/patents/WO2014011884A1)

~~~
killerpopiller
they don't have a patent. as miket pointed out, it is an patent application
and thus unproven and not granted and not enforceable

~~~
desdiv
Sorry, who is miket?

