This is written so broad... facebook basically has just patented statistical classification if its output are socioeconomics?
How can this be legal? Facebook did not invent machine learning. How can they patent it?
How can this be legal? Facebook did not invent machine learning. How can they patent it?
The whole point is to avoid conflict. Even if it's not enforceable it might cost a few hundred thousand to million dollars to fight it.
It's a way of allowing R&D externalities to be captured.
The system doesn't work all that well, but that is the intent.
We very explicitly discussed that we would either aquire them or use the patents portfolio to shut them down.
[0] http://www.ipwatchdog.com/2015/05/21/hardest-easiest-art-uni...
Is there any kind of public comment period where the patent's claims to novelty could be disputed? I feel like a lot of the worst patents may be granted because no one else was watching.
You might even be able to find prior art someplace you don't expect, like some sociology academic paper.
Inventive steps are hard to come by if math isn't patentable and the fundamental principles of software creation aren't really changing.
I recently did not renew the patent and have allowed it go into the public domain.
If the claims pointed to specific features and specific processes that gave you more reliable determinations than prior-art methods, that'd probably be patentable. (Leaving aside whether it should be, it probably would be). But machine learning presents an odd situation. With machine learning, you don't iterate on an algorithm, improving it until it generates reliable results. You feed data to a machine learning algorithm, which then infers e.g. which features are particularly probative of the desired classifications. I would wonder whether even specific applications of machine learning would be patentable under Alice, since the computer rather than the patent applicant makes the inventive inferences.
This is analogous to patenting image classification, in the abstract. It's completely ridiculous.
Patent a very specific model for determining socioeconomic status? Sure. Patent the process in general? No fuckin way.
That's my point. If you're using machine learning, isn't the "specific model" just the output of the machine learning algorithm? And if so, even that may not be patentable, because the applicant didn't create the inventive parts, the computer did.