2019-10-22 - Application granted
Should probably put a (2019) in the title. Furthermore considering how fast the ML space moves, the fact that google hasn't used this to create a model significantly better than competitors seems to show that the patented architecture did not perform better than others.
One has to ask: was that to the benefit of society?
Google may make good use of this tech. But it would be better for all of us if everyone did and didn't have to pay them a fee for the privilege.
This is reverse logic because then Google would not have published the tech and would have kept it a trade secret.
I went to a talk done by Amazon's longest serving IP lawyer and he explicitly called out that Amazon has only gone to court (or asserted its patent, can't remember the phrase) over a kindle related patent.
In this case, google might not have funded the development of transformers which could dramatically reduce costs of everything for humanity.
Same goes for drug development.
That said, I think there’s a question around software patents and how long they should last. Perhaps it should just be to recoup costs, plus some multiple. I’m not sure.
That doesn't seem likely to me. And if it were true that Amazon was so vulnerable that checkout flow click parity would wipe them out, I hardly think the law should intercede to save them - that seems like a scenario where they had a bad business model.
Provisional Application No. 62/510,256, filed on May 23, 2017
Neural machine translation with latent tree attention
US20180300317A1 James BRADBURY
edit: They do also site non-patent prior are regarding attention. Whether this covers self attention I'm not clear and of course their claims have been reviewed by the examiner in light of the art so they're presumed valid until re-exam.
Luong et al. "Effective approaches to attention based neural machine translation," arXiv 1508.04025v2, Sep. 20, 2015, 11 pages.Luong et al. "Effective approaches to attention based neural machine translation," arXiv 1508.04025v2, Sep. 20, 2015, 11 pages.There is an investor's grace period, as long as your own public prior art disclosure is the earliest, you get 1 year to file even under first to file. First to file refers to people filing for undisclosed inventions, disclosure acts as prior art against anyone else filing, along with the grace period for delaying your filing.
Often "wow the company detailing internals at this conference is so generous!" is actually them getting an extra year on the of patent expiration date by taking advantage of the grace period.
Because it seems pretty clear that the criticism is that Google is an advertising company that uses search as leadgen, and is struggling to ship AI products.