...making Linux just a little more fun!
Jimmy O'Regan [joregan at gmail.com]
Google have patented their 'Suggest a better translation' feature.
http://tinyurl.com/59b3v3 (TinyURL of a US Patent and Trademark Office URL)
"one aspect of the subject matter described in this specification can be embodied in a method that includes a method for first receiving an indication of when a user-manipulable cursor is positioned in proximity to a first presentation of first text in a graphical user interface (GUI), the first text being in a first language"
or, in other words, use 'onMouseOver' to display the original text. That's patentable?
Most of the rest of the details described are automatic techniques for determining how useful the submitted translation is.
Sergio Ortiz Rojas [sergio.ortiz at gmail.com]
Not in EU. For the moment.
El 17/08/2008, a las 16:37, Jimmy O'Regan escribió:
> Google have patented their 'Suggest a better translation' feature. > > http://tinyurl.com/59b3v3 (TinyURL of a US Patent and Trademark Office > URL) > > "one aspect of the subject matter described in this specification can > be embodied in a method that includes a method for first receiving an > indication of when a user-manipulable cursor is positioned in > proximity to a first presentation of first text in a graphical user > interface (GUI), the first text being in a first language" > > or, in other words, use 'onMouseOver' to display the original text. > That's patentable? > > Most of the rest of the details described are automatic techniques for > determining how useful the submitted translation is. > > ------------------------------------------------------------------------- > This SF.Net email is sponsored by the Moblin Your Move Developer's > challenge > Build the coolest Linux based applications with Moblin SDK & win > great prizes > Grand prize is a trip for two to an Open Source event anywhere in > the world > http://moblin-contest.org/redirect.php?banner_id=100&url=/ > _____________________________________________ > Apertium-stuff mailing list > Apertium-stuff@lists.sourceforge.net > https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/apertium-stuff
Jimmy O'Regan [joregan at gmail.com]
2008/8/17 Sergio Ortiz Rojas <sergio.ortiz@gmail.com>:
> Not in EU. For the moment. >
<spectie> Answer: The problem is that software patents exist in some ways in the EU. The power of patent governance is split between a legislature, an executive, and a judiciary. <spectie> The legislature (the European Patent Convention) says that software ideas are not patentable. <spectie> The executive (the European Patent Office) ignores this and approves software patent applications. <spectie> The judiciary (the national courts) usually declares the EPO's software patents to be invalid whenever there is a court case.
René Pfeiffer [lynx at luchs.at]
On Aug 17, 2008 at 1601 +0100, Jimmy O'Regan appeared and said:
> 2008/8/17 Sergio Ortiz Rojas <sergio.ortiz@gmail.com>: > > Not in EU. For the moment. >=20 > <spectie> Answer: The problem is that software patents exist in some > ways in the EU. The power of patent governance is split between a > legislature, an executive, and a judiciary. > <spectie> The legislature (the European Patent Convention) says that > software ideas are not patentable. > <spectie> The executive (the European Patent Office) ignores this and > approves software patent applications. > <spectie> The judiciary (the national courts) usually declares the > EPO's software patents to be invalid whenever there is a court case.
Yes, this is true. Above all, some national patent offices (including the Austrian one) give hints in workhops how to patent certain things properly (i.e. how to write the patent application). This leads to tests in court that require some amount of effort to kill these senseless patents: http://press.ffii.org/Press_releases/Amazon_patent_fully_revoked%3A_skirmish_victory_for_FFII
Despite the 2005 victory in European parliament software patents in Europe are not dead yet. This remains an ongoing struggle...
...until they discover to abuse the Copyright law:
Me: Here is one apple; here is another apple. How many apples will you get when we put them together? Inna: Two. Me: So, 1+1 is ... ? Inna: Two. Me: Good girl. Inna: How much is 2+2? Me: Shhh. We can't talk about that. Inna: Why? Will a big bad wolf come and eat us? Me: Sort of. It is copyrighted and I do not have enough money for the private use license. Inna: Did you spend all your money on a 1+1 license? Me: No, honey. Google owns the rights and they released it for public use. Inna: What about 3+3? [...]
See http://www.tanyakhovanova.com/MathBlog.html#copyright for the full dialogue.
Best, René.
Jimmy O'Regan [joregan at gmail.com]
2008/8/17 René Pfeiffer <lynx@luchs.at>:
> On Aug 17, 2008 at 1601 +0100, Jimmy O'Regan appeared and said: >> 2008/8/17 Sergio Ortiz Rojas <sergio.ortiz@gmail.com>: >> > Not in EU. For the moment. >> >> <spectie> Answer: The problem is that software patents exist in some >> ways in the EU. The power of patent governance is split between a >> legislature, an executive, and a judiciary. >> <spectie> The legislature (the European Patent Convention) says that >> software ideas are not patentable. >> <spectie> The executive (the European Patent Office) ignores this and >> approves software patent applications. >> <spectie> The judiciary (the national courts) usually declares the >> EPO's software patents to be invalid whenever there is a court case. > > Yes, this is true. Above all, some national patent offices (including > the Austrian one) give hints in workhops how to patent certain things > properly (i.e. how to write the patent application). This leads to tests > in court that require some amount of effort to kill these senseless > patents: > http://press.ffii.org/Press_releases/Amazon_patent_fully_revoked%3A_skirmish_victory_for_FFII >
I have to admit to finding it difficult to follow just what exactly they're patenting; does it cover all of the mechanisms described within, or the whole?
"[0031]If the cursor remains over the selected text for a predetermined period of time, the feedback window component 312 causes the presentation of a feedback window"
Umm... Overlib is a javascript library that has provided that kind of effect for years...
'Sticky' popups are described in the version released 2002-11-01 (http://www.bosrup.com/web/overlib/?Changes)
"[0036]According to the MTS, the alternate translation has a low probability of occurrence in the target language; or [0037]The alternate translation contains redundant words. "
Looks very similar to the sort of filtering done by apertium-transfer-tools; the first description I know of is here:
Felipe Sánchez-Martínez, Juan Antonio Pérez-Ortiz, Mikel L. Forcada. Integrating corpus-based and rule-based approaches in an open-source machine translation system. In Proceedings of METIS-II Workshop: New Approaches to Machine Translation, a workshop at CLIN 17 - Computational Linguistics in the Netherlands , p. 73-82, January 11, 2007, Leuven, Belgium. http://www.dlsi.ua.es/~fsanchez/pub/pdf/sanchez07a.pdf
which predates Google's 'suggestion' stuff: http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2007/03/suggest-better-translation.html
That paper builds on:
Felipe Sánchez-Martínez, Hermann Ney. Using alignment templates to infer shallow-transfer machine translation rules. In Lecture Notes in Computer Science 4139 (Advances in Natural Language Processing, Proceedings of FinTAL 2006, 5th International Conference on Natural Language Processing), p. 756-767, August 23-25, 2006, Turku, Finland. http://www.dlsi.ua.es/~fsanchez/pub/pdf/sanchez06a.pdf
which builds on:
F. J. Och and H. Ney. 2004. The alignment template approach to statistical machine translation. Computational Linguistics, 30(4):417-449.
Franz Och is now a research scientist at Google (http://googleresearch.blogspot.com/2006/04/statistical-machine-translation-live.html). Wow. One degree of separation.
René Pfeiffer [lynx at luchs.at]
On Aug 17, 2008 at 1651 +0100, Jimmy O'Regan appeared and said:
> [...] > I have to admit to finding it difficult to follow just what exactly > they're patenting; does it cover all of the mechanisms described > within, or the whole? > > "[0031]If the cursor remains over the selected text for a > predetermined period of time, the feedback window component 312 causes > the presentation of a feedback window"
Descriptions like these are vague on purpose. They try to walk the line between the minimum amount of information that must be given in order to get the patent and the phrase that catches most other applications working in a similar way. Findings wordings like this is the core of the software/business methods/idea patent industry. While doing the protests against the software patent directive we thought of implementing a compiler for patent applications. You describe your idea vaguely in a kind of programming language and the compiler spits out the whole application form ready for submission. With the help of some linguists this should be possible. It is a neat proof of concept why patenting software is a bad idea.
> Umm... Overlib is a javascript library that has provided that kind of > effect for years... >=20 > 'Sticky' popups are described in the version released 2002-11-01 > (http://www.bosrup.com/web/overlib/?Changes)
That's good, because this means the "technology" was known before the patent was filed. This can be used to invalidate the patent in court (or to intimidate a "patent opponent" before going to court).
Best, René.
Jimmy O'Regan [joregan at gmail.com]
[On the plus side, Google is part of the Open Innovations Network: http://www.builderau.com.au/news/soa/Google-joins-open-source-patent-network/0,339028227,339281036,00.htm?feed=pt_patent]
2008/8/17 René Pfeiffer <lynx@luchs.at>:
> On Aug 17, 2008 at 1651 +0100, Jimmy O'Regan appeared and said: >> [...] >> I have to admit to finding it difficult to follow just what exactly >> they're patenting; does it cover all of the mechanisms described >> within, or the whole? >> >> "[0031]If the cursor remains over the selected text for a >> predetermined period of time, the feedback window component 312 causes >> the presentation of a feedback window" > > Descriptions like these are vague on purpose. They try to walk the line > between the minimum amount of information that must be given in order to > get the patent and the phrase that catches most other applications > working in a similar way. Findings wordings like this is the core of the > software/business methods/idea patent industry. While doing the protests > against the software patent directive we thought of implementing a > compiler for patent applications. You describe your idea vaguely in a > kind of programming language and the compiler spits out the whole > application form ready for submission. With the help of some linguists > this should be possible. It is a neat proof of concept why patenting > software is a bad idea. >
Well... Apertium's rule system could certainly be (ab)used to do that, thanks to Sergio's fairly recent addition of monolingual rules - our legitimate purpose was to add mutations to Welsh.
If you feel like providing me with some examples, I can try to put
something together 
>> Umm... Overlib is a javascript library that has provided that kind of >> effect for years... >> >> 'Sticky' popups are described in the version released 2002-11-01 >> (http://www.bosrup.com/web/overlib/?Changes) > > That's good, because this means the "technology" was known before the > patent was filed. This can be used to invalidate the patent in court (or > to intimidate a "patent opponent" before going to court).
I don't see anything about it that wasn't know - apart, maybe, from doing it on the web.
Deividson Okopnik [deivid.okop at gmail.com]
> I have to admit to finding it difficult to follow just what exactly > they're patenting; does it cover all of the mechanisms described > within, or the whole?
They are not patenting the use of OnMouseOver if thats what you are asking. Theyre patenting the tech they created to get users to sugest better translations, AND theyre describing how it works.
Jimmy O'Regan [joregan at gmail.com]
2008/8/18 Deividson Okopnik <deivid.okop@gmail.com>:
>> I have to admit to finding it difficult to follow just what exactly >> they're patenting; does it cover all of the mechanisms described >> within, or the whole? > > They are not patenting the use of OnMouseOver if thats what you are > asking.
Erm, no, that's not what I was asking. The onMouseOver part was the only part of it that was new.
> Theyre patenting the tech they created to get users to sugest > better translations, AND theyre describing how it works.
Using technological means to ask for new translations is not new AND how it works is obvious.
René Pfeiffer [lynx at luchs.at]
On Aug 17, 2008 at 1803 +0100, Jimmy O'Regan appeared and said:
> 2008/8/17 René Pfeiffer <lynx@luchs.at>: > > [...] > > While doing the protests > > against the software patent directive we thought of implementing a > > compiler for patent applications. You describe your idea vaguely in a > > kind of programming language and the compiler spits out the whole > > application form ready for submission. With the help of some linguists > > this should be possible. It is a neat proof of concept why patenting > > software is a bad idea. > > > Well... Apertium's rule system could certainly be (ab)used to do that, > thanks to Sergio's fairly recent addition of monolingual rules - our > legitimate purpose was to add mutations to Welsh. > > If you feel like providing me with some examples, I can try to put > something together
We, the FFII, have a patent database and a search engine for patent
texts. The patents are from the European Patent Office. Give me a few
weeks and there might be a way to create something out the the data.
Best, René.
-- )\._.,--....,'``. fL Let GNU/Linux work for you while you take a nap. /, _.. \ _\ (`._ ,. R. Pfeiffer <lynx at luchs.at> + http://web.luchs.at/ `._.-(,_..'--(,_..'`-.;.' - System administration + Consulting + Teaching - Got mail delivery problems? http://web.luchs.at/information/blockedmail.php