Charlie does not let Lisa near those scary ultra loud crinkly biodegradeable Sun Chips bags.

Software patents are void under Alice (+1)
zoobab 3 hours ago
We wrote about it in May already:
https://ffii.org/covid-19-trac...
Tomorrow there is an important vote on software patents in Germany and in Europe:
https://ffii.org/open-letter-t...
Reply  Share
 Flag
another patent for do something obvious (+1)
presidenteloco 3 hours ago
with a computer.
or in this case with a pocket computer with a radio transceiver.

There's a reason all the other contact app makers didn't check these patents in order to design their apps, and are undoubtedly surprised that the patents exist.
It's because it's OBVIOUS how to do it, given the structure of the problem, and the capabilities of the underlying tech.
Reply  Share
 Flag
Re: another patent for do something obvious (+1)
kaur 2 hours ago
It is definitely not obvious. As a proof, there are many different implementations by different countries. Most are location-based and require the citizen to disclose his social graph to the government or to the agency managing the backend services. DP-3T digs into the Bluetooth Low-Energy tech (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bluetooth_Low_Energy) and distributed cryptography (nothing fancy besides being decentralized) to offer a better solution. Both the protocol itself and the implementation on the phones are also still in motion, not final.
Remember the fights in the internatiional privacy community in the spring and early summer? Those have died off by now mostly because the protocol is mostly okay from pricacy point of view. However, nothing was _obvious_ there, and things may have turned out very differently for everyone involved.
Reply  Share
 Flag
Re: another patent for do something obvious (+1)
dgatwood 2 hours ago
It is definitely not obvious. As a proof, there are many different implementations by different countries. Most are location-based and require the citizen to disclose his social graph to the government or to the agency managing the backend services.
You're missing a key part of "given the structure of the problem", which is defining what the problem is. The problem is not "contact tracing", but rather "contact tracing in a manner that does not require users to invasively reveal their location history". As soon as you introduce that requirement, there are very few possible ways to implement it, and all involve devices detecting that other devices are nearby and recording that they were nearby.
And if you further add the constraint "without revealing the fact that two people were near each other until after one of them has been diagnosed with a contagious disease", then at least at a high level, the number of possible solutions drops to exactly one, with the only differences being in the details of how the randomly generated nonces are constructed, transmitted, and stored.
I would argue that if the only thing non-obvious about a patent is in recognizing that there is a specific problem to solve, then the patent is obvious, because patents aren't intended to cover mere ideas, but actual inventions.
Then again, I haven't looked at the patent in question, so it is possible that they're doing something interesting and non-obvious. That still doesn't necessarily mean that anyone should license their tech, of course, particularly given the need for standardized protocols if we want contact tracing to be successful, but that's a slightly different question.
Reply  Share
 Flag
There's another reason. (+1)
Ungrounded Lightning an hour ago
There's a reason all the other contact app makers didn't check these patents in order to design their apps, [obviousness]
There's another reason: If it's discovered at the infringement suit that your engineers looked at the patent, any infringement found is deemed "wilful" and the penalties are multiplied by three.
As a result engineers are generally ordered NOT to look at patents when designing new products.
So that's ANOTHER way that the patent system is broken. It was supposed to give a limited-term monopoly in return for "teaching" the method for use after the patent expires. But if the engineers aren't allowed to be "taught" there's no other half of the "trade".
Reply  Share
 Flag
Some background, and international adoption (+4, Insightful)
kaur 2 hours ago
The original contact tracing protocol is / was DP-3T, described here:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
The one implemented in iOS and Android is GAEN, Google Apple Exposure Notification:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
GAEN is quite a formidable feat both as a privacy-preserving protocol and as an implementation. Google and Apple announced this jointly on the same day in April, just a month in to the real pandemic. GAEN is also a great boon to the international society. It is decentralized (as is DP-3T) and privacy-preserving. Without GAEN, the governments of the world would have buiit their own, centralized, location-based tracking apps. The social graphs of the citizens and their location data would all be exposed to the governments. For US or Chinese citizens, this means nothing as the US government can get this data from Google, Apple or the phone manufacturers anyway. For the rest of the world, this makes a huge difference. My government can currently NOT get my location data easily. And the joint protocol + implementation by Google + Apple will keep it so.
Goverments now do implement their tracking apps based on GAEN, because it is both easy and secure. The protocol is already on the phones, and there are reference implementations available. A country only needs to add the local UI (in a local language & branding), add integration with local health services (to allow citizens to declare themselves as contagious), roll out and be done.
Look at the implementation list in Wikipedia - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.... I can only wish governments luck on implementing this.
The thing to notice here is how Google and Apple overplayed all governments of the world by joint and swift action. In the current case, this is a good thing - GAEN is better and more secure / private than the location-based and other approaches that the national govermnents had. In some cases, the GPS-based apps have been pulled and replaced by GAEN-based ones already.
However, in the long run, this is scary. The digital sovreignty of a country (or state) means nothing. What the US-based mobile giants do, the rest of the world will use and follow.
Reply  Share
 Flag
I remember the last time (+1)
inode_buddha 2 hours ago
I remember the last time something came out of Utah, it was called "SCO" and yeah it was a scam. Fuckers got off with it too, as in they are still alive even though their "company" is long since dead.
Reply  Share
 Flag
Fails novelty clause (+1)
Martin S. 2 hours ago
A patent must be a novel solution to the problem; this clearly fails the test given the number of contact tracing apps that have produced the same solution when presented with the same problem.
Reply  Share
 Flag
Prior art -- terrible patent (+1)
eatvegetables 2 hours ago
From the actual patent:
"One embodiment may include a method of converting an electronic device into a tracking device that is part of a system of tracking devices distributed throughout a geographic area to track signal emitting devices travelling through the geographic area."
Police use cell tower information to identify the location of suspect phones retrospectively. They've done this for many years. For example, Bob says he was at home when Sally's house was robbed, so he must be innocent. Oops. Bobs phone was recorded as being near cell tower next to Sally's house when the robbery occured.
1. A system of tracking devices: cell towers
2. Signal emitting devices: Bob's cell phone
3. Traveling through geographic area: Bob's cell phone was seen by all the cell towers between his house and Sally's house. Bob was at Sally's house at the time of the robbery.
Reply  Share
 Flag
lol (+2)
Kryptonut an hour ago
"says his patent fight is driven by concerns about their privacy and effectiveness, not an attempt to profit."
Riiiiiiight....purely selfless.....for the people.
So will 100% of the money collected go towards Covid-19 vaccine research, or privacy groups?
Reply  Share
 Flag
Covid Industrial Complex (+1)
Malays2 bowman in a few seconds
Nothing to see here, just one of the gears turning as normal.