How is it a point against the patent if the paper was written by someone under the employment of Shazam? Isn't the point of the patent to award the innovator with the right to profit from the innovation?
That it was written by someone under the employment of Shazam makes it likely that it describes their algorithm, but for patent protection, what matters is that you can’t apply for a patent for an invention that has been published.
https://www.science.org/content/article/patent-first-publish...: “According to U.S. law, a patent cannot be obtained if an invention was previously known or used by other people in the U.S., or was already patented or published anywhere in the world. Furthermore, publicly using or selling an invention more than 1 year prior to filing a patent application completely bars you from ever winning a patent on that invention.
[…]
In Europe, for instance, there is no 1-year grace period--the chances of winning patent protection is lost the instant an invention becomes public”
You only get a one year grace period after first public discloser to file for a patent in the US. So if the dates in this scenario are:
- paper in 2003
- patent 2004-10-21
Only if the paper was released between 2003-10-22 and 2003-12-31 would it meet the one year grace period requirement.
Looks like it’s not relevant in this case since they got a provisional patent in 2002, but that’s likely what the above was referring to as “a point against that patent”.
> [T]he point of the patent [is to] award the innovator with the right to profit from the innovation
... in return for disclosing said innovation for use by others (in the patent) instead of keeping it secret. If the disclosure has already happened without the prospect of royalties (such as in a journal article), then the deal is off. But indeed various places have grace periods for that.
You should note that the USA even today still has a one year grace period between when you first published an idea and when you can valodly file for a patent for that idea. So if they published it in June 2003 but applied for the patent in April 2004, then the patent is well within the grace period and the paper doesn't constitute prior art.
I remember a popular HN post from 10 years ago, that was pulled or the source was pulled because Shazam legally threatened the disclosure of the algorithm. I think it's actually the Google drive file pdf capture from OP's article.
There are other patents for their implementation, and all are filed in multiple countries. Look at the blue sidebar under "Worldwide applications".
The linked one is just for the US version of a singular patent. It had applications in 14 other countries and WIPO, 6 of which are still active (plus US).
Any seller of software would be liable for selling software to US customers without a patent license.
I'm curious about the legal consequences of freely distributed software (e.g. open source).
I wonder if the author/provider could be held liable if they:
- knowingly (passively) or actively market to US customers (e.g. provide support)
- are aware that US users are using it, and take no actions to prevent its distribution
etc.
Can someone share their knowledge on this?
If European software incidentally infringes a US patent, and it is distributed freely, is the provider then liable? E.g. is Github basically liable for restricting US users from access to (distributing) patent infringing software?
Jamessb already linked to the right terms. One thing to add is that there is always a tradeoff between time and frequency resolution on short time Fourier transforms. You just can’t have both. It’s always a somewhat unsatisfying tradeoff that still works well in practice.
I found this out when I was trying to turn an ordinary 5 dollar thrifted musical keyboard into a midi controller by plugging it into my PC, putting it on "sine wave" and using a Goertzel detector
The latency for detecting audio-frequency waves is quite bad
This also stymied my desire to put digital audio onto a vinyl record :( literally not enough bandwidth
I thought my comment would be obvious but anyone using this code for profit within a jurisdiction that honors this patent would be exposed to potential litigation from Apple.
It's not whether "IP" laws apply; it's whether source code itself is in scope for patents. Source code is a description of an algorithm, which in principle is what the software patent is supposed to be providing anyway. Patents shouldn't be relevant here for the same reason they aren't relevant to what you write in e.g. a textbook on signal processing where you might find an exact description of how Shazam works.
Compiling and running that source code on your computer/as part of a wider system may violate a patent, but my impression was that patents are not relevant to the actual code. Are there test cases in the US around pure source distribution of a patented algorithm? Particularly post-Alice?
I wonder if the massive amount of open source software can now be used as elaborate 'prior art' in a way that basically invalidates any software patent that is awarded after the source had been made available?
I.e. if any algorithm was already implemented, in some variation, then the patent is not valid?
For example, for the infamous Amazon 'one click purchase', if a similar pattern was used, maybe a 'one click start vacuum cleaner robot', would it that patent then be invalid?
I dunno how software patents work but I was under the impression that unless you basically copy paste their code, the courts wouldn't consider it patent infringement as you can't patent the function, but rather the specific thing itself which for software is the exact code itself. But if I'm not understanding something please correct me.
You’re thinking of copyright, which covers a specific creative expression. Patents are more general on how something is done and would cover different code that works the same way.
Software patents are magic, you just start your process with 'on a computer do X' and because computers are a piece of hardware you can patent anything you like
I'm still upset that my "you can't patent software because of the Curry-Howard isomorphism" legal argument never took off. (Basically, software is equivalent to math, and you can't patent math. Therefore, you can't patent software. QED.)
[1] https://patents.google.com/patent/US7627477