Linking users and concepts - a Facebook patent

Facebook continues building up a strong patent portfolio for graph-based technologies. On January 6, 2015 the USPTO awarded the company US 8,930,378 patent on a social-like network between users and concepts. The patent is titled "Labeling samples in a similarity graph", inventors Pierre Moreels and Andrei Alexandrescu.

On the figure above, circles with Us in them mean users and circles with city names mean concepts. The dotted lines show a calculated confidence level that a particular concept is "linked" to a user who is not connected to it directly.
Since the concept can describe anything in the real as well as abstract world, Facebook patented a technology that figures out the user's connection to objects, places, and other stuff based on the user's social connections.

For completeness, here's Claim 1 (click to enlarge):

The claim looks very clever, but it's hard to believe that the idea has not been covered in the prior art. Detecting infringement of the patent would also be quite difficult because an accused piece of software would be embedded deep down in the guts of a server-based implementation.

tags: patent, facebook, graph, social, networking, internet, portfolio

Nortel/Rockstar US Patent 6,378,069 - a ticking bomb for the smartphone industry?

In July 2011, a group of companies led by Apple, Microsoft, RIM and others bought 6,000 Nortel patents. The patents were assigned to a holding entity Rockstar Consortium, Inc. One of the patents in the portfolio is US 6,378,069 "Apparatus and methods for providing software updates to devices in a communication network," issued April 23, 2002. I ran into it while reviewing references for the newly issued Facebook patent US 8,631,239.

The original Nortel patent looks incredibly broad. Its claim 1 covers any system that has a database of subscriber records and can provide software updates to the subscribers.

Arguably, the patent covers software update systems for smartphones, PCs, tablets, ebook readers (hello, Amazon!), and everything on the Internet that requires a software update. One could try to circumvent the patent by delegating software distribution to third parties, i.e. decoupling the entity that holds the subscriber database and the one that actually communicates to the destination device. It's not clear how this solution could play out in courts. Litigation over this potential workaround would be an interesting case to watch.

Rockstar has not asserted the patent yet, but the consortium still has several years to do that. They've already sued Google for allegedly infringing Nortel patents on relevant advertisement. Most likely, the Nortel portfolio contains more patent gems; litigating them can prove extremely expensive. The industry would be wise to set up a standard-like body to figure out reasonable licensing terms, instead of engaging in a series of all-out patent wars.

From our system model point of view, the patent covers key Control Points (see Scalable Innovation, Chapter 5, System Control Points: Where To Aim Your Silver Bullets), i.e. using Aboutness to direct a Packaged Payload - this is as basic as it can possibly be. An equivalent broad patent for Facebook would cover using information about users for sending messages, including ads. For Netflix, it would be using subscriber database for sending recommendations, etc. Powerful, if you can get it issued.

tags: patent, invention, software, innovation, portfolio, communications, aboutness, packaged, payload

Apple vs Motorola: no damages, no right to exclude.

June 22, 2012. CNet:

A U.S. judge has tossed out the Apple v. Motorola patent case for good, according to reports.

Judge Richard Posner of the U.S. District of Northern Illinois said that neither Apple nor Motorola has been able to prove damages and that neither company would be permitted to refile a claim.

Posner strongly questioned Apple's bid for an injunction against Motorola smartphones, saying, according to Reuters, that a ban on sales could have "catastrophic effects" and would be "contrary to the public interest."

the judge also pointed to serious problems with the U.S. patent system and questioned the worth of many software patents, saying, Reuters reported, "You can't just assume that because someone has a patent, he has some deep moral right to exclude everyone else."

In the judge's mind considerations of public interest seem to be prevailing over the patentee's right to exclude others from using the technology.

tags: patent, apple, google, portfolio

Invention vs Innovation, the patent dimension.

NYT reports on the largest patent-related transaction ever:

Nortel Networks, the defunct Canadian telecommunications equipment maker, says it has agreed to sell more than 6,000 patent assets to an alliance made up of Apple, Microsoft and other technology giants for $4.5 billion in cash.
The group of companies, which also includes Research in Motion, Sony, Ericsson and EMC, beat out Google and Intel for the patents and patent applications that Nortel had accumulated when it was still one of the largest telecommunications equipment makers in North America.

The decline of Nortel is quite remarkable. The company was one of the first firms to develop advanced wireless data and internet routing technologies, but couldn't capitalize on them in the marketplace, eventually going bankrupt. The breadth and depth of their patent portfolio relating to the fast-growing mobile networking industry is staggering, which explains the multi-billion dollar bids.
Google will probably end up paying significant royalties on these patents.

tags: invention, innovation, patents, business, mobile, competition, portfolio