Tag: IPR

Troglodyte: Driverless vehicles 3

“They call it a landing strip. In my mind this is the same as having a sign over the road telling you where you are.”

The purpose of Project Troglodyte is to hunt for bad patents and to show what went wrong. For more information, see the  web page.

 

Transitioning a mixed-mode vehicle to autonomous mode

I recently run into this article. I browsed through the patent, here are a few comments. Note: this analysis was originally done before we developed the analysis template so the approach differs a little from the rest.

Figure 1.

 

TIER 1: SUMMARY

This patent seems to describe a way of reading a reference indicator (e.g. a marking in the road) and using this info to both determine the exact location of the car and to retrieve data that the indicator points to. Basically there would be a QR code in the road at some location, which is possibly a place where the vehicle stops. They call it a landing strip. In my mind this is the same as having a sign over the road telling you where you are. What about snow and ice? It is difficult to read the QR code if it is under snow. This may have been overlooked as all the inventors seem to be from California, maybe Mountain View, and according to wikipedia snow isn’t really a big problem there. But to be fair, they do indicate that using RF technologies could be used to implement the same functionality. It can, but getting the same location accuracy would be more challenging.

Is there any harm in this patent being granted? There might be if they manage to push through the idea that a computer reading road signs and taking actions based on that is now a google monopoly. It might be difficult for Google or anyone else to push through such a wide interpretation of this patent but who has the money to challenge them?

While the ideas are somewhat useful they are not that innovative. There can be several reasons for this, one is that the best parts of the application needed to be dropped during the examination (due to prior art) by the patent office but they decided to go through with it anyway. A more cynical view might be that just before the filing date someone decided that the driverless car thing might go forward and we need to patent something stat. To be complete it is worth mentioning that I may just have fallen for the trap that I have seen many times before: things are much more obvious after someone has written them down.

 

TIER 2: AVOIDING LICENSING

As usual the description includes a lot of stuff that is already known or otherwise obvious, for example about a page is used to describe the computer system that might be running the logic needed to use the indicators. I’m not very skilled in the art of autonomous vehicles but my feeling is that the description didn’t really include anything that the public would benefit from. This is mainly because reading a QR code or other indicator is exactly analogous to what one does when reading a sign with location information. Adding the use of an url to retrieve instructions doesn’t really make a difference in the inventiveness department. I’m left wondering what was the original idea that they invented and at what point was it removed from the patent? Also, the title and the description don’t really match. While this is nine kinds of bad when writing a school assignment it might be good for a patent (if you are the inventor) as it is more difficult for the competitors to find the information.

This patent might not be that difficult to bypass. In the short term just record the orientation and location of many road signs and use the vehicle’s approximate location from GPS or sensors to check which sign it is and then retrieve this info from a database.

 

TIER 3: TECHNICAL ANALYSIS

If the QR code (indicator) includes position and orientation (of the indicator) a camera can be used to get a very accurate position, “easily” with in millimeters related to the indicator. This could be useful in a few situations:

  • There is no GPS coverage
  • The GPS location accuracy is not enough to resolve the location ambiguity due to say roads being on top of each other. This can usually be deduced from the path history, but it is good to have some redundancy, if there is reboot or something.
  • On a bridge, tunnel or similar location a Lidar or radar may not have enough information as the environment is completely built or “empty”
  • The environment has been changed beyond recognition due to construction etc. I have understood that the google approach uses prior knowledge of the environment to determine the location by comparing sensor info to database. It might be that if the road has been closed for changes that the environment, not to mention road location has changed drastically. In such a case the QR code could have info on how to cross the changed part of the road until the database has been updated by the passing vehicles.

It looks like these ideas predate the lidar approach but this has been filed on May, 2011 (now is 27 July, 2012) and as long as I know google’s lidar tech using Prius is older than that. So they may have been thinking about one of the bullets above where it would be quite handy say if there is a construction in a tunnel and vehicles need to be told what to do. It is worth noting that inertial sensors can be used for fairly accurate guidance for a short while and even dead reckoning is likely good enough to avoid a couple of cones and a steamroller if it is in a designated area. Doesn’t have much to do with transitioning to autonomous mode though.

After reading the claims I have two things in my mind:

  1. I can recognize the description from the claims, which is nice and not always the case
  2. If they manage to get another patent where they define wetware to be a computer I will need to start paying licensing fees every time I drive a car.

Troglodyte: CleanTech 1

“This is really no different from saying ‘If my invention sees a problem, it solves it'”

The purpose of Project Troglodyte (ended in 2013) is to hunt for bad patents and to show what went wrong. 

TRANSMITTING POLLUTION INFORMATION OVER AN INTEGRATED NETWORK 

I’m starting my part of  Project Troglodyte with something that might be unwise if I lived in the USA: I will dissect a patent which I think has value for just one purpose: trolling (see EFF article for more on patent trolls). I’m not saying anything that would cause legal problems, but it’s still good to have an ocean between me and the patent.

The patent is in the area of cleantech, and in particular pollution monitoring, which is a subject close to my heart.  The case is particularly interesting because there are two connected patents: US7424527 (filed 2001, granted 2008) and its continuation US 7,739,378 (filed 2008, granted 2010).  Differences in the two show how the patent system has changed in the last decade, and not for the better.

The patents are owned by Sipco LLC. Is Sipco a patent troll? I prefer not to commit myself at this point, but will let the reader decide himself, based on several articles (SmartGridToday,  Green Patent Blog, CleanTech Blog). I have put Sipco on my list of companies to follow, but for this article I will only stick to these patents.

Figure 1: Schematic from the patent application

SECTION 1: SUMMARY

The 2008 patent basically claims the following invention: there are “pollution sensors” (whatever that means) that are connected by a wireless network to a monitoring site. When the pollution level gets too high, the sensors send a warning to the monitoring site. As far as I can determine, that’s basically it.

So what is the inventive step that makes the 2008 unique and worthy of a patent?

I don’t see one. It is difficult to be diplomatic about this particular patent: it has no real value, except for trolling purposes. (I also suspect the patent-filing system has been gamed; see Section 3 below for details). In the worst-case scenario, anyone sending pollution information via a wireless network may now need to pay Sipco royalties.

The original 2001 patent at least had a somewhat concrete application area: in principle, it was directly applicable to monitoring of pollution from industrial facilities, and helping operators make decisions when something unexpected happens. Even so, the “invention” was completely trivial even in 2001. It is somewhat astonishing that the patent was granted; in Section 3 I speculate on why this may have happened (though it is speculation only).

The 2008 patent, by contrast, is sort of applicable to the monitoring of some kind of pollution from something in order to perhaps do something. A pollution monitoring management controller is mentioned in Claim 13, but since it is a dependent claim, it can be dropped without really affecting the patent. The main claims are completely abstract.

But overall it is difficult to see much non-trolling value in the 2001 either. Just one example of its vagueness: on page 17, the patent describes what happens if one of the network elements stops working. “In such a situation, upon the detection of the failed transceiver or transceiver component, the pollution monitoring management controller 302 (Fig 3) redefines communication paths out to the transceivers, and transmits the redefined paths out to the transceivers, transceiver stations, transceiver units and site controllers such that the paths are redefined”. This is also the thing that is claimed in Claim 12. That’s all the information we’re given.

This is really no different from saying “If my invention sees a problem, it solves it”. One reason for the whole existence of the patent system is that it makes innovations public; the inventor has a monopoly on the use of his technology, but society has been given detailed information on how to build the invention. In this case, society has gotten zilch. Zilch on how to to build a robust system as claimed in Claim 12, and I’m afraid zilch on how to build anything in any of the other claims. And in the case of the 2008 patent, it’s somewhat vague what the “something” is that has been claimed to have been invented.

In fact, the benefit for society is less than zilch: it is negative. Now that the patents have been granted, the owner can (completely legally) use them to block any real progress in this area. If someone actually invests money and R&D into actually building a network like this, they will face the risk of litigation from the patent owner. And that risk will exist for the next 20 years, while the patents are valid. (In practice, the owner almost certainly has filed new continuation applications already, so the risk will continue infinitely).

This is unfortunately not paranoid speculation; as the articles show, this particular patent holder has shown no hesitation to sue. Cleantech companies can more or less expect future litigation from this direction.

SECTION 2: DAMAGE CONTROL

The damage has been done and the patents have been granted.  The best damage control, of course, would be for someone to try to invalidate the patents on the basis that there existed prior art in 2001 which made the patents trivial. However,  that is a cripplingly difficult and expensive process (see the EFF’s Patent Busting site).

Realistically, the only thing that could really be done is to design workarounds. These are extremely difficult due to the general nature of the patents. However, there may be a few weak points in the patents. It might be possible to find more if this were done professionally, but a volunteer project can only go so far.

Claim 1 (of both patents) requires that a message be generated “if a pollution level exceeding a predetermined threshold is detected”. In principle, if the detectors are polled at regular (or random) intervals, they would not infringe this patent. Thus this patent might have no effect on systems that monitor continuously. However, if the purpose is to warn of sudden rises in pollution, this is a problem.

One other workaround might be to use changing thresholds; several threshold values are stored in a central computer, and the pollution sensors get updated threshold values every now and then. (Note that this makes no practical sense whatsoever. But if the alternative is to spend years in litigation, it might be the less insane solution).

Claim 13 refers to a “pollution monitoring management controller”. Such a centralized controller is also evident in all the Figures. If the information management is completely distributed, so that there is no central controller facility, then the patent should be severely weakened. However, litigation is still probably possible.

[Addendum 13.8.2012 1405 UTC: A reader pointed to another way to circumvent this. Since the term “pollution” is not actually defined in the patent, one might work around the patent by steadfastly claiming that the sensors are not “pollution sensors”. Rather, they could for example simply be called “gas sensors” or just “detectors for determining the composition of the air”. Insane? Yes, but it might work. Please keep these ideas coming!] 

SECTION 3: TECHNICAL ANALYSIS: SYSTEM GAMING?

There is something interesting about the 2001 patent, which looks like a boring technical detail but may reveal a lot. On any patent document’s first page, there is a section called “References cited” which lists patents that are related to the subject area (either found by the inventor, or by the patent examiner). They are, in effect, proof that the inventor knows what other people have invented, but has invented something different. Typically there will be  20-30 such references.

On the 2001 patent, there are more than four pages of references, double columns, small text. More than 500 references. I don’t recall seeing anything like this. I am not even sure what it exactly means. Most of the references seem to have been made by the drafting patent attorney, with only a few added by the examiner.

I have no idea what actually happened during this seven-year-long patent process, but I will try to imagine a scenario.  Patent examiners work under serious time pressure (see for example Wolinsky 2010). I have heard a rumor that examiners have only two hours to process an application, but haven’t been able to find reliable references. Two hours is almost nothing, and if true, it really makes the system a lottery.

If I wanted to get a spurious patent through, I might submit an application with 500 references, without specifying at all how the references actually relate to the patent. That makes it look as if I have done serious research before filing, and makes it difficult for the examiner to reject it outright. There is no realistic way for the examiner to go through even a small part of the references, yet he has to make a judgment. It is basically spamming the examiner.

The 2008 patent has less than 100 cited references, but nine of these refer to USPTO decisions made in 2009 on other patents. I don’t have the competence to even speculate what exactly has been going on behind the scenes, but obviously something has.

The time from filing to granting of the 2008 patent was less than two years, which is very short (in comparison, it took seven years for the 2001 patent). Perhaps the process was speeded up by the fact that the 2008 patent is a continuation of the 2001 patent. Hence a lighter prior art examination was considered adequate. If so, this also points to a weakness in the system: once a spurious patent has been granted, it is easier to churn out new spurious patents based on the first one.

I wish I had less reason to feel cynical about this, but I don’t. Patents like this make me feel that my Trolling on the human rights essay is not dystopian at all. It is simply a description of our future.

 

Troglodyte: Driverless vehicles 2

“Effectively they attempt to patent the exact thing every good driver does.”

The purpose of Project Troglodyte is to hunt for bad patents and to show what went wrong. For more information, see the  web page.

DIAGNOSIS AND REPAIR FOR AUTONOMOUS VEHICLES


This patent is analyzed as part of a series of Google driverless car patents and applications. It is an emerging technology area which, I feel, will have a significant impact in 7-20 year time frame, perhaps even earlier. Existing Intellectual Property will make a difference on how the field develops.



Figure 1.


TIER 1: SUMMARY

A system where sensor information is used to determine wear or damage to parts of the vehicle, this information is then combined with information from environmental sensors and with map data to alter behaviour of the vehicle. For example: if the brakes are worn the system would use smaller deceleration than when the brakes are new. This is done to extend the life of the brakes, presumably until they can be overhauled. While the claims don’t seem to include it, the description also introduces a possibility for the vehicle to automatically seek a repair facility.

If this application is granted as is, it would likely cover some fundamental aspects of automated vehicles. It would cover a situation where external sensors indicate water on the road and the vehicle is able to sense significant tire wear and then decelerates to avoid hydroplaning. The current application doesn’t even attempt to explain how any of this is done; it is a description of a system that decides between different actions based on sensor and other inputs. Effectively they attempt to patent the exact thing every good driver does.

It should be noted that while the claims give an impression that this is about cars, it can be considered to cover other types of vehicles such as airplanes. In fact in the description  trucks, motorcycles, busses, boats, airplanes, helicopters, lawnmowers, recreational vehicles, amusement park vehicles, trams, golf carts, trains and trolleys are mentioned as examples of vehicles.

Looking at the news, it seems driverless car development is all about sensor fusion. Adequate sensor technologies are available, but putting together a system that makes sense of all the information takes a lot of work. Protecting solutions to problems that are encountered during development is standard practice. If granted this would in a fairly broad manner give Google a handle over an important optimization aspect of driverless vehicles.

TIER 2: AVOIDING LICENSING

Using a FEM model incorporating current sensor information to predict the response of the vehicle to current conditions could be used to change the behaviour without resorting to selecting from a list of possible actions. It is difficult to say if this differs enough from the language of the claims to be outside the scope of this application, but it could be useful in any case.

The obvious bypass route is to not use information about damage or wear to components internal to the vehicle. This however could restrict how aggressively the computer could use the vehicle as it would in some cases need to make a worst case assumption about the state of vehicle systems.

TIER 3: TECHNICAL ANALYSIS

The inventive step seems to be missing so discussion of novelty is a bit academic, but looking at novelty of the different parts can show that their combination is fairly obvious. Using sensors to monitor the internal wear and damage is a known technology. By way of example: a Yamaha two stroke outboard motor I used at least a decade ago had an internal oil tank. In case the motor was out of oil it reduced the available power to avoid engine damage. I remember this as it happened to me while I was crossing a shipping lane. It was quite exciting for a while, as there was a largish ferry approaching a couple of kilometers away and I judged that if I failed in filling the tank I might not have enough time to get clear. As another example: automobile engine management systems may change to a different throttle response and ignition timing in case they lose some sensors feeding information regarding the state of the engine.

It is also common to have an indicator in the car that warns when the outside temperature is close to freezing. Several current models also offer systems that read speed limit signs with a camera and give this information to the driver. Information about automated speed traps can be downloaded to navigation devices.

Fusing all this information provided by these prior technologies is clearly necessary in an autonomous vehicle. It might be an invention if a novel way of doing this was shown, but is not enough to tell that there is a problem in need of a solution. To go back to my claim that this is what drivers do all the time; it might be an invention to show how to do, with a computer, what happens inside the head of the driver. This is because the prior knowledge on that is pretty much missing.

The description and figures are easy to follow, apart of some patentese which needs a couple of passes before being understood. Not much new is offered so the usefulness of the description to society is low. There doesn’t appear to be a step change from prior technology or knowledge so the invention is missing.

The claims are pretty straight forward and they clearly are derived from the description. Some elements seem to be missing though, like the idea where the vehicle checks in to a maintenance facility when it detects something in need of fixing. But this is likely well covered in sci-fi so it would not be new.

Troglodyte: Driverless vehicles 1

“This is solid engineering but I didn’t get the “hey this is clever” reaction which is a sort of indicator for inventiveness.”

The purpose of Project Troglodyte is to hunt for bad patents and to show what went wrong. For more information, see the  web page.

 

TRAFFIC SIGNAL MAPPING AND DETECTION

I have been interested in driverless vehicles for years and I like to read patents, so why not combine the two and share my thoughts. This is a short analysis of a Google US patent application, you can find the original here.



Figure 1.

 

TIER 1: SUMMARY

Contents in one sentence: mapping of traffic lights to enable real time status detection of those lights by vehicles. The description is not limited to automated vehicles, rather what is described is a general system of collecting location and orientation information of traffic lights and use of the results in the form of a map to enable detection of the state of said lights at a later time. When reading the patent I got the feeling that this is solid engineering but I didn’t get the “hey this is clever” reaction which is a sort of indicator for inventiveness.

The claims are not limited to a large database that all the vehicles would use to get the traffic light location information, it would also cover saving the same information in the cars own systems. I.e. it would not be possible for your car to store information of where the lights are on the routes you often drive, that is unless it had a licence from google to use.

This application seems to be intended to create difficulties for anyone who wishes to create a map of traffic lights for the purpose of guiding automated vehicles. It could give Google an advantage as creating and especially maintaining such a map by other means could pose some difficulties. Secondly there is a possibility that if it is granted in its current form Google might be able to prevent others from using information of traffic light location to help real time detection of the light state. As part of a portfolio of automated driving patents it could have some value, although there are other methods of getting the same information to car systems. The nice thing about the mapping idea is that it requires very little liaison with authorities maintaining the traffic system.

If the world is going to move to fully automated vehicles traffic lights are probably not needed in the sense they are currently used. Thus this patent would only be useful during a transition period, but the transition could easily be longer than the duration of the protection a patent offers

It is a bit scary that the description gives information on known triangulation and image recognition technologies as this might open a lot of trolling opportunities when the claims are widely interpreted.

TIER 2: AVOIDING LICENSING

An alternate to the map described in this document could be to determine when the light changes occur and from several of these time stamps create a state machine with transitions at known times. The timing information could then be distributed from the cloud to vehicles on their way to the same intersection. Knowing which light should be active would make it a bit faster to find the fixtures from larger images that result from not knowing the location of the traffic light. This would not need a map of locations of the traffic lights, it would only be a map of traffic light state machines with much more lax accuracy requirements . Vehicles could also take advantage of this information to optimize speed, thus reducing maximum accelerations and likely speed and therefore also lowering the likelihood of accidents or at least make the results less severe.

In the discussion of background it is mentioned that efforts have been made to develop systems that use radio transmission of traffic light state but the infrastructure investment is seen as an obstacle. Why not use existing radio infra to transmit the information? A scheme where the traffic light state is available on the net and read through a cellular data connection would need less tampering with the infrastructure. This of course only works in places where the traffic lights are centrally controlled.

The obvious bypassing technique is to not have a map of traffic lights and scan for them continually in the same general direction where drivers look for them. The cost of this surely will become lower as more and more computational power becomes available. One way of avoiding the use of a map could be to ask the vehicles in front of you: where did they find the light. Vehicle to vehicle communications is likely going to be ubiquitous before driverless cars, so there is a good chance that at some point only software development is required to implement exchange of the information. Getting the advantage of making the map in good weather and lighting conditions is more difficult to achieve with other methods.

TIER 3: TECHNICAL ANALYSIS

The description offers a fair explanation of the intended system though most of the details must be known technology. Triangulation and related methods are a widely used technology as is identification of objects with roughly known characteristics from images. Saving the location and characteristics of the identified objects in a database that can be called a map is likewise a well known approach for representing data in an accessible format.

At one point there is talk about triangulation and at the same time about using a sphere to determine which labels (i.e. location of traffic light in an image) will be associated with each other. Later it is mentioned that this determination may be part of an analysis of an image sequence, using a template to follow the traffic light in the consecutive images. At some point a first location determination needs to be done to get a center for the uncertainty sphere. A circular logic seems to be in use.

Knowing the location of the traffic lights before detection will likely lower the false interpretation rate especially if the conditions at the time of detection are difficult: for example there is fog, difficult lighting conditions for the cameras or heavy rain. It will also lower the computational intensity and thus lower the cost. This may be a significant advantage.

Several different types of traffic lights are in use around the world but the description is very light on how these could be identified. This is especially a problem in the map creation phase as it is crucial to make correct interpretations. If successful this effort would make the map more valuable as the vehicle would only need to identify the traffic light fixture and could use the map to identify positions of different types of lights (arrows etc.)

Value of the description is lowered by some pretty standard patent speak, for example why draw a flowchart and then say the boxes can be in any order? Is it because the examiners like flow charts and not bullet point lists? In the current form it reduces the value of the flow chart to zero, all of the text it contains is already in the description.

While creating a system that does the mapping is certainly not a trivial undertaking I find it difficult to see what is the inventive step. The mix of patent speak and technical writing in the description could effectively hide it but I would argue that the description is pretty much what most skilled in the art would try after they realise that real time identification takes too much processing power and results in too many errors.

Generally the claims seem to refer to the text in the description part and to the images.

The claims curiously omit other than color based identification of the lights (for example 20), embedded image, shape, frequency etc. could also be used for identification. With LED traffic lights it might even be possible to do a software upgrade to make them blink fast enough to show this in a row read camera sensor. Further, the color identification scheme is lacking in detail. Color is mentioned but not intensity, if the position of each intended signal is known, then it is possible to identify the state from just the relative intensity of the three indicators. Further, depending on the color of the surrounding light being reflected from the traffic light and the color of the light emitted from the traffic light there might not be a large difference in color between the on and off states anyway.

 

Launching Project Troglodyte

We are getting tired of all the whining we have done about patent trolls, and have decided to do something about it.

We are calling our effort Project Troglodyte (we chose the name because we like it). The purpose of Project Troglodyte is to hunt for bad patents and to show what went wrong. See the web page. We’ve done three sample analyses already (CleanTech 1, Driverless vehicles 2, Driverless vehicles1).

A key focus (though not the only one) are patents that would be easy for a patent troll to abuse. Sometimes a patent that initially looks bad turns out to be harmless on closer analysis; we will also include such cases.

We are not ideologically opposed to some kind of patent system as such, although we see serious flaws in the current system. What we are against are entities who abuse those flaws and provide no added value to society.  We don’t really care who owns any given patent or what they might be doing with it right now; we are simply interested in the potential for misuse, should the patent fall into the wrong hands.

We are partly inspired by the Patent Busting Project of the  Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF). That project identifies patents which are being misused in courts, and tries to invalidate those patents (for example by finding prior art).  The EFF has very strong views against most patents, particularly software patents (see Patent Fail: In Defence of Innovation). We don’t necessarily agree with everything there.

However, we agree with this part: “The US Patent Office, overwhelmed and underfunded, issues questionable patents every day. “Patent trolls” buy too many of these patents and then misuse the patent system to shake down companies big and small.”  We’ve made some pretty strong statements of our own on this (see Trolling on the human rights; SMOS: The kiss of death of IPR; SMOS: Another view).

We want to take the EFF’s idea one step further: we scan for patents that have not YET caused problems, but have potential to do so in the future. We have chosen a few basic criteria:
1. Technologies that will be crucial in the near future.
2. Technologies that are potentially vulnerable to single patents.
3. Technologies that we understand at least somewhat.
4. Sometimes technologies we are just interested in.

We are doing this because we feel strongly about the issue of patent misuse, and want to see innovation that enables a better future. Between us we have quite a lot of experience in creating inventions, protecting them and analyzing patents. We feel that this project is a way to put that experience to good use. (For more details, see the About Us page). We are open to all and any suggestions on how to make this project more effective.

We have started off the project with three patent analyses, release simultaneously:

CleanTech 1. Transmitting pollution information over an integrated wireless network. “This is really no different from saying ‘If my invention sees a problem, it solves it'”.

Driverless vehicles 2. Diagnosis and repair for autonomous vehicles. “Effectively they attempt to patent the exact thing every good driver does.”

Driverless vehicles1. Traffic signal mapping and detection. “This is solid engineering but I didn’t get the “hey this is clever” reaction which is a sort of indicator for inventiveness.”


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