Tag Archives: Patents

Amazon’s Silk

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Interesting read on Tech Dirt on Amazon.com’s Silk browser. They note that it’s a copyright infringement suit waiting to happen. If you’re too lazy to read the article, basically Silk will copy whatever website you go to onto it’s servers so it can send you a compressed version of it. For instance if a website that you’re on has a 3mb picture they’ll send you a 50kb picture instead. This does a few things. First, it will help relieve congestion on cell networks because smaller pieces of information are being sent. Second, it will save you data if you don’t have an unlimited data package. Finally, it could violate copyright. Why? Because it’s copying everything from a website and then sending you the information from a different source. Not only that, but it is effectively altering the picture they are sending you. I’m not sure if there have been any copyright cases based on compressing the quality of a picture, but for all intents and purposes it’s altering the picture. It probably should fall under fair use, but you never know some one will probably try to sue over that.

There are some other issues to consider too. The browser has predictive capabilities based off of aggregate users actions. This is actually fairly similar to what Facebook is doing, but there are no implications for ads with Amazon (at this point we don’t know if they store individual user statistics). The example they give on the website, is if you go to NYTimes.com and a high percentage of users then click on the business section Amazon will pre-load this information into their severs. This could have an impact on big websites’ server loads as well. They could potentially be hit twice for a lot of visits to their site. If Amazon predicts incorrectly, then it will hit the server at least twice.

Another interesting consideration is related to ad revenue. Let’s say users of some website like, I don’t know KBMOD.com, always visit a YouTube account after reading the front page, let’s go with InfiniteSadd, which would then auto play the video that’s on top. This of course have the ad pop up on the bottom. Now the question I have is in these situations would this count as a click, or would the ads start to filter out views and click throughs from Silk? The situation, I presented is unlikely as there’s no direct link from KBMOD to InfiniteSadd’s user profile. But’s easy to image that it could work that way.

I’d really like to know more about the user statistics that Silk will be collecting. Since the browser is going to be on their Fire device (who knows could also be an update for older Kindles as well), Amazon will know who is browsing what you are browsing and may actually keep that information in your account to predict your behavior better. I don’t see any reason why they couldn’t collect that data. I would imagine that it’s very technologically feasible to use a larger aggregate dataset for websites you don’t frequent, but for your most commonly visited websites for Amazon to have enough usage to figure out where you’re going to go next.

I think the browser is a great idea. However, I can also see this turn into another way for Amazon to better target your recommendations. If you are on your Fire and they see where you go, then they will also know what other products you might be interested in that you haven’t bought through Amazon before. If they know what interests you then they can put those into your “Silk based recommendations.” Now there hasn’t been any talk of that yet, but since they are selling the product at a loss they need you to buy a decent amount of product to get a return on their investment. I’ve seen two values, $50 and $10 losses.

Keep your eyes open for news on this, it could be a copyright and privacy issue before long.

Facebook dirty filthy liars

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Facebook has patented the ability to continue tracking users after they have left their website. Despite this Facebook repeatedly claimed that they were not in the business of tracking their users. However, Facebook’s business is knowing their product as well as possible. You are their product. They are extremely interested in knowing everything they can about you. Why? It’s really simple. The more they know about their user’s online browsing activities the better they can customize ads for you. I imagine that they will create some pretty sophisticated models to determine who will click what sorts of ads. The more people click the more accurate the ad targeting will become.

While individual users do have a web “fingerprint” as the EFF puts it, people will typically browse the same types of websites together. For example people who play fantasy football will be going to yahoo! sport (or some other competing service), they then visit sites like espn, sports illustrated and probably a few sports blogs to try to figure out the best way to get an edge in their game this weekend. Facebook will take this data and aggregate it for a larger set of data. As there are 800 million facebook users and millions of players of fantasy sports, this data could be extremely useful for Facebook to use in placing ads. From these data they may be able to determine which sports team you’re interested in, which players are on your fantasy team, and then display ads for jersey’s from that team or for a specific player. They will also be able to figure out which ads will have an higher likelihood of someone with your browsing profile to click on.

Facebook will then be able to set a premium for ads that they do this with, or they will earn more money from the number of clicks a given ad gets. This of course is why Facebook has decided to collect this data. Some of it seems harmless enough. It’s not that big of a deal that Facebook is getting my fantasy football information, why should I care? Well, you don’t just use the internet for fantasy football, you use it for banking, shopping and a plethora of other activities. Do you know what data facebook is collecting? I certainly don’t. From the patent it is unclear what protections they are providing on the data they are collection. It also doesn’t say what data they will be collecting when you visit a third party site.

As a personal precaution I have started to use Facebook in a separate instance of Chrome using the Incognito function. This prevents my browsing history from being saved and deletes many cookies. I have also taken to deleting all my cookies every time I close my browser. I don’t do it myself Chrome does it for me. Additionally, these settings are available for both Internet Explorer and Firefox. I suggest that you look into doing similar safety measures to prevent Facebook from getting information from you that you don’t want them to have.

Finally, the other thing that isn’t really discussed in many places that mention the ads, this data is also being provided to law enforcement agencies. Now of course there’s the whole if you aren’t doing anything wrong then you don’t have to worry about anything. However, this worries me regardless because I’m losing my control over what information is going to the government and companies. I don’t like that. Patents like this one and cookies that record our daily activities are changing our private life into our public life.

Google’s Motorola Future

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According to Eric Schmidt of Google the purchase of Motorola Mobile is also it’s own foray into physical products. This is promising but it’s also dangerous for Google. While 98% of Google’s revenue comes from ads as of 2008, the majority of its revenue stream is free of a great deal of risk from patent infringements.  This is double true because the majority of Google’s patents are related to search and locating data. The products that it produces that people use on a regular basis have been designed around open standards which enables them to get around patenting and use licensing instead. If any of these technologies are accused of patent infringement Google can pull up the original source code, the version and the date. While this may be more expensive than the patent examiner finding this during the patent examining procedure, it still can save Google millions of dollars in patent suits. However, it hasn’t prevented them from having to pay a good deal in licensing fees despite this as I mentioned in my previous post.

Why is this a risk for Google? Well, every one of those patent lawsuits that were targeted at Motorola is now directly targeted at Google. Google is sitting on a huge pile of cash. Enough cash to outright buy Motorola. Additionally, any lawsuit that is directed towards an application of Android on a Motorola phone that Google will eventually be selling, is going to be directed towards Google now. Previously, when there was something infringing in an application on Android most of the risk was shifted towards the manufactures of the phones and away from Google. Google does have to pay Lodsys/Intellectual Ventrues for one of their patents which allows things to be purchased through apps. Like using the Android Market place. Google also has one other lawsuit related to Android at this point, which is related to a Java Patent. This is kind of an ongoing lawsuit, which Oracle has had to remove a blog post from a former Sun employee praising the use of Java in Android.

There’s got to be some sort of potential for payout for Google to take this risk though. Yes, I do think there is. Despite the fact that Google is going opening itself to direct lawsuit battles with Apple, it also allows its engineers another outlet for creativity now that Google has shuttered Google Labs. Engineers from the Motorola Mobile side will be able to have more freedom and the engineers that work in Google will be able to play more with Android to make a more superior product. Google will have direct control over their handset opposed to farming it out to HTC like they did with the Nexus One.

Are there any other risks besides the ones you’ve mentioned already? I think there’s one big one. Anti-trust case. Google is already in the cross eyes for an investigation. In my next blog I’ll discuss the case against Microsoft which the US and EU handled and then how the precedence could impact Google.

Google’s misstep with Patents

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Google has been in the news a lot recently related patents. Why? Well, I think they’ve managed their intellectual property in a naive way. Not an incorrect way. Just one that wasn’t keeping up with the behavior of competitors and trolls in the market place. To date Google has 782 patents, for a company that has produced as many innovative products as it has, this is not very many. Google has been around for 13 years now, founding in 1998. Comparing Google to Apple, looking at patents filed after 1998, is not a good comparison. Apple has filed and received 2600 patents. Sure they’ve been busy working on products and had an established market already. The iPod had already come out by then. Regardless, this indicates that Google has made a major misstep in regard to patents.

I fully applaud Google’s efforts to minimize the number of patents they own. It’s clear from a glance at the patents, they have focused their patents on the ability to search for data as well as data management. They are sorely lacking when it comes to most software. This is most likely why Google has licensing agreements with companies like Intellectual Ventures. To combat the growing web of lawsuits surrounding it’s handset manufacturers and developers Google has been on a spree of both purchasing patents (1,000 from IBM and 12,000 with the purchase of Motorola Mobile) and propaganda against software patents.

Motorola will give Google the patent expertise and experience at defending its patent claims as well as a huge number of patents it will need to defend. I believe this will create a great change in the way that Google deals with intellectual property in general. I’m not entirely sure this is a good thing either. Google may take the route of IBM which both patents things specifically so that other companies can’t patent them and publishes technologies in obscure journals which can be later used to invalidate patents as a form of prior art. However, Google could easily take the route of Apple. This would be extremely bad in my opinion. The route where Google continues to invest in new technologies but patents everything and then makes it difficult for other companies to use that technology. Google has the innovative capabilities to become a huge patent troll.

I think the only good that would come out of that is if Google went after patent trolls.With open source technologies some of the problems with software patenting does go away. As anything with an open source license is technically released into the public and becomes part of the prior art. Unfortunately, that’s also a huge problem with open source. It would be impossible for a patent examiner, who typically has 3 days to approve a patent, to actually find a given software technology which is already being used as open source.

Overall, I think Google is currently attempting to address its misstep with patents. I think that Google will push for patent reform for software patents. I think that with a large enough group of people, including billionaires like Mark Cuban, there could be a significant change in the manner in which software patents are issued. Gaming companies, search engines, and software developers need to work together to address this issue though.

Ethics in Science III

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I’ve been doing a series on Ethics in science, part one, part two, because there’s been a lot of public issues in the UK about the behavior of scientists. Any suggestions, or laws put into affect would have far reaching impacts. As any scientist in the UK would be required to follow them and any scientist that wishes to publish in a journal headquartered there. I believe Nature is. Nature is THE journal to get published in.

There are some different suggestions on what should be done, including ethics review boards and independent verification of results. The UK’s investigation of fraud led to this result:

In the same way that there is an external regulator overseeing health and safety, we consider that there should be an external regulator overseeing research integrity,” says the committee’s report. “We recommend that the government set out proposals on the scope and powers of such a regulator and consult with the research community and other relevant parties to develop them.

I understand what they are going for here. They want to prevent another vaccine debacle or prevent another cold fusion lie. I think they also plan to prevent another “Climate gate.” While these are noble causes, I can’t help but fear that politics will get involved in this process. If a scientist is found of committing true fraud their career is over. There just isn’t the right incentives to commit fraud in MOST sciences. Yes, it happens, but it’s more likely to be a mistake than true fraud. Which is something that peer review might catch. However, even this is difficult without the initial data set, or recordings of how the experiment was carried out. Scientists are pretty brutal when going through the peer review process. They question everything and you have to have a satisfactory answer to all their questions if you want the results to be published. The true best way to improve scientific debate is to provide incentives to publish articles that have debunked previous research. This will fix more problems than a regulatory board for most of the sciences.

However, then we come to medical sciences. Here there are much greater incentives to commit fraud or intentionally mislead. Why? Well, for a blockbuster drug they can sell Billions in revenue a year. If a drug company thinks that they have a blockbuster on their hands they will try to get it to market sooner. In most cases they have patent protection for at most 10 to 15 years. But you’ve said patents are for 20 years. That’s true, however, it typically takes drug companies 10 years to get a drug to market. After the last ten years they are able to request a 5 year extension.

Why is the system set up like this? Well, the drug companies test a lot of different drugs and not all of them can be blockbuster drugs. A lot of them don’t make it through the rigorous testing process either. The drug companies have to pay for all of that as well as make a profit. So, they charge a lot for these blockbuster drugs. They actually do have some different prices to try to help the poor out as well though.

So, in clinical trails there is more incentive to commit fraud or with hold important results. What can be done about it? Well Bernie Sanders (US Senator) has proposed a prize competition for developing different kinds of drugs, which as a stipulation of getting the prize the US government would own the patent. The government would license the patent out so drugs could be cheaper. However, this prize would have to be huge which would again provide more incentives to defraud the government. It would have to be in the billions to allow for the drug companies to recoup their expenses. It could force much stronger restrictions and oversight on the drug trials though. Which could reduce the ability to commit fraud. The prize committee could potentially be made up of scientists that are part of the NIH (National Institute of Health) which would do the data analysis for each of the “Blockbuster” trials thus forcing impartiality into clinical trials.

This could work. Additionally there could be sanctions put on the fraudulent authors, where they are unable to publish for a year, at any level. Where they lose their grants, or are unable to hire new graduate students until they show they have been reformed. This would certainly kill their career. However, this should happen.

Finally, I think that scientists should be required to add any conflicts of interest in the publications as well as sources of funding. In many cases this already happens as the funding agencies require it, however making it an explicit part of the publication process will make it more transparent. Transparency is vital to science.

Science isn’t perfect, but it’s our best tool for understanding the world around it. Committing fraud on the scientific community and the world as a whole is a horrible crime and should be treated as such.