[Corpora-List] Patent application for "Referent tracking of portions of reality"

[Laurence Anthony]

> I'd say there's not much to worry about. Patents are mainly used to :
> - show to the world that some research has been done (typically,
> patent from universities, to improve their rank in the Shanghai
> Ranking...) ;
> - be able to threatened your commercial opponents, as a dissuasive
> weapon (typically, Microsoft, Google and Interval Research who just
> woke up from the 90's).
> Apparently we are in the first situation.
>
> --
> Emmanuel
>

I would agree with Emmanuel that there is nothing to worry about. One
big reason for a company to obtain a patent is so that they will not
be taken to court by another company with a competing patent. Also,
even if someone obtains a patent for a technology, you would need to
be making some kind of profit off that patent before you could be
taken to court. Using a similar (existing) technology, would be
perfectly within your rights, e.g. using WordSmith.

>There must be a vast amount of prior art that would invalidate their
patent if only there were knowledgable patent examiners in the various
POs. And why do they grant software patents anyway.

I haven't read the patent details but I would expect that they use
some niche technology that hasn't been reported before. In that sense,
the patent application would be valid. In fact, there are many, many
patented natural language processing systems that are all quite
similar. Patent writing is an art and the whole world of patent law is
very fuzzy and complex. But, I think we can relax and continue working
in corpus linguistics without worrying too much about it. It only
becomes important when you take a new technology to a company and try
to sell or license it.

Laurence.

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