22InteractionTechnique--Patents

1 .Brad Myers 05-899A/05-499A: Interaction Techniques Spring, 2014 Lecture 22: Legal Issues Around Interaction Techniques such as Patents 1 © 2014 - Brad Myers

2 .Talk Outline What is Intellectual Property (IP)? Why is IP relevant to HCI? To HCI research & invention? To HCI Practice & User Interface Design? CMU’s IP policies Controversy over software patents 2 © 2014 - Brad Myers

3 .Why Am I Talking About this Topic? Increasing interest in IP issues among students and colleagues Increasing activity in IP in the HCI area including of interaction techniques Significant value of patents of i nteraction techniques Importance to companies, including start ups I have 3 patents Authored the sidebar on IP in Hartson’s new text (HW reading) I have worked for about 34 law firms on over 57 IP cases, written about 31 expert reports, been deposed 17 times, and testified at 2 jury trials, 2 ITC hearings and 1 Markman hearing 3 © 2014 - Brad Myers

4 .Intellectual Property Property = something that can be owned Intellectual Property = “intangible property that is the result of creativity” Something non-tangible that can be owned 4 main kinds: Copyrights Trademarks Trade Secrets Patents 4 © 2014 - Brad Myers

5 .Copyrights Copyright gives the owner exclusive rights to the exact expression of an original work for a period of time. Does not cover ideas and information themselves, only the form or manner in which they are expressed Copyright © books, music, art, icons Software code But only the exact expression Copyrights are available free and automatically for all works. Can be registered, if published 5 © 2014 - Brad Myers

6 .Trademarks A distinctive phrase or indicator that uniquely identifies a particular commercial product To avoid confusion in the consumer’s mind ®, ™, SM, etc. Can be a word, icon, color, etc. Can last as long as the product is available Costs lots to get and maintain U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) for registration 6 © 2014 - Brad Myers

7 .Trade Secrets Secrets are different from Patents Patents have to be disclosed Companies keep all sorts of secrets Plans, marketing analyses, exact algorithms, … “Trade secrets” – secrets related to the products of a company E.g., the formula for Coca-Cola HCI example: exact algorithm for implementing something Different from copyright of the exact code – reimplementation issue Non-disclosure agreements (NDA) say you won’t reveal a company’s secrets If you want to get a patent, have to keep invention secret until patent is filed 7 © 2014 - Brad Myers

8 .Patents Exclusive rights to an invention for a period of time You can prevent others from doing it Ironically, does not necessarily allow you to do it US Patents: last 20 years from date of submission Patents may take 5 years and $20,000 or more to get a US patent Significant lawyer time is involved Can be up to $100,000 for patents across many countries 8 © 2014 - Brad Myers

9 .Patents U.S. Constitution, Article 1, Section 8, Clause 8: “To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries;” http://www.archives.gov/exhibits/charters/constitution_transcript.html Must be New (novel) Useful, Non-obvious (it must not be an improvement that would be obvious to a person having ordinary skill in the pertinent art) Properly disclosed, so can be reproduced http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/data/constitution/article01/39.html Inventor submits patent application to patent office, which rejects the patent based on prior art, so inventor answers, explaining why different and revising the claims to avoid prior art 9 © 2014 - Brad Myers

10 .Types of Patents Utility patents: Processes, machines, articles of manufacture, compositions of matter, and improvements thereof Cannot be an algorithm or formula by itself Cannot patent “an idea” Design patents Appearance of an article of manufacture Just has the diagrams, no specification A software-related patent is a patent that claims as all or substantially all of its invention some feature, function or process embodied in a computer program that is executed on a computer Utility patents – the usual kind Design – just pictures (e.g., http://www.freepatentsonline.com/D554094.pdf ) As opposed to: Trade secrets Copyrights – just the particular expression 10 © 2014 - Brad Myers

11 .Types of Patents Utility patents: Processes, machines, articles of manufacture, compositions of matter, and improvements thereof Cannot be an algorithm or formula by itself Cannot patent “an idea” Design patents Appearance of an article of manufacture Just has the diagrams, no specification A software-related patent is a patent that claims as all or substantially all of its invention some feature, function or process embodied in a computer program that is executed on a computer Utility patents – the usual kind Design – just pictures (e.g., http://www.freepatentsonline.com/D554094.pdf ) As opposed to: Trade secrets Copyrights – just the particular expression 10 © 2014 - Brad Myers

12 .Some People Have Always Been Against Software Patents “Software patents are an impediment to innovation and an unjust threat to software developers as well as software users.” http://www.nosoftwarepatents.com/ “Marten Mickos from MySQL said that software patents cause havoc and that it’s not like mechanics. He said that software development should be viewed like literature and art.” http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/news/1039150/open-source-luminaries-claim-software-is-like-art-literature There certainly are a lot of bad patents that have issued Recently passed “America Invents Act” – first large-scale reform of patent law in 60 years 12 © 2014 - Brad Myers

13 .Why UI Patents for Researchers? As an inventor of user interface techniques, shouldn’t I be compensated if someone used my invention? User interfaces cannot be trade secrets, by definition! If a product embodies the UI technique, it must be apparent! 13 © 2014 - Brad Myers

14 .Example: EdgeWrite Can’t embody idea in a system without making every detail apparent Allow idea to be revealed and protected Copyright, trade secret don’t seem relevant to UI ideas. patent 14 © 2014 - Brad Myers

15 .Patent Claims Patents only protect what is in the claims Claims are negotiated with patent office Must differentiate what is covered from what already exists Often, there is a key difference between the invention and the prior systems 15 © 2014 - Brad Myers

16 .HCI Patents and HCI Design Don’t want to infringe on other people’s patents as a designer But impossible to know about all relevant patents Hard to search, thousands of results Maybe patents pending Toolkit widgets generally protected by the vendor Standard Windows UI is covered by Microsoft’s patents But doesn’t help with web Didn’t help phone manufacturers Beware of “Indemnification clause” in contracts Who is liable if product that includes software from others is alleged to infringe a patent? 16 © 2014 - Brad Myers

17 .CMU’s IP Policies http://www.cmu.edu/policies/documents/IntellProp.html Copyrights generally owned by creator Books, papers, theses, musical compositions, etc. But not the copyright on software produced as research In general, results of sponsored research results are owned by the university Includes PhD research paid by grants, independent study, etc. Student work for classes generally owned by the student Includes Masters of HCI project work Even when created with “substantial use of university facilities ” © 2014 - Brad Myers 17

18 .CMU’s Tech Transfer Office Center for Technology Transfer and Enterprise Creation (CTTEC) Bayh –Dole Act of 1980 says that universities can own IP from federal research Encourages licensing and technology transfer CMU has generous terms for inventors and people who want to do start-ups CTTEC helps in general with licensing / releasing as open source What is worth getting patents on ? 18 © 2014 - Brad Myers source

19 .Software Patent Issues Unlike with drugs, software products incorporate thousands of ideas, potentially thousands of patents Difficult to determine the value of a single idea Enforcing a disputed patent can cost over $2,000,000 Something like most ideas have already appeared, so novelty is always questioned and questionable Startups and big companies now need to plan to spend $$$$ to defend against patents Even unrelated small businesses like coffee shops 19 © 2014 - Brad Myers

20 .IP Lawsuits http://press.rim.com/release.jsp?id=981 source 20 © 2014 - Brad Myers source

21 .http://www.fiercewireless.com/ pages/chart-smartphone-patent-lawsuits http://www.eetimes.com/electronics-news/4235448/Intel-patents-purchase-RealNetworks-partnership?cid=NL_EETimesDaily 21 © 2014 - Brad Myers

22 .http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/technology/german-court-blocks-samsung-tablets-from-german-market-because-they-resemble-apples-ipad2/2012/01/31/gIQAAFwReQ_story.html?wpisrc=nl_tech 22 © 2014 - Brad Myers

23 .Types of Lawsuits Big companies against each other Apple v. Samsung, etc. Non-practicing entities (NPEs) v. big or small companies Also called patent assertion entities (PAEs ), and “patent trolls ” NTP v. RIM, etc. But maybe also Carnegie Mellon vs. Marvell Technology Group Intellectual Ventures : Founded in 2000 by Nathan Myhrvold and Edward Jung of Microsoft Bought a huge number of patents and sues companies Also does some original research Income – all about licensing fees for the patents Federal Courts International Trade Commission (ITC) Patent office re-examination 23 © 2014 - Brad Myers

24 .Patent Trolls’ business model Buy or acquire patents Often poorly written and vague Threaten company with a patent lawsuit Sell the company a license for far less than defending a lawsuit would cost Repeat Having a collection of settlements makes the next one easier "Litigation by “patent trolls” cost defendants at least $29 billion in 2011, one study showed. Those costs are driven by software patents .” – citation Legalized “extortion” – citation © 2014 - Brad Myers 24

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26 .Current Supreme Court Case Alice Corp. v. CLS Bank Computer-implemented technique for reducing risk in currency and financial transactions Detailed discussion Argued in front of Supreme Court last week Could overthrow all hundreds of thousands of software patents “ collectively worth  billions of dollars” © 2014 - Brad Myers 26

27 .New Apple vs. Samsung cases © 2014 - Brad Myers 27 Apple Inc. v. Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd. et al., case number 5:12-cv-00630, in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California Apple patents: 5,946,647 – “ System and method for performing an action on a structure in computer-generated data” 6,847,959 – “ Universal interface for retrieval of information in a computer system” 7,761,414; -- “ Asynchronous data synchronization amongst devices” 8,074,172 – “Method , system, and graphical user interface for providing word recommendations” 8,046,721 – “ Unlocking a device by performing gestures on an unlock image” The Samsung patents: 7,577,757 – “ Multimedia synchronization method and device” 6,226,449 – “ Apparatus for recording and reproducing digital image and speech” Source: http :// www.law360.com/m/ip/articles/523391