Vigilante engineer stops Waymo from patenting key lidar technology

[slivym]

This is so typical in technology now, large corporations patenting everything they can possibly think of, including things that they've blatantly copied. It absolutely doesn't surprise me that a technology as fundamentally simple and foundational as LIDAR is covered by a load of bullshit patents. As the article notes what this is really about is using your patents to litigate competitors either to slow their progress or force them into expensive fights that drain their resources. Frankly, patent reform is yet another case where the large players have built themselves a moat.

[megaman8]

Using Patents to patent trivial stuff and then getting a monopoly from the government as reward is just rent seeking evil and wrong on so many levels.

[hirundo]

What if patent applications required a fee that was added to a bounty fund to reward people that could demonstrate prior art during the examination period? Engineers like Swildens would then be more than interested bystanders, but have skin in the game and therefore incentive to do what he did just out of interest.

Bounty claims could also require an accompanying fee, to be refunded if the claim succeeds. The fees would discourage low quality patent applications and bounty claims.

[Skunkleton]

I don't think this would work. If the fee was too high, then smaller companies and individuals would be locked out of patents. If the fee is too low, then it doesn't matter and large companies will continue business as usual.

[rb808]

> He then spent $6,000 of his own money to launch a formal challenge to 936.

Either he has a lot of spare time and money or this isn't the full story.

[tyingq]

It appears he has lots of spare time and money, and perhaps a grudge about big companies and patents.

https://www.wired.com/story/eric-swildens-uber-waymo-lawsuit...

[devy]

> Either he has a lot of spare time and money.

He probably has! https://www.wired.com/story/eric-swildens-uber-waymo-lawsuit...

And previous discussion on this: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15875685

[raverbashing]

People spend more on cars, fancy PCs and such, I don't think 6k would be hard for someone making, let's say 100k/yr if they were really determined

[bigmit37]

This is really pissing me off as they can essentially patent anything and everything and squash all completion. It’s now an arms race of patents among the tech giants.

I remember reading here how Google was patenting neural network layers such as dropout etc.

[ganoushoreilly]

It is tough for the small guys. It's not uncommon for a patent application to cost you upwards of 30k or so to file which is a definite barrier to entry to start with.

[tychomaz]

“Waymo's lidar firing circuit showed current passing along a wire between the circuit and the ground in two directions—something generally deemed impossible. ”

It’s almost as if science said, “Give me one free miracle, and from there the entire thing will proceed with a seamless, causal explanation.”’17 The one free miracle was the sudden appearance of all the matter and energy in the universe, with all the laws that govern it. Rupert Sheldrake, The Science Delusion: Freeing the Spirit of Enquiry

[ohazi]

> describes how a laser diode can be configured to emit pulses of laser light using a circuit that includes an inductor and a gallium nitride transistor.

Did they seriously try to patent an oscillator? Galium nitride FET or a vacuum tube, this design is at least 100 years old. WTF.

[vibrolax]

You can't claim to have invented the oscillator, but you can claim the novel use of an oscillator for a particular application.

[franga2000]

The very least the courts could do here is make the patent owner pay back the 6000$ the engineer spent on the challenge. Of course, IMO they should get a big fine to go with that too.