I have actually reviewed this man's supposedly vigilante's submission to the USPTO and it is clear that this story is not what it seems. The document is a highly professional 95+ page document of complex legal argumentation that only a law firm with a small team of lawyers with a lot of prior experience doing this could have put together. It contains lots of lawyer speak and contemporary argumentation that a lay person would simple not have knowledge of. As much as people are keen to believe the vigilante narrative, there is zero chance that is what happened here. Instead, he was used as a 'strawman' by a company with much deeper pockets to attack Waymo's key patent. I estimate that this actually cost around $100k to prepare and file.
I think this story does an injustice by calling him an 'engineer'. He cofounded Speedera Networks, which was acquired for $130m by Akamai after a 3-year patent battle, a battle he was on the front-line of and learnt a lot about patent infringement. Yes, he's an engineer, but he's also an engineer who knows more than the average engineer about patents and complex legal argumentation.
Elsewhere it's mentioned that Swildens was on the receiving end of a 3 year battle over patent infringement, where he was a founder and so intimately involved. After an apprenticeship like that it would be unsurprising if he could emulate a team of lawyers.
The Ars article omitted an important background note about the guy, that he sold a company for $120M at one point, and that it was "cheaply" because he was forced to do so by a lost patent dispute:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18119018
Can you give some more specifics? What are your credentials exactly? You only have three comments in five years on your account, all related to patent discussions but no context as to who you are exactly.
Goodness yes, everybody knows that a mere engineer can never be a clever lawyer.
Except perhaps patent lawyers, which in most jurisdictions have both engineering and lawyering degrees. Or perhaps just a motivated company founder with 4 years of expertise fighting patents. Pretty far fetched I know, but perhaps one should keep a open mind...
It does look that way but then if that's the case why didn't anybody at Uber point that out during the lawsuit? From the article:
>The patent 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. That chance discovery helped spark a lawsuit in which Waymo accused Uber of patent infringement and of using lidar secrets supposedly stolen by engineer Anthony Levandowski.
>In August 2017, Uber agreed to redesign its Fuji lidar not to infringe the 936 patent.
If "some guy" with $6000 lying around could overturn most of the patent why couldn't Uber? That's the part that baffles me.
Well it does incorporate a voltage boost converter as part of it's operation but yeah, people have been doing that sort of thing since forever. Any time you have a requirement for a higher voltage than the supply and you are pulsing something this design will just fall out from that. Not an invention...
The Velodyne driver circuits are also entirely straightforward. The characteristics of inductors and capacitors are pretty well known by now. Apparently you can get a patent for using them in entirely obvious ways.
If the US patent office did their job, then there would be no need for "vigilante" engineers.
Maybe the reporting of the patent situation is a bit biased but from what I've heard over the years it appears to me that every second patent should be invalid and has prior art.
In any classification system you're going to get false positives and false negatives. We could improve the situation through better funding to the Patent Office but given the breadth of things getting patented it's a really fundamentally hard problem and thank goodness for recent changes to US patent law making it easier to invalidate bad patents.
That's stunning that (evidently) no one noticed the patents were for a physically impossible design. Was the legal battle even about the designs or more so for posturing?
From the article, it sounds like Waymo's attempts at rewriting the patent were what introduced the physical impossibilities. Presumably the circuit from the original patent was physically possible.
Just like how engineers certify building plans to ensure the laws of physics are respected, patents really should need to go through some sort of peer certification review - at the submitter's expense - before it gets in front of an examiner!
I'm impressed that the random engineer was willing to put up $6k of his own money to challenge the patent, despite not benefiting from the decision in any way.
I disagree that he did not benefit. When a bad patent is invalidated, everyone in society benefits. That so-called "invention" is no longer exclusively locked up in the hands of a single company.
Although some engineers may disagree, this is one of the reasons I believe engineering should NOT be a protected industry/profession. Fine if the title was but not the action of doing it.
I read a story about someone showing flaws in a USA traffic light system and he was subsequently fined for "illegal engineering" which is the most idiotic thing ever.
Going on current USA progression it won't be long before you get 10 years behind bars for "illegal engineering" in some states.
That case is a little out there, I've never met an non-pe engineer that has ever gotten in trouble for doing engineering. I think PE certifications are fine in cases where there is one guy having the final say on a massive project that could kill someone if it fails. If my calculator app crashes, no one is going to be crushed to death. I think software and electrical engineering is a little bit different compared to a mechanical or civil engineer that is designing buildings and superstructures. For one, software and hardware is something you can constantly test and redesign for relatively little cost. You can come out with a product that just works and works well. Even if you are producing software and hardware that goes into lifesaving equipment, you can still perform tests on the final product to make sure it conforms. Once you build that bridge, its up there. You can't refactor it and come out with a new version if a strut fails. And because your design is in the public, the county/state/country is going to make sure you do it right. Too many people have been hurt by shoddy buildings in the lifetime of humanity to ignore modern safety code. There should be no reason why having a licensed professional engineer is a bad thing for anyone except those not good enough to beat the exam or those too cheap to hire one.
I really don't see anything to suggests that "illegal engineering" is a trend. I don't think that discussing engineering topics should be illegal but you should be fined for lying about being a PE just as you would by saying you are a medical doctor when you really aren't.
The way I understand the story from this article, the patent wasn't magic, it was just obvious and plenty of prior art existed. When this guy challenged that patent, Waymo started rewriting it, and this is when the "impossible magic tech" was introduced.
On this one, they may have some ground. A former engineer allegedly walked out with designs, and pleaded the fifth amendment when asked to testify in court.
> In March, an examiner noted that a re-drawn diagram of Waymo's lidar firing circuit showed current passing along a wire between the circuit and the ground in two directions—something generally deemed impossible.
> The USPTO found that some claims replicated technology described in an earlier patent from lidar vendor Velodyne, while another claim was simply "impossible" and "magic."
I don't see the word "magic" anywhere in the Final Rejection document. What did they say exactly?
Just goes to show that in top-down organizations, it doesn't matter if they have tons of employees and engineers when the work output of all of them is just a sum and intrinsically limited by their masters at the top.
[+] [-] discjockeydom|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] haser_au|7 years ago|reply
Source: https://www.wired.com/story/eric-swildens-uber-waymo-lawsuit...
[+] [-] calcifer|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] femto|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] akavel|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] simias|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pmorici|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pentae|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ageofwant|7 years ago|reply
Except perhaps patent lawyers, which in most jurisdictions have both engineering and lawyering degrees. Or perhaps just a motivated company founder with 4 years of expertise fighting patents. Pretty far fetched I know, but perhaps one should keep a open mind...
[+] [-] ObsoleteNerd|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] greenleafjacob|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|7 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] lawrenceyan|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] twtw|7 years ago|reply
I just took a look at the patent (highly recommended), and it's fairly ridiculous. It's a 101 design to control a diode with a transistor.
[+] [-] simias|7 years ago|reply
>The patent 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. That chance discovery helped spark a lawsuit in which Waymo accused Uber of patent infringement and of using lidar secrets supposedly stolen by engineer Anthony Levandowski.
>In August 2017, Uber agreed to redesign its Fuji lidar not to infringe the 936 patent.
If "some guy" with $6000 lying around could overturn most of the patent why couldn't Uber? That's the part that baffles me.
[+] [-] upofadown|7 years ago|reply
The Velodyne driver circuits are also entirely straightforward. The characteristics of inductors and capacitors are pretty well known by now. Apparently you can get a patent for using them in entirely obvious ways.
[+] [-] deepnotderp|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jonathanstrange|7 years ago|reply
Maybe the reporting of the patent situation is a bit biased but from what I've heard over the years it appears to me that every second patent should be invalid and has prior art.
[+] [-] ChrisSD|7 years ago|reply
I believe paying for government services is considered a contentious issue in the USA.
[+] [-] Symmetry|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] steve_adams_86|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] erpellan|7 years ago|reply
https://patents.google.com/patent/US6360693
HN discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2102388
Also: we all owe license fees for using gravity.
https://patents.google.com/patent/US6368227B1/en
[+] [-] eridius|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] canada_dry|7 years ago|reply
Just like how engineers certify building plans to ensure the laws of physics are respected, patents really should need to go through some sort of peer certification review - at the submitter's expense - before it gets in front of an examiner!
[+] [-] TheM00se|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] drakenot|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] CloudYeller|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ryandrake|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|7 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] sir-alien|7 years ago|reply
I read a story about someone showing flaws in a USA traffic light system and he was subsequently fined for "illegal engineering" which is the most idiotic thing ever.
Going on current USA progression it won't be long before you get 10 years behind bars for "illegal engineering" in some states.
Wasn't even that long ago. https://www.theregister.co.uk/2017/04/29/engineer_fined_for_...
[+] [-] moftz|7 years ago|reply
I really don't see anything to suggests that "illegal engineering" is a trend. I don't think that discussing engineering topics should be illegal but you should be fined for lying about being a PE just as you would by saying you are a medical doctor when you really aren't.
[+] [-] ezoe|7 years ago|reply
And then, the same patent is concluded to be "impossible" and "magic".
What kind of nonsense is this? How do you use or redesign to avoid using the impossible magic tech?
[+] [-] TeMPOraL|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] codeCatalyst|7 years ago|reply
So much for "Do no Evil".
[+] [-] writepub|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kabes|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jjeaff|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] still_grokking|7 years ago|reply
Oh! Someone took inspiration in real magic[1].
[1] http://www.catb.org/jargon/html/magic-story.html
[+] [-] Kiro|7 years ago|reply
I don't see the word "magic" anywhere in the Final Rejection document. What did they say exactly?
[+] [-] iamleppert|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] hiccuphippo|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] deepnotderp|7 years ago|reply
:(
[+] [-] ezoe|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rkagerer|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dang|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Jerry2|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Allower|7 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] vikingcaffiene|7 years ago|reply
Who on earth has that kind of scratch just lying around to spend on something like this? I mean good for him for doing it but wow!!