8 ms·

It's the "patent pending" part that sucks. They're trying to patent the idea of changing your video card's CLUT (color look-up table) to reduce eye strain, whic

by lispit 11y ago

It's the "patent pending" part that sucks. They're trying to patent the idea of changing your video card's CLUT (color look-up table) to reduce eye strain, which is a fairly obvious and trivial thing to do once you know that blue light affects melatonin production.

elipsey 11y ago
Yep. They care so much about public helath that no one is allowed to be healthier with paying them. Classy move.
- pbhjpbhj 11y ago
  Can't you level that complaint at all pharma firms though too? At least if it doesn't encourage those behind f.lux to continue beneficial activities (promoting the benefit of redshifted screen use) then it should encourage others to develop health focussed apps in the hope of getting paid? FWIW I use redshift.
  - elipsey 11y ago
    Pharma patents are less abstract. They patent a product, not the idea of making a product. Changing a pallete was a solved problem. "Doing something when it's a time" was a solved problem. But if you change a CLUT "becuase it's a time" your software belongs to someone else. It seems like the only innvoation here is observing a need discovered by health researchers, and patenting the existing components of the solution before someone else does. I'm would find it a bit suprising if someone on HN really thought that changing a CLUT because of the time is so hard that no one could figure out how without the promise of a government granted monopoly on the idea. I will hasten to add that actually implementing, marketing, and maintaining a real life multi-platform proprietary solution sounds hard, in the sense of being plenty of work, and I think lots of people would gladly pay for that service. The question we should be asking is: where is the public good in the government intervening to reduce competition in this space by creating a new abstract property right?
    - pbhjpbhj 11y ago
      >Pharma patents are less abstract. They patent a product, not the idea of making a product. // All patents are for ideas, in order to acquire a patent you have to give details of how to perform it - how to create a product/device or how to work a system/method to use the idea - but patents are not given for products per se. I'm not that familiar with pharma patents but the few I've seen were quite abstract, they make claims that cover many different chemicals rather than one "product" (this when attached to that group; this when attached to some other group; etc.). That said I was specifically responding to the [paraphrasing] "you have to pay them to be healthier if they patent the medically beneficial method/technique/device/drug" - which is true for all companies holding healthcare patents that they don't give free licenses on. WRT the particular product you do it a disservice - yes changing things at a time were known, yes changing colour palettes were known but there is synergy in the idea of removing blue light elements from a monitor gradually as dusk passes in order to prevent the negative effects of blue light on people and the method of changing a CLUT to achieve this end forms more than just a colocation of known ideas. One argument in this sort of situation has always been quite powerful to me - if it was so obvious then it would have been done, the need was known, the individual concepts were available. Almost every idea seems obvious post hoc.
      - elipsey 11y ago
        >> in order to acquire a patent you have to give details of how to perform it Software patents don't have to include code, and generally are not useful to a skilled practitioner in actually creating software. The are written in legalese by persons incentivized to seek as boad a claim as possible, while revealing as little usefully information as possible. >> if it was so obvious then it would have been done By this reasoning every new product should be protected by a monopoly. Sometimes how to do something is obvious, but no one wanted to do it before. The question should be whether treating every new situation as an oportunity for government sponsored property grab is good for society, or just the first guy to file. A huge number software developers get sued because they wrote software that violated a patent they had never heard of for a "business method" type of task, but "with a computer". There are hundreds of thousands of software patents, so it's not possible to read them all before selling software to make sure one hasn't infringed, assuming one could actually be sure without simply defending a trial. The reason there are so many lawsuites is because it WAS obvious, and lots of people did the same thing without ever hearing of the patent untill they got sued. I'm guessing that your not a programmer who's read any software patents. I have never met one who has that did not agree that the contents of software patents were obfuscated and worthless for creating a storehouse of usefull knowlegde that benefits society, what is the constituionally mandated purpose of patents in the first place.
coldtea 11y ago
>It's the "patent pending" part that sucks. They're trying to patent the idea of changing your video card's CLUT (color look-up table) to reduce eye strain, which is a fairly obvious and trivial thing to do once you know that blue light affects melatonin production. On the other hand, since nobody else has done it (or patented it yet), real life proves that it's not that "obvious". Like the "egg of Columbus" some thing are obvious in retrospect: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Egg_of_Columbus https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Egg_of_Columbus
- mangeletti 11y ago
  This is also true (also called hindsight bias).
- CamperBob2 11y ago
  There are only two real incentives that we, as a society, have to grant patent protection. One is to ensure that inventors have a fair chance to recoup their R&D investment. The other is to offer an alternative to trade secrets, where innovative insights are hidden from the rest of us, potentially forever, by a single proprietor. Obviously, neither of these applies here. There is absolutely no reason for us to grant patent protection to f.lux. This is so "patently" obvious that the burden of proof falls on those who would argue otherwise.
  - coldtea 11y ago
    >There are only two real incentives that we, as a society, have to grant patent protection. One is to ensure that inventors have a fair chance to recoup their R&D investment. The other is to offer an alternative to trade secrets, where the innovative methods are locked up, potentially forever, by a single proprietor. Obviously, neither of these applies here. I actually disagree with both -- let R&D happen by public research (e.g. universities) that competes for funds based on results, and then makes said results available for everybody (at least in the same country who did the paying). But that said, I don't see why the people who did this "obviously" don't need a "fair chance to recoup their R&D investment". Does it say anywhere that the R&D investment must be huge? Because that's not the case with tons of patents -- some are just accidental inventions, like the fabled 3M's post-it notes. >There is absolutely no reason for us to grant patent protection to f.lux. The burden of proof falls on those who would argue otherwise. Actually if the patent office DOES grant them a patent, then the burden on proof falls on you.
mangeletti 11y ago
I was starting to feel confused about the anti-commercial sentiment I was seeing in here, noting that this is a forum created by one of the most successful venture capital firms in technology. But, then I saw your comment. I can get on board with this comment. The fact that they're attempting to patent something so trivial puts them right up there with the likes of Intellectual Ventures, etc., IMHO.
- EarthLaunch 11y ago
  Yes, HN is fundamentally more anti-intellectual than it is anti-commercial.
  - mangeletti 11y ago
    By chance, did you mean "anti-intellectual property"?
morgante 11y ago
If it's so obvious, how come nobody else does it? Also, to be clear, I doubt they're getting a patent on "changing your video card's CLUT (color look-up table) to reduce eye strain" but rather on the specific method they use for doing so.
- lispit 11y ago
  How else would you reduce the amount of blue light emitted by a monitor using a CLUT except by changing it to reduce the amount of blue light emitted?
upofadown 11y ago
The original stated intent of f.lux was to reduce eye strain by matching the colour temperature of the screen to your surroundings. The idea about circadian light came later, it was probably their users that came up with that. ... which would hurt my head except that I have concluded that software patents are just straight up insane. There is no point in trying to figure anything out with respect to them.

by lispit 11y ago

elipsey 11y ago

Yep. They care so much about public helath that no one is allowed to be healthier with paying them. Classy move.

pbhjpbhj 11y ago
Can't you level that complaint at all pharma firms though too? At least if it doesn't encourage those behind f.lux to continue beneficial activities (promoting the benefit of redshifted screen use) then it should encourage others to develop health focussed apps in the hope of getting paid? FWIW I use redshift.
- elipsey 11y ago
  Pharma patents are less abstract. They patent a product, not the idea of making a product. Changing a pallete was a solved problem. "Doing something when it's a time" was a solved problem. But if you change a CLUT "becuase it's a time" your software belongs to someone else. It seems like the only innvoation here is observing a need discovered by health researchers, and patenting the existing components of the solution before someone else does. I'm would find it a bit suprising if someone on HN really thought that changing a CLUT because of the time is so hard that no one could figure out how without the promise of a government granted monopoly on the idea. I will hasten to add that actually implementing, marketing, and maintaining a real life multi-platform proprietary solution sounds hard, in the sense of being plenty of work, and I think lots of people would gladly pay for that service. The question we should be asking is: where is the public good in the government intervening to reduce competition in this space by creating a new abstract property right?
  - pbhjpbhj 11y ago
    >Pharma patents are less abstract. They patent a product, not the idea of making a product. // All patents are for ideas, in order to acquire a patent you have to give details of how to perform it - how to create a product/device or how to work a system/method to use the idea - but patents are not given for products per se. I'm not that familiar with pharma patents but the few I've seen were quite abstract, they make claims that cover many different chemicals rather than one "product" (this when attached to that group; this when attached to some other group; etc.). That said I was specifically responding to the [paraphrasing] "you have to pay them to be healthier if they patent the medically beneficial method/technique/device/drug" - which is true for all companies holding healthcare patents that they don't give free licenses on. WRT the particular product you do it a disservice - yes changing things at a time were known, yes changing colour palettes were known but there is synergy in the idea of removing blue light elements from a monitor gradually as dusk passes in order to prevent the negative effects of blue light on people and the method of changing a CLUT to achieve this end forms more than just a colocation of known ideas. One argument in this sort of situation has always been quite powerful to me - if it was so obvious then it would have been done, the need was known, the individual concepts were available. Almost every idea seems obvious post hoc.
    - elipsey 11y ago
      >> in order to acquire a patent you have to give details of how to perform it Software patents don't have to include code, and generally are not useful to a skilled practitioner in actually creating software. The are written in legalese by persons incentivized to seek as boad a claim as possible, while revealing as little usefully information as possible. >> if it was so obvious then it would have been done By this reasoning every new product should be protected by a monopoly. Sometimes how to do something is obvious, but no one wanted to do it before. The question should be whether treating every new situation as an oportunity for government sponsored property grab is good for society, or just the first guy to file. A huge number software developers get sued because they wrote software that violated a patent they had never heard of for a "business method" type of task, but "with a computer". There are hundreds of thousands of software patents, so it's not possible to read them all before selling software to make sure one hasn't infringed, assuming one could actually be sure without simply defending a trial. The reason there are so many lawsuites is because it WAS obvious, and lots of people did the same thing without ever hearing of the patent untill they got sued. I'm guessing that your not a programmer who's read any software patents. I have never met one who has that did not agree that the contents of software patents were obfuscated and worthless for creating a storehouse of usefull knowlegde that benefits society, what is the constituionally mandated purpose of patents in the first place.

coldtea 11y ago

>It's the "patent pending" part that sucks. They're trying to patent the idea of changing your video card's CLUT (color look-up table) to reduce eye strain, which is a fairly obvious and trivial thing to do once you know that blue light affects melatonin production. On the other hand, since nobody else has done it (or patented it yet), real life proves that it's not that "obvious". Like the "egg of Columbus" some thing are obvious in retrospect: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Egg_of_Columbus https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Egg_of_Columbus

mangeletti 11y ago
This is also true (also called hindsight bias).
CamperBob2 11y ago
There are only two real incentives that we, as a society, have to grant patent protection. One is to ensure that inventors have a fair chance to recoup their R&D investment. The other is to offer an alternative to trade secrets, where innovative insights are hidden from the rest of us, potentially forever, by a single proprietor. Obviously, neither of these applies here. There is absolutely no reason for us to grant patent protection to f.lux. This is so "patently" obvious that the burden of proof falls on those who would argue otherwise.
- coldtea 11y ago
  >There are only two real incentives that we, as a society, have to grant patent protection. One is to ensure that inventors have a fair chance to recoup their R&D investment. The other is to offer an alternative to trade secrets, where the innovative methods are locked up, potentially forever, by a single proprietor. Obviously, neither of these applies here. I actually disagree with both -- let R&D happen by public research (e.g. universities) that competes for funds based on results, and then makes said results available for everybody (at least in the same country who did the paying). But that said, I don't see why the people who did this "obviously" don't need a "fair chance to recoup their R&D investment". Does it say anywhere that the R&D investment must be huge? Because that's not the case with tons of patents -- some are just accidental inventions, like the fabled 3M's post-it notes. >There is absolutely no reason for us to grant patent protection to f.lux. The burden of proof falls on those who would argue otherwise. Actually if the patent office DOES grant them a patent, then the burden on proof falls on you.

mangeletti 11y ago

I was starting to feel confused about the anti-commercial sentiment I was seeing in here, noting that this is a forum created by one of the most successful venture capital firms in technology. But, then I saw your comment. I can get on board with this comment. The fact that they're attempting to patent something so trivial puts them right up there with the likes of Intellectual Ventures, etc., IMHO.

EarthLaunch 11y ago
Yes, HN is fundamentally more anti-intellectual than it is anti-commercial.
- mangeletti 11y ago
  By chance, did you mean "anti-intellectual property"?

morgante 11y ago

If it's so obvious, how come nobody else does it? Also, to be clear, I doubt they're getting a patent on "changing your video card's CLUT (color look-up table) to reduce eye strain" but rather on the specific method they use for doing so.

lispit 11y ago
How else would you reduce the amount of blue light emitted by a monitor using a CLUT except by changing it to reduce the amount of blue light emitted?

upofadown 11y ago

The original stated intent of f.lux was to reduce eye strain by matching the colour temperature of the screen to your surroundings. The idea about circadian light came later, it was probably their users that came up with that. ... which would hurt my head except that I have concluded that software patents are just straight up insane. There is no point in trying to figure anything out with respect to them.