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VelveteenAmbush t1_jcd6opg wrote

Reply to comment by twilight-actual in [D] What do people think about OpenAI not releasing its research but benefiting from others’ research? Should google meta enforce its patents against them? by [deleted]

You could patent your algorithm and offer some sort of GPL-like patent license, but no one respects software patents anyway (for good reason IMO) and you'd be viewed as a patent troll if you tried to sue to enforce it.

GPL itself is a copyright license and does you no good if OpenAI is using your ideas but not your code. (Plus you'd actually want AGPL to force code release for an API-gated service, but that's a separate issue.)

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Smallpaul t1_jcdnffe wrote

Software patents assigned to a public trust are a different idea than randomly suing people.

It might be set up to only sue companies that are not open.

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VelveteenAmbush t1_jcdxc8v wrote

Maybe you're onto something.

I guess the trick is coming up with foundational patents that can't be traced back to a large tech company that would worry about being countersued. Like if you make these inventions at Google and then Google contributes them to the GPL-esque patent enforcer entity, and then that entity starts suing other tech co's, you can bet that those tech co's will start asserting their patents against Google, and Google (anticipating that) likely wouldn't be willing to contribute the patents in the first place.

Also patent litigation is really expensive, and you have to prove damages.

But maybe I'm just reaching to find problems at this point. It's not a crazy idea.

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twilight-actual t1_jce1tou wrote

The cat's kinda out of the bag at this point. But a non-profit public trust that acted as a patent-store to enforce the public dissemination of any derivative works based on the ideas maintained by the patent-store could make a huge difference ten, twenty years down the road. It would need an initial endowment to get started, retain a lawyer or two to manage it.

And then, publicize the hell out of it, evangelize the foundation over every college campus with a CS department. When students have established new state of art with ML, they can toss the design to the foundation in addition to arxiv, and where ever else they might publish.

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