USPTO Awards LOL Patent To IBM 274
theodp writes "Among the last batch of patents granted in 2009 was one for IBM's Resolution of Abbreviated Text in an Electronic Communications System. The invention of four IBMers addresses the hitherto unsolvable problem of translating abbreviations to their full meaning — e.g., 'IMHO' means 'In My Humble Opinion' — and vice versa. From the patent: 'One particularly useful application of the invention is to interpret the meaning of shorthand terms ... For example, one database may define the shorthand term "LOL" to mean "laughing out loud."' USPTO records indicate the patent filing was made more than a year after Big Blue called on the industry to stop what it called 'bad behavior' by companies who seek patents for unoriginal work. Yet another example of what USPTO Chief David Kappos called IBM's apparent schizophrenia on patent policy back when he managed Big Blue's IP portfolio."
UYK (Score:3, Funny)
Hint: It's Scottish!
Re:UYK (Score:4, Funny)
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Wasn't it " In my Hesitating Opinion"?
Unless of course the messages deals with the "International Medical Health Organisation"
lol = laughing out loud? WTF? (Score:5, Funny)
"lol" hasn't meant anything close to "laughing out loud" for years. It's more like "your statement is slightly humorous, but I'm definitely not laughing".
Re:lol = laughing out loud? WTF? (Score:5, Funny)
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From the filed doc:
One particularly useful application of the invention is to interpret the meaning of shorthand terms. In one embodiment, a group of databases may be provided that each define one or more shorthand terms. These definitions may be structured in the database as shorthand terms paired with longhand terms. For example, one database may define the shorthand term "LOL" to mean "laughing out loud." Another database may instead define "LOL" to mean "lots of laughs." A database may also include multiple definitions for a given term. For example, a user's personal database may have two entries for the shorthand term "OMW" including "on my way" and "oh my word"
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From the filed doc:
...a group of databases may be provided that each define one or more shorthand terms. These definitions may be structured in the database as shorthand terms paired with longhand terms. For example, one database may define the shorthand term "LOL" to mean "laughing out loud." Another database may instead define "LOL" to mean "lots of laughs." A database may also include multiple definitions for a given term. For example, a user's personal database may have two entries for the shorthand term "OMW" including "on my way" and "oh my word"
IOW, they have managed to patent a dictionary? Prior art, anyone?
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But this one involves computers and stuff! It's so obviously different!
Re:lol = laughing out loud? WTF? (Score:5, Interesting)
Worse, they patented a *BSD classic application's function.
Check http://cvsweb.netbsd.org/bsdweb.cgi/src/games/wtf/ [netbsd.org]
Yes, it is really the "wtf" command. They really need some heads up from BSD guys.
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And in IBM's internal corporate database, LOL expands to "Lots of Lawyers".
OA (Ob Abbreviation): IANAL.
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rofl
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imho, lol looks like someone sticking their hands up. "So the police yell 'Stick em up', so I'm, like, lol"
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On a development project we banned LOL and insisted on the more accurate LIMH - laughing in my head. No one LOLs online.
Re:lol = laughing out loud? WTF? (Score:5, Funny)
Actually, "lol" is now an anti-abbreviation for a period. For example:
"today i went to the store and got some orange juice lol"
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I would almost consider this +5 Insightful over +5 Funny due to how true this is.
Re:lol = laughing out loud? WTF? (Score:5, Funny)
This patent would have helped a co-worker of mine's uncle: He thought LOL meant "Lots of Love."
Pretty harmless, until he started using it inappropriately: "I'm so sorry to hear of your loss. LOL" or "You're better off without him anyway. LOL".
Apparently, they had to hold an intervention. :)
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The "lots of love" is what someone told me too, when I was first starting out online.
Luckily, I didn't trust his expertise. Before I started using it, I checked for myself. :P
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It made me LOL. The typical kind.
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What's a girl and why is their temperature relevant?
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Perhaps more suspect is the use of blond rather than blonde. Blond being reserved for males, blonde for females. So his most stressed point was to mention a blond male, 'hot' and 'girl' being merely secondary
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I thought blond meant hair color and blonde meant stupidity.
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Needs more BBQ IMO.
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(Because You're On Fire)
Whatis bot (Score:3, Interesting)
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Whatis bot query (Score:5, Funny)
CRAP.
> whatis CRAP
>>> IBM's CRAP:: Internally known as Consumer Research and Planning.
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lol
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See? I bet you thought the W was for WebSphere! (I know I did, until I checked it before posting.)
The most trivial patent awarded so far? (Score:4, Interesting)
Does this win some sort of stupidity award for the most ridiculous patenting of something that shouldn't be patentable? Whats next, patenting the use of punctuation in sentances?
Summary is wrong, read the patent (Score:2)
/. always words the summary of patents awarded in the stupid and most trollish way possible.
It's actually a good idea and has nothing to do with patenting LOL.
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So J becomes I
O becomes D
B becomes R
or perhaps you meant something else??? 3 OR 4 work letter???
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Three or four work letter?
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Re:Summary is wrong, read the patent (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Summary is wrong, read the patent (Score:4, Funny)
Tell that to Imhotep.
WHATISBOT: In My Humble Opinion Too Easily Patented.
WHATISBOT: PRESS ENTER FOR MORE OPTIONS.
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Yes, but all they have patented is the functionality to look up a given abbreviation and substitute the long form of it. My IDE will let me enter "fore" and have it bring up a list of matching options include "foreach", how is this any different other than its in relationship to communications i.e. "texting" and presumably email? Its exactly the sort of functionality that someone building a message client might think to add - and probably has of course - and as such I think its ridiculous that it could be p
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It might be obvious to add into a messaging device, but the USPTO would need to find a couple of prior art references that contain all the features and then show a reason to combine them. The PTO doesn't get to just say, "it would be obvious to do that,
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I already have prior art to this from at least 9 years ago. Used to do it with mIRC script in irc channels where people insisted on using abbreviations.
In fact:
on ^*:text:*:#:{
echo $color(text) -trn $target $replace($1-,lol,laugh out loud,imho,in my humble opinion)
haltdef
}
Come and get me IBM.
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It might be obvious to add into a messaging device, but the USPTO would need to find a couple of prior art references that contain all the features and then show a reason to combine them. The PTO doesn't get to just say, "it would be obvious to do that, kneener kneener kneeeener"
Actually, the Patent Office can do that, but they don't. This is what leads to incredibly broad patents.
Originally, a patent was designed to cover a specific method for achieving a result. Today, we have IBM essentially patenting "using a database to automatically look up words in messages received on a computer". Don't think so? The text speaks for itself:
My e-mail client is a "recipient messaging device
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This functionality goes back at least
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For many people, "lol" is punctuation. As in "I went to the store and bought some chicken lol"
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Whats next, patenting the use of punctuation in sentances?
I suspect it will be patenting grammer...
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Whats next, patenting the use of punctuation in sentances?
There's not nearly as much potential infringement for punctuation, as say, common misspellings.
New rule! (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:New rule! (and unintended consequences) (Score:4, Insightful)
With this rule, companies will be motivated to submit as many semi-stupid patents as possible. That way, when the examiner decides that a patent is completely stupid, the other invalidated patent is likely to be a useless one that was created just as patent fodder.
Or maybe incorporate a bunch of shell corporations, and have each of those corporations apply for a single patent at a time. If it is completely stupid, there is no other patent to strike down. If it is granted, the shell corporation will sell it to the real corporation.
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Well, there wouldn't be much point in exponential penalties for multiple cases, would there?
WTF Indeed (Score:4, Insightful)
They've patented a dictionary? That's what it looks like to me.
how is this not original? (Score:2)
while dumbing the concept down to lol to make it seem abd, lets think about it in a practicla manner.
A system that auomatically knows what a abbreviation means withine the given context would be pretty clever.
I ahe read documents ful of initals, sometime the SAME initials just different context.
LOL, 555, mdr. all those mean the same thing.
Also LOL is a place in france, LOL is short for Lack Of Love LOL is also short for memory.
ASa side note, my kids actually say LOL sometime with pronounciation of each lett
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ASa side note, my kids actually say LOL sometime with pronounciation of each letter, sometime as 'Lawl'. The are 9 and 11.
Not surprising, considering how illiterate their father is.
Did IBM just patent every geek's head? (Score:3, Insightful)
I do those translations in my head. My memory is the database. Does that mean I owe IBM royalties?
I can't believe they just patented the lookup table, albeit in a very specific context.
Re:Did IBM just patent every geek's head? (Score:5, Funny)
Mine too, but more like MS-Access after passing the 1-gig recommended limit.
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I do those translations in my head. My memory is the database. Does that mean I owe IBM royalties?
Yes. And you owe me, services rendered, for answering your question.
So... (Score:2)
I've been using these terms since 1992 for the most part, can I sue IBM now?
YATMV! (Score:2)
Your
Abbreviation
Translation
May
Vary
Bury the USPTO (Score:2)
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One more example of why the patent system needs to be eliminated. Let us invalidate _all_ patents, not just one other of theirs.
Brilliant logic!
While we're at it, let's ban all cars because some of them cause accidents because they are faulty. Let's ban all speech, because some people use speech to preach hatred. Let's take laws against murder off the books, because some people have been falsely imprisoned for murder.
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There is no prove that society is better or worse off with or without patent system. Humankind has developed over a very long time without patents, so it is very likely that by abolishing all patents nothing would change. Chances are we are better off, because we don't have to deal with patent trolls any more.
FU! (Score:2)
Dear IBM,
FU!
- The Internet
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Dear IBM,
FU!
- The Internet
PS- DIAF!
But I likes the short form (Score:2)
If you click the graphic in the summary, you get a diagram of the translation. It takes a short economical phrase, then expands it into a longer one. What's wrong with economy? Ok, perhaps there's some vocab learning that has to take place first, but I'm still doing that with English perpetually anyway -- I'll run across a word for which I'm uncertain of the meaning and I'll look it up in an online dictionary. It's also safer to leave be, otherwise those poor parishioners at the Lord of Love church [lol.org] are
FWIW... (Score:5, Informative)
For those of you who didn't RTFA, they didn't patent LOL, but the process of using a database to tell you what LOL means, or something along those lines. Not quite as absurd, but still silly.
However, if you have ever worked for a huge company like Intel, you are swimming in a veritable alphabet soup of unrecognizable acronyms every day. They make an acronym for everything over there. So something like this database would be a godsend in an environment like that.
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However, if you have ever worked for a huge company like Intel, you are swimming in a veritable alphabet soup of unrecognizable acronyms every day. They make an acronym for everything over there. So something like this database would be a godsend in an environment like that.
It's called acronymfinder.com [acronymfinder.com], and it's been there for a long time [acronymfinder.com].
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That isn't the technology being patented.
Abstract from the linked patent page: "Electronic messaging systems, a machine-accessible medium, and methods for text-based electronic communication. In one embodiment, a plurality of databases are provided. The databases each define shorthand terms with one or more longhand terms. A shorthand term is targeted within a text message, and the databases are searched for corresponding longhand terms. The longhand terms are selected for display according to factors such
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They patented the use of text substitution and lookup tables on the internet. That makes it new and special.
DIAF (Score:2)
ICQ (Score:2)
and other IM's used to convert LOL, BRB, etc into faces, little signs or sounds years ago. Isn't that the same thing?
I'm sure there was some option where the short hand was translated onto the screen to its full meaning.
It's the patent version of World War I (Score:5, Insightful)
Don't blame IBM. They're not "schizophrenic". They are merely in the game playing by the rules as they are written, because that's what everyone else on the field is doing. What if a football team suddenly decided throwing passes was dishonorable, and they wished other people wouldn't do it? They'd get hammered. They'd lose all over the place.
Same for IBM. They can wish for change and still play a mean game. Nothing wrong with that at all. In fact - the more the merrier, says I. Why? Because the more idiot patents like this that get granted, the sooner this mess will end. For two reasons.
First reason - the dumber a patent is, and the more obvious it is that you are merely patenting something someone else came up with - the more likely it is that a judge somewhere will get that clue we've all been waiting for.
Second reason - World War I.
How did WWI start? The assassination of Franz Ferdinand of Austria. A single death. That's all it took. All of the alliances and counter-alliances of the time made an extremely unstable system. All it took was the right nudge, a single assassination, and all those alliances got called up. Countries picked sides and it was off to war. Where 15 million people died. Imagine that. Fifteen million people all killed, and it all traces to a single assassination.
Remind you of anything?
All of these companies today have these IP portfolios, and an uneasy truce in between them that says "you nail us and we'll nail you". Strategic partnerships, licensed IP - a tangled web of legal rights. Just like the tangled web of alliances pre-WWI.
All it will take is our Ferdinand.
Remember the hubub over the FAT file system, how MS holds the patent on it? Why aren't they suing everyone for their legally due royalties? They could nail everyone from Samsung to Nokia. So why not do it? Because everyone would nail MS for other trivial things they are in violation of. It would be Patent WW I.
So let these companies patent trivial crap like LOL. Why not? It will make the crater bigger when The Big One happens. And nobody wants that because in this case it won't be soldiers dying, it will be money evaporating. IP portfolios are insanely overpriced. If PWI happens, the courts will be *swamped*. The only fix will be to invalidate software/process patents or spend every single minute of court time available until 2142 sorting out the mess. And that means those portfolios will suddenly be useless. As will all the license agreements. That's a lot of money to go *poof*. It'll make the housing market bubble of 2008 look like a hiccup. We're talking many many billions of dollars here.
So let the current cold war continue. Go ahead. Patent LOL. Patent emoticons. Patent tying your right shoe before your left - I don't care.
Just know that it's going to end, it's going to end soon, and it's going to end badly. And there will be blame enough to go around for everyone. In fact, the end may be beginning right now. We may have had our Ferdinand just recently. [google.com]
It's going to be a hell of a ride when this whole mess hits the fan.
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And nobody loses but the little guy, who gets hit with eleventy-three patent suits from every company in the Delaware phone book, and doesn't have any patents to retaliate with.
The hordes of stupid patents will do nothing if IBM tries using them against Microsoft, or vice versa. They're great for stamping out Joe's New Idea, Inc.
Disemvowel? (Score:2, Interesting)
BS (Score:2)
Simple Solution, Patent Pending (Score:3, Interesting)
Let's lobby the patent office to create a wiki for lay man ideas. Then everyone normal that can't afford to patent every blog article that they can come up with on a daily basis can then upload their ideas to the database.
This should eliminate all patents for obvious stuff. And only the 10 or so really original ideas are still patentable.
Simple solution, maybe I should patent it...
Cats (Score:2)
Hmm.... I thought LOL meant "wow, that cat sure is cute [lolcats.com]"
I have prior art (Score:2)
WTF FTW (Score:2)
I love the icon for this article. I wonder how their software deals with palindromic abbreviations.
WTF FTW
I see lol as a visual icon, like a smiley (Score:2)
I always thought it looked like someone drowning. or surrendering.. you know
o/ = waving hello or goodbye
\o/ = Yay!
o7 = a snappy salute
lol = dont shoot!
the dude abides... (Score:2)
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I thot it was "humble", not "honest". Use "frankly" if you want it to mean "honest".
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No, it means: I my humble opinion.
Get an IBM patented thesaurus, you douche!
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And my friggin' keyboard ate that missing 'n'.
I probably need an IBM patented dictionary adjustment program for posting this carp.
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First off, I'm glad someone understands what's going on and that they are not actually patenting LOL.
Second, read the patent; while you are correct, the patent talks about getting the means based on specific context; which is hard to do.
It's nt even about the definition, hell you could create your own definition, big deal. Determining context of a conversation automatically and then know what a abbreviation or Jargon means within that context is awesome.
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How would this be any different than any other kind of grammar/context translation? I mean, fuck, but IBM probably had patents on that sort of thing forty years ago. It looks to me like a back door way of repatenting what's probably expired already.
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A system for determining the meaning of acronyms in context might indeed be sufficiently original and non-obvious to be patentable. However, this patent claims only the idea of doing so, not any particular method. A patent must be sufficiently detailed as to allow one skilled in the art to implement it. Since it does not provide this level of detail, I conclude that the patent is invalid.
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Apple invents it, Microsoft clones it, and IBM patents it.
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Actually the way it goes is:
1. Some obscure one-man start-up invents it, unsuccessfully tries to productize it (bad marketing, rough edges etc), fails, and is bought up by bigger fish.
2. A number of companies sell it for a few years, with so-so results.
3. Apple "borrows" the idea and creates a product which is exactly the same, except that its name starts with "i", it is white, and it replaces all buttons with a single "just do it" one in the shape of an Apple logo. Several million are sold in the first yea
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Indeed, although note that it's only with the Ipod that Apple made a dominant product, with the word becoming a generic term for that market.
With everything else - computers, phones - their product remained a niche, and other companies don't give a damn about trying to copy them. Yet still, despite them not being the inventors, or the first companies to do it, you have Apple fans and the media claiming that Apple "invented" or "popularised" it...
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With everything else - computers, phones - their product remained a niche, and other companies don't give a damn about trying to copy them.
I'm very far from being an Apple fanboi, and I don't like iPhone, but I can't help but notice that its design very strongly affected that of the smartphones that came after it: HTC Touch, all Android phones, Palm Pre, N900 all bear those marks.
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In Business for Money