Microsoft Patents Looks-Are-Everything Dating 192
theodp writes "Screw that eHarmony Compatibility Matching System nonsense. 'Physical appearance is generally considered one of the most important search criteria among users of online dating services,' according to a patent granted Tuesday to five Microsoft Research Asia inventors. Its Image-Based Face Search technology not only allows people to specify the 'gender, age, ethnicity, location, height, weight, and the like' of their prey, explains Microsoft, it also allows them to 'provide a query image of a face for which they would like to search for similar faces.' So, even though you can't have the real Angelina Jolie or Natalie Portman, Microsoft will fix you up with a look-alike."
Protection, too (Score:2, Interesting)
Also, patents are supposed to grant protection to new idea, but software doesn't need any.
The idea is that some genius inventor, might have some great technological idea. But to commercially exploit that idea, a 1 billion dollar plant is necessary. Even building a prototype would cost in the range of hundreds of thousands.
The single lone inventor can't start a business like this. He needs to raise funds and for that he need to talk to investors. But the investor could run away with the idea with it. Or there's risk that the investor pours lots of money to develop the product and then some other company copies it. The patent is here to give some protection to the money seeking and money investing. It makes sure that the long development time will get compensated for.
In the realm of software and algorithms, a "plant" is simply a laptop and investment is hacking a couple of week-end in a row. That's it. By the end of the month, the genius inventor has his product up and running. No need to secure a 100k deal to build a prototype. Unlike in the engineering world, in the software world, ideas are cheap.