[HN Gopher] IBM Patented Euler's 200 Year Old Math Technique for...
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IBM Patented Euler's 200 Year Old Math Technique for 'AI
Interpretability'
Author : busymom0
Score : 106 points
Date : 2025-11-13 18:41 UTC (4 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (leetarxiv.substack.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (leetarxiv.substack.com)
| mv4 wrote:
| I remember reading that IBM holds a staggering number of patents
| - over 150,000 in the US alone.
| CountHackulus wrote:
| When I worked there many decades ago, I had pressure and saw
| people get rewards for patenting everything you could. Seems like
| things haven't changed.
| stuffn wrote:
| This is the primary reason IP patents should be thrown out.
| They're far too easy to get, exist primarily for the purpose of
| rent seeking, and generally provide nothing useful to the public
| knowledge.
| anthk wrote:
| Good in case of Europe has a shortage on toilet paper.
|
| Also, this might be tangentially related to Fractan. Any
| Mathematician there? if there's some relation, the patent might
| be void/null.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FRACTRAN
| noir_lord wrote:
| While we might get to laugh at those silly people with their
| software patents (and describing them as toilet paper is quite
| funny) it still has real world effects for us.
|
| For many years I had to install a linux distro and then mess
| around with freetype because there was a valid patent on
| subpixel hinting that was valid in the US and irrelevant in
| Europe but because the distro's I used at the time where US
| based I got caught in the cross fire.
|
| Given the huge imbalance between US tech and Europe Tech (and
| rest of the world really) in software they sneeze, we get flu.
|
| That only stopped been a problem when the patents expired[1].
|
| [1] https://freetype.org/patents.html
| anthk wrote:
| That's why you should always use either European or Canadian
| mirrors. On FreeType, maybe Clear Type related; but I
| remember some slight hinting methods _not_ related to
| cleartype which looked far superior on flat LCD screens IMHO.
|
| Another one was Lame and MP3. And I remember the codecs issue
| with the Penguin Liberation Front for Mandrake, LIVNA for
| another distro and Debian Multimedia, among others.
| pkaye wrote:
| Isn't this just a patent application? Also what are the actual
| patent claims? I was not able to find a link to the application.
| kristjansson wrote:
| https://patents.google.com/patent/US20230401438A1
| ipfreely wrote:
| Misleading. This has not been patented. The author links to a
| patent publication, which happens to the vast majority of patent
| filings in the U.S. There was a rejection of this patent
| application mailed by the USPTO in August 2025.
| analog31 wrote:
| Rejection is when the fun begins. Note that I'm not a lawyer,
| but I do have 20+ patents, none in the software realm.
| Rejection means you get to revise your application and re-
| submit with a new deadline and new fees. Your chances of
| getting it accepted on the second or third try can vary.
|
| Applications are seldom withdrawn or ultimately rejected
| altogether, but may be granted with severely narrowed claims.
| Also, you can revise the claims without changing the text,
| within limits, which results in granting of a patent with a
| very broad text followed by narrow claims
| rdtsc wrote:
| The patent system for software is garbage, but it also doesn't
| seem to jive with the title. They don't claim to invent continued
| fractions, what they patent is applying them to some domain.
|
| https://patents.justia.com/patent/20230401438#history
|
| > A method, a neural network, and a computer program product are
| provided that provide training of neural networks with continued
| fractions architectures.
|
| It's a bit like the propelling device
| https://patents.google.com/patent/US1331952A/en -- it doesn't
| invent or patent shoes, or invent or patent springs, but it
| patents attaching springs to shoes.
|
| It would seem using continued fractions with elliptic curves what
| the author wants to do, wouldn't be covered.
|
| However, I still think it can still be challenged if someone can
| show that continued fractions have been used in with NN before.
| Or even better, maybe pytorch or other open source projects can
| explicitly reject crap that's patented. If you put your shit in a
| junk patent, take it out of the project and enjoy yourself, don't
| spread it around. So, if the authors of the patent are the ones
| pushing for the inclusion, then someone should challenge that and
| have it removed unless the patent is withdrawn.
| ajb wrote:
| The problem here is whether _just_ applying some well studied
| technique to a new area like AI is really inventive enough to
| be patentable. There were loads of patents which basically
| added "in a computer" to some existing technique. Just because
| NN's are novel doesn't mean people should be able to get an
| exclusionary property right over the use of well known
| techniques in NN's because they put in half a day's work to be
| the first to apply that technique to NN's. This isn't the
| Guinness book of records.
| IceHegel wrote:
| Whether or not the patent was actually granted in this case, I
| have not been able to think of a compelling reason to have
| patents for software. In fact, I think most intellectual property
| laws need to be seriously rethought.
|
| If the objective is to maximize investment by protecting
| successful results, I don't think our system is doing a very good
| job.
| keeda wrote:
| Before this devolves into the morass of outraged comments that
| usually comprises any discussion of patents, here is the golden
| rule I coined for such threads:
|
| RTFC: Read the Fucking Claims
|
| The claims are the only part of the patent that really matter
| because those are the only enforceable language. Plus, this is a
| patent application so the claims have not even been examined yet.
|
| Without commenting on the merits of this patent itself, remember
| that new applications of existing techniques are still novel, and
| hence patentable. In fact, if you think about it, almost all
| inventions and innovations are just applying novel combinations
| of well-known techniques to new use-cases. (Anything that doesn't
| fit that definition and introduces genuinely new methods is
| usually in the "groundbreaking" category.)
|
| So I'd guess "applying old technique to new problem" is probably
| the case here. I'm no subject matter expert, and there may be
| prior art that invalidates this, or it may not meet the non-
| obviousness bar... but when the "200 year old math" came about
| neural networks were not really a thing.
| linuxhansl wrote:
| Software patents are mostly garbage and unneeded. And I say that
| having some in my name (I actually tried to get my name off them,
| but our lawyers said it's not possible).
|
| Show me one useful software patent that (a) is not "obvious to
| one skilled in the art", and (b) benefits society by being
| granted a monopoly. Just one!
|
| Software rarely requires expensive research that would be worth
| protecting. Rather than enabling a fair market, this takes
| fairness out of the market.
|
| Software patents are like getting a patent on "Murder story with
| final revelation of who did it." Maybe add one or two features,
| like a "detective with hat", etc. In one fell swoop you would be
| able to own most murder mysteries.
|
| Software (like books, stories, art, etc) is better handled by
| Copyright law. May the one who actually _has a better product_
| win!
|
| Sorry for the rant.
| JohnFen wrote:
| I agree with your rant. I have a similar one. I personally
| think that software should mostly just not be patentable at
| all, since (among others) these things are not patentable
| according to US patent law: scientific discoveries,
| mathematical methods, aesthetic creations, and rules or methods
| for performing mental acts.
| bandofthehawk wrote:
| In addition, software is also copyrightable, which makes much
| more sense than patents for protecting unauthorized use. IMO,
| patents for software should be mostly eliminated, and even
| copyright terms should be much shorter.
| fsckboy wrote:
| > _Show me one useful software patent that ... (b) benefits
| society by being granted a monopoly. Just one!_
|
| that's a bullshit criterion, and nothing about what you said
| applies to software in particular.
|
| it's generally agreed that monopolies are bad for society, but
| patents only grant a temporary monopoly to reward innovation,
| in exchange for which society gets disclosure (at the time
| patent systems were promulgated, many ideas died with their
| inventors as trade secrets) and encourages more R&D by creating
| a system for payoff.
| bandofthehawk wrote:
| The only "system for payoff" I've seen with software patents
| is patent trolls. Are there cases of software inventors being
| rewarded for their software more fairly because they had a
| patent?
| oriolid wrote:
| I think every every company I've worked at that had R&D had
| some kind of reward system for patents. Yes, most of the
| software patents were nonsense but those who have their
| names on it still did get paid.
| waterhouse wrote:
| Guessing those rewards are in the hundreds of dollars,
| probably a fraction of the engineer salary that went into
| the technical work.
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| It's not bullshit. You said it yourself, the benefits are
| supposed to be disclosure and encouraging R&D.
|
| But disclosure is rarely an issue with software, and patents
| are bad at properly disclosing software details in the first
| place.
|
| And in software there's already a huge motivation to do R&D,
| while patents are more likely to block useful work than in
| most fields. Even if I think of highly optimization-motivated
| fields like video encoding, patents slow down innovation more
| than they accelerate it.
|
| So can you name some software patents where those motivating
| factors actually worked? It's a fair question.
| yyurgenson wrote:
| RSA
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| What was the societal benefit of putting 20 years of monopoly
| on that algorithm? I don't think potential profit was a big
| motivator in that research work.
|
| And that patent got invalidated in most of the world anyway.
| Aloisius wrote:
| The societal benefit was having RSA publicly described. MIT
| isn't a charity.
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| You think they were just going to sit on that and do
| nothing if they couldn't get a patent? Or that they'd
| turn it into a product without the underlying math being
| revealed right away? I don't believe either of those for
| a second.
| Aloisius wrote:
| There is a rather long history of the workings of
| cryptography products kept secret, so yes, it is entirely
| possible that the underlying math would have been kept as
| a trade secret.
|
| It is also possible that it would have never been created
| in the first place because resources were allocated to
| other patentable inventions.
|
| Of course, in the case of RSA, a similar algorithm _was_
| developed separately by the British government and kept
| secret for 24 years.
| josefritzishere wrote:
| Gold star comment.
| mring33621 wrote:
| I agree that software patents are generally garbage and hurt
| innovation.
|
| Unfortunately, there are probably many people here on HN that
| make a living off software patents.
| smj-edison wrote:
| What would you think about still having software patents, but
| having them expire in 2-5 years? I feel like the concept of a
| patent is still a good one, but the time it takes to go from
| zero to a product is drastically lower with computer
| programming. The patent length should reflect that.
| OgAstorga wrote:
| How would you feel about patenting language? I.e. If you
| speak with certain words or certain patterns then you have to
| pay a royalty (only for 2 to 5 years).
| smj-edison wrote:
| First off, I think that's a false equivalency, as patenting
| is about ideas (in a platonic sense), not about instances
| of ideas (which is what copyrighting is).
|
| Secondly, we already have that in limited forms with
| trademarks and copyrights.
|
| Thirdly, I think the concept of intellectual property is
| one of the most brilliant social innovations in the past
| 500 years, as it aligns incentives to innovate (why would I
| innovate if someone will just steal my work?).
| greg_w wrote:
| One cannot (in the US) get a patent for software itself. This
| was settled a while ago. There needs to be more in the claims.
| In fact, the patent discussed here does not claim continued
| fractions and nobody would be in danger using them even if the
| patent issued as is (which is not certain, because the patent
| claims rather trivial modification of a classic neural network
| architecture, which should be brought up by the examiner as
| obvious).
|
| Patents are propelling the society when they work as intended.
| They made XIX century and at least good chunk of XX century.
| Without patents, people fall back to copying each other,
| because it is much easier to copy than to innovate.
| zkmon wrote:
| I don't think they are patenting any classical math as the blog
| claims. It's an architecture using CF that is patented, I
| believe.
|
| Ofcourse, patents are trash.
| shmerl wrote:
| Reminds this: https://theonion.com/microsoft-patents-ones-
| zeroes-181956466...
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