Patent expiry on speed sign reading

[totteraptor]

Hi All
Does anybody know when the patent(s) on reading speed signs that Mobile Eye holds will expire?
(These are possibly the reason why new Teslas are unable to read speed signs as it passes them).

 

[RTPEV]

A very quick Google search turned up this: US20080137908A1 - Detecting and recognizing traffic signs - Google Patents

which indicates an expiration of 9/20/2030.

However, that does not necessarily mean that we have to wait until then for other self-driving or semi-autonomous systems to be able to use this technology. It is very common practice to license or cross-license technology. Granted, MobileEye and Tesla don't have the world's best relationship, but if Tesla has any compelling patents that they have not open-sourced (I haven't heard much about Tesla's open patents lately, and I wonder if it would only apply to electric drivetrain related patents, and not self-driving patents), then they may have something that MobileEye wants and would want to consider cross-licensing. Actually the way it works in the real world is that a whole bunch of patents would be bundled up and cross-licensed as a whole, because nobody has ALL the necessary pieces for a full system.

 

[Puddles]

I took a quick peek at the patent description, it immediately put me to sleep, and when I woke up decided that I did not need to understand it to form an opinion. Because, Internet.

I can't see how one can patent something like this when the technology is so widespread and commonly available. OCR has been around for ages. I'm sure there are clever patent lawyers out there who know how to tweak the language so that a slightly different implementation would be acceptable.

The Tesla party line as I understand it is that "Signs can change" and "Real time AI analysis trumps all" and "We should not rely on the sign people to keep our autonomous vehicles safe." I don't disagree with these philosophies. I do think that it would be easy enough to slip in some code that can use signage to supplement the AI however. I wouldn't be surprised if it was in there right now, gathering data.

 

[RTPEV]

Actually the standard for patentability is not an invention has to be groundbreaking new sci-fi technology. In fact, it should be "understandable by those skilled in the art". What makes a good patent is putting together relatively simple technology (mobile cameras and OCR in this case) and combining them in a novel way (automatic sign recognition in this case) that is not obvious. Of course usually these things seem obvious when viewed in hindsight, but at the same time, if they were so obvious, they probably would have been patented, if not implemented, previously. So that's how something like this can pass muster quite easily.

 

[totteraptor]

A very quick Google search turned up this: US20080137908A1 - Detecting and recognizing traffic signs - Google Patents

which indicates an expiration of 9/20/2030.

However, that does not necessarily mean that we have to wait until then for other self-driving or semi-autonomous systems to be able to use this technology. It is very common practice to license or cross-license technology. Granted, MobileEye and Tesla don't have the world's best relationship, but if Tesla has any compelling patents that they have not open-sourced (I haven't heard much about Tesla's open patents lately, and I wonder if it would only apply to electric drivetrain related patents, and not self-driving patents), then they may have something that MobileEye wants and would want to consider cross-licensing. Actually the way it works in the real world is that a whole bunch of patents would be bundled up and cross-licensed as a whole, because nobody has ALL the necessary pieces for a full system.

Thanks - super helpful!
had hoped for something earlier but guess not. crossing my fingers for cross-licensing

 

[RTPEV]

I was actually very surprised it was as OLD as it was!