💩 Niklas I just found out that not only does Google hold the patent on dropout in neural networks, but also on processing images using deep neural networks and Microsoft even holds the patent to train ConvNets on GPUs. What the hell is wrong with the patent office?!

🥝 Mr Do they hold "a" patent on those? Is it possible that it's for a very specific use case? Do you have the patent numbers? Would be curious to see.

💩 Niklas Yes sure, here are the numbers: US9406017B2, US9715642B2 and US7747070B2 in respective order. :)

🥝 Mr Thanks, it seems they own at least one of the well known techniques. Interesting that everyone seems to know it. Makes you wonder if companies are spending a lot of time working around the patent since google hasn't committed it being open.

💩 Niklas I don't think any of these can or will really be enforced (how would you check or even prove that other companies use dropout in their proprietory code?), but it's just ridiculous to me how those companies could even get those patents.

🥝 Mr You can pretty much get a patent for any method as long as it's novel. like you said, you can't always enforce it.