This sub seems to have a rather alarmist reaction to patents which is a bit surprising to me. Coming from a Data and Software Engineering background, and holder of a couple patents myself with admittedly fairly broad claims for data systems, I have found that all existing use cases in the industry utilize patents as a sort of nuclear deterrence – to disincentive auxiliary lawsuits against you rather than as offensive claims.

So it’s a bit shocking to me how seriously this subreddit in particular takes patents as opposed to /r/computerscience or hacker news. Does the field of machine learning actively attack people who use similar techniques?