Do SecAgg related patents by universities and companies have any implications for flower?

Privacy & Security
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I’m considering to use flower and it’s secure aggregation mod in a project. I stumbled upon this patent: Systems and methods for secure aggregation in federated learning claiming some aspects of the secure aggregation protocol/ algorithm. I was wondering how you deal with it and if it’s even relevant for your implementation of SecAgg.
Thanks in advance :slight_smile:

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The said patent is not by google but University of Southern Cali. So I’m rephrasing this question to be more general. There seem to be multiple patents by google also.

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3

Flower doesn’t use any of the methods from the mentioned patent in its implementation.

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So patents in general are not really anything you are worrying about? Does this change in commercial use?

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I should have been more clear, while we are not currently using any methods covered by the mentioned patents in Flower’s secure aggregation implementation, we always keep an eye on the evolving landscape of patents and IP in the field of FL. If any concerns arise, particularly for commercial use, we would conduct a thorough legal review to ensure compliance with relevant patents and intellectual property laws. This helps us maintain the integrity and legality of our work for both open-source and commercial applications.

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Thanks for clarifying

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