Bonum Certa Men Certa

Patents Roundup: Microsoft, Free Software Innovations and Impending Changes to Patent Law

"If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of giants," Sir Isaac Newton (1642-1727)

Newton's Cradle
Newton's Cradle



Microsoft continues to upset with its infatuation of everything "invention" or "innovation". While Gates and Myhrvold patent everything under the sun (for vanity and profit), other Microsoft employees claim credit for things that have prior art and plenty of foundations upon which to build.

Microsoft boss Don Mattrick still believes he was the very first person to invent controllable 3D human avatars.

"I'm claiming to have invented avatars! I did 4D Sports Boxing! Do you know what 4D Boxing was? Hey, you should be writing this! That was me," Mattrick told Official Xbox Magazine.


By the way, Google is no angel, either.

Google Patents Searching Through Multiple Categories At Once



[...]

What's unclear to me is how anyone "skilled in the art" could consider this a non-obvious solution. This is (and was) the sort of evolutionary improvement that pretty much anyone in the space would have known was coming to search engines.


It wasn't long ago that we wrote about Halliburton and its pursuit for a patent on patent trolling. The Register has a more detailed report on the subject.

Halliburton - the Texas-based company famous for pocketing billions from the war in Iraq - hopes to patent the art of patent trolling.


Innovation in Free Software



Eric Raymond, who has been eerily quiet over the past year, wrote in the OSI blog about open source software and innovation.

There's an argument commonly heard these days that open-source software is all very well for infrastructure or commodity software where the requirements are well-established, but that it can't really innovate. I laugh when I hear this, because I remember when the common wisdom was exactly the opposite -- that we hackers were great for exploratory, cutting-edge stuff but couldn't deliver reliable product.

How quickly people forget. We built the World Wide Web, fer cripessakes! The original browser and the original webservers were built by a hacker at CERN, not in some closed-door corporate shop. Before that, years before we got Linux and our own T-shirts, people who would later identify their own behavior correctly as open-source hacking built the Internet.


It's important to remember that Free software predates proprietary software. It's not a new phenomenon but it's the way things used to before people like Bill Gates stood up and said: "They are the ones who give hobbyists a bad name, and should be kicked out of any club meeting they show up at."

The Patent System Ain't Working



Michael Tiemann

Michael Tiemann of the OSI, citing this writeup, summarises and shares some takeaway points.

Venkatesh Hariharan recently wrote an article titled The practical problem with software patents, a subject near and dear to my heart. He draws on the same research that I have cited in the past, the book "Patent Failure: How Judges, Bureaucrats, and Lawyers Put Innovators at Risk," by Boston University professors, James Bessen & Michael J. Meurer, but I confess that he shows both greater insights and certainly a better sense of humor than I do when I write abou[t] the subject.


Groklaw has meanwhile released the third part of an article about re Bilski.

In my view, the short answer is that Bilski isn't the last or best word, and that in time there will be further refinements. That may be too small a word, actually, but I read Bilski as leaving it to the Supreme Court to do anything new, useful and practical about software patents, if I might coin the phrase, while the US Appeals Court for the Federal Circuit stands on a very old dime in the meanwhile, while attempting to basically make it harder to patent mathematical "fundamental principles." The court doesn't want anyone to patent 1 + 1 = 2, in other words, because the whole world needs to be able to do that. But if you use 1 + 1 = 2 in a process that is patentable because it's tied to a particular machine and/or is transformative, that's fine with them. That's if I understand what the court wrote. Considering that patent lawyers and professors are still struggling with it, I'm guessing I don't yet fully.


Here is some more interesting commentary on the subject on Bilski.

It’s not just the ease of writing programs that guarantees we’ll involved external agents more and more in our lives. It’s also the development of cheap sensors that will become ubiquitous and that will provide raw data for agents to work on. And of course, the availability of Internet access everywhere, all the time, which allows agents to communicate with both the sources of data and the people who want the agents’ output.


Additional new resources (re Bilski and beyond):
A brief explanation of what the free culture movement is and the various factors that led to its fighting to preserve the commons, including corporations and special interests trying to restrict the commons to protect their interests, the development of the open source community, technological developments, such as the Internet and digital copying of media, the developmentof web 2.0 and its philosophies, current state of copyright law and youth culture.


We previously wrote about Rambus in [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13]. It is a perfect example of patent ambush, which got the wrath of the European Commission (the US government seems to have remained indifferent). The impact is massive and the company is now making a move to embargo another company (Nvidia), potentially driving it out of the market (because, to be a tad sarcastic, that's what innovation is all about).

It seems that the negotiations between Rambus and Nvidia over the licence fees for Rambus patents haven't been going too well. Rambus has now filed a complaint against Nvidia at the US International Trade Commission (USITC), asking the USITC to order an import ban for products with Nvidia parts containing memory controllers for SDRAM memory components like DDR, DDR2, DDR3, LPDDR, GDDR, GDDR2 and GDDR3. This probably includes most of Nvidia's graphics chips, mainboard chipsets and notebook chipsets, including those incorporated in the latest Apple notebooks as well as products by Asus, BFG, Biostar, Diablotek, EVGA, Gigabyte, HP, MSI, Palit, Pine and Sparkle, who were all explicitly listed by Rambus.


Europe



Over in Europe, there is a glimmer of hope for the EPO, whose action can save the UK-IPO as well. Glyn Moody wrote about this yesterday.

The UK's Patent Office – which now goes by the awful name of UK Intellectual Property Office, which means it's really the UK Intellectual Monopolies Office – is a curious beast. On the one hand, as its name suggests, it's tied into one of the biggest confidence tricks around, dressing up conceptual mutton as intellectual lamb. On the other, there are odd outbreaks of sanity that suggest someone in there understands some of the deeper issues concerning software patents.

[...]

It's not coincidence that Microsoft still maintains that GNU/Linux infringes on some 200 of its sacred software patents – and yet is strangely coy about naming them, since it doesn't want its bluff called.


Spurred by the EU's response (or lack thereof), here is another little status report about the ACTA, which we mentioned a lot recently [1, 2, 3, 4].

One of the most disgusting displays of an industry crafting laws to benefit their industry in backrooms is the secret negotiations over the ACTA treaty. This is the international agreement on copyright that's basically been written by entertainment industry insiders, and will effectively force governments around the world to change copyright laws in favor of the entertainment industry. Yet, the actual negotiations are being held in secret. When confronted about it, various government negotiators have basically said it has to be secret because that's the way things are done.


Don't forget to tell people about ACTA [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11]. It's about the so-called "copyrights cartel" seeing it as its privilege to take the law into its own hands, backed by corruptible diplomats who harbour secrecy and discourage discussion with the public. These 'elites' want more control and more money. They want to suppress or forbid peer production in an increasingly-digital era. This threatens not only culture, but also the Internet and Free software. The ACTA encompasses many areas.

Comments

Recent Techrights' Posts

Apple is the Company of Dictators and Worse
Apple is just another greedy corporation in search of sweatshops and even pedophiles (especially the high-profile ones)
Counting Unhatched Eggs Is Not Counting Chickens
Everything here will persist as normal
The "Infinite Bread"
The biblical story of Jesus feeding the 5,000 has software parallels
In Many Cases and in Many Different Ways, Technology Became Less Durable and Less Reliable Over Time
The "modern" things are more complex. And complexity is a foe or reliability and repair-ability.
Microsoft's LinkedIn is Losing Money, Traffic, and Hope; Now It Wants to Sell Its Users' Lifeblood (and Data)
Let this be a reminder of what social control media really is about
Microsoft Lunduke: Freedom of Speech Means Spreading What I Have to Say and Banning People I Disagree With
4Chan is one he aims for and he is siccing 4Chan trolls at people he doesn't like
Richard Stallman Back at the "Rudolf-Diesel" Hörsal "MW 2001" in About 40 Hours
He spoke there before; there's a very high seating capacity there
 
Links 20/10/2025: Louvre Museum Reveals Weakness, About 7 Million Protest US Turning Into Oligarchy/Monarchy
Links for the day
They Should Have Listened to Techrights Over a Month Earlier (Xubuntu Site Compromised)
we reported this issue about 40 days earlier and nobody did anything about it
Richard Stallman to Give Another Talk Today in Bavaria (Bavarian Academy of Science)
Tomorrow at 6 PM he speaks in Munich
Barry Kauler Explains That Puppy Linux and EasyOS Exclude Systemd to Keep Things Simple
Barry Kauler's Puppy Linux is in the community's hands. He now focuses on EasyOS and more.
Half a Year After Brian Fagioli Got Kicked Out of BetaNews for Slop He's Still Doing LLM Slop and Slop Images Targeting 'Linux' (Plagiarising Original Works)
If the Web gets polluted or flooded by slopfarms such as these, and Slashdot then sends traffic so these slopfarms (Slashdot probably doesn't do this intentionally), then real writers with real knowledge of GNU/Linux will lose the spark for publishing
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Sunday, October 19, 2025
IRC logs for Sunday, October 19, 2025
Campaign of FUD Against Framework Laptops and GNU/Linux (Using Microsoft's Attack on Linux, 'Secure Boot')
Ritual Defamation Cult has turned its attention over to Framework
Liberation From 'The Feed'
They rank things based on the editor's choice/ideology (he or she knows the sponsors, hence the masters)
Microsoft's Killing of Vista 10 Seems to Have Resulted in More Articles About GNU/Linux (But Also FUD)
We not only saw a rise in traffic, we also saw a remarkable rise in the number of articles
Today (a Day Before Richard Stallman Talk at TUM) There's a Patent Propaganda Event at TUM
Perhaps an opportunity for Dr. Stallman to rebut this "invention to patent" nonsense/fantasy (conflating monopolies with innovation)
OpenSource or "Open Source" as a Brand is Dying, Let's Get Back to Talking About Software Freedom
Those of us who actually want to reform the industry and put users in control of their systems/devices will recognise that "Open Source" was selling a lie or got-co-opted by liars
19 Years in Numbers: Techrights' Anniversary Countdown and Retrospective
In 2019 we began improving our workflows and, accordingly/predictably, we became a lot more productive
Slop Turns People Off (LLMs Lack Intelligence, They're Just Plagiarism Powerhouses That Fail to Deliver Any Real, Measurable Value)
"More" (or "MOAR") isn't always better
IBM Red Hat Has Re-calibrated or Adjusted to Bubble Economics, False Promises, and Slop/Plagiarism
This won't end well
Fake Numbers, Fake Claims, Fake Economy, and Media Grifters That Prop Up Fraud
Grifters like The Register MS won't be looked upon kindly after the bubble implodes
For Some, the GNU Web Site is Not Accessible This Week
They seem to have gone into some kind of lock-down mode
Symptoms of Upcoming Microsoft Layoffs in XBox
A crashing franchise
Psychiatrist confession: Germanwings crash & Debian toxic culture recognized before suicides
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
Gemini Links 19/10/2025: Scentjacking 101, Slop Hype Boosters, and Steam Next Fest
Links for the day
Slopwatch: The Serial Slopper, LinuxSecurity, and Google News
Let's hope slopfarms die as soon as possible
Links 19/10/2025: Cambodia Scam Centres, Slop Hurting Wikipedia Traffic
Links for the day
As Economies Crumble Free as in Beer Will Matter, Not Just Free as in Freedom/Libre (Libertad)
French regions choosing to embrace Software Freedom
25 Years Ago, an Explanation of How Reducing Free Software to 'Apps' Would Interfere With Freedom Goals
there's nothing unreasonable about it
A List of 63 Known Gemini Clients (Software to Browse Geminispace Content With Gemini Protocol)
Not counting browser plugins for Web browsers
Gemini Links 19/10/2025: "Firma Odin Is Transforming" and Bot Attacks While "AFK"
Links for the day
US Government: 6.1% of Site Visitors Use GNU/Linux
GNU/Linux has a considerable share and it is growing
LLM Slop Could Not Rise to Prominence Without Media Complicity and Artificial Hype
Inane garbage disguised as "journalism"
Why the FSF No Longer Recommends Debian, as Explained by Richard Stallman This Month
some weeks ago
All the Latest Half Dozen Articles by Mehedi Hasan (UbuntuPIT) Only Admit at the End That He's Using LLM Slop
Disclosure is OK, but the practice of using slop is not
The 'Modern' Web of Fake Security and Easy Censorship of Whole Domains
Each year it gets worse
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Saturday, October 18, 2025
IRC logs for Saturday, October 18, 2025
The Term "AI" is Not New and What Today's Media Calls "AI" Isn't Even AI
Only the hype was new... and totally artificial
Gemini Links 18/10/2025: "Planetary Rings", Steam, and PSU Replacement
Links for the day
Defeating LLM Abuse (State-of-the-Art Plagiarism) in the Area of Linux and GNU, Free Software, BSD, Security and So On
The aim is to get them to stop using LLMs to rip off other people's work
Links 18/10/2025: Russell Vought in Charge, US Government Leans to Russia Again
Links for the day
Credit Where It's Due: LinuxConfig.org Quit Doing LLM Slop, Back to Original and Real Articles
We waited for a while to say this, now it seems conclusive
Of Note: UbuntuPIT Aware of Critics of Slop, Adds Disclosure of Use of LLMs
We appreciate the honesty
Links 18/10/2025: Madagascar's President Flees and ICE Arrests Protest Comedian Robby Roadsteamer
Links for the day
Richard Stallman Near the European Patent Office (EPO) in 3 Days From Now
It'll be a good opportunity for patent examiners to listen, ask questions, and maybe greet him in person
From Scholar to Booster of Slop (and Even Slop in His Own Blog)
We're going to keep an eye on future posts of his
End of Vista 10 Also Good News for the BSDs
There are many news sites that recommend trying GNU/Linux this month
What's Wrong With Liking Parrots or Birds as Pets?
They'd demonise people for speaking about freedom, no matter what they say or do
Digital Sanitation Good Practices
leave behind Microsoftism
10 Days Ago Richard Stallman Gave a Long Interview in French (linuxfr.org)
English translation
Science, Not Fast Food/Junk Food
The commercial exploitation of users won't stop until users exercise full control over their software or - more broadly - their computing (including data)
The Free Software Foundation, Which Has Appointed a 43-Year-Old President, is Looking to Add Another Board Member (or Treasurer)
expect the FSF to add more people
Richard Stallman Confirms Next Week's Talk at Technical University of Munich, We Urge EPO Staff to Attend
That's probably late enough for EPO staff to attend after work
Gemini Links 18/10/2025: Notifications and Geminaut
Links for the day
Many Red Hat People Are Leaving, But It'll Be Framed Publicly as Leaving IBM
Similarly, IBM layoffs (or "RAs" as they're called) include Red Hat layoffs
Expect More Waves of Microsoft Layoffs This Month (at Least Two Rounds Confirmed Already)
From what we can gather, assuming the recent rumours about XBox are true, there will be at least 3 waves of Microsoft layoffs this month alone
Security Issues in Cisco and Jenkins Passed Off as "Linux" Problems
Fear, Uncertainty, Doubt (FUD) tactics
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Friday, October 17, 2025
IRC logs for Friday, October 17, 2025