06.21.11
Posted in Europe, GNU/Linux, Microsoft at 1:43 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Summary:Microsoft’s notorious bundling tactics are under more fire in Europe, indicates the OpenSUSE Community Manager
SEVERAL months ago we saw the FFII and others campaigning to put an end to unwanted preinstalls of Microsoft Windows, whose numbers are on the decline anyway. Jos Poortvliet, a Dutch member of KDE and OpenSUSE, has just explained that there is another motion to address the problem:
[T]he well known Microsoft tax is unavoidable, even if you don’t want or use it! They can’t ship back the licenses as MS doesn’t accept that. In effect, their customers have to pay Microsoft even though they don’t use their software.
It is called Tying and illegal, but who has the financial power to do something about it? In the USA, this has been solved – MS has been ordered to accept customers who send back licenses and give them $30 for each. They don’t make it easy but at least it is possible now. However, as far as I know, in NL there is no such a rule and I’m not sure about the rest of the EU either. Hettes is talking to the Department of Economics in the Netherlands but frankly, I’m not sure that’ll help much.
Earlier today we found an odd new blog post that provides revisionism on the subject (no link needed, hopefully). Despite court evidence which shows us how Microsoft abused the OEMs, some people push the story that Windows is just the operating system of choice (but customers are not actually given choice) and that GNU/Linux became less popular on sub-notebooks for technical reasons as opposed to Microsoft’s anti-competitive tactics (which we covered here 2-3 years ago). █
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Posted in Apple, Bill Gates, GNU/Linux, Google, Microsoft, Patents at 10:48 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Summary: A look at some of the latest lobbying against “Linux” and “FOSS” in light of the news and bogus ‘advice’ from pretenders
Microsoft’s FUD tactics have evolved. No longer must we see lies perpetuated about the capabilities of GNU/Linux (or that it’s like “communism”). The new FUD tactics paint Linux and Android as disrespectful of the law (so-called ‘IP’) and “not free”. The monopolist has been hiring lobbyists accordingly and we named some of these before. Few of them must disclose their funding sources in order to comply with the law (disclosure weakens them).
Any pundit or other entity which promotes Microsoft’s party line on patents can be seen as endorsing the blackmail Microsoft has been engaging in [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7]; it’s bad for PR and for one’s karma. Justifying what Microsoft does with patents is extremely hard, so such pundits often turn to daemonising Microsoft’s competitors. A few years ago we referred to this tactic as the “equally evil” troll, where basically one ‘defends’ what Microsoft has been doing by saying that a competitor like IBM, Google, or Apple is just as “evil” for some specified reason (which usually does not compute).
Last year a lobbyist came out of the woodwork promoting a company now partly owned by Microsoft. He got some special access to documents with which he daemonised IBM. He is happy enough to accuse companies that are not patent trolls of being "trolls" while leaving parts of the Microsoft cartel — Intellectual Ventures (IV) included — unaddressed. He not calling IV a troll, even though it is the world’s biggest patent troll. The name of this lobbyist — you’ve guessed it — is Florian.
At Groklaw, Pamela Jones asks, “where can you go where you will be safe from patent trolls?”
She wrote this in relation to Microsoft and patent trolls when she added: “Plus the problem is bigger than patent trolls. Remember when Microsoft tried to sell patents to use against Linux to patent trolls? So proxy patent trolls are a much bigger problem than just patent trolls. Remember where Lodsys got its patents from and the picture gets clearer. There is a disturbed ecosystem here, and the problem is that software patents should never have been introduced into the environment. Now they are overwhelming everything. The only true solution is for software and patents to get a divorce. And the only entity that can accomplish that is Congress.”
This was written in relation to a patent from IV being used against iPhone and Android developers (but no Windows developers). We also wrote about the origin of this patent in [1, 2, 3]. The only good thing about patents is that no matter how much they are passed around, the names on them do not change; neither does the changelog, to speak, or the change of ‘ownership’ (however bizarre the notion of ‘selling’ ideas may sound). So, it’s not too hard to show Microsoft in the details.
“Remember when Microsoft tried to sell patents to use against Linux to patent trolls? So proxy patent trolls are a much bigger problem than just patent trolls. Remember where Lodsys got its patents from and the picture gets clearer.”
–Pamela Jones, GroklawBased on this item, “Lodsys LLC is a Marshall, Texas-based subsidiary of Lodsys Holdings LLC, a Delaware LLC. Some have speculated that the ownership trail leads to Intellectual Ventures” (yes, not news by now, not to mention that IV uses many other shells according to other reports, at least a thousand shells according to one source).
“Leverage If You Are Threatened with Patent Infringement (and why you should ignore FOSSpatents)” says the headline of a post about Microsoft Florian and the misdirection he gives to those sued by Lodsys; basically he instructs them to surrender and he neglects to tell them what IV really is and where it leads back to (Microsoft and Bill Gates, the patents maximalist who lobbies for patents even on poor people's basic food ingredients, for his own profit). Semi-truths and ill advice is what Florian is all about. As the blog post states, “Lodsys probably LOVES Florian’s analysis and opinions. (I have no connection or contact with anyone at Lodsys, Apple, and no longer any contact with Florian). He seems to be making all the arguments that support the troll’s business plan – you can’t afford to fight, don’t even try, the trolls arguments are decent, just give in and sign the license.”
To quote more:
Whatever you do, please ignore the advice of non-attorney commentators (such as Florian Muller @ fosspatents) because they can be shortsighted and are not qualified to provide the complex legal analysis and advice you will need. (e.g. from one of Florian’s latest posts about the Lodsys patents, any patent attorney should be able to recognize that Florian does not understand the law regarding patent infringement and numerous other issues.)
For example, some commentators (including Florian Muller @ fosspatents) are advising targets of patent trolls to roll over and pay the license fee; Florian is even advising you that the license agreement that has not been made public is acceptable for you to sign. I very much question the soundness of this advice, especially considering the above article at IP Watchdog. Contrary to the bad advice and legal analysis put forth by Florian, there are options available to companies threatened by patent trolls and even if the outcome is a license agreement, Florian’s legal analysis and advice is not solid. (I could write a white paper explaining why Florian’s analysis is messed up, but I don’t have the time right now. If anyone requests me to provide more detailed analysis, I will put it on my to-do list.)
For starters, in my opinion, Lodsys probably LOVES Florian’s analysis and opinions. (I have no connection or contact with anyone at Lodsys, Apple, and no longer any contact with Florian). He seems to be making all the arguments that support the troll’s business plan – you can’t afford to fight, don’t even try, the trolls arguments are decent, just give in and sign the license.
[...]
Any good negotiator (which IMO excludes Florian) will tell you that you do not negotiate with yourself. Thus, I have no idea why Florian claims to be supporting application developers when he writes analysis that attempts to shred their potential leverage arguments and advises them to pay what Lodsys is asking. If someone was truly supporting the application developers, they would be trying to bolster the application developers leverage arguments (as I have been trying to provide on this blog).
Some sites evidently fall for it because at least one writer wrote that the “best course of action for iOS developers faced with patent infringement suit threats issued by patent holding firm Lodsys earlier this month might be to play nice with licensing requests, according to one intellectual property researcher. Florian Mueller, who runs the FOSS Patents blog that posted an in-depth FAQ for concerned developers last week, says that indicating a willingness to play nice with Lodsys could be far less costly than the alternative, in the long run.” We have already challenged this FAQ, which is a wolf in sheep’s clothing. It’s a trap. Smells more like a lobbying/marketing exercise…
“Later on it turned out that Florian was indeed wrong and his advice was worse than useless.”
Later on it turned out that Florian was indeed wrong and his advice was worse than useless. It was pure poison. As Jones put it, “this was Mueller’s advice when the story began. Now that Apple has stepped in, which every lawyer I know thought was inevitable from day one, how does that advice look to you? It’s important for developers in a particular legal situation to have a lawyer and not to listen to “legal” advice from those not qualified to offer it.” Or worse — from a lobbyist! He also advised companies which Microsoft and its proxies sued to just surrender and pay up. it’s exactly what Microsoft needs. In order for these pieces of bad advice to make it into the press, this lobbyist (not a lawyer or a patents veteran, yet he pretends everyone but himself is not qualified t speak on the subject), whose main skill is mass-mailing journalists, has been working behind the scenes to get himself quoted. We are saddened to see that many people think he is quoted in articles due to merit as opposed to his lobbying skills. He is a veteran lobbyist. He knows the tricks.
This man seems to have been lobbying in vain to paint Google as a patent aggressor because, according to this new report, Microsoft’s lobbying (part of the same party line) failed to incite US regulators to the point of blocking a bid for Nortel's patents.
“According to this article,” notes Jones, “Apple has thousands of patents, Nokia has more than 10,000 patent ‘families’ (same patents, different jurisdictions), Microsoft has around 18,000 patents, and Google has about 600, mostly search-related”, so over whom would Google have an unfair advantage?” Google has its reasons for buying — not so much applying for — patents. Microsoft has been attacking Google’s Android (and by extension Linux) from many angles in an attempt to tax Google’s work and turn that into a Mirosoft cash cow. As we have argued all along, one of the next players that may sue or at least extort Android is Nokia, which Microsoft pretty much conquered in nefarious ways.
“Dying companies try to use patents and copyrights. That’s who does it, as we saw in SCO’s saga.”
–Pamela Jones, GroklawAbout the patent war that has been brewing in the mobile space, Jones writes: “It’s been going on for a while. Dying companies try to use patents and copyrights. That’s who does it, as we saw in SCO’s saga. Now it’s Nokia and Microsoft struggling to deal with a world that is passing them by. So out come the patents. If you find that nauseating, tell your Congresscritter. That’s who can change patent law.”
To quote some findings of interest, in case of “a breakup, Nokia’s three units may be worth about 21.9 billion euros, based on the sales multiples of its competitors this year. The breakup value may not include Nokia’s patents, which Tero Kuittinen, an analyst with MKM Partners LP, estimates are worth 5 billion euros. That would bring the total to 26.9 billion euros. Huawei, ZTE Huawei Technologies Co. and ZTE Corp. (ZTCOF.PK) may also be interested in buying Nokia’s assets.” [via Groklaw]
“The breakup value may not include Nokia’s patents, which Tero Kuittinen, an analyst with MKM Partners LP, estimates are worth 5 billion euros.”
–Seeking AlphaSpeaking of lobbyists, recall those employed by the company of Bill Gates’ father [1, 2] and then watch who is going after Apple according to the following report. So, who represents Kodak, which we previously wrote about in relation to the Gates dynasty [1, 2]? Answer:
Pickard and fellow Sterne Kessler attorney David Cornwell are representing the firm against Kodak’s subpoena; Pickard declined to comment. K&L Gates is representing Kodak in the New York case. Kodak spokesman Gerard Meuchner confirmed that the firm will also handle the litigation in Washington.
Interestingly enough, the new York Times has published this piece about the demise of Microsoft as compared to Kodak’s (both resorted to using patents as their products are no longer desirable or necessary):
Technology upends companies in different ways. It allows new firms to deliver better products and services in a more efficient way; it also creates new goods and services for consumers to want. Eastman Kodak, the fifth-biggest company in the S.& P. 500 in 1975, was almost destroyed by digital cameras and is no longer in the index. General Motors, fifth biggest in 1985, was hobbled by rivals that could make more fuel efficient cars. Microsoft still rules the PC desktop. But that will matter less and less as users migrate to tablets and more computing takes place in “the cloud.”
There is another lesson in Microsoft’s long slide. It is about how far corporate behemoths will go to stop technology that threatens their dominance. Ten years ago, Microsoft tried to use its virtual monopoly of the operating system to strangle potential rivals and their new technologies. Fortunately, it failed. But the new rising behemoths will likely try similar tactics on whatever new gizmo challenges them.
As the Microsoft boosters note, “The New York Times this weekend had an editorial comparing the current state of Microsoft with the plight of Eastman Kodak.”
Kodak too is a patent aggressor as we showed in older posts. Curiously, at one point Kodak complained about Gates' accomplice at Intellectual Ventures. Guess which lobbyist dare not really criticise it? Instead, he tries to attribute its deeds to Google. Astonishing claims; look no further than Florian for those bits of humour disguised as serious allegations. If it’s bad for FOSS due to patents, then it’s good for Mr. FOSSpatents. █
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Posted in Audio/Video, Patents at 9:22 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Summary: Following the attacks from MPEG-LA against free codecs, Xiph.org submits an appeal to the FTC
“Xiph.org asks FTC to make the practice of submarine patents anti-competitive,” notes this person who links to a seemingly new page from the creators of Ogg. Techrights publishes in Ogg Theora on a daily basis and TechBytes makes Ogg Vorbis files at least once a week. These are good compression algorithms that have come under attack from the Microsoft- and Apple-back cartel known as MPEG-LA. We wrote about it in this site many times before and we have also just created a wiki page.
“This gives the holder of such a patent the ability to hinder or eliminate entire markets which would compete with their own offerings.”
–Xiph.OrgTo quote the introduction to this complaint: “Xiph.Org submitted the following comments in response to the Federal Trade Commission’s Request for Comments and Announcement of Workshop on Standard-Setting Issues, Project No. P111204. The document’s intended audience is law and policy wonks. As such it uses technical legal language that may not be immediately accessible to a wide audience. If in doubt, please consult a patent attorney before posting long rants to Reddit or Slashdot.
“Patents affect standards in a fundamentally different way from any other context. Competition normally limits the value of a patent, with that value determined by the advantage of the patented technique over the next best option. However, patents essential to the implementation of a standard gain their value from network effects. The innovation often plays no role. This gives the holder of such a patent the ability to hinder or eliminate entire markets which would compete with their own offerings.”
As we noted earlier this year, MPEG-LA has already come under investigation. It is recognised that something detrimental to the public is going on there. █
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Posted in Intellectual Monopoly, Patents at 8:50 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
The public gets smacked by patents on algorithms
Summary: BitTorrent is called a (software) patent violation, domain management too leads to a patent lawsuit, and Internet phones lead to lawsuits in several countries
PATENT reform (real reform) is a matter of urgency in the United States (more so than in other countries), as we noted minutes ago. And “according to a lawsuit filed at a U.S. District Court this week,” reports TorrentFreak, “BitTorrent is also an infringement in its own right.
“Tranz-Send Broadcasting Network filed a complaint at the court this week where it alleges that BitTorrent is infringing on a patent originally filed in April 1999. The company claims to have suffered significant losses and wants to be compensated for the ongoing patent infringement.”
Hollywood would love it, everyone else would suffer. And apparently receiving better service from a registrar too is an infringement, according to allegations in a lawsuit against GoDaddy (which personally I ditched last year). Quoting The Register:
Go Daddy has been sued for allegedly infringing two patents when it sends email alerts to customers whose domain names and web hosting accounts are about to expire.
Its accuser is WhitServe, a patent licensing company based in Connecticut. It also runs NetDocket, a service designed to make renewing trademark registrations and patents easier.
Lastly, as as mentioned last week, Microsoft too is being sued for Skype, showing perhaps that even phone calls over the Internet are verboten unless one surrenders to extortion and can pay up somehow (in a market where the margins are very low or 0 because people are accustomed to free calls):
Skype Inc. was sued by a Luxembourg company for infringing its patents in a federal court in the United States on Thursday. Via Vadis filed similar lawsuits against the internet video phone company in Europe.
It would be easy to laugh it off because it’s Microsoft’s problem, but this case can have severe consequences for free/libre alternatives.
Welcome to the fantasy world of patents — a fantasy for the bad guys and a living Hell for the rest. █
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Posted in America, Law, Patents at 8:28 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Primer: In a nation where algorithms and methods (abstract, no physical equivalent) become proprietary ‘assets’ a reform must arrive to restore competition and innovation
THE US patent system was recently ridiculed for encouraging patents so poor that someone seeking a patent monopoly on his “Godly” powers justified it by pointing to software and business method patents, to paraphrase the headline from Techdirt. We actually wrote about it last week when it was not clear whether it was a prank. Last week we also noted that the USPTO or associated legislator claimed that they sought changes to the system, but as we state repeatedly, no real reform is even being proposed. The thing they call "reform" is just “wolf in sheep’s clothing,” to reuse the term from this one opinion on the HR 1249 Patent Reform Bill. There is no real reform in the making and it is only getting worse as more and more patent trolls plant their flag somewhere in a practicing industry, usually the software industry (a lot of patent trolls do favour and focus on software patents, based on recent statistics).
On the subject of business methods and associated patents there is this new report in the New York Times. This is closely related to the subject of software patents because both types of patents are ludicrous for similar (not identical) reasons. Read this:
Banks Turn to Schumer on Patents
For years and much to their frustration, big banks have paid hundreds of millions of dollars to a tiny Texas company to use a patented system for processing digital copies of checks, making Claudio Ballard, the inventor of the system, a wealthy man and the bank industry’s biggest patent foe.
[...]
But DataTreasury and Mr. Ballard have fought back. They have hired their own Washington lobbyist, financed in part by the $400 million in settlements, jury verdicts and royalties earned in recent years.
In an interview, Mr. Ballard said the banks’ argument that they had embarked on electronic check processing — the process covered by his patents — long before his patents were issued is simply wordplay.
Patently-O, a maximalist of the patent system says that “[w]ell known patent attorney Hal Milton recently published a new article in John Marshall’s Review of Intellectual Property Law (RIPL) that argues for the presentation of a “new result” within every patent application. The majority of newly drafted patent applications do not follow Milton’s approach and instead seem to obscure the innovative elements of the claimed invention and fail to identify the problem being solved by the invention.” Need we have more evidence that patents do not promote innovation? We have gathered a lot over the years. Patents cost each and every one of us a lot of money while mostly benefiting lawyers and billionaires who are defended by them. █
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Posted in America, Law, Patents at 3:26 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
(ODF | PDF | English/original)
Resumen: Más evidencias nuevas que las grandes corporaciones, con decenas de miles de monopolios de las patentes son los que también controla la política de patentes.
SI la USPTO (Oficina de Patentes y Marcas de los Estados Unidos) proclama que está ahí para servir al público, entonces es seguro que hace un trabajo de mala calidad. Al ser el otorgante de los monopolios, simplemente ayuda a excluir al público y elevar artificialmente los precios en beneficio de las grandes empresas (y los multimillonarios que las dirigen). Cuanto antes los ciudadanos se dan cuenta de esto, mayor será la oposición a la USPTO y está se convertirá (en especial la “P” en la USPTO).
La semana pasada mostró que Intel estaba atacando a los intereses públicos, mientras pretendemos hacer lo contrario[http://techrights.org/2011/06/13/intel-for-swpats/]. Se argumentaba que las patentes de software eran buenos para el público. Lo que es una mentira vergonzosa, vergonzante. La “propiedad intelectual” se hace eco de multitud de mensajes de Intel[http://twitter.com/ballard_ip/status/80021797378076672] al decir (en este caso) que de Intel en la “necesidad de las patentes de software”. Tiene patentes 45K en todo el mundo e invierte de $ 300 a 500 millones en el # smallbiz ”
No hay nada como PR (Relaciones Públicas), ¿verdad? Para una empresa que vale (capitalización bursátil), casi 1.000 veces más de lo que pretende invertir (con fines de lucro) en las pequeñas empresas esto es puramente PROPAGANDA. Y que no dice nada sobre las pequeñas empresas a las que Intel aplasta todo el tiempo, incluso violando la ley y triturando las pruebas. Hemos cubierto esto antes.
El presidente de la FFII (Fundación para una Infraestructura de Información Libre) responde con[http://twitter.com/zoobab/statuses/80178203326562304]:
@Ballard_ip Smallbiz no puede competir con Intel en materia de patentes. Yo reto a Intel en su demanda de hardware == software
Otra compañía que es aún más grande que Intel sería GE, que también promueve las patentes de software[http://techrights.org/2009/05/02/general-electric-for-sw-pats-in-eu/] y otras cosas que dañan al Software Libre[http://techrights.org/2009/11/23/dirty-laundry-at-general-electric/]. Bueno, de acuerdo con este nuevo artículo[http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-06-13/ge-joins-apple-in-urging-congress-to-let-patent-office-keep-fees.html], “GE se une a Apple para instar al Congreso a dejar a la Oficina de Patentes mantener sus tarifas”:
Apple Inc. (AAPL), la AFL-CIO y la Universidad de Yale se encontraban entre empresas, sindicatos y universidades, exhortando a los legisladores Casa de incluir una disposición en la legislación pendiente que permitiría a la agencia de patente de los EE.UU. el control de su propia financiación.
Más de 150 empresas, escuelas y grupos enviaron hoy una carta al presidente de la Cámara, John Boehner, republicano de Ohio, y el líder de la minoría Nancy Pelosi, una demócrata de California, expresando su apoyo a dejar que la Oficina de Patente de los EE.UU. mantenga todos los derechos que recoge de los usuarios.
Notoriamente ausente de este debate son los representantes del público. Eso demuestra que para la USPTO, el público no tiene importancia. No es justificado. La verdad es que las patentes como un todo daña al público en muchos aspectos, excepto tal vez a algunos miembros del público, que son altamente cotizados en alguna empresa como GE. Las patentes son para ellos. Para el resto es sólo un tema que realmente no debiera existir. No se trata sólo temas como el costo de los tratamientos médicos, pero también cosas de menor importancia que se relacionan con la sociedad y no únicamente los costos; considerar patente de Microsoft sobre las cámaras que se niegan a trabajar (como una patente). Apple también la fabricación de teléfonos se vuelven contra sus “dueños” sobre la base de este nuevo artículo[http://consequenceofsound.net/2011/06/apple-to-ban-iphone-concert-filming/] que dice o por lo menos pregunta: “¿Apple prohibe la filmación de conciertos con el iPhone?” Bueno, Apple siempre está al servicio de los cárteles de derechos de autor, que es abominable en sí mismo. Bueno, ahora que persiguen un monopolio en este Hollywood chúpatelo. Apple no es una compañía de ensueño?
Divulgación: Mi hermana y su marido trabajan en Intel y GE, pero NO me reservo ningún juicio porque los principios son lo primero. █
Translation produced by Eduardo Landaveri, the esteemed administrator of the Spanish portal of Techrights.
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