Bonum Certa Men Certa

FRAND Quite Likely the First Casualty at USPTO, Not Patents (Directly)

Summary: The US Department of Justice takes on FRAND, but systemic patent problems endure

The monopolists' offices celebrate patent monopolies wherever they may be. Their business of monopoly grants benefits a lot when nations compete over who has more monopolies on more ideas. It's nothing to do with the public benefiting; the contrary is true when it comes to the public. The EPO too is part of the problem and The Greens funded a group to show this:



In December 2012, M∙CAM, Inc. was tasked by The Greens|EFA in the European Parliament to analyze, on a preliminary basis, certain outputs of the European Patent Office (EPO) that may be problematic in the context of the patentability standards of the European Patent Convention (EPC), Articles 52 and 53. To do so, M∙CAM aggregated a total of 482,102 patent issuances from the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) in eighteen selected US classification codes, and determined if European equivalents for any of those documents existed.


The duplicates are not a problem for patent offices because the offices around the world gain more money from duplicate applications, irrespective of whether they are accepted or not. Watch the USPTO getting excited about patents sum rather than quality. "The patent system is busted," says this new article about attempts by USPTO to legitimise software patents as a concept.

Another news site says: "The US Patent and Trademark Office wants to fix the horribly broken US patent system as it pertains to software and the agency is asking for help from the public."

It already knows what is broken and what the public wants. With strong public (and at times corporate) backlash we can help change things, but changes will be made from within. It's corporate backlash that antagonises patents in standards, for example, leading to real changes as we'll show later. Masnick says "Congress So Dysfunctional, It Can't Even Fix The Errors It ADMITS It Made In Patent Reform" and he also criticises USPTO by writing that "US Patent Office Seeking 'Partnership' With Software Community, Hoping To 'Enhance Quality Of Software Patents'" (also covered in light of motives).

Another class of controversial patents is all about profit disguised as benefit like feeding poor people. Here is Masnick's response to this:

he Main Problem With Patented GM Food Is The Patent, Not The Fact That It's GM



[...]

Initially, Monsanto and Pioneer asked to license the gene, but then lost interest for some reason. So eventually Dr Ronald made the GM rice freely available to developing countries, thus allowing them to exploit it for their peoples' benefit without needing to pay.


Seeding the market with patents, not just metaphorically speaking, is now Monsanto's business model, aided in part by the Gates Foundation. Going back to the issue of patents in standards, i.e. patents that are requiring payments from anyone wishing to comply with standards, the DOJ/FTC's action addresses them while Microsoft shows its hypocrisy in a biased Seattle court with ITC (USPTO border enforcement facility) bans being used to sanction import of Android devices. There is a step in right direction as US DOJ steps in to impede FRAND:

The Department of Justice and the US Patent and Trademark Office sent a policy statement [PDF] today, suggesting that the International Trade Commission or ITC back away from enforcing "exclusion orders," which can kick a product off the US market in cases involving standards-based patents.

It's an important issue which just came up last week when the Federal Trade Commission closed its 19-month investigation of Google over antitrust issues. A variety of corporate patent battles have been moved to the ITC recently, including some of the biggest struggles over smartphones.

In closing that investigation, the FTC said that Google shouldn't ask for exclusion orders or injunctions on its standards-based patents.


Andy Updegrove wrote about this as well:

Yesterday the Antitrust Division of the U.S. Department of Justice (DoJ) and the U.S. Patent Trademark Office (USPTO) united in issuing a rare joint policy statement on Remedies for Standards-Essential Patents Subject to Voluntary F/RAND Commitments. As the title suggests, the policy focuses on those patent claims that would be necessarily infringed by the implementation of a standard (so-called standards essential patents, or “SEPs”), where the owner of the claims has pledged to make the claims available on “fair, reasonable and non-discriminatory” (or “F/RAND”) terms. More specifically, the policy statement addresses the question of whether, and if so when, the owner of SEPs should be entitled to ask the International Trade Commission (ITC) for an injunction to bar the importation of products implementing the standard in question.

Until recently, the ITC rarely found itself in the limelight, as its purpose is to protect U.S. markets from unfair inroads by foreign commercial interests. One way it can do so is to protect the owners of U.S. patents from unauthorized foreign vendors when they seek to sell products into the U.S. that would infringe the U.S. patents. In such a case, the ITC has the poser to bar the importation of the goods until such time, if ever, as the vendor has acquired a patent license from the owner of the infringed patent claims on terms satisfactory to the owner.


Carlo Piana wrote an article about altogether stopping those patents and his strong opening goes like this:

"Patents are here to stay." This is the sort of statement that makes me uneasy. I guess in the 17th century the common wisdom was "slavery is here to stay." In the 18th century giving voting rights to women seemed absurd and foreseeing open borders between France and German was crazy talk in 1945. At a certain point, fortunately, those things changed for the better. Is it time to change the common wisdom on patents as well? Is the time ripe—will it ever be?—to utter the frightening word abolition? I do not have the privilege to know the answer, but I regard the question as a legitimate one. According to some patent experts, however, questioning the very existence of patents seems blasphemous.


In an increasingly-degrading system integrity that's designed to just suit corporations (like the USPTO does) we ought to expect no real reform, not without some major intervention. Officials who assassinate people against the principle of due process (including their own citizens), torture people and not releasing them when they are found innocent (abroad in order to dodge laws), and use secret services to crush protests against bankers are clearly corrupted by power. At home, FISA is passed to spy on domestic folks, NDAA allows the citizens to to be assassinated, tortured, and be indefinitely detained. So the software patents issue is part of a systemic issue. Here we have another case of ITC going Rambo for some parasite with patents:

InterDigital, known for owning a number of patents related to wireless products, has filed a complaint with the United States International Trade Commission against several technology firms.

Claiming they infringed seven of its patents, InterDigital has requested the ITC apply a ban on the U.S. import of products created by Samsung, Nokia, ZTE and Huawei.


With many rogue patents from giants like Sony [1, 2] and Microsoft we just know that things won't improve. Nothing will change unless legal action by the likes of the DOJ is taken. So the news about FRAND being challenged is a step in the right direction.

Recent Techrights' Posts

Computers Got Smaller, So GNU/Linux Got Bigger
Many people here recognise the lack of urgency (or need) to get expensive new laptops
GNU/Linux Grows at Windows' Expense and Microsoft Trolls Infest and Maliciously Target Articles About It
Microsoft is - and has long been - organised crime
They Say I'm Mr. Bombastic
They didn't take good lawyers
 
Links 09/06/2025: Science, Hardware Projects, and Democracy Receding
Links for the day
BetaNews is a Plagiarism and LLM Slop Hub, the Chief Editor Isn't Addressing This Problem Anymore
SS Fagioli is basically a parasite leeching off or exploiting other people's work
Links 09/06/2025: Chaos in Los Angeles and Hurricane Season
Links for the day
Links 09/06/2025: Windows TCO and Many Data Breaches
Links for the day
Abuse Inside the Polish Patent Office (UPRP) - Part VI: Political Stunts by Former President Edyta Demby-Siwek and the Connection to Profound Corruption at EUIPO
it's like a money-laundering operation where one politician rewards another at taxpayers' expense
Gemini Links 09/06/2025: Pipelines and Splitgate
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Sunday, June 08, 2025
IRC logs for Sunday, June 08, 2025
Links 08/06/2025: Tiananmen Carnage Censorship Persists, North Korean Goes Offline
Links for the day
Gemini Links 08/06/2025: Love as an Ethnographic Method and Monitorix Gemini-Frontend v0.1
Links for the day
Links 08/06/2025: Exposure of More GAFAM Surveillance and Social Security Records Compromised
Links for the day
Linux Foundation is a Mediator for Microsoft et al, Not for Small Companies That Support Rather Than Attack the GPL
Many people still wrongly assume that because it is called "Linux Foundation", then it is pro-Linux and represents the same mindset
This Past Friday, Confirming What We Said All Along About Brett Wilson LLP: It's Shrinking, Has Considerable Debt, Loss of Net Assets Despite the Microsoft SLAPP Money
The documents only became publicly available less than 2 days ago
Some of the Many Reasons We Sued Microsofters for Harassment
perpetrators of harassment
For 20 Years Many People Were Sharecropping for Canonical's Oligarch, Now He's Deleting All Their Contributions
"Ubuntu has erased instead of archiving the trove of material at Ubuntu Forums"
There Was Always Too Much 'Crazy Stuff' Going on Around Freenode
What many IRC users lost sight of
Exposing Crime is Not a Crime (It Never Was)
In the eyes of rich and powerful people, those who speak about their crimes are the "criminals"
GNU/Linux Distros Abandoning Microsoft GitHub
Will curl be next to leave Microsoft GitHub?
Expect More XBox Mass Layoffs Soon If the Rumours Are True
From a Microsoft media operative
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Saturday, June 07, 2025
IRC logs for Saturday, June 07, 2025
Europe Needs to Move Away From GAFAM; The Sooner, the Better
Europe - not just the EU - must abandon GAFAM as soon as possible
The Issue Isn't GNOME's Promotion of Diversity But GNOME Corruption, Abuse, Censorship, and Worse
So-called "Conservative" (republican, pro-Trump, bigoted) people want you to think the problem with GNOME is politics
When the News Sources Become Scarce and Increasingly Full of Polluted/Contaminated 'Content' (With LLM Slop and Slop Images)
Integrity matters
"Linux" Sites That Spew Out LLM Slop
We're lacking enough material for another "Slopwatch"
Abuse Inside the Polish Patent Office (UPRP) - Part V: Breaking the Law, Just Like EPO
We'll hopefully cover some of the pertinent details later this year
Links 08/06/2025: Security Lapses, CISA Cuts, and More
Links for the day
Gemini Links 07/06/2025: Mime Types and Geminisphere Introduction
Links for the day
Links 07/06/2025: Slop Companies Retain All Private Data, More Books Banned in the US
Links for the day
Gemini Links 07/06/2025: "A Monk's Guide to Happiness" and "Wireless Earbuds"
Links for the day
Links 07/06/2025: More Rumours of Mass Layoffs in Microsoft's XBox Division, New COVID Variant
Links for the day
Drug Addiction is a Real Problem, It Destroys Families
a rather sensitive matter
Abuse Inside the Polish Patent Office (UPRP) - Part IV: Political Scrutiny and Errors/Inconsistencies in Official Documents
When such organisations receive scrutiny they start focusing on cover-up and muzzling of facts (or crushing people who say the truth)
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Friday, June 06, 2025
IRC logs for Friday, June 06, 2025