Bonum Certa Men Certa

US Congress Should Stop Targeting Symptoms and Instead Tackle the Real Problem, Patent Scope

And Schumer Should Focus on the Correct Target (Software Patents), Not Trolls

Scope



Summary: Alluding to the fact that politicians pursue a corporate 'reform' (benefiting large companies) rather than the obvious reform which the USPTO needs

Somebody called Steph Kennedy contacted me a few days ago. I had an amicable exchange with this person who runs the IP Troll Tracker site -- a site which like us seems to realise that the Schumer 'reform' once again got derailed. He now speaks primarily about trolls rather than software patents/scope, which he focused on before. As Steph put it in her unique style, "I suppose on the one hand this is good news…all those software patents people don’t want issued? Well, they’ll languish forever now with the patent office reviewing cases for a living. It’s kind of like when Congress gets deadlocked: that’s a good thing because if they can’t agree? They can’t make more stupid laws.



"Throwing crazy-stupid legislation together so that you can tell your corporate constituents that you are trying to solve their problem? That’s what politicians do."

"Motorola is a defence mechanism, not an offence mechanism to Google, but EU regulators are too misguided to see this."She is throwing a wobbly Schumer's way. He no longer proposes a good reform. Here is another misdirected reform coming from the US government. And another. Why the sudden focus only on trolls? As Masnick's site puts it: "Of course, even before the law was officially on the books, it looks like Vermont's Attorney General has already sued a patent troll under existing consumer protection laws (raising questions as to why the new law is necessary). In this case, the troll is one we've written about a few times. Remember the series of rotating shell companies that had claimed that businesses who had a networked scanner need to pay $1,000 per employee? Yeah, that one."

Here is another report about Congress targeting trolls in isolation. Politicians serve corporate interests, only going after trolls, the side effect of a rogue system. Trolls are, on occasions, a proxy for large corporations, but this is the exception rather than the norm. Microsoft seems to be doing it, Apple hardly ever does (there are a few examples where Apple does this, e.g. MPEG-LA). Google won't use proxies like Microsoft and Apple do and it states this clearly, upfront.

Motorola is a defence mechanism, not an offence mechanism to Google, but EU regulators are too misguided to see this. completely missing the source of this issue and instead going after the victim which is trying to defend itself by expensive deterrence plan.

It is worth noting that Steph misunderstood some of the points I had made prior to the post in question, based on her response to me (posted some hours ago). Patent Troll Tracker was a lawyer, not her. The point I was making is that refocusing on trolls is often something that lawyers, politicians and lobbyists do, whereas bloggers often fall right into the same trap and lose sight of patent scope as the principal issue. The one point I disagree with Steph is that she says some companies are "actually selling off some of their patents to the trolls themselves (possibly and potentially Google and definitely Ericsson)."

Actually, while Ericsson is a good example which we covered before [1, 2, 3], she should mention Apple and Microsoft, not Google. Name even one troll which was fed by Google. None, right?

“Throwing crazy-stupid legislation together so that you can tell your corporate constituents that you are trying to solve their problem? That’s what politicians do.”
      --Steph Kennedy
A good example of an Apple- and Microsoft-backed patent troll is Intellectual Ventures, the world's biggest patent troll. How come Congress does not tackle this extortion operation? Too big to jail or even address. As Steph put it a few weeks ago, this troll makes nothing except propaganda. She wrote: "What long-term positive PR that IV thought they were going to accomplish with this survey is anybody’s guess."

As long as the USPTO is controlled by giants like software patents booster IBM, nothing will change for the better without a real fight.

Irving Wladawsky-Berger, an IBM veteran who endorses software patents, continues to post his pro-patents dross. These are the people who, sadly enough, control the politicians. A politicians who works for common interests is not a politicia but an activist. Strong action is needed to fix patent scope; Congress just isn't doing it,

Recent Techrights' Posts

Links 06/07/2025: Climate Change and "The Right to Criticise"
Links for the day
The Mainstream Media Took 4 Days to Realise Microsoft Shut Down Its Operations in Pakistan and Fired Everybody
We estimate that Microsoft has had about 29,000 layoffs since January
“Twibel” Actions Against Comedians (and Why It's a Truly Low Blow)
they try to make up in quantities for a lack of merit or quality
 
Links 06/07/2025: End to End Encryption at Risk, Reuters Twitter ("X") Account Withheld in India
Links for the day
Gemini Links 06/07/2025: Tinylog and Certification Rotation
Links for the day
PCLinuxOS Sites Coming Back, Gradually
let's just be patient
Social Control Media, Even If Based on Free Software, Still Has Many Problems
a distraction from what actually mattered and still matters
IBM is Not Your Master
IBM makes friends with people who exclude the majority of the population: women
Help Fund the Free Software Foundation (FSF)
If you have some dollars to spare, go support the FSF
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Saturday, July 05, 2025
IRC logs for Saturday, July 05, 2025
A Short History of Attacks on Techrights (and Boycott Novell Before That)
good opportunity to tell again the story of several (not all) attempts to silence us
Leadership in Free Software
Don't let IBM lead. It's a terrible flag bearer.
Linux Foundation Apparently Flirting With Slop (Marketing by LLM-Generated SPAM)
The Web is in a really bad state!
COVID-19 Sped Up Site Improvements in Techrights
A few months later we created our very own IRC network
Gemini Links 05/07/2025: Negative Questions and 'Touching Grass' (Going Outside)
Links for the day
Links 05/07/2025: Dalai Lama Succession as 90th Birthday Approaches, 40 deg C in China
Links for the day
Links 05/07/2025: Hungary and US Defecting to Russia, "Google's Hotseat Hypocrisy"
Links for the day
Gemini Links 05/07/2025: 4th of July 2025 and "Zig Roadmap 2026"
Links for the day
How to Combat the Exploitation and Abuse by Microsoft GitHub
Not to mention corruption and crimes against women
Bryan Lunduke is Actually Sending His Audience to Attack People
"[Lunduke] is actually sending his audience to attack people."
Even The Right Wing is Rejecting Bryan Lunduke
no wonder he became so irrelevant and marginal
Microsoft's MSN Helps Microsoft Spread Lies About the Layoffs' Scale (Well Over 25,000 People Laid Off This Year)
There seem to be monopolies on lies and on truth
The Death of X Has Been Greatly Exaggerated (by Compromised Media)
X.Org Server is alive and well
Rewriting Things in Rust
How far would you go?
In 2025 Everything is "AI". Remember Blockchains?
Talk about what companies and things (services, products, software) actually do, not the labels they use
Julian Assange Has Been Free for a Year
Julian Assange and I disagreed on some things
Monopolies and Scalping
Monopolies gravitate towards price hikes
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Friday, July 04, 2025
IRC logs for Friday, July 04, 2025
Microsoft's August Layoffs Wave: "August is Confirmed for Additional Performance Based Cuts"
"August is confirmed for additional performance based cuts from the recent connects along with additional organizational cuts."
What Microsoft Reputation Laundering (With a Weaponised Law Degree) Looks Like in a Foreign Continent
You would expect this in uncivilised and primitive countries
Slopwatch: LLMs 'Write' Fake or Distorted 'News' About "Linux"
LLM slop disguised as news
Links 04/07/2025: Google Replaces the Web With Slop, "AI Might Kill Us All"
Links for the day
Gemini Links 04/07/2025: Mindfulness and F1
Links for the day
Weeks After Microsoft Bankruptcy in Russia the Company Shuts Down in Pakistan, Too
Last month Windows' share in Pakistan fell to an all-time low
Rob Musial's June 2025 Additions of Malware in Proprietary Software
Via the GNU Web site this week
Links 04/07/2025: Microsoft's H-1B Visa Applications Show Another Crisis Unfolding, Many More Deep Cuts and Shutdowns Revealed, Complete Microsoft Exits
Links for the day
Gemini Links 04/07/2025: A Day To Remember and "Stop Killing Games"
Links for the day
Crime and Corruption at Microsoft GitHub Cannot be Covered Up by SLAPPs in Another Continent
We'll write about this for a long time to come
Slop Videos Are Disappointing Garbage, Nothing New, Just Brute Force up on Display or a Pedestal of Slop
Slop videos aren't a new thing
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Thursday, July 03, 2025
IRC logs for Thursday, July 03, 2025
The War on Local Storage (People Hosting Their Files Locally and Privately)
There's nothing wrong with controlling one's computing
What Digital Independence Means
Independence in the digital realms means abandoning platforms like GitHub, not just rejecting proprietary software
NVidia is a Bubble
they temporarily see fortunes and wrongly assume perpetuity thereof
Fedora Does Not Care About Diversity and Inclusion, It's About Optics (Corporate Image)
any notion of inclusion is superficial and misleading
Don't Buy the Excuses for Microsoft's Mass Layoffs
Back in the 90s, Microsoft bought a lot of companies to get and stay ahead