12.28.15

EPO a “European Institution Which Does Not Fall Under EU Law”

Posted in Europe, Patents at 6:45 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Petition regarding EPO

Summary: Highlighting a soon-to-end petition which bemoans the bizarre state of affairs at today’s EPO and its controversial impact on Europe

THE previous post focused on today’s talk which led us to the following petition [PDF], sent to us by several people almost simultaneously. We wish to bring it to the attention of EPO examiners and generally, as so many people are affected by the EPO, any EU citizen who is eager to take action to defend Europe’s interests and the interests of science and technology, not conglomerates like Microsoft. Watch what kinds of patents Microsoft is getting and using aggressively, based on this latest rant from the EFF (just published). To quote the EFF:

For the first time ever, this month’s Stupid Patent of the Month is being awarded to a design patent. Microsoft recently sued Corel for, among other things, infringing its patent on a slider, D554,140, claiming that Corel Home Office has infringed Microsoft’s design.

[...]
Microsoft’s patent claims against Corel are unsurprising in light of how much money is potentially at stake. If Corel is found to infringe even one of Microsoft’s design patents through even the smallest part of Corel Home Office, current Federal Circuit law entitles Microsoft to all of Corel’s profits for the entire product. Not the profits that can be attributed to the design. Not the value that the design adds to a product. All of the profit from Corel Home Office.

We previously wrote about the EPO’s special relationship with Microsoft, whereupon the EPO sent several threatening letters to me (all of them about Microsoft and the EPO). What are they so desperate to hide? They never withdrew these threats. █

Today’s Chaos Computer Club (CCC) Talk: EU Software and Business Method Patents: Call for Action

Posted in Europe, Patents, Videos at 6:18 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Summary: Today’s talk about software patents in Europe and a petition calling for action to stop these (again)

AS EPO examiners probably know by now, despite software patents (“as such,” as per Brimelow) not being legal in Europe, the EPO does occasionally entertain patent applications that pertain to software, even if it euphemistically names them CII to nymshift and add smoke to the debate. This can devastate famous European companies.

A CCC talk which was mentioned here over the weekend is now available for viewing online. It was presented earlier today and we were hoping to find a static file (Ogg/WebM preferable) as soon as possible in order to share information about software patents in Europe. EPO workers might wish to watch this in order to better understand how the management dodges the rules. The above video is from YouTube (the speaker has just sent it to us) and the MP4 version is already mirrored in the FFII’s Web site (1.1GB file in a heavily-patented multimedia format, ironically enough).

“A CCC talk which was mentioned here over the weekend is now available for viewing online.”“Henrion and colleagues are on at 32C3 now,” a reader wrote to us earlier, so some people were evidently streaming it live. This reader of ours tracked down the petition mentioned at the end of the talk. “It seems risky,” the reader said, as more people now realise that the EPO is out of control and UPC needs to be shunned. “According to the petitioner,” says the European Parliament’s Web site, “the European Patent Office is an international European institution which does not fall under EU law. He proposes that the EU contacts the EPO in order to conclude an interinstitutional agreement which would enable Members of the European Parliament to address parliamentary questions to the EPO and improve the parliamentary supervision of the EPO. The petitioner also asks the European Commission to harmonise national substantive patent law so that patent law becomes part of the acquis communautaire and the major differences which currently exist between the national patent law systems are removed. The EPO cannot deal with these differences, but has become the de facto harmoniser of patent law owing to its position as the provider of patents. According to the petitioner, the current situation is lacking a legislator and the development of patent law is concentrated in the hands of the executive and the judiciary. This is contrary to the separation of powers. The lack of balance between the powers means that it is difficult to respond to the fact that patent law affects areas other than that of EU policy, such as industrial policy, European standardisation and research policy. Moreover, the petitioner believes that the lack of harmonisation of substantive patent law weakens the negotiating position of the EU in matters relating to patent law with respect to third parties (WIPO, SPLT, TRIPS+, etc.).”

Incidentally, earlier today we found more articles about India rejecting software patents (for now…)

An article by RNA, who call themselves “Intellectual Property Attorneys” (it’s not hard to guess whose side they’re on), was published earlier today, around the same time of an article with the title “The Murky Waters Of Software Patents”.

“The one side isn’t “patent supporters” but mostly large corporations.”“India has announced a hold on plans to clarify the software patent process within the country,” wrote the reporter of the latter article, “a move that has both critics and supporters up in arms. In one camp, patent supporters argue that the investment in a new piece of software has to be protected both financially and by reputation against cheap imitators, while critics of software patents claim that software patents do nothing but lead to expensive litigation to fight infringement claims.”

The one side isn’t “patent supporters” but mostly large corporations. They’re not even Indian. They support not patents but software patents in India, which makes no sense for this economy that thrives in software and isn’t wealthy enough to withstand legal actions from aboard (mostly north America, obviously). That’s the kind of thing which UPC passage would enable, attracting all sorts of patent trolls and bring them to Europe with their software patents (that’s what trolls typically use for extortion purposes, where small companies are attractive targets that cannot afford legal battles and may quickly settle instead).

Learn from the mistakes of patent scope at the USPTO (whose official site is reportedly still not fully working today, based on IP Kat‘s comments, even 4 days after the outage). █

Links 28/12/2015: Corporate Media Associates Linux With N. Korea and Abuses, Linux 4.4 RC7 Released

Posted in News Roundup at 3:58 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNOME bluefish

Contents

GNU/Linux

Free Software/Open Source

  • SaaS/Big Data

    • On the OpenStack Scene, Get Credentials to Get Hired

      As part of its efforts to grow the OpenStack talent pool and global community, the OpenStack Foundation has announced a new professional certification program that is meant to provide a baseline assessment of knowledge and be accessible to OpenStack professionals around the world. Some of the first steps in advancing the program are taking place now, and other companies are also advancing OpenStack certification plans. Here is a sampling of the educational opportunities.

  • Pseudo-/Semi-Open Source (Openwashing)

  • BSD

  • Licensing

    • What topped the GitHub charts in 2015

      It’s been a year of open-source projects. Both enterprises and startups have been releasing their code into the wild as a way to grow their capabilities. It’s not just the code that’s important; it’s the programmers and contributors that can get their hands on it, alter it, fix it, and make it better.

    • Best of Opensource.com: Law
    • Answer to a Frequently Asked Question

      Q: Which open source license is best?

      A: Unlike bilateral copyright licenses, which are negotiated between two parties and embody a truce between them for business purposes, multilateral copyright licenses — of which open source licenses are a kind — are “constitutions of communities”, as Eben Moglen and others have observed. They express the consensus of how a community chooses to collaborate. They also embody its ethical assumptions, even if they are not explicitly enumerated.

  • Openness/Sharing

  • Standards/Consortia

    • Switzerland Wants a Single, Universal Phone Charger by 2017

      Apple’s Lightning cable cartel be damned: Switzerland is moving forward with a plan for a single, universal phone charger across the country, standardizing phone chargers across the board. While the exact standard hasn’t been mentioned yet, it wouldn’t be hard to guess the standard: Micro USB, used across phone platforms, most especially Android, which has a gigantic chunk of the cell phone market worldwide.

Leftovers

  • Security

    • Security Researchers Offer Warnings About Hackable Railroads

      The well-being of critical infrastructure and transportation has long been the elephant in the room when it comes to cybersecurity: plenty of researchers have warned about the possibility of attacks on power-plants, the national grid, and, more recently, even the emergence of internet connected cars.

      Now, researchers are warning of the gaping holes in the security of railroad systems. On Sunday at Chaos Communication Congress, a security, arts and politics conference held annually in Hamburg, Germany, members of the SCADA StrangeLove collective presented a long list of problems with railroad systems that attackers could exploit.

    • DLL Hijacking Just Won’t Die

      To make a long and complicated story short, a bad guy who exploits this vulnerability places a malicious DLL into your browser’s Downloads folder, then waits. When you run an installer built by an earlier version of NSIS from that folder, the elevation prompt (assuming it runs at admin) shows the legitimate installer’s signature asking you for permission to run the installer. After you grant permission, the victim installer loads the malicious DLL which runs its malicious code with the installer’s permissions. And then it’s not your computer anymore.

    • CA Council to Improve Internet Certificate Security in 2016

      At the heart of much of the Internet’s security is the use of Secure Sockets Layer/Transport Layer Security (SSL/TLS), which provides encryption for data in motion. Certificate Authorities (CAs) are the trusted entities that issue TLS certificates, and as a group, the CAs are gearing up for big year in 2016, with multiple efforts designed to improve the security of the Internet.

    • Backspace Flaw Enables Linux Zero-Day Attack
    • Monday’s security updates

  • Environment/Energy/Wildlife

    • Thousands More Homes Face Flooding Threat

      Thousands of homes are being evacuated in York after “unprecedented” levels of rain caused the Foss and Ouse rivers to burst their banks and the city’s flood barrier to be lifted.

    • UK flooding: Government rejected warnings of high flood risk from own advisers

      Minsters were warned by the Government’s own climate change advisers that they needed to take action to protect the increasing number of homes at high risk of flooding – but rejected the advice.

      The decision not to develop a comprehensive strategy to address increased flood risk came in October just a few weeks before the flooding in Cumbria before Christmas and the most recent flooding in Lancashire and Yorkshire.

    • Why Engineers Can’t Stop Los Angeles’ Enormous Methane Leak

      One of the biggest environmental disasters in US history is happening right now, and you’ve probably never heard of it.

      An enormous amount of harmful methane gas is currently erupting from an energy facility in Aliso Canyon, California, at a startling rate of 110,000 pounds per hour. The gas, which carries with it the stench of rotting eggs, has led to the evacuation 1,700 homes so far. Many residents have already filed lawsuits against the company that owns the facility, the Southern California Gas Company.

  • Finance

  • PR/AstroTurf/Lobbying

    • Bill O’Reilly Had A Terrible 2015

      Numerous Journalists Took Apart O’Reilly’s Falklands War Tales. O’Reilly has repeatedly attempted to bolster his reporting credentials by claiming over the years that he reported “in the Falklands” during the 1982 Falklands War. A Mother Jones exposé, however, found that O’Reilly fabricated his reporting resume and his former colleagues said he was actually 1,200 miles away in Buenos Aires. O’Reilly also claimed to have reported on a 1982 Buenos Aires protest in which “many were killed,” but numerous journalists who reported from the scene and a historian disputed his story. Furthermore, O’Reilly claimed to have helped an injured CBS photographer during the protest, but his colleagues have no recollection of that incident.

  • Censorship

    • True or false, decide through self-censorship, says minister

      He said self-censorship was important to see that the information they received and believed were valid and not detrimental and disruptive to harmony in society and country.

    • Public should practice self-censorship on social media, says minister

      Communications and Multimedia Minister Datuk Seri Dr Salleh Said Keruak today called on the people to use their power of self-censorship to reject or accept any information posted on the social media.

      He said self-censorship was important to see that the information they received and believed were valid and not detrimental and disruptive to harmony in society and country.

      “The important thing is, we should not be confused between news and views. Views are people’s own and not necessarily accurate and our views could differ from each other’s. But news contain facts, the veracity of which are verified before being disseminated.

    • Anonymous Attacks Asia Pacific Telecommunity website to protest Internet censorship

      The global hacktivist group, Anonymous has now turned its eyes to the varying degrees of censorship being practised in Asia. The Asia Pacific Telecommunity website (apt.int) has not only been hacked by members of the Anonymous hacker collective, and they also have got entry to the site’s admin panel (running Drupal), and also have been able to get their hands on a database dump.

    • Anonymous Hacks Asia Pacific Telecommunity Against Internet Censorship in Asia

      Anonymous hacker collective has attacked the official website of Asia Pacific telecommunity and defaced it in protest against growing plans for internet censorship in Asia.

      The hackers gained access of the website’s admin panel (running Drupal) and from there, leaked all the data stored on the website along with defacing the site with one of their own pages.

    • Court Orders Shutdown of Libgen, Bookfi and Sci-Hub

      A New York District Court has granted Elsevier’s request for a preliminary injunction against several sites that host academic publications without permission. As a result the site’s operators are now ordered to quit offering access to infringing content, while the associated registries must suspend their domain names.

    • Amidst censorship row, two “porn-coms” are releasing in India in January

      India’s 2016 film calendar will begin on a controversial note. Two Bollywood adult comedies starring the same actor are releasing within a week of each other in January. Both Maastizaade and Kya Kool Hain Hum 3 are releasing after facing considerable objections from India’s censor board.

    • The Splinternet: A New Era of Censorship, Surveillance, and Cyberwarfare

      For more than a decade, the internet has become a seemingly borderless land of free flowing information. It began as a not so open U.S. military data system decades ago, but it evolved over time into the public digital domain it has become.

    • On the Aggressive, Hilarious Theorizing in ‘Censorship Now!!’
    • Harvard Law Review Freaks Out, Sends Christmas Eve Threat Over Public Domain Citation Guide

      In the fall of 2014, we wrote about a plan by public documents guru Carl Malamud and law professor Chris Sprigman, to create a public domain book for legal citations (stay with me, this isn’t as boring as it sounds!). For decades, the “standard” for legal citations has been “the Bluebook” put out by Harvard Law Review, and technically owned by four top law schools. Harvard Law Review insists that this standard of how people can cite stuff in legal documents is covered by copyright. This seems nuts for a variety of reasons. A citation standard is just an method for how to cite stuff. That shouldn’t be copyrightable. But the issue has created ridiculous flare-ups over the years, with the fight between the Bluebook and the open source citation tool Zotero representing just one ridiculous example.

  • Privacy

    • Why ownCloud’s CEO isn’t worried about the death of Safe Harbor [Ed: Katherine Noyes should be smarter than that and not quote Microsoft propagandist Enderle]
    • Windows 10: Microsoft hits new low with ‘Upgrade Now’ or ‘Upgrade Tonight’ pop-up [Ed: how to push spyware]

      The latest pop-up message to consumers, outed on Reddit, removes the explicit option to opt out of the upgrade, instead offering two options: ‘Update Now’ or ‘Update Tonight’. Simply closing the box will make it go away (we’re still trying to ascertain for how long) but it seems that this is a deliberate attempt to prey on the less tech savvie.

    • The Tax Sleuth Who Took Down a Drug Lord

      “I’m not high-tech, but I’m like, ‘This isn’t that complicated. This is just some guy behind a computer,’” he recalled saying to himself. “In these technical investigations, people think they are too good to do the stupid old-school stuff. But I’m like, ‘Well, that stuff still works.’ ”

      Mr. Alford’s preferred tool was Google. He used the advanced search option to look for material posted within specific date ranges. That brought him, during the last weekend of May 2013, to a chat room posting made just before Silk Road had gone online, in early 2011, by someone with the screen name “altoid.”

    • China passes law requiring tech firms to hand over encryption keys

      Under the guise of counter-terrorism, the controversial law is the Chinese government’s attempt to curtail the activities of militants and political activists. China already faces criticism from around the world not only for the infamous Great Firewall of China, but also the blatant online surveillance and censorship that takes place. This latest move is one that will be view very suspiciously by foreign companies operating within China, or looking to do so.

    • New Chinese law takes aim at encryption

      A new law passed by China’s Parliament on Sunday requires technology companies to assist the government in decrypting content, a provision that the country maintains is modeled after Western law.

      A new law passed by China’s Parliament on Sunday requires technology companies to assist the government in decrypting content, a provision that the country maintains is modeled after Western law.

      ISPs and telecommunication companies must provide technical assistance to the government, including decrypting communications, for terrorism-related investigations, according to Xinhua, China’s official news agency.

    • China Using US Encryption Fight To Defend Its New Encryption Backdoor Mandate

      So, again, to all the politicians and lawmakers supporting backdooring encryption, what’s your response when China uses it to say that’s why they’re doing it as well?

    • Senator Richard Burr: Confused And Wrong On Encryption

      Right, except so far officials haven’t been able to show evidence of any of those cases actually using encryption. Similarly, law enforcement has failed to show that criminals using encryption have really been that much of a problem either. And that’s because it’s not a problem. Even in the (still mostly rare) cases where encryption is being used, criminals still reveal plenty of information that would allow law enforcement to track them down. It’s called doing basic detective work.

  • Civil Rights

  • Internet/Net Neutrality

    • India Tells Facebook To Shut Down Controversial Zero Rating Program ‘Free Basics’

      The Indian government has spent much of the last year trying to craft net neutrality rules, and had recently been fielding public comment on whether or not Facebook’s zero rating effort, Free Basics, violates net neutrality. As we’ve covered at length, Facebook’s been trying to corner the developing nation ad market with a zero rated program that offers free access to curated, Facebook approved content. Critics and Free Basic content partners alike haven’t been comfortable with giving Facebook that much control.

    • How the Internet of Things Limits Consumer Choice
    • Why India’s Net Neutrality Activists Hate Facebook

      Facebook Inc. Chairman Mark Zuckerberg made a personal appeal in one of India’s leading newspapers for the country to allow a free Internet service that has stirred controversy and invited questions from regulators.

      Facebook’s proposed Free Basics plan allows customers to access the social network and other services such as education, health care, and employment listings from their phones without a data plan. Yet activists say the program threatens the principles of net neutrality and could change pricing in India for access to different websites.

      The backlash in India centers on net neutrality, the principle that all Internet websites should be equally accessible. Critics accused the world’s largest social networking company of favoring a limited swath of the Internet and excluding rival services. And Facebook’s broader Internet.org initiative, including Free Basics, is seen as an effective way to draw more users onto a social network already used by over a billion people.

    • Facebook’s Zuckerberg: If You Oppose Our International Power Grab, You’re An Enemy Of The Poor

      Last week we noted that India had shut down Facebook’s Free Basics program, arguing the company’s plan for zero rating Facebook-approved content and services is effectively glorified collusion; an attempt to eventually corner global ad markets under the banner of altruism. The country has been trying to craft net neutrality rules, and has slowly realized that whatever neutrality looks like, Facebook deciding what content Indians get access to isn’t it.

    • Comcast Cap Blunder Highlights How Nobody Is Ensuring Broadband Meters Are Accurate

      For years now we’ve noted that while broadband ISPs rush toward broadband caps and usage overage fees, nobody is checking to confirm that ISP meters are accurate. The result has been user network hardware that reports usage dramatically different from an ISPs’ meters, or users who are billed for bandwidth usage even when the power is out or the modem is off. Not only have regulators historically failed to see the anti-innovation, anti-competitive impact of usage caps, you’d be hard pressed to find a single official that has even commented on the problem of inaccurate broadband usage meters.

  • Intellectual Monopolies

    • Copyrights

      • El Paquete Semanal: How Offline Piracy Flourishes in Cuba

        For more than a decade many Cubans have been pirating the latest entertainment without a proper connection to the Internet. Instead, they have built their own person-to-person distribution network to share a weekly package of pirated material: El Paquete Semanal.

Buying Panels and Paying the Media to Cement Personal Agenda: The Bill Gates Common Core Case Mirrors the Battistelli Unitary Patent Case

Posted in Bill Gates, Europe, Marketing, Patents at 7:02 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Watch out and be prepared for the massive Unitary Patent PR campaign

Gates and media

Gates and media 2

Summary: A look at highly expensive lobbying for personal gain by Bill Gates in just one area (among many) and how this relates to EPO lobbying for the UPC, which basically helps make the rich even richer

BASED on the EPO’s spendings of nearly a million dollars for a US company to promote the Unitary Patent in the US, there is definitely something going on and we cannot help thinking of Gates’ promotion of Common Core, which he profits from (we no longer cover this, having written hundreds of articles on the subject). It’s all about Big Business, which is already treated more favourably than others at the EPO.

A few days ago we found this promotional EPO article that says: “Reflecting in statistics, the European Union is the second-largest overseas filer with the SIPO, accounting for 28% of foreign filings in 2014. In the same year, Chinese filers contributed more than 9% filed with EPO, mainly clustering around the sectors of digital communication, computer technology and telecommunications.”

“It’s all about Big Business, which is already treated more favourably than others at the EPO.”Well, actually, many of the filers are big businesses from China (some are government-connected and enjoy a fast lane at the EPO). Battistelli has been visiting China and posing a lot with Chinese officials recently, not because they have so much in common in terms of human rights but because Battistelli serves globalists, not Europeans. He serves the world’s billionaires, people like Bill Gates.

Incidentally, last night as we reorganised some old feeds we found alarming headlines from the past 2 years. In them, Bill Gates’ push of Common Core came under fire. Like the Unitary Patent in Europe, there’s a big PR campaign behind it. See articles (written by teachers) such as “An Audit of Bill Gates’ Common Core Spending” or “Bill Gates: An infographic”.

“It’s an information war.”Having essentially bribed the Seattle Times for favourable coverage before [1, 2] (like Adelson does right now in Las Vegas, despite getting caught), Bill Gates is doing it again. To quote some headlines, “Bill Gates funded the Seattle Times “Education Lab””, “Bill Gates funds the media then secretly meets with them” and “Bill Gates funds the media, including the Seattle Times’ Education Lab, then secretly meets with them”. He gives them marching orders like he did in the New York Times with his occasional visits. Gates also pays notable British press like the BBC and The Guardian in exchange for favourable coverage. It’s an information war. He is buying out the media and the front groups, making them incapable of resisting and rendering them just puppets catering for his agenda, masquerading as lots of interest groups of various different stakeholders. Here are some headlines from the aforementioned teachers’ blog:

A lot of the above reminds us of Battistelli and his precious Unitary Patents. He has an agenda to sell and obscene amounts of money are now being (mis)used for an unacceptable PR campaign. Who benefits? Certainly not the public.

Don’t believe anything that EPO management says, including whatever it may say about the Unitary Patent. Sadly, the EPO is now poisoning also the media and it sets up events that serve as Unitary Patent propaganda. █

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