05.02.16

Interesting Supreme Court Cases About Patents in the United States

Posted in America, Courtroom, Patents at 1:45 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Another ‘Alice’ on the way?

The bronze doors of the US Supreme Court
The bronze doors of the US Supreme Court

Summary: A quick review of some of the latest developments regarding SCOTUS (the US Supreme Court) as far as patents go

There will soon be an interesting design patent case at the Supreme Court of the United States, alongside other cases that are not about patents and some that are (some are about copyrights too). A new article by Dennis Crouch, covering a “patent-copyright parallel” (not exactly the same as in Oracle v. Google), says about one such case: “In both patent and copyright cases the issue of laches arises more often than you might think because of the legal treatment of “ongoing” infringement. Each infringing act is seen as a new act of infringement. Thus, the six-year limits period starts anew each time a new copy of the infringing product is made, sold, or used. If someone has been making an infringing product for the past 10 years, the statute would let the patentee them reach back 6 years for damages. Courts often see that result as as problematic when the patentee sits on its rights for so long (and since most civil claims have a shorter period of limitations) and thus apply the laches doctrine to limit collection of back damages even when within the six-year period.”

“Müller essentially changed sides and he is against Apple’s unreasonable patent demands these days.”“This is, incidentally,” said this one person, “the second time this term that SCOTUS has granted one copyright and one patent case in a day” (SCOTUS typically rules in favour of reformists these days, so whichever such case the Justices take under their wing would likely end well).

As Florian Müller put it in this morning’s article about design patents: “In about five weeks from now, we’ll see how successful Samsung’s mobilization efforts have been, and two months after that we’ll see the fruits of Apple’s campaigning.” The focus of Müller, however, is stated upfront in his title: “Where will the ‘friends of the Supreme Court’ come down on design patent damages in Apple v. Samsung?” Müller and I do not agree on the Oracle v. Google case (we had a long exchange about it today), but we do agree on the Samsung case. Müller essentially changed sides and he is against Apple’s unreasonable patent demands these days. If SCOTUS rules against Apple (in any of the ongoing cases), it will be good news for Google, for Android, for Free software, and for Linux. Apple has placed itself on the wrong side of history. █

Governments in Europe Still Active Against EPO Management

Posted in Europe, Patents at 1:15 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Philip Cordery

Summary: There is still political work being done — albeit rather discreetly — against Battistelli and his goons at the European Patent Office’s top-level management

WE sometimes get the impression of defeatism among EPO staff. Some find it hard to believe that Battistelli will step down and dismissed staff representatives reintegrated into the workforce, even though work is still being done (usually more discreetly than before) towards that.

“As for the EPO situation,” one person told us about an insider, “s/he doesn’t expect much to change for the better, given the Administrative Council’s unwillingness to do anything other than, more or less, backing the president. S/He, too, appears to be very frustrated with the lack of action on the part of national governments, including our minister of (in)justice in Germany, who’s a sad joke in my opinion.”

“The Netherlands is increasingly concerned and so is France.”Germany, for reasons we have explained here several times before, feels comfortable turning a blind eye because it benefits financially from the EPO. But that doesn’t mean other countries too choose inaction. The Netherlands is increasingly concerned and so is France. The predominantly French management around Battistelli (his cronies and their family members) are becoming a national embarrassment that promotes perception of systemic corruption.

“The French MP Philip Cordery,” SUEPO wrote earlier today, “reported in a blog post dated 25 April 2016 about a joint letter (written with other French MPs: Pierre-Yves Le Borgn’, Richard Yung, Claudine Lepage, Jean-Yves Leconte and Hélène Conway-Mouret), dated 21 April 2016, to the French Minister of Economic Affairs Emmanuel Macron. The letter was sent “in order to demand once again that France take action towards a reform of the management of this international organization”.”

The PDF link/original in French [PDF] suggests ongoing work ‘behind the scenes’, so to speak, not for the first time from Mr. Cordery [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7]. Cordery et al ought to know that Battistelli has become a source of great shame to France.

A translation of the blog post [PDF] (original) and a translation of the letter [PDF] in English was posted by SUEPO and here it is in English:

EPO: Keep up the pressure for management reform

Following the last meeting of the Administrative Council of the European Patent Office, I, together with a number of my colleagues representing French citizens established outside France, called upon the Minister of the Economy, Emmanuel Macron, in order to demand once again that France take action towards a reform of the management of this international organization.

And the accompanying letter:

Paris, 21 April 2016

Ref.: PC/AF/169

Minister,

We wish to draw your attention to the importance of the decisions taken at the last meeting of the Administrative Council of the European Patent Office.

We are pleased to note that a resolution was voted through, resulting from a compromise in order to obtain a majority. It has therefore been possible to focus on the social conflict and the imposition of sanctions and disciplinary procedures against EPO staff members. We welcome the role played by France, which, by your mediation, has accepted its responsibilities and mobilised its partners with regard to these issues.

We are now calling for the greatest vigilance on your part with regard to the effective implementation of the measures arising from this resolution. In our view it is essential that the persons concerned are given the opportunity to make recourse rapidly to an outside authority to re-examine the issues and act in arbitration with regard to the sanctions which may have been imposed on them, and that this be put into effect without any further delay.

The present immunity of the management of the EPO with regard to management of the staff and the choice of strategic attitudes adopted by the Office is a matter of great concern. It is arousing concern with regard to the future of this organization, and the development of innovation in Europe. The nationality and the status as a French executive of the President impose a particular responsibility on our country in the present situation. It is for this reason that in our view it is imperative that France, by way of its official representative on the Administrative Council, takes action such that a major change in the management of the Office can come into effect rapidly.

At the present time, the two staff union representatives who were dismissed in Munich have not been reinstated, and the degrading abuses of the statutes of the Office continue. Some
staff members at the Hague are still under investigation. One of them in particular has been deprived of any treatment as a result of failure to take account of his stopping work due to illness, giving rise to fear of possible dismissal. We therefore believe it to be essential that our own citizens, who are victims equally with the other staff members of the repressive managerial policy adopted by the President of the Office, be fully and continuously supported during this ordeal.

We are at your disposal to discuss these matters with you. More than ever, we are convinced that a major reform of the management of the EPO is essential, and we are eager that our
country should commit itself to this end, without any shortcomings.

We remain, Minister, yours faithfully

Philip Cordery

Pierre-Yves Le Borgn’

Richard Yung

Claudine Lepage

Jean-Yves Leconte

Hélène Conway-Mouret

Emmanuel MACRON
Minister of the Economy, Industry, and the Digital Sector
139, rue de Bercy
75572 Paris Cedex 12

Copy to Yves LAPIERRE
Director General
National Institute of Industrial Property

Assemblée Nationale – 126 rue de l’Université 75007 PARIS
pcordery@assemblee-nationale.fr – 01 40 63 06 58

There is action in additional EU member states against the EPO, but revealing details at this stage would potentially compromise actions. The EPO saga is far from over, in spite of the relative calm. Don’t be misled. Battistelli was advised to keep a low profile for a reason. It’s a massive reputation laundering operation. █

The European Spam Office (EPO)

Posted in Europe, Marketing, Patents at 9:58 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

This is all from the past hour, in succession (EPO’s Twitter feed in a period of just 15 minutes, 3pm-3:15pm GMT)

EPO spam

Summary: EPO budget at ‘work’, days after doing copy-paste jobs and also working overtime in the weekend for an extravagant and needless/purposeless event (except for Battistelli's own pride)

Not Just Benoît Battistelli and Willy Minnoye (EPO): Željko Topić Too Thinks He is Above the Law, Avoids the Judges and Courts

Posted in Europe, Law, Patents at 8:29 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Arrogance apparently runs deep inside EPO veins

Željko Topić article

Summary: The latest developments regarding some of the criminal complaints and civil lawsuits against Topić (above), who is now a Vice-President at the European Patent Office (EPO)

EPO management vainly disregards judges, it doesn’t just attack them (e.g. dismisses or suspends them if it does not think that they're loyal enough to Battistelli, in spite of complete independence).

More news from Croatia have landed on our lap and it’s quite revealing. It says a lot about Željko Topić as an individual, not just as a ‘professional’. Much like Willy Minnoye proudly proclaiming that he would ignore rulings from the highest Dutch judges, Topić apparently believes that he is above the law. He is not showing up in court (cases which he is losing) and based on additional information we have been given, this unacceptable behaviour continues to date. How can EPO stakeholders take seriously people who don’t believe in the rule of law (except when it suddenly suits them and they can distort the law to silence critics) if they’re trying to be granted patents which presumably would be enforced in a court of law?

“How can EPO stakeholders take seriously people who don’t believe in the rule of law (except when it suddenly suits them and they can distort the law to silence critics) if they’re trying to be granted patents which presumably would be enforced in a court of law?”“The origins of this story go back quite a long way,” told us a source, “as far back as 2007 in fact. This is a symptom of the Croatian legal system which is notoriously slow and where cases take many years to process (especially if there is some kind of political interference). It’s not that different from the EPO which may explain why Topić fitted in so well. He was probably able to give his boss some good tips on how to exploit a dysfunctional legal system to the detriment of EPO staff.

“The story begins back in November 2007 when the Croatian public sector union SDLSN (“Trade Union of State and Local Officials and Employees of the Republic of Croatia) reported on the “Bullying of ‘unwanted’ civil servants” at the State Intellectual Property Office.”

This was mentioned in an older article (with this translated 2007 report and suicide 'collateral damage' therein).

Our source continues: “The affair resurfaced in the Croatian press on 5 March 2012 when the newspaper “Jutarnji List” [shown above] published a short report which explained that SIPO employees who had been targeted by the “bullying” action in 2007 had filed a number of criminal complaints and a civil lawsuit against Topić.”

Here is an English translation of this article:

JUTARNJI LIST

5 March 2012

Team selected for culling: Željko Topić, head of the SIPO for years, pursued in court

He established a special unit with 10 officials selected for dismissal

Željko Topić, Director of the State Intellectual Property Office (SIPO), who has been linked to numerous scandals like buying a luxury Mercedes at the expense of the Institute, is under suspicion of having abused his employees.

An invented and displaced department

The findings of the administrative labour inspectorate from 25 January 2008 confirm that that on 15 October 2007 Topić deliberately selected a group of ten employees at the SIPO for transfer to a professional unit which he had established and called “The extraction and storage of non-administrative mail“. It didn’t bother the Director that none of his ten officials were qualified for the task of archiving as they included among their ranks IT experts, a professor of French, a Master of Engineering, senior economists and administrative lawyers.

Due to the “urgency of the work” ten officials were moved from Vukovara Street [SIPO headquarters] into offices in Sava Street 118 where, confused and outraged, they languished for twenty days without work. It was not until November 13th that the first document arrived but even then they could not do their job because the computer was not connected to the database at the SIPO headquarters.

Realizing that their transfer was actually a downgrading and a prelude to dismissal, in October 2007 the employees reported Topić to the labour inspectorate.

It was determined that Topić was not authorised to set up new departments and that the ten employees were not qualified for archiving. Topić tried to justify his actions in front of the labour inspectorate by claiming that these were employees who had performed their work badly but the inspectorate found that the last assessment of their work from 2003 was “very successful”.

One official committed suicide

The inspectorate ordered Topić to return the officials to their previous jobs which he did. But then one of the transferred officials committed suicide. Three criminal charges were filed against Topić and one civil lawsuit was initiated. The procedures are still ongoing.

“No information is available about the status of the criminal complaints,” we got told, “but the civil lawsuit which was filed some time around 2008 is still pending in 2016! Welcome to the Croatian legal system! EPO employees may have a feeling of dejà-vu…”

“EPO employees may have a feeling of dejà-vu…”
      –AnonymousWe covered one such story only a day ago (this morning we published a Spanish translation).

Our source continues: “One of the lead plaintiffs in the civil lawsuit against Topić is Jadranka Oklobdžija who was the Chairperson of the staff union at the SIPO at the time in question (2007). According to reliable reports from Zagreb, Topić has been summoned to appear before the court in the civil proceedings on four occasions but each time he has failed to turn up.

“The latest hearing in the civil action took place on 1st April 2016. Topić was in Zagreb on the day but despite having been summoned, he didn’t bother to turn up in court for the hearing.

“So it seems that a new summons will now be sent directly to Topić at the EPO in Munich.”
      –Anonymous“The judge seems to have got wind of the fact that Topić was in town and she questioned a representative of SIPO about his failure to appear. The SIPO representative said that Topić had arrived in Zagreb the previous day (31 March) and was due to return to Munich the following day (2 April). It seems that the judge was not amused at being treated like an “April fool”. She requested SIPO to provide details of Topić’s address at the EPO so that the court could send a summons to him in Munich. The SIPO representative objected to this but the judge overruled the objection and made an order that Topić’s address in Munich should be disclosed to the court. So it seems that a new summons will now be sent directly to Topić at the EPO in Munich.”

It sure looks like the EPO is unable to escape Topić’s past, no matter how hard it attempts to deny it, even punishing those who ‘dare’ or are brave enough to speak about it. █

Nefarious Forces for Patent Abuse and Software Patents in the United States, Australia, India, Korea, and Europe

Posted in America, Asia, Australia, Deception, Europe, Patents at 7:36 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

We need more leaks, e.g. UPC leaks, to shed light on who’s pulling whose strings

TPP
Patent pollution and “global patent warming,” as Benjamin Henrion occasionally calls it [1, 2]

Summary: A roundup of news from the weekend and today, with emphasis on the elements inside the system (or the media) which push for regressive policies that benefit them financially at the expense of everybody else

THERE is progress being made toward patent justice, albeit there are self-serving elements that are parasitic and non-producing. They battle to maintain the status quo, if not to make it even worse. Below are the latest examples.

United States

The other day we mentioned the latest disappointing move from CAFC, which in essence defended patent trolls in the US (where they sparingly use software patents for extortion, even when these patents would not withstand a court’s scrutiny). CAFC supporting patent trolls shouldn’t be surprising given CAFC’s history. Joe Mullin reacts as follows: “Patent reform advocates who were hoping to “shut down the Eastern District of Texas” face disappointment today, as the top US patent appeals court ruled (PDF) against a venue transfer in a dispute between two food companies.”

Don’t expect reform to come from CAFC, initiator of software patents. From SCOTUS? Maybe. Is an appeal next on the agenda? Will this reach SCOTUS?

Australia

There is a new motion to convince the Australian government to ban software patents (officially). It’s part of a broader motion which also suggests some of the following changes, as covered some days ago:

In its draft report released on Friday the commission recommends that action must be taken to “rebalance” the existing IP laws with a new system that balances the interests of rights holders and users.

The commission says that while a good system balances the interests of rights holders and users, Australia’s IP system has swung too far in favour of vocal rights holders and influential IP exporting nations.

Patent attorney Mark Summerfield, along with other patent maximalists (whom he flirts with online), already attacks/mocks the Commission for daring to make these suggestions. Perhaps it threatens his source of income, which is basically patent wars, confrontation, saber-rattling etc.

“Now that a Committee in Australia proposed ban of swpats,” Benjamin Henrion correctly noted, “IBM and other patent agents calls the move “flawed”…”

We mentioned IBM’s patent chief and his response yesterday (noted towards the end).

India

India is still under heavy attack by the software patents lobby (for almost a year now, as it intensified last summer). India’s media has just published this opinion that’s summarised as follows: “It’s to the credit of policymakers that they have steadfastly refused to kiss this pig called ‘software patents’, despite it being dressed up in the lipstick of ‘innovation’” (not just in software).

The article is titled “Lipstick on a pig” and “The pig in question is the regime of software patents being advocated by some multinational corporations (MNCs),” notes the author. Indians will hopefully get involved in this process and provide input with which to counter the lobbyists, who never grow tired (they’re paid for it).

Korea

IAM ‘magazine’, a patents maximalist, wants us to believe that “trolling” is now “monetisation drive” (asking for ‘protection money’ while barely, hardly or not at all developing anything). In relation to software and BM patents in Korea (it calls these “fintech patents”) it urges the country, which is traditionally not aggressive/assertive in the patents sense, to get more trollish. IAM itself is funded by patent trolls (in part). Not nice, IAM, not nice…

EU

In the continent where EPO officials regularly lobby EU officials, despite the EPO being a non-EU body, there is still an effort to bring software patents to European member states.

Here is MIP becoming platform of patent maximalists who do UPC advocacy (to sell their services). Well, according to this tweet, the article is “sponsored” (i.e. promotional) and it says:

The opt‐out possibility offered by Article 83 UPCA pays lots of attention to the choices patentees are facing with regards to their filing strategy. We focus here on defensive strategies in the new legislative framework, in particular on actions before national courts.

[...]

These uncertainties make it difficult for parties to implement a defensive strategy. Is it worth investing in an invalidity action in a national court, before entry into force of the UPC? Assuming such an action impacts patentees’ choices at all, will it completely prevent the use of the UPC or only preclude the use of the UPC for a nullity action?

With UPC “uncertainties make it difficult for parties to implement a defensive strategy,” so they turn to patent lawyers. The UPC is very good for aggressors and for lawyers; it’s bad for everybody else. █

[ES] El Sistema de Patentes de los EE.UU: Donde Uno Desperdicia Años en Corte y Gasta $8,000,000 en Honorarios de Abogados Peleándo una Patente Falsa

Posted in America, Patents at 6:45 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

English/Original

Article as ODF

Publicado en America, Patentes at 5:24 am por el Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Laoficina de patentes de los EE.UU. Ha esencialmenteexternalizado los costos al público

Alice road

Sumario: un sumario de noticias acerca de las patentes de software en los EE.UU. Y ha lo que han llevado, debido en gran manera al decline en calidad de las patentes por parte de la USPTO (dejando que otros se las arreglen limpiando el desórden)

Losridiculos bajos estándares de la USPTO vienen con un costo altísimo, aunque este costo es considerad una externalidad por esta codiciósa oficina de patentes. A menos que este desorden sea arreglado, de los EE.UU podrían quedar sólo largas corporaciónes multinacionales con miles de patentes cada una, opuestamente a ágiles startups sin ninguna.

Elliot Harmon dice que esta patente de software en particular, la que puede ser fácilmente demolida usando a Alice, ha estado en uso en el Districto Este de Texas y es la “Estupida Patente del Mes” (de las series de la EFF). Para citar:

Este mes, la compañía nnovaciones Voice2Text ha presentado demandas de violación de patentes contra dos de Voz sobre IP (VoIP), y Phone.com Vitelity. Voice2Text no tiene sitio web o cualquier otra información en línea; su único activo parece ser la Patente de Estados Unidos número 8.914.003, como era de esperar, una patente sobre el uso de reconocimiento de voz para convertir un mensaje de voz en un mensaje de texto. Igualmente como era de esperar, se presentó esos trajes en el Distrito Este de Texas, cuyas prácticas patente duende amigable hemos documentado a fondo en este blog. La patente Voice2Text es tan absurda que teníamos que cumplir con nombrarla la Patente Estúpida de mes.

“A menos que este desorden sea arreglado, de los EE.UU podrían quedar sólo largas corporaciónes multinacionales con miles de patentes cada una, opuestamente a ágiles startups sin ninguna.”

Con el fin de destruir dicha patente uno necesitaría gastar buen montón de dinero en lugar de asentarse. Considere esta nueva historia titulada “Por orden de la Corte demandante a pagar $ demandados 8 millones en honorarios de abogados en juici de patentes“. Eso es mucho dinero; abogados de patentes groseramente sobrecarga y el sistema juega a su favor mediante la inducción de los costes adicionales en muchos niveles (por ejemplo apelaciones), favoreciendo así los que tienen presupuestos más grandes o bolsillos más profundos, dejando pequeños jugadores mucho más vulnerables. Para citar las palabras finales: “Este caso ilustra que los tribunales tengan una acción fuerte cuando se enfrentan a demandas sin fundamento, la evidencia ocultada o alterada, y declaraciones engañosas hechas a la corte o adversarios. También sirve como un recordatorio fuerte como para considerar su consejo con cuidado, y el consejo que dar, o un demandante puede tener que pagar sus propios honorarios y los de la parte demandada, que en este caso asciende a otros $ 8 millones.”

Este caso puede ser la excepción de la norma, pero juzgando por la decisión acerca de NewEggde resistir a los trolles de patentes, frecuéntemente cuesta millones de dólares y no hay garantía para el acusador — después de perder — de cargar con el costo del los honorarios legales de el acusado (victima). NewEgg actualmente hizo histora al agenciárselas para obligar al troll de patentes que page el costo de los recibos legales de la victima (acusado) hace unos meses, debido a una inusual decisión de el juez.

“NewEgg actualmente hizo histora al agenciárselas para obligar al troll de patentes que page el costo de los recibos legales de la victima (acusado) hace unos meses, debido a una inusual decisión de el juez..”

Patently-O acaba de recomendar relativamente un nuevo reportede Lynda J. Oswald que critica el término “responsabilidad objetiva” y cuyo resumen dice: “En 1995, el Circuito Federal sumariamente adjunta la etiqueta de” responsabilidad objetiva “a la infracción de patente directa, a pesar de que ese término no lo hace aparecer en cualquier Ley de Patentes de Estados Unidos de los últimos dos siglos. El catecismo de “estricta” responsabilidad directa violación de patentes es ahora tan bien arraigada en la doctrina de patentes que es fácil perder de vista lo reciente de la llegada de esta terminología se encuentra en la jurisprudencia, y la aplicación lo molesto de esta norma se ha demostrado, incluso para el Circuito Federal, que lo creó. El acto primera patente (1790) precedió a la aparición del derecho de daños como un campo distinto de la ley común de Estados Unidos (mediados de 1800) por un medio siglo o más, y la explosión de responsabilidad del fabricante de la segunda mitad del siglo XX alterado radicalmente nuestra comprensión de responsabilidad objetiva. Las implicaciones de esta línea de tiempo olvidado son profundas. “Responsabilidad objetiva,” particularmente en su formulación moderna, no es un término neutral y descriptivo. Más bien, el término evoca opciones de política social y las consideraciones de equilibrio que pueden ser apropiados en el contexto ley de responsabilidad de productos o actividades anormalmente peligrosas, pero que son incongruentes y fuera de lugar en el marco legal de la ley de patentes. Estimando que la infracción de patente directa sea una responsabilidad objetiva conduce a dos efectos imprevistos y no deseados. En primer lugar, la adopción de la etiqueta de “responsabilidad objetiva” para la responsabilidad directa violación de patentes inadecuadamente infla el papel de los tribunales en el establecimiento de estándares de infracción de patente directa de responsabilidad y sugiere – erróneamente – que la responsabilidad de patentes es una construcción de la jurisprudencia, cuando en realidad se trata de una ley construir. En segundo lugar, la etiqueta de “responsabilidad objetiva” cambia incorrectamente el foco de la investigación por violación de patente de protección de los intereses de propiedad exclusiva de la demandante en su patente a la derecha hacia un examen cargado de valor de la utilidad social de la conducta del acusado la Ley de Patente vis-à- vis el daño a la titular de la patente. Descartando la etiqueta de “responsabilidad objetiva” por infracción de patente directa sería replantear el análisis y el debate, moviendo la responsabilidad directa violación de patentes fuera de un marco de política y de vuelta hacia su entorno legal adecuado.”

“La PTAB es cada vez más usada para corregir los errores de la USPTO, pero ¿porqué no excavar más profúndo en la raíz del problema y simplemente enfrentar la insaciáble codicia de la USPTO’?”

Vale la pena notar aquí que un montón de los riésgos son pasados a los acusados, no a los acusadores, quienes frecuéntemente cuentan con la pobre calidad de las examinaciónes en la USPTO. La PTAB es cada vez más usada para corregir los errores de la USPTO, pero ¿porqué no excavar más profúndo en la raíz del problema y simplemente enfrentar la insaciáble codicia de la USPTO’?

La CAFCno vendrá al rescate de uno después de PTAB según un ejemplo dado por Patently-O. Para citarlo: “El Circuito Federal ha negado en banc revisión de las decisiones en cuatro procedimientos de revisión inter partes presentadas por Gnosis. Circuito Federal había confirmado previamente la prueba de Patentes y apelar la determinación de derechos de propiedad intelectual Junta que las reivindicaciones de la patente de Merck y SAMSF impugnados eran inválidos obviamente.”

La relevancia de esto fue más que nunca más aparente cuando Bass jugó el valor de las compañíás al inválidar patentes clave — un movimiénto el cual ahora IAM combina con los trolles de patentes al comparar Bass con trolles Spangenberg es un troll de patentes, Bass invalida las patentes. Tienen un modus operandi muy diferente, pero como IAM puso, la conexión se encuentra dentro de un equipo de seguimiento: “Dado que haciendo equipo con el ex CEO IPNav Erich Spangenberg para lanzar su primer examen contradictorio de Estados Unidos (IPR) en febrero del año pasado – desafiando una patente relacionada dosificación farmacéutica propiedad de Acorda Therapeutics – Kyle Bass se ha convertido en uno de los jugadores de más alto perfil del mundo empresarial IP. Ya sea que debe ser visto como antagonista, protagonista o el antihéroe en algún punto intermedio depende de su punto de vista. Lo que es seguro es que las acciones de validez perseguidos por él y Spangenberg a través de su Coalición por medicamentos asequibles – la orientación patentes pertenecientes a empresas farmacéuticas ‘originales’ – sacudió el paisaje post-América Inventa IP.”

“La pobre cálidad de la USPTO — una trampa en la que la EPO cae cada vez más — ayuda a los trolles, investores estrátegicos predatorios/hedge funds, y monopolistas los cuales hacen un diservicio a la innovación.”

Aquí vale la pena notar que si las patentes invalidadas por solicitud de Bass no hubieran sido otorgadas por la USPTO en primer lugar, nada de esto hubiera pasado. La pobre cálidad de la USPTO — una trampa en la que la EPO cae cada vez más — ayuda a los trolles, investores estrátegicos predatorios/hedge funds, y monopolistas los cuales hacen un diservicio a la innovación. Tengan cuidado con el jefe de patentes de la IBM teniendo la audacia de quejarse del sistema que David Kappos empeoró notablemente (en favor de IBM; IBM ahora le paga por cabildeo), más aún quejándose de un sistema fuera de su propio país (Australia) por que intenta mejorar la calidad de las patentes, como notamos ayer.

 

 

[ES] La Oficina Europea de Patentes Todavía Sigilósamente Abusiva, Pagará $15,000 en Compensasió a Trabajadora Tras un Tardío Fallo de la ILO

Posted in Europe, Law, Patents at 6:41 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

English/Original

Article as ODF

Publicado en Europa, Law, Patentes at 4:43 am por el Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Sumario: La Organización Internacional del Trabajo (ILO) emite un fallo en un caso de abuso de la EPO y nota “la excesiva duración de los procedimienteos internos de apelación.”

La ILO puede estar luchando contra la gran carga causada por las quejas contra la EPO (sugerencias han sido hechas al respecto), pero ocasiónalmente se pone al día con algunos casos de la EPO y emite fallos actuales, probablemente casí una década después de que la queja original se presentó. La gerencia de la EPO ha estado inundándose y ahogandose por la ILO por causa de sus propios abusos, que han causado un gran número de quejas sean llenadas allí.

Una reciente decisión llamó nuestra atención. “Parece que el largo texto sólo está en Francés pero es una lectura interesante,” una persona nos dijo acerca de este juicio de la ILO de hace un par de meses atrás “Es acerca de acoso en la EPO y como es tratado internamenet” (presuntamente por los parecidos a la “gestapo” como es llamada internamente [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7]).

El sumario en Inglés dice: “El demandante impugna la decisión de exigirle que someterse a un examen médico durante la investigación de su queja de acoso y el despido por dicha reclamación.” Lo que es digno de mención aquí es la edad de este caso; la primera decisión después de 7 años:

1. Las decisiones del 16 de diciembre 2009 4 de febrero 2010 y 19 de junio de 2013 se dejan de lado.

2. La EPO pagará a los querellantes 10.000 euros en concepto de indemnización por daño moral que resulta de las decisiones que se han reservado.

3. Se deberá pagar sus 1.000 euros en concepto de daños morales por la excesiva duración de los procedimientos de recurso internas.

4. También deberá pagar 1.000 euros a su en los costos.

5. Todas las demás reclamaciones, en la medida en que no son discutibles, son desechadas.

Miren como dinero/presupuesto de la EPO “trabaja“. Hay un costo oculto para esta administración incompetente.

Lo anterior no debiera ser tan chocante para aquellos que han estado siguiendo los abusos de la OEP. Tenga en cuenta el tiempo que tomó la justicia por hacer; el demandante podría haber cambiado varias ofertas de empleo desde entonces o tal vez perdido el interés en el caso, después de haber pasado mucho tiempo y energía, presumiblemente sobre los recursos costosos. Dejando a un lado las posibles pruebas de violaciones de los derechos humanos, lo que tenemos aquí es un recordatorio de que los empleados de EPO simplemente no pueden confiar en la OIT por la justicia y si Battistelli el tirano rompe las reglas o mal uso sus propias reglas (que él mismo compone), habrá sin recurso efectivo a la justicia independiente y rápida.

Alguien nos ha enviado una opinión interna de la EPO, señalando que “una fuente de EPO que también nos señaló a su último mensaje el Siegfried Bross bemieves [sic] el siguiente:« en mi opinión, la estrategia del presidente es mantener un perfil bajo de este año, o al menos la mayoría de la misma (“un año de consolidación”) con la esperanza de que el Consejo se calmará y la oposición se extinguirá (contribuyendo activamente a matar a unos cuantos enemigos). Esto le da el tiempo para prepararse para el siguiente ataque. Se está haciendo un estudio financiero y un estudio social, y tratando de construir FFPE. Los bits son muy desagradables (reforma de pensiones y más) quedarán entonces el próximo año – para ser aprobado en el Consejo de diciembre. Todo el asunto sobre el proceso penal es en mi opinión un ruido de sables.”

Actualmente Battistelli está demoliendo la OEP haciendo todo lo posible para garantizar la fuga de cerebros [1, 2, 3, 4], las dificultades de contratación (debido a daños a la reputación), grandes huelgas, y los solicitantes insatisfechos. Leer este comentario publicado justo antes del fin de semana:

Nobbi dice: No se distraiga por la maniobra de “socialdemocracia/Ma/SocialStudy/SocialConference”.

1. Reducir el salay-masa y por consiguiente, las contribuciones al fondo de pensiones. Motivar al personal cerca de la jubilación (anticipada) para salir, la mejora de la demografía del personal y la creación de un fondo de pensiones problema que requiere más reformas. examinadores más de recluta en el extremo inferior de la escala salarial, si es posible en un contrato limitado. No ayuda el problema de fondo de pensiones creado. No se supone que es. Bonificaciones a la gerencia.

2. En la parte superior de los objetivos habituales cada vez mayores para la producción, añadir objetivos personales “-is-puntualidad de calidad” para las comunicaciones primera y / o más en el examen (certeza A principios de Examen avanzada antes de lo que esperaba (ECfAE)) y aplicar el Criterios de París. Más bonificaciones a la gerencia.

Resultado: Oh!?! Demasiados examinadores … muy pocos archivos … menos las tasas de renovación para el EPOrg … más por las oficinas nacionales.

3. Deshacerse de los examinadores en el contrato y de los más experimentados y aún así a los examinadores costosos izquierda. Empujarlos a la producción ridícula. Siempre se puede salir si dont’t como él! Los bonos …

Resultado: examinadores menos costosas, menos las contribuciones al fondo de pensiones. Oh! Un problema de fondos de pensiones.

4. Contenido de la PriceworthyConsultant y dice: Aumentar la edad de jubilación y la tasa de contribución al fondo de pensiones para los examinadores (mientras tanto el estampillado) que aún quedan. Bonificaciones para el consultor y …

5. Viene en otro PriceworthyConsultant y dice: Empresa de trabajo de búsqueda y examen para finalmente deshacerse de los examinadores de la casa. Disolver el fondo de pensiones y utilizar el dinero para bonos … …

6. La IA-Oracle genera totalmente automatizado de búsqueda de día cero y justo a tiempo de exploración bajo demanda as-you-deseo y dice: Deshacerse de todos los no-dirección y el personal de gestión inferior. No hay necesidad de un fondo de pensiones, ya que tiene bonificaciones para …

“Seguro que sí,” una persona respondió. “Para aquellos que todavía serán parte de “la oficina”. En tu escentario: el President y los Vice presidents.”

Links 2/5/2016: Linux 4.6 RC6, DragonBox Pyra

Posted in News Roundup at 6:15 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNOME bluefish

Contents

GNU/Linux

  • Download Linux Voice issue 18

  • Desktop

    • Windows desktop share falls below 90% [Ed: based on Microsoft-connected firm]

      The desktop share of Windows computers worldwide fell below 90 per cent for the first time since it established the mark, according to figures from the web analytics company Net Applications.

      While there were encouraging figures for Microsoft among the various Windows versions, the overall share fell to 89.23 per cent.

  • Kernel Space

    • Linux 4.6-rc6

      Things continue to be fairly calm, although I’m pretty sure I’ll still
      do an rc7 in this series.

      There’s nothing particularly scary in here – there’s a fix for a
      long-standing infiniband interface problem, but since you actually
      have to have the hardware for that, it’s not like that is going to
      affect all that many people, and the workaround was pretty
      straightforward. The bulk of the rest is really just the normal random
      noise. Drivers (sound, gpu, ethernet being the bulk of it),
      architectures (arm, s390, x86), networking is the bulk of it.

      Shortlog appended for your edification,

      Linus

    • Linux 4.6-rc6 Kernel Released, Codenamed “Charred Weasel”
    • Linus Torvalds Announces Linux Kernel 4.6 RC6, Dubbed “Charred Weasel”

      It’s Sunday night, so Linus Torvalds has announced the release of a new RC build for the upcoming Linux 4.6 kernel series, which has been dubbed “Charred Weasel.”

      According to Linus Torvalds, things continue to remain fairly calm in the development cycle of Linux kernel 4.6, which might very well get one more Release Candidate (RC), version RC7, next week, on May 8, 2016. Then, one week later, on May 15, we should be able to get our hands on the final release of Linux kernel 4.6, which will hit the stable repositories of various distributions most probably around June 2016.

  • Applications

  • Desktop Environments/WMs

    • K Desktop Environment/KDE SC/Qt

      • KDE Akonadi Support For Microsoft Exchange
      • Akonadi Resource for Microsoft Exchange Web Services (EWS)

        Whether you are a Microsoft hater or a lover, when you have ever had a chance to work for a medium or large corporation, you have probably stumbled upon Microsoft Exchange mail server. While it can be made to talk to regular e-mail clients using standards such as IMAP, POP3 and SMTP, some corporate admins choose not to enable any of the standard mail protocols leaving the user with no choice other than to use Microsoft Outlook. Even if it is possible to use regular e-mail clients they will not be able to explore the full potential of Exchange, as it is not only a mail server but rather a groupware server which includes support for calendar, tasks, contacts and many more.

      • Evaluation of the Qt Quick Scene Graph Performance

        QPainter, which is the base of drawing in KStars, uses an imperative way whereas QtQuick Scene Graph utilizes declarative paradigm. In Scene Graph you add some set of “nodes” (classes with prefix QSG) to the root node that is returned by calling QQuickItem::updatePaintNode() whenever you want to render QQuickItem and manipulate them during the runtime (change position, geometry, material, etc.) This gives possibilities to perform some optimization like batching the nodes to draw them in fewer calls to OpenGL, which can be of tremendous help for us in drawing stars, for example.

      • Hello World!

        As the title suggests it is a lite version for mobile/tablets, slow machines like budget laptops, netbooks, single-board computers like Raspberry Pi, etc. One of the main differences between desktop and lite versions is that the graphics of the latter is based on QML/QtQuick. KStars Lite is built bearing in mind the differences between mouse/touch interfaces and the graphical frontend will be designed according to touch interfaces of mobile platforms.

      • Plasma Mobile : New base system

        Last Akademy, the Plasma team revealed the first prototype of the new Plasma Mobile.

        [...]

        Our initial Ubuntu Touch base was Ubuntu 15.04. Eventually, our image started to diverge from the Ubuntu Touch base. For example, we upgraded libhybris to upstream version because libhybris available in Ubuntu archive diverged too much from upstream to be useful in our context. We also had to upgrade to a newer Qt version, and we also needed to upgrade the base system to Ubuntu 16.04 (Xenial Xerus) because we did not have the resources for managing different branches for packaging the latest git KF5/Plasma for 15.04.

      • Converging Kubes

        Kube, our PIM-Client in the making, is supposed to run on a variety of platforms and form-factors. We aim to provide a consistent look and feel across them all. If you know how to use Kube on your desktop machine, you will know how to use it on your Android phone or tablet as well. So what we are going to do, is building a UI for the phone, allowing it to display multiple pages on the tablet and in the end serving it on the desktop as well. Good idea, right?

  • Distributions

    • 4MLinux 17.0 OS Hits the Stable Channel, Brings Firefox 46.0 & Thunderbird 45.0

      Softpedia has been informed by 4MLinux developer Zbigniew Konojacki about the general availability of his 4MLinux 17.0 independent, desktop-oriented GNU/Linux distribution.

    • Third OpenELEC 7.0 Beta Is Out, Built Around the Kodi 16.1 “Jarvis” Media Center

      On May 1, 2016, the OpenELEC devs have had the pleasure of announcing the release of the third Beta build of the forthcoming OpenELEC 7.0 Linux kernel-based operating system for embedded devices.

    • Screenshots/Screencasts

    • Arch Family

    • OpenSUSE/SUSE

      • openSUSE announces first round of accepted proposals

        The first round of proposals for the openSUSE Conference have been accepted and people who submitted a call for papers should log-in to events.opensuse.org and check to see if their talk has been accepted as part of the first round of proposals.

        For proposals that have been accepted, users should confirm their proposal as soon as possible and also register for the conference if they had not done so already.

    • Red Hat Family

    • Debian Family

      • Backporting of PHP security fixes

        Next step would be to start doing the same for PHP 5.3 (back porting from PHP 5.4, and later on also from PHP 5.5). This can be in use for RHEL 6.x (as LTS support for Debian Squeeze was recently finished).

      • Trusting, Trusting Trust

        A long time ago Ken Thompson wrote something called Reflections on Trusting Trust. If you’ve never read this, go read it right now. It’s short and it’s something everyone needs to understand. The paper basically explains how Ken backdoored the compiler on a UNIX system in such a way it was extremely hard to get rid of the backdoors (yes, more than one). His conclusion was you can only trust code you wrote. Given the nature of the world today, that’s no longer an option.

        Every now and then I have someone ask me about Debian’s Reproducible Builds. There are other groups working on similar things, but these guys seem to be the furthest along. I want to make clear right away that this work being done is really cool and super important, but not exactly for the reasons people assume. The Debian page is good about explaining what’s gong on but I think it’s easy to jump to some false conclusions on this one.

      • OMG Maven 3.0.4 on stretch
      • My Debian Activities in April 2016

        This month I marked 171 packages for accept and rejected 42. I also sent 3 emails to maintainers asking questions. It seems to be that another quiet month is behind us. Nevertheless the flood of strange things in NEW continued this month. Hmm, weird world ..

      • Derivatives

        • Debian-Based GParted Live 0.26.0 Is Out with Linux Kernel 4.5 and GParted 0.26.0

          Last week, we reported news on the release of the GParted 0.26.0 open-source partition editor software, and now Curtis Gedak informs us about the availability of GParted Live 0.26.0-1.

        • Canonical/Ubuntu

          • Installing Ubuntu 16.04 LTS

            In the good tradition of our Ubuntu installation tutorials, as well as at the request of several of our readers, we’ve decided to publish a new guide that will teach you who to boot and install the Ubuntu 16.04 LTS operating system.

          • Ubuntu 16.04 LTS (aka Xenial Xerus) What’s In The Bits and Bytes?
          • Gorgeous Live Voyager 16.04 Linux OS Comes Hot on the Heels of Ubuntu 16.04 LTS

            The team of developers behind the Live Voyager desktop-oriented operating system have announced today, May 1, 2016, the release and immediate availability for download of Voyager 16.04 LTS.

            Coming hot on the heels of Ubuntu 16.04 LTS (Xenial Xerus), the Voyager 16.04 LTS GNU/Linux distribution is in fact based on the Xubuntu 16.04 LTS flavor, featuring a highly customized Xfce 4.12 desktop environment and a huge collection of open-source tools.

          • Entroware Ubuntu Laptop Launches For $650

            If you are in search of an affordable Ubuntu laptop that comes pre-installed with the Linux-based operating system you might be interested in a new Linux laptop system created by the UK-based company Entroware.

            The new Entroware Orion Ubuntu laptop is equipped with a 14 inch screen offering users a resolution of 1920 x 1080 pixels, and comes with a variety of specification options that include the ability to install a choice of Intel Core i3, i5, or i7 Skylake processors that can be supported by up to 16GB of RAM.

          • Ubuntu 16.04 LTS

            It is always a big deal when Canonical releases a new long-term support version of Ubuntu. Despite Ubuntu’s important place in the Linux distribution ecosystem, I should admit right off the bat that I am not a regular user of Ubuntu. I try out each new release of the desktop version Ubuntu and occasionally use Ubuntu Server, but I tend to use Fedora and CentOS for almost all of my daily desktop and server needs. Still, I’ve always been fascinated by what Canonical is doing with Ubuntu and their Unity desktop environment. Below, I take a look at Ubuntu 16.04 LTS and share my thoughts on the Unity desktop environment and the distribution as a whole.

  • Devices/Embedded

Free Software/Open Source

  • Web Browsers

    • Mozilla

      • The Thunderbird hypothesis

        Let the contributors speak first

        It sounds either like something obvious or someting that should have been already asked. To my knowledge, however, nobody has asked the community of contributors of Thunderbird if they have a clear opinion on the path to a (brighter) future. There’s more. Whatever the final choice of entity that will be made, Thunderbird should actually agree to that choice. And at least in the case of the Document Foundation, I believe it would only be logical that the members of the Document Foundation decide on whether it is a good idea for themselves.

        One implied matter here is that the Thunderbird project should have a precise idea on who his actual contributors are, and from that data extract some notion on who can work on what, for how long and with what capability. What I’m trying to suggest here is that it is important to know where you’re starting from so that you can also tell what’s the more urgent tasks, technical or logistical.

  • SaaS/Back End

  • Databases

  • CMS

    • The intersection of Drupal, IoT, and open hardware

      Back in the day, I was working at a large nonprofit in the “webmaster’s office” of the marketing department and was churning out custom PHP/MySQL forms like nobody’s business. I finally got weary of that and starting hunting around the web for a better way. I found Drupal 6 and starting diving in on my own. Years later, after a career shift and a move, I discovered the Portland Drupal User Group and landed a job as a full-time Drupal developer. I continued to regularly attend the meetups in Portland, which I found to be a great source of community, friendships, and professional development. Eventually, I landed a job with Lullabot as a trainer creating content for Drupalize.Me. Now, I’m managing the Drupalize.Me content pipeline, creating Drupal 8 content, and am very much involved in the Portland Drupal community. I’m this year’s coordinator, finding and scheduling speakers.

  • Education

    • 6 colleges turning out open source talent

      Most IT departments have project road maps that will require open-source skills, but finding recent college grads with open source talent can be challenging.

      Whether your company is planning an open-source-based big data implementation, installing an open-platform file manager, or adopting an open approach to customer relationship management, experts say traditional computer science departments might not be turning out students you need.

  • BSD

    • GhostBSD 10.3 to Add ZFS and UDF Support, Will Be Based on FreeBSD 10.3

      The development cycle of the GhostBSD 10.3 has started, and a first Alpha build is now ready for public testing, bringing various new features, several improvements, as well as bug fixes.

      Based on the recently released FreeBSD 10.3 operating system, GhostBSD 10.3 should arrive later this year with support for the ZFS (Z File System) and UFS (Unix File System) filesystems, ZFS encryption support in the installer, as well as quarterly updates to the GhostBSD Software applications, adding more stability to the OS.

    • bsdtalk264 – Down the Gopher Hole

      Playing around with the gopher protocol. Description of gopher from the 1995 book “Student’s Guide to the Internet” by David Clark.

  • Public Services/Government

    • NZ Government open source software licensing consultation

      Open and transparent: NZ Government open source software licensing consultation a success

      A consultation to develop a framework for consistent licensing of New Zealand Government open source software has been carried out successfully in an open and transparent manner, says Paul Stone, Programme Leader Open Government Data at Land Information NZ.

      The consultation considered proposals for consistent policy and guidelines that would extend the NZ Government Open Access and Licensing (NZGOAL) framework to cover open source software as well as government content and data.

    • “Hugely useful” Loomio powers consultation on open source software

      A consultation to develop a framework for consistent licensing of New Zealand Government open source software has been carried out successfully in an open and transparent manner, says Paul Stone, Programme Leader Open Government Data at Land Information NZ.

  • Openness/Sharing/Collaboration

    • Open Access/Content

      • Smarthistory: No grand strategies needed, just openness

        For many, open initiatives within higher education may have begun when The New York Times declared 2012 as “The Year of the MOOC.” According to the article, “Traditional online courses charge tuition, carry credit and limit enrollment to a few dozen to ensure interaction with instructors. The MOOC, on the other hand, is usually free, credit-less and, well, massive.” Today MOOCs may not be living up to the hopes (or hype) of many of their original proponents, but the concept of developing and delivering educational content online is now certainly common practice.

        Perhaps your history with open educational resources is a bit longer? Before MOOCs, increasing awareness of the costs associated with college texts spawned the open textbook movement. Founded in 1999 at Rice University, OpenStax (then Connexions) began its mission to create open textbooks as freely available educational resources with nonrestrictive licenses, where faculty, researchers, and even students could share and freely adapt educational materials such as courses, books, and reports. While the open textbook movement never really enjoyed the flare of popularity of MOOCs, they too have found advocates and an audience within higher education.

    • Open Hardware/Modding

  • Programming/Development

    • Three Cheers for Monotasking!

      Anyone who has coded—or worked with coders—knows all about this. They complain constantly about interruptions, and with good reason. When they’re deep into a problem, switching their attention is costly. They’ve lost their train of thought, and it can take several minutes to get it back. That’s not much of a problem if it happens a few times a day, but it’s a real killer if it happens a few times an hour.

Leftovers

  • Publishers ‘feeding on scraps from Facebook’, says Bloomberg Media boss

    Newspapers, magazines and other publishers are “feeding on the scraps” of Facebook’s multibillion-dollar ad business despite playing a central role in keeping the social network’s users happy, according to the boss of Bloomberg Media.

    Justin Smith, chief executive of the financial information company’s publishing arm, told the Guardian that even though Facebook was sending traffic to publisher websites, it was making far more from ads in its news feed which was filled with publisher content.

  • Science

    • Science Says This Centuries-Old Discovery Will Save the Planet

      That might sound strange, given that electricity production is the number-one source of greenhouse gas emissions in the United States. Coal- and gas-burning power plants are still our main sources of electricity, and in some parts of the country the power grid is so dirty that electric vehicles might actually cause more pollution than traditional gas-guzzlers.

  • Health/Nutrition

    • A Potent Side Effect to the Flint Water Crisis: Mental Health Problems

      Health care workers are scrambling to help the people here cope with what many fear will be chronic consequences of the city’s water contamination crisis: profound stress, worry, depression and guilt.

      ….Diane Breckenridge, Genesee Health’s liaison to local hospitals, said she had seen “people come into the hospitals directly related to breakdowns, nervous breakdowns, if you will….Most of it’s been depression or suicidal ideation directly linked to what’s going on with their children,” she added. “They just feel like they can’t even let their children take a bath.” Children, too, are traumatized, said Dexter Clarke, a supervisor at Genesee Health, not least because they constantly hear frightening things on television about the lead crisis, including breathless advertisements by personal injury lawyers seeking clients.

      ….Too often now, Nicole Lewis cannot sleep….To help her nerves, she recently installed a home water filtration system, paying $42.50 a month for the service on her main water supply line. She also bought a blender to make her sons smoothies with lead-leaching vegetables, like spinach and kale.

      But still her mind races, especially late at night. Her 7-year-old was just found to have attention deficit disorder, she said. Her 2-year-old is already showing athletic promise, but she wonders whether lead exposure will affect his ability to play sports.

    • War on Drugs has failed – ENCOD Article

      I have had the honour of serving as the European Director of Law Enforcement Against Prohibition (LEAP) for the last four years, and have been thrilled to oversee the establishment of thriving national groups in the UK and Germany, with the possibility of more on the horizon. In my view, law enforcement offers a unique and critical voice to the international drug policy reform debate.

      LEAP, founded in 2002, today has over 150,000 supporters and speakers in 20 countries. We consist of police officers, lawyers, judges, prison governors, probation officers, intelligence and military personnel, and even international drug czars. What unites us is a shared professional knowledge, experienced across the full spectrum of law enforcement, that drug prohibition has egregiously failed.

    • Chernobyl’s Ongoing Toll: 40,000 More Cancer Deaths?

      In 1996, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) stated that Chernobyl was “the foremost nuclear catastrophe in human history”.

    • If Obama Visits Hiroshima

      It is remarkable that it required a wait of over 60 years until John Kerry became the first high American official to make such a visit, which he termed ‘gut-wrenching,’ while at the same time purposely refraining from offering any kind of apology to the Japanese people for one of the worse acts of state terror against a defenseless population in all of human history.

  • Security

    • Pirate Bay visitors infected with crypto-ransomware via bad ads [Ed: Windows]

      Although malvertising attackers have hit a number of torrent sites over the past month, as noted by TorrentFreak, this weekend’s premier of the sixth season of Games of Thrones triggered a huge spike in BitTorrent activity. The attackers may have been trying to cash in on a surge in traffic to The Pirate Bay.

  • Defence/Aggression

    • D.C. Elite Hated Larry Wilmore’s Drone Joke Last Night, But Loved Obama’s in 2010

      Last night at the annual White House Correspondents’ Association Dinner, Nightly Show host Larry Wilmore compared President Barack Obama to Golden State Warriors point guard Stephen Curry because they both “like raining down bombs on people from long distances.”

      The audience of Washington, D.C. journalists, politicians and celebrities reacted with pained “oooooooh’s,” as did Obama himself (before grinning widely).

    • Pentagon Won’t Prosecute Troops Involved in Deadly Strike on Afghan Doctors Without Borders Hospital

      The incident, in which a US aircraft bombed a Doctors Without Borders medical facility continuously for at least 30 minutes, left 42 civilians dead—including medical staff and patients. The attack destroyed the main building, including the emergency room and intensive care unit. Some patients were burned alive in their hospital beds.

    • A Week of Slaughter in Aleppo Also Destroyed One Of Its Hospitals

      This week’s increased attacks on Aleppo come amid what was supposed to be a partial ceasefire in Syria, but which has all but collapsed. Staffan de Mistura, the UN envoy for Syria, characterized the talks as “barely alive,” the Guardian reports. “How can you have substantial talks when you have only news about bombing and shelling?” he asked.

      Meanwhile, many believe the situation in Aleppo will only get worse in coming weeks, with reports of a military buildup around Aleppo that some fear will result in the government’s attempt to embark on a complete siege of the city’s civilian neighborhoods.

    • Tailor hacked to death in Bangladesh; ISIS claims responsibility

      Police in Bangladesh say they have detained three people in relation to the killing of a Hindu tailor, who was hacked to death in the central Bangladeshi district of Tangail.

      Those detained for questioning include two party members, one from the opposition BNP party and a local leader of the Jamaat e Islami Islamist party.

      The tailor, Nikhil Joarder, is the latest victim in a series of similar attacks in this South Asian nation.
      Police said Joarder was inside his tailoring shop in Tangail on Saturday when at least two assailants drove up on motorbikes and attacked him with machetes. He died immediately, according to Tangail Police Superintendent Mohammed Tanvir.

    • ISIS Says It Killed Bangladesh Tailor Once Jailed for Blasphemy

      A Hindu tailor who had been briefly jailed several years ago over accusations that he made an unfavorable comment about the Prophet Muhammad was hacked to death on Saturday near his shop in central Bangladesh, the police said.

      Islamic State militants claimed responsibility for the killing, citing the accusations of blasphemy against the tailor, according to the SITE Intelligence Group, which monitors jihadist websites.

      Mohammad Abdul Jalil, the officer in charge of the Gopalpur police station in the Tangail district, a central region where the attack occurred, said in a telephone interview that it was too early to determine the motivation of the assailants or whether they were Islamist militants.

      Similar attacks claimed by the militants seem to be accelerating, with five people hacked to death in the past nine days.

    • Rediscovering nonviolence in the Vatican

      Is the Catholic Church ready to abandon ‘just war’ theory and recommit to pacifism?

    • Drop the Just War Theory

      Laity and religious meeting in Rome appeal to Pope Francis to share with the world an encyclical on nonviolence and just peace and for the church to no longer use or teach ‘Just War theory’

    • Remembering the Rev. Daniel Berrigan, Jesuit Priest and Peace Activist

      He was a Jesuit priest, a man of the cloth and a man of letters—but most of all, the Rev. Daniel Berrigan was a man of peace. He was also, as it happened, the man whom Kurt Vonnegut went so far as to call “Jesus as a poet.”

      Berrigan died Saturday at age 94, leaving as his legacy his poetry and prose, along with his life story, which reads as an object lesson on how to follow the Gospels to the letter without bending to the political tides that all too often have pressed his Catholic cohorts into submissive poses. Not so with Berrigan, who was known for his steadfastness and forcefulness, particularly with regard to his anti-war and anti-nuclear activism.

    • Remembering Daniel Berrigan, with Gratitude

      Daniel Berrigan has died, and so we have lost our great teacher who, flinty and generous and relentlessly persistent, taught us how to live in a culture of death and madness:

    • Drafting Women Means Equality in Slavery

      Last week the House Armed Services Committee approved an amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act requiring women to register with Selective Service. This means that if Congress ever brings back the draft, women will be forcibly sent to war.

      The amendment is a response to the Pentagon’s decision to allow women to serve in combat. Supporters of drafting women point out that the ban on women in combat was the reason the Supreme Court upheld a male-only draft. Therefore, they argue, it is only logical to now force women to register for Selective Service. Besides, supporters of extending the draft point out, not all draftees are sent into combat.

    • Israel Wants More from US

      The Obama administration and Israel are locked in a curious negotiation over how many billions of dollars the U.S. will send to Tel Aviv, a demonstration of Israel’s political clout, says ex-CIA analyst Paul R. Pillar.

    • The EU – A CIA Covert Operation

      The upcoming British referendum on whether to stay in the European Union (EU) represents the culmination of a long term project by the United States to destroy the concept of national sovereignty in the Old World and replace it with a supranational entity with ironclad links to Washington.. Whether that longstanding ambition has succeeded will be decided on June 23 – which is why President Barack Obama made a special trip to the Mother Country to give them a little lecture on the alleged evils of nationalism and the goodness of the EU.

  • Environment/Energy/Wildlife/Nature

    • Feds Rely On Industry-Funded Study To Push For More Offshore Oil Exploitation

      Less than one day after President Obama tweeted out that message on climate change, David Sirota and Ned Resnikoff from the International Business Times aimed a spotlight at the Obama administration’s hypocrisy in an investigative piece that exposed again the fossil fuel industry’s influence over our government. Prior to that, the Public Accountability Initiative had revealed the massive influence that the industry had over the government’s assessment of the economic impacts of offshore drilling.

      According to the IB Times report, the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management’s recent analysis of the economic benefits of increased offshore drilling in the Gulf of Mexico and on the Pacific Coast near Alaska was funded partly by the fossil fuel industry. The analysis is currently being used by the administration to sell the project to the American public.

    • Humans Care More About Climate Change if They Know They’re Responsible

      Climate change denial is still a huge problem among elected representatives, to say nothing of the general populace, and even when our elected leaders do try to act to combat climate change, their efforts often leave much to be desired. While it’s easy to blame the problem on scientific illiteracy, a lot of research has shown that even when individuals are educated about climate change and its effects, this knowledge does little to change their concern about the problem—they are still more likely to stick to political narratives than scientific ones.

      However, a new study coming out of the University of Michigan suggests that what people know about climate change can make a difference. Namely, people who understand that climate change is largely caused by human activity are more likely to be concerned about climate change and its effects.

    • Assassinated Activist Berta Caceres Took on the Entire Oligarchy in Her Home Country

      On March 3, assassins entered the home of Berta Caceres, leader of Honduras’ environmental and indigenous movement. They shot her friend Gustavo Castro Soto, the director of Friends of the Earth Mexico. He pretended to be dead, and so is the only witness of what came next. The assassins found Berta Caceres in another room and shot her in the chest, the stomach and the arms. When the assassins left the house, Castro went to Berta Caceres, who died in his arms.

      Investigation into the death of Berta Caceres is unlikely to be conducted with seriousness. The Honduran government suggested swiftly that it was likely that Castro had killed Berta Caceres and made false statements about assassins. That he had no motive to kill his friend and political ally seemed irrelevant. Castro has taken refuge in the Mexican embassy in Honduras’ capital, Tegucigalpa. He continues to fear for his life.

  • Finance

    • #TTIPleaks: confidential TTIP papers unveil US position

      Greenpeace Netherlands has obtained 248 pages of leaked Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) negotiating texts [1], which will be published on Monday 2 May at 11:00 CET. The documents unveil for the first time the US position and deliberate attempts to change the EU democratic legislative process.

    • Leaked TTIP documents cast doubt on EU-US trade deal

      Talks for a free trade deal between Europe and the US face a serious impasse with “irreconcilable” differences in some areas, according to leaked negotiating texts.

      The two sides are also at odds over US demands that would require the EU to break promises it has made on environmental protection.

      President Obama said last week he was confident a deal could be reached. But the leaked negotiating drafts and internal positions, which were obtained by Greenpeace and seen by the Guardian, paint a very different picture.

    • A Simple Solution to Boost Workers Across the Planet

      In the competition for jobs between U.S. workers and developing world workers, American workers are losing, and the TPP, which the Obama administration touts as being pro-labor, is, like NAFTA, anything but. Under the TPP, signatories will be required “to have laws governing minimum wages, hours of work, and occupational safety and health,” but the level of the minimum wage and any other standard is left entirely to each country to determine on its own.

    • Why the People Picking California’s Tomatoes Can’t Afford to Eat Them

      Given the success of the agricultural industry in California, says Gail Wadsworth, co-executive director of CIRS and one of the authors of the report, there’s no reason why farm workers should get the short end of the stick. CIRS has advised the Yolo Food Bank to encourage more farms to contribute fresh food to the food bank or directly to their workers. Says Wadsworth: “I don’t see any rational reason why farm workers, who are essential to every American’s well-being, should be so poorly paid.”

    • The Socialist Alternative

      The disintegration of the ruling political parties, along with the discrediting of the established political and economic elites, presage radical change. This change may come from the right. It may result in a frightening proto-fascism. If it is to come from the left it must be pushed forward by dogged activists and citizens who are willing to accept that stepping outside the system will mean surrendering all hope of power for perhaps a decade. To continue to engage in establishment politics, especially attempting to work within the Democratic Party, will further empower corporate capitalism and extinguish what remains of our democracy.

    • Wall Street Has Taken Over the Economy and is Draining It

  • AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

    • Call for ‘Revolution’ Still Reverberating as Sanders, Clinton Head Neck and Neck Into Indiana

      Days ahead of Indiana’s May 3 primary, a new poll shows Democratic presidential rivals Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton neck and neck while observers foresee the Vermont senator’s impact being felt long after the nomination is secured.

      According to the NBC News/Wall Street Journal/Marist poll, Clinton leads among likely Indiana primary goers 50 percent to Sanders’ 46 percent. But that lead is within the poll’s margin of error of 4.6 percentage points for Democrats.

    • Political Revolutionists: Does an Inside-Outside Strategy Have a Chance?

      As the presidential candidates for 2016 go kicking and sliding toward the final primaries — and most especially into California, an increasing number of pundits with a knack for the writing and rewriting of history will offer their best guesses about Bernie’s next steps. Many groups with thousands of Bernie volunteers will feel the pressure from those Bernie loyalists to never give up or give in. And many thousands more are also clamoring now about how they might be able to influence those next steps.

      Though many Bernie supporters know it in their minds, few like to acknowledge that the people’s movement Bernie has ignited will not be led by Bernie in the post-primary season, the general election campaign season, or even when the next president is inaugurated in January 2017. Even if Bernie is elected as our president, his role has changed too. The movement to bring about the kind of transformational change Bernie has adopted as his campaign platform is a “marathon not a sprint” to November. This people’s movement requires a longer term commitment to the slogging, uncomfortable, underfunded and rarely appreciated work of getting and keeping people organized to fight the good fight.

      [...]

      Keep working for Bernie. Keep working to get out the vote in the remaining primary states.

    • Trump’s Toxic Culture: How His Mix of Threats and Fear Is Closing People’s Minds From Reality

      For the past 10 months, Donald Trump has been a political enigma. Against the predictions of journalists, policy wonks and odds makers, a tabloid darling with no political experience and few coherent policies is now poised to be the Republican nominee for president.

    • Hilarious: Trump Jumps Over Wall to Get to California GOP Convention as Protesters Block Entrance

      Apparently, Old Bayshore Road was blocked by anti-Trump protesters, demonstrating against Trump’s southern border proposal, among other policies.

    • Keeping Wall Street Speeches Secret Speaks Volumes About Hillary Clinton

      It’s been roughly three months since Hillary Clinton promised, during her Feb. 4 debate with Bernie Sanders on the eve of the New Hampshire primary, to “look into” releasing the transcripts of her paid speeches to Goldman Sachs and other Wall Street investment houses.

      If you’re a stickler for details and would like to know precisely how long Clinton has delayed on fulfilling her pledge or exactly how much cash she has raked in for her speaking gigs and from whom, you don’t have to spend hours scouring the Internet. You can simply log onto two sites created by a 40-year-old Sanders supporter and web developer named Jed McChesney of Olathe, Kan.

    • Donald Trump’s Policy Feast of Incoherence

      Contradictory promises abound, with no explanation of how any of it could work.

    • This Is Why Hillary Clinton Can’t Tell Bernie Sanders to Drop Out

      Eight years ago this month, Clinton was trailing hopelessly behind then-Sen. Barack Obama for the Democratic presidential nomination. On May 1, 2008, Clinton loaned her bankrupt campaign $1 million (following at least $10 million in earlier loans). Before the end of that week, pundits were calling the contest for Obama, whose May 6 win in the North Carolina primary, by 14 points, had made his delegate lead essentially insurmountable. “We now know who the Democratic nominee will be,” Tim Russert said on MSNBC after the results came in. Less than a week later, Obama surpassed Clinton in the super-delegate count, signaling that the party establishment was shifting behind the presumptive nominee.

    • Why Hillary Clinton’s Promise of a Gender-Equal Cabinet Is So Shrewd

      Internationally, pre-election pledges for gender equality in the most powerful offices of state have become increasingly common. In 2004, Spanish prime ministerial hopeful Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero made this pledge before his election and went on to appoint Spain’s first gender-parity cabinet. Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau famously pledged in 2015 that half of his cabinet would be female. He made good on that pledge, and when asked why, simply replied: “Because it’s 2015.”

  • Privacy/Surveillance

    • TOR And VPN Users — Government’s Hacking Targets Under New Spying Rule

      According to the updated rule 41 of the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure, law enforcement agencies can target people who either use privacy tools or those who are a victim of the same. This small amendment might bring a big change in the way we see the law enforcement.

    • GCHQ has disclosed more than 20 vulnerabilities in 2016

      This came to light after it emerged that GCHQ was instrumental in discovering vulnerabilities in Mozilla Firefox thanks to its info-sec arm Communications Electronics Security Group (CESG).

    • Snowden: Without encryption, everything stops

      Edward Snowden defended the importance of encryption, calling it the “backbone of computer security.”

      “Encryption saves lives. Encryption protects property,” the former National Security Agency (NSA) contractor said during a debate with CNN’s Fareed Zakaria that aired Sunday.

      “Without it, our economy stops. Our government stops. Everything stops.”

      Snowden, who previously leaked documents revealing the extent of the NSA’s surveillance program, said we are in the midst of the “greatest crisis in computer security in history.”

    • NSA pins another badge of honor on Snowden

      If the Director of National Intelligence “’blames” you for something, is that bad, or is it a badge of honor?

      That would be the latter for Edward Snowden… again.

      This time, he’s not getting the blame for a massive data dump proving that nefarious governments have been using computer technology to invade individuals’ privacy.

    • How Mark Zuckerberg became the internet’s most powerful man

      Can anyone stop Mark Zuckerberg? Most of Silicon Valley would be happy to forget the last couple of weeks – Apple’s revenue has declined for the first time in a decade, Google has become embroiled in a new stand-off with the European Commission that will almost certainly be long and painful, and the less said about Twitter at the moment the better – but Facebook can do no wrong.

  • Civil Rights/Policing

    • Smearing Three Dead Teenagers

      In classic style, the police seem to believe that by playing up the alleged criminal pasts of these young Black girls, the public will be led to believe that they alone are responsible for their deaths and stop asking questions about the role of police.

    • Why we can’t reform our cops: Race, guns and the failure to police the police

      We learn more about the problem of police violence and how it can persist and might be covered up when a video only surfaces after some significant delay. That allows time for the police to provide their account of the incident before the video evidence is available, and possibly before they even know that any video recording exists. In the case of Walter Scott’s death, it took more than two days before the video became available to authorities. Feidin Santana, who captured the shooting on his cellphone camera, initially kept quiet about the video, fearing retribution, but was angered when he heard the police account of the incident and made the recording available to Scott’s family and to the media.

    • Stop Calling Them Conservatives! The New GOP of Trump & Cruz Is the Party of Nihilism

      In a candid and often funny interview currently making the rounds, the recently retired Speaker of the House John Boehner let’s everyone know how he truly feels about the state of his own party, and what he thinks about some of the more extreme characters that exist within it. Not surprisingly, Boehner’s amusing assessment of Ted Cruz, whom he called a “miserable son of a bitch” and “Lucifer in the flesh,” made all of the media headlines.

    • Kid Criminals

      Forcing kids as young as 9 years old to register as sex offenders has enormous costs to society.

    • Will you be punished for revealing classified info? Depends who you are

      So said President Obama in a recent interview when asked about former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server. Essentially, the president was saying it was no big deal, despite the findings that classified information was involved.

      Yet, the Obama administration has brought more charges under the Espionage Act against officials for allegedly mishandling classified information than all other administrations combined since it was signed into law 99 years ago.

      Consider Thomas Drake, a former top NSA official who faced prosecution in 2011 for the “willful retention of national defense information” after communicating unclassified information to The Baltimore Sun regarding illegal surveillance programs at the agency. Eventually, Drake pled guilty to a misdemeanor and the government dropped the espionage charges against him.

    • TSA bosses are called ‘some of the biggest bullies in government’

      The Transportation Security Administration on Wednesday was caught in a crossfire by three of its executives who said the agency’s managers punish employees when they point out security lapses at the nation’s airports.

      “These leaders are some of the biggest bullies in government,” Jay Brainard, a TSA security director in Kansas, told the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform. “While the new administrator of TSA has made security a much-needed priority once again, make no mistake about it, we remain an agency in crisis.”

      As airports anticipate what may be a record crush of passengers this summer, the three men testified that morale was near rock bottom among TSA security workers.

    • 5 Government-Sanctioned Ways America Still Honors the Confederacy
    • May Day Rallies Worldwide Demand Workers’ Rights

      In U.S. ” there’s manufactured ignorance that prevents us from knowing about May Day,” says historian

    • Lunchroom Lunacy: Cops investigate $2 bill spent on school lunch

      When you think of felony forgery your thoughts might turn to Al Capone or Bonnie and Clyde shooting it out with the Texas Rangers.

      Not for some local school cops. For one day, public enemy number one when it came to forgery was 13-year-old eighth grader Danesiah Neal at Fort Bend Independent School District’s Christa McAuliffe Middle School.

      Now 14, Daneisha was hoping to eat that day’s lunch of chicken tenders with her classmates using a $2 bill given to her by her grandmother when she was stopped by the long arm of the law.

      “I went to the lunch line and they said my $2 bill was fake,” Danesiah told Ted Oberg Investigates. “They gave it to the police. Then they sent me to the police office. A police officer said I could be in big trouble.”

      Not just big trouble. Third-degree felony trouble.

    • This 28-Year-Old Is Running For Congress To Try To Destroy U.S.-Saudi Relations

      Earlier this month, a political newcomer named Alex Beinstein picked up enough delegates to pose a credible primary challenge to three-term congressman Rep. Scott Tipton (R-Colo.).

      That means voters in Colorado’s 3rd district will have a new name to consider when they gather on June 28 to choose their Republican standard-bearer — along with a lot of new ideas.

      Beinstein, a 28-year-old libertarian, wants to use the district’s House seat to place Saudi Arabia on the list of state sponsors of terror. He believes the longtime U.S. partner is responsible for the 9/11 attacks and the growth of violent extremist groups, including the self-described Islamic State, in Syria.

      The only reason Saudi leaders haven’t been held accountable yet, Beinstein says, is because Saudi money has corrupted everyone from President Barack Obama and CNN’s Anderson Cooper to House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) and Fox News leadership. He told The Huffington Post that Bill Gates, Apple Inc., The Plaza Hotel in New York and the Four Seasons hotel chain are among other alleged lackeys of the kingdom. (Let’s not even get started on Hillary Clinton.)

    • How Body Cameras Help Prevent Tragic Police Shootings

      Fourteen-year-old Dedric Colvin was shot on Wednesday when Baltimore Police mistkook his BB gun for a semi-automatic pistol.

  • DRM

    • Tuesday Is ‘International Day Against DRM’

      Tuesday May 3 is International Day Against DRM, which for ten years has been an annual even to protest and build awareness about digital rights management. The event is sponsored by the organization Defective by Design, the anti-DRM initiative of the Free Software Foundation.

  • Intellectual Monopolies

    • Copyrights

      • Pirate Bay Gets a ‘Massive’ $9 in Donations, Per Day

        When The Pirate Bay and other torrent sites started accepting Bitcoin donations a few years ago, copyright holders voiced concerns about this new ‘unseizable’ revenue stream. Thus far, this fear seems unwarranted with TPB raking in an average of $9 per day in Bitcoin donations over the past year. While hardly a windfall, it’s a fortune compared to the donations received by the leading torrent site KickassTorrents.

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