02.21.17
Posted in Deception, GNU/Linux, Google, Microsoft, Patents at 8:54 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
If it looks like a patent troll, IAM will certainty love it and agonise over the bad reputation of trolls
Summary: Selective coverage and deliberate misinterpretation of Microsoft’s tactics (patent settlement under threat, disguised as “pre-installation of some of the US company’s software products”) as seen in IAM almost every week these days
THERE IS A WAR against GNU/Linux. It’s a very big war. But a lot of it happens in the back room and it is being led by Microsoft, a notoriously corrupt company that still relies on bribes and blackmail for a lot of its deals (we have given many examples in the past).
Yesterday we saw a Microsoft-friendly site writing about the latest attack on Free software from Google. The site called it “Patently Ridiculous” (in the headline) that “Google [is] Ordered To Pay $20 Million Plus,” as we noted here the other day (it’s a notoriously trolls-friendly judge).
“Not all of this officially counts/qualifies as patent revenue (royalties) because Microsoft uses a clever trick now.”“Software patents are usually patents on the obvious wrapped up in as obscure, vague and technical a language as possible,” the site said. “In this case Google has been found guilty of infringing a “sandbox” patent in Chrome.”
That’s a software patent and it was found valid in one of those notorious courts in the Eastern District of Texas, so Google will hopefully appeal. But there is an even broader war going on, some of which involves Microsoft satellites that keep suing Android (or GNU/Linux) device makers. We provided plenty of examples in past years.
“This trick started about a year ago with Acer, not too long after it naturally followed from a lawsuit against Samsung that yielded a settlement 2 years ago (same effect, same consequences).”Microsoft itself is playing this aggressive game also directly, though it learned how to disguise it a little better. It is trying to make billions of dollars by shaking down Android OEMs and Chrome OS OEMs (often the same OEMs — more or less — as these two operating systems overlap one another more and more over time). Not all of this officially counts/qualifies as patent revenue (royalties) because Microsoft uses a clever trick now.
This trick started about a year ago with Acer, not too long after it naturally followed from a lawsuit against Samsung that yielded a settlement 2 years ago (same effect, same consequences). Then came Xiaomi (not only bundling of Microsoft malware but also payments to Microsoft, in the form of patent purchases). This was all along misportrayed by IAM, as we repeatedly showed. Either they are willfully ignorant or maliciously lying about it. Today IAM published another one of these puff pieces. It paints Microsoft as some kind of “good cop”, but what the author of this article conveniently neglects to say (or twists the facts of) is that Microsoft previously blackmailed HTC using software patents (around the same time Apple did so).
Here is how IAM put it:
The Microsoft petition – jointly filed with Taiwan’s HTC – argues that claims 14, 15 and 17 of the ‘695 patent should be invalidated on grounds of obviousness. The petition also notes that the ‘695 patent has been asserted by Philips along with several other patents in a series of infringement cases it filed in the District of Delaware back in December 2015. The seven of these lawsuits that remain active target Acer, Asus and HTC from Taiwan; Double Power Technology and Yifang from China; and US companies Visual Land and Southern Telecom. Microsoft has joined the Acer, Asus, Double Power, Visual Land and Yifang cases as a counter-defendant; it is also involved in the HTC case as an intervenor-plaintiff.
[...]
Of the defendants in the Philips lawsuits, we know that Microsoft signed HTC as a patent licensee back in 2010, and that it has revised and expanded existing IP licensing deals with Acer and Asus in recent years. With regards to both the latter, this involved the pre-installation of some of the US company’s software products on the Taiwanese manufacturers’ devices; this has also been a feature of headline patent deals signed with other major Asian companies, including Lenovo and Xiaomi. It may be the case that Microsoft has also offered some form of patent risk mitigation, similar to the aforementioned cloud customer programme, as part of these agreements – though that is just my speculation at this stage, and would be difficult to confirm since the details of such licensing arrangements are typically highly confidential.
Instead of ever acknowledging their mistakes/errors, Team IAM likes to pretend that I did not understand what they wrote. This Microsoft-powered site with many guests from Microsoft embedded in articles is fooling nobody. Microsoft is almost worshiped there and rarely is there even a single sentence critical of the company.
“Just using patents to coerce companies into doing what Microsoft tells them,” I told IAM. “It’s a form of blackmail.” But they keep repeating Microsoft’s talking points every month if not every week. That’s revisionism.
Watch how IAM framed a PTAB IPR petition (as if Microsoft cares for companies it blackmailed): “Microsoft IPR filed against Philips looks like another example of the company’s patent-plus value creation strategy.”
Blackmail with patent threats is not “Value creation”. It’s extortion, it’s blackmail. IAM needs to stop pretending that it’s a news site if trolls are painted as innocent victims and companies that terrify and bully the whole industry get treated like a banality to be ignored if not celebrated.
IAM, like the EPO which turned it into a propaganda mill, is a symptom of many of the things we stand against. The other day it celebrated European patent-based sanctions against Chinese companies (like the aforementioned OEMs from Taiwan or China) and only days ago it promoted patent tax through SEPs, which are inherently not compatible with Free/libre software. To quote:
Avanci was launched last September with Qualcomm, Ericsson, ZTE, KPN, InterDigital and Sony all agreeing to make their standard essential patents that read on 2G, 3G and 4G technology available for license across a range of IoT industry verticals. The first three sectors that Avanci has targeted are the auto industry, connected homes and smart meters. There’s no doubt that Avanci brings together some of the leading plays in wireless technology, but it also has some notable gaps such as Nokia and Huawei. Five months after it launched it is yet to conclude any licensing agreements, although Alfalahi insisted that feedback from the industry and from regulators has been positive and that his team continues to talk to a wide range of licensees and possible members. “We’re not saying that cross-licensing or one-on-one licensing doesn’t work, we just believe there’s a better way and over the last year it has become clear there is a need in the market,” he said.
By making up buzzwords like “IoT” or “4G” companies try to bundle together a bunch of patents that deny entry into the market (via standards) unless entrants pay a very large toll (sometimes more expensive than all the hardware combined). In reality, many of these patents are software patents, i.e. something which isn’t even patent-eligible in the vast majority of countries.
We read IAM not for information but mostly as an exercise in understanding the idealogical opposition; IAM stands for greed, protectionism, and litigation, in lieu with its funding sources (revenue sources are not limited to subscriptions). █
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Posted in Europe, Patents at 8:05 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Facts don’t matter at the EPO anymore
Summary: An introduction or prelude to a long series of upcoming posts, whose purpose is to show governance by coercion, pressure, retribution and tribalism rather than professional relationship between human beings at the European Patent Office (EPO)
THE EPO is no ordinary employer and not an ordinary place to work (or retire from). The best way to judge the character of a person (or an employer) is not the way he or she protects a friend or family (kinship); it’s often the way he or she treats/mistreats peers, especially in difficult times (times of trouble or trauma). Sympathy and care under stress, ordeal or challenge help build long-term relationships — the very thing which the EPO lacks. Utter lack of empathy seems to be a path to promotion, which means that those at the top of the ladder tend to be cruel, heartless, and greedy.
“Utter lack of empathy seems to be a path to promotion, which means that those at the top of the ladder tend to be cruel, heartless, and greedy.”In the series, which we will structure chronologically, details will be shown to demonstrate the EPO’s poor treatment of workers, the lack of a functional justice system, the lack of a proper appeals system, nepotism, harassment (from management/superiors), and lack of outside assistance from ILO, which basically discredits claims that the EPO deserves immunity. █
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Posted in Europe, Patents at 7:46 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Summary: The European Cancer Patient Coalition (ECPC), which calls itself “the largest European cancer patients’ umbrella organisation,” fails to fulfill its duties, says a source of ours, and the EPO makes things even worse
THE merciless EPO is one those things that, once you go further and delve even deeper, reveals much broader abuse which implicates more institutions. Not only European institutions are implicated but international ones too. 2 years ago we mentioned the ECPC's letter, which is still available online [PDF]. One can also access it from the link in this introductory page. We have already published the whole letter as text (mentioned in part 2), but one of our readers called it “another piece of information about the EPO and its bla bla mission, so caring about us citizens.”
“Our experience is not only about fighting cancer, but also about the absurd state of things in this branch of healthcare, the cancer and the many powerful industries connected.”
–AnonymousThe EPO does not even care about its own workers, let alone citizens. One day we intend to show just how poorly if not arrogantly (inflammatory and indignant psychosis) the EPO treats workers with disabilities, illnesses, etc. It always leaves our jaw on the floor because in any other working place the employer would get sued for improper treatment (or mistreatment) of workers. Psychopathology at the EPO is what inflicts and now wholly dominates the management, not ordinary workers such as examiners. For the most part, examiners are the victims.
One of our readers was eager to share an old story which demonstrates just how bad experiences with the EPO’s management can be.
“At the time,” a reader told us, “I was struggling with my mother’s cancer, pancreatic cancer. The fight we went through is a chapter on its own and one day (hopefully soon) [when] I will find time and guts to publish it as a case study, since even if that terrible disease finally claimed my mother’s life, we could obtain some good results. Our experience is not only about fighting cancer, but also about the absurd state of things in this branch of healthcare, the cancer and the many powerful industries connected. Surprisingly, but now not really, EPO management jumped into this tragedy of my family, by exploiting (and in fact provenly aggravating) my nervous breakdown, and exacerbating the difficulties of coping with a deadly disease in my family distant over a thousand km and a severely ill father, with dementia.
“The letter speaks out the concerns that the ECPC has about a recent decision of the Enlarged Board of Appeal, how it is an obstacle and a further hurdle for scientific information sharing and consequently how it actually hampers progress in a field of medical research which is already burdened by questionable practices of keeping secret and hidden vital information. ”
–Anonymous“Well, in that horrible state of mind of those days, I bumped into this European Cancer Patient Coalition (ECPC) group (to me previously unknown) and into De Lorenzo’s open letter to the EPO. The letter speaks out the concerns that the ECPC has about a recent decision of the Enlarged Board of Appeal, how it is an obstacle and a further hurdle for scientific information sharing and consequently how it actually hampers progress in a field of medical research which is already burdened by questionable practices of keeping secret and hidden vital information.
“I was already on a long-term sick leave, having been missing from the Office for about a year, so I mailed it to my colleagues at the EPO to ask about it and they told me that no information whatsoever had ever been disclosed internally about that letter or about its related issue, which was to me no surprise of course.
“But whatever: up until the day I found that ECPC open letter no answer or even the slightest consideration could be documented, from the side of the EPO, and this was already several months after it was issued.
“…up until the day I found that ECPC open letter no answer or even the slightest consideration could be documented, from the side of the EPO, and this was already several months after it was issued.”
–Anonymous“I phoned the Italian branch of that institution, where its president Mr. De Lorenzo mostly operated and following their very own directions I sent a mail to ECPC, precisely addressing the attention of its president, asking whether an answer from Battistelli and the EPO had ever been received. Well, I got no answer from them either. De Lorenzo had been hit by scandals in the nineties in Italy, then being Minister of Health, and had been condemned to a third degree sentence, hence fully confirmed. So, maybe after his own troubled experiences, on which I express no opinion, he saw no [point] either and not much of an interest in messing about the “nasty and powerful” as he might sense EPO and Battistelli are (and rightly so). By the way, I never got an answer from ECPC or from De Lorenzo ever since… Don’t know, maybe he’ll answer, one day. I don’t tolerate politics mess-abouts with a topic like this, especially after what I have been through with mum’s disease and death. The painful efforts of a desperate fight and after that cancer caused the loss of so many people I knew.
“Anyway, and this is the juicy bit for you, after a good while I found a post in the LinkedIn profile of EPO; they posted a stupid pink ribbon, to show their support for the fight against this deadly disease…Ugh! Seeing the nerdy servile comments and thumb-ups on the post, I could not take it. So I took a screenshot for safety and posted the link to the ECPC letter there as a provocative reminder, to point out the hypocritical attitude of the EPO, so disgusting on such an issue. In the image below, a .png file, people should [be able to] see it. It is dated February 2015, so well after the open letter from ECPC and three months after my mother left us.
“Same as when I recently posted, as an ironical pun with the recent infamous habits at the EPO, a link to an exhibition on The World of Spying held in Berlin. Some visits on my LinkedIn profile, often anonymous, started to buzz around. Yet, and as up to present, no answer at all. Not on my post in LinkedIn, nor to the ECPC letter, what would be more important.
“How should I not think for a while, that Big Pharma is also having a say on that and dictates EPO/Battistelli behaviour?”
–Anonymous“Now, the issue addressed by the letter is urgent. It deals with the struggle that research has in pursuing a cure and it points out an obstacle caused by decisions and policies of the EPO. If the EPO believes in what it says about promoting research on cancer, it should at least give an answer. Well, no answer; So the EPO simply and very openly does not care, yet is hypocritical enough to purport the opposite with a stupid LinkedIn post, with a pink ribbon they should better shove up their [expletive].
“This episode has implications: why is the EPO reticent on this issue? Why not have the EBA [Enlarged Board of Appeal] express their views openly, on their very own decisions, either reconsidering or not their position? How should I not think for a while, that Big Pharma is also having a say on that and dictates EPO/Battistelli behaviour?
“The people at the Alltrials.net initiative should be also made aware of this…”
Checking the link of the letter again, it’s still there. “To my knowledge,” our reader noted, “it had never been answered by EPO or Battistelli himself.
“…if ECPC itself fails to further pursue such an important issue they brought up themselves and tolerates a total lack of consideration by EPO, then we might ask whether this is another corporate European money machine…”
–Anonymous“For the record, my direct enquiry by ECPC also remained unanswered: At the time I asked whether they got an answer from the EPO they told me, on the phone, they’d surely answer on this, they would surely follow up the issue and also let me know. But they never did. Which might cast some doubt about the seriousness of this type of initiatives or even about the organisations promoting them: if ECPC itself fails to further pursue such an important issue they brought up themselves and tolerates a total lack of consideration by EPO, then we might ask whether this is another corporate European money machine…
“But this might be a side note… or another story…” █
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