Bonum Certa Men Certa

Complaints About Google Patents, R3 Patents, and the EFF's Campaign of Exposing/Disarming Patent Trolls

The Intellectual Ventures-connected trolls' harbour, Dominion Harbor Group, is now attacking the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), having attacked me personally last week

Trolls' harbour



Summary: A mix of interesting developments surrounding patents, including a nasty campaign by Dominion Harbor Group to smear patent reformers

THE world of patents is a hostile world where blackmail and extortion are common (albeit usually kept behind the scenes, away from the public eye). I often hear stories of people who suffered from patent trolls. It's a life-changing experience to them. It can make people suicidal.



Google and Asymmetric Numeral Systems (ANS)



"I often hear stories of people who suffered from patent trolls. It's a life-changing experience to them. It can make people suicidal."Several months ago Google too became part of the problem, having initiated a 'first strike' patent attack on a rival. It's worrying to see Google resorting to that and earlier today an article was published saying that "Google [is] Accused of Trying to Patent Public Domain Technology" (via, comments aplenty).

To quote:

A Polish academic is accusing Google of trying to patent technology he invented and that he purposely released into the public domain so companies like Google couldn't trap it inside restrictive licenses.

The technology's name is Asymmetric Numeral Systems (ANS) [1, 2], a family of entropy coding methods that Polish assistant professor Jarosław (Jarek) Duda developed between 2006 and 2013.


To all those who try to dub Google an "efficient infringer" or demonise Michelle Lee because she used to work at Google, say no more. Google is no different from the rest of them (not anymore). Google too has turned into a patent bully (when it suits Google). Even when it comes to entropy, which basically boils down to software patents...

"Encryption is very easily demonstrable as reducible to mathematics."In other news, this new press release speaks of "filing of patents for the encryption protocol Parano" (this won't be accepted post-Alice).

Encryption is very easily demonstrable as reducible to mathematics. All software patents are just maths. Computer vision too. AI? Obviously! Invalid patents. All of them. But why are these still being pursued and sometimes granted by the USPTO?

R3 and Corda



Earlier today someone told me about "another interesting #swpats [software patents] bullies case for you," citing this tweet which says: "My last tweet caused R3 to send me a cease and desist...

"So let's try again: can anyone find these Corda patent apps? I may have prior art."

More context is provided below that:



Dominion Harbor Group Attacks Critics of Trolls



No post would be complete without the idiocy of infantile trolls, whose CEOs openly defame and ridicule people, just like a bunch of children in an elementary school (talking about testicle size etc. and bragging about having a dinner outside the house).

"They're like a couple of kids playing with a box of matches and it's incredible that anyone out there was willing to give them capital (investment).""For anyone believing EFF anti-patent stance helps small tech innovators, some hard facts show otherwise," a patent maximlist (Nick Gross, linking to his own post) wrote today in Twitter, linking to more EFF bashing from a site of a patent troll, Dominion Harbor Group (there's apparently more of that on the way as it's labeled "part I"). That same site now defames me by repeating crap which the troll's CEO and his sidekick know to be untrue. So desperately trying to shoot the messenger. "IPWire (tm) is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Dominion Harbor, Dallas Texas," it says. So basically, trolls don't like the EFF, which doesn't like them either. Big surprise!

Keep an eye on these people. They're like a couple of kids playing with a box of matches and it's incredible that anyone out there was willing to give them capital (investment). They'll burn themselves. After TC Heartland there's not much they can do in Texas, either.

Recent Techrights' Posts

Hopping From One Set of Buzzwords to the Next
Rotating hype and vapourware
Currys PCWorld Hates GNU/Linux Even Though It Runs the World
If more and more people choose to remove Windows, then Currys PCWorld will feel the financial impact of its dumb policies
The Register MS Takes More Money to Boost Slop Hype, This Time From Snyk, a Notorious FUD Source
At some stage or at some point they might even decide to stop doing so
"AI" Hype or LLM Slop is Not About Efficiency, It's About Lowering Standards
It does not seem like IBM is genuinely committed to the same goals (or commitments) as the original Red Hat
If Free/Libre Software is Adding Trillions in Value to the European Economy, Then the European Commission Must Crush Software Patents
Further to what we wrote yesterday
 
Links 14/08/2025: Data Brokers Hiding Opt-Out Pages From Google, "Fight Chat Control"
Links for the day
FSF Infrastructure Under Constant Attack
The disconnect (literally) has had an effect on credibility
Feels Like The Register MS is Trying to Diversify a Bit
If The Register MS goes back to being The Register US (or UK), that will be a nice improvement
Gemini Links 14/08/2025: Reading Journal and LLM Fatigue Revisited
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Wednesday, August 13, 2025
IRC logs for Wednesday, August 13, 2025
Internet Relay Chat and Gemini Protocol Help Us Relive the Net of the Dial-Up Era
The kids were alright
"GPT-5" is Another Microsoft Dead Cat Trying to Bounce
The hype, the momentum (or the inertia) is wearing off
Microsoft Windows Losing Its Grip Near Turkey and Russia
The 'corridor' nations connecting Iran to Europe
Slopwatch: LinuxSecurity, Google News, and Serial Slopper (SS)
The slop, the bad, and the ugly
Links 13/08/2025: The “Incriminating Video” Scam and Corruption in South Korea
Links for the day
Gemini Links 13/08/2025: Movie Memories and Mystery Machine Bus
Links for the day
Links 13/08/2025: GitHub Trouble and Openwashing by Microsoft OSI With the Typical Buzzwords
Links for the day
Microsoft Swallows GitHub Losses
Only Microsoft knows how much money it has already lost on GitHub
Gemini Links 13/08/2025: Climate, Coffee, and Deploying Troops in Washington DC After Pardoning 1,000+ Insurrectionists in Washington DC
Links for the day
The Register MS Lowered MS Focus This Week
We hope The Register recognises its errors and tries to make up for them
Learning Ethics From Jeffrey Epstein's Enabler/Client/Ally, Coca-Cola, and Microsoft Accenture
Whatever merits vocabulary changes initially had are being tainted or obscured by later iterations, which tell us to avoid word like "normal", which apparently offend some people (so they argue)
Personal Attacks From Rust People Serve to Confirm They Have Lost the Argument
"The discussion I find around the net so far has no technical merit and centers around ad hominem"
Physical Meters and Purely Mechanical Meters Aren't Dumb; It's Dumb to Mock or Dismiss Them as Antiquated
I've learned a lot this week, both online and over the telephone
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Tuesday, August 12, 2025
IRC logs for Tuesday, August 12, 2025
GitHub Will End Up like XBox and Skype
It is not likely that the XBox franchise will survive the next 5 years
Stones Thrown in Glass Houses
Projecting? You bet!
As Europe Gets Increasingly Serious About Software Freedom and Digital Sovereignty It Needs to Enforce a Ban on Software Patents ASAP
many councils in Europe move to Free software and US policy/companies cannot be trusted
Windows 12 in Bahrain (Microsoft "Market Share" Down to 12%, an All-Time Low)
They really ought to get away from Windows even faster
The Web Needs 'Pest Control' When It Comes to LLM Slopfarms
The goal is to discourage more sites becoming slopfarms
Microsoft Can Now Stop Reporting the GitHub Layoffs (Even When They Happen)
GitHub's original staff will see the true cost of becoming "b0rged" - something that Microsoft earned a bad reputation for
How to Get Very Bad or Even Malicious Code Into Linux? Write it in a Language That Linus Torvalds and Most Other Linux Developers Don't Understand.
One point nobody brings up is, what if code gets committed while evading audits and scrutiny?
Links 12/08/2025: Wikipedia Fails at UK High Court, Perlmutter Still Fights to Squash the Slop Lobby
Links for the day
Gemini Links 12/08/2025: Field Recording and Digital Legacy
Links for the day
Links 12/08/2025: WinRAR Zero-Day, SonicWall Does More Harm Than Good
Links for the day
Links 12/08/2025: More Sabotage of Underwater Cable Ahead of Russian Alaska Summit
Links for the day
Richard Stallman Will Not Miss Microsoft GitHub, It Was Only Good at Harvesting a Lot of Code for Plagiarism-as-a-Service
investors are apparently willing to lose money for buzzwords
Slopfarms Slopping Away at "Linux" and Spreading Microsoft Misinformation
Slopfarms don't comprehend this as they lack actual comprehension, they're just parrots
Links 12/08/2025: Science, Hardware, and Ukraine Excluded From Negotiations About Its Future
Links for the day
GitHub the Company Has, in Effect, Just Died (Time to Look for Alternatives)
To Microsoft, what's left of GitHub after dismantling/folding it is some "training set" (people's code, without permission to "train" i.e. misuse under the guise of "GenAI" plagiarism)
Linux Foundation Says "Housekeeping", "Hung", "Normal", "Native Feature/Support" and "Girl/Girls" Are Offensive Words
Bombing people is OK, just use the right "terms"
It Looks More Like Microsoft GitHub Layoffs
GitHub is just losing loads of money
Gemini Links 12/08/2025: Meditation, OpenStreetMap, Smolweb, and More
Links for the day
Google News is Dying: Most of Its Top Stories Now Are LLM Slop With Slop Images (i.e. 100% Fake 'Content')
Google News has been drowning in this sort of stuff for quite some time
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Monday, August 11, 2025
IRC logs for Monday, August 11, 2025
Our Predictions Were Right: GitHub Dying as Losses Pile Up (as a Company It Cannot Continue to Exist, It's Not 'Free Hosting')
GitHub always lost money