Bonum Certa Men Certa

IAM and IBM Want Lots of Patent Litigation in India

Not just low-salaried labour/workforce for IBM

India IAM lobbyingSummary: Having 'championed' lobbying for litigation Armageddon in China (where IBM's practicing business units have gone), patent maximalists set their eyes on India

IBM is trying to change the USPTO, having had a Director in it for a number of years (he's now working for IBM as a lobbyist). IBM is a patent bully and almost a troll (IBM still sells some products, so it's premature to start calling it a "patent troll").



IBM used software patents against Twitter (many did not notice that), extracting perhaps tens of millions of dollars without actually doing anything.

Florian Müller, an IBM critic, has just published this blog post about a core Twitter patent in the post-Alice era. "Worst-case scenario for Twitter," he added, is that "some of its "own" patent claims might belong to Indian inventor, who could then sue Twitter."

From yesterday's blog post:

It could be that an Indian patentee ends up owning what was considered a core Twitter patent. But he's not quite there yet. His U.S. Patent Application No. 15/053,889 is facing an Alice (€§101) rejection by the examiner, which he is appealing (the appeal was filed in late November). Most recently, the examiner sought to defend his rejection in his mid-February answer to the appeal brief.

Twitter's older and narrower patent was granted at a pre-Alice time; but the broader one was granted in 2015. The USPTO is clearly applying double standards so far, holding the same claims abstract in one case after not holding them abstract in another. That's not good.


PTAB/district courts/CAFC would likely just say, "go away, opportunist/troll..."

They're no longer tolerant of such patents.

Speaking of India, Dolby does not create anything concrete in India; nothing but patent lawsuits. But a person from Dolby, a speaker at an upcoming IAM event in India (possibly with the usual advocacy of software patents in India), will certainly enjoy yesterday's puff piece that says:

Documents filed with the Delhi High Court show that Dolby Laboratories called off a dispute with Oppo last December after more than a year of litigation. For the US-based licensor of audio standards technology, the Oppo deal followed on two settlements with Indian defendants during the course of 2017.

Dolby made its first patent assertions in India in 2016, with Oppo and Vivo as its initial targets. In October that year, Delhi High Court Justice Rajiv Sahai Endlaw laid out an interim royalty payment regime requiring both defendants to deposit 34 rupees ($0.52 at today’s rates) with the court per device sold. According to SpicyIP, the court subsequently required the two Chinese brands to “furnish bank guarantees for the entire amount of the royalty payments due to the plaintiffs”.

[...]

Dolby’s latest cases demonstrate why FRAND and SEP issues will be high on the agenda here in Mumbai.


IAM has long lobbied for software patents in India, for FRAND, and SEP (see examples from last year [1, 2, 3, 4, 5]). IBM did the same thing in India (we wrote articles about that). IAM is the spin department/think tank (setting up lobbying events). It's just using Dolby (above) as a "model" example by which to drive the agenda. IAM and IBM are often on the same wavelength; both are patent maximalists that want the public to think that patents and innovation are the same thing and only patent litigation (or 'monetisation') is the fulfillment of a patent.

Recent Techrights' Posts

The 'Culture Wars' in Free Software Have Gone Out of Control
Social control media amplifies such utterly infantile discourse
10 Out of 10: RMS Attracts Massive Audience in Göteborg, Sweden (All Seats Occupied, Some People Standing)
a 55-second clip of his talk
The Lawsuit by Clients of Brett Wilson LLP Against Brett Wilson LLP is Officially On, It is Progressing, The 'Experts' Pick Outside Law Firms (RPC and Mills & Reeve) to Spare Them From Litigants in Person
So it is probably quite potent
Slopwatch: Plagiarism and "Linux" Articles by Bots
Sites that do this won't survive; many of them rely on slop services (suppliers) that will cease to exist after the bubble bursts
 
Gemini Links 11/10/2025: An Evening at the Fair and Fast Fourier Friday
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Friday, October 10, 2025
IRC logs for Friday, October 10, 2025
Geminispace is Very Large
The word continues to spread and the number of participants grows
Teaser: To Compensate for the Fact Our Clients Are Terrible Human Beings Who Strangle Women (While on Microsoft's Payroll) and We Get Paid by Mystery Parties We Bombard You and Your Wife With Almost 10 Kilograms of Legal Papers
If you can't win an argument, then drown the other side with papers?
Another Wave of Microsoft Layoffs, This Time During National Day Holiday
This time it's China again
Staying Happy in Times of Crackdowns on Civil Society
Optimism in this sort of "new reality" or "new normal" seems like something for the irrational person
"Nobel" Exploited Posthumously for "AI" Hype, Now They Do the Same With "Quantum"
ere have been many jokes about "Nobel" for peace (often granted to pro-war people) and a fake one for "Economics" (establishment propaganda)
Distinguished Lecture by Richard Stallman This Coming Monday in Rome
After "Free software, Crucial for Freedom in a Digital World"
Links 10/10/2025: Putin Admits Russia Downed Azerbaijan Airlines Jet, More New Heat Records
Links for the day
Noteworthy Claim That IBM is Firing a Lot of Lawyers This Week (RAs in the Legal Department)
A lot of what they do is patent 'trolling' or lawyering up against their own staff (e.g. HR disputes)
Links 10/10/2025: US Judge Bars Attacks by ICE On Journalists and Protesters; “We Took The Freedom of Speech Away” Says the President
Links for the day
Slopwatch: Serial Sloppers, Google News Gifting Slopfarms, and Fake News/Plagiarism About "Linux"
Google itself is a slop pusher these days
Qualcomm, the New Owner of Arduino, Blasted for Its Software Patents Tax on 'Smartphones'
A lot of Qualcomm's patents are on software. We wrote about this in prior years.
XBox Layoffs Rumours, Downtime, and Criticism From XBox Co-Founder
"everyone is ditching the xbox."
Links 10/10/2025: Honoring The Legacy Of Robert Murray-Smith, Many Articles on the Hey Hi (AI) Bubble
Links for the day
Gemini Links 09/10/2025: October Gothic and Reading Middle Earth Role Playing; C and Ada
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Thursday, October 09, 2025
IRC logs for Thursday, October 09, 2025
Links 09/10/2025: Farewell to Jane Goodall, California Bans Algorithmic Price-Fixing
Links for the day
Gemini Links 09/10/2025: Lost Wages and a Saga Of Continuing To Use Palm PDAs
Links for the day
Richard Stallman's Talk in Helsinki is Done. Tomorrow Göteborg.
There are scarce details in Finnish about Dr. Stallman's talk
New XBox Leaks Probably Serve to Confirm XBox's Collapse (Many More Layoffs)
It's very much consistent with what many other sites have reported lately
The Slop Song
The train wreck marches on
LLM Slop/Advanced Plagiarism Flooding the Zone With Capital That Does Not Exist
Many publishers out there still participate in this bubble instead of calling it what it is
Links 09/10/2025: Sacked Microsoft Workers Make "Sackbird", IBM Taps CockroachDB for PostgreSQL
Links for the day
"Happy Hacking Day" Richard Stallman Talk This Afternoon (From 14:00 to 16:00) at Haaga-Helia University in Pasila
Richard Stallman in Helsinki, Finland
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Wednesday, October 08, 2025
IRC logs for Wednesday, October 08, 2025
Links 09/10/2025: Impact of Microsoft Layoffs, More Data Breaches
Links for the day
Gemini Links 09/10/2025: Autumn Blues and C IRC Bot
Links for the day