06.05.18
Posted in Patents at 6:24 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Hublink, LLC, a Dominion Harbor subsidiary, is based in Texas and is part of a cryptic network of shells (Dominion Harbor receives its patents from Microsoft’s patent troll, Intellectual Ventures)
Summary: Another quick look at actions of patent trolls, especially in the Eastern District of Texas where courts are notoriously trolls- and/or plaintiffs-friendly
EARLIER today (this morning) we wrote about Microsoft and Intellectual Ventures, which Microsoft uses to pursue patent litigation ‘by proxy’ (Intellectual Ventures has thousands of obscure satellite firms/shells).
Here goes — yet again — Microsoft’s patent troll, filing patent lawsuits against companies that use Android (Linux) or at least attempting to shake these down using patents (threats of lawsuits). That’s why the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) got involved. Remember that Intellectual Ventures is feeding patent trolls near and around the Eastern District of Texas, but sometimes (in more recent years in particular) it files lawsuits directly. In a case dated May 29th, according to today’s short post, an inter partes review (IPR) dealt with a patent of “Intellectual Ventures I LLC” (there are many variants of “Intellectual Ventures”). To quote:
The Patent Trial and Appeal Board’s conclusion following inter partes review that a cellular communications patent directed to frequency hopping owned by Intellectual Ventures I LLC was invalid and anticipated was not supported by substantial evidence, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit had held. Among other things, the Board erred in invalidating independent claim 1 based on irrelevant disclosures in the specification.
This actually reached the Federal Circuit, which can be expensive. The large patent troll Dominion Harbor (connected to Microsoft through Intellectual Ventures) barely even gets this far.
What we see here is ongoing abuse from Intellectual Ventures, which is losing a lot of money (that money comes — in the form of big investments — from Microsoft itself).
Speaking of Texas, Blue Spike is a patent troll or “lawsuits factory” [1, 2, 3] based in Tyler, Texas (yes, think Eastern District of Texas) and it is suing once again, this time demanding $210,000,000 from Frontier. So far a couple of news reports about it [1, 2] could be in this niche’s media/sites. To quote:
US operator Frontier Communication is being sued by data patent holder Blue Spike in Texas for over USD 210 million, Law360 reported. Blue Spike claims the operator’s FiOS TV service infringes 11 patents related to watermark embedding technologies. Blue Spike also alleges violation of a 12th patent, related to Frontier’s business Wi-Fi service.
Blue Spike, based in Tyler, Texas, holds more than 100 patents for forensic watermarking, signal abstracts, data security, software watermarks, product license keys, ASLR and deep packet inspection, FierceCable reported.
Blue Spike does absolutely nothing but lawsuits. It’a an anvil or a yoke to the economy.
Staying down there in Texas, a Korean university known as KAIST (acronym) has a trolling entity in the US and it’s still acting like a classic patent troll in the Eastern District of Texas (where else?), as Kaist IP US LLC v Samsung Electronics Co. serves to show. The latest twist in this case was covered yesterday as follows:
The court denied plaintiff’s motion to strike portions of the rebuttal report of defendants’ damages expert because his theory capping the value of a patent-in-suit based on prior licensing negotiations was not unreliable.
KAIST is one of those very few Korean entities which are litigious. It does a lot of that in the US, not in Korea, where software patents for example are difficult to pursue (compared to Texas).
Earlier today we saw Velocity bragging about a new patent in Japan and Canada. The patent alludes to “software providing aggregated application metadata that reveals emerging patterns, performance issues, human productivity insights…”
Courts in Japan and Canada, however, would likely not permit such software (and thus seemingly abstract) patents. It sounds totally bunk, abstract, at least based on the press release. Those countries — unlike China — don’t quite tolerate such patents. China’s SIPO is ranked very low for patent quality and this new Chinese patent boasted about by BioMarker might actually endure scrutiny (but only in China, which is like the 'new' Eastern District of Texas). It’s very rare to see English press releases in which companies brag about Chinese patents. Seeing the fast-changing litigation climate in the US, perhaps they have plans in the far east. █
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Posted in America, Courtroom, Law, Patents at 5:49 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
‘Activists’ as in greedy and mischievous law firms, whose reckless actions damage the image of the US patent system
Summary: The gunslingers that shoot from the hip at tribunals which assess patent quality don’t quite seem to understand what the outside world thinks of them; aggressiveness against the government itself merely reinforces the belief that they — the law firms — are the outlaws or the people’s (not just the state’s) enemy
THE USPTO must obey or at least respect rulings from the Supreme Court (SCOTUS). Otherwise it might grant patents in error, only to be ‘reprimanded’ (or at least embarrassed) by judges years down the line. The America Invents Act (AIA), introducing the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB), helps assure that the USPTO more or less complies with SCOTUS, e.g. on § 101. It intervenes before and after patent grants, often thwarting application grants or voiding them after the grant.
AIA has been good, but it’s no good for law firms that are accustomed to lengthy (hence expensive) legal battles.
‘Activist’ law firms have decided to do something about it, even if they’re opposed by Federal courts and politicians, who generally accuse these firms of “shams”, “scams” and so on. Even the Federal Circuit got involved. The patent “scam” of Allergan and Mohawk Tribe is one such example; it is a threat to the very core of the patent system. The lawyers behind this “scam” are threatening me because they don’t like the negative publicity. Yesterday Bloomberg had this article by Susan Decker, who wrote the following:
Technology companies, banks and insurers say that allowing drugmaker Allergan Plc to use an American Indian tribe’s sovereign immunity to avoid competition from generics could undercut a system to weed out bad patents.
Industry groups filed arguments with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit in Washington ahead of oral arguments Monday. The court is considering whether patents for the company’s blockbuster dry-eye drug Restasis can still be challenged despite being transferred to a tribe that claims sovereign immunity.
“If Allergan’s ‘rent-a-tribe’ strategy is ultimately successful, it could doom the entire” review process, said Brad Wright, a patent lawyer with Banner & Witcoff in Washington. “Patent owners of all types — not just pharmaceutical companies — would be able to circumvent the process by asserting sovereign immunity.”
[...]
The Mohawk tribe has since reached a similar agreement with another company, SRC LLC, and together they sued Amazon.com Inc. and Microsoft over patents for high-speed computing. Apple Inc. was sued over a patent owned by three North Dakota tribes, though the case was settled.
The goal is to avoid a review of issued patents before the patent board, which has an easier legal standard to cancel issued patents and is a favorite among tech and financial companies. The U.S. Supreme Court in April rejected claims the administrative reviews were unconstitutional.
Don’t expect these “scams” to last. Thus far (and it has been going on for about a year) they lose at every turn. On their side they mostly have dishonest law firms and patent maximalists such as Watchtroll. The concept of covered business method review (CBM) — a part of the America Invents Act (AIA) — was recalled/mentioned by Dennis Crouch the other day in relation to patent maximalists who want to sue even their own government for patent infringement. In one instance they want the government to stay out of their business and here they suddenly care so much about the government? To quote:
The America Invents Act (AIA) allows for a “person” to file a covered business method review (CBM) to challenge an issued patent. See AIA Section 18 (because they it is a temporary program, the CBM provisions have not been codified in the United States Code).
[...]
The setup here is fairly limited because it is only focused on governmental use, but it is the type of questions likely to receive interest from the Supreme Court. In its decision in the case, the Federal Circuit ruled (over a dissent) that a Section 1498 action counts as an infringement lawsuit for the purposes of the AIA and that the U.S. Government counts as a “person” under the statute — writing that “The AIA does not appear to use the term ‘person’ to exclude the government in other provisions.”
As usual, Crouch hopes to solicit patent maximalists’ input for SCOTUS (and lawyers make money from any litigation, so why cares about laws anyway?). What these people don’t care to realise is that the reckless behaviour (as above) merely serves to discredit the patent system as a whole. They don’t want to play by the rules and in the process they just smash the underlying system (as happened at the EPO). █
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Posted in Deception, Europe, Patents at 4:48 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Entryism completed?
Summary: One year they’re exposing Battistelli’s abuses and the next year they not only stop it but actually join Battistelli for photo ops whilst also promoting his agenda and deleting comments he might not like
THE EPO scandals won’t be covered by IP Kat anymore. To make matters worse, they’re mass-nuking comments that are critical of EPO management (as they did for António Campinos a few months back).
“How can this be?”
“Well, look no further than leadership and editorial changes at IP Kat (including Stephen Jones, who celebrated with Battistelli as they lobbied together for UPC ratification in the UK).”Many EPO insiders wonder that.
Well, look no further than leadership and editorial changes at IP Kat (including Stephen Jones, who celebrated with Battistelli as they lobbied together for UPC ratification in the UK). The picture at the top was taken and boasted about (by the EPO’s management) shortly after Jones had left IP Kat, leaving in charge more of the Bristows stuff (same agenda, Team UPC’s).
This isn’t a new observation by the way. We took note of it before, e.g. in:
There are more articles with more examples; we took note of it many times before, even as recently as 2 weeks ago.
A few hours ago IP Kat announced its upcoming anniversary party and guess where it’s at…
“This whole ‘party’ sort of confirms that IP Kat has been ‘hijacked’ by the Battistelli-friendly Team UPC.”Here we go: “join us on Monday, 2 July at Bristows London offices for an afternoon of celebrations and discussions about the recent past, present and future of this great area of the law!”
This whole ‘party’ sort of confirms that IP Kat has been ‘hijacked’ by the Battistelli-friendly Team UPC. The blog has been dominated by it since the blog’s founder left. Just notice who’s talking there and what about; there are even talks about SPCs, Bristows’ ‘favourite’ alongside UPC (they’re connected); IAM wrote about unitary SPCs earlier today (only hours ago), reinforcing or cementing the UPC agenda all these sites have. They and their sponsors/clients profit from patent trolls. Some of them receive money from Battistelli, e.g. through PR firms.
“They’re a serious threat not only to British democracy but German democracy too.”Perhaps such is the nature of entryism, but what’s concerning is how extreme an element it is; the same Team UPC which dominated Kluwer Patent Blog (and deleted UPC-hostile comments in there) is now doing the same at IP Kat. They ‘sanitise’ information and occasionally spread misinformation. Bristows’ party line has just been repeated by tweets from Managing IP (no link, but it’s pretty revealing whose posts they are inspired by or copy, more so than IAM). Gemma Barrett from Bristows has meanwhile posted this tweet/post about UPC; Team UPC lacks anything to say regarding UPC ‘progress’, so now it looks at Romania, a country with barely any European Patents (EPs). It says that the “PPA will come into force when Germany (whose ratification of the PPA is also on hold)…”
Wait. It’s an understatement to say “on hold” considering the extremely serious nature of the constitutional complaint. But never let a good propaganda opportunity go to waste or facts get in the way of IP Kat Bristows. Remember how after this must-read scandal in Germany they wrote a lot of posts to cover that up (as we noted several times at the time). They’re a serious threat not only to British democracy but German democracy too. They and Battistelli have that in common. All they care about is litigation (for them to profit from). █
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Posted in Deception, Free/Libre Software, GNU/Linux, Microsoft, Patents at 4:28 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
While Microsoft sells ‘protection’ (euphemistically named “Azure IP Advantage”) from itself and its patent trolls [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18]
Summary: While the media keeps obsessing over delusions like a ‘new’ Microsoft or “Microsoft loves Linux” the company carries on propping up patent trolls (which it then provides ‘protection’ from, but only if one chooses Azure) and threatening GNU/Linux OEMs, opting for the use the patents for bundling their ‘apps’ (an exchange along the lines of, “put our apps in Android or we’ll sue you”)
DO NOT for a single moment be misled by Microsoft’s latest charm offensive, which seems to have been timed so as to distract from Apple’s big announcements in an annual event. It would be spurious to tell our readers that Microsoft is not a friend of Free/Open Source software (FOSS). We spent about a decade writing about that; it’s a subject which we covered in literally thousands of posts. It’s worth noting that the new chief of GitHub will be the same person who infiltrated GNU/Linux through Novell with Mono, so these are entryism experts (he had moved between Microsoft and FOSS — jobs-wise — several times, along the lines of’a revolving doors’ model). Microsoft used Xamarin (which he was the chief of) to literally obliterate ‘dangerous’ (to Microsoft) FOSS projects like RoboVM before Microsoft ‘compensated’ them for the trouble (in the form of a takeover, i.e. money and cushy jobs/salaries). But this post isn’t about GitHub. Instead, let’s focus on patent news that’s connected to Microsoft. The TomTom lawsuit backfired in the media (even Jim Zemlin berated them for it) and ever since then Microsoft chose indirection. It’s hiding behind proxies such as SCO (but for patents, not copyrights).
“A lot of the money has been put into this patent troll by Microsoft and Bill Gates (at a personal capacity, too). They were willing to lose hundreds of millions of dollars just to prop up this troll.”A few days ago professor James Bessen (a patent trolls expert), via Brian J. Love (another scholar who is sceptical of the current patent law), highlighted this new article from the exceptionally Bill Gates-friendly Forbes. It’s about Intellectual Ventures (IV), Microsoft’s biggest patent troll which we’ve been tracking and reporting on for over a decade. “Self-proclaimed a new way of invention, patent troll IV has been a loser for its investors (& targets too),” Bessen remarked. A lot of the money has been put into this patent troll by Microsoft and Bill Gates (at a personal capacity, too). They were willing to lose hundreds of millions of dollars just to prop up this troll. It’s no ordinary troll but a massive network thereof. “After 10 Years,” notes Forbes, “Nathan Myhrvold’s $3 Billion Of Private Equity Funds Show Big Losses” (that’s the headline). Here are some excerpts:
Some 10 years ago, Nathan Myhrvold, the former chief technology officer of Microsoft, raised nearly $3 billion for two private equity funds from financial investors and tech companies. These were not your typical funds. They were designed to invest in patents and innovations, not companies or their securities, over a lifespan of 20 years, as opposed to the usual 10 to 13 years. Halfway through their run, the funds are deep in the red.
Invention Investment Fund II was the bigger fund that Myhrvold’s firm, Intellectual Ventures, raised in 2008. It has generated a -15.44% internal rate of return, according to data provided by the University of Texas Investment Management Co., one of Intellectual Ventures’ investors.
[...]
Nevertheless, Myhrvold has washed his hands of Invention Development Fund. It is now being managed by a new firm, Allied Inventors Management, which was set up solely to run Invention Development Fund outside of Intellectual Ventures. The fund has been renamed Allied Investors Fund. “The terms of the arrangement are subject to confidentiality agreement,” said DG Kim, Allied’s chief financial officer. “As far as internal fund matters, I am bound and can’t say anything really.”
We recently wrote about it because Microsoft had unintentionally revealed something. Filings showed that it was by far the biggest investor in this troll. It even lost a lot of money just trying to prop it up again (with another round of major investment). Richard Lloyd, who mentioned it at the time (Irish media actually broke the story), now has this new article stating that IV is “among the leading sellers of patents in first quarter” (IV sells patents to ‘satellite’ trolls that take many legal actions; the Wall Street Journal estimated about 9 years ago that IV had already created thousands of such ‘satellites’).
So what we have here is Microsoft’s patent troll (still led by Microsoft’s former CTO and heavily funded by Microsoft) distributing patents to patent trolls that are suing Microsoft’s rivals (including Linux companies, as we noted over the years). To quote:
IAM has teamed up with Allied Security Trust (AST) to provide quarterly updates on the secondary market for patents to determine who’s buying, who’s selling and what sort of assets are changing hands. As well as the data, AST has provided some additional information on the principal deals and the defensive aggregator’s CEO Russell Binns has added some commentary on the main trends. This analysis covers the first three months of 2018 and shows how Intellectual Ventures continues to dominate the market on the sell-side, while the NPEs Dominion Harbor and Uniloc are the leading buyers.
It’s also worth noting that IAM now works with the Allied Security Trust (AST), which is — as we last noted some weeks ago — like a patent ‘cartel’. IAM took note of another such ‘cartel’, IP Bridge, on the same day, writing:
Mobile network operator NTT Docomo has become the latest Japanese firm to partner with IP Bridge, the patent fund run by CEO Shigeharu Yoshii. A wireless-focused subsidiary of NTT, the world’s fourth largest telco by revenue, Docomo has previously made only limited patent transactions with third parties.
We wrote about IP Bridge. It’s almost like the ‘IV of Japan’, albeit much gentler. All these entities are basically participating in a large-scale ‘cartel’ whose de facto function is keeping small companies out of the market. They’re monopoly enablers.
“Microsoft did the same thing 3 years later at Nokia (Nokia’s patents will only ever bother Apple and Android OEMs, but never Microsoft).”That brings us back to Microsoft. And this time it’s about Yahoo’s trove of software patents. Well, just as many people worried at the time (10 years ago, the time of Microsoft’s hijack of Yahoo), USPTO-granted patents of Yahoo show up in lawsuits/dockets. Critics like ourselves predicted that these patents would get scattered to trolls that target Microsoft’s main competitors on the Internet while Microsoft gets to shield itself by wielding leverage over Yahoo. Microsoft did the same thing 3 years later at Nokia (Nokia’s patents will only ever bother Apple and Android OEMs, but never Microsoft).
According to the EFF’s Daniel Nazer: “Old @Yahoo patents now in the hands of trolls. Prolific patent troll IP Edge has sued @Twitter claiming it infringes this software patent: https://patents.google.com/patent/US8352854 …”
We wrote about IP Edge several times earlier this year, e.g. [1, 2, 3, 4; like IV, it typically operates through ‘satellites’ which file the lawsuits. This makes it incredibly hard to keep track of these things; it’s hard to know who’s behind which lawsuit/s.
Daniel Nazer has just published this new article titled “EFF Fights for Public Access To Patent Disputes” because even the EFF struggles to gain access to such crucial information. To quote:
The public can’t judge if courts are fair if the public is locked out. The parties generally don’t care if the proceedings are hidden (indeed, they may want them hidden). This means that, at times, groups like EFF and press organizations have had to stand up for public access. Unfortunately, while the First Amendment protects the right of access, courts sometimes fail to protect this right.
In patent litigation, we’ve seen routine over-sealing by busy district courts. EFF has twice moved to unseal records in patent cases in the Eastern District of Texas, and both times the court unsealed material that should have been public.
Now EFF is taking action to push for transparency in two critical venues for hearing patent disputes. We’re protesting against the Federal Circuit’s practice of delaying the public from reading filed briefs, and the Patent Trial and Appeal Board’s use of secret docket entries.
[...]
The Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) overseas a variety of important procedures within the Patent Office, including inter partes review (IPR) and administrative appeals. The IPR proceedings, in particular, are now one of the most important methods for challenging bad patents.
Recently, we filed an amicus brief at the PTAB in a case considering whether a patent owner can avoid review by claiming sovereign immunity. As part of our work in that case, we discovered that when documents are filed under seal at the PTAB there is no public docket entry. So, not only does the public not get to see the sealed document, it doesn’t even know that one has been filed.
We sent a FOIA request to the Patent Office that, in effect, asked for all non-public docket entries in post-grant proceedings at the PTAB. We did not request the filings themselves but only the docket entries. After some back-and-forth, the Patent Office produced a list [PDF] of 16,773 docket entries (we thank the FOIA Officer who helped with this process). In other words, there have thousands of filings before the PTAB that the public had no record of.
Meanwhile, as Nazer noted in Twitter yesterday:
U.S. Patent No. 10,000,000 will likely issue some time this month. To make sure the publicity is good, the USPTO will hand-pick this patent (it won’t be the patent that randomly would have gotten that number).
Far too many ‘inventions’ so you just know that the vast majority simply aren’t inventions and are basically bogus patents waiting to be exploited en masse by patent trolls. Many such trolls are connected to Microsoft, either directly or through IV (which has literally thousands of them). How large a scale does this network of trolling have? It’s hard to tell unless the EFF can compel/press for better public access to information. Many patent disputes happen secretly, with conditional settlements that include “no disclosure” agreements (NDAs). Secrecy shelters serial bullies from regulators/scrutiny/challenge (such as IPRs at the Patent Trial and Appeal Board). █
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Posted in Europe, Patents at 3:07 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
The management team distracts from that, usually with help from media that the managers are paying (at the EPO’s expense)
Summary: As work is running out (patents granted far too hastily with far too little scrutiny) expectation remains that Campinos will soon implement staff cuts which are being discussed by the top-level management
THE next king of Eponia, António Campinos, will start his reign in a few weeks. Battistelli, according to lingering rumours, still hopes to make a ‘comeback’ as head of UPC (there are similar rumours about upcoming firings of somewhere between 700 to 1000 employees, probably not too long after Campinos takes over).
The EPO could be seen last night retweeting the IAM lies that it’s paying it to spread. One scratches one’s back and they swap positions interchangeably. IAM is setting up UPC advocacy events with help from the EPO’s PR agencies and direct support from Battistelli. Earlier this week, under “European Union, Spain, United Kingdom” in a patent lawyers’ site IAM was reposting its UPC propaganda. It’s being (re)published in other Web sites. The EPO must be very proud, having paid IAM for such patent lies.
“Well, the Unified Patent Court Agreement (UPCA) isn’t being signed by Germany and it is definitely not compatible with a ‘Brexit Britain’…”Patrick Wingrove, writing on behalf of Managing IP (which was also setting up UPC advocacy events that were EPO-connected), wrote this UPC puff piece yesterday, summarising it as follows: “The UK government ratifying the international agreement that will establish a Unified Patent Court (UPC) for Europe is the biggest recent news related to the UPC and Unitary Patent. But May saw some interesting developments.”
Well, the Unified Patent Court Agreement (UPCA) isn’t being signed by Germany and it is definitely not compatible with a ‘Brexit Britain’ (I’m not a proponent of Brexit, but I at least understand the reality of this referendum). When will they ‘get’ it and decide to abandon this whole lobbying campaign? Having invested so much time and money in this lobbying, they simply refuse to give up. Arguably, an overzealous (For UPC) Battistelli was the death knell of the EPO. █
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