Bonum Certa Men Certa

CCIA Speaks Out and EFF Lashes Out at Andrei Iancu's USPTO for Trying to Work Around the Law and Ignore Courts Because of Patent Maximalists' Agenda

Make Patents Great Again



Summary: A sort of regulatory capture at the USPTO worries front groups of technology companies, seeing that the USPTO simply cherry-picks court rulings in an effort to shape patent law (or at least examination guidelines) in favour of the litigation 'industry'

THE USPTO had improved for a number of years, but then came Iancu, whose firm had worked for Donald Trump. Trump put him in charge of the USPTO, perpetuating the very Trump-like culture/pattern/hallmark of "vendor capture" (more commonly known as "regulatory capture"). The "vendor" in this context is the patent microcosm.



"Trump put him in charge of the USPTO, perpetuating the very Trump-like culture/pattern/hallmark of "vendor capture"."Yesterday the CCIA's Patent Progress wrote something which echoes what we've been saying for a long time: "Further Evidence That Examiners Can Be Incentivized To Improve Patent Quality" (as they should).

Patent Progress under Mr. Landau really gets it (unlike Matt Levy, whose wife worked for the USPTO at the time). To quote Landau's opening paragraph:

Patent Progress has previously covered the research of Profs. Wasserman and Frakes regarding structural incentives at the USPTO that affect examiner behavior. A new paper in the AIPLA Quarterly Journal, written by Eric Blatt and Lian Huang (both former examiners), examines another area in which examiner incentives affect behavior—the Signatory Authority Review Program.


Levy's all-time low was probably the time he wrote for Watchtroll, a site of patent extremists. Here's an example from yesterday, "The Death of Invention" (patents and invention are not the same thing and patents are not dying, they're merely improving).

"Levy's all-time low was probably the time he wrote for Watchtroll, a site of patent extremists.""This is modern €§ 101 in a nutshell," Burman York (Bud) Mathis III writes this week, comparing abstract patents being voided to a "death" and adding a ridiculous image ("painting" or computer rendering) of a graveyard. Quinn and his drama queens. Quinn, the site's founder, has meanwhile traveled to see Iancu and he wrote about it yesterday. Iancu buddying up with Watchtroll (once again) says a lot about today's USPTO leadership. Iancu is quoted as saying: "The proposal is that once we go through the various steps and we make all the modifications that are necessary, new fees would be implemented in early 2021. We’re a ways away from all that."

Will he even last that long? It certainly does not look like technology companies (prolific applicants) like him, but based on this new tweet, the patent trolls' lobby is happy to see such a patent 'industry' actor in charge of the Office. "Iancu has made a very encouraging start at the USPTO, says 3M's IP chief," IAM wrote. He's a patent maximalist, just like IAM which routinely gives him a platform.

"Perhaps Mr. Iancu, appointed by Trump, decided that he like his boss can just ignore laws and court rulings when that suits him and his financial agenda (he's still connected to the company he came from)."By contrast, the EFF's Alex Moss wrote (yesterday evening or last night) about a problem we had been mentioning for several months. He warns that the Office should not be allowed to make mockery of justice, or Iancu ignoring the law and becoming like Battistelli (what did at the EPO). SCOTUS decisions need to be respected, the ITC needs to respect Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) inter partes reviews (IPRs) rather than ignore them, and the Federal Circuit's decisions oughtn't be cherry-picked. "The Berkheimer case is a mistake that needs correcting," Moss correctly wrote. Here's more:

Since the Supreme Court’s 2014 Alice v. CLS Bank decision, courts have invalidated hundreds of patents that should never have been issued. Unfortunately, the Patent Office may restrict the impact of that ruling on patent applications under examination.

The Patent Office has issued a request for comment on a proposal to give guidance to examiners that would put a thumb on the scale in favor of patent applicants. If adopted, the guidance would make it too hard for examiners to reject applications on abstract ideas. We’ve argued before against Patent Office proposals that water down the Supreme Court’s Alice decision. We have submitted new comments urging the office to apply Alice comprehensively and correctly, rather than biasing the process in favor of applicants hoping to patent generic computer functions.

The Alice ruling was a big win for software developers and users. The decision empowered district courts across the country to invalidate hundreds patents that should not have issued, and to do so at the earliest stages of a lawsuit, before litigation costs become prohibitive. But lawsuits over patents on basic ideas, like the idea of using categories to store and retrieve information, keep coming. These patents may use technical jargon, but actually require no technology beyond an off-the-shelf general-purpose computer.

Examiners need to understand the change in the law that Alice made. Our comments emphasize the key part of Alice’s landmark holding—describing generic computers performing generic computer functions can’t save a patent.

So why is this guidance coming now? The Patent Office’s new request comes on the heels of the Federal Circuit’s decision in Berkheimer v. HP, Inc., the first case to find evidence outside a patent necessary to decide whether the patent is abstract under Alice. If courts take the direction of Berkheimer, it could mean that those accused of infringement will have to present evidence to a jury at trial before they get a decision on eligibility under Alice.

[...]

Until then, EFF hopes the Patent Office takes our comments into account. The Berkheimer case is a mistake that needs correcting. The Patent Office should not view it as an opportunity to skew the outcome of decisions on pending patent applications in ways that undermine the rules so recently set forth in Alice.


Perhaps Mr. Iancu, appointed by Trump, decided that he like his boss can just ignore laws and court rulings when that suits him and his financial agenda (he's still connected to the company he came from). If that's the case, the reputation of the Office will suffer for a long time to come.

Recent Techrights' Posts

How Many Women Has Microsoft's Alex Balabhadra Graveley Already Strangled and Where Does That End?
If you too are a victim of this man and wish to share information, contact us
"We Might Save Somebody's Life"
I follow the example of my father
Gemini Links 16/07/2025: Tmux and OCC25 Working TLS
Links for the day
Reboots Should Never be Necessary
"BUT WHAT ABOUT SECURITY!!"
There's Still Hope for the World Wide Web
Let's hope that the trajectory of the Web won't be leading us to over-reliance on Google, nor will it reward worthless slopfarms
 
Revolving Doors: One Day You're a Judge, the Next Day You're an Attorney Paying Public Officials and Working for Violent and Dangerous Microsoft Employees
how the US justice system works
Sharing Code and Recipes
It helps explain the triviality of software freedom
Slopwatch: Noise, Plagiarism and Even Fear, Uncertainty, Doubt/Fear-mongering/Dramatisation
What are we meant to do to prevent a false association or misleading connotations? Game the LLMs? No. Boycott slopfarms.
Gemini Links 16/07/2025: BaseLibre Numerical System and Simple Web Browsing with TLS
Links for the day
Links 16/07/2025: Fascist Slop Takes "Intelligence" Clothing, New Criminal Case Against MElon
Links for the day
Why I am Suing the Serial Strangler From Microsoft, Alex Balabhadra Graveley, in the UK High Court This Week
Out of respect to the process and to the Court, I shall not share any pertinent details about the case
Links 16/07/2025: China’s Economy Grows Steadily, France Takes Action Regarding Harm to Children by GAFAM and Fentanylware (TikTok)
Links for the day
It is Not About Politics
Beware the people who try to make this about politics
Good Journalism Saves Lives
a shocking number of women die or get seriously hurt every day due to violence from a partner
Recognition of Women's Contributions to Free Software
Being passive is not an option when bad things are happening
Slopfarms Are Going to Perish Because Public Opinion is Changing
Many slopfarms will simply go offline
19 Years of Standing Up for Justice, Equality, and Truth
This week we shall take it up a notch
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Tuesday, July 15, 2025
IRC logs for Tuesday, July 15, 2025
Links 15/07/2025: LLM Pollution and Pushback in Ukraine
Links for the day
Gemini Links 15/07/2025: xkcd, New Cert, and Alhena Gemlog
Links for the day
Links 15/07/2025: Press Freedom at Risk and New Facebook Blunders
Links for the day
Gemini Links 15/07/2025: Smolweb and Alhena 5.1.7
Links for the day
The Danes Want GNU/Linux
David Heinemeier Hansson recently moved to GNU/Linux
Cory Doctorow Explains Why Software Freedom Matters, Whereas "Open Source" Misses the Point and Helps Monopolies
It's a very long article
BillPR (EpsteinGate-Bribed NPR) is Turning Into a Partial Slopfarm that Promotes Slop
"I went on a date with a chatbot!"
Two Weeks Passed Since Latest Large Wave of Microsoft Layoffs, More Expected Next Month
Blaming the debt on "AI" is just self-serving storytelling
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Monday, July 14, 2025
IRC logs for Monday, July 14, 2025
Gemini Links 15/07/2025: Gemini "Style Sheets" and Switching From Microsoft GitHub to Codeberg
Links for the day
Coming Soon: Another OSI Scandal, This One Implicating Molly de Blanc
OSI has been fairly quiet lately
Outreachy & Debian pregnancy cluster, Meike Reichle evidence
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
Again, "Lunduke is Actually Sending His Audience to Attack People"
Microsoft Lunduke is not trying to "protect" Linux
XBox is Rapidly Turned Into a Slopfarm by Microsoft
Slop isn't about efficiency and saving money
One of the Most Hilarious Things About the Microsoft SLAPPs
It's so ridiculous
Financial Support for the Free Software Foundation or the GNU Project
The FSF has extended until Friday its fund-raising campaign
Illegally Hiding (or Demanding Secrecy Around) Illegal Requests or Attempts at Extortion
unlawful communications like threats
Microsoft's Halloween Documents and systemd, Wayland, Etc.
Maybe one day Wayland will be widespread. Or maybe not.
Gemini Links 14/07/2025: BOFH Archive, Updating Old Palm PDAS, and Nginx vs Slop Bots
Links for the day
Ubuntu is Becoming GAFAM-Like
What does that say about Canonical and Ubuntu?
Slopfarms Which Take Real Articles About GNU/Linux and Turn Them Into Copycats Which Are False
Even before the LLM hype those were quite common
The Firm That Picks on Techrights is Accustomed to Working With Criminals
Techrights never did anything illegal. So why is it being picked on by people who work with criminals?
Microsoft Said the Mass Layoffs Were for "Investment" in "AI", But It's Also Laying Off the "AI" and "Copilot" Staff
Months ago we showed many so-called "AI" people were getting the boot and this time it's the same
DryDeadFish is Dead, Long Live DryDeadFish
We kept checking, hoping it can recover from some temporary technical issue
For Quite Some Time Already Microsoft Attracts Crackpots, Scams, and More
Occasionally we talk about the situation at IBM as there are many parallels
Links 14/07/2025: Chatbots Broken Again, McHire LLM Shows Limits of the Hype
Links for the day
Changing One's Name Won't Change One's Past
People who have earned a bad reputation are not magically "entitled" to reset
People Who Assault Women Are Not Victims of "Distress"
It seems like an American tradition. In a country with almost 50 presidents, not even one was a female.
Slashdot Media Turned Linux Journal Into a Slopfarm and Now Slashdot Actively Promotes Anti-Linux Slopfarms
Yes, "no-nonsense" apparently means actual nonsense
Adoption of Gemini Protocol Still Growing
Gemini Protocol is being obscured by the media - it doesn't help that Google 'hijacked' the word "Gemini" - but people still manage to find out about it, download a client, and use it
Links 14/07/2025: Arresting Photographers, Threats to Revoke US Citizenship Over Criticism
Links for the day
More EPO Leaks on the Way
We hope that Mr. Rowan will actually try to refute what we say and show, not merely point the finger at the messengers
Decommodification is a Corporate Strategy Against Communities
systemd is led by Microsoft and hosted by Microsoft
copyleft.org 'Hijacked' by the People Who Attack the Person Who Created Copyleft
So far there's nothing "tasteless" in copyleft.org, but that can change at any time in the future
Asking People to Take Down Articles and Videos Only Makes These More Popular and "Viral"
If you do something bad, one of the worst things you can possibly do it try to silence those who speak about it
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Sunday, July 13, 2025
IRC logs for Sunday, July 13, 2025
Two-Thirds Towards FSF Goal, Richard Stallman to Give Talks in Europe
There are 67 left before reaching the target
Brett Wilson LLP "Takes it Personal" (Character Assassination, Not Professionalism). Everybody Can See That.
On behalf of violent men
Gemini Links 14/07/2025: Politicised Tech and "Leaving GitHub"
Links for the day