12.03.18
Posted in Europe, Patents at 7:57 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
How long can the marketing campaign (marketing Mr. Campinos) hold?
Summary: The EPO’s race to the bottom of patent quality continues, it’s now complemented by direct association with patent trolls and law stands in their way (for they repeatedly violate the law)
JUST like today’s USPTO, the European Patent Office (EPO) promotes software patents in Europe using hype waves. It nowadays invites the most notorious patent trolls from the US to be keynote speakers at events which ‘dress up’ software patents in Europe as “blockchains”. As the EPO put it earlier today: “The EPO’s Patenting #Blockchain conference will happen tomorrow. If you won’t be able to attend, we will be live-tweeting the highlights of the event. Stay tuned!”
“It nowadays invites the most notorious patent trolls from the US to be keynote speakers at events which ‘dress up’ software patents in Europe as “blockchains”.”Then there’s the bizarre concept of “AIpatents” or “AI” patents that are just software patents i.e. fake patent grants. The EPO is now granting fake patents that court would no doubt reject, throw away. “Panellists at the EPO’s Patenting #ArtificialIntelligence conference identified three types of AI patenting,” the EPO wrote this morning. Welcome to the EPO under António Campinos; it doesn’t care about quality of patents and it doesn’t care about staff, either. Poland turns 100 and on Friday the EPO leveraged some bizarre slant to make it all about patents and Campinos. We mentioned this over the weekend and the EPO amplified this nonsense earlier today.
“Then there’s the bizarre concept of “AIpatents” or “AI” patents that are just software patents i.e. fake patent grants.”This morning the EPO retweeted, yet again, this lie from Managing IP (Managing Intellectual [sic] Property [sic]): “António Campinos has so far succeeded in improving relations in the upper echelons of the @EPOorg since taking over as president in July.”
“This tweet is a lie,” I told them (again). “It is a falsehood. He has NOT “succeeded in improving relations”. Ask actual EPO workers and unions (if they’re allowed to speak). They call him “mini Battistelli”.”
Speaking of Managing IP, a longtime pusher of the UPC, in light of this huge blow to Team UPC (Sam Gyimah resigning) they said that “Gyimah is the 10th person to resign over the UK government’s EU Withdrawal Agreement, including previous IP minister Jo Johnson” (his predecessor). Huge blow for the UPC as three consecutive ministers who promoted it have all resigned (or moved) in just 2 years.
“Their bubble long ago burst and they hope that UPC will reverse this trend by creating a new bubble.”Alas, as usual, one can rely on Team UPC to craft some spin and fantasy; earlier this week Ramona Livera (“an advocate at Elias Neocleous & Co. Llc”) wrote in the Cyprus Mail that the “unified patent court provides security” (financial security for people like Ramona, pursuing more litigation). Why don’t they hire actual journalists? This paper has just published self-promotion lies for Team UPC, whose agenda is a direct assault on science and technology in Europe (for the sake of the legal billing ‘industry’).
“Budget pressures pushing patent processes in house,” says a recent headline of Managing IP. This should be read as mass layoffs or loss of ‘business’ for patent law firms. Their bubble long ago burst and they hope that UPC will reverse this trend by creating a new bubble. By bubble we mean frivolous litigation.
No propaganda day would be complete without IAM’s contribution. Days ago it said: “Nokia now working its way through the Chinese mobile market. Another royalty bearing licence means more patent-related revenue dropping straight onto the company’s bottom line.”
“No propaganda day would be complete without IAM’s contribution.”Microsoft turned Nokia into a troll and this latest deal, announced widely at the time (e.g. [1, 2, 3]) was also mentioned earlier today by a patent propaganda site, Managing IP. How many of the underlying patents have actually been tested in court? █
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Posted in IBM, Patents, Red Hat at 7:00 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Photo source (modified slightly): The 10 Most Powerful Women in Technology Today
Summary: IBM’s special role in lobbying for software patents (and against PTAB) needs to be highlighted; even Ethereum’s co-founder isn’t happy about IBM’s meddling in the blockchain space (with help from Hyperledger/Linux Foundation)
IBM keeps pursuing all sorts of bogus software patents on “blockchains” (a hype wave nowadays surfed by the EPO and USPTO). As can be expected, given our lack of loyalty to any company (we have no sponsors), we very often write about IBM as a patent menace, undermining programming with software patents advocacy and stockpiling of such bogus patents. Last week we stumbled upon this new article titled “Ethereum Co-founder Sounds Off On IBM Blockchain” and it said this, citing Quartz:
Ethereum’s co-founder doesn’t seem impressed with the IBM blockchain.
The company has been among the firms investing both money and mind power into blockchain, evidenced by a string of announcements over the last several months — in a drive to file scores of blockchain-related patents. In fact, IBM is tied with Mastercard for the second-highest tally of blockchain patents in 2017. The company said its blockchain platform has more than 400 clients, using Hyperledger Composer and Hyperledger Fabric. Among recent announcements, the company had a patent accepted to use blockchain for database management.
However, Co-founder Vitalik Buterin, who spoke with Quartz on the sidelines of Devcon4, isn’t thrilled with IBM’s moves.
“I don’t understand this deeply, but the detail that jumped out at me is they’re saying, ‘Hey, we own all the IP and this is basically our platform, and you’re getting on it.’ And like, that’s … totally not the point.”
IBM’s acqusition of Red Hat worries us somewhat because of Red Hat’s software patents. What will be the fate of these patents in IBM’s hands?
We never forgot how IBM leveraged the Intellectual Property Owners Association (IPO) for software patents lobbying in the US. They created a dedicated “taskforce” for this [1, 2].
Another stacked panel of IPO was advertised over the weekend; it is a propaganda mill and front for IBM among other software patents proponents who loathe PTAB as it invalidates software patents by merely applying 35 U.S.C. § 101 or the law (based upon SCOTUS). Notice who’s in this “webinar”; just three law firms: “Gasper LaRosa of Jones Day, Brian Murphy of Haug Partners LLP, and Dorothy Whelan, Fish & Richardson” (they speak about PTAB, which invalidates a lot of software patents).
“The registration fee for the webinar is $135,” it says. Wasting money to be lied to or get indoctrinated? █
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Posted in Courtroom, Law, Patents at 6:21 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Summary: In the face of patent maximalists’ endless efforts to derail patent quality the tribunal keeps calm and carries on smashing bad patents
SUPPORTED by SCOTUS and the Federal Circuit, inter partes reviews (IPRs) at the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) have long (years) applied 35 U.S.C. § 101 to invalidate software patents erroneously granted by the Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO). PTAB combined with Alice has been a very possible emergence and development for software developers (programmers/coders), as opposed to patent trolls.
“Attempts to undermine IPRs so as to save fake patents have not been successful.”As the week begins we already see Janal Kalis mining USPTO documents, hoping to find some positive news. All he found was this exceptional case wherein “The PTAB Reversed an examiner’s 101 Rejection of Claims for inventory management in a patent application owned by Baker Hughes: https://e-foia.uspto.gov/Foia/RetrievePdf?system=BPAI&flNm=fd2017006294-11-13-2018-1 …”
We can assume that in all other new cases PTAB affirmed the examiners’ rejections or ‘overturned’ (reversed) an acceptance.
Understandably, those who are accustomed to making a living from lawsuits aren’t happy. PTAB thwarts frivolous lawsuits.
Consider this new tweet which says: “Do [Section] “101 panels” exist? Director of TC 3600 Business Methods – Tariq Hafiz – provides priceless insights for effectively dealing with the @USPTO…”
So I told him that the term “101 panels” is as meaningless a concept as “don’t spit chewing gum on the pavement” department. Section 101 is the law and patents on “Business Methods” are bunk, no matter what the USPTO says. It’s down to the courts, eventually. They have the final say, provided one can afford the long and arduous process.
Authored by Robert Jain last week was this PTAB headsup regarding Unified Patents and RPX (there’s commonality in how they file IPRs — a subject we covered several times before). Attempts to undermine IPRs so as to save fake patents have not been successful. As Jain explained:
On October 19 the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) instituted trial on all challenged claims in Unified Patents Inc. v. Realtime Adaptive Streaming, LLC, IPR2018-00883, rejecting Realtime’s argument that Unified’s members were unnamed real-parties in interest. In its first Unified decision discussing Applications in Internet Time, LLC v. RPX (AIT), the Board rejected arguments that Unified’s Content Zone members were unnamed RPIs, finding that would overextend the AIT analysis and the common law…
Unified Patents is again offering money to help invalidate the patent of the patent troll Telebrands. To quote:
On November 29, 2018, Unified added a $1,000 contest to PATROLL seeking prior art for US Patent No. 9546775 which has been asserted on multiple occasions by Telebrands Corp. (an NPE). The ’775 patent, generally related to a decorative laser light system, has been asserted in 7 district court cases.
Any patent troll that can be squashed by PTAB won’t be missed (disarming them is enough as all they have is patents and without patents they cannot sue). A few weeks ago, based on this other post, Unified Patents turned to the USPTO for “registered [...] service mark Unified Patents® under Registration No. 5,605,486, recognizing that Unified Patents® has earned industry goodwill and developed a reputation distinguishable and protectable in the marketplace.”
We have long been supportive of Unified Patents, having recognised that the majority of what they do has a positive effect on the ‘innovation terrain’; they remove a lot of patent trolls from the ‘zone’. █
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