Bonum Certa Men Certa

False Hope for Patent Maximalists and Litigation Zealots

Hope street



Summary: Patent litigation predators in the United States, along with Team UPC in Europe, are trying to manufacture optimistic predictions; a quick and rather shallow critical analysis reveals their lies and distortions

35 U.S.C. €§ 101 remains strong in the United States. Courts follow it. There are new examples. Some were publicised earlier this week; we posted two batches of daily links yesterday (double the usual) and we no longer deal with the matter as meticulously as last year because EPO affairs are more urgent than the USPTO's.



"Long story short, even if we ignore racketeering and extortion 'behind the scenes' (that's the majority of troll activity) and only focus on what becomes public (actual lawsuits), trolls still dominate."In the previous post we quickly noted that António Campinos continues granting European software patents because like the man who gave him the job he does not care about patent quality, only quantity. Maybe he strives to be like China, where patent filings exceed a million per year.

More low-quality patents would certainly mean more frivolous and baseless litigation. Patent trolls can exploit such patents to receive "protection money" without ever going to court or filing a lawsuit. They just make threats. On some occasions they do in fact proceed from threats to actions. Statistics published earlier this week (by RPX) show that the majority of new patent lawsuits get filed by trolls. It's always the case. They are the majority of lawsuits; they make nothing at all; all they do is blackmail companies/people and sometimes sue. Lex Machina also has some new data. As Michael Risch put it yesterday: "I did want to drop a brief note that the Stanford NPE [trolls] Litigation Database appears to be live now and fully populated with 11 years of data from 2007-2017. They've been working on this database for a long while. It provides limited but important data: Case name and number, district, filing date, patent numbers, plaintiff, defendants, and plaintiff type. The database also includes a link to Lex Machina's data if you have access."

Long story short, even if we ignore racketeering and extortion 'behind the scenes' (that's the majority of troll activity) and only focus on what becomes public (actual lawsuits), trolls still dominate. They do nothing for innovation and a lot against it. Sometimes they're stopped without them even filing a lawsuit, owing to Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) inter partes reviews (IPRs).

"They've stooped rather low to generate pretense of "good news" or "hope"."The upside is, software patent are nowhere near making a comeback and litigation numbers continue to fall, owing largely to 35 U.S.C. €§ 101 . Anticipat has just published some new spin, echoed by the likes of Janal Kalis; Anticipat's folks are lying by omission, as usual, or intentionally spinning the numbers. They don't count IPRs but instead focus on mere patent applications i.e. not actual US patents. They've stooped rather low to generate pretense of "good news" or "hope".

Likewise, here in Europe, the chronic liars from Bristows (this time Edward Nodder) want us to think the dead UPC is suddenly resurrected because "change is [made] the training required to qualify as a patent attorney" in one small country with not so many European Patents (low on a per capita basis, too). The blog has been silent for so long, so here's what they said yesterday (and will probably pay other sites to syndicate):

The Austrian parliament has reported here that it adopted amendments to the Patent Attorney Act on 9 May 2019. One change is to the training required to qualify as a patent attorney. Currently there is no requirement to have studied law at university, the legal knowledge being acquired through practical training. Under the new requirements, law (including Austrian and European) must have been studied at a university (the course content to be governed by a decree), and the duration of practical training will be shorter.


And that's it; from the above Bristows came up with "Austria’s change to patent attorney training will enable representation in UPC" (their headline). This has nothing to do with UPC, but when Team UPC is ever so desperate they might even mistake EPC for UPC. Or focus on Austria, which does not even register on the EPO's chart (warning: epo.org link) based on number of patents. Germany got 20,804 patents last year, compared to 535 in Austria (that's 0.4% of the total at 127,625).

Recent Techrights' Posts

Pushers of systemd Rewrite History (Richard Stallman Said UNIX "Was Portable and Seemed Fairly Clean")
Unlike systemd
Trajectory of The Register: From News Site/s Into "B2B"... and Into Microsoft Salespeople
Something isn't right at The Register
Doing My Share to Tackle Online Slop and SPAM
Trying my best to 'fix' the Web
 
Links 27/07/2025: FSF Hackathon and "Hulk Hogan Was a Very Bad Man"
Links for the day
Gemini Links 27/07/2025: DAW Mixer Chains and Simple Software
Links for the day
The Register MS is Inventing or Giving Air Time to New Conspiracy Theories so as to Distort the Narrative As High-Profile Agencies Fall Prey to Microsoft Holes
But the problem is holes, i.e. Microsoft making bad products; the problem is Microsoft
When You Tell You It's Free, Does That Mean No Charges (If So, Who's Paying and Why)?
there's "no free lunch"
Most Editors at The Register Are American, Including the Editor in Chief, a Decade-Long Microsoft Stenographer (Writing Prose to Sell Microsoft)
It's not easy to tell where the site is based (we tried) because it's hiding behind ClownFlare and CrimeFlare hasn't been well lately
"New Techrights" Soon Turns 2 (A Few Days Before the FSF Turns 40)
We have a lot more to say about LLM bots
When Silence Says So Much
Garrett, a 'secure' boot pusher, will need to defend himself in the UK High Court
The Register in Trouble
There is not much that can be done at this point
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Saturday, July 26, 2025
IRC logs for Saturday, July 26, 2025
Misinformation in Social Control Media
Social control media passes around all sorts of tropes
Slopwatch: Fake Linux 'Articles' and Slopfarms With "Linux" in Their Names/Domains
throwing bots at "Linux" to make some fake articles
Links 26/07/2025: Amazon Shutdown in China, Russian Economy Slows
Links for the day
Gemini Links 26/07/2025: History of Time (1988) and Gemini Games
Links for the day
Links 26/07/2025: 50 Percent Tariffs in Amazon, Dying Intel Offloads Network and Edge Group (NEX)
Links for the day
Blaming Programming Languages for Users' and Developers' Bad Practices
That's like blaming cars for drivers who crash into things
Slopwatch: Fakes, FUD, Duplicates, and Charlatans Galore
The Web as we once know it is collapsing. Some opportunists try to replace it with low-quality slop.
The Register UK Seems to Have Become American and Management is Changing (Microsofter as Editor in Chief)
The Register 'UK' is now controlled by the Directions on Microsoft guy
Many People Still Read Techrights Because It Says the Truth, Produces Evidence, and Does Not Self-Censor
Unlike so many other sites
The Register is Desperate for Money, According to The Register
I decided to check how they're doing as a business
Microsoft Finally Finds a Use Case for Slop?
Create low-quality chaff to shift the media's attention?
Microsoft Windows Lost 400 Million Users in a Few Years, Why Does The Register Double Down on Windows With New US Editor?
days ago they hired a new US editor
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Friday, July 25, 2025
IRC logs for Friday, July 25, 2025
For Libel Reform One Must First Bring (or Raise) Awareness to the Issues and Their Magnitude
I myself know, from personal experience
Links 26/07/2025: Rationed Meals in the US and TikTok Repels Investments (Too Toxic)
Links for the day
Gemini Links 26/07/2025: "Bloody Google" and New People in Geminispace
Links for the day
Response to Solderpunk (Father of Gemini Protocol) About the Gemini Community
Solderpunk responds to non-sequitur
HTML and the Web Used to be Something a Child Could Learn, "Modern" Web is a Puzzle of Frameworks, Bloat, and Worse
When the Web was more like Gemini Protocol
New US Editor in The Register is 84% Microsoft/Windows Booster
It'll be worrying if it carries on like this
Links 25/07/2025: Slop Blunders and China Has Code of Conduct for Lawmakers in HK
Links for the day
Gemini Links 25/07/2025: Some Books and Babies and Capital
Links for the day
Links 25/07/2025: NOAA Cuts Endanger Lives, "Europe's Self Inflicted Cloud Crisis"
Links for the day
They Try to Lecture Us on Ethics
They even removed "master" from Microsoft GitHub
The Future of the Web is One Rendering Engine or 'Flavours' of Chrome
The future of the Web does not look bright at all
Best Sites Are Not Optimised for Any Browser, They Work Equally Well With All of Them
Red Hat (IBM) is making rubbish sites
YouTube is a Spamfarm, Slopfarm, and Clickfarm (a Lot of Numbers There Are Fake)
Those who don't fake look unpopular and unimportant
We Don't Do JavaScript and Pages Are Small
Thankfully Gemini Protocol has nothing like JavaScript
'Tech' is Not Technology
Some people use terms like 'Old Tech'
IBM's Debt Rose by Almost 10 Billion Dollars in the Past 6 Months Alone
The "hey hi" circus is coming to an end
Yes, Master
Gaslighting by actual racists
Microsoft Bribes and Buys Politicians to Tell Europe What to Do About Free Software (Which It's Attacking)
Microsoft: we speak for the thing that we are attacking! Follow the money...
Making Backups Quickly and Reliably
Backups are imperative, more so in an age of uncertainty, unpredictable weather, and worsening standards (quality of products going down while prices go up)
Techrights Investigation: Estimating the Point in Time LinuxIac Turned Into LLM Slop (Part of the Time)
Bobby Borisov got lazy
10th Month, Ten Weeks From Now, at Ten AM
In Wentworth Institute of Technology in Boston
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Thursday, July 24, 2025
IRC logs for Thursday, July 24, 2025
A Nadella Memo Distracts From Microsoft's Cheapening Of the Workforce
Right now the "MSM" (mainstream media) is flooded/overwhelmed by garbage pieces that relay lies for Nadella
Vanishing Faces of GNU/Linux
Free software projects do not depend on any one person or company to still exist
Microsoft Says It Lost 400 Million Windows Users, Now It's Waiting for GNU/Linux to Stop Booting on 'Old' PCs
When it comes to Windows, Microsoft is fully aware of the issue and statements it made earlier this summer suggest it lost 400 million Windows users
Slopwatch: LinuxTechLab, linuxsecurity.com, LinuxIac, and More
Also: The Register's Microsoft agenda (new editor)
Gemini Links 25/07/2025: Gemtext Aware Titan Editor and Gemini Protocol Comeback
Links for the day