System76 has been making good strides on their Coreboot support for their hardware and they are now readying a System76 Darter Pro OSFC Edition as their apparent first laptop to ship with Coreboot in place of the proprietary BIOS.
Ahead of this year's Open-Source Firmware Conference (OSFC) being held from 3 to 6 September at the Google and Facebook offices in Mountain View, System76 announced the Darter Pro OSFC Edition that ships with Coreboot. Those pre-ordering the device are able to pick up their new laptops during the event, so it appears at least for this initial run of enabled devices they are just weeks out from becoming a reality.
Days are long gone when finding a Laptop with suitable hardware to install and use Linux and its distributions on it was a tough task. In its early days Linux was the Operating System of programmers and the open-source community but in recent years normal users also started switching from Windows and Mac to Linux thanks to its powerful and highly customizable nature. Considering customers’ increasing demand for Linux supported Laptops, many Laptop manufacturers jumped on the bandwagon and started offering Laptops with Linux pre-installed on them. These Laptops also come with hardware specially customized to match Linux and its various distributions requirement.
So in this article I will give you an in-depth guidance to buy Laptop for Linux and cover all the things one should consider before buying the Laptop for Linux. Later in the article we’ll have a look at few Linux supported Laptops which you should consider while buying.
mentioned last week that rc3 was unusually small.
Well, we fixed that. The small size of rc3 was clearly just because of pull request timing patterns, and rc4 is back up to normal size and then some.
Part of it is networking - rc3 didn't have any net updates, and rc4 does. But it's not just that, I think we just happened to have several things that shifted to this past week instead of having made it into rc3.
It is worth nothing that while this rc is the largest rc4 (at least in number of commits) that we've had in a couple of years, it's not really outrageously so - it really is just larger than usual by about the same amount that rc3 was smaller than usual.
The Linux 5.4 kernel will deprecate and mark as obsolete the Wireless USB (WUSB) and Ultra-wideband (UWB) subsystems within the kernel.
Queued as part of the USB changes growing for Linux 5.4 are obsoleting the WUSB and UWB subsystems, which were already "orphaned" as they went without any maintainer of the code in the Linux kernel for a while already.
SWAPGS was publicized earlier this week and since the launch-day mitigations for Linux 5.3 Git, the SWAPGS speculative protection has been making its way back to the various supported Linux kernel stable trees. This additional SWAPGS mitigation protection does take another minor performance hit for Intel CPUs going back to Ivybridge.
Fscrypt is the common Linux kernel framework leveraged by the likes of the EXT4, F2FS, and UBIFS file-systems for providing native encryption support. While that Fscrypt-based file encryption has been part of the kernel for several releases now, there's been some shortcomings in how the encryption keys are handled but that should be cleared up for the upcoming Linux 5.4 cycle.
Eric Biggers of Google has been working to improve the key management for fscrypt. The solution he's been working on for a while is support for a file-system level key-ring with ioctls that allows keys to be easily added and removed.
Vulkan 1.1.118 is the latest version of this high performance graphics API specification. As is usually the case, there are a number of document corrections/clarifications trickling in to this ever evolving spec. But besides those maintenance items, there are two new extensions, both of which happen to be AMD vendor extensions.
A lazy Sunday project. Opens an XDG toplevel and prints interesting events. Does other useful things like maintaining an XKB state and printing key events in the form of keysyms and UTF-8 strings, dumping keymaps to a file, and filtering out events you aren't interested in. For sway at least, I imagine that this will solve questions like "what key name do I put in my config file to bind to ?"
I hope someone finds it useful!
WEV is a new Wayland utility developed by Drew DeVault of Wayland notoriety for his work on the Sway i3-inspired compositor and the WLROOTS library.
One of the ways to generate fractals is using the Iterated Function System (IFS).
In mathematical terms the system is a finite set of contraction maps w_i for i=1, 2, …, N, each with a contractivity factor s<1, which map a compact metric space onto itself. It’s the basis for fractal image compression techniques.
IFS fractals, as they are known, can be of any number of dimensions, but are often calculated and drawn in 2D. The fractal is made up of the union of several copies of itself, each copy being transformed by a function (hence “function system”). The canonical example is the Sierpià âski triangle. Substitution tilings are great source of fractal shapes, due to their recursive nature. This method can generate regular-looking fractals as well as non-geometric fractals.
OpenComic is an open-source comic and manga reader that works on Windows, mac OS, and Linux.
The computer behemoth settled the alleged Foreign Corrupt Practices Act violations by four Microsoft subsidiaries in separate agreements with the SEC and the U.S. Department of Justice.
Microsoft, as part of its settlement with the SEC, neither admitted nor denied the misconduct described by the agency.
Linux is fun and more fun when there are car racing games available for Linux based operating systems. In this post, we thought to collect the list of best Linux racing games for you.
Today, after 4 years and 5 months of work, we are pleased to announce the release of the Xfce desktop 4.14, a new stable version that supersedes Xfce 4.12.
In this 4.14 cycle the main goal was to port all core components to Gtk3 (over Gtk2) and GDBus (over D-Bus GLib). Most components also received GObject Introspection support. Along the way we ended up polishing our user experience, introducing quite a few new features and improvements (read below) and fixings a boatload of bugs (read changelog).
GTK3 applications making use of client-side decorations and header-bars using the Breeze GTK theme now respect the active KDE color scheme. This improvement should yield GTK3 applications that look much better running on the KDE desktop and are themed similarly to the Qt/KDE programs. Though under X11, the GTK3 CSD applications do not have shadows support but that does behave correctly on Wayland.
Also striking it big this week was ZWP_Linux_DMABUF_V1 support being added to KWin for its Wayland compositor code. By using this extension with supported drivers should yield lower memory use and better performance running on Wayland.
Out this Sunday is the KDE Frameworks 5.61 update that most notable addresses the recently exposed vulnerability to KDE where specially crafted .desktop and .directory files could automatically execute arbitrary code on users' systems.
In addition to that serious security fix, which should also be patched for Linux distributions not immediately switching to the new KF5, KDE Frameworks 5.61 as the newest monthly update also has...
Q4OS is a curious project which has done a few things that set it apart from most other Linux distributions. The first thing which stands out about Q4OS is it runs the Trinity desktop. Trinity is the continuation of KDE 3, a flexible desktop environment that was replaced by KDE Plasma on most Linux distributions. Q4OS is one of just two projects in the DistroWatch database still using Trinity as a first tier desktop.
The other feature which immediately stands out is Q4OS is designed to look like classic versions of Microsoft Windows. The Trinity desktop has been themed to have a distinctly Windows XP appearance, complete with desktop icons and a two-pane application menu.
Q4OS 3.8 is based on Debian 10 and is available in 32-bit (x86) and 64-bit (x86_64) builds. The project ships two editions. The first edition now uses KDE Plasma by default, but still ships with Trinity as a secondary desktop on the install media. The second edition ships with Trinity only. The KDE Plasma media is 869MB in size while the pure Trinity edition is a 638MB download. I decided to download the combined Plasma and Trinity edition.
The disc boots to a graphical environment. A pop-up appears and asks us to select our language from a drop-down list. When wireless networks are detected we are also given the chance to connect over wi-fi. The Plasma desktop (version 5.14.5) then loads. The desktop features a single icon for launching the distribution's installer. A panel at the bottom of the display holds the application menu, task switcher and system tray. A welcome window then appears and offers us six buttons that launch configuration modules or tools to help us install packages. I will come back to the welcome window later as it is not particularly useful when running from the live media.
It has been a long time coming, but Liquid Lemur Linux 4.0 has been released! I’ll get the forums back online in the next day or two…
Lemur 4 still comes in the pre-morphed state. I planned to release it in the default Window Maker layout. However, after updating to Debian 10 (Buster) a lot of the Window Maker apps refused to work. So until I can find the issue, Lemur will remain pre-morphed.
The ARM64 project is pleased to announce that all ARM64 profiles are now stable.
While our developers and users have contributed significantly in this accomplishment, we must also thank our Packet sponsor for their contribution. Providing the Gentoo developer community with access to bare metal hardware has accelerated progress in acheiving the stabilization of the ARM64 profiles.
Here’s your report of what has happened in Fedora Program Management this week.
I have weekly office hours in #fedora-meeting-1. Drop by if you have any questions or comments about the schedule, Changes, elections, or anything else.
I am currently distributing GNU/Linux in Indonesia. As you know, distributing libre software that is licensed under GNU GPL and such other licenses, requires you to distribute the source code too. A question pops up: where to get source code of a GNU/Linux system along with whole source code repository it possesses? For example, where to get Ubuntu's source code DVD and its source code repository? To answer that question, I decided to make a series of notes regarding my search in source code of popular GNU/Linux distros. Criteria I made are (1) whether a distro provides source CD or not, (2) where the official source code packages repo located, (3) where the raw source codes located, and finally (4) how to get them for end users. I also tried to find (5) mirrors of the source code repo. I am starting here with Ubuntu, of course, and next time I will look at Debian, Fedora, openSUSE, and Trisquel. I hope this article and the next ones will help anybody to understand how important the source code is and ease them to distribute free as in freedom software. Enjoy!
MINIX NEO S1 & S2 USB-C hubs are specifically designed for Apple Macbook, Macbook Air, and Macbook Pro, but since they follow USB-C specifications they should work with compatible devices. You must note your experience may vary, as we’ve seen MINIX NEO S2 “works” with Khadas Edge running Ubuntu 18.04 + XFCE, but stability, at least with regards to driving an extra display may be an issue. An external power supply is almost certainly needed unless you only use the product as a USB-C SSD.
MINIX NEO S1 & S2 can be purchased on various shops including GearBest, GeekBuying, and Amazon starting at respectively $79.99 and $97.99.
From its early days, the availability of source code was one of the defining characteristics of open source software. Indeed, Brian Behlendorf of the Apache web server project, an early open source software success, favored "source code available software."
Another important aspect related to user rights. Hence, the "free software" terminology that came out of Richard Stallman’s GNU Manifesto and GNU Public License (GPL). As the shorthand went, free was about freedom, not price. Christine Peterson would later coin "open source" as an alternative that avoided the confusion that regularly arose between these two meanings of free. And that’s the term that’s most widely used today.
This year, I helped organize West Coast Hackfest with my stalwart partner and friend Teresa Hill in Portland – with assistance from Kristi Proggi. Big thanks to them for helping to make this a success!
Primarily the engagement hackfest was focused on the website content. The website is showing its age and needs both a content update and a facelift. Given our general focus on engagement, we want to re-envision the website to drive that engagement as a medium for volunteer capture, identity, and fundraising.
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I would like to thank the GNOME Foundation for providing the resources and infrastructure to have us all here.
The Document Foundation has made some tweaks to improve file loading and save times in its word processor and spreadsheet programs in the latest version of LibreOffice, 6.3.
The open-source office suite for Windows, macOS and Linux – which consists of a word processor, spreadsheet, presentation graphics, diagramming tool and database manager – began in 2011 as a fork of Oracle's OpenOffice (now Apache OpenOffice). The origins of the project go right back to the '80s, when it was a commercial office suite called Star Office.
The foundation now comes up with a major new release around every six months. The previous version, 6.2, was released in February 2019.
This release fixes the security issue whereby documents could auto-run arbitrary system commands automatically on opening, thanks to a component called LibreLogo and its interaction with Python. LibreLogo, intended for teaching programming, is still included by default on Windows, even though most users have no use for it.
I plan to update all kind of visual aspects in LibreOffice (6.4), if you are interested in feedback, help, support, you are welcome.
Download the Fontwork.odp file where all 40 existing fontwork’s are shown. Play around with them and submit the updated file. Nothing is easier to contribute back and have fun with LibreOffice.
Unifont 12.1.03 is now available. Significant changes in this version include the replacement of the Jiskan glyphs in the Japanese version, unifont_jp, with Izumi public domain glyphs. Also, modifications to Limbu, Buginese, Tai Tham, Adlam, and Mayan Numerals, plus a redrawn Indian Rupee Sign.
Emilie Schario, Data Engineer and Analytics at GitLab talks about diversity at GitLab. Schario said that she never met a female data engineer before, but was amazed to see so many females leading tech divisions at GitLab.
Just tried tog(1), the "interactive read-only browser for Git repositories" included with Game of Trees. May I just say swoon?
tog has log, diff, blame, and tree views. You can start in any of the views by calling tog with appropriate sub-command, or start from default log mode and switch to tree by hitting t, blame (enter), or diff (enter on a line with a hash).
When you want to make a website, you need HTML, JavaScript and CSS. To create a website using Python, you need a few other things. These things are ways to create HTML, CSS and maybe even JavaScript. You could create routines to write each web-page as users interact with the site and other events occur. This is exactly what the authors of web frameworks have done, making it easy to create pages and entire sites. Calling it easy is an exaggeration but at least it will help to make the process faster.
Python map() function applies another function on a given iterable (List/String/Dictionary, etc.) and returns map object. In simple words, it traverses the list, calls the function for each element, and returns the results.
Python map object is also iterable holding the list of each iteration. We can also convert it to List or Dictionary or other types using their constructor functions.
Voilà, during the last week, I received very good news, I will be a speaker at PyCon.DE 2019 in Berlin in October 2019.
I will present my new talk What’s new in Python 3.8?
"The lack of security means we can broadcast with our own equipment anything we want, and any smart TV will accept it," Cabrera says. "The transmission hasn’t been at all authenticated. So this fake transmission, this channel injection, will be a successful attack."
Something else I spotted: in 2004 I was working on KPilot as a hobby project (alongside my PhD and whatever else was paying the bills then), so there’s lots of links to the old site.
Problem is, I let the domain registration expire long ago when Palm, Inc., the Palm Pilot, and KDE 4 ceased to be a going concern. So, that domain has been hijacked, or squatted, or whatever, with techno bla-bla-bla and recognizable scraps of text from the ancient website. Presumably downloading anything from there that pretends to be KPilot will saddle you with plenty of malware.
NordVPN introduced NordLynx technology, built around the WireGuard protocol. The technology combines WireGuard’s high-speed connection and NordVPN’s custom double Network Address Translation (NAT) system. WireGuard’s ability to secure users' privacy often comes up as a point for discussion, as it does not dynamically assign IP addresses to everyone connected to a server. Therefore, it’s required to store at least some user data on the server, compromising their privacy.
The US Navy will replace the touchscreen throttle and helm controls currently installed in its destroyers with mechanical ones starting in 2020, says USNI News. The move comes after the National Transportation Safety Board released an accident report from a 2017 collision, which cites the design of the ship’s controls as a factor in the accident.
Yet we should remember this: No matter how deft the diplomacy that papers over a pullout, wars are either won or lost. For years, the Taliban and its al-Qaeda allies have vowed to outlast us and drive us out. Now, we’re getting ready to leave and they are getting ready to rule. What would you call that?
Bouworde has been working in the Taroudant region of Morocco for more than 15 years, sending groups of young volunteers from Belgium to work on infrastructure projects like water canals, schools, and a women’s center in the area.
However, following significant media attention in Morocco this week, the organization has chosen to cancel its upcoming volunteering projects.
The guide, published in June, says: “British Sikh and Hindu groups have consistently objected to the use of the word ‘Asian’ to describe those convicted in sexual grooming gang cases like in Rochdale, Rotherham, Oxford and Telford.”
An NSO spokesperson told Press Gazette that the charity wanted the “misleading practice” stopped altogether.
The guide provides the reporting press with the contact details for national Sikh organisations, who can assist time pressured reporters with snappy timely quotes and with accuracy. Finding reputable resources on items in the news or under public discussion is not always easy, and this is as true for religion as any other subject of public interest.
Turkish state broadcaster Turkish Radio and Television (TRT) has censored comments by a young girl calling attention to the environmental risks associated with a controversial gold mine project in Turkey’s northwest.
Children's station TRT Ãâ¡ocuk cut short a live phone call with a nine-year-old girl as she began to address the construction of a gold mine to be run by Canada-based intermediate gold producer Alamos Gold in Turkey’s north-western Ãâ¡anakkale province, news website Gazete Karñnca reported on Saturday.
Rainforests are a crucial feature of Earth’s biosphere. Apart from being critical to Earth’s climate and vital carbon sinks, the major player in Earth’s hydrological (water) cycle, a massive producer of oxygen and home to most of the world’s species, rainforests are the home of a large indigenous human population. They are also the source of many vital resources, including medicines, used by humans around the world.
However, the vast range of ecological services that rainforests have provided ongoingly for the 400 million years of their existence, and which have been critical to the survival of homo sapiens since we first walked the Earth 200,000 years ago, are not measured and valued by accountants and economists: Have you ever seen a balance sheet or set of national accounts that includes an entry for ‘Value of ecological services taken from nature and on which life and our entire production of goods and services depend’?
Because these services have been available without the need for human management or intervention, and given the primitive conception of accounting and economics that humans use, the ecological services of rainforests are given no monetary value. Hence, essential ecological services are treated as worthless by virtually everyone in the industrialized world. As a result, modern industrialized humans have decided to systematically destroy the rainforests in order to extract a vast amount of short-term profit for the benefit of a few and the temporary satisfaction of many. So if we do not value ecological services such as oxygen and water generation as well as climate and weather-moderating capacities, what is it that we do value by destroying rainforests?
A report from the right-wing think-tank set to be published tomorrow warns that record levels of low-skilled immigration in recent years have pushed wages down for those born in the UK on lower salaries.
But it has already been slammed by commentators.
Author Emma Kennedy said: “So let me get this straight. When we have a DIRE shortage of nurses, our EU nurses are returning home in droves, Priti Patel wants to raise the threshold for migrants wanting to work here to €£36,700?
“Who do Brexiters think is going to look after our sick? Dogs with sad eyes?”
The Centre for Social Justice report says the Home Office could exempt key sectors like the NHS to allow workers making less than €£36,700 to continue to come to the UK to work.
Top clients include Fidelity’s Center for Applied Technology (FCAT). Fidelity is a financial firm which increasingly throws itself into the blockchain industry.
Blockstream employs BetterHash, an improved mining management software by long-time Bitcoin developer Matt Corallo. Corallo plays another important role in Bitcoin development as the maintainer of Bitcoin’s Ubuntu repository. Interestingly, Corallo and Blockstream CSO recently had a spat on Twitter.
The curious case of Twitter suspending accounts is not limited to common users. Earlier, several prominent right-wing accounts were shadow-banned by Twitter. Fact-checking accounts and other social media users who disagree with the left-wing accounts have faced bans and scrutiny from Twitter. Recently, tweets from scientist Anand Ranganathan, a free speech warrior and filmmaker Vivek Agnihotri were withheld by the Twitter ‘in response to a legal demand’.
Our study, News consumption in the UK: 2019, looks at how adults and older children in the UK access news content across television, radio, print, social media, other internet sources and magazines.
It found that while TV is still the most popular way for people to access news, its use has fallen since last year, from 79% to 75% of adults. At the same time, use of social media for news has risen from 44% to 49%.
Nova Scotia is continuing its bid for an amiable trade relationship with China, with plans for a promotional website built specifically to fit the country’s strict [Internet] censorship laws.
Nova Scotia Business Inc. (NSBI) — the agency responsible for developing the province’s business interests — put a call out Friday morning for web developers to create a Chinese website to launch by the start of November 2019.
[...]
The New York Times, The Washington Post, HuffPost, The Guardian, NBC News, the Globe and Mail and, as of recently, the Toronto Star are all unreachable in China.
A court in Kyiv ruled in favor of a Ukrainian far-right nationalist group, C14, in its defamation suit against the internet TV station Hromadske.TV after the outlet published a tweet referring to C14 as a “neo-Nazi” group.
The judge accepted C14’s claim that the tweet caused reputational damage and ordered Hromadske to retract the statement and pay a fine.
The August 6 decision caused outrage among Ukraine’s human rights activists and journalists – and rightly so.
In the last few years, several British actors and comedians have made Twitter waves, criticizing their country’s stance toward multiculturalism and free speech. Recently, John Cleese gave fodder to the professionally outraged by declaring matter-of-factly that some cultures are preferable to others. Rowan Atkinson has opined that criticism of a belief system that engages in abhorrent practices is not only reasonable, but necessary. In saner times, these opinions would have been self-evident and their articulation unnecessary.
The FDNY admitted Friday that an employee’s personal hard drive was ripped off and thousands of EMS patients may have had their information compromised — five months after learning of the theft.
The theft affected 10,253 people who were treated or taken to the hospital by FDNY EMS ambulance between 2011 and 2018 — including 2,988 whose social security numbers might have been exposed, the FDNY said.
Oil firms’ insistence on their supply chains speaking the same language, and loudly, on safety is also worth emulating. [Attackers] increasingly infiltrate large corporations by first penetrating the defences of smaller suppliers and piggybacking on the communications systems which link the two. This is made easier by the fact that many firms treat hacks like gonorrhoea, an embarrassing affliction no one wants to admit even if speaking about it would stop its spread. Some call it a tragedy of the cyber-commons.
The Metropolitan Police has presented no “clear and compelling” grounds for seizing journalists’ notes from their interviews with ISIS bride Shamima Begum, the lawyer for media groups fighting the case in court said today.
Walmart has been criticized in various countries for labor exploitation and U.S. presidential candidate Bernie Sanders recently condemned them for paying ‘starvation wages’.
Iran's moral guardians are concerned: while Islam is increasing in political importance throughout the Arab world, people in the Islamic Republic of Iran are leaving the mosques in droves. As Ali Sadrzadeh found out, young people seem especially susceptible to the attractions of sects or Christianity
“Every year at least a thousand girls are kidnapped, raped, and forced to convert to Islam, even forced to marry their tormentors,” according to Tabassum Yousaf, a Catholic lawyer linked to the St. Egidio community.
To draw attention to the issue, the papal foundation ACN is hosting a press conference in Karachi on Thursday, which will see the attendance of Cardinal Joseph Coutts and several Muslim leaders.
The phenomenon of forced conversions hits Pakistan’s religious minorities, especially Christians and Hindus.
When Michelle Otero arrived at an art show featuring Mexican-American women, the first thing she did was scan the room. Two exits.
The purpose of this service is to solve an IP dispute quickly through a discussion between both parties, by advice or opinion from a mediation committee which consists of three members - a judge in the IP division and two experts such IP attorneys.
This mediation tries to draw a conclusion in 3 to 6 months (within three times mediation meetings). The mediation committee discloses impression of the case. But also it may suggest the parties to solve the dispute through a lawsuit when the issue is complicated. In order to draw a conclusion quickly, both parties are required to submit all necessary documents (including evidence) prior to the first mediation meeting. The mediation is closed to the public, including the existence of a request for mediation.
[...]
However, it has an advantage in the involvement of an active judge in mediation meetings. The parties can know what decision the court is likely to make, in a short period of time and at a low cost. Therefore, it may become a useful tool especially for SMEs.
Shamnad Basheer was one of the handful of people in the IP world who was larger than life. Kat readers who wish to take in the entirety of Shamnad's accomplishments are invited to read the attached. Permit this Kat to mention the highlights.
Shamnad came from the Indian state of Kerala in southwest India. He studied law, graduating with Honors from the National Law School of India University Bangalore, a national higher education initiative to create a special setting for legal education in India. He first turned to the private sector, practicing IP law at the firm of Anand and Anand in Delhi. From there, he made his way to Oxford, earning a BCL with Distinction and in turn an MPhil and DPhil in law.
Already writing and lecturing to international renown, he inter alia taught at George Washington University in Washington, DC, before settling in for a number of years at the National University of Juridical Sciences in Kolkata as the Ministry of HRD Chaired Professor of Intellectual Property.
Along the way, he created SpicyIP, which is recognized as a leading IP blog worldwide and serves as the window into all things IP in India (not infrequently, as expressed in Shamnad’s deeply felt and strongly worded posts). Shamnad joined this Kat in co-editing a book for Oxford University Press, in between teaching (for which he won numerous awards), guest lectureships, articles, book chapters, reports, and IP legal advocacy, especially in copyright and in a noted intervention in the landmark Novartis patent case.
Last month, in Amgen Inc. v. Coherus BioSciences Inc., the Federal Circuit affirmed a decision by the U.S. District Court for the District of Delaware dismissing a complaint filed by Amgen Inc. and Amgen Manufacturing Ltd. against Coherus BioSciences Inc. for failure to state a claim. Amgen had filed suit against Coherus for infringement of U.S. Patent No. 8,273,707.
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Citing PODS, Inc. v. Porta Stor, Inc., 484 F.3d 1359, 1367 (Fed. Cir. 2007), the Federal Circuit also noted that "where a patent applicant sets forth multiple bases to distinguish between its invention and the cited prior art, the separate arguments [can] create separate estoppels as long as the prior art was not distinguished based on the combination of these various grounds." The Court concluded that "Amgen did not rely on the combination of its asserted grounds to distinguish Holtz," and that "while Amgen did assert multiple reasons for why Holtz is distinguishable, our precedent instructs that estoppel can attach to each argument." The Court therefore determined that in the instant case, "prosecution history estoppel applies to the 'particular combinations' ground regardless of the other two arguments Amgen made."
Amgen also argued that prosecution history should not apply in the instant case because the response filed prior to allowance of the claims did not contain the argument that Holtz failed to disclose the particular claimed salt combinations. Explaining that "[t]here is no requirement that argument-based estoppel apply only to arguments made in the most recent submission before allowance," the Federal Circuit stated that "[w]e see nothing in Amgen's final submission that disavows the clear and unmistakable surrender of unclaimed salt combinations made in Amgen's [earlier] response." The Federal Circuit therefore determined that the District Court did not err in determining that prosecution history estoppel barred Amgen from succeeding on its infringement claim under the doctrine of equivalents, and affirmed the District Court's order dismissing Amgen's complaint for failure to state a claim.
Gatorade began using the term "Sports Fuel" to describe its products in 2013. In 2016, Gatorade adopted the slogan, "Gatorade The Sports Fuel Company" and sought to register the slogan as a trademark with the USPTO.
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In order to successfully assert a fair use defense under the Lanham Act, a party must show that the alleged infringement "is a use, otherwise than as a mark ... which is descriptive of and used fairly and in good faith only to describe the goods or services of such party."
The district court determined that Gatorade (1) had not used "Sports Fuel" as a trademark, (2) its use was descriptive its goods, and (3) it used the mark fairly and in good faith, and thus successfully raised the fair use defense.
The 7th Circuit reviewed each of these prongs individually, but did not consider the likelihood of confusion, as they affirmed the district court's ruling.
