Bonum Certa Men Certa

We Will Never Have a Meaningful Debate About Patents When the Media Calls Algorithms “AI” and the EPO is Called “EU Patent Office”

Had they called it “EPO Patent Office” we'd have a recursive acronym like GNU

dad                    yes, son               what is AI again?                                 something smart                                smart?                  algorithm! Then he realised any algorithm which does stats/maths is 'AI'



Summary: Low-quality reporting is part of the reason we have low-quality debates about patent law

BASED on the world's trashiest tech tabloid, ZDNet [1], there are patents based on "HEY HI" (AI). The USPTO uses that as an excuse for granting abstract patents, with WIPO (UN) cheering from afar. Then we have TechDirt [2], and Slashdot linking to TechDirt [3], which wrongly described this as an "EU" thing yesterday (to be fair to TechDirt, it did cover some EPO scandals in the Battistelli era, it opposes software patents in Europe, supports 35 U.S.C. ۤ 101 and so on). It spoke of the "EU Patent Office" and more repetition of the falsehood (EPO predates the EU and has different member states). Those three examples from yesterday are good examples of bad and misguided journalism in this domain (truer than ever before so far in 2020).



"Unless we can get more people to accurately assess and fact-check, we'll carry on drowning in a sea of lies and myths."António Campinos has fallen in love with "AI" as a buzzword; but he apparently wasn't happy to allow computer-generated applications (or the likes of that, gaming the system with automation at the applicant's end).

Sadly, debates about these issues are rarely honest. This past week I responded to many misleading or outright false tweets from the EPO. Tweets aren't generally known for high quality, but those ones were just utter lies, sometimes paid-for lies.

A couple of weeks ago Hartwig Thomas (Switzerland) entertained one such EPO tweet when he responded with: "The claims are all false/heavily slanted:

- Disclosing some technique is almost never “unsafe”! - The concept of “owner” is related to the misused concept of “property”. - Open communication of a technique or method or machine does NOT prevent its commercial exploitation (just ask Red Hat!) - Why should use of knowledge ever be “authorized” by anybody? - Read boldrin/levine “against intellectual monopoly” who illustrate that patent law fails to achieve its goals and hurts society."

That's just a response to one EPO tweet among many (there are hundreds of new ones each month). Unless we can get more people to accurately assess and fact-check, we'll carry on drowning in a sea of lies and myths.

Related/contextual items from the news:



  1. Europe rejects patent applications signed with AI inventor


  2. EU Patent Office Rejects Two Patent Applications In Which An AI Was Designated As The Inventor

    We've written a bunch about why AI generated artwork should not (and need not) have any copyright at all. The law says that copyright only applies to human creators. But what about patents? There has been a big debate about this in the patent space over the last year, mainly lead by AI developers who want to be able to secure patents on AI generated ideas. The patent offices in the EU and the US have been exploring the issue, and asking for feedback, while they plot out a strategy, but some AI folks decided to force the matter sooner. Over the summer they announced that they had filed for two patents in the EU for inventions that they claim were "invented" by an AI named DABUS without the assistance of a human inventor.

    [...]

    The problem, yet again, is in people's misguided belief that everything must be owned by someone, and that somehow without a patent it is impossible to successfully commercialize or market a product. There is tremendous evidence to the contrary (including just by looking at products after their patents run out -- which is often a time when more innovation occurs, since there's greater competition driving improvements). But, instead, you hear nonsense like the following from Prof. Ryan Abbott, who helped file the two now rejected patents, arguing that without patents, somehow these inventions might not come to be:



  3. EU Patent Office Rejects Two Patent Applications in Which an AI Was Designated As the Inventor


Recent Techrights' Posts

Comparing U.E.F.I. to B.I.O.S. (Bloat and Insecurity to K.I.S.S.)
By Sami Tikkanen
New 'Slides' From Stallman Support (stallmansupport.org) Site
"In celebration of RMS's birthday, we've been playing a bit. We extracted some quotes from the various articles, comments, letters, writings, etc. and put them in the form of a slideshow in the home page."
Thailand: GNU/Linux Up to 6% of Desktops/Laptops, According to statCounter
Desktop Operating System Market Share Thailand
António Campinos is Still 'The Fucking President' (in His Own Words) After a Fake 'Election' in 2022 (He Bribed All the Voters to Keep His Seat)
António Campinos and the Administrative Council, whose delegates he clearly bribed with EPO budget in exchange for votes
Adrian von Bidder, homeworking & Debian unexplained deaths
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
 
GNOME GUADEC 2022 & Debian Albanian women trafficked to Mexico?
Reprinted with permission from the Free Software Fellowship
Sainsbury's: It Takes Us Up to Two Days to Respond to Customers Upon Escalation (and Sometimes Even More Than Two Days)
It not only does groceries but also many other things, even banking
People Don't Just Kill Themselves (Same for Other Animals)
And recent reports about Boeing whistleblower John Barnett
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Monday, March 18, 2024
IRC logs for Monday, March 18, 2024
Suicide Cluster Cover-up tactics & Debian exposed
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
Gemini Links 19/03/2024: A Society That Lost Focus and Abandoning Social Control Media
Links for the day
Matthias Kirschner, FSFE: Plagiarism & Child labour in YH4F
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
Linux Foundation Boasting About Being Connected to Bill Gates
Examples of boasting about the association
Alexandre Oliva's Article on Monstering Cults
"I'm told an earlier draft version of this post got published elsewhere. Please consider this IMHO improved version instead."
[Meme] 'Russian' Elections in Munich (Bavaria, Germany)
fake elections
Sainsbury's to Techrights: Yes, Our Web Site Broke Down, But We Cannot Say Which Part or Why
Windows TCO?
Plagiarism: Axel Beckert (ETH Zurich) & Debian Developer list hacking
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
Links 18/03/2024: Putin Cements Power
Links for the day
Flashback 2003: Debian has always had a toxic culture
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
Sainsbury’s Epic Downtime Seems to be Microsoft's Fault and Might Even Constitute a Data Breach (Legal Liability)
one of Britain's largest groceries (and beyond) chains
[Meme] You Know You're Winning the Argument When...
EPO management starts cursing at everybody (which is what's happening)
Catspaw With Attitude
The posts "they" complain about merely point out the facts about this harassment and doxing
'Clown Computing' Businesses Are Waning and the Same Will Happen to 'G.A.I.' Businesses (the 'Hey Hi' Fame)
decrease in "HEY HI" (AI) hype
Free Software Needs Watchdogs, Too
Gentle lapdogs prevent self-regulation and transparency
Matthias Kirschner, FSFE analogous to identity fraud
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
Gemini Links 18/03/2024: LLM Inference and Can We Survive Technology?
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Sunday, March 17, 2024
IRC logs for Sunday, March 17, 2024
Links 17/03/2024: Microsoft Windows Shoves Ads Into Third-Party Software, More Countries Explore TikTok Ban
Links for the day
Molly Russell suicide & Debian Frans Pop, Lucy Wayland, social media deaths
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
Our Plans for Spring
Later this year we turn 18 and a few months from now our IRC community turns 16
Open Invention Network (OIN) Fails to Explain If Linux is Safe From Microsoft's Software Patent Royalties (Charges)
Keith Bergelt has not replied to queries on this very important matter
RedHat.com, Brought to You by Microsoft Staff
This is totally normal, right?
USPTO Corruption: People Who Don't Use Microsoft Will Be Penalised ~$400 for Each Patent Filing
Not joking!
The Hobbyists of Mozilla, Where the CEO is a Bigger Liability Than All Liabilities Combined
the hobbyist in chief earns much more than colleagues, to say the least; the number quadrupled in a matter of years
Jim Zemlin Says Linux Foundation Should Combat Fraud Together With the Gates Foundation. Maybe They Should Start With Jim's Wife.
There's a class action lawsuit for securities fraud
Not About Linux at All!
nobody bothers with the site anymore; it's marketing, and now even Linux
Links 17/03/2024: Abuses Against Human Rights, Tesla Settlement (and Crash)
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Saturday, March 16, 2024
IRC logs for Saturday, March 16, 2024
Under Taliban, GNU/Linux Share Nearly Doubled in Afghanistan, Windows Sank From About 90% to 68.5%
Suffice to say, we're not meaning to imply Taliban is "good"
Debian aggression: woman asked about her profession
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
Gemini Links 17/03/2024: Winter Can't Hurt Us Anymore and Playstation Plus
Links for the day