Published 6 days ago (on 12 February 2020)



Summary: Patent maximalists continue to face stronger arguments from their sceptics, who rightly allege that words are being intentionally misused and numbers fabricated so as to distort underlying facts

THE U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) does not deal with copyrights. That's a separate office in the US, so the USPTO wants software developers to pursue patents, not the copyrights they already have anyway. A year ago Iancu gave the green light for examiners to more or less ignore parts of or caselaw around 35 U.S.C. ۤ 101. Buzzwords help. Now they call algorithms and maths "property"...

"Monopoly is not property," I told Henrion after he had said/recited that: "If intellectual property is like property, we should levy a tax on it..." (that's a video, which we've added at the top)

"Now they call algorithms and maths "property"...""The misnomers were promoted into the mainstream by plutocrats and their lawyers so as to say that "COMPETING" is "THEFT"," I continued. He said that around the time he saw -- and citing a post from last year -- "Shadow writing [of] legislation" (the key bit is: "He is Vice Chair of the Intellectual Property Owners Association Section 101 Task Force and was one of the principle authors of the IPO’s proposed Section 101 legislation [...] The Federal Circuit has shown significantly greater hostility to software patents than the district courts, finding ineligible subject matter in 85% of the litigated software patents.")

Watchtroll has basically just published "Six Years After Alice: 61.8% of U.S. Patents Issued in 2019 Were ‘Software-Related’—up 21.6% from 2018" (they wrongly try to imply that Alice somehow invalidates almost two-thirds of new patents). These sorts of distortions aren't too uncommon.

"The CCIA's main lobbyist against software patents has just responded to someone who cited an old article from the anti-Alice blog named after Bilski."Many misleading numbers (lies) came from an IBM lobbyist and former employee, David Kappos. His lies -- soon to be cited by Koch-backed lobbyists -- contributed to the perception that past USPTO Directors are selling influence. This makes Obama look like a Trump in the sense that both appointed patent maximalists for this position (albeit to Obama's credit he later put Michelle Lee in charge).

The CCIA's main lobbyist against software patents has just responded to someone who cited an old article from the anti-Alice blog named after Bilski. "I hope his case analysis is more accurate than his prosecution analysis data," he said, "which has significant errors (compounded by misuse by others who do things like describe a 101/102/112 rejected patent being abandoned as due to Alice.)"

We've already mentioned how the numbers have been deliberately distorted and then used to craft lies told repeatedly to politicians.

"We've already mentioned how the numbers have been deliberately distorted and then used to craft lies told repeatedly to politicians."This is the kind of thing we've come to expect mostly from the European Patent Office (EPO) and its lobbyists in Brussels.

On Monday the EPO tweeted: "patent fact: Notice of opposition to a European patent must be filed within nine months of the patent's grant being mentioned in the European Patent Bulletin."

And "also prepare LOADS of money (even more in recent years) to merely stop something that should not have happened in the first place due to EPO maladministration" was my reply. Many software patents in Europe are disguised as "device" or "HEY HI" (AI) and the price of objecting is being raised, as we noted twice earlier this month. ⬆