Audiocasts/Shows

• RBW: A BitWarden CLI That Is Actually Useful

  The official Bitwarden CLI client is frankly terrible so someone decided to make a 3rd party Bitwarden client that actually has a sensible interface while it’s not perfect I still think it’s much better than the alternative.

• My First Look At Fedora 34 (and GNOME 40)

  Fedora 34 is officially here. And being that Fedora is such an important Linux distribution, I just have to take a look at it. Also, Fedora ships with GNOME 40 by default, so this will also be my first look at GNOME 40.

• THIS TABLET RUNS LINUX?! Microsoft Won’t buy Discord, and GUI Linux apps on Windows – Linux News

  This time, we have the release of Ubuntu 21.04, graphical linux apps on windows, Discord refusing to be bought by Microsoft, and a good looking potential new Linux tablet.

Kernel Space

• AMD Begins Prototyping CRIU Support For ROCm Compute – Phoronix

  As part of AMD’s growing HPC focus and maturing of their Radeon Open eCosystem GPU compute stack, they ended out this week by making public a prototype implementation of CRIU support for ROCm.

  AMD’s Radeon open-source graphics software developers are working on Checkpoint/Restore In Userspace (CRIU) handling for ROCm. CRIU allows the ability to freeze a running process and archiving it to disk that can then be thawed/restored later on. This user-space-based solution is, of course, much more tricky when it comes to handling processes interacting with the GPU.

• Graphics Stack

  • Nouveau Working On Bringing Up Some OpenGL Compute Shader Support For NV50 Era GPUs

    Open-source “Nouveau” driver developers have been working on at least partial support for OpenGL compute within the NV50 Gallium3D driver that is used by the NVIDIA GeForce 8 series through GeForce 300 series graphics cards.

    Longtime Nouveau contributor Ilia Mirkin has been working recently on compute support for NV50 Gallium3D driver for pre-Fermi GPUs. The focus with this compute support seems to be about working towards OpenGL ES 3.1 requirements where ARB_compute_shader is mandated.

Instructionals/Technical

• How to Secure WordPress Installation with Bedrock – Google Cloud

  How to Secure WordPress Installation with Bedrock on Google Cloud Platform. Bedrock is a WordPress boilerplate with a different improved directory structure and easier configuration.

  It is more secure by isolating the web root and limit access to non-web files and more secure passwords using wp-password-becrypt which replaces the MD5 hashing with modern bcrypt method.

• EasyOS: Recompile in OE for aarch64 target

  Have done a complete cross-compile in OpenEmbedded, host system EasyOS Dunfell version 2.7.2 x86_64 CPU, target aarch64 (ARM64). These are the same packages as in Easy 2.7.x on a x86_64 PC.
  Great, it went right through, except for ‘flsynclient’ package — will tackle that later.

• Full Circle Magazine #168

• How To Change Timezone on CentOS 8 – idroot

  In this tutorial, we will show you how to change the timezone on CentOS 8. For those of you who didn’t know, By default, when a server is provisioned a default timezone will get configured automatically with the Coordinated Universal Time (UTC). On CentOS, the system’s timezone is set during the install, but it can be easily changed at a later time.

  This article assumes you have at least basic knowledge of Linux, know how to use the shell, and most importantly, you host your site on your own VPS. The installation is quite simple and assumes you are running in the root account, if not you may need to add ‘sudo‘ to the commands to get root privileges. I will show you through the step-by-step setting of the correct timezone on a CentOS 8.

• Raspberry PI Parking Sensor with HC-SR04 and LED Bar

  Park assistants were optional in older cars but soon it became a common component in recent car models. A DIY parking sensor system can be created with Raspberry PI and a few, cheap, electronic parts

  In this tutorial I’m showing you how to configure and create a simple parking sensor with Raspberry PI, visually measuring proximity distance with ultrasonic sensor HC SR04 and showing it on a 10 segment LED Bar.

• How To Backup And Restore MySQL/MariaDB Database In A Proper Way

  If you are using MySQL or MariaDB Databases it is very important for you to understand how to take backup and restore data. In addition, you need to keep regular backups of the database and this will help you to restore your data if your application crashes or the data is corrupted by any system failure.

  MySQL and MariaDB include command-line tools that you can use to quickly and easily backup and restore databases. The mysqldump tool is used to export the contents of a database to a text file, while the mysql client can be used to import data from a text file into a MySQL/MariaDB database.

• How to Configure the Firewall in Ubuntu With UFW

  The Linux operating system is one of the most robust and secure operating systems that you can get your hands on. But that does not mean it is not prone to security breaches at all.

  When it comes to information security, it is important to take a proactive approach to avoid data breaches. This guide shows you how to add an extra level of security by enabling and configuring the firewall on your Ubuntu Linux system.

Games

• Imperator: Rome from Paradox is put on hold to focus on other projects

  Paradox Interactive have announced that they’ve put Imperator: Rome effectively on hold for all of 2021.

  As probably their least popular modern full game, Imperator: Rome struggled from the moment it was released. Paradox have tried to overhaul parts of it with some free updates, and some DLC for true fans but it appears all their work so far just hasn’t been enough to turn it around in players eyes and in a business sense.

  [...]

  In other Paradox news, unfortunately for them it looks like the recent Europa Universalis IV: Leviathan expansion has become one of the most negatively reviewed DLC on Steam. Ouch. Paradox Tinto are currently in charge of that one and they’re trying to fix it up.

Desktop Environments/WMs

• K Desktop Environment/KDE SC/Qt

  • March/April in KDE PIM

    Since the last report two month ago we saw the 21.04.0 release of Kontact, and again integrate more than 1400 changes by more than 30 contributors. Here are some of the highlights.

    Kontact

    A large focus remains preparing the upcoming migration to Qt6 and KF6. This mainly consists of porting away from deprecated functionality in Qt and KDE Frameworks, as well as language features that are incompatible with C++17. While not having any visible impact right now, this will allow for a smoother transition down the line.

    Not only code needs to be updated, Carl also updated and extended a tutorial on how to develop Akonadi-based applications from the KDE4 era.

  • Dotfiles, Stow, i3, aerc – a quick look

    I have been running Manjaro as my main Linux distribution for some time now, and until recently never had an issue. This week though, after a major update to KDE Gear 21.04, things broke and I could not log into KDE Plasma anymore. What happened was that I ended up with a mix of proper latest release KDE packages and a couple of (outdated?) git-based community packages, so libraries mismatched.

    I suspect the root cause was that I seem to have installed some git packages earlier that now received a proper release and the versions got mixed up. PEBKAC, as usual oJO.

    The up-side was that I was forced to spend some time outside my belowed Plasma and KDE Gear, and went back to basics with a leaner set-up for a few days.

    Anyway, I fixed my botched-up KDE update, but thought my fall-back set-up might still be worth blogging about.

Distributions

• OpenIndiana Hipster 2021.04 is here

  After another 6 months have passed we are proud to announce the release of our 2021.04 snapshot. The images are available at the usual place. As usual we have automatically received all updates that have been integrated into illumos-gate. This release’s most notably changes are

• OpenIndiana Hipster 2021.04 Released For This Solaris/Illumos-Based OS

  While the popularity of Solaris may be waning, OpenIndiana continues ticking in 2021 as the open-source platform based on Illumos that was born out of the former OpenSolaris state.

  OpenIndiana Hipster 2021.04 is the new six-month update to this Illumos platform. With OpenIndiana Hipster 2021.04 there are a number of new packages including the latest Firefox and Thunderbird ESR releases, updated NVIDIA drivers through the 460 series, OpenSSL 1.1.1 is now available, and updated Python packages. For using OpenIndiana on the desktop, the laest MATE desktop packages are available.

• It’s Been 10 +1 Years Now!

  Today, while I was wearing it, I realized that tomorrow is the anniversary of my blog.

  So, after 11 years, I am still a Linux user.

  Who would have thought?

  My walk started almost by accident, with a modest Asus Eee PC with Xandros preinstalled (The legendary MiniMe!) I never thought that such a humble machine with change the way I use computers in such a profound way.

  I was re-reading the first entry that I posted on this blog and a bitter-sweet wave of memories made me smile.

  So much has changed since then!

  [...]

  Yet, I am glad that I can rely on my Linux computers, just in the same way like the day I quit Windows. Linux has truly made my work easier and less worrisome… (Boy! I’ve been online without an antivirus for 11 years!)

• BSD

  • Wayland on FreeBSD with AMDGPU

    In the category of ever-more-specific niches for blog posts, here’s some notes today where I switched my main workstation – FreeBSD 13, nVidia GT730, KDE Plasma – over to KDE Plasma Wayland.

  • “Hotfix” GhostBSD 21.05.01 ISO’s are now available

    It was reported that when using the partition editor to install GhostBSD was resulting in those 2 errors below:

    EXITERROR: ERROR: Invalid file system specified on disk0-part=Z
    EXITERROR: ERROR: Invalid file system specified on disk0-part=U

    I made a new ISO with the fix for that issue.

• IBM/Red Hat/Fedora

  • Fedora Vs Red Hat: Which Linux Distro Should You Use and Why?

    Fedora and Red Hat. Both Linux distributions belong to the same organization, both use RPM package manager and both provide desktop and server editions. Both Linux distributions have a greater impact on the operating system world.

    This is why it is easier to get confused between the two similar distributions. In this article, I will discuss the similarities and difference between Red Hat and Fedora.

    This will help you if you want to choose between the two or simply want to understand the concept of having two distributions from the same organization.

• Debian Family

  • South African tech expert re-elected as Debian Project Lead

    Developers of the Debian Linux distribution have re-elected Jonathan Carter as the leader of the free operating system project.

    Carter is a South African based in Cape Town who works part-time for the African Institute for Mathematical Sciences, where he does system administration work on the institutional network that it uses in its centres across Africa.

    He has served as the Debian Project Lead since April 2020 and was re-elected for another year. Carter is the first South African elected to the post.

    Debian is an important player in the global free software and open-source ecosystems.

    Besides being a popular operating system on servers and desktop computers in its own right, Debian is also used as the foundation of several other widely used Linux distributions, such as Ubuntu (founded by Mark Shuttleworth, also a South African) and its many derivatives.

  • Sparky news 2021/04

    The 4th monthly Sparky project and donate report of 2021:
    – Linux kernel updated up to version 5.12.0
    – added to repos: Ventoy, Yad based Ventoy-GUI, Sunflower twin panel’s file manager, Google Messages for Desktop, Rocket.Chat Desktop, ProtonMail Bridge, uGet Integrator, KGet Integrator
    – some preps to a next point release 5.15 “Nibiru”

• Canonical/Ubuntu Family

  • Ubuntu 21.10 (Impish Indri) Daily Builds Are Now Available to Download

    Matthias Klose was, once again, the one to announce a couple of days ago that the Ubuntu 21.10 (Impish Indri) is officially open for development, revealing the fact that the goal for the next major Ubuntu release is to ship GCC 11 as default system compiler, introducing C++17 by default, a change that’s planned for July.

    And now that the development cycle is official open and the toolchain was uploaded, the time has come for the Ubuntu developers to publish the first daily build ISO images for Ubuntu 21.10 (Impish Indri), which you can download right now from the main download servers.

  • Ubuntu 21.10 “Impish Indri” Now Open For Development

    Development on Ubuntu 21.10 ‘Impish Indri’ has now officially begun and the daily builds are now available for the download. Ubuntu 21.10 is due to be released on October 14, 2021.

    Part of an announcement from the Matthias Klose:

    We’re pleased to announce that impish is now *open for development*. auto-sync has been enabled and will run soon. As usual, we expect a
    large influx of builds and autopkgtests in this initial period, which will cause delays.

  • Ubuntu-based elementary OS 6 ‘Odin’ Beta Linux distro now available for download

    Why don’t more desktop computer users run Linux-based operating systems? Well, software compatibility aside, there is fear of change and the unknown. For a user to switch from Windows, it need to be a fairly simple affair. For years, just installing a Linux distribution was a daunting task. These days, it can be faster and easier than installing Windows 10 — depending on the distro, of course.

    For beginners, once installed, their chosen Linux distro should be easy to use with an intuitive desktop environment. I’m a big fan of GNOME, but understandably, not all folks like it — especially Linux novices. One particular Linux-based desktop operating system has been focusing on accessibility to all — elementary OS. This distribution is polished and focuses on being easy to use. It is a good choice for both experts and beginners alike. And now, elementary OS 6, code-named “Odin,” has officially achieved Beta status.

Devices/Embedded

• DR8072A embedded router board offers dual 2.5 GbE, WiFi 6 connectivity – CNX Software

  We’ve previously found Qualcomm IPQ8072A quad-core Cortex-A53 networking processor in WPQ873 embedded SBC with support for WiFI 6, three GbE ports, one 2.5GbE port, and support for 5G M.2 modems.

  The design was adapted from Qualcomm HK09 reference design, and now another company, Wallys Communications, has launched another board based on HK09. DR8072A embedded router board is somewhat similar to WPQ873, but does come with two 2.5GbE ports instead of just one, one extra Gigabit Ethernet port, among other smaller changes.

• Crowdfunding campaign to launch JingPad A1 Linux tablet now live

  Remember JingPad A1, the world’s first Linux-powered 5G tablet that hit headlines back in March? Now, the tablet is back in the news again, this time with reports of the company behind it, Jingling launching a crowdfunding campaign to bring the device to the market. Also, we have had Linux tablets in the past though JingPad A1’s claim-to-fame is that it is the first Linux-based tablet to boast of 5G connectivity.

  The tablet with an ARM chip at its core along with 6 GB of RAM and 128 GB of storage will be running the company’s JingOS which is an Ubuntu-based Linux platform. The tablet is expected to be ready for prime-time action starting June 2021 though the crowdfunding campaign on IndieGoGo has already been live for about a week now. Those interested can register their interest and collect a coupon to procure the device when it is launched.

  The JingPad A1 will have an 11-inch AMOLED panel having 2K resolutions. The display will have a 4:3 aspect ratio. That again is considered the best aspect ratio for reading books and magazines. In fact, while the effect might not be too noticeable when reading books, magazines are a much better fit on a 4:3 display than it is with displays having a 16:10 aspect ratio. Besides, the display will also have stylus support with 4096 levels of pressure sensitivity.

• Open Hardware/Modding

  • Channel your inner Wolverine with these 3D-printed, muscle-controlled bionic claws | Arduino Blog

    n the fictional Marvel Universe, Wolverine has sets of claws that pop out of his hands as if they were natural parts of his body. While a seemingly fantastic concept, myoelectric sensors are able to pick up on muscle movements in order to illicit a response. YouTuber MERT Arduino & Tech decided to take this concept and build a pair of forearm-mounted claws.

    The wearable device senses muscle activation via a MyoWare muscle sensor, which sends information on to an Arduino Nano on a custom carrier board. Depending on the signal, it’s able to extend or retract claws, with the help of a servo motor and linkage system.

• Mobile Systems/Mobile Applications

  • Give your Android phone a tuneup this weekend: 5 simple things to change – CNET

  • 2022 Honda Civic adds wireless connections for CarPlay, Android Auto

  • 5 Android apps you shouldn’t miss this week – Android Apps Weekly

  • 5 Inspiring Android Apps for Creating Motivational Quotes

  • 8 Great Features of Google’s Phone App on Android

  • Best New Android Games this Week: Sixit, Summoners War: Lost Centuria, Santorini, and More – Droid Gamers

  • Report: Roblox Has Numerous Potential Security Issues on Android

  • This minimalist Android home screen helps cut the clutter and reduces your screen-time | Yanko Design

  • Best Free Android Apps: Tor Browser – stay safe while browsing

  • 10 Best Equalizer Apps For Android | Must-have For Stereo-quality Sound

  • Buying your first Android wearable? Here’s what you need to know

  • Google is fixing one of Android’s biggest problems — here’s how | Tom’s Guide

  • Google Play cracking down on misleading Android apps – 9to5Google

  • Another blow for Huawei as Google Android ban continues to bite | Express.co.uk

  • 2022 Honda Civic adds wireless connections for CarPlay, Android Auto | Engadget

  • Redmi 10X 5G receives Android 11 update almost a year after its launch

  • 5 of the Best Video Player Apps for Android

    he default Android apps have matured in recent years, and the video app is no different. However, each manufacturer has its own idea of how a video app should act and what formats it should play. That’s what makes third-party apps so attractive, as they will offer vastly more features, formats and functions. Let’s take a look at some of the best video players for Android you should download today.

Free, Libre, and Open Source Software

• Comms

  • Ingo Juergensmann: The Fediverse – What About Ressources?

    Today ist May, 1st. In about two weeks on May, 15th WhatsApp will put their changed Terms of Service into action and when you don’t accept their rules you won’t be able to use WhatsApp any longer.

    Early this year there was already a strong movement away from WhatsApp towards other solutions. Mainly to Signal, but also some other services like the Fediverse gained some new users. And also XMPP got their fair share of new users.

    So, what to do about the WhatsApp ToS change then? Shall we go all to Signal? Surely not. Signal is another vendor lock-in silo. It’s centralistic and recent development plans want to implement some crypto payment system. Even Bruce Schneier thinks that this is a bad idea.

    Other alternatives often named include Matrix/Element or XMPP. Today, Don di Dislessia in the (german) Fediverse asked about power consumption of the Fediverse incl. Matrix and XMPP and how much renewable energy is being used. Of course this is no easy answer to this question, but I tried my best – at least for my own server.

    [...]

    Overall, and my personal impression, is that Matrix is really bad in regards of ressource usage. Given that I’m the only active user it uses exceptionally many ressources. When you also consider that Matrix is using a distributed database for its chat rooms, you can assume that the ressource usage is multiplied across the network, making things even worse.

    Friendica is using a large database and many disk accesses, but has a fairly large user base, so it seems ok, but of course should be improved.

    Mastodon seems to be quite good, considering the database size, the number of log lines and the user count.

    XMPP turns out to be the most efficient contestant in this comparison: it uses much less CPU cycles and database disk I/O.

• FSF

  • Despite backlash, Free Software Foundation reaffirms decision to reinstate Richard Stallman [Ed: We seem to have missed that at the time]

• Programming/Development

  • Perl/Raku

    • Perl Weekly Challenge 110: Valid Phone Numbers and Transposed File

      These are some answers to the Week 110 of the Perl Weekly Challenge organized by Mohammad S. Anwar.

    • EV charge pricing per State in US

      Continuing from my previous post ( http://blogs.perl.org/users/itcharlie/2021/04/calculating-ev-battery-charge-with-perl.html ) I learned that residential electricity charges are calculated using an electricity supply rate per kWh and a electric delivery rate per kWh which actually increases the total EV charge prices that I have calculated in my previous post. My current bill states that my electric supply rate is at 6.9057 cents per kWh and my delivery rate is 11.1785 cents per kWh making it a total of 18.0842 cents per kWh which is 5 cents more than my original post at $ 0.13 cents per kWh.

  • Rust

    • Niko Matsakis: [AiC] Vision Docs!

      The Async Vision Doc effort has been going now for about 6 weeks. It’s been a fun ride, and I’ve learned a lot. It seems like a good time to take a step back and start talking a bit about the vision doc structure and the process. In this post, I’m going to focus on the role that I see vision docs playing in Rust’s planning and decision making, particularly as compared to RFCs.

      Vision docs frame RFCs

      If you look at a description of the design process for a new Rust feature, it usually starts with “write an RFC”. After all, before we start work on something, we begin with an RFC that both motivates and details the idea. We then proceed to implementation and stabilization.

      But the RFC process isn’t really the beginning. The process really begins with identifying some sort of problem1 – something that doesn’t work, or which doesn’t work as well as it could. The next step is imagining what you would like it to be like, and then thinking about how you could make that future into reality.

      We’ve always done this sort of “framing” when we work on RFCs. In fact, RFCs are often just one small piece of a larger picture. Think about something like impl Trait, which began with an intentionally conservative step (RFC #1522) and has been gradually extended. Async Rust started the same way; in that case, though, even the first RFC was split into two, which together described a complete first step (RFC #2394 and RFC #2592).

      The role of a vision doc is to take that implicit framing and make it explicit. Vision docs capture both the problem and the end-state that we hope to reach, and they describe the first steps we plan to take towards that end-state.

Red Carpet at the Picket Line

Philip Roth and His Defensive Fans Are Their Own Worst Enemies

A committed atheist, Philip Roth feared only one form of posthumous punishment: being trapped for all eternity in a hostile biography. In 2007, Roth, echoing a similar quip from Oscar Wilde, said, “Biography gives a new dimension of terror to dying.” Roth’s had already been the subject of a harsh and unforgiving portrait in Leaving a Doll’s House (1996), the memoirs of his former wife, the actor Claire Bloom. As John Updike noted in The New York Review of Books, “Claire Bloom, as the wronged ex-wife of Philip Roth, shows him to have been, as their marriage rapidly unraveled, neurasthenic to the point of hospitalization, adulterous, callously selfish, and financially vindictive.” This crisp summary ended Roth’s friendship with Updike, even after Updike made clear he was recapping Bloom’s book and not affirming its accuracy.

The Legal Showdown at Hanna Flats

Nonetheless, the Forest Service’s Hanna Flats logging project included clearcutting 1,109 acres, commercial logging on 734 acres, 360 acres of pre-commercial logging, and 149 acres of prescribed burning to supposedly protect the “wildland-urban interface” from wildfire. It’s worth noting the clearcutting was strongly opposed by local residents who cherish this area for its natural beauty and abundant recreational opportunities.

Fortunately, the federal court in Idaho saw through the ruse and on April 27th, handed down a decision that found Trump’s Forest Service violated federal law when it “categorically exempted” this commercial timber sale from the environmental analysis requirements of the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) and the Healthy Forest Restoration Act (HFRA).

All Dressed Up for the Oscars and Nowhere to Go

The retro furniture brought in by the show’s producer, Steven Soderbergh, was meant to conjure the glamor of Hollywood’s Golden Age, the most obvious visual difference being the large proportion of stars of color among the nominees and presenters. Union Station was finished in 1939, also the year that the first Black actor was nominated for—and won—an Oscar: Hattie McDaniel for her portrayal of Mammy in Gone With The Wind. That “classic” was pulled from HBO soon after George Floyd’s murder, but was made available again after being fitted with a disclaimer rejecting the movie’s whitewashing of “the horrors of slavery.” It would be twenty years before another Black actor was nominated by the Academy. When Union Station opened most Black people seen in the building were either shining shoes or were members of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, the first union led by African Americans. Their duties included attending to Hollywood stars as they travelled in style between Los Angeles and New York.

Given the reduced numbers of attendees at this year’s Oscars, Hollywood’s supposed commitment to racial diversity was on full display right from the get-go—Regina King’s long walk into the building through the Ticket Hall, DJ-ed to her mark with power-groove elegance by the genial Questlove, who later got in a pitch for his forthcoming Summer of Soul documentary about the Harlem Cultural Festival of 1969.

Disney Got Itself A ‘If You Own A Themepark…’ Carveout From Florida’s Blatantly Unconstitutional Social Media Moderation Bill

Earlier this year, we noted that a wide variety of states (mostly those controlled by angry, ignorant Republicans) were looking to pass blatantly unconstitutional bills that sought to force social media companies to host all speech and not moderate. As we noted in that article, Florida seemed to be leading the way, and now both houses of the Florida legislature have passed the bill that is blatantly unconstitutional, and will only serve to waste a large amount of taxpayer dollars to have this law thrown out in court.

Integrity/Availability

• Proprietary

  • Security

    • Privacy/Surveillance

      • Boris Johnson’s Phone Number Leaks: Turns Out He Uses End-To-End Encryption… While Trying To Ban It For Everyone Else

        Well, look at that. The gossip newsletter Popbitch revealed UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s personal phone number (in a somewhat hilarious way). The latest edition included this up at the top:

Defence/Aggression

• Bone Rooms: How Elite Schools and Museums Amassed Black and Native Human Remains Without Consent

  Revelations the University of Pennsylvania and Princeton hold the remains of a child killed by Philadelphia police in the 1985 MOVE bombing are the latest development in a conversation about demanding respectful treatment of African American remains in museum collections, especially those of the enslaved. The Penn Museum also apologized last week for holding more than 1,000 stolen skulls of enslaved people in its Morton Collection, and the president of Harvard University issued a letter in January acknowledging the 22,000 human remains in its collections included 15 from people of African descent who may have been enslaved in the United States, vowing review of the school’s ethics policies. “This is a really vast problem,” says historian Samuel Redman, author of “Bone Rooms: From Scientific Racism to Human Prehistory in Museums,” who also describes the repatriation of Native American remains after Congress passed the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act in 1990. “There are individual instances like this that are horrific and we need to pay attention to, but it is a symptom of this much larger problem.”

Environment

• The Green Brief: The US is back. Should Europe rejoice?

  After four year of Trumpism, the United States made its big comeback on the green diplomacy stage last week by organising a virtual climate summit in Washington.

  As expected, the summit’s mainstay was the announcement of America’s new 2030 climate target. President Joe Biden proclaimed that the world’s largest economy will cut emissions by 50-52% by 2030 compared with 2005 levels, roughly doubling Barack Obama’s previous pledge to cut emissions by 26-28% by 2025.

  “The cost of inaction keeps mounting. The United States isn’t waiting,” Biden said.

  So is this good news for Europe? The short answer is yes. After four years of climate scepticism fuelled by the Trump administration, America’s return to the table means Europe is no longer isolated among Western powers when it comes to climate action on the global stage.

• Wildlife/Nature

  • Scottish zoo celebrates being able to welcome back visitors after lockdown

    THE adorable northern rockhopper penguin chick wasn’t the only new arrival at Edinburgh Zoo in the past week as Scotland’s showpiece zoo was finally able to open its doors to visitors from across the UK.

    As Scotland’s Covid restrictions lifted, borders reopened and ­people were allowed to travel beyond their regions then visitor attractions breathed a sigh of relief.

    And Edinburgh Zoo’s keepers rolled their sleeves up in anticipation of old friends returning from across the island and spreading out across the 82 acres of wooded hillside to visit the more than 2500 endangered animals.

Finance

• Don’t Let Wall Street Get Rich Off of Our Water

  Everyone knows that water is “invaluable” — it’s literally life, requiring a constant intake by each of us, or we quickly die. But the Wizards of Wall Street want to reduce potable H2O from its environmental, humanitarian, and spiritual essence to just another perishable economic good that they can market-price and sell to the highest bidder — turning our water into speculators’ gold.

  This contrivance has opened the door for financial manipulators who’ve quietly been devising razzle-dazzle schemes to allow rich global investors to play in water. They’re now pushing water futures, automated split-second trading, “water grabbing” ventures, hedging schemes, and other financialization hustles to maneuver the monetary value of this essential resource.

AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

• Biden Administration Poised To Give Comcast Lobbyist Canadian Ambassador Spot

  While the Biden administration still hasn’t fully staffed the gridlocked FCC, it does appear to be ready to reward a top Comcast lobbyist and key Biden fundraising ally with a cushy new post.

• Awards Are Political

  Cary Grant never won an Oscar despite being a consistently popular leading man (over 30 years, 1930s-1960s), and big money-maker for the studios and theater chains. He retired in 1966, was given an Honorary Oscar (you know, an ‘Ooppsie’) in 1970, and died in 1986.

  All awards (Oscars, Nobels, etc.) are political. Albert Einstein won the Nobel Prize in physics in 1921 (100 years ago), for his discovery in 1905 of the law of photoelectric effect (which is an aspect of CCD devices today, like solar cells and digital cameras). But pointedly NOT for his revolutionary theories of relativity (the special theory related to light, speed and time; and the general theory that includes the effects of mass and gravity, and the law of mass-energy equivalence that is the basis of nuclear fission and nuclear fusion). Einstein’s papers on relativity were all published before 1917, the first in 1905. Einstein’s 1921 Nobel was an Ooppsie.

• What Do the Women With Jim Jordan Want?

  At first blush it would seem that Marjorie Taylor Greene and Lauren Boebert have an insurmountable lead if recent actions by those two women are the measuring stick.  They both serve in the United States House of Representatives and seem to be engaged in a competition to see which of them can come up with the most effective way to demonstrate their stupidity.  Their records, of course, set a low bar.

  Prior to entering the House, Rep. Greene had a legacy that some might have believed gave her an insurmountable lead. Commenting on the Las Vegas mass shooting in which 58 people were killed she said the event might have been staged in order to help those in favor of anti-gun legislation.  Describing the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting that resulted in the death of 20 children,she called it a hoax. She said the killing of 14 students at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School was staged. In February 2019 she said that two of her House Colleagues who were sworn in without their hands on the Bible were not “really official” members of congress.  They are both Muslim and Rep. Greene said:  “They really should go back to the Middle East.” Those comments standing alone should have given her the clear lead over any of her colleagues.  It was not to be.  Lauren Boebert entered the fray.

• Voter Fraud and the Myth of E Pluribus Unum

  Until recently, the power of the secretary of state had eluded me.  Like most American voters, I had simply assumed that the system had two parts: popular vote and Electoral College.  They don’t necessarily work together. For instance, in 2000, Al Gore won the national popular vote against GW Bush, but he lost the Electoral College vote. (Had he won his home state of Tennessee, the Electoral College votes there would have gone to him instead of Bush and he’d have won the presidency.) On election night, the MSM, though it tallies individual state popular and electoral college voting, rarely provides insight into how individual states handle votes, of what counts as a valid vote, who determines validity, and what the number of votes tossed away are. Turns out this individual determination of vote validity is crucial in presidential elections.

  I didn’t fully understand or appreciate the full significance of such state-by-state determination of vote counts until I read Greg Palast’s How Trump Stole 2020, which I reviewed several months before the election. Palast lays bare the What and How of voter disenfranchisement, and shows specifically how states have manipulated votes and helped determine who would win the presidential election since at least 2000.  How do they manipulate? By tossing votes away — literally and by “technicalities” that hardly ever hold up to scrutiny. During the 2016 presidential election, Palast reckons that, despite all the distractions about DNC hacking and FBI interference, Hillary Clinton won the election — not only the popular vote, but also the Electoral College vote had all the tossed votes, in swing states, been counted.

Civil Rights/Policing

• What Chinatown Can Teach Us About Community

  This May, Asian American History Month, it’s worth taking a look at what we can learn from them.

  During the first wave of Chinese immigration in the mid-1800s, Chinese workers came to the U.S. to build the transcontinental railroad, search for California gold, and improve their lives. These Chinese laborers were paid less than white workers and were often blamed for driving down pay and taking jobs. Hate crimes against Chinese immigrants were prevalent.

• This Black Life Must Matter! MLK’s greater message to America

  In a 1965 sermon, King explained that the “majestic words” of the Declaration of Independence penned by Thomas Jefferson, that “all men are created equal,” were the cornerstone of the civil rights movement.

  On April 4, 1967, he delivered a speech in Riverside Church in Manhattan of a kind never heard before from any American political leader. It was addressed to the American people, not the government. It called upon us to open our eyes and our minds to evils inherent in the American capitalist hegemonic system. He denounced the United States government, stating “…I knew that I could never again raise my voice against the violence of the oppressed in the ghettos, without having first spoken clearly to the greatest purveyor of violence in the world: my own government.” He had a radical democratic vision committed to trying “to make America what it ought to be.” (Final Speech, Memphis, TN, April 3, 1968) That speech is, Beyond Vietnam — A Time to Break Silence, and you can read it here: https://kinginstitute.stanford.edu/king-papers/documents/beyond-vietnam. Time magazine later called the speech “demagogic slander that sounded like a script for Radio Hanoi.” The Washington Post called it “sheer inventions of unsupported fantasy” declaring that King had “diminished his usefulness to his cause, his country, and his people.” The New York Times wrote an editorial entitled “Dr. King’s Error”, and even the NAACP objected to it.

• We Need a Trauma-Informed Legal System

  Now there’s a movement underway to change that. In university law classes and training programs for established attorneys, trauma awareness is gaining traction in law practices across the country.

  At its root, trauma awareness is about “assessing trauma and trauma symptoms in all routine practices and then asking: ‘What happened to you?’ not ‘What is wrong with you?’” said Deeya Haldar, co-author of The Pedagogy of Trauma Informed Lawyering.

Internet Policy/Net Neutrality

• Canadian Government Wants To Regulate Social Media Like Broadcast

  It’s Canada’s turn in the carousel of attempts at terrible internet regulation around the world. The ruling Liberal party, which professor and internet law researcher Michael Geist has called the most anti-internet government in Canadian history for its wide variety of planned new internet laws, has been working for months on a bill to amend the Broadcasting Act and greatly broaden its scope, giving the CRTC (Canada’s counterpart to the FCC) authority over all kinds of online video and audio.

Digital Restrictions (DRM)

• San Jose, California Federal Jury Convicts Former Netflix Executive of Receiving Bribes and Kickbacks from Companies Contracting with Netflix, DOJ Reports

  “Not only did Mr. Kail deprive Netflix of its money and resources by abusing his position as VP of IT Operations, he created a pay-to-play environment whereby he stole the opportunity to work with an industry pioneer from honest, hardworking, Silicon Valley companies,” said FBI Special Agent in Charge Craig D. Fair. “Bribes and kickback schemes, such as those facilitated by Mr. Kail, undermine the fabric of competition in Silicon Valley, and the FBI will aggressively pursue anyone who attempts to criminally exploit their position for personal gain.”

  “High-ranking corporate officials hold positions of trust not only in their companies, but also in the eyes of the public,” said Michael Daniels, Acting Special Agent in Charge IRS Criminal Investigation. “That trust is broken when such officials abuse their power and commit crimes to unjustly enrich themselves.”

  According to the evidence presented at trial to the federal jury, Kail, 49, of Los Gatos, was employed at Netflix as the Vice President in charge of IT Operations from 2011 until July 2014. In this position, Kail owed Netflix his honest services. Netflix prohibited conflicts of interest by its employees in its Code of Ethics and its “Culture Deck,” which required disclosure of actual or apparent conflicts of interest and reporting gifts from people or entities seeking to sell to the company.

  As Netflix’s Vice President of IT Operations, Kail approved the contracts to purchase IT products and services from smaller outside vendor companies and authorized their payments. The evidence demonstrated that Kail accepted bribes in ‘kickbacks’ from nine tech companies providing products or services to Netflix. In exchange, Kail approved millions of dollars in contracts for goods and services to be provided to Netflix. Kail ultimately received over $500,000 and stock options from these outside companies. He used his kickback payments to pay personal expenses and to buy a home in Los Gatos, California in the name of a family trust.

Monopolies

• FOSS Patents: Apple raised its effective App Store commission rate in certain geographic markets to (respectively) 31.4%, 32.1%, and 35.25% in September

  After this post, I’ll (have to) take a break from blogging about App Store antitrust matters for a few weeks or maybe even months, as I’ll explain further below. Before I do that, I’m going to share several thoughts and pieces of information in this post.

  [...]

  The ability to increase prices without losing market share is characteristic of a monopolist. Sometimes, monopolies are identifiable just on that basis. In those cases where a monopolist could have increased prices, but did not do so, a SSNIP test is performed by economists on a hypothetical basis (such as by conducting a survey): Small but Significant Non-transitory Increase in Price. Generally, “small but significant” means 5%-10%, and plaintiffs often argue that they can establish even greater market power than what it takes to command a 10% increase.

  Epic’s examples all make sense. It’s true that Apple extended the scope of applicability of the 30% commission (the Small Business Program just came recently for antitrust reasons and has nothing to do with market dynamics whatsoever) to other types of payments, as the testimony in this case confirms. Search Ads are indeed another indirect price increase, as many app developers pay for the discoverability of their apps on the App Store by promoting their apps above the organic search results that may favor a competitor–which in turn often forces the affected competitor to place Search Ads only to maintain the top spot.

• Patents

  • Judicial Court of Paris halts SPC battle between MSD and generics [Ed: EPO patents against generics or against access to medicines (which nihilists hate, they just want more monopoly and predatory pricing)]

    In France, MSD is currently battling against Mylan, Sandoz, Teva, Biogaran and EG Labo. Recently, the Judicial Court of Paris issued four decisions. For now, the battle between MSD and the generics companies is on hold.

    All patent disputes are based on the national SPC for basic patent EP 07 20 599. The SPC protects the combination of ezetimib and simvastatin, on which MSD’s cholesterol-lowering drug Inegy is based.

    Meanwhile the SPC (FR05C0040) has expired. The dispute, therefore, focus mainly on the question of damages.

    [...]

    In all cases, MSD relied on Allen & Overy partner Laetitia Bénard, who is known for pharma litigation.

    Mylan and Sandoz both counted on Denis Schertenleib, who is regularly active in pharma litigation on the side of generic companies.

    Biogaran is a regular client for mixed firm Casalonga. Biogaran not only relies on the team’s litigators in such disputes, but also hires its renowned patent attorneys for EPO filing and oppositions.

  • French bill proposal authorizing the granting of an ex officio patent license in the interest of public health in the event of an extreme health emergency

    In my last post I deciphered several fake news, which spoil the public debate about compulsory licensing, I then mentioned a bill proposal, introduced by Mr. Ronan Le Gleut in the Senate on April 8, 2021, whose I thought important to translate, so that it can feed the international debate on compulsory licensing following the current health crisis.

    It should be noted that the translated text takes up the proposals made as early as May 2020 in a Report issued by the de Boufflers Institute, and then those that were also made by a Collective Tribune of specialists in patent law and property law published in March 2021.

  • Suspending IP Protection: A Bad Idea (That Won’t Achieve Its Desired Goals) [Ed: The patent profiteers misframe patents as "IP" and basically call for the bodies to pile up higher (COVID casualties) for the sake of corporate profits from monopoly pricing. How do they sleep at night?]

    Demagogy is never pretty. When coupled with a species-threatening pandemic, the propensity for the pundit class is to be susceptible to solutions that sound reasonable only to the uninformed. To make matters worse, some of those “solutions” are proposed by actors creative in using the crisis to advocate positions that benefit their constituencies under the cover of (and preying on) the humanitarian impulses of global elites comfortable in both their privilege and ignorance. This is particularly dangerous where positions promoted under the cover of beneficence mask long-felt and deep-seated resentments over encouraging, perhaps heavy-handedly, a global trade regime mandating recognition of intellectual property rights in countries adverse to them and that have been successful in chipping away at them for the past 20 years.

  • World IP Day – our take on patent trends and developments [Ed: Conflating patents with WTO/WIPO propaganda like "IP", which is a harmful misnomer championed by monopolists and their lawyers]

    WIPO member states designated the 26th April as World IP Day, to commemorate the day on which the WIPO Convention came into force in 1970. On a day set to allow consideration of the role of intellectual property (IP) in encouraging innovation, we reflect on current and upcoming trends in the patent litigation space.

    How has the patent litigation sector fared during the pandemic?

    Patent actions respond to long term commercial objectives and patent actions have remained stable in the UK patents court/European courts, in spite of the pandemic.

  • IP protection in the Southeast Asia region: What EU SMEs should know [Ed: Advancing the old lie that EUIPO and EPO work for SMEs. They just misuse the term to mislead the masses.]

    Why is IP (intellectual property) protection important for European Union SMEs?

    Small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) are the backbone of the EU economy. They represent 99 percent of all businesses in the EU, account for more than half of Europe’s gross domestic product (GDP) and employ about 100 million people. The positive association between economic performance and ownership of intellectual property rights (IPRs) is particularly strong for SMEs.

    SMEs that own IPRs generate 68-percent higher revenue per employee than SMEs that do not own any IPRs at all, according to the latest study published in 2021 by the European Patent Office (EPO) and the European Union Intellectual Property Office (EUIPO) on IPRs and firm performance in the EU. As the study shows, IPR protection has become crucial to the success of SMEs, and it is thus key for SMEs to be aware of the value of intellectual property and of the best ways to benefit from it.

  • Patent prosecution: FAQs

    The Norwegian Industrial Property Office (NIPO) (known as ‘patentstyret’ in Norwegian) handles all administrative (formal and substantive) aspects of the grant procedure in Norway. The NIPO grants patents from Norwegian national applications and validates European patents granted by the European Patent Office (EPO) (for further details please see ” How are European patents validated in Norway?” below).

    The NIPO generally processes Norwegian national applications relatively swiftly, issuing a search report and written opinion (known as ‘realitetsuttalelse’ in Norwegian) within five to seven months from the filing date. In the written opinion, the NIPO…

  • The Public Private Nature of Patents [Ed: If a patent isn't legitimate, it should be thrown out, regardless of any private agreements.]

    Patent law is a quirky mix of private and public law. Individual inventors and their assigns are granted private property rights and the freedom-of-contract to license those rights as they see fit. But, patents are designed to serve a public purpose, and the courts have occasionally struck-down private agreements that go too-far — especially agreements that frustrate the invalidation or cancellation of wrongfully issued patents.

    In Kannuu Pty Ltd., v. Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd. (Fed. Cir. 2021), the question on appeal is whether an agreement between parties can enforceably prohibit the filing of an Inter Partes Review (IPR) petition. In the case, Kannuu and Samsung entered into an NDA that included a forum selection clause — choosing NYC Courts (Federal or State) as the sole arena for litigating actions or proceedings relating to the agreement. Kannuu shared substantial information about its patent porfolio. Samsung decided not to pursue any license agreement but did (allegedly) adopt the disclosed navigation/search functionality Samsung Smart TVs.

    Kannuu then sued (6 years later) after several of its patents had issued in NYC Federal Court. In response, Samsung filed a batch of IPR petitions. The PTAB granted 2 of 5. Although Kannuu raised the forum-selection argument to the PTAB, the PTAB did “declined to consider the merits of whether the FSC barred Samsung’s petitions.” Kannuu brief. Back in court, the district court refused to issue an anti-IPR injunction — holding that the forum selection clause did not exclude IPR filings.

  • Number Of Cannabis Patents Granted In Europe & UK Growing At A Quick Pace [Ed: Patents are like drugs to stoned lawyers who never in their lives saw something that they did not wish to litigate over]

    The worldwide explosion of the recreational and medical cannabis markets, and submarkets, appears that it will continue for years to come. New industries have been born, new mega-companies are growing and other new worldwide players will undoubtedly emerge. When new industries with almost unlimited revenue growth rates appear, the companies need an edge on their competition to survive the consolidations and mergers, to come out on top. Sometimes that edge is having and protecting their IP… with patents. An article from a UK and European Patent and Trade Mark Attorney firm discussed the view from the UK. It said: “Following high profile legalisation in territories around the world (for example Canada, some states in the US and limited medicinal allowability in the UK), industry and financial institutions are recognizing the commercial potential of cannabis… And where there is commercial potential, there will be a demand to protect innovations made to capitalize on the market. A quick search on a global patent database indicates over 7000 granted patents which include the word cannabis, including over 1000 in Europe and UK. However, given that recreational cannabis is presently illegal in many places (for example, most places in Europe and federally in the US), can you patent something which is illegal? Additionally, since cannabis is natural and has been known since ancient times, can you patent something which is so well known?” Active companies in news today include: Nextleaf Solutions Ltd. (OTCQB: OILFF) (CSE: OILS), GW Pharmaceuticals plc (NASDAQ: GWPH), MediPharm Labs Corp. (OTCQX: MEDIF) (TSX: LABS), Canopy Growth Corporation (NASDAQ: CGC) (TSX: WEED), The Valens Company Inc. (OTCQX: VLNCF) (TSX: VLNS).

  • PATROLL Success: Defeating Low Quality Patents [Ed: Many software patents being thrown out at PTAB owing to crowdfunded challenges]

    In 2020, Unified Patents launched several strategic relationships with prior art vendors to increase the quality of the submissions for PATROLL. These vendors, Apex Standards, Techson IP, Amplified, Traindex, InQuartik, IPscreener, and now Google, have led to not only more submissions but high-quality prior art being announced against NPEs on a monthly basis.

    In 2018, there were 337 total submissions for various PATROLL contests. In 2019, that number dropped to 282. However, in 2020 that number climbed back up by nearly 40% to 389 submissions.

    [...]

    Of these 40 submissions, nearly half of them came from one or several of the prior art reports provided by the various vendors. By establishing these relationships with the vendors, it aided our searchers in finding high-quality art to defeat low-quality patents. PATROLL is just one of many tools that Unified provides in helping to improve patent quality.

  • Unified Urges Federal Circuit to Reverse Western District’s Prejudged Blanket Rule Denying Contested Stay Motions [Ed: Look what a mess Texas has made of patent law; those cowboys are the best weapon against the legitimacy of the status quo, discrediting the notion patents are about justice, innovation, etc.]

    On April 26, 2021, Unified, along with The Computer & Communications Industry Association (CCIA) and CableLabs, filed an amicus brief in re Vulcan Industrial Holdings, a petition for mandamus of a denial of a stay by Judge Albright in light of an instituted PGR (PGR2020-00065). In the brief, amicus argued Judge Albright has clearly abused his discretion by openly adopting a rule against stays that “smacks of prejudgment.” Here, Vulcan diligently filed a PGR two and a half months after the patent grant and just one and a half months after the complaint was filed, but the Court found even that aggressively early filing was dilatory, ignored the certain simplification of issues that the USPTO instituted on all claims, and applied an erroneous legal test despite clear guidance from the Federal Circuit and myriad district court rulings.

  • EPO oral proceedings by videoconference: 44 amicus curiae briefs in case G 1/21 [Ed: EPO breaks the law, then rigs the courts that decide on it. People not happy…]

    The ‘new normal’ at the EPO and more particularly plans to allow oral proceedings by videoconference even if parties don’t want it, have been leading to extensive debate over the last weeks. No less than 44 amicus curiae briefs were filed with the Enlarged Board of Appeal in case G 1/21, where the crucial referral question will be answered: “Is the conduct of oral proceedings in the form of a videoconference compatible with the right to oral proceedings as enshrined in Article 116(1) EPC if not all of the parties to the proceedings have given their consent to the conduct of oral proceedings in the form of a videoconference?”

    [...]

    In a ‘preliminary brief’, the Institute of Professional Representatives before the European Patent Office epi writes it: “considers that the question under consideration in G 1/21, concerning oral proceedings under Article 116 EPC, is very important. epi also notes that a number of questions have been raised about the operation of the EPO and the Boards of Appeal, not least in complaints to the German Constitutional Court. It is therefore, in epi’s view, essential for the European patent system to show that the Enlarged Board not only is but also appears to be a proper judicial body. (…) In Article 24(3) EPC, it is made clear that, if a member is suspected of partiality, this is a possible reason for exclusion. (…) In this respect, it is pointed out the President of the Boards of Appeal (…) and some other members of the Panel were involved in the drafting of new Article 15a RPBA and it is this involvement which gives rise to a suspicion of partiality.”

    The criticism is also voiced, in stronger words, in an anonymous brief by ‘A. Schauinsland’: “Manifest partiality of the president of the boards of appeal in case G 1/21 The president of the boards of appeal, Mr Josefsson, has decided to put himself as chair in G 1/21. The succession of facts mentioned above would impose that Mr Josefsson deports himself in G 1/21. Not only he is chairing the case, has contributed to the drafting of Art 15aRPBA2020, but at the same time he has contributed in rushing the whole affair by abiding to the bare minimum foreseen under R 115 when summoning to oral proceedings. In view of his attitude, there is not even the perception that Mr Josefsson would be not prejudiced, he actually is.”

    Apart from the preliminary document, epi also filed a ‘substantive brief’: “As explained in detail below, a thorough application of the methods of interpretation usually applied by the Enlarged Board of Appeal to construe legal provisions of the EPC leads to the conclusion that the conduct of oral proceedings by videoconference without the consent of the parties is not in conformity with Article 116 EPC: epi is therefore of the opinion that the answer to the question of law should be negative.”

  • This week in IP: Albright trial lessons revealed, Coke diversity policy on ice, Senate passes IDEA Act [Ed: A think tank of patent trolls is whitewashing a rigged court of Albright, whose sole objective is attracting patent trolls and not justice]

    On Thursday, April 29, Managing IP revealed the top lessons learned by litigators while watching Judge Alan Albright’s first four patent trials at the US District Court for the Western District of Texas.

    Albright, who took up his position at the court in 2018, has fast become the busiest judge for patent cases in the US. Last year, 855 cases were filed in his court, 124 more than in the Delaware district court, the next busiest venue.

    One of the five key lessons that lawyers have taken away is that they need to give careful thought to how they prepare (and select) their witnesses.

    Syed Fareed, partner at Baker Botts in Austin, says the first thing to note is that Albright wants witnesses to actually answer questions in cross-examinations.

    “Judge Albright is very keen on experts and witnesses answering the questions that they’re asked because the jury learns through them, and if they’re not answering the questions, they’re doing a disservice to the jury.”

    Beyond that, private practice lawyers and in-house counsel tell Managing IP that parties should understand how to approach disputes that are broken down into multiple trials, and learn how to take advantage of Albright’s approach towards dispositive motions, among other things.

  • Fed. Circ. Told Albright’s Comments ‘Smack Of Prejudgment’ [Ed: In Texas the patent law/s or the legal system was reduced to a joke; it's not about justice at all, just aggression for profit]

    Unified Patents LLC and others are urging the Federal Circuit to review Western District of Texas Judge Alan D. Albright’s refusal to pause patent cases during Patent Trial and Appeal Board reviews, saying that the judge’s statements “smack of prejudgment.”

    Filed Monday, the amici curiae brief backs Vulcan Industrial Holdings LLC’s April 15 mandamus petition arguing that Judge Albright created an “impossible barrier” for getting a stay granted after Vulcan had secured a post-grant review of Kerr Pumps Co.’s patent.

    Judge Albright said that he had based his decision on whether he could hold a trial before the PTAB issues its…

  • 04/27/2021 Universities are the most successful in patenting [Ed: Funded by the public to create private monopolies; this doesn't tell the full story and instead it misleads the public to manufacture consent for injustice]

    In 2020, a total of 7,470 patents were granted or validated by Czech and foreign entities by the Industrial Property Office of the Czech Republic (IPO CR). Foreign applicants held 93% of them, and the remaining 7% belonged to Czech entities, that is, 525 patents.

    Among the foreign applicants, entities from Germany have long dominated, with 1,838 patents validated or granted in 2020. The United States of America ranked second with 1,304 patents. Among the Czech applicants who were patented by the Industrial Property Office of the Czech Republic, companies have long dominated. Last year, they obtained half of all patents granted to Czech applicants. This is followed by public universities that have obtained less than a third of the domestic patents and about one-tenth of the patents belong equally to public research institutions and natural persons. “Among the patents granted to companies, two-thirds of the patents granted were to domestic companies. Then the remaining third was the property of foreign companies.”Caryl Elias of Statistics Department says about CZSO’s R&D and Information Society.

  • German patent firm alliance opposes compulsory video oral proceedings [Ed: This intentionally overlooks the major blunder or scandal; the practice is illegal and the tribunal has been stacked or rigged to pretend otherwise; it’s an assault on the law itself]

    For the European Patent Office and the Boards of Appeal, oral proceedings by video conference are an opportunity to conduct hearings without health risks during coronavirus. Furthermore, they are a way to prevent a severe case backlog. Initially, however, video hearings were only possible with full party consent.

    However, at the beginning of the year, the EPO and the Boards of Appeal changed this practice. In their view, too many hearings failed to take place, as too often one party did not agree to the video conference solution.

    G 1/21 referral to Enlarged Board

    A Board of Appeal has referred the dispute Andrew AG vs. Rohde & Schwarz to the Enlarged Board of Appeal. Now, the new policy is subject to a judicial review by the EPO’s highest judicial body. The court will clarify whether compulsory oral hearings by video conference are compatible with the European Patent Convention.

    The EBO will hear the submission on 28 May 2021, via video conference. Therefore, interested members of the public can also watch via video link.

    The parties involved had until 27 April to submit comments on the much-debated issue. A total of 22 companies, law firms, individuals as well as professional and industrial associations used the opportunity. In addition to well-known corporations like Bayer, Siemens, BASF, Philips and Hoffmann La Roche, various patent attorney associations also filed amicus curiae briefs.

    Among them are the associations of European, German and Swiss patent attorneys. For example, the Patentanwaltskammer (Chamber of Patent Attorneys), BDPA (Federal Association of Patent Attorneys), Vespa, the Institute of Professional Representatives before the European Patent Office (epi) and the European Federation of Intellectual Property Agents in Industry (FEMIPI).

    Numerous patent attorney firms also submitted comments, including Christian Menges from Munich-based firm Diehl & Partner, and French firm Plasseraud.

  • Clean energy patenting is outpacing fossil fuels, but experts warn it’s not enough [Ed: Well, patents do not solve climate problems and this EPO propaganda in the form of puff pieces distracts and misleads the public for greenwashing purposes of a deeply corrupt institution

    A new report from the International Energy Agency and the European Patent Office tracks the upward march of clean energy patent applications worldwide — and warns that it’s not enough.

    Driving the news: The report shows a resumption in clean energy patenting after a slump in recent years, and that innovation in these technologies is outpacing fossil fuel-related patenting.

    Why it matters: While aggressively deploying existing tech is a huge part of the climate puzzle, the report says that significant evolution and invention is also needed.

  • Osteopore collars European patent for next generation bone regenerative implant technology

    The patent EP 3218019 A4 covers Osteopore’s process which involves combining a soluble magnesium salt filler with a suitable polymer to produce “smart” 3D biomimetic scaffolds without solvents or heat.

  • Taking Advantage of the New Purple Book Patent Requirements for Biologics [Ed: Completely missing the point and the societal harm of such patents]

    New federal legislation will take effect this year that will require a reference product sponsor to submit to the FDA a list of any patents identified to a biosimilar applicant during the patent dance. The FDA is required to list these patents in the Purple Book. Small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs)—and others in the industry—can take advantage of this new source of information by using it to identify (i) potential partnerships for licensing of existing IP; (ii) targets for IPRs; or (iii) design around opportunities for the development of new technology.

    The Consolidated Appropriations Act was signed into law on December 27, 2020. While perhaps most newsworthy for its provisions related to COVID-19 relief and spending, the Consolidated Appropriations Act (the longest bill ever passed by Congress) included several provisions on biosimilars. One of these provisions, Section 325 of Division BB, is directed to “Biological Product Patent Transparency.” This section requires a reference product sponsor to provide to the FDA a list of any patents identified to a biosimilar applicant as part of the patent dance (subsections (l)(3)(A) or (l)(7)), not later than 30 days after those patents were identified to the applicant. The FDA is then required to “include such information for such biological product” in a searchable, electronic format.

  • Software Patents

    • GE Video Compression patent challenged

      On April 30, 2021, continuing in the ongoing efforts in the SEP Video Codec Zone, Unified Patents filed an ex parte reexamination against U.S. Patent 6,795,583 owned by GE Video Compression LLC (GEVC). The ‘583 patent is purportedly essential to the H.265 and AV1 standards and is part of the HEVC Advance patent pool as well as SISVEL’s video codec patent pool.

    • Esmé Swindells Q&A: the future of medical software patenting [Ed: Resurgence of the old scam wherein patents on algorithms are sought by misportraying them as something “medical”]

      Covid-19 has rapidly accelerated the development and deployment of medical software as routine procedures were forced to go remote – but how can the developers of these platforms protect their intellectual property? Potter Clarkson senior associate patent attorney Esmé Swindells discusses how digital health founders can patent their inventions and her predictions for case law changes over the next five years.

      [...]

      ES: Work very closely with patent attorneys. For some of our clients we’ll have quarterly meetings and we’ll run through all of their current portfolios to see where their projects are at, but also importantly talk through other research programmes. Obviously patent attorneys know the law better, so they’ll pick up on things that might be patentable, bits of data that sound interesting.

      It’s a case of making sure, before you file your application, that you assess what the technical feature is and have data that supports this. It wouldn’t be enough in the application to just say ‘look, we’ve used this AI algorithm’, you need to demonstrate the medical technical effect.

      Data is key for getting patents through in the medical field. Something that’s obviously come out of AI is the in silico data, where algorithms are used in the drug discovery phase to target a particular disease. At the moment it’s a fine line between when you file your patent application based on in silico data and when you’re going to get in vivo data. We typically say to applicants not to solely rely on in silico data, and we try and get in vivo data before filing the main application. If you’ve got in vivo data in your application, the patent is very likely to go through to grant, whereas in silico data is unlikely to hit the sufficiency requirements at the moment.

    • Use Of Artificial Intelligence Attracts Legislative And Regulatory Attention In The E.U., U.S., And Israel [Ed: Software patents agenda and/or patent maximalism wrapped up in "hey hi" (AI) hype]

      The European Commission is proposing new legislative rules aimed to promote excellence and trust in the field of Artificial Intelligence (AI). The new proposal of EU regulation lays down: (a) harmonized rules for the use of artificial intelligence systems in the EU; (b) prohibitions of certain particularly harmful AI practices; (c) specific requirements for high-risk AI systems and obligations for operators of such systems; (d) harmonized transparency rules for AI systems intended to interact with individuals, such as emotion recognition systems, biometric categorization systems, and AI systems used to generate or manipulate image, audio or video content; and (e) rules on market monitoring and surveillance.

      The proposal’s declared purpose is to lay down a balanced and proportionate regulatory approach between the minimal requirements to address the risks and problems linked to AI, without unduly constraining or hindering technological development or otherwise disproportionately increasing the cost of placing AI solutions on the market.

      Meanwhile, in the United States, the Federal Trade Commission has offered business guidance on AI and algorithms, and how companies can manage the consumer protection risks of AI and algorithms. The FTC emphasizes that the use of AI tools should be transparent, explainable, fair, and empirically sound while fostering accountability. The FTC says that the use of AI technology to make predictions, recommendations, or decisions has great potential to improve welfare and productivity. However, it also presents risks, such as the potential for unfair or discriminatory outcomes or the perpetuation of existing socioeconomic disparities.

• Trademarks

  • Amazon offers IP Accelerator to Canadian SMB owners [Ed: Amazon trying to distract from its role in trademark dilution]

    Amazon has launched its Intellectual Property Accelerator (IP Accelerator) programme for small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) in Canada.

    IP Accelerator will help SMBs secure trademarks and protect their brands in Amazon’s stores and in the wider marketplace.

    The programme connects sellers directly to a network of participating Canadian law firms, including Bereskin and Parr, Clancy PC, JZC Intellectual Property Law, Brouillette Legal, Chari Prenol Slaney and Turco, Kestenberg Siegal Lipkus, Palmer IP, and Ridout and Maybee.

  • Amazon Launches IP Accelerator in Canada to Help Small Businesses Secure a Trademark and Protect Their Brands

    Today, Amazon launched the Intellectual Property Accelerator (IP Accelerator) in Canada, making it easier and more cost effective for small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) to obtain trademarks, protect their brands and tackle infringing goods both in Amazon’s stores and the broader marketplace.

  • A titanic appeal sunk by an ice cube; miniscule use supports an EU registration and UK common law rights

    Don’t be fooled: decision O/050/21 is not just another unsuccessful appeal to the UK Appointed Person (approximately 85% of such appeals are unsuccessful). Underlying the decision of the UK IPO O/315/20 are miniscule levels of use that can support a UK passing off claim and be used to maintain an EU trade mark registration, which should cause concern for anyone trying to clear a mark in the UK.

    Also, while in most cases where both registered and unregistered rights are pleaded, the decision on unregistered rights follows the decision on registered right, this decision did not follow that pattern.

    Belfast Gin Distillery Limited (Belfast Gin) registered the mark ‘Titanic Gin’ in relation to spirits and liquors and the service of distillery services. Danny Boy Label LLP (Danny Boy) applied to invalidate this registration based on a prior European registration of the mark TITANIC for ‘alcoholic beverages (except beer)’ and that the use of the mark would be contrary to the law of passing off. Belfast Gin put Danny Boy to proof of use, as the earlier registration was more than five years old at the date of the claim.

    It was not disputed that Danny Boy made genuine use if its mark, at least in relation to whisky, until 2011. At that point, the distillery supplying Danny Boy closed and Danny Boy had tried but failed to find an alternative supplier.

• Copyrights

  • Go forth and reimplement your APIs: the April 5th Supreme Court judgment in Google v. Oracle

    In 2010, when Oracle took over the failing Sun Microsystems and sued Google for USD 9 billion for copying parts of the Java API into Android, to many observers the very notion of copyrighting APIs was a novelty, if not purely absurd. Application Programming Interfaces could be likened to virtual terminals allowing programs to interact with each other. For languages like Java, this is crucial: they are only valuable if many programmers can freely use and improve them, and one cannot implement a language without the APIs. For this reason, Sun had taken no issue with Apache reimplementing Java and was similarly fine distributing for free its own open-source implementation.

    However, what may have been fundamental to software people, proved quite difficult to explain to lawyers. In his 2016 testimony in the Northern District of California, former Sun CEO Jonathan Schwartz attempted the following analogy: it was like having restaurants fight over rights to an arrangement of hamburgers on a breakfast menu, instead of competing on the product. Judge Alsup, despite having been a programmer himself, admitted the witness was making no sense at all.

    By the time Schwartz immortalized himself with the apparent belief that hamburgers belonged on breakfast menus, Oracle’s campaign had already been waged for four years – since the initial suit in 2010, it had seen a loss on grounds of patents, a loss on copyrightability, then a staggering win on copyrightability on appeal and now was being waged on the aspect of fair use. The jury sided with Google. The Federal Court again reversed on appeal, noting that verbatim copying of others’ work, to use it for the same purpose of function in a competing product, could not be deemed fair. The Supreme Court, already having refused once to hear the case after Oracle’s first successful appeal, this time granted certiorari to rule on the aspect of fair use.

  • More Fireworks in the Copyright World

    The US District Court for the Western District of Pennsylvania issued an injunction, on March 11, 2021, in PYROTECHNICS MANAGEMENT, INC. v. XFX PYROTECHNICS LLC and FIRETEK regarding the copyright protection of “command codes” in a fireworks system.

    Pyrotechnics Management filed suit July 24, 2019, alleging copyright infringement, tortious interference with prospective contractual relations, and unfair competition. fireTEK filed a motion to dismiss on October 15, 2019, and the motion was denied on October 15, 2019. Then, Pyrotechnics filed for an injunction.

    Pyrotechnics makes and sells digital pyrotechnics firing systems used to create complex fireworks displays, under the brand name “FireOne.” Those products incorporate the command and control protocols.