Linux has been around for 30 years, beginning back in 1991. Yes, it’s that old, and it did make history. If you are interested in the history of some of the major Linux distros, here it is in a nutshell – the history of various Linux distros, like Ubuntu, Fedora, REHL, Linux Mint, Slackware, etc. Finally learn more about why they were created and what makes each different.
Note: As there are plenty of distros out there, we are only focusing on a few major distros.
Google has fixed a bug in Chrome OS version 91.0.4472.165 that surfaced on Monday and prevented some users from being able to login to their systems.
Chrome OS downloads updates automatically but doesn't apply them until reboot, so only those who restarted their Chromebooks to ingest the force-fed broken update were affected.
Earlier this week, the internet titan on its Google Workplace status page said, "Our engineering team has identified an issue on Chrome OS 91.0.4472.165. The rollout of this version was halted."
As a workaround for those bitten by the bug, Google advised users: to "powerwash" their Chrome OS devices back to factory settings; to rollback the Chrome OS device to a previous version via USB; or to remove the affected account and add the account back to the device. All three mitigations, however, clear local data on the device.
The big news you've probably heard. Valve have announced their handheld console/PC, The Steam Deck. I take a look and discuss a few things.
This past week were the initial Linux benchmarks of the Ryzen 9 5900HX with the ASUS ROG Strix G15 laptop. Ubuntu was used as the default test platform as usual given its popularity and arguably the most relevant Linux distribution to use given that it's the most common Linux distribution at the moment for preloads on laptops by multiple vendors. In any case, as usual many users were quick to say "but Arch Linux!" as if it was going to make a dramatic difference in my findings. Well, here are some Ubuntu 21.04 versus Arch Linux benchmarks on that AMD Advantage laptop.
Learn how systemd targets work in Linux.
AutoKey is a scripting application for Linux. It lets you automate repetitive and trivial operations on your computer so you can perform them quickly and efficiently.
Some of the tasks where AutoKey serves well include text expansion, correcting typos, launching programs, and inserting boilerplate texts. Besides, you can also use it to run custom scripts to automate complex system actions on your machine.
That said, though, AutoKey can be intimidating to its first-time users. To this end, here's a guide to help you install, set up, and use AutoKey on Linux.
Running a playbook in a chroot or container is not supported by Ansible, but I have invented a good workaround to do it anyway.
The first step is to install Mitogen for Ansible (ansible-mitogen in Debian) and then configure ansible.cfg to use it...
When trying out a new Linux distribution, one of the first things you need to familiarize yourself with is the system’s package manager. Arch Linux and other Arch-based distros, like Manjaro, use pacman to install or update packages, remove software, and keep the system up to date. Pacman isn’t related to the classic video game, rather just an acronym of package manager.
In this guide, you’ll learn how to use pacman on Arch Linux, Manjaro, and other distros based on Arch. It works the same across any of them. Read on to master pacman with commands to install packages, remove packages, update the system, etc.
Tar command in Linux is used to archive files and folder into a single archived compressed file. Linux admins use tar command to perform day to day backup and restoration tasks. In other words, we can say that tar command is a command line utility which is used to archive important files and folders of a Linux system and later we can extract files and folders from that archive for restoration purpose.
If you have a development background, then you must be aware of many development tools. When you individually develop a project through any programming language, you’re either comfortable with a command-line interface (terminal) or GUI tools. But what if you’re working with the team members, it is hard to send chunks of programs to all team members individually. There is also a size limit of files on different platforms that don’t allow the user to send more than the described size.
It is hard to collaborate when the project is too large and needs modification all the time. For this, you need a distributed version control system that helps you collaborate with team members worldwide. It is good to use a distributed version control system for small and large software projects. Each of the team members will get full access to the complete repository on the local system, and they can work offline.
In this tutorial, we will show you how to install RabbitMQ on AlmaLinux 8. For those of you who didn’t know, RabbitMQ is open-source message-broker software built around Advanced Message Queuing Protocol (AMQP) protocol. RabbitMQ can be easily deployed in a distributed and federated configurations to meet high-scale, high-availability requirements.
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 installation of the RabbitMQ on AlmaLinux 8. You can follow the same instructions for Rocky Linux.
Observer is a cyberpunk horror game developed by Bloober Team and published by Aspyr. It was released on Windows, PS4, and Xbox in 2017, and later on, it came to Linux. In this guide, we’ll show you how to play it on Linux.
Orwell is a simulation video game by Osmotic Studios. In the game, the player assumes the role of an operative and monitors security cameras for national security threats. Here’s how to play it on Linux.
reveal.js is an open-source HTML presentation framework. It’s a tool that enables anyone with a web browser to create fully-featured and beautiful presentations for free.
Presentations made with reveal.js are built on open web technologies. That means anything you can do on the web, you can do in your presentation. Change styles with CSS, include an external web page using an <iframe> or add your own custom behavior using our JavaScript API.
So in these times of pandemic, this tool can be quite useful for many students and teachers.
Linux is widely known among enthusiasts for the productivity and the control it offers to its users. However, one of the things that often goes unnoticed is its flexibility in terms of customizations.
Speaking of customizations, the wallpaper is a simple yet fundamental aspect of the Linux desktop that can make or break its aesthetics. Finding the perfect wallpaper manually can be tough. So why not let a simple script take the pain away? Let's find out more about this script in detail.
Sed is a built-in Linux tool for text manipulation. The term sed stands for “stream editor”. Despite the name, sed isn’t a text editor by itself. Rather, it takes text as input, performs various text modifications according to instructions, and prints the output.
This guide will demonstrate how to use sed to delete a line from a text.
The Open System Interconnection (OSI) model conceptually illustrates seven abstraction layers of communication framework that devices use for interoperability over the network. In the 1980s, the model was a globally accepted standard framework for network communication.
The model defines a set of rules and regulations required to render interoperability between different software and devices.
It was introduced by the Internet Organisation of Standards in 1984 when computer networking was only becoming a new concept. Even though the internet these days is based on a simpler networking model, TCP/IP. The OSI 7-layer model is still used to visualize the basic essential networking architecture and troubleshoot problems.
A pod can also have one or more containers, one of which is the application container, and the others are the init container, which halts after it completes a job or the application container is ready to perform its function, and the sidecar container, which is affixed to the primary application container. A container or pod will not always leave due to an application failure. In scenarios like this, you will need to restart your Kubernetes Pod explicitly. In this guide, you will explore how to force pods in a deployment to restart using several ways.
When sticking to Wine recommendations of maintaining separate prefixes per-application, a lot of system files get duplicated for each game/application and in turn leading to significant bloat. With the current state of Wine it can mean hundreds of megabytes per prefix in duplicated files. But proposed reflink patches for Wine are aiming to cut down on this severe bloat.
Developer Alex Xu sent out a set of patches today that would implement Reflink support within Wine. Alex explained, " With a MinGW build of Wine without Mono or Gecko, new 32-bit prefixes are over 150 MB, and new 64-bit prefixes are over 300 MB. The vast majority of these files are byte-for-byte identical to Wine's central DLL copies...When reflink is supported by the underlying filesystem, new Wine prefix sizes with Mono and Gecko disabled are reduced to less than 1 MB. The resulting Wine prefix is byte-for-byte identical to one created without reflink, but occupies less space on disk. "
Control Ultimate Edition is an adventurous game packed with actions and thrillers. The developers of the game “Remedy Entertainment” successfully marked the title of the game in gaming publications and were nominated for numerous video game awards. Control Ultimate Edition is available on the platform across Ps4/5, Xbox Series X/One, Epic Games Stores, Pc, and Steam.
#gnu #linux not falling behind. https://www.gadgetheadline.com/play-control-ultimate-edition-on-linux-how-to/
Smartphones are basically pocket-sized computers running mobile-friendly operating systems. And folks who want to run a free and open source GNU/Linux distribution on their phones get the advantages of a hackable, customizable OS that can run desktop Linux applications as well as mobile apps.
But the selection of mobile-optimized Linux apps is still rather small, which is why some folks have been using tools like Anbox to run Android applications on Linux phones. But now there’s a new work-in-progress alternative to Anbox called WayDroid which offers smoother performance on supported devices.
I found an interesting Russian site and Telegram channel where newbies QA try to get some experience in QA process for free. Its name is Ã¥þüÃÂÃâ¡ÃºÃ¸ (Hamsters). You can ask admins to create a group for testing of anything and if someone want they will test your software (mobile, web, desktop or something) for you. I asked there if someone want to test LibreOffice and many people said yes. So, today we have the group of Russian newbies QA who are triaging bug reports in our Bugzilla. We have a goal - to have minimal number of unconfirmed bug reports in end of August 2021 as possibly.
I am happy to announce that the release 1.0.3 of the GNU Health Personal Health Record (PHR) component, MyGNUHealth.
This release updates the medical genetics domain, with the latest human natural variant dataset based on UniProt Consortium (release 2021_03 of June 02 2021).
The fourteenth release of littler as a CRAN package just landed, following in the now fifteen year history (!!) as a package started by Jeff in 2006, and joined by me a few weeks later.
littler is the first command-line interface for R as it predates Rscript. It allows for piping as well for shebang scripting via #!, uses command-line arguments more consistently and still starts faster. It also always loaded the methods package which Rscript only started to do in recent years.
littler lives on Linux and Unix, has its difficulties on macOS due to yet-another-braindeadedness there (who ever thought case-insensitive filesystems as a default were a good idea?) and simply does not exist on Windows (yet – the build system could be extended – see RInside for an existence proof, and volunteers are welcome!). See the FAQ vignette on how to add it to your PATH.
When you’re acquainted with Python, you’re probably aware that the Increment and Decrement expressions (both before and after) aren’t supported. Python was created to be understandable and consistent. In linguistics having ++ and — expressions, a beginner programmer frequently makes the mistake of confusing the distinctions among increment/decrement expressions, post and pre (both in priority and return value). In comparison to many other programming languages, basic increment and decrement expressions are not quite as necessary. In this tutorial, we will learn about the increment by 1 operator in Python code. Make sure you must have a python tool installed and configured on your system. Hence, we have installed the Spyder Python tool on our system.
While contrasting variables, it’s important to examine both the contents and respective datatypes. Whenever the values of the two inputs differ, the statement is satisfied. Throughout Python, we may use “!=” or “is not” to do not equal operations. Whenever the values of any two Python variables or operands supplied on either side of the not equal operator are not equal, it must return true, else false. Many structured query languages might grumble about matching various types since Python is flexibly yet tightly typed. The not equal operator must return “True” whenever the values provided in two variables are the same; however, they are of various types. Let’s have some examples to see the working of python Not equal operator. First of all, you must ensure that your system has a python tool installed and configured. Launch your installed python tool to start working. At the time of implementing this article, we have been working on the Spyder Python tool.
In any programming or scripting language, the loop is a quintessential feature. Loops are generally to perform a repetitive task until a certain condition is met. Bash is a powerful scripting language that supports all the major features of a scripting language (including loops).
This guide demonstrates one-line for loops in Bash.
Strstr() in the C language is a built-in function. The functionality of strstr can be understandable through the manual present in the Ubuntu terminal if you are working on Ubuntu. Then the terminal will show you the guide of strstr and how it works.
The C language of programming has a facility to split a string using the function strtok. This is done through a delimiter. It is an easy task that uses a pointer token. A string that is taken as input is divided into small strings called tokens. ‘S’ is the name that indicates that in “strtok”, str stands for the string, and “tok” stands for the token. So this function splits the string into tons of tokens. We have highlighted some examples in this tutorial that will help you out understand this concept.
The way to merge two or more strings is called string concatenation. It is a very common task for any programming language. Some programming languages use a specific operator, some programming languages use the built-in function, and some programming languages use both operator and built-in function to combine string values. The string concatenation can be done by using the ‘+’ operator and different types of built-in functions in C++. The uses of the ‘+’ operator and different built-in functions to combine strings in C++ have been explained in this tutorial.
An array is a group of elements of the same data type. Many functions are performed on arrays either in the main program or outside it, in the functions. In C++, in the case of functions, we need to pass them. This is done via parameters as arguments. These arguments can be of different ways, either sizeable arrays or through the pointer array. In this tutorial, we will cover some major aspects of array transfer using different parameters of the functions.
The way to cut any portion from a string is called a sub-string. The substr() function exists in C++ to generate a new string by cutting a particular portion from a string. The string.h library file is required to include to use this function. This function has two arguments. The first argument contains the starting position of the new string, and the second argument contains the length of the string. The way to use the substr() function in C++ has been explained in this tutorial.
Different built-in functions exist in C++ to work with the string data. The find_first_of() function is used to find the location of the first occurrence of the specified character. This function returns the position of the first occurrence of the string that will be given as the argument value of this function. Different uses of this function for searching the string in C++ have been explained in this tutorial.
Xiaomi entered the competitive Chinese mobile phone market in 2010 with MIUI, an Android-based smartphone software product which it offered for free. By 2017, it had achieved global recognition as a leading smartphone manufacturer and reached US$15 billion in revenue. Today, Xiaomi is the world’s largest Internet-of-Things (IoT) firm and by the end of 2020 had revenues exceeding US$37 billion.
The Visa Foundation and Village Capital - the world's largest organization supporting early-stage startups - announced the 20 startups selected for their Future of Food in Latin America 2021 program .
The call sought entrepreneurs who are building high-growth projects in the agritech and foodtech sectors and received 117 applications from 15 countries in the region such as: Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guatemala , Mexico, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, Saint Lucia and Uruguay.
These are the selected ventures:
Uri Schor, a resident of Zichron Yaakov, is a family man, software developer, surfer and mountain biker. In recent years he has been devoting a considerable amount of his time to an issue that upsets him: public access to the beach at Kibbutz Ma’agan Michael. Schor is the beach’s freedom fighter. A one-man guerilla unit.
He is incredibly organized. He has every document needed to prove the injustice he says is being committed there. He has a mountain of correspondence with the authorities, government ministries and law enforcement agencies. The paperwork could probably cover Israel’s more than 190 kilometers of shoreline. But while there still is no solution, Schor has endless patience. He smiles and explains why all the agencies involved have failed to protect the beach and allow free access to the public.
A Smurf attack is a type of Denial-of-Service Attack (DOS) where an attacker exploits internet control message protocol (ICMP) packets. The attack surfaces when an attacker sends a massive flood of spoofed ICMP echo_request packets to the target victim.
This article will learn about how a Smurf attack is executed and how much damage a Smurf attack can cause to a network. The article will also describe preventive measures against a Smurf attack.
A data link layer acts as a medium for communication between two directly connected hosts. At the sending front, it transforms the data stream into signals bit by bit and transfers it to the hardware. On the contrary, as a receiver, it receives data in the shape of electrical signals and transforms them into an identifiable frame.
MAC can be classified as a sublayer of the data link layer that is accountable for physical addressing. MAC address is a unique address for a network adapter allocated by the manufactures for transmitting data to the destination host. If a device has several network adapters i.e., Ethernet, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, etc., there would be different MAC addresses for each standard.
In this article, you’ll learn how this sublayer gets manipulated to execute the MAC flooding attack and how we can prevent the attack from happening.
Microsoft has warned customers about a new crypto mining malware that can steal credentials, remove security controls, spread via emails and ultimately drop more tools for human-operated activity.
The BLAKE3 cryotpgraphic hash function that was announced last year and based on its predecessor BLAKE2 has now reached version 1.0 for its official/reference software implementation. BLAKE3 continues to be much faster than BLAKE2 while also being much faster than the likes of SHA-1/SHA--2/SHA-3 and even MD5 while being more secure.
We have become all too accustomed – even desensitized – to reading stories of data breaches, misuse and evocative privacy debates. Malicious cyberattacks with the goal of harvesting information are now par for the course. According to the HIPAA Journal, 62 healthcare-focused data breaches occurred in April of this year alone, exposing the contents of 2.5 million medical records – a number that is historically high but unfortunately eye level with prior months. Combined with the observable and frightening rise in ransomware attacks targeting the sector, the risk to patient data is at an all-time high and healthcare organizations are chronically ill-prepared to combat it. So, it is easy to appreciate the legitimate paranoia that data custodians have towards data management and, along with the restrictions imposed by legislation, the self-imposed restrictive governance severely limiting access to production data.
Carine Kanimba’s cell number reportedly on the list of targets tied to NSO Group; Rwanda claims it does not possess the technical capability to use such software
The future of Minneapolis’ Lake Street will be powered in part by solar.
As business and building owners rebuild in the wake of last year’s civil unrest after the police killing of George Floyd, dozens are seeking public funding for solar projects, including some designed to incorporate racial equity goals.
Thirty-four property owners have been awarded money for solar installations through the city’s Green Cost Share program. Another dozen program applicants are receiving money for energy efficiency upgrades.
In a recent case, Trimble Inc. v. PerDiemCo LLC, No. 2019-2164 (May 12, 2021), the Federal Circuit found that, sometimes, threatening a patent infringement action, or entering extensive patent license negotiations prior to filing suit, with a company having a presence in a particular state could subject you to jurisdiction in that state, even if you are located elsewhere.
On one hand, this could provide a retailer with the ability to obtain declaratory judgment jurisdiction in a preferred home forum when the retailer is on the receiving end of infringement threats from a patent owner. On the other hand, this means that retailers should be aware of their communications regarding their own patents, and take care not to inadvertently subject themselves to a suit by a target alleging non-infringement in an unwanted jurisdiction.
Chemours is a 2015 spin-off from Du Pont. Its patents at issues here relate to a polymer having a high melt flow to allow high-speed extrusion to cover electrical wires. U.S. Patent Nos. 7,122,609 and 8,076,431. The claims require a standardized melt flow rate range: 30€±3 g/10 min along with other physical properties.
Daikin petitioned for inter partes review, and the PTAB agreed that the claims were invalid as obvious based upon a single prior art reference, U.S. Patent No. 6,541,588 (“Kaulbach”). Judge Dyk’s dissenting opinion in this case explains that “[t]he only material difference between [Chemours] claim 1 and Kaulbach is that Kaulbach discloses (in Sample A11) a melt flow rate of 24 g/10 min, slightly lower than 27 g/10 min, the lower bound of the 30 €± 3 g/10 min rate claimed in claim 1 of the ’609 patent.” Actually, Kaulbach goes even further and expreslly discloses a melt flow rate of “15 g/10 min or greater” and includes the example of 24 g/10 min MFR.
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Market Share vs Sales Numbers: The Board also held that market share evidence (rather than merely sales numbers) is required for a showing of commercial success. The Federal Circuit disagreed. “[M]arket share data, though potentially useful, is not required to show commercial success.”
Blocking Patents: Still on Commercial Success, the Board also rejected the commercial success argument after finding that Chemours patents at issue blocked market competition — so that any commercial success would be due to the patent’s existence rather than the innovation’s marketability. On appeal, the Federal Circuit rejected this conclusion also as contrary to law, finding that the Board totally misapplied the blocking patent doctrine.
The UK will remain a key venue for biopharma patent litigants even when the UPC is up and running, argues IAM life sciences editor Adam Houldsworth. In fact, the English courts may acquire a new strategic significance working in parallel with the new system
The patent covers the company's improved breast cancer screening analysis and is effective across 25 European countries
If you think patents are all about protecting something “technical” or something only a scientist or engineer could appreciate, you are mistaken. Patents can protect how things look as well as how they work. If you want to protect how something works, you need a Utility Patent. If you want to protect how something looks, you need a Design Patent.
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In deciding which type of patent is right for you, be sure to work with a patent attorney who has written, prosecuted, and litigated both types, so you too can independently assess the benefits/downsides of both.
The US president’s executive order on antitrust law and support for a COVID IP waiver don’t inspire confidence, but a USPTO head nomination will reveal more
A Texas jury next week is set to consider whether Verizon's LTE network services infringe a wireless patent developed by a University of Florida professor.
Nearly four years after Mobility Workx LLC filed suit, Verizon Communications Inc. and its affiliates will tell the jury on Monday that its cellular networks do not infringe a 2007 patent registered to UF professor Sumi Helal and an engineer, both of whom run Mobility Workx.
The patent, covering a method of imitating mobile communications in networks, is the sole patent remaining out of the three Mobility Workx accused Verizon of infringing. One was dropped after...
As part of the EPO's continuous dialogue with users and user associations across all sectors, the latest in a series of high-level meetings with top applicants, small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs) and high-growth firms (HGFs) took place online on Wednesday 21 July. To date, ten meetings have taken place with key applicants from Asia, Europe and the US, including four of the top ten applicants at the EPO and three SMEs. Several of the meetings were hosted by EPO President António Campinos and further meetings are planned in the course of the year, including with user associations.
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Finally, applicants expressed an interest in technical follow-up meetings as well as holding high-level meetings on an annual basis. The meetings, which are set to take place frequently with applicants from all sectors, supplement the Office's comprehensive outreach programme, which includes further regular exchanges with user groups such as epi, Business Europe, SACEPO and AIPPI, among others. The widespread use of online meeting platforms and tools has allowed the EPO to increase its dialogue with its stakeholders, and the Office will explore how to capitalise on the advantages of hybrid meeting environments further as it heads towards a new normal.
Over the past decade, Congress and the courts have made changes that have improved the patent system and encouraged American leadership in innovation. With our nation in a period of economic recovery, now is not the time to threaten that important progress.
Expansionists who claim that the U.S. needs more and stronger intellectual property are fond of arguing that patents convey constitutionally protected property that must receive treatment equal to that of tangible property. This has become a favorite talking point in their efforts to undo the positive changes made over the last decade by Congress and the Supreme Court. However, patents are not of the same quality and don’t have the same attributes as traditional property.
Adherents of this view equate patents with the deeds that convey ownership of real property. Just as a deed describes the boundaries of a parcel of land and transfers rights to the landowner, they argue that a patent defines the metes and bounds of an invention and grants ownership rights to the inventor or the inventor’s assignee. This “property equivalence” argument has been at the heart of dozens of petitions to the Supreme Court seeking to challenge the inter partes review (IPR) process, which allows the Patent Office to review patents to determine whether they should have been issued. The expansionist view is that patent rights should be held inviolate and that – like landowners – patent holders deserve to enjoy “quiet title” to their inventions.
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To ensure clear boundaries, the written description requirement would need to be strictly enforced by USPTO. To prevent patentees from redrawing the boundaries of their property, patent prosecution would also need to be reformed to limit continuation practice and to bring a reliable, finite end point to the patenting process.
Patent quality would also need to be substantially improved. An effective property regime doesn’t require that every grant of rights be valid, but it does require a vastly lower invalidity rate than that of the current system. This would require increasing fees, devoting substantially more than 19 hours for examination, and applying significantly more stringent standards to ensure the boundary lines are clear.
There would also be a need to create an effective means of identifying ownership interests – similar to the recordation system for real property – that requires assignments and perhaps FRAND licensing obligations (which are like liens) to be recorded and made publicly available. A host of other real property doctrines – from nuisance to adverse possession to trespass by necessity – would also need to be incorporated into this system.
The resulting regime is what treating patents “like real property” would actually look like. I suspect that patent expansionists would find such a regime highly disadvantageous and supremely objectionable, but I’d be happy to be proved wrong. Either way, if they want their arguments to hold any water, those who claim patents should be treated like real property should be championing reforms to make the patent system work a lot more like a property system – and right now, they aren’t.
As a trainee patent attorney Claire has worked with a range of clients in the biotechnology and pharmaceutical areas, on applications related to a broad range of technologies, including antibodies, industrial biotechnology, gene therapies, RNA therapies, new chemical entities and drug repurposing.
“How much data do I need to file a patent application?” This is a question we get asked by many clients in the biotechnology and pharmaceutical field. In particular, this has been a more pressing concern during the pandemic as many companies had to restrict the number of scientists working in laboratories to allow social distancing. Some projects progressed a little slower than planned, delaying data read- outs.
Supporting an invention with sufficient data is however critical when applying for a patent at the European Patent Office (EPO), specifically in the biotech field and in the pharmaceutical field. This is particularly important when complying with the requirements for inventive step and sufficiency under European practice. An Examiner will assess whether it is plausible that the invention performs as claimed and whether the technical problem that the invention is said to solve, is actually solved. The invention must be rendered plausible at the priority date of the application, and in the life sciences field, data is usually required to demonstrate this.
Neurim Pharmaceuticals has launched a second round of litigation against two Viatris Inc. subsidiaries to try and pull a generic version of its insomnia medication off the market, despite a ruling from the European Patent Office last year that revoked the company's parent patent.
The High Court claim, which became newly public on July 15, focuses on a so-called divisional patent of the parent, for a melatonin-based insomnia drug. While the parent patent was revoked by the EPO back in 2019, the descendant patent is still in force, according to the new claim.
The US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit found that targeted advertising is still an abstract idea and that a system providing targeted advertising must utilize something more than generic features and routine functions to be eligible for patent protection. Free Stream Media Corp. v. Alphonso Inc., Case No. 19-1506 (Fed. Cir. May 11, 2021) (Reyna, J.)
Free Stream Media, d.b.a. Samba, owns a patent directed to “a system providing a mobile phone user with targeted information (i.e., advertisements) that is deemed relevant to the user based on data gathered from the user’s television.” The system has three main components: (1) a networked device (e.g., a smart TV) that collects primary data, including program information, location, weather information or identification information; (2) a client device (e.g., a mobile device) on which applications run and advertisements may be shown; and (3) a relevancy-matching server that uses the primary data to select advertisement or other targeted data based on a relevancy factor associated with the user. Specifically, the relevancy-matching server “may also be configured to render the targeted data to the user through the networked device and/or the sandboxed application of the client device.”
