Hello! Welcome to this week's Linux Roundup.
We had another wonderful week in the world of Linux releases with the releases of MX Linux 21 RC1, Feren OS 2021.10, Debian 11.1, and Manjaro 21.1.5.
A new Linux-based alternative to Windows 11 has shown up online right at the time of the release of Microsoft’s desktop OS. Dubbed as Windowsfx 11, it is an alternate version of Windows that brings several Windows 11 design elements to your PC.
Now, I know that there are a few apps that can add the Windows 11 Start Menu to older versions of Windows, Windowsfx 11 not only adds the Start Menu but also the new Taskbar with centered icons, the translucent theme of Windows 11, dark mode, and various other features to your older PC. It even adds a Cortana-like virtual assistant called Helloa. You can check out the demo video below to get an idea about how it will look like on your system.
Last week, Valve released a teardown video showcasing the Steam Deck internals. This is almost becoming a trend, as Sony did something quite similar before they released the PS5 to the public.
The main difference with Sony here is that Valve starts by saying that “this is your device, you are free to do whatever you want with it, including opening it.” while they do not recommend you do for numerous reasons. Still, that feels so unusual to hear that it’s a breath of fresh air. And some journalists wonder why people like Valve…
In today’s episode we provide a way to enable your "switch screens" key on your Ubuntu MATE laptop.
For awhile, I've talked about potentially making a deployment script for my Xmonad/Emacs desktop. The project got put on hold several times, but now it's time to get this thing released. I've spent a few days this week working out some of the bugs, and I think it's time to go public with the script....but this thing is still very much BETA software. Not recommended for installation on production machines.
So things continue to look quite normal, and it looks like the rough patch (hah!) we had early in the release is all behind us.
Knock wood.
The commit stats look normal for an rc5, and the diffstat is fairly regular too. We had more arch updates than perhaps is common, with almost as many lines of diffs in architecture code as there is in drivers. Admittedly some of that "architecture" code ends up being devicetree updates, so some of it could be attributed to driver code, but that's not how our source tree is laid out..
Outside of arch code (x86, powerpc, arm, arm64) and drivers (mainly gpu, networking and usb), we have a smattering of other changes: 9p and ksmbd, core networking, and some perf tooling updates. And misc smaller random stuff.
Shortlog appended for more of a flavor for the details. Please do give this a whirl,
Linus
Phoronix Test Suite 10.6.1 was released today with various improvements for our cross-platform, open-source, fully-automated benchmarking software.
Among the changes that built up for Phoronix Test Suite 10.6 include the following highlights:
Linux is open-source software based on the Linux kernel. Other systems, namely Microsoft and Apple, come in one complete version. In contrast, Linux can adapt to satisfy the needs of the user through the addition of various free apps.
Distributions, also known as distros, are free operating systems originating from the Linux kernel that you can install on your PC or mobile device. A distro often incorporates a package management system, which facilitates speedy installation, configuration, and necessary upgrades. This does away with the process of having to find software online and manually install it on your Microsoft or Apple device.
A Linux distro contains the Linux kernel and a variety of software, including GNU tools, a window system and manager, and a desktop environment. These elements combine to produce a software package that is adaptable and allows users to install the specific apps and operating systems that they need.
Sometimes finding the perfect linux distro that meets your needs it's not that easy as you have to test it before you install it, downloading and testing the distro takes a lot of time especially when Linux is your main OS and you are trying to switch to something that works.
Setting up Appwrite on any Operating System, or Kernel is pretty easy. Here we are going to go through an easy and simple method to setup Appwrite on a Linux Kernel. Well I use Ubuntu Operating System, so let's get started with setting up Appwrite on Ubuntu.
Today we are looking at how to install MetaTrader 4 with the Vantage FX Broker on a Chromebook. Please follow the video/audio guide as a tutorial where we explain the process step by step and use the commands below.
There are so many way to try out Linux, Live booting, virtual machines, dual booting and they have their merits and demirits but which one is the best option to actually go with.
“The Network File System (NFS) was developed to allow machines to mount a disk partition on a remote machine as if it were a local disk. It allows for fast, seamless sharing of files across a network.” (src)
NFS does not ask for passwords, instead on the server in /etc/exports is defined what client (identified by ip-address) may access what folder.
In this tutorial, we will show you how to install FireBird on Ubuntu 20.04 LTS. For those of you who didn’t know, Firebird is a relational database offering many ANSI SQL standard features that run on Linux, Windows, and a variety of Unix platforms. Firebird supports application programs and triggers, as well as many ANSI SQL standard features. Its multi-generational design enables simultaneous OLTP (Online Transaction Processing) and OLAP (Online Analytical Processing) activities.
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 the step-by-step installation of the FireBird database on Ubuntu 20.04 (Focal Fossa). You can follow the same instructions for Ubuntu 18.04, 16.04, and any other Debian-based distribution like Linux Mint.
In this tutorial, we will show you how to install Audacity on Linux Mint 20. For those of you who didn’t know, Audacity, free and open-source audio editing, and recording software. Audacity can be used across varying platforms such as Linux, macOS, and Windows.
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 the step-by-step installation of Audacity open-source audio editing on a Linux Mint 20 (Ulyana).
Postfix is a popular Mail transfer agent(MTA) which is a part of SMTP whose full form is Simple Mail transfer protocol and Postfix function is to transfer/send mails from one server to another. Postfix is known because of its determination of routes and sending emails; it is completely free and installable on all major Unix operating systems. Around 25% of all the public servers use or run postfix on the internet.
As it is installable on all major Unix operating systems, in this article we will provide a step-by-step guide about how to install and configure Postfix on Ubuntu 20.04.
PostgreSQL, or Postgres, is a free, powerful, and open-source relational database management system developed at the University of California.
In this tutorial post, We are going to show you the steps to install PostgreSQL on Ubuntu Linux along with the pgAdmin4 web-based management tool.
This simple tutorial shows how to install the latest version of Kodi media center in Ubuntu 18.04, Ubuntu 20.04, Ubuntu 21.04, and their based systems, e.g., Linux Mint 20, Elementary OS 6 and Zorin OS 16.
Kodi, formerly XBMC, is now at version 19.2 “Matrix”. It fixed some possible crashes caused by missing timer type, missing channel icons, accessing invalid PVR channel, or switching monitors, toggling on/off HDR from Windows 10 display settings.
The big one in the release it that Kodi 19.x now is available on the Xbox, along with swap chain and HEVC DXVA2 decoder performance improvements, and 4k resolution and HDR video playback fixes. For more, see the release note.
So I decided to switch the nameservers on my fossjon.com domain over to Cloudflares service for 2 different reasons. One is that they offer more advance https reverse proxying tech and also a better dns management interface as well! I still have the domain registered with Google Domains as they offer pretty good mx email forwarding via gmail.
An experimental branch of the open implementation of WinAPI – Wine 6.19 has been released . Since the release of version 6.18 , 22 bug reports have been closed and 520 changes have been made.
Recently we wrote about the stealth assassination game HITMAN landing on GOG.com. Not specifically Linux news but interesting industry news to keep an eye on, due to the massive backlash it had and now GOG has removed it for sale. Quick note: while the game does have a Linux build ported by Feral Interactive on Steam, like the rest of Feral titles it didn't make it to GOG.
As a reminder on the issue - HITMAN is a single-player game, however it does lock quite a lot of features to do with progression behind needing an online connection. With GOG being famous for its anti-DRM stance, bringing that over did not sit well with customers and the backlash spawned well over 2,000 posts on the GOG forum.
After repeated delays it seems Mouse Hat Games have finally settled on an actual release date for Logic World. What was once called TUNG - The Ultimate Nerd Game, shall hit Early Access on October 22.
[...]
From what we've been told the Linux support is working very nicely.
Mabox Linux 21.10 refreshed iso images are ready for download. Built on the Manjaro stable branch as of 10 October 2021, it provides a bunch of improvements and fixes.
Today we are looking at Feren OS 2021.10. It comes with Linux Kernel 5.11, based on Ubuntu 20.04, KDE 5.22.5, and uses about 1GB of ram when idling. Enjoy!
In this video, we are looking at Feren OS 2021.10.
Please join us at the next regular Open NeuroFedora team meeting on Monday 11 October at 1300UTC in #fedora-neuro on IRC (Libera.chat). The meeting is a public meeting, and open for everyone to attend.
The Debian Project announced the general availability of the Debian 11.1 “Bullseye” and Debian 10.11 “Buster” as bugfix releases.
Debian doesn’t follow a fixed release schedule, and that makes it somewhat hard to know exactly when a new release will be available. Now the Debian project has announced the availability of two new versions of its operating system simultaneously.
Debian is one of the oldest GNU/Linux distributions that is still in active development. It is the basis for other Linux distributions such as Ubuntu, Kali Linux, or MX Linux.
The Debian Release Team released the first point release for the mid-August this Saturday, Debian 11 Bullseye released in.
As usual with such point releases, the update mainly fixes security problems that have accumulated since the last update, along with a few adjustments for serious problems in applications. These adjustments are only made in the point releases if no regressions are to be feared. A total of 74 bugs were fixed and 24 security problems were fixed. The details can be found in the announcement of the publication .
New month, new service pack! As always, new features and fixes have been backported from postmarketOS edge to the stable version after tough testing by our tough community members on edge.
Submitted by A release of the project Brython 3.10 (Browser Python) with a web browser-side implementation of the Python 3 programming language, allowing you to use Python instead of JavaScript to develop scripts for the Web. The project code is written in Python and is distributed under the BSD license.
While developing MiTubo I've recently felt the need of parsing HTML pages: the first problem I wanted to solve was implementing proper RSS feed detection when the user entered a website URL into MiTubo's search box, so that MiTubo would parse the site's HTML, look for <link rel="alternate"...> URLs in the HEAD section, and let the user subscribe to any video feeds found there.
A quick search in the internet did not provide a clear answer: I found a Qt HTML parser in (stalled) development, and a few other C++ or C parsers (among the latters, lexbor is the most inspiring), but all of them seem to take the approach of parsing the HTML file into a DOM tree, while I was hoping to find a lightweight SAX-like parser. Pretty much like Python's html.parser.
Anyway, I don't remember how it happened, but at a certain point I found myself looking at html.parser source code, and I was surprised to see how compact it was (apart, of course, for the long list of character references for the HTML entities!). Upon a closer look, it also appeared that the code was not making much use of Python's dynamic typing, so, I thought, maybe I could give it a try to rewrite that into a Qt class. And a few hours later QHtmlParser was born.
Elixir releases are self-contained directories containing your applications together with all dependencies and the Erlang virtual machine. Although convenient, there are unfortunately not platform-independent. Here’s how to build your application release for any Elixir version and operating system with ASDF and Docker.
Releases are almost as good as a single executable. Almost, because there are platform dependent. Personally, I love minimalism and skipping layers whenever I can. I run Fedora for my desktop so I can actually match my environment with a Fedora server and achieve one of the most effortless deployments there can be (like with Go).
I can move the releases’ files to the server with scp and restart a small systemd service. That’s how simple Elixir deployment can be if you remove anything extra.
However, keeping the same environment is not always possible. And Elixir release won’t just depend on your OS flavor. Instead, an Elixir release depends on your processor architecture and C library version (glibc package). This is because there are still system dependencies in place even though Erlang bytecode is platform-independent.
Those of us tasked with developing firmware for embedded systems have a quite a few hurdles to jump through compared to those writing for the desktop or mobile platforms. Solved problems such as code reuse or portability are simply harder. It was with considerable interest that we learnt of another approach to hardware abstraction, called Luos, which describes itself as micro-services for embedded systems.
This open source project enables deployment of distributed architectures composed of collaborating micro-services. By containerizing applications and hardware drivers, interfaces to the various components are hidden behind a consistent API. It doesn’t even matter where a resource is located, multiple services may be running on the same microcontroller, or separate ones, yet they can communicate in the same way.
Big changes are afoot in the way patent drugs are priced in Canada. At present, Canada’s Patented Medicine Prices Review Board (PMPRB), a federal agency, is responsible for setting maximum prices for patented drugs (i.e., pharmaceuticals, biologics and vaccines). The agency has been criticized for failing to rein in prices, which are higher than in some peer countries. This criticism is unfair: the tools the PMPRB was given to regulate drug prices when it was established in 1987 have become less effective over time.
Advertisement Article content To address this problem, the federal government has authorized the PMPRB to introduce new pricing regulations, now scheduled to come into force in January. We think this is the wrong strategy. Instead of relying on price regulation, Canada should engage in negotiations about drug pricing with manufacturers and our trading partners with the aim of bringing about a fairer international sharing of the burden of paying for global R&D costs.
Merck Sharp & Dohme Corp and Pfizer's Wyeth LLC subsidiary have resolved a patent dispute over their competing vaccines for preventing diseases including pneumonia and meningitis, according to a Delaware court filing.
The parties asked U.S. District Judge Richard Andrews on Tuesday to dismiss the claims with prejudice. Pfizer spokesperson Pam Eisele said in an email on Wednesday that the companies had resolved their worldwide dispute over the vaccine patents. Details of the settlement weren't immediately available.
Kenilworth, N.J.-based Merck had requested a declaratory judgment from the court in January that its Vaxneuvance vaccine for diseases caused by pneumococcus bacteria, which the U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved in July, didn't infringe three patents related to Wyeth's Prevnar vaccines. Merck's complaint said it and New York-based Wyeth had been embroiled in patent proceedings related to the vaccines for over four years in several countries including Australia, Canada, Japan, and the UK.
It’s been five months since the Bolivian government called on Canada to allow COVID-19 vaccines to flow from a manufacturer in St. Catharines, Ont., to the Global South.
Now, the country, where fewer than thirty per cent of people are fully vaccinated, is repeating its request for Canada to override the patent waiver and issue a compulsory license to allow manufacturing to begin.
“It is time to make decisions in the name of humanity,” said Benjamin Blanco, Minister of Foreign Trade and Integration, Ministry of Foreign Relations for Bolivia in an interview with Global News.
[...]
In March 2020, the Government of Canada amended the Patent Act and the Drugs Act in direct response to the COVID-19 pandemic. The changes would allow the government to use and authorize the use of patented inventions on a time-limited basis to address drug shortages.
At the time, Srinivas Murthy, a Faculty of Medicine member at the University of British Columbia, thought it would be a sign of things to come, but noted that we’ve trended the wrong way.
“I don’t think we’ve even moved the needle in wanting to waive patents,” he said.
According to both Murthy and Gold, some of the arguments to uphold patents, mainly around innovation, lack empirical evidence. But, to Gold, part of the reason why Canada could be hesitant around touching the intellectual property (IP) of big pharma is the desire to have them invest and build in the north. The desire to drive investment coupled with buying vaccines from the companies in question is another reason Gold thinks Canada is mum on the TRIPS waiver.
“Any time that the government worries about exporting or decreasing IP, they’re going to get attacked by certain sectors, including the pharmaceutical sector,” he said.
Researchers at ESET found multiple samples of the malware uploaded to the VirusTotal scanning service throughout last year, the first one appearing in May 2020.
Executive Summary: The Productivity Commission is to be congratulated for producing a comprehensive discussion paper on the complex and tangled topic of the right to repair. Taking an interdisciplinary, holistic approach to the issue, the Productivity Commission shows a strong understanding that the topic of the right to repair is a multifaceted policy issue. Its draft report covers the fields of consumer law, competition policy, intellectual property, product stewardship, and environmental law. The Productivity Commission displays a great comparative awareness of developments in other jurisdictions in respect of the right to repair. The policy body is also sensitive to the international dimensions of the right to repair – particularly in light of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals. The Productivity Commission puts forward a compelling package of recommendations, which will be useful in achieving law reform in respect of the right to repair in Australia.
As with other aspects of trade mark law, the UK and EU have adopted asymmetrical arrangements about exhaustion post-Brexit. The arrangements result in uneven outcomes on enforcement against parallel imports for UK and EU right-holders. It remains to be seen how the principle of exhaustion of UK rights will develop in the hands of the UK government and the courts.
Currently, thanks to section 12 of the Trade Marks Act 1994, holders of UK rights will find their rights are exhausted once their goods have been placed on the market in the UK or anywhere in the EEA. When a right is exhausted, it is no longer enforceable. The reverse does not apply for holders of EU rights, whose rights will allow them to enforce against goods placed on the market in the UK which make their way into the EU.
The direct consequence is that UK right-holders cannot enforce against parallel imports coming to the UK from the EEA. In contrast, EU right-holders would be able to enforce their rights against parallel imports moving from the UK into the EU. This has the effect of placing UK and EU businesses on an uneven footing, particularly in industries where licensing plays a big role. Under the post-Brexit lopsided exhaustion regime, licensors would struggle to enforce territorial exclusivity of licensed rights for their UK licensees.
Everything we covered on WTR over the past seven days – and all you need to know from the world of trademarks to set yourself up for the start of another busy week.
Courtney Cox, a professor at Fordham University Law School, has a very interesting trade secret law article forthcoming in George Washington Law Review called "Legitimizing Lies." The article can be downloaded on SSRN.
Cox argues, in short, that trade secret law could generate an unexpected incentive for trade secret holders to "lie." The reason is that federal and state trade secret statutes require anyone who wishes to own a trade secret to take "reasonable" measures to keep that information secret, and in some instances deception—including deception effectuated by lies—may be the most reasonable way to keep something secret. For example, companies sometimes use "deception technology" in their cybersecurity systems "to trick hackers into thinking they are getting close to critical data.” (25). Cox highlights increasing use of a cybersecurity device, affectionately called the "honeypot," which operates as a decoy computer system that can lure away would-be hackers. (24).
Cox suggests that, to the extent deception-based information security becomes the most effective option for protecting secrets in a certain industry or context, then trade secret law may require taking that deceptive act. This is because the trade secret statutes, at the federal and state level, include taking "reasonable" measures to preserve secrecy as a necessary element of a plaintiff's trade secret case. Thus, the law encourages, or at least gives its blessing, to "lying."
This is a follow-up to my previous post on the Epic Games v. Apple Unfair Competition Law (not antitrust) injunction. In the meantime, iMore quoted me on an announcement of an in-app purchasing (IAP) alternative by a company named Paddle that believes its drop-in replacement for Apple's IAP API will be allowed soon as a result of the Epic injunction.
Now that Apple has filed a motion to stay the injunction (PDF), I'd like to share a few observations and perspectives.
That whole motion-to-stay process could be avoided if both parties acted more constructively. To the extent that any correspondence between them has come to light, neither of the parties is being constructive, and they could not complain should Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers--who has already put so much effort into her handling of this huge and complex case--scold them at next month's motion hearing.
It is utterly disappointing to see Apple break a promise. It adds to this picture of Apple stopping at nothing to defend its App Store monopoly. Last year, at the preliminary-injunction stage, Apple wrote that it "wants Epic on iOS" provided that it complies with the rules. The Apple apologists out there, of whom there are quite a few, may argue that some of Epic's public statements since the grant of the injunction justify Apple's current stance. They may say that Apple has a reasonable apprehension of Epic being hell-bent to break the rules again, just like in August 2020. But Epic CEO Tim Sweeney's statements are neither what I believe to be the true motivation for Apple to keep the door closed nor are they sufficient justification for walking back on last year's promise.
On September 28, 2021, Judge Edward M. Chen of the United States District Court for the Northern District of California granted a motion by Fortress Investment and certain entities funded by Fortress to dismiss with prejudice an antitrust complaint that Intel was still pursuing and from which Apple withdrew in June as this blog was (to the best of my knowledge) first to report.
[...]
This may serve to dissuade Fortress from asserting certain combinations of patents in court, in which case Intel would have actually accomplished something of tangible value despite the dismissal. Moreover, Intel may gain mileage out of this case at the policy level, especially now that the Biden Administration appears to be more sympathetic to makers of innovative products.
The key takeaways are that patent aggregation is not without antitrust risks. But if you, as an alleged infringer of aggregated patents, want to bring an antitrust complaint over patent aggregation in the Northern District of California, you can give it a try, but you must plead specific patent markets consisting of substitutes (not complements), and you better do so only when any potentially abusive behavior has actually occurred.
Sumio Iijima firmly believes that “new materials only have value when they are used.” While carbon nanotechnologies have entered the market, their full potential has not yet been reached. As the European Patent Office explains, current products incorporate bulk nanotubes, which are masses of unorganized nanotubes that are used as composite fibers to bolster mechanical, thermal and electrical properties. These products include smartphone touch pads and a material called Vantablack, known as the blackest substance on Earth, which is used in telescopes and cameras to absorb excess light.
Ahhh, the German injunction gap. A topic of interest in the UK courts at the moment (see the various applications to expedite trials because of it here). But turns out the German patent litigators are also talking about it. From September 15 to September 17 2021, the annual meeting of the German Association for Intellectual Property (GRUR) took place in Bonn. Part of the program was an analysis of Germany's bifurcated patent procedure and ways to better synchronize nullity and infringement proceedings. Katfriend Anselm Gripp provides the following write-up of the session.
The International Trade Commission can more readily provide injunctive relief against an adjudged infringer than a district court, under appropriate conditions (i.e., with regard to an infringing product or a product made by infringing a claimed method). In September, the Federal Circuit affirmed an exclusion order by the Commission in Jennewein Biotechnologie GmbH v. International Trade Commission (Glycosyn LLC joined as an Intervenor based on its patent being the basis for the exclusion order), based on importation of a product made by a patented method, which relied in part on an application of the doctrine of equivalents in establishing infringement (something that has become more common of late; see, e.g., Ajinomoto Co. v. International Trade Commission).
In addition, Todos and joint venture partner NLC Pharma announced recently that they are seeing positive advancements of the Tollovir treatment program for hospitalized coronavirus (COVID-19) patients who are currently enrolled in a Phase 2 clinical trial in Israel. Tollovir, which is based on the same compounds as Tollovid, has been demonstrated to reduce lung inflammation.
The Federal Circuit has been tearing through mandamus petitions on the issue of inconvenient venue under Section 1404(a). The issue comes up in cases where venue is proper and the court has personal jurisdiction over the defendant, but for whatever reason the particular venue chosen by the plaintiff is inconvenient. Thus, the statute provides a district court with discretion to move venue “[f]or the convenience of parties and witnesses, in the interest of justice.” 28 U.S.C. €§ 1404. Section 1404 appeals are traditionally quite rare. The issue comes up at the very beginning of the case, but there is no immediate right appeal the grant or denial of the transfer motion. By the time the district court reaches final judgment any harm due to litigating in an inconvenient forum is typically water-under-the-bridge leaving no cognizable harm for the appeal. The shortcut then is to petition for mandamus as soon as the district court grants or denies a motion to transfer.
[...]
The chart above comes from a simple Westlaw case search of appellate decisions referencing both Section 1404(a) and mandamus. What you’ll notice is a relatively large number of decisions from the Federal Circuit, the vast majority of these out of the Fifth Circuit region.
US Courts typically enforce choice-of-forum provisions found within contracts between two business entities. Here, Kannuu and Samsung entered into a non-disclosure agreement as part of a potential deal, and the contract included a choice-of-forum provision that directed “any legal action” stemming from the agreement to courts located in New York City “and no other jurisdiction.” The potential deal fell apart and Kannuu eventually sued Samsung for patent infringement. Samsung responded with an inter partes review (IPR) petition. Kannuu then asked the USPTO to drop the petition based upon the forum-selection-clause and, failing that, also petitioned the district court for an order that Samsung drop the IPR. The district court denied Kannuu’s motion for preliminary injunction and then appealed.
[...]
The district court case is only at the preliminary injunction stage, and the appellate panel found no abuse of discretion in the district court’s finding that the IPR proceedings are not covered by the agreement since the agreement focuses on confidentiality rather than intellectual property rights.
CosmoKey asserted U.S. Patent No. 9,246,903 against Duo in the U.S. District Court for the District of Delaware, alleging infringement. The District Court found the patent's claims to be ineligible under 35 U.S.C. ۤ 101 because they were directed to an abstract idea and lacked an inventive concept. On review, the Federal Circuit reversed, and provided a small glimmer of clarity illuminating the ever-elusive contours of the "inventive concept."
[...]
According to the '903 patent, this "provides an authentication method that is easy to handle and can be carried out with mobile devices of low complexity [and] it is a particular advantage of the invention that the mobile device does not have to have any specific hardware for capturing or outputting information."
I wanted to let you know that Managing IP has undergone some changes following feedback to better suit subscriber needs. The team and I believe these changes will allow us to provide a better service to you.
After more than 30 years, we have ceased to offer our printed magazine (which most recently was published every quarter). For the time being, a PDF version will still be available, but it will no longer be printed and distributed as before.
[...]
We are also very conscious of global sustainability efforts. Though it is only a small act, not printing and distributing thousands of copies globally every quarter will help us to reduce our carbon footprint without compromising the very standards we promote on the website each and every day. This is something we take very seriously.
Kathi Vidal at Winston & Strawn has been floated – she would make a great pick for head of the USPTO, but her nomination isn’t guaranteed
HMD Global Oy, the licensee of the Nokia smartphone brand has been granted a patent for the Nokia T20 tablet design by the European Union Intellectual Property Office (EUIPO). The patent application was submitted on April 16, 2021, but was only granted on October 8, 2021.
Pools streamline a messy process, but in-house sources in the auto and tech industries say some implementers may never be convinced of their value
Whether the UK Supreme Court hears the DABUS appeal or not, AI inventorship is a debate only policymakers can solve
Patent legislation across Asian jurisdictions is constantly catching up with the pandemic’s demands, with stronger protection, foreign filing and higher compensation being common themes. However, the gaps persist, and businesses need to fathom the domestic barriers to stay ahead.
On Sept. 2, 2021, the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia addressed what it called a “core issue”—whether an artificial intelligence (AI) machine can be an “inventor” under the Patent Act. It ruled that the “clear answer” is no.
A lot of PSPDFkit’s growth to date, in fact, has been by word of mouth, a strategy that has gotten it very far up to now. Its customers include Dropbox, DocuSign, SAP, IBM, Volkswagen, Fabasoft, Wolters Kluwer Deutschland, and the European Patent Office, among a number of others that it works with under NDA.
Patents are granted for inventions that are novel and involve an inventive step. Any information or material that is publicly available or published before the filing of a patent application is known as "prior art" and this forms the basis on which novelty and inventive step is determined. For a prior patent application to be considered prior art for a subsequent patent application, the prior patent application should have been published before the filing of the subsequent patent application. A prior patent application that was filed before the filing of a subsequent patent application but published only after the filing of the subsequent patent application, is not prior art in many jurisdictions. The jurisdictions that do consider such patent applications as prior art often refer to them as 'secret prior art'.
Swedish telecom giant Ericsson Inc has sued Apple Inc in federal court in Texas seeking a declaration that the rates it offered Apple to license its 5G wireless patents are fair and reasonable.
Ericsson accused Apple of using improper tactics to lower the royalty rates it has to pay and refusing to license the patents under anything other than its proposed terms in the lawsuit filed Monday in Marshall, Texas.
The lawsuit comes as the companies, which settled a previous licensing dispute in 2015 amid a California court battle, are deadlocked in negotiations over a new license, according to Ericsson.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit on Monday affirmed Apple Inc's Patent Trial and Appeal Board win invalidating parts of a fingerprint-authentication patent owned by Korean patent owner Firstface Co Ltd, but also upheld two other Firstface patents that Apple had challenged.
U.S. Circuit Judge Raymond Chen wrote for a unanimous three-judge panel rejecting Apple's claims that the two valid patents were obvious based on earlier disclosures, but agreeing with Apple that a third patent was obvious.
Firstface sued Apple and Samsung in 2018 in San Francisco federal court for infringing the three patents with "home buttons" or "home keys" that wake devices and use fingerprints to authenticate users simultaneously, in cases that were stayed for the PTAB proceedings.
If the complicated birth of United States patent law can be told through the story of a single figure, that person is Oliver Evans. Evans’s patenting activities spanned the Founding. He received patents from four states in the 1780s, and then, in 1791, the third U.S. patent to be granted. This grant became the most contested patent of the early Republic. Amid bitter politicking, Evans received the first Congressional patent extension and brought four of the U.S. Supreme Court’s first six patent cases. He also pioneered large-scale patent enforcement, asserting and litigating his rights across multiple states, as well as issuing the first demand letter to a sitting U.S. President. In the process, Evans became the nation’s leading polemicist for the rights of patentees.
The story of Oliver Evans thus embodies the framing of American patent law -- the construction of both the law's institutional framework and the political and rhetorical claims that surrounded it. By appearing at all the major waypoints of Founding-era and early-nineteenth-century patent history, Evans provides a crucial test case for several important historical questions, including the degree of continuity between the first federal patents and their state predecessors, the contested role played by natural-rights conceptions of the patent, and the enforceability of inventors’ rights in the early Republic.
What is the price of an ordinary human life? Although the answers may be imprecise and deeply rooted in philosophical quandaries, for those suffering from a rare genetic degenerative disorder, Novartis answers the question, valuing life at 2.1 million dollars (Rs. 16 crore). This was the price that a family from Kannur, Kerala raised within 7 days through crowd funding to give the youngest son Mohammed, a fighting chance. Onasemnogene abeparvovec, commercially available under the name Zolgensma, is the gene therapy medication prescribed for those suffering from Spinal Muscular Atrophy. Novartis obtained the patent for this “miracle drug” from its $8.7 billion acquisition of AveXis.
[...]
Other than Article 31, Article 7 speaks on how a balance is to be sought, between the individual benefits of the inventor and the needs of the users of that technological knowledge, the same idea being iterated under Section 83 of the Indian Patents Act. Article 8(1) empowers countries to take measures necessary to safeguard public health, corresponding to their respective socio-economic and technological needs. These articles identify the true goal of innovation and the public interest that is to be addressed by these scientific advancements. Article 30 also explicitly provides for implementing exceptions to patent rights, to the extent that it does not conflict with ordinary use of the patent or cause unreasonable prejudice to the legitimate interests of the patent holder and instead strike a balance, between these exclusive rights and public interest. In the midst of the present COVID-19 pandemic, the Supreme Court in a suo moto writ petition addressed the utility of the compulsory licensing regime with respect to essential drugs and how the Government is empowered by the same to expeditiously address national emergencies., (For instance, in case of urgent demand for the drug and at the same time, a consensus cannot be reached regarding the royalties to be paid, the High Court is empowered to determine the royalty amount.).
Jeffrey Wilder, the U.S. Department of Justice Antitrust Division Economics Director of Enforcement, gave a speech yesterday before the IAM and GCR Connect SEP Summit in Washington. Here is a link to the text, which I perceive as a welcome return to sanity. The key paragraph that summarizes the Antitrust Division's approach under the Biden Administration is as follows...
Characterising it as a "welcome return to sanity", Comparative Patent Remedies summarised the recent speech of Jeffrey Wilder, the U.S. Department of Justice Antitrust Division Economics Director of Enforcement, as to his department's proposed approach to SEPs.
The University of Stirling has joined the Pan-European Seal Programme, a prestigious EU training scheme, becoming the first in Scotland to partner with Europe’s leading Intellectual Property (IP) organisations: the EU Intellectual Property Office (EUIPO) and the European Patent Office (EPO).
[...]
The Pan-European Seal Programme is jointly organised by Europe’s IP Offices, EPO and EUIPO, and offers paid, trainee roles in Alicante or Munich.
On October 5, 2021, Unified Patents added a new PATROLL contest, with a $2,000 cash prize, seeking prior art on at least claim 1 of U.S. Patent 10,292,022. The patent is owned by Ascension Intellectual Properties LLC, an NPE. The '022 [patent] relates generally to media echoing and social networking methods and devices, for use with mobile systems and is currently being asserted against Amp Me, Inc.
Unified is pleased to announce prior art has been found on U.S. Patent 7,184,707, formerly owned by Toshiba but now assigned to 2BCom, LLC, an NPE. The ‘707 patent is generally related to a communication device and a method for controlling a communication device that can load or unload service information at appropriate timings by flexibly designating discriminating conditions of connection or disconnection of a link. The ‘707 patent has been asserted in district court against BMW, FCA, and Kia.
In this article for The Patent Lawyer, Mathys & Squire partner Dani Kramer and associate Dylan Morgan review the response of patent offices to blockchain filings with a particular focus on the United Kingdom Intellectual Property Office (UKIPO), the European Patent Office (EPO), and the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO).
In the last decade or so, blockchain has become an area of increasing interest both commercially and from a patenting perspective. While blockchain has not yet become a part of daily life for most people, the technology can be applied to many fields and offers the potential to improve various existing technologies. Unsurprisingly, many companies are keen to protect their blockchain developments via patents.
[...]
As will be apparent from the Examiner’s comments in the UK examination report cited above, the EPO is generally more amenable to blockchain inventions than the UKIPO.
Indeed, for EP3312756B1 (the EP filing in the above-mentioned Trustonic patent family) the Examiner’s objections were almost entirely related to novelty and inventive step, with the patentability per se of the subject matter attracting very little attention.
This trend is played out across European patent filings. Novelty and inventive step tend to be the determining factors, with patentable subject matter tending to be of subsidiary relevance. This is partially due to the way in which the EPO approaches inventive step – and as with all applications, non-technical aspects are of limited relevance during the determination of an inventive step – but, as a general rule, the EPO seems willing to consider blockchain technologies as being technical and to more readily grant blockchain patents.
Another application that illustrates this difference in approach between the EPO and the UKIPO is EP3577593B1, which was filed by PHM Associates in 2018 claiming priority to a GB application filed in 2017. On the face of it, this is a fairly innocuous European application. Following entry into Europe via a Patent Cooperation Treaty (PCT) application, the Examiner raised various novelty and inventive step objections. Once these were overcome, a patent was granted by the EPO.
Conversely, the corresponding UK application GB2566741A has thus far received a total of four examination reports from two different examiners, with each of these examination reports objecting to the claims as relating to unpatentable subject matter.
Turning then to an application that has fallen foul of EPO subject matter objections, EP3376456A4 is an application filed by Nippon Telegraph and Telephone Corp in 2016 that relates to the determination of whether a party is qualified to add blocks to a blockchain. This application has been refused by the EPO Examining Division and is currently under appeal.
...software, or computer-implemented inventions?
On October 5, 2021, the Central Reexamination Unit of the USPTO issued a final office action rejecting all claims of U.S. Patent 7,664,924, owned and asserted by Eighth Street Solutions, LLC, an NPE and Endpoint IP entity. The ’924 patent is related to securing a computer system by selectively controlling write access to a data storage medium. The '924 patent has been asserted against Sophos, Trend Micro, McAfee and Avast.
Patentee wins this one–with the Federal Circuit reversing the district court and finding the claims on patent-eligibility under Alice step-two. This is another case that serves as a data-point, but I struggle to differentiate it from similar cases finding claims ineligible.
[...]
On appeal, the Federal Circuit has reversed — holding that the patent “discloses a technical solution to a security problem in networks and computers.” That statement suggests reversal on Alice Step 1; but the court actually leapt to Step 2 without a clear holding on Step 1. Here, the court found that the claimed steps were (1) developed by the inventors; (2) not admitted prior art; and (3) yield advantages over the described prior art. The court noted the difficulty with this case — the purpose of the invention was to “reduce significantly” “the complexity of the authentication function.” But, simplification can quickly suggest abstraction.
UKIPO names new chair
The UKIPO has appointed Harry Rich as its new chair for a three-year term, it announced on Monday, October 4.
Rich currently serves as registrar of consultant lobbyists, as well as chair of the Valuation Tribunal Service, non-executive director of the Press Recognition Panel, and governor of the Glasgow School of Art. His term began on Friday, October 1.
The office also named Harriet Kelsall and Hilary Newiss as non-executive directors, also for three-year terms.
Former IP lawyer Newiss is a trustee of the Natural History Museum and has served on several boards, including that of the Francis Crick Institute and the Human Genetics Commission.
Kelsall was chair of the National Association of Jewellers and is a non-executive director of the National Hallmarking Council.
“To perform at our best, we need to draw on breadth and wealth of professional experience and expertise,” said Tim Moss, UKIPO CEO. “I am delighted to welcome Harry, Harriet and Hilary to an already experienced and committed team of non-executive directors.”
Commenting on his appointment as UKIPO chair, Rich said he was “passionate about the ways that design, innovation, creativity and business drive wellbeing and prosperity”.
[...]
The US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit issued two separate decisions this week setting out that Judge Alan Albright’s refusals to transfer Google’s and Juniper Networks’ patent infringement cases were clear abuses of discretion.
The appellate court let Google and Juniper Networks transfer from the District Court for the Western District of Texas to the District Court for the Northern District of California on Wednesday, October 6 and Monday, October 4 respectively.
The Federal Circuit found in both cases that there were problems with Albright’s analysis of the public and private interest factors that traditionally governed rulings on motions to transfer.
Earlier Thursday, EA Sports’ top executive said the company is reconsidering its naming-rights agreement with FIFA and could rebrand its top-selling soccer series. A couple of new trademark applications in Europe could point to a name the publisher has in mind.
In Australia, the term “ugg boots” refers to a general style of sheepskin shoe with the fleece turned in for warmth. It is a generic term, and not a trademark – in Australia. And, there are dozens of companies that make and sell ugg boots in that country, including Australian Leather Pty. Ltd.. The original name “ugh” came from 1970s surfer Shane Stedman who has been quoted as saying “We called them Ughs because they were ugly.”
UGG is a registered trademark in the USA, now owned by Deckers Outdoor Corp. Back in 2016, Deckers learned that Australian Leather had imported 12 pairs boots labelled “ugg boots” into the USA and sued for trademark infringement. The defendant argued that it should be able to import its boots to the US since the term is generic in Australia, but the district court sided with the plaintiff in rejecting that defense. On appeal, the Federal Circuit affirmed in a R.36 Judgment without any opinion (the original complaint included some design patents as well).
This is an important design patent decision that substantially narrows the scope of prior art available for anticipation rejections in design patent cases. The result is that it should become easier to obtain design patent protection. The decision is only about 600 words long — fewer than may writeup about the case.
My children have a variety of paper stumps that they use for smoothing and blending their pencil drawings. The first image below shows a typical paper stump that artists have been using for many decades. The second image shows the design for Surgisil’s article of manufacture that it is attempting to patent (design patent). I also recall being fascinated by double-sharpened pencils that you can see in the third image.
[...]
Surgisil is in some tension with precedent holding that the claim scope should be limited only to ornamental features. See, e.g., In re Zahn, 617 F.2d 261 (CCPA 1980) (“[35 U.S.C] 171 refers, not to the design of an article, but to the design for an article.”); OddzOn Prods., Inc. v. Just Toys, Inc., 122 F.3d 1396 (Fed. Cir. 1997) (design patent scope is limited to the ornamental features). The appellate panel here did not address that argument presented by the USPTO on appeal.
Generally, the USPTO will see this case as a major change to anticipation analysis. In the end, it will make it even easier to obtain design patents — and seemingly permits someone to obtain a design patent by grabbing a design that is known in the art and applying it to a new article of manufacture.
As part of the ongoing debate on value-sharing for creators and users of online content, press publishers were granted a neighbouring right under EU copyright. This entailed an opportunity to obtain remuneration through licences for the use of online journalistic content by online aggregation services.
However, the right’s lack of efficiency became visible when press publishers in France, the first country to implement the right, attempted to enforce remuneration for Google’s use of snippets. Google demanded zero-remuneration licences or would abstain from using snippets from news webpages, which has proven to lead to decline in webpage traffic. Accordingly, the press publishers were still not seeing the promised remuneration. Since the strong market position of Google appeared to enable the ultimatum, the publishers claimed the behaviour infringed competition law, constituting an abuse of dominance.
This article argues that EU competition law cannot be relied on to ensure remuneration under the press publishers’ right. This argument is, firstly, based on an analysis concluding that practices similar to that of Google – forcing zero remuneration licences - do not constitute an abuse of dominance under Article 102 of the Treaty of the Functioning of the European Union. Secondly, the argument is founded on the conclusion that competition law, de lege ferenda, should not be applied for such purposes, as the goal of competition law does not warrant securing remuneration. Moreover, it is suggested that the fairness standard, which some argue is becoming a benchmark in EU competition law, is not a steering principle in itself, but rather that fairness is the result of correct competition law enforcement.
In July this year, the Federal Court of Australia handed down a decision in Stephen L. Thaler [2021] APO 5, which allowed listing AI system DABUS as an inventor in a patent application. It is interesting to explore what implications this decision could have in the field of copyright.
About the DABUS decision
The DABUS case refers to an international patent application where AI DABUS was listed as an inventor. Initially, it was rejected by a number of IP offices around the world (including the US, UK, EPO, German and Australian patent offices). The Federal Court of Australia heard the appeal in the case and found that under the Australian Patent Act the AI could be listed as an inventor. According to the court, Dr Thaler, who is the developer, owner and controller of DABUS, would be the owner of the patent. The court found that this is compatible with the goal of the Patent Act to promote innovation and that nothing in the Patent Act explicitly or impliedly prohibits listing AI as an inventor. The decision has been appealed to the Full Federal Court and the outcome is pending.
Posthumous releases and realisation of unfinished works come with controversial stories. While some artists like Cristo or choreographer Mark Morris accept or arrange for their works to be released or continued after their death, others keep silent on the future of their works, by default leaving it to the hands of third parties to decide their fate after they are gone. In Amy Winehouse’s case, after the release of album ‘Lioness: Hidden Treasures’, compiled of B-sides and demos, Universal Music CEO announced that he had destroyed all of her demo recordings, in an attempt to prevent anyone else from releasing them posthumously. When such extremes as destruction of art, or the unwilling release of it, could be the future of someone’s legacy, it is no wonder that Anderson .Paak felt it was imperative to make his will for his legacy ink-on-skin-clear. But would that be enough? What (other) means do artists have to make sure their intentions are respected?
[...]
Whatever model is followed, the dilemma between economic loss and following the artist’s intent still remains, since usually the ones inheriting are the ones that would be gaining from posthumous releases, and would most likely refrain from enforcing the deceased artist’s rights for the sake of personal gain. As a result, a lack of express will in countries following the Succession Model would leave little to prevent these parties from using the works of an author, in such a way that could injure the artist’s legacy, for example by releasing work that is beneath the artist’s calibre, bearing their name, or that goes to a different ideological direction.
