Welcome to this week's Linux release roundup.
NixOS 21.11, openSUSE 15.4 Alpha, EndeavourOS 21.4, CentOS 9, Arch Linux 2021.12.01, Robolinux 12.12, and Nitrux OS 2021.12.02 have been released this week.
Blender 3.0 has also been released this week.
The Linus Tech Tips YouTube channel has been putting out a series of videos called the Switching to Linux Challenge that has been causing a bit of a stir in the Linux community. I’ve been keeping an eye on these developments, and thought it was a good time to weigh in with my thoughts. This article focuses on how new Linux users can increase their odds for success — I have also written a companion article, “What desktop Linux needs to succeed in the mainstream”, which looks at the other side of the problem.
Linux is, strictly speaking, an operating system kernel, which is a small component of a larger system. However, in the common usage, Linux refers to a family of operating systems which are based on this kernel, such as Ubuntu, Fedora, Arch Linux, Alpine Linux, and so on, which are referred to as distributions. Linux is used in other contexts, such as Android, but the common usage is generally limited to this family of Linux “distros”. Several of these distros have positioned themselves for various types of users, such as office workers or gamers. However, the most common Linux user is much different. What do they look like?
The key distinction which sets Linux apart from more common operating systems like Windows and macOS is that Linux is open source. This means that the general public has access to the source code which makes it tick, and that anyone can modify it or improve it to suit their needs. However, to make meaningful modifications to Linux requires programming skills, so, consequentially, the needs which Linux best suits are the needs of programmers. Linux is the preeminent operating system for programmers and other highly technical computer users, for whom it can be suitably molded to purpose in a manner which is not possible using other operating systems. As such, it has been a resounding success on programmer’s workstations, on servers in the cloud, for data analysis and science, in embedded workloads like internet-of-things, and other highly technical domains where engineering talent is available and a profound level of customization is required.
The Linux community has also developed Linux as a solution for desktop users, such as the mainstream audience of Windows and macOS. However, this work is mostly done by enthusiasts, rather than commercial entities, so it can vary in quality and generally any support which is available is offered on a community-run, best-effort basis. Even so, there have always been a lot of volunteers interested in this work — programmers want a working desktop, too. Programmers also want to play games, so there has been interest in getting a good gaming setup working on Linux. In the past several years, there has also been a commercial interest with the budget to move things forward: Valve Software. Valve has been instrumental in developing more sophisticated gaming support on Linux, and uses Linux as the basis of a commercial product, the Steam Deck
The Linus Tech Tips YouTube channel has been putting out a series of videos called the Switching to Linux Challenge that has been causing a bit of a stir in the Linux community. I’ve been keeping an eye on these developments, and thought it was a good time to weigh in with my thoughts. This article focuses on what Linux needs to do better — I have also written a companion article, “How new Linux users can increase their odds of success”, which looks at the other side of the problem.
Linux is not accessible to the average user today, and I didn’t need to watch these videos to understand that. I do not think that it is reasonable today to expect a non-expert user to successfully install and use Linux for their daily needs without a “Linux friend” holding their hand every step of the way.
This is not a problem unless we want it to be. It is entirely valid to build software which is accommodating of experts only, and in fact this is the kind of software I focus on in my own work. I occasionally use the racecar analogy: you would not expect the average driver to be able to drive a Formula 1 racecar. It is silly to suggest that Formula 1 vehicle designs ought to accommodate non-expert drivers, or that professional racecar drivers should be driving mini-vans on the circuit. However, it is equally silly to design a professional racing vehicle and market it to soccer moms.
I am one of the original developers of the Sway desktop environment for Linux. I am very proud of Sway, and I believe that it represents one of the best desktop experiences on Linux. It is a rock-solid, high-performance, extremely stable desktop which is polished on a level that is competitive with commercial products. However, it is designed for me: a professional, expert-level Linux user. I am under no illusions that it is suitable for my grandmother.
It’s been a little over 1,5 years since I joined GitLab as my first all remote company. About half a year ago, I wrote about what I learned in one year at GitLab. In this blog post I will describe my setup how I work because I got several questions about it over the last time. I can also blame dnsmichi who published a similar post about his setup ;-).
I can certainly recommend the page about “Considerations for a Productive Home Office or Remote Workspace“ in the GitLab Handbook about All-Remote.
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I used to have Thinkpads in the past, but I recently switched to Dell XPS. I have two Dell XPS 13. One for work (in white) and one private (in black).
While I personally prefer to run ArchLinux (btw I use Arch!) I’m running the latest Ubuntu LTS on my work laptop.
The laptop is connected to a CalDigit TS3-Plus which is my docking station. This was one of the few docking station which supported 4K@60Hz back when I bought this. I would prefer a docking station with more USB-ports. Right now I have another USB-Hub (hidden under the desktop) because the ports provided by most of the docking stations out there are not really enough for me.
No matter where you in the linux world you'll be surrounded by linux jargon that everyone expects you to know so let's go over some of these terms like distro, de, package manager and much much that everyone on Linux needs to know
This breaks down all the simple tasks that Linus and Luke did in Linux. I also show more advanced ways to complete the tasks faster to make you a better user!
In this video I try to play along with some of their challenges. Also, they shouted me out and I'm embarrassed AF.
Fairly small rc4 this week. Three areas stand out in the diff: some kvm fixes (and tests), network driver fixes, and the tegra SoC sound fixes.
The rest is fairly spread out: drm fixes, some filesystem stuff, various arch updates, and some smattering of random driver fixes.
Nothing looks all that scary, although I certainly hope the kvm side will calm down.
Linus
Linus Torvalds just released Linux 5.16-rc4 as the latest weekly release candidate for Linux 5.16 that will debut as stable in early 2022.
While Linux 5.16-rc3 was lighter due to Thanksgiving activities by US developers, Linux 5.16-rc4 is still trending on the small side. Linus Torvalds noted in today's release announcement, "Fairly small rc4 this week. Three areas stand out in the diff: some kvm fixes (and tests), network driver fixes, and the tegra SoC sound fixes."
Torvalds went on to add in today's 5.16-rc4 announcement, "The rest is fairly spread out: drm fixes, some filesystem stuff, various arch updates, and some smattering of random driver fixes. Nothing looks all that scary, although I certainly hope the kvm side will calm down."
The fourth 5.16 kernel prepatch is out for testing. "Nothing looks all that scary, although I certainly hope the kvm side will calm down".
Intel's open-source Linux graphics driver developers continue making their driver preparations for being able to accommodate Vulkan ray-tracing with upcoming Xe HPG graphics having ray-tracing hardware capabilities.
For over one year now Intel has been making preparations for Vulkan ray-tracing with their open-source Linux graphics driver stack. The big feature addition has resulted in a variety of driver changes and they are inching towards the milestone of having things working.
A webcam is a video capture device that is either connected to a computer directly (typically by USB) or over a computer network. Many modern netbooks and laptops have a built-in webcam.
Webcams spice up online communication by offering real-time video chat and webcasting. These tiny cameras enable users to chat in realtime with friends and family, send video email around the world, to videoconference with co-workers and clients, and even to broadcast a TV-like channel over the net. Other people use a webcam as part of a security system, making use of motion detection to receive image and video intrusion alerts, both interior and exterior, of a building or home.
Today we are looking at how to install CudaText 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.
This is full guide, howto install CentOS Stream 9 using minimal boot iso image. I install CentOS Stream 9 Workstation, but also CentOS Stream 9 Server installation is possible using exactly same method. I also use network installation (netinstall), but you can also download and use full CentOS Stream 9 DVD iso image.
In this tutorial, we will show you how to install OpenEMR on Ubuntu 20.04 LTS. For those of you who didn’t know, OpenEMR is an open-source electronic health record and medical practice management solution that includes patient demographics, scheduling, electronic medical records, prescriptions, billing, clinical decision rules, patient portal, reports, multi-language support, security, and plenty of documentation.
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 OpenEMR medical office workflow software 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.
This tutorial will be helpful for beginners to install blender 3.0 in Ubuntu 21.10 , Ubuntu 20.04 LTS and Linux Mint 20.2
As you know Blender is an open-source 3D creation suite and completely free for use. It is a public project and made by hundreds of people and it supports Animation, 3D modeling, Sculpting, camera tracking, video editing, rendering, composting, and much more.
It is a cross-platform software that supports Windows, Linux, and macOS.
This post is part of a series called "PACKRAT". If this is the first post you've found, it'd be worth reading the intro post first and then looking over all posts in the series. In the last post, we we were able to build a functioning Layer 1 PHY where we can encode symbols to transmit, and receive symbols on the other end, we’re now at the point where we can encode and decode those symbols as bits and frame blocks of data, marking them with a Sender and a Destination for routing to the right host(s). This is a “Layer 2” scheme in the OSI model, which is otherwise known as the Data Link Layer. You’re using one to view this website right now – I’m willing to bet your data is going through an Ethernet layer 2 as well as WiFi or maybe a cellular data protocol like 5G or LTE.
Nessus is a proprietary vulnerability scanner developed by Tenable, Inc.
It scans cover a wide range of technologies including operating systems, network devices, hypervisors, databases, web servers, and critical infrastructure.
Nessus gives you malware detection, scanning of embedded devices, configurations auditing, control systems auditing and compliance checks among other features.
The results of the scan can_be reported in various formats, such as plain text, XML, HTML and LaTeX. The results can also b saved in a knowledge base for debugging.
On UNIX, scanning can be automated through the use of a command-line client. There exist many different commercial, free and open source tools for both UNIX and Windows to manage individual or distributed Nessus scanners.
Nessus provides additional functionality beyond testing for known network vulnerabilities.Nessus can also support configuration and compliance audits, SCADA audits, and PCI compliance.
We are back with our usual monthly update! Boiling Steam looks at the latest data dumps from ProtonDB to give you a quick list of new games that work (pretty much?) perfectly with Proton since November 2021 – all of them work out of the box or well enough with tweaks...
Gamebuntu is a new app that promises to make gaming on Ubuntu painless for Linux newcomers and help them build a game-ready setup in a few minutes without any hassle.
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The app is targeted at ex-Windows users (a.k.a. Linux newcomers) who want to switch from Windows to Linux/Ubuntu and do some gaming. It works on virtually any supported Ubuntu release or derivative and acts as both an installer and launcher.
I’ve tested Gamebuntu on the upcoming Ubuntu 22.04 LTS (Jammy Jellyfish) release and with a single mouse click on the “Install” button it installed Steam, the powerful OBS Studio screencasting and streaming app, Lutris game manager, PulseEffects advanced audio manipulation tools, Wine for installing Windows games and apps, and Heroic Launcher for playing games in the Epic store.
Today we are looking at EndeavourOS 21.4, the KDE edition. It is based on Arch, Linux Kernel 5.15, KDE 5.23, and uses about 900MB of ram when idling. Enjoy!
In this video, we are looking at EndeavourOS 21.4, the KDE edition.
Ubuntu Desktop is a Linux distribution developed by Canonical, and it’s one of the most popular distributions, thanks to its ease of use. It’s also one of the top choices for people who are getting started with Linux. The server edition, which we won’t be focusing on here, is also operating in the majority of internet servers.
So what is a Linux distribution? It’s an operating system developed from the Linux kernel, UNIX-like system created by Linus Torvalds in 1991. Linux distributions are usually free and open source, and many are great alternatives to popular operating systems like Windows and macOS.
The Ubuntu Foundation was formed in 2004 by a South African-British developer and entrepreneur Mark Shuttleworth. He wanted to create a more user-friendly Linux distribution than Debian, which was very popular among Linux users at that time. It was notoriously difficult to install, however, and the Ubuntu Foundation worked to remedy that.
Eigencomm EC616/EC616S are Cortex-M3 microcontrollers supporting the 3GPP R13/R14 NB-IoT standard, with 3GPP R14 notably introducing the newer LTE Cat-NB2 standard allowing higher bitrates up to 127 kbps downlink, and up to 159 kbps uplink, and OTDOA and E-CID positioning methods.
Both EC616 and EC616S are virtually identical, but the EC616S comes with fewer GPIOs and is designed for the lowest possible BoM cost for modules as small as 10Ãâ10 mm. Both target similar IoT applications such as wireless meter reading, smoke detection, smart street lights, smart logistics, asset tracking, smart fire monitoring, smart parking, smart home, wearable devices, industry 4.0, smart agriculture, and others.
Who says it’s too early to get in the holiday spirit? We say it’s not. After all, people need time to get in the spirit before it comes and goes. And what better way to count down the days until Christmas than an electronic Advent calendar?
In the name of saving weight and pushing plastic, it’s nice to see continuous tweaks on 3D printer extruders from folks in their spare time. And to go where no extruder has gone before, [wayne dalton] has managed to combine the rolling screw thread extruder concept directly onto a brushless pancake motor. The result is a filament pushing mechanism weighing in at just under 90 grams. What’s more, this modification arrives a few weeks weeks after we first saw an open source version of the rolling screw thread extruder land on Thingiverse back in September.
Today was my last day at Oracle, and thus also in the MySQL team.
When a decision comes to switch workplaces, there's always the question of “why”, but that question always has multiple answers, and perhaps the simplest one is that I found another opportunity, and and as a whole, it was obvious it was time to move on when that arrived.
But it doesn't really explain why I did go looking for that somewhere else in the first place. The reasons for that are again complex, and it's not possible to reduce to a single thing. But nevertheless, let me point out something that I've been saying both internally and externally for the last five years (although never on a stage—which explains why I've been staying away from stages talking about MySQL): MySQL is a pretty poor database, and you should strongly consider using Postgres instead.
Coming to MySQL was like stepping into a parallel universe, where there were lots of people genuinely believing that MySQL was a state-of-the-art product. At the same time, I was attending orientation and told how the optimizer worked internally, and I genuinely needed shock pauses to take in how primitive nearly everything was. It felt bizarre, but I guess you soon get used to it. In a sense, it didn't bother me that much; lots of bad code means there's plenty of room for opportunity for improvement, and management was strongly supportive of large refactors. More jarring were the people who insisted everything was OK (it seems most MySQL users and developers don't really use other databases); even obviously crazy things like the executor, where everything was one big lump and everything interacted with everything else2, was hailed as “efficient” (it wasn't).
Dear all,
I am happy to announce the 16th official release of GNU Astronomy Utilities (Gnuastro version 0.16).
Gnuastro is an official GNU package, consisting of various command-line programs and library functions for the manipulation and analysis of (astronomical) data. All the programs share the same basic command-line user interface (modeled on GNU Coreutils). For the full list of Gnuastro's library, programs, and a comprehensive general tutorial (recommended place to start using Gnuastro), please see the links below respectively:
https://www.gnu.org/s/gnuastro/manual/html_node/Gnuastro-library.html https://www.gnu.org/s/gnuastro/manual/html_node/Gnuastro-programs-list.html https://www.gnu.org/s/gnuastro/manual/html_node/General-program-usage-tutorial.html
For a complete review of the new/changed features in this release, please see [1] below (also available in the 'NEWS' file within the source code tarball).
Here is the compressed source and the GPG detached signature for this release. To uncompress Lzip tarballs, see [2]. To check the validity of the tarballs using the GPG detached signature (*.sig) see [3]:
https://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/gnuastro/gnuastro-0.16.tar.lz (3.7MB) https://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/gnuastro/gnuastro-0.16.tar.gz (5.9MB) https://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/gnuastro/gnuastro-0.16.tar.gz.sig (833B) https://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/gnuastro/gnuastro-0.16.tar.lz.sig (833B)
Here are the SHA1 and SHA256 checksums (other ways to check if the tarball you download is what we distributed). Just note that the SHA256 checksum is base64 encoded, instead of the hexadecimal encoding that most checksum tools default to.
fe1f84bf1be270f1a62091e9a5f89bb94b182154 gnuastro-0.16.tar.lz B4hftfYuyc7x3I6aEJ2SQlkp6x7zOOrPz/bK2koGuR8 gnuastro-0.16.tar.lz 1ae00673648fe8db5630f1de9d70b49fadb42d7d gnuastro-0.16.tar.gz kMEdJbsFrRNxDLX4EXntgXNgikJv3/2LIEWGLV/e4i0 gnuastro-0.16.tar.gz
For this release, Pedram Ashofteh Ardakani, Natáli D. Anzanello, Sepideh Eskandarlou, Raúl Infante-Sainz, Vladimir Markelov and Zahra Sharbaf directly contributed to the source of Gnuastro, I am very grateful to all of them. I should also thank Alejandro Serrano Borlaff, Fernando Buitrago, Mark Calabretta, Zohreh Ghaffari, Giulia Golini, Leslie Hunt, Raúl Infante-Sainz, Matthias Kluge, Juan Miro, Juan Molina Tobar, Markus Schaney, Zahra Sharbaf, Vincenzo Testa, Ignacio Trujillo and Aaron Watkins for their very good suggestions or bug reports that have been implemented in Gnuastro 0.16.
If any of Gnuastro's programs or libraries are useful in your work, please cite _and_ acknowledge them. For citation and acknowledgment guidelines, run the relevant programs with a `--cite' option (it can be different for different programs, so run it for all the programs you use). Citations _and_ acknowledgments are vital for the continued work on Gnuastro, so please don't forget to support us by doing so.
This tarball was bootstrapped (created) with the tools below. Note that you don't need these to build Gnuastro from the tarball, these are the tools that were used to make the tarball itself. They are only mentioned here to be able to reproduce/recreate this tarball later. Texinfo 6.8 Autoconf 2.71 Automake 1.16.4 Help2man 1.48.5 ImageMagick 7.1.0-9 Gnulib v0.1-4944-g7fc3219bc Autoconf archives v2021.02.19-29-g0fbee2a
The dependencies to build Gnuastro from this tarball on your system are described here: https://www.gnu.org/s/gnuastro/manual/html_node/Dependencies.html
Best wishes, Mohammad
A new version 0.0.7 of RcppSpdlog is now on CRAN. RcppSpdlog bundles spdlog, a wonderful header-only C++ logging library with all the bells and whistles you would want that was written by Gabi Melman, and also includes fmt by Victor Zverovich.
This release brings upstream bugfix releases 1.9.1 and 1.9.2 of spdlog. We also removed the YAML file (and badge) for the disgraced former continuous integration service we shall not name (yet that we all used to use). And just like digest four days ago, drat three days ago, littler two days ago, and RcppAPT yesterday, we converted the vignettes from using the minidown package to the (fairly new) simplermarkdown package which is so much more appropriate for our use of the minimal water.css style.
For radio enthusiasts worldwide, the inexpensive Chinese handheld radios produced by the likes of Baofeng and other brands have been a welcome addition to their arsenal. They make an ideal first transceiver for a new licensee, a handy portable for any radio amateur, and an inexpensive basis for UHF or VHF experimentation. Unfortunately with the low cost comes something of a reputation for not having the cleanest spectral output, and it seems that this has caught the attention of regulators in Germany and Poland. In Germany this has resulted in the announcement of a sales prohibition (PDF in German) which seems likely to be repeated across the rest of the EU.
For one-off projects or prototypes it’s not uncommon for us to make do with whatever workspace we have on hand. Using a deck railing as an impromptu sawhorse, for example, is one that might be familiar to anyone who owns a circular saw, but [Daniel] has a slightly different situation. He had been setting up metal workpieces on random chunks of brick in order to use his plasma cutter, but just like the home handyman who gets tired of nicking their deck with a saw, he decided to come up with a more permanent solution and built a custom plasma cutting table.
Plasma cutting has a tendency to throw up a lot of sparks, so most commercial offerings for plasma cutting tables include a water bath to catch all of the debris from the cutting process. [Daniel] builds his table over a metal tub to hold some water for this purpose. The table itself is built out of aluminum and designed to be built without welding even though most people with plasma cutters probably have welders as well. The frame is designed to be exceptionally strong and includes curved slats which add to the strength of the table. The table is also designed to be portable, so the curved slats stay in place when the table is moved.
South African [Afrorack] claims to have built the first home-built modular synthesiser in Africa. Whilst we can’t be sure of this (and to be frank, it doesn’t actually matter) what we can be sure of is that the latest additions to this rig sound pretty rad. (video, embedded below) There really isn’t much doubt that the African nations are the kings of rhythm, and that living in the less well-to-do areas you need to have a certain resourcefulness to use the materials around you. It’s not like you can just pop down to the local electronics store for a missing part, even if you had the funds for it.
Opioid overdose-related deaths have unfortunately been increasing over the last few decades, with the COVID-19 pandemic exacerbating this public health crisis even further. As a result, many scientists, healthcare professionals, and government officials have been working tirelessly to end this deadly epidemic. Researchers at the University of Washington are one such group and have recently unveiled a wearable to both detect opioid overdose and deliver an antidote, in real-time, restoring normal bodily function.
As the researchers describe in their paper, opioid overdose causes respiratory rate depression which will lead to hypoxia (insufficient oxygen in the blood) and ultimately death. Fortunately, opioid overdose can be readily reversed using naloxone, a compound that binds to receptors in the brain, outcompeting the opiates themselves, and restoring normal breathing. Unfortunately, if someone is overdosing, they are unable to self-administer the antidote and with many opioid overdoses occurring when the victim is alone (51.8%), it is necessary to develop an automated system to deliver the antidote when an overdose is detected.
This week's set of "x86/urgent" changes for the Linux 5.16-rc4 kernel due out later today has some Spectre V1 fixes after kernel commits last year ended up partially messing things up around its SWAPGS handling. These fixes in turn will also likely be back-ported to relevant stable kernel series.
Thanks to an Alibaba engineer, Lai Jiangshan, are some important fixes around the Spectre V1 SWAPGS mitigation that are landing today in the mainline kernel.
As a quick recap, whilst anyone may inspect the source code of free software for malicious flaws, almost all software is distributed to end users as pre-compiled binaries. The motivation behind the reproducible builds effort is therefore to ensure no flaws have been introduced during this compilation process by promising identical results are always generated from a given source, thus allowing multiple third-parties to come to a consensus on whether a build was compromised. If you are interested in contributing to our project, please visit our Contribute page on our website.
The diffoscope maintainers are pleased to announce the release of diffoscope version 195. This version includes the following changes:
[ Chris Lamb ] * Don't use the runtime platform's native endianness when unpacking .pyc files to fix test failures on big-endian machines.
In a statement released today by the European Bioeconomy Alliance, the coalition details its criticisms of a new methodology for life cycle analysis (LCA) developed by the European Commission’s Joint Research Centre (JRC).
The LCA analysis methodology has been developed by the JRC over the last three years, with input from various stakeholders, and encompassing players from both the bio-based and fossil-based plastics supply chains. The final methodology for the LCA of alternative feedstock for plastics production was published in June 2021.
European Bioplastics (EUBP), a member of the EUBA, says that, alongside other organisations, it contributed significant expertise, which it does not believe was fully taken into account of the published methodology. The Managing Director of EUBP, Hasso von Pogrell, comments: “Together with other bio-based industries, we support LCAs as a valuable instrument to measure environmental sustainability.
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Earlier this month, Appleyard Lees released data on global patent activity that suggests renewed interest in developing bioplastics after an initial peak in 2003, a trend also supported by the European Patent Office (EPO). As technologies expand and companies begin to make decisions about future sustainable development, it seems that a way to accurately compare bio-based and fossil-based plastics will be increasingly important – and perhaps also elusive.
The cryptocurrency-trading hamster Mr Goxx has died. The rodent, who shot to internet fame for his ability to often outperform human investors using a specially built trading cage, died on Tuesday. The furry financier's official Twitter account announced the hamster's death to his 18,000 followers on social media. "You proved to us, that the internet doesn't necessarily have to be a toxic wasteland," his owners told the BBC.
This post started as a Twitter thread – I’m reposting here to elaborate a bit (and fix some typos).
I recently read Cory Doctorow‘s novel “Walkaway”. It scathingly turns on the increasing inequality & proposes an anarchist-style rebellion consisting of people simply walking away and renouncing “default” society. It’s quite a page turner, and so definitely worth reading.
I have my difficulties with one plot point, though: The notion of gaining eternal(-ish) life by uploading your personality. First, I don’t think that will ever happen, technology-wise; second, I don’t think our personality, our being-as-human, makes any sense without a body.
“We” are not just spirit, not just reasoning and thought as located in Broca’s and Wernicke’s areas and the pre-frontal cortex, but are the result of processes all over the brain, in the limbic system and thalamus etc, all of which are strongly linked to our bodily functions.
In that sense, there doesn’t seem to be a well-defined “me” which can be reduced to pure spirit or to computation. “I”, the conscious me, is an interpretation, a kind of self-regulation mechanism as Maturana proposed with his autopoiesis, whose “location” is not definable.
The actual practical problems involved in a “mind scan” are daunting, though, and apparently unsolvable – there is no known non-destructive way of mapping out the neural connections in a living brain, and even if there were, the dynamics of different proteins and complex neurotransmitter mechanisms is still largely unknown. Some of these problems might indeed be solved the next 50 years – the novel is set around 2070 – but others, like the physical problems of probing molecular-sized networks with non-destructive networks (which may be impossible in principle due to Heisenberg’s indeterminacy relations and the wave/particle duality) and getting an actual electron microscope inside someones brain; and not least, the philosophical and neurological problem of what consciousness even is don’t seem to going anywhere even in the next five hundred years. To put it another way, as a practical proposition (as opposed to say, as a thought experiment or a plot point in a science fiction novel) the notion of personality upload should not be taken seriously by any intelligent persons – and this would, like space travel elsewhere, not be a problem with the novel if it weren’t for the fact that too many people actually do take the idea seriously these days.
Harvard University is the latest U.S. school to add measures protecting caste-oppressed students following a push from graduate workers and a national organization.
Since March, South Asian graduate student organizers have tried to point out to the university's administration what they say is a real problem on campuses across the U.S.: discrimination based on the Hindu caste system.
Those born into lower castes, known as Dalits in India's deeply rooted hierarchies, have faced violence and oppression on the subcontinent for thousands of years. Though the system is now illegal in India, its impact is still far-reaching and can manifest themselves in a lack of social and economic mobility.
With the increase in South Asian immigration to the U.S. since the 1980s and '90s, the hierarchies have been carried overseas.
Twenty-five percent of Dalits in the U.S. report having faced verbal or physical assault, according to research by Equality Labs, an organization dedicated to ending white supremacy and casteism. One in 3 Dalit students also reported experiencing prejudice that affected their education, the study found.
After their election debacle in Virginia and the close call in New Jersey, Democrats are looking for what or who to blame. Initial targets are Critical Race Theory (CRT), something dismissed as “wokeness,” and Congressional progressives known as “the Squad” including the nefarious “AOC.” If Democrats accept the narrative that swing voters rejected “extremism,” they are doomed to lose big in 2022 and 2024.
Leading Republicans have not shied away from extremism or violence; in fact, they have embraced both. When Arizona Congressional Representative Paul Gosar tweeted animated videos showing him killing Representative Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) and attacking President Biden with a sword, Republicans in Congress overwhelmingly voted against censuring him. They blame Biden for the recent spike in COVID cases, while they actively campaign against mandatory vaccination and masking.
Former Republican Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich is promoting rightwing “Replacement Theories” that were behind the neo-Nazi Charlottesville rally. On Fox “Fake” News, Gingrich accused leftists of trying to “drown” out “classic Americans” and replace them with people who knew nothing of this country’s history and traditions because they want to “get rid of the rest of us.” Gingrich’s claims were repeated by Fox talking head Tucker Carlson who accused Democrats of trying to “change the racial mix of the country” so they could “reduce the political power of people whose ancestors lived here.”
“Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery that mediocrity can pay to greatness”, Oscar Wilde famously stated. Yet, the comical imitation of another work or person is not without controversy. Whilst some grin and bear the parody, others are less charmed by a spoof of their creation or persona.
Max Verstappen, renowned F1 driver, proved to be the latter. In a case currently pending before the Dutch Supreme Court, Verstappen alleged that the use of a look-a-like in a commercial infringed his portrait/image rights. The recently issued conclusion (of 8 October 2021) by the Attorney General to the Dutch Supreme Court is worth discussing, as it gives an insightful analysis of a difficult topic: what are the limits to parody?
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In 2016, Verstappen featured in a TV commercial for Dutch supermarket chain Jumbo. In the commercial Verstappen delivers groceries in his F1 racing car, attesting to the swiftness of Jumbo’s delivery service. Shortly thereafter, Picnic, a competitor of Jumbo, also launched a commercial. In this commercial, a (very accurate) look-a-like of Verstappen, wearing the identical racing outfit Verstappen wore in the Jumbo commercial, delivers groceries in Picnic branded lorry.
Unhappy with the parody, Verstappen successfully claimed infringement of his image right at first instance (before the district Court of Amsterdam). The Court of Appeal of Amsterdam ruled differently and held that, under Dutch law, image rights only grant protection against the actual use of one’s own image. Given that the commercial of Picnic merely depicted a look-a-like of Verstappen, the image of Verstappen itself was not used and thus could not have been infringed.
In an attempt to have the final laugh, Verstappen brought the case before the Dutch Supreme Court.
This Kat continues her review of the “Handbook of Intellectual Property Research” (ed. by I. Calboli and M. Montagnani, OUP, 912 pp.), published recently in open access (review of Parts I and II, here). After discussing traditional legal methods in Parts I and II, the second half of the book introduces readers to empirical research methods.
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Chapter 28, authored by Geertrui Van Overwalle and Lina Kestemont, reminded this Kat of the methodology courses she took during the first year of her PhD studies. Van Overwalle and Kestemont present a useful classification of different research designs (eg descriptive research an evaluative research), which is followed with an explanation of doctrinal and empirical research methods.
Daniel Seng details in Chapter 29 the six steps to quantitative legal analysis. Although quantitative legal analysis is not without its limitations, Seng reminds that where designed properly, it can become a reliable tool in IP research.
Sharon Bar-Ziv looks at the content analysis approach (one of the basic methods in empirical research) in IP scholarship. After introducing readers to the three main stages of content analysis, Bar-Ziv applies this methodology to a case study: content analysis of online copyright law cases.
In a verdict reached on Tuesday, the jury found that the infringement was willful, allowing Illumina to potentially collect triple damages. It also invalidated Illumina's US Patent No. 7,541,444, titled "Modified nucleotides," and claim one of US Patent No. 10,480,025, titled "Labelled nucleotides."
"We are pleased that the jury found that four of Illumina’s patents directed to our proprietary azido sequencing-by-synthesis chemistry were valid and willfully infringed by BGI," Illumina said in a statement. "We respectfully disagree with the jury’s decision to invalidate [the '444 patent]. We will appeal that part of the jury’s decision."
"We are pleased to see that the jury invalidated the claim of [the '444 patent] asserted by Illumina," MGI said in a statement. "This patent contained the broadest of all the asserted claims and had the longest remaining life of the five asserted patents. With this result, MGI may potentially begin selling CoolMPS technology-based products in the US ten months earlier, by August 2022.
"In addition, the jury awarded Illumina much smaller damages ($8 million), only a third of what it was seeking," MGI said. "We firmly believe that MGI has not infringed any valid Illumina claim and are evaluating options for post-trial proceedings."
In a note to investors, Cowen analyst Dan Brennan suggested the decision will block BGI from entering the US market in the next year or two assuming the verdict is held up on appeal. According to Illumina, the '444 patent was set to expire in June 2023 and US Patent No. 7,771,973, also titled "Modified nucleotides," will expire in August 2022.
Intellectual property agencies around the world want to back innovation that addresses climate change. Fast-tracking green technology patents is a key approach
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Meanwhile, the EPO has established a dedicated classification scheme for green inventions, making it easier for users to search its vast database and retrieve patent documents that cover these technologies.
Japan’s IP Bridge has more China litigation experience than many licensing businesses, but faces a tough challenge from Huawei
As is well-known, Congress established the Federal Circuit as a circuit court of appeals to harmonize U.S. patent law in an environment where regional Circuit Courts had developed their own judicial interpretations of the patent statute. As a consequence, it was often to a party's benefit to choose to litigate in a Circuit where the law was favorable to their case. The resulting disharmony was occasionally and variably corrected by the Supreme Court, but Congress perceived the High Court's capacity or concentration on patent law to be insufficient to the country's needs for consistent application in this area of the law. For a generation, the Federal Circuit was able, with little interference from the Supreme Court, to create the harmony Congress mandated, assisted by judges who understood the law and the precedential roots thereof (as well as understanding Congress's mandate and the need to doctrinal consistency). Recently, however, the Court seems to have morphed (along with the composition of the judges) into a soi-disant court of equity, more concerned with doing what at least two judges on any particular panel have been convinced to believe is "the right thing" (for the parties or the law) than with ruling consistently with the Court's precedent. And that tendency (which could be termed "equity creep") explains in part the Court majority's decision in Biogen Int'l GmbH v. Mylan Pharmaceuticals Inc. and Judge O'Malley's vigorous and cogent dissent.
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This is where Judge O'Malley believes the majority and the District Court got off on the wrong foot as a "threshold error" that the majority dismisses in error.
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This is not a case where blaze marks are needed, according to Judge O'Malley, who states "[the specification] does not provide a laundry list disclosure of therapeutically effective doses" but rather provides "one range with the exact DMF 480 dose that is claimed" (emphasis in dissenting opinion) and thus blaze marks should not be required or an issue in deciding satisfaction of the written description requirement.
This portion of Judge O'Malley's dissent raises the issue in a way not otherwise addressed expressly in either opinion, but one that seems relevant to the Court's precedent and consideration of it in this case. It has long been the case that claims must not need in haec verba support in the specification. See, e.g., Ariad Pharms., Inc. v. Eli Lilly & Co., 598 F.3d 1336, 1352 (Fed. Cir. 2010) (en banc). This decision, for the first time, may be one where claims that unambiguously have in haec verba support have been found not to satisfy the written description requirement. As with many of the Court's precedents, the current Court seems to show in its opinions a slow, disquieting tendency to have them spread from the doctrinal boundaries to encompass more and more circumstances that, in past precedent would have been inconceivable. This is an embodiment of a specialized patent court that it is not easy to appreciate Congress did not intend to create.
Arbutus owns several patents related to a lipid-based delivery system for nucleic-acid-based treatments. U.S. Patent 8,058,069 and 9,364,435 are the two at issue here. The claims are directed to the creation of a “acid-lipid particle” that includes some RNA along with lipids to stabilize the sequence, including particular percentages of cationic lipids, non-cationic lipids, and conjugated lipids.
COVID: If you have been following the news, you know that the COVID-19 vaccines distributed by Moderna and Pfizer deliver mRNA to the cells using lipid nanoparticles. Although Arbutus has apparently not threatened Moderna with an infringement action, it has apparently requested a broader license agreement and refused to issue a covenant-not-to-sue. Moderna recognizes “a substantial risk” that Arbutus will assert the patents in an infringement lawsuit “targeting Moderna’s COVID-19 vaccine.”
Pre-COVID: Moderna had been working on mRNA delivery systems and had previously licensed the patents for research work using a milestone payment scheme. Moderna challenged the patents via IPR in 2018 and 2019 so that it could use the inventions without royalty payments or other reporting. IPR2018-00739; IPR2019-00554. This was all before COVID, but the risk and value have ramped-up exponentially.
In Biogen Int’l GMBH v. Mylan Pharma Inc. (Fed. Cir. November 30, 2021), the Federal Circuit has extended that metaphor and found Biogen’s patents invalid for lack of written description. In the case, Judge Keeley (N.D.W.Va.) held a bench trial and concluded that the asserted claims Biogen’s MS treatment-method patent invalid for lack of written description. On appeal, a divided Federal Circuit then affirmed, with Judge Reyna penning the majority opinion joined by Judge Hughes, and Judge O’Malley writing in dissent.
Biogen’s U.S. Patent 8,399,514 covers a method of treating multiple sclerosis using the drug dimethyl fumarate (DMF). The claimed method has one step: administering about 480 mg of DMF per day along with an excipient.
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The question in the case is whether the dosage requirement (~480 mg/day) was sufficiently disclosed in the original specification so that it can be specifically claimed. For this type of analysis, the courts look to the Written Description requirement as one way to ensure that a patent’s exclusive rights are commensurate with what was actually invented. The doctrine requires that the patent application show “possession of the invention” as judged from the perspective of a person of skill in the art considering the entire original specification, including “words, structures, figures, diagrams, formulas, etc.” Lockwood v. Am. Airlines, Inc., 107 F.3d 1565, 1572 (Fed. Cir. 1997). Originally filed claims are seen as part of the specification, and so most often it is sufficient to show that claim limitations were found in the original application. But see, Ariad Pharm., Inc. v. Eli Lilly & Co., 598 F.3d 1336 (Fed. Cir. 2010) (en banc) (original claims can still fail). Despite Ariad, we most often see the power of written description in situations where the claims have been amended to add some limitation that is not clearly expressed in the original specification.
Computers, and the functionality they provide, permeate every part of modern life. Computers are on your desktop, computers are in your car and there’s a chance you’re reading this article on a device that’s talking to the watch on your wrist, the router in the other room and a variety of other smart devices in the building.
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In Europe the two patent applications (EP3564144 and EP3563896) were refused by the EPO following oral proceedings in November 2019 on the grounds that the European Patent Convention requires an inventor to be a human.
The EPO’s decision is being appealed to the Board of Appeal (J0008/20 and J0009/21). In its preliminary opinions (here and here) the Board of Appeal indicated that in its view an inventor needs to a person having legal capacity. The oral proceedings for the appeal is scheduled for 21 December 2021**
Incidentally the Designation of Inventor statement on the EP DABUS cases is not your typical statement and is worth a read. It’s an essay in its own right!
Eligo Bioscience today announced that the US Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) has issued on Nov 19, 2021, a decision and a judgement acknowledging priority to the invention of precision bacterial killing using CRISPR to The Rockefeller University. This invention described in patent family WO2014124226, is owned by The Rockefeller University and exclusively licensed to Eligo Bioscience. With the ruling, the USPTO canceled all claims of all five SNIPR Biome's US patents involved in the interference.
Earlier this year, the European Patent Office (EPO) updated some of its Guidelines for Examination in a way that potentially could affect U.S. patent litigation. These Guidelines instruct European patent examiners (and the public) on how the patent prosecution process works—much like the United States Patent and Trademark Office’s (USPTO’s) Manual of Patent Examining Procedure. For example, the Guidelines detail what form a patent application must be in, what happens during a prior art search, and perhaps most importantly, what should be included in an application. Guideline F-IV 4.3 particularly focuses on the form, contents, and clarity of the claims.
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This begs the question: could description amendments made under Guideline F-IV 4.3 affect U.S. litigation? U.S. courts have yet to grapple with this specific question.
Assume that an applicant submitted identical descriptions and claims to the USPTO and the EPO. But during prosecution, the EPO required the applicant to delete material in the description to ensure consistency between the claims and the description. Both applications then issued with identical claims. Parts one and two of this inquiry are easily met. A court’s hardest task is to determine whether the statement was a blatant admission, “consistent with the claims and the invention described in the specification,” or not related to a unique aspect of foreign patent law.
In this hypothetical, a court could find that description amendments are blatant admissions. See Gillette Co. v. Energizer Holdings, Inc., 405 F.3d 1367, 1374 (Fed. Cir. 2005) (holding that patentee’s statements to the EPO regarding claim scope could be used in claim construction because they were blatant admissions). Because description amendments delete embodiments that are outside the scope of the claims, a court could interpret them to be blatant admissions of claim scope of identical claims. Courts could similarly apply this same logic to find that description amendments are made to be consistent with the claims and invention, and thus, they are relevant to understanding the scope of the claims in the U.S. patent.
Whether description amendments are “unique to foreign patent law” may be a closer call. It is rare for the specification to be amended during U.S. prosecution. In fact, U.S. examiners do not have the authority to require an applicant to delete material in the specification that is not covered in the claims. Thus, a court could conclude that the EPO’s description amendment requirements are so different from U.S. patent law, that an applicant’s response to such a requirement should not impact the scope of the U.S. patent. Claims, however, define the “metes and bounds” of the invention. They are not unique to foreign patent law. Therefore, a court may find that the deletion is not “a statement related to unique aspects of foreign patent law” because it was a statement about claim scope.
On 11 November 2021, the Hungarian Parliament accepted a substantial amendment to the Patent Law, which will be effective from 1 January 2022. This article provides a general overview of the forthcoming amendment.
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Prior to the amendment, there has existed a bifurcation system in Hungary, according to which nullity proceedings against patents are decided first by the Hungarian Intellectual Property Office (HIPO). Against the decision of the HIPO, a request for reconsideration can be filed at the Metropolitan Court (the single competent court for such cases), and against the decision of the Metropolitan Court, any party can appeal to the Metropolitan Appeal Court. While Metropolitan Appeal Court decisions are final, requests for supervisory proceedings can – under certain circumstances – be filed to the Kuria (the Supreme Court of Hungary).
If, within a patent infringement lawsuit, the defendant bases its defence on the invalidity of the ruling patent, it can start a nullity proceeding against the patent, and the patent infringement proceeding is suspended until a final decision is made concerning the validity of the patent. Because of the three or possibly four levels of nullity proceedings, they last an average of four to five years, and the subsequent patent infringement lawsuit, which also involves two or three levels, starts only after this long period has elapsed. Unless the patentee can obtain a preliminary injunction, the infringer can use the patent until a final decision is brought in the patent infringement lawsuit, which often takes place after between six and eight years after the beginning of the proceeding.
This bifurcation system has certain advantages, but they are more than offset by the long procedural time, which has decreased the value of Hungarian patents and caused serious problems for patent owners. The recent amendment limits the exclusive right of the HIPO to provide a first-instance ruling in nullity cases, and authorises the Metropolitan Court (and all appeal courts) to decide in both the validity and infringement lawsuits of a patent if the defendant has filed a nullity request within the framework of a counterclaim in the lawsuit.
If there is an ongoing nullity proceeding against the patent before the start of such a counterclaim, the earlier process has to be decided first. Here, the bifurcation system is maintained – the infringement lawsuit has to be suspended.
Artificial intelligence (AI) generated inventions are not precluded from patent protection – provided a human is named as inventor in the patent application, Germany’s Federal Patent Court has ruled.
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While a district court in the US state of Virginia has also ruled against Dr. Thaler this year, a parallel case about applications for the same inventions was decided in Dr Thaler’s favour in Australia. That decision is the subject of an appeal by Australia’s commissioner of patents, however. Further, earlier this year the South African Patent Office granted Dr Thaler’s patent.
Marc Holtorf, patent litigation expert at Pinsent Masons, said “The recent Thaler/DABUS decision of the German Federal Patent Court has cleared the way to register inventions made by AI as patents in Germany. While the court decided that the listed inventor must be a natural individual it has also ruled that the AI can be named additionally.”
However, Sarah Taylor, also of Pinsent Masons, said the “rare win” for Dr Thaler is likely to be appealed. “Despite this, it appears that the German court has attempted to find a pragmatic solution to this problem, of dealing with patent applications that concern AI devised inventions,” Taylor said.
After the Austrian Parliament unanimously passed the government bill on 19 November 2021 ratifying the Protocol to the Agreement on a Unified Patent Court (UPC) on provisional application (PAP), the Austrian Federal Council has also unanimously approved ratification of the PAP today, 02 December 2021, as expected.
Momentum is gathering towards the UPC becoming operational
And Day Two, on Tuesday 7 December, will take place in China’s afternoon, which will allow for a focus on Europe that will include a briefing on key upcoming developments including the UPC.
Progress continues at pace towards the new Unified Patent Court (“UPC“) in Europe, with news that the National Council of the Austrian Parliament (Nationalrat) has unanimously approved the Protocol on Provisional Application (“PPA“). The next step is for the PPA to be approved by the Austrian Bundesrat (Federal Council), and this is likely to happen before the end of this year.
Therefore Austria is likely to be the thirteenth participating Member State of the UPC to approve the PPA, which is all that is required for the PPA to enter into force. The Chairman of the Preparatory Committee has already been given a mandate to organise a signing ceremony of the Declaration relating to the start of the Provisional Application Period, so it looks unlikely that there will be much further delay in the process.
Judge Len Stark, President Joe Biden’s nominee for the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, faced questions from senators at his judiciary nomination hearing on Wednesday, December 1.
Stark, a judge at the District Court for the District of Delaware, was probed by Senators Patrick Leahy and Chris Coons on appeals from the Patent Trial and Appeal Board, the District Court for the Western District of Texas and his experience as a trial judge.
When Stark introduced himself, he said it was a special privilege to be the first Delawarian to be nominated to the Federal Circuit and the first to be nominated by a Delawarian president.
His first patent-related question came from Leahy, who noted that the Federal Circuit had increasingly raised the bar for Article 3 standing.
The senator asked: “Do you agree judicial review is important and both sides should have a chance to seek review before being estopped?”
Stark replied: “In all instances when an issue related to the PTAB comes before me, I apply the law to the specific facts of the case.”
Leahy then turned to western Texas, asking whether he saw any issues with the fact that a quarter of US patent cases were going to one venue.
Stark gave a similar answer, saying he saw patent venue disputes regularly in Delaware and in each case looked at the specifics before him and applied the law.
Coons later asked how Stark thought his experience at the District of Delaware might help him at the Federal Circuit.
Stark said he would bring with him a recognition of how challenging it was to put together a reviewable record in a patent case.
“The tech is always complex and the facts are challenging and patent litigators, as you know, often disagree with one another,” he said.
“I estimate in a typical patent case that goes to trial, I make many hundreds of decisions and maybe more than 1,000 decisions. Typically, only a handful of those decisions will ever get appealed to the Federal Circuit.
“I would bring with me an understanding of the context in which those appeals arise.”
The nominee for USPTO director got the most attention from the Senate Judiciary Committee panel aside from New York judge nominee Dale Ho
Both nominees have substantial experience handling patent cases. Stark as a district court judge in the patent-heavy district of Delaware (2000+ patent cases) and Vidal as a patent attorney and patent litigator in Silicon Valley. And, importantly, I expect both nominations will be swiftly confirmed by the Senate, although Judge Stark will not be seated until after Judge O’Malley retires in March 2022. Vidal’s testimony offered some clues, suggesting that she may consider rolling back some of the pro-patentee procedural changes to IPRs implemented by Dir. Iancu. But, as is usual with nomination hearings today no concrete details were provided.
There is a split developing in the world over whether artificial intelligence software (AI) can be listed as an inventor on a patent application.
A recent U.S. district court decision illustrates the consistent position taken in the U.S. In September 2021, the district court held that there was “overwhelming evidence” that Congress defined the term inventor in the Patent Act to include only natural persons.1 As such, AI cannot be listed as an inventor on a patent application. Similarly, the U.K. has recently ruled that AI cannot be an inventor under British law.2
The Federal Court of Australia, in a recent decision, took a different approach. In July 2021, the court held that “an artificial intelligence system can be an inventor for the purposes of [Australia’s Patents] Act.”3 South Africa has even recently issued a patent where “[t]he invention was autonomously generated by an artificial intelligence.”4
The result reached by the U.S. and U.K. and the opposite result reached by Australia and South Africa are interesting because at issue were alleged inventions by the same AI.
The European Patent Office (EPO) has granted the Rousselot’s patent application for SiMoGel, a gelatin-based platform for the production of functional gummies.
Launched in 2018, the product enables starch-free production of nutraceutical gummies – improving hygienic conditions for supplement development.
“We’re delighted to have achieved this important step in protecting our innovative SiMoGel solution,” said Marit van der Heijden, Global Marketing & Project Manager at Rousselot. “The patent grant by the EPO strengthens our current patent portfolio and confirms that we are delivering truly innovative solutions to the market. In securing this patent, we are able to offer our customers even more opportunities for secure product development, allowing them to tap into the growing nutraceutical gummy market.”
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The patent is effective in all major countries in Europe and is pending in Brazil, Japan and the United States.
In parallel with its partnership deal, Rousselot has announced EU patent approval for SiMoGel gelatin-based, starch-free solution for functional gummies. The patent will enable the company to add further value to this dynamic category with new innovative delivery formats, says Marit van der Heijden, global marketing & project manager.
She asserts that nutraceutical gummies achieved average market growth of 37.3% between 2016 and 2020 (Innova Market Insights), which has generated some exciting opportunities.
“In securing this patent, we are able to offer our customers even more opportunities for secure product development, allowing them to tap into the growing nutraceutical gummy market.”ââ¬â¹
Rousselot recently developed centre-filled gummies (or gummy caps), which combine the benefits of soft gels with gummies, and plans to team up with customers to develop 3D gummies in visually appealing and “palatableââ¬â¹” shapes.
Van der Heijden adds: “We are committed to using gelatin as the preferred excipient in this application, as we believe its many functional benefits and natural origins bring endless possibilities for consumers to enjoy their daily vitamins, and even medicines.”ââ¬â¹
The EU (European Patent Office) patent is valid throughout Europe but is pending in Brazil, Japan and the US.
On 8 November 2021, the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) published its annual World Intellectual Property Indicators Report (WIPI), reviewing global IP activity in 2020.
WIPI compiles data from around 150 IP authorities (both national and regional) and WIPO concerning filing, registration and renewals on IP rights. It finds that 2020, for all its eventfulness, presented a resilience force in IP – several main application volumes worldwide increased since 2019...
The Plaintiff and the Defendants (who are members of the BGI Group) are the major players in the genetics sequencing industry. The Products and Services are manufactured by the BGI Group in mainland China, the majority of which are sold and supplied to the Overseas Customers through the Hong Kong airport. The Defendants had been engaging in these transhipment activities (the “Transhipment Activities”) for at least 2 to 3 years prior to the Plaintiff’s application and subsequent approval for the Patent.
The claimants in this case claimed to have suffered US$1.2bn in lost profits from the defendant’s accepted failure to file an appeal in time against a patent revocation. In an interesting judgment dated 29 October, Mr Justice Adam Johnson held that the claimants failed to establish that a duty of care was owed to those entities who suffered the most substantial losses and failed to prove that their lost chance of securing some benefit from the patent, had an appeal been filed, was “real and substantial”. As such, the Judge held the claimants were only entitled to “nominal damages” because of the accepted breach of duty.
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Although Mr Justice Adam Johnson held that a duty of care was only owed to the First Claimant, he nonetheless went on to consider whether, if a duty had been owed to all the Claimants, their loss of profits claim would have succeeded.
Had the appeal of revocation of Patent 458 been lodged in time, then its revocation would have been automatically suspended, pending the appeal being heard and resolved. Therefore, there was no positive step that the Claimants needed to prove they would have taken on the balance of probabilities. The Judge said that the only issue to consider was what would have happened in the counterfactual scenario in the period 2012 to early 2015. The counterfactual is not assessed on the balance of probabilities. Instead a Claimant’s losses will follow, based upon the chance of the counterfactual situation arising (the damages being assessed in percentage terms) provided that the lost chance or opportunity is a real one (i.e., a chance of 10% or more).
In a very careful consideration of the counterfactual evidence, Mr Justice Adam Johnson was not persuaded that the existence of Patent 458 in the period 2012 to early 2015 would have generated any real chance of the vehicle manufacturers and/or the Rival Company making different procurement decisions, so that a larger share of business went to the Claimants.
Merck has become the first covid-19 therapeutic or vaccine owner to strike a deal with the MPP. Here are the most important takeaways from the agreement.
Nicox SA (Euronext Paris: FR0013018124, COX), an international ophthalmology company, today announced that patent EP 3,769,753, expiring in 2040 and covering the Company’s product candidate in development for blepharitis, NCX 4251, has been issued by the European Patent Office (EPO). The patent covers ophthalmic suspensions comprising a specific form of fluticasone propionate nanocrystals and the method for manufacturing the ophthalmic suspensions. Examination of corresponding patent applications providing exclusivity in the United States (U.S.), China, Japan and other territories is in process.
Counsel at Ericsson and four other companies say NDA quibbles, antitrust suits and collective holdout have all become more common
On November 17, 2021, the USPTO issued a final office action rejecting all claims of U.S. Patent 9,645,720 at issue. The '720 patent is related to data sharing, owned by Crandall Technologies LLC, an NPE, and has been asserted against Vudu. The final office action issued roughly 10 months from when Unified filed the request for ex parte reexamination and about 9 months after reexamination was ordered.
On November 16, 2021, the United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit summarily affirmed the PTAB’s ruling that all challenged claims U.S. Patent 10,259,494, are unpatentable in a summary affirmance under Rule 36, effectively ending the longstanding assertion of those claims. In January 2021, the Board terminated IPR2020-00948, Unified Patents, LLC v. Arsus, LLC, in response to Arsus disclaiming all challenged claims. Arsus's counsel filed a Motion to Vacate Judgment arguing that the Board was deprived of subject matter jurisdiction after Arsus's disclaimer. The Board issued an order denying Arsus's motion to vacate and affirming termination of the proceeding.
We study the impact of Standard Setting Organization (SSO) intellectual property rights (IPR) policies on standardization and innovation. Specifically, we conduct a pair of event studies for two well known IPR policy revisions: a switch from Fair Reasonable and Non-Discriminatory (FRAND) to Royalty-Free licensing at the World Wide Web Consortium in 2003, and an update of the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers (IEEE) Standards Association's IPR policy in 2015. Overall, we find little evidence that these policy changes caused a decline in participation by patent licensors or reduced innovation in patent-intensive parts of either SSO. This pattern holds for both W3C and IEEE, across numerous measures of participation and innovation, and for a variety of different treatment and control group comparisons. We interpret these findings as evidence that any link between IPR policies, innovation, and SSO participation is much weaker than purely theoretical arguments to the contrary often suggest.
In a new study by Boston University’s Timothy Simcoe and Qing Zhang from Charles River Associates, the pair researched the impact of changes to Standard Setting Organization (SSO) intellectual property rights (IPR) policies on participation, standardization, and innovation for two well-known IPR policy revisions: a 2003 World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) switch from Fair Reasonable and Non-Discriminatory (FRAND) to Royalty-Free licensing and a 2015 Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers (IEEE) IPR policy revision. The study found these changes resulted in little or no decline in participation or innovation in patent-intensive parts of either SSO. The results held for both the W3C and IEEE across numerous measures and “treatment” vs “control” group comparisons. These quantitative findings appear to rebut the theory that SSO participation and licensing policy are connected.
SynAct Pharma AB ("SynAct") today announced that the European Patent Office (EPO) has issued an Intention to Grant for the company's European patent application covering AP1189 in methods of treating arthritic diseases.
SynAct has received information that an Intention to Grant has been issued concerning its European patent application 20723141.6 (EP publication 3773558). The European patent, when granted, will provide protection until 2040 for the use of SynAct's lead compound AP1189 in combination with methotrexate in methods of treating arthritic disease, including Rheumatoid Arthritis, as in the recently completed BEGIN study where AP1189 given in combination with methotrexate gave a significant reduction in disease activity. Importantly, the patent application among other also covers the use of combination treatment in other arthritic diseases, such as Psoriatic Arthritis and Ankylosing Spondylitis.
On 17 November 2021, the Hungarian Parliament significantly amended Act XXXIII of 1995 on the Patent Protection of Inventions ("Patent Act"). The amendments will enter into force on 1 January 2022.
The changes will amend and supplement the rules on the Bolar exemption, introduce revocation counterclaims in patent infringement suits and amend the rules on preliminary injunctions.
To help you capitalize on these changes, we summarized them below.
Video codec licensing platforms must strive for balance and efficiency, argues Access Advance CEO Pete Moller, but fees on content distribution would prove counterproductive
On the 12th of November, the JPO published an updated version of its earlier 2018 "Comparative Study on Computer Implemented/Software Related… [Links to this PDF]
At 10 am Monday, FOSS folks and others interested in software patent litigation will have a chance to have a firsthand look at how our courts address patent cases. The case involves a “notorious patent troll,” according to Electronic Frontiers Foundation, that is trying to hide information from Apple, which it’s suing.
“At a federal appeals court hearing that will be livestreamed, attorney Alexandra H. Moss, Executive Director at Public Interest Patent Law Institute, who is assisting EFF in the case, will argue that a judge’s order to unseal all documents and preserve public access in the case of Uniloc USA, Inc. v. Apple Inc. should be upheld,” EFF said in a statement on Thursday. “Uniloc is entitled to resolve its patent dispute in publicly-funded courts, Moss will argue, but it’s not entitled to do so secretly.”
EFF said that this is the second time the plaintiff, Uniloc, has appealed an order to be more transparent in this case.
Flook is a divide-and-conquer case that looks a lot like the Alice test itself. The claims were directed setting of “alarm limits” for a catalytic conversion process and the court identified the only novel feature to be a mathematical formula. The mathematical formula was an abstract idea, and thus offered no patentable weight. And, the remaining features were admittedly known in the art.
Respondent’s process is unpatentable under €§ 101 not because it contains a mathematical algorithm as one component, but because, once that algorithm is assumed to be within the prior art, the application, considered as a whole, contains no patentable invention. Thus, the claim as a whole was ineligible. Although the court recognized that it had disected the claim into component parts, it also concluded that this approach still took the claim “as a whole:”
Sources at Birkenstock Americas, Clif Bar and four other brands reveal what they do when their teams really want to use terms that conflict with other marks
It Takes Two, the latest game from Brothers: A Two Sons' Josef Fares, has been hit by a trademark claim from Grand Theft Auto parent company Take-Two.
The acclaimed co-op puzzler about a pair of divorcing parents was struck by a trademark claim before its release earlier this year, it has emerged. Records show developer Hazelight subsequently abandoned ownership of the name.
What we do know is that the filing was first made with the European Union Intellectual Property Office (EUIPO) in August this year, and it one hundred per cent relates to a motorcycle.
A few days ago, Adele released her new studio album "30". Following the news, a tweet went viral in which the singer called on streaming platform Spotify to disable the feature known as "shuffle" on her freshly released album. This feature allows users to listen to songs from an album, playlist or EP in an order not chosen by the user or the artist. The function is also mandatory for users who do not subscribe to the streaming service (on mobile devices). According to the artist, it should be removed to respect her artistic choices, which include choosing the order of songs within albums.
Spotify subsequently disabled the shuffle button on all albums accessed through the music streaming platform. Adele commented, "We make our albums with so much care and consideration for a reason... our art tells a story and our stories should be heard the way we intend them to be. Thank you, Spotify, for listening". To which Spotify's official Twitter account responded, "Anything for you".
The message was met with the approval of the majority of the music community, which noted that each artist recognizes clear choices of creativity not only in the creative process of the individual song but also in the choice of the exact order in which they should appear on an album. While one could debate this topic from a non-legal standpoint (and perhaps we will return to it), one (unsolicited) question might be:
What would have happened if Spotify had not agreed to remove the "shuffle" feature at Adele's request and she had decided to take her reasons to the legal level? Also, is there a connection between this story and a possible infringement of the author's moral rights? If so, to what extent? Is the album per se, conceived as a particular sequence of songs, a work that is the result of the author's "free and creative choices" and thus deserving of the protection of the moral right of integrity? A cascade of questions.
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Thus, if moral rights can be understood as an extension of the author's personality, and the negative effect on one’s own honour should be proven by concrete derogatory treatment, would Adele's request be relevant from a copyright perspective?
With the sacred (and thus truly inviolable) benefit of the doubt, it seems unlikely to find a connection between the impossibility of avoiding the Spotify's "shuffle" feature and a violation of the reputation and honour of the artist.
