The dev says of their creation that it adds “useless gaps around tiled and maximized windows”. This is similar to the sort of look you get with a tiling-window manager (like i3-gaps, AwesomeWM, etc), but inside of GNOME Shell.
The ‘Useless Gaps’ extension is designed for GNOME 40 and up. It will work on older versions of GNOME Shell (I used it on Ubuntu 20.04 LTS) but, as is the case with many modern extensions, you’re unable to access its settings window (from which you can adjust the size of the gaps).
I hope you are doing well? We had a good week in the world of Linux Releases, with Pop!_OS 21.10, Kaisen Linux 2.0, SparkyLinux 2021.12, MakuluLinux Shift NextGen, Debian 11.2, ALT Linux 10.0 beta, Debian Edu 11.2, ReactOS 0.4.14, and Bluestar Linux 5.15.7.
No matter how old or new you are, you will always need simple ways to complete your daily tasks. Users can choose from an enormous number of Linux operating systems. Hence, it becomes a bit confusing to choose the correct Linux distro for daily usage. That’s why we have written this blog to give you a brief explanation of the best Linux distros for everyday use.
On the one hand where Microsoft Windows users can only change the OS interface themes or get some level of customization with the help of some third-party software; Linux can do a lot more. The modular structure of Linux allows the operating systems to be used with different graphical user interfaces. The X Display Manager as part of the X Window System is responsible for this. There are many different desktop environments. Well-known are, for example, KDE, GNOME, Xfce, MATE, or Cinnamon. And a Linux user can choose any of them if he is not happy with the current to enhance experience and convenience on its daily use machine.
I've been suggesting for quite a while that every linux setup should have a seperate home and root partition so today I explain why I say this.
1:46 The News 16:16 Security Update 23:52 Bi-Weekly Wanderings 52:38 Announcements & Outro
First up in the news, Linux Mint monthly news, Europe embraces open source, Debian has browser issues, Fedora goes all in on Wayland, Firefox helps you fight spam, And the Linux kernel gets rusty
In security, Ubuntu Kernel Security Patches, FGKASLR gets closer to mainline, Data stealing malware hides on Linux servers, Go Daddy data breach
MX Linux is one of the most powerful Linux distros today and it's even ranked #1 on DISTROWATCH. Why has NO other Linux Distro beaten it in the last 3 years? Is MX really that good? In this video, we'll be having a deep dive into the newly released MX Linux 21.
Listener feedback, and a look at Bitkeeper, the version control system that compelled Linus Torvalds to create Git.
Things are calming down, and rc6 is fairly small. That's normal for this time in the release schedule, but it's also normal for this time of year.
And I expect that the next two weeks will be very quiet, and smaller still. But maybe people are bored, maybe people are staying in due to covid picking up again, we'll just see.
Regardless of what happens, I will be making an rc8 - not because this release looks particularly problematic, but simply due to the seasonal holidays. There's no point in releasing a final 5.16 and opening the merge window when people are still on holiday or just coming back. So we'll have at least one extra week of rc this release, even if no nasty issues appear. And if issues _do_ appear, that can obviously delay things further, even if that may look unlikely right now.
Anyway, on the rc6 front, most of the changes here are drivers (mainly networking, usb, and gpu, with some minor noise elsewhere), although the bpf seltest additions do show up in the diff quite prominently too.
There's the usual arch updates too. A good chunk of of those are to dts files, so maybe they count as driver updates.. But there's some other small changes in there: x86 kvm fixes, powerpc, s390 and mips fixes, arm soc fixes etc.
The rest is spread out - filesystems (btrfs, ceph, ciph) and core kernel (mostly networking).
I know most of us are preparing for Christmas, but give it a whirl, ok? How important are those presents (and that family) anyway?
Shortlog appended for people who want to scan the details,
Linus
Thanks to the reverse-engineering, open-source community there has been mainline Linux driver support for select NZXT all-in-one water cooling solutions while for the upcoming Linux 5.17 kernel is another new NZXT driver for some of their other products.
Thanks to independent developer Aleksandr Mezin, Linux 5.17 is slated to introduce the "nzxt-smart2" driver as part of the kernel's hardware monitoring subsystem.
Coming as a surprise to end out the week is confirmation that the lead developer and architect for Intel's Linux Vulkan driver has left the company.
Jason Ekstrand who has been heavily involved with Intel's Vulkan open-source Linux driver announced on Friday that he is leaving the company. Ekstrand has been the "lead developer" of the Intel "ANV" Mesa Vulkan driver since it was started with fellow developers at the time like Kristian Hoegsberg. Ekstrand has been instrumental to the success of Intel's open-source Linux Vulkan driver and continued improvements.
Last year with Linux 5.10 FUSE added DAX support for use with VirtIO-FS. Like with DAX for other file-systems, enabling this direct access mode allows bypassing the page cache. For use-cases when running on persistent memory like devices or VirtIO, having this direct access to the storage device can be beneficial for performance. With Linux 5.17 FUSE is expanding the DAX support to allow per-inode control as well.
The AMD P-State Linux driver is what their engineers have been iterating through the past number of months with cooperation from Valve and other stakeholders.
Compared to ACPI CPUFreq as used currently across AMD processors, the AMD-Pstate driver for use on Zen 2 and newer processors makes use of ACPI CPPC (Collaborative Processor Performance Controls) for improving AMD CPU efficiency on Linux by being able to make more more informed and accurate performance state decisions.
Surfing the Internet has never been as safe as it is today, and yet there have never been as many threats swarming the Internet as there are today, not only for your security: also for your privacy. Therefore, thinking about both security and privacy, one of the most helpful ideas that you can grab is to use a good VPN.
Have you ever wondered how long it took your Linux system to boot up? You may be looking to try to speed up the time it takes for your Linux system to be ready to use, or you may just be curious. Rather than getting out a stopwatch, let’s take a look at some Linux commands we can use to see how long it took to boot up Linux.
Many developers manage their user-specific application configuration – also known as dotfiles – in a version control system such as git. This allows for keeping track of changes and synchronizing the dotfiles across different machines. Searching on github, you’ll find thousands of dotfile repositories.
As your dotfiles are sprinkled all over your home directory, managing them in a single repository is not trivial, i.e. how do you make sure that your .bashrc, .tmux.conf, etc. that life in your dotfile repository appear in the proper places in your home directory? The most common solution is to use symlinks so that the .tmux.conf in your home directory is just a symlink pointing to the appropriate file in your dotfile repository:
I’ve also been learning the ropes of Blender’s geometry nodes recently. While only scratching the surface, I created this visualizer for the track. The heavy lifting is done with baking the sound to f-curves, which is then somewhat tweaked to acceptable ranges with f-curve modifiers.
Pop!_OS is now available on the Raspberry Pi 4! This guide will go over how you can set up the OS on your Raspberry Pi 4. To get started, ensure you have a speedy MicroSD Card.
EasyOS, like the pups before, has tended to be built with a large collection of applications. I like to see an app to cater for every need, at least for 95% of the users. Obviously there have to be limits to what is builtin, but one app I reckon would be nice to have is a video editor.
If you are running Kali Linux on VMware Workstation or on a ESXi host you should ensure that the VMtools package is installed and working correctly. Having the vmtools package installed brings a number of improvements to the running of the virtual machine, including helping with the following...
In this tutorial you will learn how to fix the error : "‘UnicodeDecodeError: 'utf-8' codec can't decode byte 0x82 in position 4: invalid start byte"
If you are getting this error when trying to open the protonvpn app on Linux mint, this means you cannot connect to servers, after some researching for awhile I didn't find the cause of error but i managed to find the solution.
It seemed like a package or something got broken when I updated the system and due to the update the protonvpn gui wasn't working anymore.
I bought a new ‘distro testing’ laptop in the Black Friday sale last month (don’t get carried away, it cost me €£200 and a lot of headaches) but I only installed Ubuntu 22.04 on it this weekend — and instantly hit a snag.
See, normally when I install Ubuntu alongside Windows as a dual-boot system Ubuntu will add the GRUB boot loader — awesome — and populate that boot loader with links to any other operating systems, such as Windows (or technically boot into the Windows boot manager) — also awesome.
Except, that no longer happens when installing Ubuntu 22.04.
Instead, after I finished installing Jammy and rebooted I could only boot Ubuntu. To boot Windows I need to use the boot manager menu. While a limp push of the F10 key isn’t exactly hard, it is less than preferable.
Today we are looking at how to install Gnome Web 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.
In the early days of my Linux experience, I was the technology director of a small PreK-12 school district in the state of New York. Our technology budget was always stretched to the limit. We were a Windows 2000 Active Directory Domain, but we had limited central server disk space and no teacher home directories. In addition, we experienced a dozen or so hard disk failures for staff computers.
I don't practice drawing, so I don't expect to be able to draw well, but I do sometimes enjoy drawing, regardless of skill. One application I use when attempting to get some imagery out onto a canvas is MyPaint, a digital paint application focusing on a clean interface, appealing brushes and materials, and ease of use. The ease of use part is important for artists and chronic doodlers like myself. When you sit down to do something, you generally want to do the thing, not spend hours learning new software or configuring a complex application. MyPaint manages to make it more comfortable to be in front of a blank canvas and empowering to produce something beautiful.
plocate finds all files on the system matching the given pattern. It is a locate based on posting lists, giving much faster searches on a much smaller index.
When you need to search for some files in Linux, you might typically use find or locate commands. So, now you have a new alternative called plocate.
plocate works by creating an inverted index over trigrams (combinations of three bytes) in the search strings, which allows it to rapidly narrow down the set of candidates to a very small list, instead of linearly scanning through every entry.
Named for the posting lists that inspired it, plocate was written to be a drop-in replacement for mlocate. While it can still use updatedb to create its database, plocate can also use the plocate-build utility to create an index.
In Linux, when a file is created, its ownership is granted to the user who created it. However, there will be situations or scenarios in which we may have to give ownership to some other user.
We can do this by using the chown command, which stands for change owner. Using this command, we can change the ownership of a file and the directories and symbolic links.
In this tutorial, we will learn to change the ownership of files using the chown command.
In this tutorial, we will show you how to install MySQL on Fedora 35. For those of you who didn’t know, MySQL is an open-source relational database management system.
2D jump’n’run game SuperTux released 0.6.3 Beta recently with many exciting new features.
SuperTux is a free open-source side-scroller inspired from the Super Mario Bros. Player may control a penguin called Tux in game to run and jump through multiple worlds, fighting off enemies, and reclaim Penny.
At home, I am mainly using Xbox360 gamepads (I must have 5 of them) and a Dual Shock 4 with my Linux PCs.
How do you get better pictures from a 20+ year old Game Boy Camera? How about marrying a DSLR lens to it? That’s what [ConorSev] did and, honestly, the results are better than you might expect as [John Aldred] mentioned in his post about the topic. You can check the camera out in the video below.
A 3D printed adapter lets you mount a Canon EF lens to the Game Boy Camera, a trick that we’ve seen in the past. [ConorSev] looked at the existing adapters floating around, and came up with the revised version you see here. There was still the problem of actually getting the images off the Camera cartridge, but luckily, this isn’t exactly unexplored territory either.
The KDE project today announced the release of GCompris 2.0, the new major version of the educational entertainment software suite aimed at children between the ages of 2 and 10. Its name comes from the French phrase “J’ai compris”, which in Spanish means “I have understood”.
As a development that falls under the KDE umbrella, GCompris is free software, although its license was changed from GPLv3 to AGPLv3 in March 2021. The suite has taken some important turns throughout its history, since initially It was built with GTK, C and Python to pass in 2014 to Qt, QML and C ++ and to be under the shelter of its current matrix. On the other hand, in 2020 the versions for Windows, macOS and Android became free, so they began to be distributed under the same conditions as the version for Linux.
Now covering what the suite itself offers at the application level, GCompris provides more than 170 educational activities and games. According to the KDE project, “It is used by teachers, parents and, most importantly, by children from all over the world”, being able to perform the function of “An accessory in classrooms and at home” by giving “children the opportunity to practice a wide range of skills while having fun”.
GCompris 2.0 comes with some new games and activities that are sure to come in handy for kids during the Christmas holidays that are just around the corner. The first new activity is called Baby mouse (baby mouse) and it’s aimed at teaching the little ones to use a computer for the first time. Once started, the user is presented with a friendly environment with brightly colored ducks in which they can use the mouse or a touch screen to interact.
With Sort Numbers and Sort Letters, children who already know the numbers and letters can practice their ordering, while in Sort Sentences Reading and grammar are practiced by classifying the parts of sentences. With the Positions activity it is possible to practice reading comprehension and spatial location.
Its a time to be thankful for what you can do, rather than be pissed off about things that you can’t do because we’re in the 3rd year of a global pandemic.
I made it home to Shropshire, in time to cast an important vote, and to spend Christmas with my folks… something I couldn’t do last year.
Work involves a client with software integration difficulties. Our goal is to enable a Python 3 migration in the company, which involves a tangle of dependencies in various languages. The interesting aspect is that we’re trialling BuildStream as the solution. We know BuildStream can control the mix of C/C++/Go/Java/etc. dependencies, in a way which Python-only tools like virtualenv cannot, and we hope it will be less friction compared to introducing a fullblown packaging system like DPKG. The project is challenging for a number of reasons and I am not enjoying working over VPN+SSH to another continent, but I’m sure we will learn a lot.
We have just made the next Gen of MakuluLinux Shift Live, Please make sure to Read the updated release notes and grab your copy below, or from the Shift section above.
Within the trailer lasting barely two minutes, we encounter ominous references to the central themes of the DebConf19 Outreachy tindernship scandal: a woman, her first internship and first trip, coincidentally, in Brazil. Men with power and money. Public exhibition. Humiliation of a woman. This could be a Debian Outreachy tindernship but it is just a movie.
It constantly amazes us what we hackers can build these days, (electronics shortages aside) we have access to an incredible array of parts, with specifications that only a few years ago would be bank-breaking and longer ago just fantasy. It’s nice to see people building one-offs just for fun, in spite of the current difficulties getting parts to actually be delivered. For example, check out this miniaturized Nintendo Switch created by [scottbez1] that plays animated GIFs from an SD card on tiny 1.14ââ¬Â³ LCD display.
The Wio Terminal is a microcontroller with WiFi support. It compares with Arduino when you add a WiFi Shield. Also, it compares well with the ESP8266/ESP32 which are also microcontrollers with built-in WiFi support. For the end-user, all these can be programmed using the Arduino IDE and MicroPython. That is, you can choose between any of these microcontrollers and the development experience will be almost the same.
A microcontroller is used in embedded systems. That is, electronic devices that need a small computer to work, but do not require this computer to run a full operating system like Linux. The Raspberry Pi is an example of a device that runs a full operating system and can be added to electronic devices that really need a full operating system to work. In practical terms, you can think of the microcontroller as a very small computer that does not run Linux but can run single programs that you develop, using a special tool like the Arduino IDE.
Cisco Systems, Inc. is an American multinational technology corporation that focuses on networking hardware and software. It has over 75,000 employees with its headquarters in San Jose, California.
Cisco has been participating in open source development for almost 30 years including founding projects like OpenDaylight, FD.io, VPP, PNDA, SNAS, and OpenH264, and contributing to projects like OPNFV, Kubernetes, OpenStack, Ansible, Chef, Puppet, Maven, and many others.
Cisco has also been a key contributor to the Linux kernel over the years, accounting for about 0.5% of total kernel commits, and is a Platinum Member of the Linux Foundation and Premium Sponsor of the Open Source Initiative.
On 8th of this month I attended a full day OpenSpace on "Digitalisering, kompetensförsörjning och livslÃÂ¥ngt lärande" organized by JobTechDev and Sunet. This was the first in-person event for me after 2020 Nullcon in March. That brought in some extra excitement. Then the night before I tried to look for the place and to my surprise we were having it in Internet Stiftelsen, The Swedish Internet Foundation.
I managed to the reach the venue around 15 minutes before the event started and talked a few people. At beginning we all sat in a circular fashion and Leif & Greg (from JobTechDev) started explaining the format and the plan for the day. All in Swedish :P Though people moved into English after Leif pointed out that I am the only person in the room (we had 30+ participants) who neither speaks nor understand Swedish.
[...]
During the discussion of Open Source, one thing was super clear that all the people present in the room (both developers and high number of management folks) were all convinced about writing and using Open Source technologies. My organization, Sunet is already into writing only Open Source solutions mode. The rest of the orgs also agreed that they should put that in the organization policy and make sure that they maintain proper Open Source projects. After all we all are being paid by the government using public money.
I am happy to announce that my project Jitter has been officially accepted as part of the GNU Project.
The new Jitter home page is https://www.gnu.org/software/jitter . The git repository is still at http://git.ageinghacker.net/jitter .
JavaScript is the most popular programming language among software developers, for three years in a row, according to the yearly survey conducted by Stack Overflow.
This guide will take a look at how to install Node.js, one of the core technologies that has popularised the JavaScript language. Node.js is a JavaScript runtime environment, that allows you to create server-side or backend JavaScript applications.
Ah, advent. That time of year when the shops are filled with the sound of Christmas songs – largely, the very same ones they played when I was a kid. They’re a bit corny, but the familiarity is somehow reassuring. And what better way to learn about this year’s new Cro features than through the words of the Christmas hits?
[...]
Cro offers improved latency out of the box for thanks to setting TCP_NODELAY automatically on sockets. This disables Nagle’s algorithm, which reduces the network traffic of applications that do many small writes by collecting multiple writes together to send at once. This makes sense in some situations, but less so in the typical web application, where the resulting increased latency of HTTP responses or WebSocket messages can make a web application feel a little less responsive.
This tutorial explores image classification in PyTorch using state-of-the-art computer vision models. The dataset used in this tutorial will have 3 classes that are very imbalanced. So, we will explore augmentation as a solution to the imbalance problem.
What’s better than a 100MHz scope? How about an optical one? Researchers at the University of Central Florida think that’s just the ticket, and they’ve built an oscilloscope that can measure the electric field of light. You can find the full paper online.
Reading the electrical field of light is difficult with traditional tools because of the very high frequency involved. According to [Michael Chini], who worked on the new instrument, the oscilloscope can be as much as 10,000 times faster as a conventional one.
We’ve been following [James Bruton]’s open dog project for a little while now, and with his considerable pace of work – pandemic or no pandemic – development has been incredibly rapid. The latest milestone is the public release of version 3 (Video, embedded below.) This upgrade to the system adds 3D printed cycloidal gearboxes, removing the previous belt drives. [James] had immense fun tuning the motor controller parameters for these and admits they’re not completely dialed in yet. He notes that the wider gearbox body means that the robots geometry needed to change a little, and the previous belt-drive version may have a bit of an edge, but he’s confident he can make it work (and given his incredible previous robotics builds, we totally believe he’ll nail it!)
By now, [CuriousMarc] and his team of volunteers are well versed in 1960s hardware restoration. So when a vintage IBM I/O Tester came into their possession, a full machine makeover was all but inevitable.
The I/O Tester dates from around 1965, which roughly coincides with the introduction of IBM’s lauded System/360 computer mainframe. In addition to the computer itself, business customers could order a variety of peripherals with their computing system. These included storage devices, printers, additional operator consoles, and so on. Since these peripherals shared the same I/O design, a portable hardware testing rig was a sensible design choice. One portable low-voltage tester could be paired with any number of IBM peripherals, doing away with the need to have unique debugging panels on every piece of computing hardware.
Fast forward to the present day, and the IBM I/O Tester looks positively antique with its blinkenlight lamp panel and switches. To use the tester, simply connect up one (or both) of its chunky 104-pin connectors to your IBM peripheral of choice, insert the accompanying paper overlay, and voilà. Operators could then observe the status of the many lamps to evaluate the inner digital workings of the connected peripheral. Depending on the connected hardware, the tester could reveal the contents of data registers, printing status, disk and tape transfer status, and probably much more. The purpose of the tester’s ninety indicator lights is completely dependent on the attached peripheral, and the paired paper overlays are essential to comprehend their meaning.
A recent cartoon in the French daily Le Monde featured a bedraggled man arriving at a doctor’s office for a Covid-19 vaccine. “I am here for the fifth shot because of the third wave,” he says. “Or vice versa.”
His bewilderment as France suffers its fifth wave of the pandemic, with cases of the Delta variant rising sharply along with Omicron anxiety, captured a mood of exhaustion and simmering anger across the world two years after the deadly virus began to spread in China.
Uncertainty bedevils plans. Panic spreads in an instant even if, as with the Omicron variant, the extent of the threat is not yet known. Vaccines look like deliverance until they seem a little less than that. National responses diverge with no discernible logic. Anxiety and depression spread. So do loneliness and screen fatigue. The feeling grows that the Covid era will go on for years, like plagues of old.
Drugmaker Pfizer Inc. has signed a deal with a U.N.-backed group to allow other manufacturers to make its experimental COVID-19 pill, a move that could make the treatment available to more than half of the world’s population.
In a statement issued Tuesday, Pfizer said it would grant a license for the antiviral pill to the Geneva-based Medicines Patent Pool, which would let generic drug companies produce the pill for use in 95 countries, making up about 53 per cent of the world’s population.
IT FEELS LIKE the world has a lot of Pandora's boxes open at once right now. Last week another crisis came into view with disclosure of a vulnerability in the widely used open source Apache logging library Log4j. Since then, system administrators, incident responders, and governments have been scrambling to install patches and reduce the threat. The bug is simple for attackers to exploit and can lead to full server takeover. Patching is on the rise, but Apache has had to release additional fixes that now must be installed. After some preliminary probing and exploitation from attackers around the world, defenders are bracing for a brutal next wave. And they say that vulnerable systems will lurk in networks for years, just waiting to be discovered and exploited.
Meanwhile, researchers put the surveillance-for-hire industry on blast this week as Meta took down infrastructure on its platforms from seven companies that had targeted more than 50,000 of the company's users and others. And Google's Project Zero did a deep technical analysis of NSO Group's ForcedEntry iOS exploit, underscoring just how sophisticated a private organization's hacking tools can be. WIRED also took a look at growth tactics of the world's largest deepfake abuse site that uses AI to generate false nude images.
With all of this targeted hacking and misinformation floating around, check out WIRED's guide to defending yourself against “smishing” or SMS phishing attacks deployed by everyone from the most elite hackers down to run-of-the-mill spammers.
And there's more. Each week we round up all the security news WIRED didn’t cover in depth. Click on the headlines to read the full stories.
Many of you follow my blog by means of an email subscription to new posts. I once had a conversation with a reader who had even forgotten that it's actually a blog, i.e., a website, and thought it was just an email newsletter :-)
In the summer I had to switch from FeedBurner, whose email notification service Google unfortunately discontinued, to Follow.it.
[...]
Single-post emails would have cluttered people's mailboxes in the first few years of FOSS Patents, when there were sometimes five or six posts on a given day at the height of the "smartphone patent wars." Now I typically do only one post on a given day, sometimes two, and only rarely three or more.
Tech giant has been granted patent for doorbell that remembers regular callers and alerts residents when a stranger is approaching but privacy campaigners see it is a worrying development
[...]
AMAZON's doorbell system, Ring, has just secured 17 new patents and some of the features have privacy campaigners worried.
Ring's tentative new features would employ artificial intelligence (AI) and facial recognition systems to identify strangers and perform other tasks that some find dystopian.
The US Patent & Trademark Office this week published a new patent filed by Apple that reveals a privacy feature designed to show iPhone contents only through special glasses, so that only the owner of the phone can see what’s on the screen.
As reported by Patently Apple, the patent application refers to a system that can display “vision-corrected graphical outputs and standard graphical outputs on an electronic device.”
Faced with a potential vote of censure by the board of the International Atomic Energy Agency, the nuclear watchdog of the United Nations, Iran agreed Wednesday to replace surveillance cameras at a key site that manufactures centrifuges.
But Iran continues to block United Nations inspectors from viewing the video those cameras produce, and from replacing the full memory cards in cameras at other sites.
Iran’s refusal to grant the United Nations inspectors full access has further complicated talks in Vienna aimed at trying to restore the 2015 Iran nuclear deal, leaving the negotiators without a clear and complete assessment of Iran’s nuclear program. European negotiators said this week that the talks were stalled and that time was running out.
Failure to overcome east-west divisions is the key reason why Europe has not become a true global player. In the last 30 years Europe has often been subservient to Washington policies. Europe’s interventions to end genocide in ex-Yugoslavia led to President Bill Clinton’s Dayton agreement which finally ended the conflict. In policies over the euro, trade, banking and financial regulation and relations with China, Europe has frequently had to play second fiddle to America.
The present crises are more likely to prolong than end disunity. The Covid-19 pandemic has been sufficiently virulent to unhinge economic growth and social cohesion. But it has not been strong enough to generate a unified European response. The most important offspring of Maastricht, the European Central Bank, born in 1998, facing much higher inflation than expected, must decide a post-Covid-19 strategy for asset purchases and (still negative) interest rates. This is not the Europe that the architects of Maastricht and Minsk had in mind. There is still the possibility of a benevolent European outcome – based on successful implementation of Covid-19 vaccination strategies, an ebbing of east-west tension over Ukraine and inspired economic leadership – to make the best of low interest rates and the EU’s Next Generation funding programme. To get there will require hard work, statesmanship and a necessary portion of good fortune.
When a government decides to take a look at your particular field of experimentation, it’s never necessarily a cause for rejoicing, as British motor vehicle enthusiasts are finding out through a UK Government consultation. Titled “Future of transport regulatory review: modernising vehicle standards“, the document explains that it is part of the process of re-adopting under UK law areas which have previously been governed by the European Union. Of particular interest is the section “Tackling tampering”, which promises a new set of offences for “tampering with a system, part or component of a vehicle intended or adapted to be used on a road“.
They go into detail as to the nature of the offences, which seem to relate to the production of devices designed to negate the safety or environmental features of the car. They’re at pains to say that they have no wish to target the legitimate car modification world, for example in motorsport or restoration, but it’s easy to see how a car hacker might inadvertently fall foul of any new rules. It’s worried the enthusiasts enough that a petition has been launched on the UK parliamentary petition site, making the point that the existing yearly MOT roadworthiness test should fulfill the function of taking any illegal vehicles off the road.
There also is a Wikipedia entry for an ancient city named "Alium" as the Latin translation of the Greek name "Alion." Even Wikipedia doesn't have much to say about that city other than it got mentioned in a couple of historical documents. Since it was a Greek city, the endonym is Alion, and Alium is merely an exonym that happens to be a homonym of "garlic." Place names can have funny meanings, which is why a certain Upper Austrian town was renamed "Fugging" earlier this year, greatly reducing the number of selfies taken before the place name sign.
I don't know why the patent pool was named "garlic" in Latin: maybe its founders didn't care to perform some due diligence on the chosen name (LMGTFY), which is not as critical as technical essentiality checks, or there is a hidden meaning there and they like spaghetti aglio e olio or they'll eventually relocate to Gilroy, CA, the Garlic Capital of the World where they even serve garlic ice cream--which is presumably not protected by a manufacturing patent licensed by MPEG LA or challenged by Unified Patents before the PTAB.
Article 3 of the SPC Regulation is provided below (*) for reference. Article 3(d) states that an SPC must be based on "the first marketing authorisation" for the product. In Santen (C-673/18), the CJEU interpreted Article 3(d) as ruling out the possibility of an SPC for a product based on a second marketing authorisation of any form, regardless of whether the second authorization was for a new formulation, route of administration or indication.
Given that many combination products will be based on monotherapies that have been previously approved, it was thought that the courts would interpret Santen as ruling out SPCs for the majority of combination therapies. However, in a decision of the Irish Court of Appeal in Merck v Clonmel [2021] IECA 54, an SPC for a combination product INEGY (ezetimibe and simvastatin) was found not to contravene Article 3(d). This was despite there having been a previous approval for one of the active ingredients, ezetimibe (EZETROL), used in the combination. The decision therefore raised questions over the applicability of Santen and Article 3(d) to combination products (IPKat). However, the SPC was nonetheless found invalid under Article 3(a).
[...]
The continuance of conflicting decisions from the national courts on all three Articles (a), (c) and (d), put pay to any expectation that the decisions in Santen and Royalty Pharma were the end of the matter. Central to the current disputes surrounding the interpretation of Article 3 is whether the same definition of product should be used throughout. Particularly, can the decision of the CJEU on the interpretation of Articles 3(a) and (d) be applied to Article 3(c)?
Whilst not the subject of the latest CJEU referral, there also still seems to be a need for clarification on how Royalty Pharma should be applied to combination products. Particularly, are the decisions of the Irish and French courts to invalidate an SPC based on Article 3(a) in line with the decision in Royalty Pharma that it is not the inventive concept that matters but whether a product is "specifically identified" in the patent?
Clarification of the case law on all of these questions is hampered by the interaction with the separate sub-provisions of Article 3. If a SPC for a combination product cannot be clearly invalidated with one sub-provision, it often seems that another sub-provision will often do as well.
Counsel say criminal actions have an edge over civil actions, but police inaction and procedural challenges often cause them to opt for civil infringement suits instead
In-house and law firm counsel say Mercado Libre is more engaged than others on counterfeiting, but that measures such as strict ID checks must come next
The first American patent for Multilink technology consists of an automation device for mounting on a DIN rail, which separates the communication module from the application module.
It’s December and time for what is now an annual ritual for this Africa Correspondent – The Africa IP Highlights! The Africa IP Highlights is an initiative of this Kat and is a series of posts put together to highlight some of the key developments in IP in Africa each year. Interested readers can find the Africa IP Highlights 2020, here.
Yesterday, it was all about key developments in the copyright field in the Africa IP Highlights 2021 – the result of collaboration between myself and several IP practitioners and researchers across Africa: Caroline Wanjiru Muchiri (Centre for IP and IT Law, Strathmore University, Kenya); Ekene Chuks-Okeke (Banwo & Ighodalo, Nigeria); Marius Schneider and Nora Ho Tu Nam (IPvocate Africa, Mauritius); Ruth Mulenga Sinkala (PhD Candidate, University of Cape Town), Vanessa Ferguson, Sibongile Dee and Regardt van der Merwe (Von Seidels, South Africa).
This post is the third and final installment in the “Africa IP Highlights 2021 series” of posts highlighting some of the key developments in IP in Africa in 2021. The first 2 posts covered copyright and trade marks.
As previously stated, the series is the result of collaboration between myself and several IP practitioners and researchers across Africa: Caroline Wanjiru Muchiri (Centre for IP and IT Law, Strathmore University, Kenya); Ekene Chuks-Okeke (Banwo & Ighodalo, Nigeria); Marius Schneider and Nora Ho Tu Nam (IPvocate Africa, Mauritius); Ruth Mulenga Sinkala (PhD Candidate, University of Cape Town), Vanessa Ferguson, Sibongile Dee and Regardt van der Merwe (Von Seidels, South Africa).
This is my appearance on the Repeal the 20th Century podcast (Youtube channel). We discussed my IP debate at the Soho Forum, the basic case against IP (both natural rights/Lockean and utilitarian), problems with both, problems with Locke’s proto-Marxian labor theory of property, patent, copyright, and trademark, defamation, plagiarism, attribution, fraud, property rights in “value,” and “ownership” of NFTs and bitcoin.
The Trade Secret Act (GeschGehG) covers information that has a certain economic value, such as profit and sales figures, but also technical know-how. According to Sec. 2 No. 1 GeschGehG, this information is only protected as business secrets as long as it is, firstly, not generally known or readily accessible, secondly, is the subject of the circumstances according to appropriate confidentiality measures and, thirdly, a legitimate interest in the secrecy exists.
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In copyright law, on the other hand, it can only be proven by submitting the source code to prove that software does not infringe the copyright.
The Intellectual Property Office has published a Call for views on Standard Essential Patents (SEPs). https://www.gov.uk/government/consultations/standard-essential-patents-and-innovation-call-for-views
The purpose of the call for views is to allow the UK Government to better understand whether the current SEPs framework encourages innovation and effectively promotes competition in markets, or whether there are any barriers to innovation and competition. It will establish whether government intervention is required and understand what intervention could look like.
The US Department of Justice, Antitrust Division is seeking public comments regarding a new draft policy statement regarding SEPs and FRAND.
The European Patent Office has announced a stay of all examination/opposition proceedings involving applications/patents in which the assessment of inventive step is exclusively based on evidence that was not publicly available before the filing date, and in which the decision depends entirely on the outcome of Referral G2/21 (Plausibility), until after the Enlarged Board has issued its decision.
The issue of "Plausibility" has become a hot topic at the EPO. It can be relevant to both sufficiency of disclosure and inventive step.
In the matter considered in T116/18(relating to EP 2 484 209), the patent in question included data showing a synergistic effect of insecticidal compounds against two species of moth.The Opponent submitted evidence that compounds falling within the scope of the claim did not, in fact, have synergistic effect against one of those species.The Patentee then tried to rely upon post-filed evidence demonstrating a synergistic effect against a third species of moth in support of inventive step.
Some IP lawyers feared Brexit and Covid-19 would be bad for business. They could hardly have been more wrong
As announced by the European Patent Office, Austria has completed its ratification process for the Protocol on Provisional Application of the Unified Patent Court Agreement. Once Austria deposits its instrument of ratification, the provisional application period will start, allowing the important final steps required to create a fully-functioning court to be completed, including the recruitment and training of the technical and legal judges, and the completion of the case management IT system.
District court hands setback to NHK-Fintiv opponents, including Apple and Google, but Big Tech is also seeking to undo the Iancu policy on Capitol Hill
Unfortunately, many in the technology industries often start with a misguided mindset about what intellectual property represents.
DOJ Proposes New Guidelines on Standard Essential Patents (SEPs). On December 6, the DOJ, the US Patent and Trademark Office, and the National Institute of Standards and Technology issued a Draft Statement on Licensing Negotiations and Remedies for Standards-Essential Patents Subject to Voluntary F/RAND Commitments. The draft statement aims to revise a similarly titled statement from 2019 that one DOJ official observed “has been criticized as favoring patent holders and promoting the use of injunctions or ITC exclusion orders to remedy SEP infringement.” The draft statement says that injunctive relief is rarely an appropriate remedy for resolving SEP disputes and provides guidance for parties on engaging in good-faith negotiations over a F/RAND license. Additionally, the draft statement says that adding conditions to SEP licenses “may also raise antitrust concerns.” This marks a notable change in direction from the 2019 statement, which deemphasized the applicability of antitrust law in F/RAND disputes. The DOJ has requested comments on the draft statement by February 4, 2022.
Earlier this month, Sen. Thom Tillis (R-NC), the Ranking Member of the Subcommittee on Intellectual Property of the Senate Committee of the Judiciary, wrote to United States Trade Representative Katherine C. Tai to express his opposition, yet again, to the Biden Administration's support for a proposal by India and South Africa to waive certain provisions of the World Trade Organization (WTO) Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS Agreement) in relation to the prevention, containment, or treatment of COVID-19. In Sen. Tillis' letter, which was his fifth letter to the U.S. Trade Representative, the Senator called the Administration's support for waiving international obligations under the TRIPS Agreement "disastrous" (using that word three times in the two-page letter).
Intellectual Ventures predicted an "IP reckoning" for the automotive industry and did its part to turn this into a self-fulfilling prophecy (by suing GM, Toyota, and Honda). Just yesterday I reported on Sisvel v. Ford, and now I've become aware of the latest SEP enforcement action against a car maker: Acer, a Taiwanese device maker known to be a very reasonable patent holder (as that company is on the receiving end of patent suits all the time), is tired of Volkswagen's hold-out tactics vis-à-vis the Avanci 4G patent pool that offers a one-stop license to dozens of SEP portfolios. Acer has brought a patent infringement complaint against VW in the Eastern District of Virigina...
I have written a handful of posts over the years suggesting a merger of the USPTO and Copyright Office to form a United States Intellectual Property Organization (USIPO). The current fractured structure means that we lack a coherent administrative approach to treatment of the various IP regimes, even though they obviously overlap in very important ways. Further, although trade secrets are increasingly important to US industry, no federal agency is providing any oversight or guidance. The political difficulty here, I believe, is that major copyright industry insiders feel that they have captured the copyright office and so are concerned that a transformation would harm their lobbying position.
I expect that most folks won’t be satisfied, but in many cases it might be sufficient. And, if the technology is sufficiently mainstream, it suggests that the patent document actually needs less disclosure.
The question is dividing opinion among the experts, with potentially serious consequences for the future of artificial intelligence and computing innovation
The ink isn't dry yet on the Biden Administration's draft policy statement on standard-essential patent (SEP) enforcement, and an American industrial icon is already facing yet another SEP infringement lawsuit as Ford Motor Company got slapped yesterday with a complaint by Italian (but globally present) licensing firm Sisvel in the District of Delaware (this post continues below the document)...
This is a complex and ever-evolving area of patent law that our UP and UPC experts continue to monitor. We are keeping a close eye on developments and we will provide further advice and updates as the situation changes and in the run up to the commencement of the new system.
On December 14, 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 11,012,720. The patent is owned by Rovi Guides, Inc., an NPE and subsidiary of Xperi Holding Corporation. The '720 patent generally relates to providing a buffer time prior to deletion of a media content item.
Bolt, the largest scooter operator in Europe, has filed a patent for its new tandem riding prevention system – the first of its kind in the world – in bid to improve industry safety standards for scooters. Bolt’s patent submission for the system has now been accepted by the European Patent Office, and if awarded it will be valid in 154 countries.
On December 10, 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 7,187,670. The patent is owned by Buffalo Patents, an NPE. The '670 patent generally relates to a communication terminal for Internet telephony. The patent is being asserted against ZTE, HTC, TCL, Coolpad Group, and OnePlus.
R.J. Reynolds has settled an e-cigarette maker's claims that RJR's Vuse line copied its technology four days before a trial was slated to begin, according to a Thursday filing in North Carolina federal court.
U.S. District Judge Catherine Eagles found in May that RJR's products infringed parts of two Fuma patents. A jury in Greensboro, N.C., was set to consider on Monday whether RJR infringed additional parts of one of the patents, whether the patents were valid, and what damages RJR owed, among other things.
Fuma sued Winston-Salem, N.C.-based RJR in 2019 for infringing patents related to an e-cigarette design with a cartridge and power source. The complaint said RJR copied Medina, Ohio-based Fuma's design after meeting with Fuma about its e-cigarette technology in 2010.
The Secretary of Commerce has announced three new members of the USPTO’s Patent Public Advisory Committee (PPAC): Charles Duan, Suzanne Harrison, and Heidi S. Nebel. Congratulations! All three of these individuals care deeply about improving the patent system, and now have an official seat at the table.
Counsel share their views on the revocation of PepsiCo’s potato variety used in Lay’s chips, including what the edict might mean for foreign innovators in India
With regard to inventions, the draft law introduces the new concept of a preliminary invention application and proposes to consolidate the provisions on patents into one law, thus transferring the solutions to this law and repealing the Act of 14 March 2003 on Filing European Patent Applications and the Effects of the European Patent in the Republic of Poland.
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The bill introduces changes with respect to the manner of proceedings in cases considered under the contentious procedure. Here it is envisaged that the Polish Patent Office, acting under the contentious procedure, will as a rule make decisions during closed sittings, and not at hearings.
This is reflected in patenting trends. As highlighted in our recent article concerning wind power, the European Patent Office (EPO) and International Energy Authority (IEA) has released a joint report, "Patents and the Energy Transition", surveying global trends in low-carbon and clean-energy technology earlier this year. The report identified patenting trends across a variety of low-carbon energy (LCE) technologies, using an international patent family (IPF) metric to measure patenting activity. Solar power made up by far the largest volume of LCE technologies-related patents, with 46,500 IPFs filed between 2000 and 2019. The EPO-IEA report noted a number of important innovations, including those relating to manufacturing processes and organic PV cells (which were based on conductive organic polymers or molecules rather than silicon-based devices).
Artificial Intelligence (AI)means enabling machines and computers to imitate the learning, perception, decision-making, and problem-solving capabilities of a human being(IBM, 2020). The examples of the AI application areas are natural language processing (NLP), speech recognition, image recognition, real-time recommendation, healthcare, finance, education, and autopilot technologies.
The University of South Florida’s lawsuit against the federal government over a patent on genetically modified mice is headed for a virtual trial, amid uncertainties over the new omicron variant of the coronavirus.
USF and the government are scheduled to begin trial Dec. 6 in the U.S. Court of Federal Claims in Washington. Both sides previously indicated they intended to be in the courtroom for the trial.
I really have no idea what to make of this quote from Judge Reyna’s opinion, but the PTAB Judges Appear to love it. More than 600 PTAB decisions have included the full quote over the past few years. The citation appears to come into play in two occasion: (1) when the PTAB makes a slight shift from what the examiner identified as the relevant abstract idea; and (2) when the claims appear to be directed to something very specific, but that still fails the Alice test.
The merger with Würtenberger brings particular expertise in plant-variety protection. Gert Würtenberger and Karin Grau-Kuntz will join Meissner Bolte as of counsel, while Tanja Wittmann joins as senior associate.
The trio spun off from IP firm Wuesthoff & Wuesthoff in 2012. The team focuses on advice on trademark, design and competition law. This often includes litigation. Name partner Gert Würtenberger is well-known in plant variety protection law and is regularly active in infringement proceedings. Only a few firms in Germany have a focus in this field, and Würtemberger is one of them alongside Wuesthoff & Wuesthoff.
Gert Würtenberger has also been president of the German Association for the Protection of Intellectual Property (GRUR) since 2014.
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The litigation team is based in Munich. The firm has eleven offices in Germany and one in the UK.
EPO President António Campinos and the President of the Boards of Appeal Carl Josefsson have made a joint proposal to the EPO’s member states to relocate the Boards of Appeal from the current venue in Munich Haar to the city centre. According to the two presidents, the new location should be the EPO building at Pschorr-Höfe VII near Munich’s main railway station. The EPO’s main building is located at Bob-van-Benthem-Platz near the Isar river. This is where the Boards of Appeal had their headquarters until 2017.
The move back to Munich city centre is expected to be completed in four to five years, even though some of the leases for the buildings in Haar run until 2032.
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For many observers, the announcement by the two presidents comes as a surprise. As to the reasons for this initiative, a spokesperson for the Boards of Appeal explained, “When the EPO building investment program was presented to the Administrative Council in 2019, the President of the Boards of Appeal pointed out that the end of the rental contract for the building in Haar coincided approximately with the completion of the envisaged renovation of the Pschorr-Höfe.” Josefsson also asked the Council to retain sufficient room for manoeuvre with regard to the long-term options for the premises of the Boards of Appeal.
Moreover, the increase in homeworking in the wake of the corona pandemic is said to have given the EPO greater flexibility. The EPO anticipates that in the future there will be fewer and fewer employees working in the office buildings at any one time. As a result, the Boards of Appeal would again have space available in the EPO’s buildings in the city. Josefsson, however, firmly advised member states “that any new premises had to reflect the organisational autonomy of the Boards of Appeal”.
The President of the Boards of Appeal and the President of the Office jointly propose to the Administrative Council to re-locate the Boards of Appeal from Haar to the building Pschorr-Höfe 7 in Munich, owned by the EPO, as of 2025/2026.
While this pretty spectacular U-turn still has to be confirmed by the Administrative Council in 2022, I have little doubts that the AC will do so (the tail is usually wagging the dog in Eponia). And in this case, it would clearly be the right decision for many reasons, even though we have not yet seen the price tag associated with this planned measure. But it makes little sense at least to me to rent expensive office space outside Munich while leaving EPO-owned facilities empty. It is still amazing and puzzling to me that this simple insight came so late.
Alexander Ramsay: Firstly, Austria needs to formally deposit its instruments of ratification at the depository at the Council Secretariat, which I expect around mid-January. That should then complete the required 13 member states and the protocol should come into force.
The Unified Patent Jurisdiction is coming! It is announced that the system will be operational by 2022. Great! But no information on its implementation, European governments seem to be barely aware of it, ignoring the issue (not really “European” by the way)… What is the problem?
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We are, according to some, a few months away from a revolution for the European patent system and I have the feeling, perhaps very personal, that I am swimming in the fog with many of my peers (and the governors). Perhaps it is time to bring this debate into the public arena? Otherwise the legitimacy and therefore the success of the future jurisdiction will suffer.
The team will have both dual-qualified lawyers and patent attorneys representing both infringement proceedings and EPO oppositions. Mr. Herr previously worked for Finnegan as a patent attorney trainee.
For the Company's pancreatic cancer drug licensed from The University Texas at Austin, in which the Company currently seeks patent protection in the US, the Company will now also seek protection on the licensed drug formulation in China, India and the European Patent Office, with all member countries designated, which includes all 27 EU member countries plus 11 non-EU countries.
Basmati, meaning queen of fragrance, is a superior grain of rice. It is a slender grain with a distinct aromatic flavour. For centuries, Indian farmers have cultivated Basmati rice along the foothills of the Himalayas. Culturally, it is identified with Indian food.
However, on September 2, 1997, a U.S. based corporation, named RiceTec Inc., was awarded a patent for Basmati rice. It is interesting that the patent was awarded not to a company belonging to India, Pakistan or Bangladesh but to an American company.
How/Why did this happen? What are the implications of such patent claims?
For generations, farmers in the subcontinent studied and experimented with its cultivation, developed it to fit ecological circumstances, culinary demands, and flavours. However, Indian and Pakistani companies or governments did not have patents on Basmati rice.
On June 21st,* the Patent Trial and Appeal Board declared two new interferences involving CRISPR technology. The first, Interference No. 106,132, named Sigma-Aldrich as Senior Party and the University of California/Berkeley, the University of Vienna, and Emmanuelle Charpentier (collectively, "CVC") as Junior Party, while the second, Interference No. 106,133 named Sigma-Aldrich as Senior Party and the Broad Institute, Harvard University, and MIT (collectively, "Broad") as Junior Party.
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All claims of all applications and patents of each party in each Interference were designated as corresponding to the Count.
The PTAB gave CVC a priority date that is the filing date of U.S. Provisional Application No. 61/757,640, filed January 28, 2013, and Sigma-Aldrich a priority date of U.S. Provisional Application No. 61/734,256, filed December 6, 2012.
The PTAB gave Broad a priority date that is the filing date of U.S. Provisional Application No. 61/736,527, filed December 12, 2013, and Sigma-Aldrich a priority date of U.S. Provisional Application No. 61/734,256, filed December 6, 2012.
Philips and Xiaomi are in dispute in several European countries over UMTS and LTE patents from Philips’ SEP portfolio. Dutch electronics supplier Philips accuses the Chinese mobile phone company of infringing its patents, suing Xiaomi in the UK, Germany, the Netherlands and Spain. It also prompted action in China and India.
In turn, Xiaomi accuses Philips of not offering a licence on FRAND terms. Thus, states Xiaomi, Philips is violating the rules laid down by the France-based European Telecommunication Standards Institute (ETSI). Since ETSI contracts are subject to French law, Xiaomi brought an action against both Philips and ETSI at the Tribunal judiciaire in Paris (case ID: RG 20/12558).
Last week, patent pool firm MPEG LA and frequent patent challenger Unified Patents announced a patent pool for 3GPP infrastructure named Alium. I have no idea why they chose the Latin word for garlic as the name for a telecommunications patent pool. If the pool smells from anything, it's from the apparent agenda of high-volume implementers seeking to devalue patents.
As I noted three months ago, there are various reasons for which Open RAN is certain to increase SEP licensing costs. At the time, I was not taking a position on the bottom-line desirability of Open RAN, or the O-RAN software interfaces and specification. My focus was narrowly on IP licensing and litigation issues. I later reported on growing unease in Europe over the geopolitical dimension of the push for adoption of O-RAN, and on the security risks identified by a German government agency. It's a multi-faceted topic. With deep-pocketed organizations beating the drums for Open RAN, the potentialy intriguing aspects of the approach have received far more publicity than the caveats.
A requirement for continuing legal education (CLE) is on the horizon for US patent attorneys and patent agents, but that horizon has been pushed back once again. The first proposed step was a voluntary certification of CLE attendance. However, Dir. Hirshfeld and OED Dir. Will Covey have pushed that back indefinitely:
On June 10, 2021, the USPTO issued a Federal Register Notice announcing that the voluntary CLE certification would commence in the spring of 2022 but that implementation of the biennial electronic registration statement would be delayed until November 1, 2024. 86 FR 30920.
Traditionally, patent law purports to rely on the market to assess the extent of an invention’s value. The underlying theory is that as long as the basic requirements for the patent are met, the patent is granted and the patentee is given the right to exclude; the value of that right will depend on market valuation of the invention. But in reality, courts do consider the extent to which an invention benefits society in various patent law doctrines, including utility, eligibility, nonobviousness, and damages. This is consideration is generally not openly acknowledged, but occurs in the background, the equities of the case so to speak.
This article defends and argues for a more open acknowledgement of the role of benefits of the invention in patent law. Courts do have a role to play in assessing an invention’s value, especially where there is reason to think that there may be a mismatch between the invention’s social value and market value. Patent law should embrace the notion that it is not solely concerned with increasing the rate of innovation agnostically as to the benefits of the technology; rather, patent law also plays a role in shaping the direction of innovation. More open acknowledgement of this role would provide better information to the public and allow the development of more consistent and coherent standards. This development could occur gradually through the common law method, without any drastic break from precedent. To this end, this article also explores various doctrinal possibilities, such as a revival and modification of the pioneer patent doctrine.
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.
What Apple wants the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Texas to do is to declare that Ericsson--not Apple--breached its FRAND obligation, and to hold that a couple of Ericsson 5G patents are not standard-essential (nor infringed by Apple for any other reason). If Apple had decided to file an answer to Ericsson's complaint, it would have brought those claims as counterclaims. But Apple elected to bring a motion to dismiss instead of an answer (though it will have to answer if its motion to dismiss doesn't make the case go away). Therefore, Apple filed its own separate complaint, though it's clear that if both parties' claims survived any motions to dismiss, the two cases would be consolidated.
Apple is being consistent by saying that most of its own claims should be dismissed just like Ericsson's claims that they're modeled after, but should the court let Ericsson's case go forward, then the related claims by Apple also need to be adjudged.
I've read Apple's complaint, and have formed an opinion except on the technical questions of whether or not particular patents are essential. Apple's complaint is more about narrative than facts, more of a blame game than a meritorious action. For example, by alleging that Ericsson filed suit in Texas within six minutes of making Apple a licensing offer, Apple tries to make Ericsson look bad, like saying "look how litigious they are." But the very same complaint by Apple makes it clear that Apple has rejected, and was always going to reject, Ericsson's $5G/unit demand. And Apple's complaint itself states that the relevant licensing offer stated Ericsson's public position on reasonable royalties, which Apple has clearly disagreed with.
At the start of this year, Nokia v. Daimler was the most significant automotive standard-essential patent (SEP) dispute. Summer had barely started when that one settled out. Now that the year 2021 is drawing to a close, Acer v. Volkswagen is the most "inspiring" automotive patent spat, at least judging by the traffic my previous post gets (though Sisvel v. Ford is a not-exceedingly-distant second).
Acer's complaint mentions the proposal of licensing negotiation groups (LNGs) as a pillar of Volkswagen's alleged hold-out tactics vis-à-vis the Avanci pool. It is the latest criticism of the LNG idea. In recent weeks, there have been at least two webinars on the subject, and I'd like to share some observations on them here.
The European Commission's expert group report on SEPs tosses out the idea of LNGs as Proposal 75, but let's not forget that the entire expert group report is not a Commission communication, as the Commission itself clarified on more than one occasion. Also, a key participant (Ericsson's Monica Magnusson) distanced herself from the report by means of a published dissent. Still, when a facial absurdity--given that it's fundamentally at odds with existing cartel law--appears as a "proposal" in something that is not formally but almost an official EU document, I can see why some are concerned, and why webinars are held (or blog posts written, as in this case) to discuss the thing. It's like people are standing in front of an aquarium and staring at some big sharks inside: in a way you rely on being protected by the thick glass between you and the predators, yet there's this thought of what would happen if--against all odds, but you never know--the glass broke...
4IP Council held a webinar on LNGs last month, and a recording is still available. The two panelists were Dr. Igor Nikolic, who is a Research Fellow at the European University Institute, and doctoral student Haris Tsilikas. They looked at LNGs strictly from a competition law perspective, but taking into account an important difference between physical goods and patent rights: while physical goods are simply not delivered to someone unless an agreement on the terms has been reached, implementers are typically already using the patented techniques.
Australia attracted international attention in July when a Federal Court ruled that artificial intelligence can be named as the inventor of a patent. In Thaler v. Commissioner of Patents, Federal Court Justice Jonathan Beach ruled that under Australian patent law, inventors don’t necessarily have to be human. The decision challenges the assumption that only human beings can be inventors. Beach did rule, however, that an AI system cannot apply for a patent or receive a patent.
The parties in Interference No. 106,133, namely Senior Party Sigma-Aldrich and Junior Party the Broad Institute, Harvard University, and MIT (collectively, "Broad"), filed their respective lists of proposed preliminary motions four days prior to their August 3rd teleconference with the Board to present their arguments for the Board to grant leave to file any of them.
Broad InstituteJunior Party Broad proposed Substantive Preliminary Motion No. 1, to change the Count under 37 C.F.R. ۤۤ 41.121(a)(1)(i) and 41.208(a)(2).* The justification here as in earlier interferences (Nos. 106,115 and 106,126) is to provide "a count broad enough to cover Broad's best proofs, which are directed to CRISPR-Cas9 systems using dual-molecule RNA but not including a donor polynucleotide sequence."
The Unitary Patent may become a standard choice for SEPs - the decision on simultaneous protection in Germany (UP+DE) should already be considered now
For owners of Standard Essential Patents (SEPs) there is one option that should be considered already prior to the start of the UPC.
Last week, we observed oral proceedings for consolidated appeals T1513/17 and T2719/19, because a fundamentally important priority entitlement question was at stake. Specifically:
Is priority valid for a Euro-PCT application if the priority-entitled applicant is applicant for the US only on the PCT application, and there has been no transfer of priority rights to the applicant for Europe?
The Board of Appeal believes this issue concerns a point of law of fundamental importance that is decisive to both appeals, and, at the hearing, the Board indicated it was very likely to refer questions to the Enlarged Board of Appeal to clarify the correct approach.
Kenneth B. Germain and Louise H Sitler provide some pre-Yuletide reading material with their new article, "The Constitution Commandeth: Thou Shalt Not Protect the Same Subject Matter Under Design Patent and Trade Dress Law," 21 Chi.-Kent J. Intell Prop. 90 (2021). [Download here]. This is not the first time that Ken Germain has raised this issue, as the article points out. Perhaps the solution the authors propose should be called the "Germain De-stacking Doctrine."
Since the court considered the specialities of the exceptional drug supply procedure, the final verdict is an extremely important one serving to the effective protection of patent rights.
The Canadian government is facing mounting pressure to waive the patent on the Johnson & Johnson COVID-19 vaccine to allow a Canadian manufacturer to export a low-cost version to Bolivia.
The Bolivian government struck a deal with Ontario's Biolyse Pharma to seek a compulsory licence to produce and export COVID-19 vaccines without the permission of the patent holder.
The Court of Appeal on Friday rejected a bid by BGI Group subsidiaries to overturn findings that they infringed valid patents for rapid DNA sequencing held by Illumina Cambridge Ltd., holding the inventions were not obvious in light of prior research in the field.
The patents claim inventions in the field of DNA sequencing, specifically a technique known as "sequencing by synthesis." Three of the four patents at issue are for modified nucleotides.
The BGI companies — Latvia MGI Tech SIA, MGI Tech Co. Ltd., MGI International Sales Co. Ltd. and MGI Tech Hong Kong Co. Ltd., formerly BGI Complete Genomics...
The USPTO has joined forces with the Department of Justice (DOJ) and National Institute of Standards (NIST) in creating a new draft policy statement on licensing of standards-essential patents (SEP) subject to voluntary F/RAND commitments.
The Supreme Court has not yet granted a writ of certiorari in any patent cases this term, and has denied certiorari in several dozen cases. A handful of important petitions are pending whose outcome could be transformative to the law.
The year now coming to a close has seen an unprecedented degree of chaos and uncertainty in the application of the Patent Trial and Appeal Board's policy of using "discretion" to turn away patent challenges.
Under its precedential 2020 decision in Apple Inc. v. Fintiv Inc.,[1] the board considers six factors to decide whether to decline to institute a proceeding because of copending litigation in another forum.
In practice, the second factor — the scheduled date of a district court trial — has been the most important factor.
In Fintiv itself, for example, review was refused because of a civil case...
On December 13, 2021, the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) issued a final written decision in Unified Patents, LLC v. NavBlazer, LLC holding all challenged claims of U.S. Patent 9,885,782 invalid. NavBlazer is associated with patent attorney and prolific inventor, Raymond Anthony Joao. Along with Caselas, GreatGigz Solutions, Joao Control and Monitoring Systems, and Joao Bock Transaction Systems, his companies have launched dozens of lawsuits against technologies ranging from streaming video to financial transactions. The ’782 patent is directed to vehicle navigation systems that provide information about a route and has been asserted against TomTom, Apple, Samsung, LG, Motorola Mobility, and Hyundai for their devices that provide vehicle navigation.
The Unitary Patent Era is on its way to Europe. Depending how quickly the structures and personnel for the associated courts are established, the Unitary Patent Era should arrive in either 2022 or 2023. After several challenges raised by choice of language, Brexit, and German litigation, the Unitary Patent came one step closer to reality when Austria approved ratification of the Protocol on the Provisional Application (PPA) of the Agreement on a Unitary Patent Court (known in Europe as the UPCA) on December 2, 2021. Accordingly, Austria is soon becoming the thirteenth European Union member to ratify the PPA, which clears the way for the establishment of the UPCA in 16 and up to 24 of the 27 members of the European Union (Croatia, Poland, and Spain will not participate in the UPCA in the near future).
A federal judge in California tossed a lawsuit brought by big tech companies including Apple and Google over a U.S. Patent and Trademark Office policy that reduced the number of patent disputes it considers.
U.S. Supreme Court precedent prevents the companies from challenging an internal PTO rule that allows the patent office's administrative judges to deny more bids for inter partes reviews (IPRs), U.S. District Judge Edward Davila said.
The IPR process, which allows parties to challenge the validity of patents at the PTO's Patent Trial and Appeal Board, is popular with major tech companies and others often targeted with patent infringement lawsuits as an efficient way to head off the claims.
Rejections of IPR petitions have been rising in part because of an internal PTO rule giving PTAB judges discretion to deny review when related court litigation has made more progress, among other things.
Apple Inc, Google LLC, Cisco Systems Inc, and Intel Corp sued the PTO last year, alleging the rule undermined the central role IPRs have in "protecting a strong patent system" and violated federal law.
Since it became clear that Brexit would mean that London was not able to take its place as the Life Sciences base for the UPC, there has been much speculation about the potential location, within the central division, for hearing of cases that would have gone to the London court.
Matthias Schneider, Audi's chief licensing officer since 2018, has been a critical voice in the European SEP debate
There's every indication right now that--short of an 11th-hour agreement--Ericsson and Apple are patent litigation-bound.
In early October, Ericsson brought a FRAND (not infringement) complaint against Apple in the Eastern District of Texas, with a license agreement still in force until the end of the year. While it may seem early to bring a case at that stage, Apple itself surprised Ericsson last time with some pre-expiration moves, and Ericsson just didn't want to lose the race to the courthouse this time around.
An anti-antisuit motion by Ericsson in the Netherlands became known shortly thereafter. I subsequently asked the three major German patent infringement courts whether they had any such action pending before them, but the answers were consistently negative (at least at the time I asked; I may soon have to inquire again).
The PTAB recently issued an odd opinion in this case focusing on the written description requirement. The application is directed to a “package of absorbent articles.” I.e., a bag full of diapers. These particular diapers are designed to include a higher percentage of “bio-based materials” and fewer petrochemicals. As such, the claims require that the bag contain “a plurality of absorbent articles … wherein the absorbent articles are devoid of lotion, fragrance or perfume, chlorine, and green number 7 dye.”
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In addition, the specification provided no criteria for determining why “green number 7 dye” is “undesirable.” Based upon those perceived failures in the specification, the PTAB concluded that “the term ‘green number 7 dye’ … lacks adequate written description support and is indefinite.” Although I have no experience in this area, I did do a 2 minute Google search and found that Green No. 7 is a term of art for Phthalocyanine Green G.
SEP owners question whether a new draft policy from the US Department of Justice sufficiently emphasises the problem of holdout
Effective January 1, 2022, electronic retrievals of priority documents between the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) and the European Patent Office will be managed via the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) Digital Access Service (DAS).
For applications filed on or after January 1, 2022, the applicant must provide the WIPO DAS access code associated with the priority application. The transition to the WIPO DAS will provide applicants with additional security via the requirement of the WIPO DAS access code, which serves as a third validation point for each application along with the application number and filing date. In addition, use of the WIPO DAS permits applicants to better manage and monitor the status of requested certified copy retrievals via the WIPO DAS applicant portal.
Earlier today EPO President António Campinos and Commissioner Shen Changyu of the China National Intellectual Property Administration (CNIPA) held their annual high-level bilateral meeting. The two heads of office convened via videoconference to discuss recent developments at both offices and at the global IP level, as well as future co-operation between the two strategic partners.
The heads welcomed exchanges between experts at both offices. Throughout 2021, EPO and CNIPA shared information on several topics including legal frameworks, practices and procedures, classification, tools and services, academies, and the Boards of Appeal.
Mergers and acquisitions are both exciting and exhausting. Tight deadlines, limited information and large amounts of money at stake mean that there is significant pressure to gain confidence in a deal. This is especially the case when intellectual property is the primary asset changing hands. However, AI and machine-learning software could be set to transform this space.
US courts formerly tossed around the derogatory term “paper patents” in reference to inventions that were thought experiment scribbled down on paper and never actually reduced to practice. Ordinarily, paper patents were given more narrow construction than their more well rounded cousins. But, at least they were still on-paper.
The USPTO has announced its intent to stop printing patent documents on paper as a matter of course. Rather, the patent grant will remain in electronic storage. Paper versions will still be printable on-demand — informally from the website or formally with a fee.
Shares in Sareum Holdings PLC rose on Wednesday after the company said that the European Patent Office has issued an 'Intention to Grant' notice for a patent in respect of an invention associated with its proprietary SDC-1802 TYK2/JAK1 Kinase inhibitor program.
Shares at 0819 GMT were up 0.50 pence, or 10%, at 5.50 pence.
The U.K. drug-development company said the patent will protect the SDC-1802 molecule and its pharmaceutical preparations as a therapeutic to treat TYK2-dependent T-cell acute lymphoblastic leukaemia.
Sareum Holdings said it expects the patent to be formally granted within four months subject to certain formalities being completed.
The United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) has announced the final deadline for submission of applications for its Patents for Humanity COVID-19 award: The submission deadline is 5 p.m. ET, September 30, 2021.
Patents for Humanity is the United States Patent and Trademark Office’s (USPTO) awards competition recognizing innovators who use game-changing technology to meet global humanitarian challenges. The Patents for Humanity COVID-19 award category was launched April 5, 2021, for patent applicants, holders, and licensees whose inventions track, prevent, diagnose, or treat COVID-19. The program highlights COVID-19 success stories that will inspire others to harness innovation for human progress.
As the development of artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning accelerates, it was inevitable that the courts would be called to answer the question of whether or not a machine can be an inventor for the purposes of applying for a patent.
On 21 September 2021, the Court of Appeal handed down its decision in the case of Stephen Thaler v Comptroller General of Patents Trade Marks and Designs [2021] EWCA Civ 1374. By a majority of 2 to 1 the court dismissed the appeal of Dr Stephen Thaler who filed two patent applications naming his AI machine DABUS as the inventor. This judgment affirms the UK’s current position that, under the Patents Act 1977, the right to apply for an invention must originate from a human inventor. An AI system cannot be named as the inventor on a patent application.
In a recent judgment, the Court of Appeal has upheld that, within the current legal framework in the UK, an artificial intelligence (AI) machine cannot be named as the inventor in relation to a patent application for an invention which it created. The full decision is available here: Thaler v Comptroller General of Patents Trade Marks And Designs [2021] EWCA Civ 1374.
Dr Thaler applied for two UK patents in respect of inventions which he claims were created by his AI machine known as DABUS (‘Device for the autonomous bootstrapping of unified sentience’). The applications were considered withdrawn by the UK Intellectual Property Office (UKIPO) by failure to identify the inventor and how Dr Thaler derived the right to be granted a patent from the inventor in accordance with section 13 of the Patents Act 1977. Dr Thaler claimed that DABUS was the inventor and that he derived the right to be granted a patent as owner of DABUS. This was first appealed to the High Court in 2020, but was dismissed, and in turn was appealed to the Court of Appeal and came before experienced patent judges, Lord Justice Birss, Lord Justice Arnold, and Lady Justice Laing.
Tech Day is an annual celebration of innovation, learning and collaboration that takes place at the EPO. Primarily an internal event until now, Tech Day brings together teams of experts from across the Office to explore a technological theme of special significance.
The theme of Tech Day 2022 is Technologies of Transformation: those technologies developed in response to the most pressing global crises of our time and with a view to sustaining planetary health - both human health and that of our planet.
No Patents on Seeds! is filing an opposition against a Nunhems (BASF) patent on watermelons (EP2814316) derived from conventional breeding. The bushy plants were originally discovered in a garden. They argue that the genetic predisposition to bushy growth occurred randomly. Nunhems has, in this case, simply used well-known methods to breed melons with less seeds from these plants. However, the main advantage of the plants is that they need less space to grow. However, these characteristics were detected but not invented. The patent covers the plants, the seeds and the fruits.
“Bush-type watermelon plants are already known from their countries of origin in Africa. This patent is an abuse of patent law, based on a fake invention, and meant to circumvent the legal prohibitions,” says Christoph Then for No Patents on Seeds!. “While BASF and the EPO are profiting from this situation, the public is being deceived.”
Patents on conventionally-bred plants are prohibited in Europe. The European Patent Office (EPO), which makes a profit from granting patents, has nevertheless found ways and means to circumvent the prohibitions: in this case, the plants, which were developed with commonly used methods to produce less seeds, are treated as a technical invention (increasing the number of chromosomes). However, this additional technical step is not necessary, not inventive and does not have any impact on the growth of the plants or the quality of the fruit.
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"The EPO has added even more legal loopholes in recent years: random mutations are regarded as inventions in the same way as genetic engineering." No Patents on Seeds! is warning that an increasing number of patent applications are being filed for fake inventions. "For example, the applicants may try to create the impression that CRISPR/Cas gene scissors are being used, but in reality, the plants are derived from conventional breeding."
Clene Nanomedicine, Inc Inc. (NASDAQ: CLNN) along with its subsidiaries “Clene” and its wholly owned subsidiary Clene Nanomedicine, Inc., a clinical-stage biopharmaceutical company focused on revolutionizing the treatment of neurodegenerative disease, announced it has validated key patents granted by the European Patent Office that protect the Company’s breakthrough processes, devices and methods for treating certain disease indications for its nanotherapeutic drugs.
BioWorld published by Clarivate Plc (NYSE:CLVT), a global leader in providing trusted information and insights to accelerate the pace of innovation, has announced the six most important biopharmaceutical stories and trends of 2021. BioWorld is a suite of award-winning news services delivering actionable intelligence on the most innovative therapeutics and medical technologies in development. Each year, BioWorld's team of editors and analysts review and assess the market-moving and life-changing stories and trends of the year. This year, BioWorld found therapeutics for Alzheimer's, innovation in DNA vaccines and the evolution of Artificial Intelligence among some of the most pivotal stores and trends of 2021.
Contrary to the case law of the European Patent Office (EPO), the patentability of a dosage regime remains unsettled.
Accordingly to statistics collected by the Japanese Patent Office (JPO), participating in the Patent Prosecution Highway (PPH) in China will significantly speed up examination and grant of a patent application. Per the JPO data, from January to June 2021, the China National Intellectual Property Administration (CNIPA) on average issued a first office action within 2.2 months of granting a PPH request. This is close to a third of the time it takes the USPTO to issue a first office action from time of grant of a PPH request at 5.6 months per the JPO data.
The average pendency from PPH request to grant in China was 11 months versus 16.5 for the U.S. The average number of Office Actions was 1 in China versus 2.92 for the U.S.
There has been much headline ink spilled on the question of AI-inventorship in the IP press and beyond. Kat friends Professor Kelvin FK Low (National University of Singapore), Professor Wai Yee Wan (City University of Hong Kong) and Associate Professor Ying-Chieh Wu (Seoul National University) examine the recent Australian and UK cases and critical analyzes the arguments on both sides in an attempt to answer that question and how (or whether) AI-inventorship incentivizes invention. Over to the Professors...
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It is perhaps most interesting to compare the contrasting fortunes of the Project’s filings in Australia (Thaler v Commissioner of Patents [2021] FCA 879) and England and Wales (Thaler v The Comptroller-General of Patents, Designs And Trade Marks [2020] EWHC 2412 (Pat)/Thaler v Comptroller General of Patents Trade Marks And Designs [2021] EWCA Civ 1374). In Australia, Beach J accepted that Dr Stephen Thaler, the inventor of DABUS, could be said to either be entitled to have the patent assigned to him or be a person who derived title from the inventor, thus overcoming the difficulty that even if DABUS could be regarded as an inventor, it could not itself own a patent owing to its lack of legal personality. The convoluted contortions that Beach J engaged in to arrive at this conclusion was rejected in England. The argument is perhaps best summed up by Marcus Smith J, who described it as “hopeless” because “DABUS would – by reason of its status as a thing and not a person – be incapable of conveying any property to Dr Thaler. In short, the ability to transfer, which DABUS lacks, is fatal to Dr Thaler’s contentions. The same point can be put in a different way: because DABUS is a thing, it cannot even hold property, let alone transfer it.”
electroCore, Inc. (the “Company”), (NASDAQ: ECOR), a commercial-stage bioelectronic medicine company, today announced that the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) has issued U.S. Patent No. 11,191,953 to the Company, relating to the treatment of stroke symptoms.
An EPO consultation on virtual hearings has concluded that the majority of users are happy with the format – and of course they are, it’s common sense.
We’ve come a long way since dial up modems! With a focus on patents & trademarks, Heather McCann, Partner at EIP, and Julius Stobbs, Founder of Stobbs, look back at how the intellectual property industry has changed since the beginning of their careers and how it will continue to change going forward.
The Paris Court of Appeal has rejected a patent holder’s interpretation of EU case law that concerns criteria for obtaining supplementary protection certificates (SPCs) for innovations in medicine.
A recent decision by a Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) panel in Canadian Solar Inc., et al v. The Solaria Corporation may have opened the door for aggrieved parties to seek rehearing for any reason, rather than the prescribed situation where the panel “misapprehended or overlooked” some issue in an inter partes review (IPR). Acknowledging in its order that the motion for rehearing did not satisfy the requirements for granting rehearing under 37 CFR €§ 42.71(d), the Board invoked the PTAB’s “inherent authority to reconsider our Decision Denying Institution” and relied on “changed facts” to institute the IPR, despite no statute or rule authorizing such an action. Although perhaps unintended, the consequences of this decision may be that the door to rehearing is now kicked wide open, for both patent owners and petitioners: if PTAB is allowed to ignore Section 42.71(d)’s rehearing requirements in this circumstance, there should be nothing preventing it from ignoring those requirements when deciding other rehearing requests, too.
The latest round in the Thaler/DABUS patent applications story has been fought and lost by Dr Thaler in the UK Court of Appeal, although with one dissenting judgment. An appeal to the Supreme Court is possible but the subsequent announcement of the UK Government’s National AI Strategy which will include a UK IPO consultation on the use of copyright and patents to protect AI, expected to be launched within the next few months may mean that the issues could be resolved via legislation instead. Where will Dr Thaler/DABUS go from here?
On December 13, 2021, the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) issued a final written decision in Unified Patents, LLC v. Voice Tech Corporation holding all claims of U.S. Patent 10,491,679 invalid. The ’679 patent relates to remotely controlling a computer's operating system and applications using voice commands from a mobile device. The patent was asserted against Mycroft AI Inc. for using open source, voice-related technologies.
The Patent Trial and Appeal Board has nixed one of two Voice Tech Corp. patents involved in its bitter infringement fight with artificial intelligence company Mycroft AI, which was held in contempt in September for violating a court order to take down a threatening blog post.
The decision, handed down Monday, came in a challenge from Unified Patents, which is not a party to the parallel litigation in Missouri. The PTAB said Unified showed that the eight claims it challenged in U.S. Patent No. 10,491,679 were obvious in light of a 2006 patent application called Wong combined with elements of a...
More entities are seeking protection for AI-related inventions at the European Patent Office, but while grant rates are also on the rise they continue to lag the overall rate. In this co-published piece, Frances Wilding of Haseltine Lake Kempner offers a guide to key data points
The term “artificial intelligence” is sometimes used in European patent applications and patents without further explanation or elaboration, AI apparently being taken to be no more than a known, off-the-shelf option. It is very unlikely that such applications and patents are concerned with developments in AI.
The International Patent Classification (IPC) helps us here. It has an extensive dictionary in which catchwords are linked to classifications. The catchword “Artificial Intelligence” is linked to only one class: G06N. That at least covers machine learning and neural networks, technologies at the core of developments related to artificial intelligence.
Many patent holders and pools designate their patents as relevant or essential to a standard without proper scrutiny or analysis. As part of an ongoing series examining this dubious practice, we highlight U.S. Patent 9,838,714. The ‘714 patent is owned by the Electronics and Telecommunications Research Institute (ETRI), is purportedly essential to H.265 (HEVC) standard as part of the Access Advance Patent Pool, and is part of a family of at least 29 applications globally. It should not be considered essential.
The ‘714 patent is directed to the prediction phase of video coding, specifically how to scan the decoded signals during intra-prediction. In this process, there is a specific order in which the values of a block (e.g., a 4x4 or 8x8 transform block) are processed. The ‘714 patent requires that the first row or column is scanned first, before any other column or row. See, e.g., claim 1 (“scanning entropy-decoded signals of a first row with priority so that all of the entropy-decoded signals of the first row are scanned prior to scanning entropy-decoded signals of any other row”).
Addressing the preclusive effect of judgments by tribunals with limited jurisdiction, the US Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit held that trademark cancellation proceedings before the Trademark Trial & Appeal Board (TTAB) do not have preclusive effect against trademark infringement lawsuits in federal district courts. Beasley v. Howard, Case No. 20-1119 (3d Cir. Sept. 17, 2021) (Chagares, J.)
In 1969, Beasley started a band named The Ebonys. In the mid-1990s, Howard joined the band, and in 1997, Beasley obtained a New Jersey state service mark for “The Ebonys.” Several years later, Beasley and Howard parted ways. In 2012, Howard registered “The Ebonys” as a federal trademark with the US Patent & Trademark Office (PTO).
In 2013, Beasley filed a petition with the TTAB to cancel Howard’s mark, arguing that Howard had defrauded the PTO.
In a non-precedential ruling, the CAFC affirmed the Board's decision (here) ordering cancellation of a registration for the mark BF-7 for "nutritional supplement goods" on the ground that Registrant Sunbio was not the owner of the mark at the filing date of the underlying application because it had not used the mark. The court rejected Sunbio's arguments that (1) it did not have proper notice of the theory on which cancellation was based, and (2) the Board's finding of nonuse was not supported by substantial evidence. Biogrand Co., Ltd. v. Sunbio Corporation, Apppeal No. 2021-1433 (Fed. Cir. December 14, 2021) [not precedential].
Can you register a famous person’s name as your trademark without their consent? The Lanham Act seems to say no, and the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office interprets this to mean no, never, no matter what. 15 U.S.C. €§ 1052(c) provides, in pertinent part, that the PTO must deny federal registration to a trademark if it “[c]onsists of or comprises a name, portrait, or signature identifying a particular individual except by his written consent….” Unlike registration denials under Section 1052(a), the PTO denies registration without any inquiry into whether the mark suggests a false connection between the mark and the famous person. Nor does the PTO inquire into whether the famous person also sells the goods or services in question, as it does with private individuals under Section 1052(c). Rather, with respect to celebrities and world famous political figures, registration is denied based solely on the determinations that (1) “the public would recognize and understand the mark as identifying a particular living individual”; and (2) the record does not contain the famous person’s consent to register the mark.[1] Under this provision, the PTO routinely denies registration to marks that appear calculated to capitalize on the famous person’s name to sell products. For example, the PTO denied registration under Section 1052(c) to ROYAL KATE as applied to watches, cufflinks, jewelry, and other luxury products based solely on the determination that “ROYAL KATE identifies Kate Middleton whose identity is renowned.”[2] Id. And the PTO denied registration to OBAMA PAJAMA in connection with pajamas based on the examining attorney’s “excellent job marshalling a variety of press excerpts to demonstrate the obvious – namely, that President Barack Obama is extremely well known.”[3]
Here are three recent TTAB decisions in Section 2(d) inter partes proceedings. Not knowing all the facts, see if you can guess how they came out. At least one of the three was dismissed or denied. Answer(s) in the first comment.
Recent developments mean that the EU’s long-awaited Unified Patent Court and unitary patent are on course to roll-out next year. However, writes Adam Houldsworth, there are still some hurdles to get over before lift-off. Read more here
The AEG-owned promoter is accusing its rival of advertising and selling tickets to a new Southern California festival that it says infringes the Coachella trademark.
Meta Platforms, Facebook’s parent company, has acquired the trademark portfolio of US bank Meta Financial Group for $60 million, spokespersons for both companies revealed on Monday, December 13.
The South Dakota-based bank disclosed in a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission that a Delaware company called Beige Key had agreed to acquire the worldwide rights to Meta trademarks.
“Beige Key is affiliated with us and we have acquired these trademark assets,” a Meta Platforms spokesperson said, according to Reuters.
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The EPO Boards of Appeal are set to return to their old home in Munich city centre, just four years after they relocated to the suburb of Haar.
EPO president António Campinos, alongside BoA president Carl Josefsson, made the joint proposal last Friday, December 10. A detailed plan is expected to follow next year.
The BoA relocated to Haar in 2017, during the term of Campinos’ predecessor Benoît Battistelli.
The plan was controversial owing to Haar’s location 12 kilometres outside Munich city centre, posing what many attorneys saw as an unnecessary burden in terms of travel and expense.
Under the new plan, the BoA will be located in the EPO’s Pschorr-Höfe 7 premises in the more central Bayerstrasse area from 2025/2026.
According to Campinos and Josefsson’s proposal, the original rental contract for the Haar building agreed in 2017 lasts until 2032. An additional contract signed in 2019 expires in 2026.
Put aside the WYHA?s and the TTABlog Tests. Sink your teeth into this Harvard Law Review note that strikes at the heart of trademark infringement doctrine: "Trademark Injury in Law and Fact: A Standing Defense to Modern Infringement," 35 Harv. L. Rev. 667 (December 2021). This note posits that trademark law and the law of standing have grown apart. "Trademark law has expanded to recognize infringement in the absence of concrete harm to trademark owners. Meanwhile, the law of standing has contracted to reject claims by plaintiffs whose injuries are not concrete. This Note argues that under current Article III scrutiny, these trademark claims of abstract harm should not survive."
Over the past several years, the USPTO has been battling trademark applications that use fake specimens to establish a claim. Often these are low-quality photoshopped images, but can be more sophisticated.
This week, the UPSTO announced a final order for sanctions against the China-based law firm Shenzhen Huanyee Intellectual Property Co., Ltd. and the firm’s director Ms. Yusha Zhang associated with about 15,000 trademark applications many of which included “false and fraudulent submissions.”
In a somewhat muddled decision, the Board affirmed a refusal to register the proposed mark HAVE SOME DECENCY for various charitable fund raising services on the ground that the mark was not in use as of the applicant's Section 1(a) filing date. Applicant Suuberg made preparatory measures to use the mark but never rendered the services before her filing date. In re Alessandra Suuberg, Serial No. 88234650 (December 10, 2021) [precedential] (Opinion by Judge Albert Zervas).
In a somewhat muddled decision, the Board affirmed a refusal to register the proposed mark HAVE SOME DECENCY for various charitable fund raising services on the ground that the mark was not in use as of the applicant's Section 1(a) filing date. Applicant Suuberg made preparatory measures to use the mark but never rendered the services before her filing date. In re Alessandra Suuberg, Serial No. 88234650 (December 10, 2021) [precedential] (Opinion by Judge Albert Zervas).
The dispute arose when “Krasny Oktyabr”, a Russian confectionary company, registered an EU trade mark (EUTM) in Class 30 for a figurative sign representing a lobster. In the Soviet Union (which included Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia after 1940), “Rakovye Shejki” (“red lobsters necks”) were cheap and popular candies, sold since the late 19th century. Their wrapping prominently featured a lobster, as seen in some archives from Saint-Petersburg, Moscow or Kyiv factories.
“Roshen”, a Ukrainian confectionary, filed an application for a declaration of invalidity of the EUTM. Rather than arguing that the sign had become customary for the goods in question, Roshen based its application for invalidity on the lack of distinctiveness and descriptiveness of the sign. First the EUIPO, then the General Court, refused Roshen’s application. In essence, the General Court stated that Roshen failed to prove that the goods in question were actually sold and known under that mark during the Imperial or Soviet era in the Baltic States or Poland, this because the evidence relied upon by Roshen only related to Soviet Russia, Ukraine and Belarus. The General Court also concluded that Roshen failed to demonstrate that an average consumer in the Baltic States or Poland would perceive the image of a red lobster immediately, without further thought, as descriptive of the type of candy or of one of its characteristics (para. 98). As the result, Krasny Oktyabr’s EUTM was maintained.
Official symbols are generally protected under articles 7(1)(h) and 7(1)(i) EUTMR. Article 7(1)(h) applies to symbols that are registered with and listed by WIPO, such as flags, state emblems and hallmarks. Article 7(1)(i) applies to signs that are of a particular public interest, but which have not been registered with WIPO. An example of such a sign is the euro sign (€).
In a recent decision of 1 December 2021, the General Court (10th Chamber) gives an insightful analysis of the rationale behind the two articles and whether a different scope of protection applies to them.
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The BoA secondly assessed whether the mark of Schmid depicted the PGI Symbol and, if so, whether Schmid had received permission by the relevant authority (in this case, the European Commission) to register the PGI Symbol as part of her application. In that respect, the BoA found that the mark of Schmid depicts the PGI Symbol in full, and that the European Commission neither directly consented thereto, nor allowed, such use on the basis of Regulation 1151/2012.
Having established that Schmid registered a symbol of particular public interest without authorization, the BoA ruled that the mark should be cancelled on the basis of article 7(1)(i) EUTMR. It therefore dismissed the appeal, resulting in the case being brought by Schmid before the General Court
Misleading invoices have become a big problem in both Poland and the European Union. Some trademark owners now receive a deluge of unsolicited mail from companies requesting payment for trademark and design services they never received, such as publication, registration or entry into business directories. Usually these are issued by companies under their own names (a list of such companies can be found on the Polish Patent Office or EUIPO websites).
East Midlands-based patent attorney and trade mark attorney firm, Adamson Jones IP Ltd, has welcomed four new team members in the last twelve months.
Natasha Walker (neé Hybner) joined the business in November as Associate and Chartered Trade Mark Attorney and specialises in brand protection, trade mark registration and enforcement of trade mark rights.
As you may recall from our post on the ‘Sony Vita’ invalidation case, where a trade mark is registered for a product but only used for something viewed by consumers as a different product, the trade mark right for the registered product for which it is not used is lost, even if it resembles the actual marketed product, or is contained in it, or serves a secondary but commercially irrelevant function. In Monster Energy v. EUIPO / Frito-Lay (joined cases T-758/20 and T-759/20), the GC had the opportunity to reiterate this assumption on 10 November 2021. The GC confirmed the rule that one product belongs to one category under the Nice Classification, the only exception being that it is a composite product.
Frito Lay had applied to revoke EUTM no. 009492158 for ‘MONSTER’ in cl. 5, 29, 30 and 33 held by Monster Energy under Article 51(1)(a) EUTM Regulation (cancelation decision No 14 861 C), claiming that the trade mark had not been put to genuine use for any of those goods within five years. Having initially (but unsuccessfully) tried to hold on to classes 5 (based on energy drinks being at the same time nutritional supplements) and 30 (with respect to milk and coffee being ingredients of some of their products), the case before the GC only concerned “coffee”. Monster Energy argued that their drinks, and more particularly their “X-PRESSO MONSTER” drink, were both coffee and energy drinks (cl. 30 and 32) at the same time in an attempt to maintain protection in class 30.
Chanel is aiming to bolster its robust arsenal of world-famous trademark registrations by way of an interesting mark. According to a newly-filed trademark application for registration, Chanel is looking to register the number 5 with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (“USPTO”) for use on cosmetics, pointing to its use of the number embossed on shades of eyeshadow inside No. 5-branded palettes as an example of how it has been consistently using the mark since at least as early as November 2021. The application is not necessarily striking because the mark is a numeric one. Trademarks can take the form of a wide array of “symbols” that are capable of indicating the source of a product or service – from words and logos to colors and product packaging, and numbers certainly fall within this pool of possible indicators.
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Beyond that, Chanel maintains registrations for 1932 for use on perfumery, and for 3.55 for use in connection with “downloadable podcasts featuring commentary and ideas in the fields of fashion, art, music, travel, and creative inspirations.” And back in 2002, Chanel sought to register the number 5 for use on handbags and tote bags, but faced pushback from the USPTO and initiated an unsuccessful cancellation proceeding centering on an unaffiliated third party’s use (or lack of use, as Chanel argued in its petition for cancellation) of a stylized number 5 on different types of bags. (Chanel ultimately abandoned that application.) The brand has similarly sought to register 2005 for use on handbags by way of applications that date back more than 20 years.
On 22 November 2021, the China National Intellectual Administration (CNIPA) issued the new Guidelines on Trademark Examination and Review. Ling Zhao of the MARQUES China Team reports.
The Guidelines are effective from 1 January 2022. According to the CNIPA, the Guidelines aim to regulate trade mark examination procedures, and to ensure the consistency in the application of laws and regulations.
The release of the Guidelines is just about in time to accommodate the amendment of the China Trademark Law and the continuing increase in trade mark filings.
New guiding opinions
The Guidelines include a whole new section of guiding opinions on formality examination and the procedures for trade mark applications, oppositions, invalidations, reviews, cancellations, classification of goods/services, specifying composing elements of trade marks for trade mark search, formalit
The China National Intellectual Administration (CNIPA) recently published the new guidelines for trade mark examination procedures. The new guidelines cover topics such as formality examination and procedures for trade mark applications, oppositions, declarations of invalidity, cancellations, classification of goods and services, examination of applications for change of trade mark ownership, trade mark renewal and other procedural issues. Ling Zhao of the MARQUES China team reports here.
This post is part of a series of evidence summaries for the 21 for 2021 project, a CREATe project within the AHRC Creative Industries Policy and Evidence Centre (PEC). The 21 for 2021 project offers a synthesis of empirical evidence catalogued on the Copyright Evidence Portal, answering 21 topical copyright questions for the 21st century. In this post, Raffaele Danna (Research Fellow, Institute of Economics of Scuola Superiore Sant’Anna), Arianna Martinelli (Associate Professor in Applied Economics, Institute of Economics of Scuola Superiore Sant’Anna) and Alessandro Nuvolari (Professor of Economic History and Director of the Institute of Economics at Scuola Superiore Sant’Anna) explore the empirical evidence on negative intellectual property spaces.
For anyone interested in the discussions about automated content filtering, Christmas came early this week: On Monday YouTube published the first edition of its Copyright Transparency Report. The report that covers copyright enforcement actions on the platform for the period from January to June of this year provides much needed insights into how YouTube’s various copyright management systems function. In publishing this report YouTube is finally bringing some empirical evidence to the discussion about the automated content filtering that is being fuelled by the ongoing implementation of Article 17 of the Copyright in the Digital Single Market (CDSM) directive. In this context it is worth pointing out that the report published on Monday covers a period before the most national implementation of Article 17, which means that the numbers presented in the report reflect the status quo ante and can thus serve as a baseline for assessing the actual impact of Article 17 going forward.
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This number alone makes it very clear that concerns about over-blocking by automated upload filters are very much grounded in reality and underline the importance of strong ex-ante safeguards in national implementation of Article 17. It will be interesting to see how these numbers will change once Article 17 has been widely implemented. For instance, how will these numbers be affected once YouTube has adapted its automated filters to implement ex-ante safeguards such as the German rules on treating fragments shorter than 15 seconds as presumably legal or, more crucially, what will be the impact of limiting permissible ex ante filtering only to “manifestly infringing” content, as partly endorsed by the Commission’s Guidance and proposed by Advocate ÃËe in Case C-401/19 . In order to better understand the impact of such measures it would be helpful, if future editions of the transparency report would break out the numbers for the EU 27 — unless Youtube implements the required changes globally.
Comedians and other spoken word authors are seeking the same streaming royalties paid to songwriters, but an impasse has led to the removal of their works from Spotify.
Do you want to be paid, or do you want to be heard? That’s the predicament hundreds of comedians seem to be finding themselves in following Spotify’s decision to remove their works from the streaming platform amidst a dispute over copyright royalties. Tracks and albums from hugely popular comedians like John Mulaney, Tiffany Haddish, Jim Gaffigan and Kevin Hart were quietly taken down by Spotify right before the long Thanksgiving weekend, leaving comedy fans and even some of the affected comedians scratching their heads.
In a previous post on this Blog, we analysed the EU case law relating to the emerging services of Cloud Service Providers (C-265/16, V-CAST), as well as the impact of the new EU Directive on copyright in the Digital Single Market (CDSM). More specifically, in the case between V-Cast and RTI, the CJEU ruled that the Infosoc Directive, in particular Article 5(2)(b) thereof, must be interpreted as precluding national legislation which permits a commercial undertaking to provide private individuals with a Cloud service for the remote recording of private copies of works protected by copyright, by means of a computer system, by actively involving itself in the recording without the rightsholder’s consent.
Even though that Court’s judgment was very specific to the V-Cast service, it left room, arguing a contrario and subject to certain conditions, to consider the mere provision of Cloud storage services of audio-visual content, with reproductions made on individual requests of end-users, to be covered by the private copying exception. This is since: (i) it is not a necessary requisite that the users possess the reproduction means or equipment, given that such reproduction can be made also via means or equipment made available by third-party operators (€§ 35 of the V-Cast judgment); (ii) the provider which merely organizes the reproduction on behalf of the users could be considered within the limits of the private copying exception, where the provider does not play an active role and does not interfere with other exclusive rights, such as the communication to the public (€§ 37-38 of the V-Cast judgment).
Senators are looking into reviving a 2020 draft bill that was never made public but that sought to modernise the US Copyright Office, say sources
The Indian Copyright Office has issued a notice of withdrawal to Ankit Sahni, the man who secured India's first-ever copyright registration recognising an artificial intelligence tool as the co-author of an artwork, it was revealed to Managing IP today.
The withdrawal notice, sent on November 25, asked Sahni to inform the Copyright Office about the legal status of the AI tool Raghav Artificial Intelligence Painting App, and invited his attention to Section 2(d)(iii) and Section 2(d)(vi) of the Copyright Act.
Section 2(d)(iii) sets out that the term ‘author’ in relation to an artistic work means an artist, and Section 2(d)(vi) states that the person who causes an artistic work to be created shall be its author.
The Government has signed a statutory instrument transposing the Directive on Copyright in the Digital Single Market ((EU) 2019/790) (Directive) into Irish law.
The Directive, which has given rise to extensive debate amongst stakeholders, aims to update copyright legislation for the digital age and to strengthen the rights of copyright owners when their content is used online. The Directive was enacted in April 2019 and EU member states were given until 7 June 2021 to transpose the Directive into their respective national laws. Ireland was one of 23 member states that did not meet that deadline, and following this new legislation now becomes the seventh to transpose the Directive into national law.
Tánaiste and Minister for Enterprise, Trade and Employment Leo Varadkar considers that the new law will be part of a broader discussion on the future of media and will be important to ensure that "the rights of our creators, writers, journalists and performers are upheld when it comes to their work being shared online".
We are reviewing the detail of the statutory instrument and will publish further updates in the coming days.
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