This week brought us a major Vulkan release and a minor DXVK update for our Linux gaming, a major Gamebuntu release for our Ubuntu gaming, the official release date when we can start purchasing Valve’s Steam Deck gaming handheld, and a new Ubuntu-powered Linux laptop.
On the distro and software release front, we got a major Nitrux release, a moderate Raspberry Pi OS release, a minor update to the powerful Mixxx DJ software, and a major release of the Phosh Wayland shell for GNOME on mobile devices.
You can enjoy this and much more in 9to5Linux’s Linux weekly roundup for January 30th, 2022, below!
We all take it for granted, but it is one of the best things about Linux. We share the history of the live CD, how it all got started, and the times it saved our bacon.
The **kde** software series continues with **Alkimia** , **Analitza** , and **Ark**.
The 5.17-rc2 kernel prepatch is out for testing.
This is a minor (point) release in the 4MLinux STABLE channel, which comes with the Linux kernel 5.10.90. The 4MLinux Server now includes Apache 2.4.52, MariaDB 10.6.5, and PHP 7.4.27 (see this post for more details).
CIOs who seized the opportunity to innovate faster during the pandemic saw their digital transformation timelines shrink by a factor of years. Now, those CIOs are grappling with big questions around how to keep up that accelerated pace without burning out and driving away talent, according to new research from Harvard Business Review Analytic Services.
These questions require urgent answers, because rather than a short-term effort, CIOs and IT organizations “now see digital acceleration as a more permanent fixture in the business landscape,” according to the research available today: “Maintaining Momentum on Digital Transformation.”
Recreating what was normal before the pandemic should not be the organizational goal. If it is, the organization could fall behind competitors “Recreating what was normal before the pandemic should not be the organizational goal. If it is, the organization could fall behind competitors,” the report states.
Mixxx 2.3.2 is here about three months after Mixxx 2.3.1 and introduces controller mapping for the Pioneer DDJ-SB3 2-channel DJ controller. In addition, this release improves support for the Traktor Kontrol S3 4-channel DJ controller by fixing timedelta calculation bugs.
The UI has been improved with a new functionality for the playlist, namely to sort items by color. Moreover, Mixxx now appends the selected file extension when exporting to playlist files.
Professionally, I use macOS. It has been one of two options given by my employers and I need a Unix environment to be productive. I live in the terminal and do all of my development in an Ubuntu virtual machine using VirtualBox. The macOS user interface looks nice and it is very user friendly. Which is why many developers strive to replicate it. And that is why far too often, there is a *nix distribution which is specifically built modeling itself after what comes out of Cupertino. Truth be told, the same could be said about Windows, but the focus today is macOS.
We have released the Qt 6.2.3. The latest patch release to the Qt 6.2 series contains almost 300 bug fixes compared to the Qt 6.2.2 release.
This article aims at integrating and applying the main lessons learned in the process of evolution of Prolog. It is structured into three major parts. Firstly, we overview the evolution of Prolog systems and the community approximately up to the ISO standard, considering both the main historic developments and the motivations behind several Prolog implementations, as well as other logic programming languages influenced by Prolog. Then, we discuss the Prolog implementations that are most active after the appearance of the standard: their visions, goals, commonalities, and incompatibilities. Finally, we perform a SWOT analysis in order to better identify the potential of Prolog, and propose future directions along which Prolog might continue to add useful features, interfaces, libraries, and tools, while at the same time improving compatibility between implementations.
This is an important point: interrupted commands are not restarted. So if your script needs to do something important that shouldn't be interrupted, then you can't, for example, use the trap command to trap the signal, print a warning, and then resume the operation like nothing happened. Rather, what you need to do if you can't have something interrupted is disable Ctrl-C handling while the command executes. You can do this with the trap command too by specifying an empty command to trap. You can also use the trap command to reset signal handling to the default by specifying a "-" as the command. So you might do something like this: [...]
A built-in bash command that is used to execute a command when the shell receives any signal is called `trap`. When any event occurs then bash sends the notification by any signal. Many signals are available in bash. The most common signal of bash is SIGINT (Signal Interrupt). When the user presses CTRL+C to interrupt any process from the terminal then this signal is sent to notify the system. How you can use trap command to handle different types of signals is explained in this tutorial.
Millions of doses of a new, cheap coronavirus vaccine will soon be available in India, and they will arrive with one distinction neither Moderna nor Pfizer can claim: They’re patent-free.
The new CORBEVAX inoculation, which was developed in Texas with decades-old technology and little support from the U.S. government, received emergency use authorization last week from India’s drug regulation agency.
The researchers behind the vaccine stand with little to gain financially.
“We don’t own any intellectual property,” said Dr. Peter Hotez, a researcher who helped lead the vaccine’s development.
Efforts to immunize the world are falling far short of some expectations, and human rights campaigners are pressuring pharmaceutical companies to transfer new vaccine technology to speed global access to shots.
And while doubts linger about CORBEVAX’s effectiveness against the omicron variant and a lack of public data, its development, outside the path of typical pharmaceutical development and stripped of the same financial incentives for inventors, represents a model for others and could bolster their arguments, vaccine equity advocates said.
About 59 percent of the world’s population has received at least one dose of a vaccine, according to Our World in Data, which tracks government reports globally. But fewer than 9 percent of residents in low-income countries have received a dose.
Upon shutting down its computer systems, the hospital’s downtime procedures kicked in, with physicians taking notes and prescribing medicine to patients by hand. Even after downtime procedures ended, the hospital was still meticulous in rebooting digital operations to ensure the virus was not lingering. While most computer systems were up and running by Wednesday, the emergency room’s charting system was expected to be offline for the rest of the week, said Hussey, with doctors in the department getting ER patient records from other parts of the hospital network.
The charting system at Jackson Hospital was hit earlier this month by Mespinoza, a ransomware attack that has infected up to 190 organizations worldwide across industries, including several in healthcare, says the Department of Health and Human Services.
It was approaching midnight on Sunday and the head of IT at a Florida hospital had a problem.
The emergency room of Jackson Hospital, a 100-bed facility on Florida's panhandle, called to report that it couldn't connect to the charting system that doctors use to look up patients' medical histories. Jamie Hussey, Jackson Hospital's IT director, soon realized that the charting software, which was maintained by an outside vendor, was infected with ransomware and that he didn't have much time to keep the computer virus from spreading.
The hospital shut down its computer systems on his advice.
Josh and Kurt talk about how to get attention for security problems. Recent research around Twitter credentials checked into GitHub showed us how to get a lot of attention when compared to a problem like Log4Shell which took years before anyone really picked up on the problem. It’s hard to talk about security sometimes.
The IRS is reportedly reconsidering its previously-announced plan to require taxpayers to share facial images and other personal data with an unregulated private company, ID.me, in order to file tax returns online or access information about their filings, payments, and returns through the IRS website.
The hesitation by the IRS comes after ID.me was caught lying about whether it uses “one to many” facial recognition to try to identify facial images against large databases of selfies or other mug shots. ID.me had falsely claimed that it only uses “1 to 1” matching to “verify” that a selfie matches previously stored images of a specific person. But the company has now admitted that’s incorrect. ID.me actually€ compares selfies submitted by taxpayers (or by hackers or identity thieves, who could easily copy a facial image from a targeted victim’s or their friend’s social media posts) to its own “internal” database of images of tens of millions of people aggregated from unknown sources.
An IRS spokesperson told Jennifer Epstein,€ Shawn Donnan,€ Dina Bass of Bloomberg News that “any taxpayer who does not want to use ID.me can opt against filing his or her taxes online.”
TEFCA has been in progress over multiple administrations following the passage of the 21st Century Cures Act in 2016 – and few have a better sense of its ins and outs than Dr. Donald Rucker, who served as national coordinator for health IT from 2017 through 2021.
Rucker, now chief strategy officer with 1upHealth, sat down with Healthcare IT News to chat about what's next for interoperability in the United States, the advantages of FHIR-enabled tools and the importance of being able to analyze population-wide health data.
The Foreign Ministry on Friday said some of its diplomats working at Finnish missions abroad had been the target of espionage using surveillance software. The ministry did not disclose where the [cracking] took place or how many diplomats were targeted.
The number of android apps asking for camera and microphone permissions on smartphones has increased from 45% to 68% and 28% to 54%, respectively, in the last five years, according to a study by data security and privacy firm Arrka titled ‘State of data privacy of Indian mobile apps and websites’.
The study involved 201 Indian mobile apps and websites from 100 organisations across 25 industries. Arrka tracked various privacy parameters over five years. Here are some of its findings: [...]
As tensions began to rise over Ukraine, US media produced a stream of articles attempting to explain the situation with headlines like “Ukraine Explained” (New York Times, 12/8/21) and “What You Need to Know About Tensions Between Ukraine and Russia” (Washington Post, 11/26/21). Sidebars would have notes that tried to provide context for the current headlines. But to truly understand this crisis, you would need to know much more than what these articles offered.
The diplomatic boycott of the Beijing Winter Olympic and Paralympic Games may go down in history as the official start of the cold war between the U.S., a handful of its allies and China. The American strategy, however, of using boycotts to pressure Beijing in the name of ‘human rights’, may prove costly in the future.
On the morning of August 25, 2021, I woke up on the floor with my lungs gasping for breath. My heart was racing, my hands and legs were shaking from adrenaline, and I was sweating from running. It took me about a minute to realize it was just a nightmare, one where I had to jump off a six-step ladder to run away from Burmese soldiers. Except it wasn’t a nightmare.
Anti-war group CodePink will lead a coalition in a public action in Washington, D.C. Monday morning to demand the Biden administration prioritize delivering much-needed support to working families and communities across the U.S. instead of threatening military action and punishing sanctions against Russia amid the Ukraine conflict.
The groups, which also include SPACEs In Action and Arm in Arm for Climate, will gather in Black Lives Matter Plaza to demand President Joe Biden "use the power of his office to pass the healthcare, child care, climate, and anti-poverty programs that our communities need" within the Build Back Better Act.
Britain will probably be visited by termites again. Most of the country is too cold and damp for them to thrive—but as the Devon colony shows, not all. And so BRE is teaching surveyors, architects and workers in the timber industry how to spot the signs before termites have a chance to settle in. Better to get rid of unwanted guests straight away than have to spend decades on another eviction.
Indigenous environmental defenders in Ecuador on Sunday pointed to a pipeline rupture in the Amazon rainforest as "the exact reason why we oppose oil extraction" as the pipeline operator temporarily halted pumping crude oil.
A pipeline constructed by OCP Ecuador burst on Friday after a rockslide, according to NBC News. Videos posted on social media by the Confederation of Indigenous Nationalities of Ecuador (CONAIE) and Amazon Frontlines showed oil spraying out of the pipeline into the rainforest.
In Finland, the average price will be €172.85 and it will be €178.16 in Latvia and Lithuania.
The one-year anniversary of the attack on the Capitol has come and gone, and a lot has been said about the need to fight back against existential threats to our democracy. Not enough is being said, however, about what’s being fought for and won in workplaces across the country.
The 2008 Olympics signalled the welcome arrival of China on the world stage. The 2022 Winter Games, in contrast, prompt grave concerns in many quarters. Today, China is undoubtedly a great power. Yet its political regime and economic model reveal dangerous fault lines, while its strategic ambitions and aggressive rhetoric stoke growing resistance.
The 2008 financial crisis undermined the traditional hierarchy of the global political economy. The intervention of the Group of 20, whose co-operation prevented another worldwide depression, signalled a new era. Yet its members chose divergent paths. The EU imposed austerity, causing persistent stagnation and rising inequality. The U.S. adopted a more Keynesian approach, but the size and duration of its stimulus proved inadequate. Populist reaction grew.
[...]
Beijing has managed its growing debt burden so far. Recent moves to rein in overdrawn real estate companies and curb the overheated property market demonstrate resolve. Yet whether the party can steer the transitions without depleting local government revenues and damaging household wealth is a real dilemma.
Indeed, the social costs and demographic tensions of China’s growth strategy are rising. Urban economic inequalities have exploded, while economic growth has slowed, over the past decade. Many people struggle to get their foot on the property ladder. The fall in China’s working-age population since 2011, a consequence of its old one-child policy, may bolster relative wages in the short run. But its ramifications in the long run are serious. The welfare burden on future generations, anticipating higher taxes and greater responsibilities for social care, will increase significantly as society ages. The recent decision to allow families to have three children has predictably failed to reverse the trend. Indeed, the punishing grind and pervasive anxiety felt by many workers in a hypercompetitive economy has engendered a growing anti-consumerist backlash among millennials, who prefer “lying flat” to working “996” (from 9 a.m. to 9 p.m., six days a week). Such passive dissent could jeopardize national ambitions.
Thus last summer Mr. Xi declared the need “to regulate excessively high incomes,” to ensure “common prosperity for all.” Early moves include charging well-known celebrities with tax violations, imposing curbs on private tutoring and extending the government’s crackdown of foreign public listings by major tech companies. Leading entrepreneurs have pledged billions to social welfare programs in return. Many believe Mr. Xi is using populist rhetoric to mobilize mass support and displace potential threats to his rule. His major goal is for China to become a high-income economy by 2049. Yet the risk that it will get old before it gets rich is real.
The espionage was carried out by means of Pegasus, a spyware developed, marketed and licensed by Israel’s NSO Group. The highly sophisticated software infiltrates smartphones typically through so-called zero-click attacks by exploiting zero-day vulnerabilities in the operating system.
The spyware is capable of obtaining root privileges on the infected device and, in theory, of harvesting and sending any data to the attacker.
Spotify CEO Daniel Ek on Sunday spoke out publicly about the controversy that's blown up over the Joe Rogan podcast and COVID-19 vaccine misinformation, sparked by an ultimatum from famed rocker Neil Young.
Ek noted in a blog post that doctors and scientists as well as Spotify subscribers have raised questions about the company's policies and "the lines we have drawn between what is acceptable and what is not." He also acknowledged that Spotify hasn't been transparent about its policies regarding content that it hosts.
It seemed to me that the real objective of the lawsuit was not to rescue a man’s name or alter his reputation, but to frighten scholars of the Holocaust, to instill Poland’s pervasive atmosphere of fear into an entire discipline and to make students and educators think twice before choosing topics that would challenge the government-sponsored version of history. The idea of a right to national pride, advanced in court, is an ambiguous and legally undefined sentiment that effectively means any member of the Polish nation has the right to sue historians whose findings offend them.
Meanwhile, Holocaust survivors are dying every day. There are few left to protest the new revisionism.
The world is not ready for the coming electoral tsunami. Neither is Facebook. With so many elections on the horizon — France, Kenya, Australia, Brazil, the Philippines and the United States will hold elections this year — the conversation now should focus on how Facebook is preparing.
I know what it’s like to prepare for an election at Facebook. I worked there for 10 years, and from 2014 through the end of 2019, I led the company’s work across elections globally. It has poured more than $13 billion into building up its safety and security efforts in the United States since the 2016 elections, when the platform was too slow to recognize how its products could be weaponized to spread misinformation.
"Most of the listeners hearing the unfactual, misleading and false COVID information of Spotify are 24 years old, impressionable and easy to swing to the wrong side of the truth," Young posted in a statement to his website. "These young people believe Spotify would never present grossly unfactual information. They unfortunately are wrong."
A lack of cultural understanding by Facebook, Instagram, and other social media platforms is a prevailing reason for inaccurate content moderation in Iran, Middle East experts said.
Moreover, and they said, Iran’s proposed international [Internet] replacement, the National Information Network, is dangerously close to coming into effect.
The report by the Foreign Correspondents Club (FCC) of China said journalists there face physical assaults, hacking, online trolling and visa denials.
Local journalists in mainland China and Hong Kong are also being targeted.
China has labelled the FCC an "illegal organisation".
Answer: Despite the utter failure of the volume to make a viable argument for Hitchens’ utility in radical politics, what caused his neocon turn, or even shed light on his contributions, the late polemicist remains a useful tool for liberal imperialists and outright reactionaries. On the anniversary of his death, former Vanity Fair editor Graydon Carter wrote a fawning tribute that in many ways is indistinguishable from the purple prose of this current volume. Matthew Continetti of the American Enterprise Institute likewise wrote a reverential tribute. Hitchens remains a useful propaganda tool via his seemingly-endless Hitch-Slap videos on YouTube. Also, obvious from the testimonials page at the front of the book, apparently there are people in DSA who have fondness for him. Why?
There are many ways to parse this book, just as there are many ways to parse its subject. Adulatory reviews of this title have previously granted Ben Burgis, a philosophy professor and leading advocate of the Jacobin magazine tendency within the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), the tacit acknowledgement of legitimacy to both his interrogative stance, predicated upon philosophy, and the intellectual validity of the inquiry, that Hitchens had a deep level of thought and political grounding.
The USIPA Board features representatives of various organizations and constituencies that make up the Intellectual Property Ecosystem in the U.S., including the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office (USPTO), the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO), the Copyright Alliance, the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), AT&T, IBM, and MIT, among others.
Chip making giant Intel Corp has inched toward a possible reprieve from part of a landmark $2.1 billion verdict, after a U.S. tribunal agreed to review the validity of one of two semiconductor patents that a jury said it infringed last year.
The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office's Patent Trial and Appeal Board on Wednesday granted a request to review VLSI Technology LLC's patent, which means the board believes there is a reasonable chance that at least one challenged part of it is invalid.
A West Texas jury said Intel must pay $1.5 billion for infringing the patent last year, as well as $675 million for infringing another VLSI patent, in one of the largest patent jury verdicts in U.S. history.
A South Dakota-based entity called Patent Quality Assurance LLC asked the board to review the first patent four months after the verdict. It told the tribunal that earlier inventions made parts of VLSI's patent unprotectable.
A patent grants a negative right to its owner, i.e., the right to exclude others from making, using, exercising, disposing, or offering to dispose of, or importing the invention as claimed. A patent does NOT grant the right of use.
For a business to be able to practice its intellectual property rights, it will be necessary to secure freedom to operate (FTO).
FTO is the ability of a business to develop, make, and market products without legal liability or risk concerning the infringement of a third party’s intellectual property rights.
FTO analyses are relevant in circumstances where a new product or technology is developed and the business wishes to ensure that it will be free to manufacture and market the new product or technology so as to inform research strategy and to avoid pitfalls such as payment of royalties to third party IP owners for license fees; or to avoid costly IP litigation. A FTO analysis is often conducted as part of the intellectual property due diligence prior to an investment in acquisition of a business as a condition of closing a deal. This is even more so in deals where the acquisition or investment is mainly IP focused, and the value of the IP assets is determined in part by the ability to practice the claimed technology. A clear FTO assessment can provide confidence and reassurance to potential investors or shareholders.
INPI will hold on 3 February 2022 (9:00am-6:20pm), in partnership with CEIPI, an international conference on the industrial property challenges associated with the economic recovery in light of France’s Presidency of the Council of the European Union. The event will be fully online, streamed in English and French. Registration is open now and more information about the event is available here.
European Innovation Council and SMEs Executive Agency - Policy debate during the EU Industry Days 2022: The Unitary Patent System and SME Instruments in the Area of Intellectual Property - 9 February 2022
The European Innovation Council and SMEs Executive Agency will hold an online discussion on 9 February 2022 from 3:15pm-4:00pm about the Unitary Patent System and SME Instruments in the Area of Intellectual Property. This discussion is part of the EU Industry Days 2022, an annual event that highlights industrial frontrunners and ongoing industrial policy discussions whilst improving the knowledge base of European industry. The registration for the event can be made here.
The trigger point and the timing of a request for a precautionary injunction (PI) is crucial. However, in pharmaceutical patent enforcement, most damage occurs from the launch of the Gx product, which can account for a price cut of as much as 40% from the originator's drug. Therefore, the PI must be filed and granted before the Gx launches, yet while there is sufficient proof available to overcome the so-called Bolar exemption hurdle. The PI filing date serves this aim, because most cases are referred to a court-appointed expert panel for evaluation, which takes at least three months. Consequently, the date of the PI grant decision may come after the launch of the Gx.
The main concern for patent holders lies in the fact that IP courts do not wish to interfere with administrative decisions and applications (including for the pricing of original drugs) and limit the PI decision in terms of prevention of the marketing, trading or import of the Gx product. Therefore, even when a PI is granted, the price cut cannot usually be remedied. Where a patent holder suffers a loss, they may only be subject to a compensation action for the next couple of years.
On 1 July 2020, in order to meet the proposals of practitioners, intellectual property courts, in the form of Intellectual Property Divisions (IPDs), were introduced in Poland. This role was entrusted to five Regional Courts – in Gdaà âsk, Katowice, Lublin, Poznaà â and Warsaw. Courts of Appeal in Warsaw and Poznaà â deal with cases at second instance. In accordance with applicable regulations, cases involving greater technical complexity, namely cases concerning computer programs, inventions, utility models, topographies of integrated circuits, plant varieties and business secrets of a technical nature, are in principle dealt with only in Warsaw.
In practice, all civil intellectual property cases go to these five regional courts only. Prior to the changes, apart from cases concerning Community trade marks and designs handled exclusively by the Regional Court in Warsaw (its 22nd Division, then known as the Court for Community Trade Marks and Industrial Designs), intellectual property cases were handled by various regional courts throughout the country having jurisdiction over the defendant's registered office/place of residence or the place where a tort was committed. Currently, an attempt to initiate proceedings before any court other than those mentioned above will result in the case being referred to a court in Gdaà âsk, Katowice, Poznaà â, Lublin or Warsaw having appropriate jurisdiction.
The companies here compete in the market for creating specialized finger-LED equipment and accompanying data analysis services. This case focuses on calculating total hemoglobin (“SpHb”) based upon light absorption readings from the finger-LED.
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Each product line will have a different equation because it will likely have a different LED configuration; have different sensors; and have a different physical form. So, a product developer needs to run a clinical trial of its product in order to estimate the most accurate coefficients. For each person in the trial, you do a blood test for SpHB level (the gold standard) and then also take measurements with the finger LED.
What is the Trade Secret: The trade secret at issue here is the optimization algorithm for determining all the equation coefficients. How do you take data from the clinical trials and turn that into an operational equation for measuring SpHB?
Answer, if you have studied linear algebra this is all straightforward and largely developed in the 1960s. Math and engineering students across the country take classes on linear programming and linear optimization and have done so for decades. These same models are a basis for most of the system we call “AI.”
The defendants pointed to a particular 2008 IEEE article that spells out the particular approach claimed to be a trade secret here — – the parties refer to this algorithm as “TSS.” We don’t know the title of this article (it is redacted), but we do know that this is a very well known article with 1,200+ citations.
Here's a short follow-up to my take on Epic's opening brief in its Ninth Circuit appeal of Apple's App Store antitrust acquittal. The previous post focused entirely on the legal issues, but I did also want to highlight that Epic Games has hired the man who may have been the most successful Supreme Court attorney in recent history: Thomas C. "Tom" Goldstein of Goldstein & Russell.
The profile on his firm's website mentions the two cases in which I saw him achieve major victories for his clients: FTC v. Qualcomm and Oracle v. Google. In the Qualcomm case, I predicted a reversal even ahead of the hearing, and was amazed at Mr. Goldstein's performance. Qualcomm was represented by Cravath--Epic's firm against Apple (and Google)--at trial. The combination of Cravath and Mr. Goldstein was dynamite. I view his work on Google's behalf much less favorably on the truth-o-meter, and agree with the dissent by Justices Thomas and Alito to a far greater extent than with the per curiam opinion.
The question is now whether he can do it again. I very much hope for the sake of competition, innovation, and essential app developer freedoms that he will indeed convince the judges of this being one of those rare cases in which a single-brand market--and only a single-brand market--is warranted. Then Google and Qualcomm are not only way bigger but also a lot more sophisticated than Epic when it comes to high-stakes litigation. There were success factors in place--which are not meant to downplay the brilliance of Mr. Goldstein's lawyering--that may be missing this time around.
After the expiration of the Ericsson-Samsung patent cross-license agreement, Ericsson went to court about a year ago, and Samsung's response included 30 petitions with the Patent Trial & Appeal Board of the United States Patent & Trademark Office, each taking aim at an Ericsson patent. We're now seeing a similar development, though on a smaller scale so far, between Ericsson and Apple, and once again it looks like a net licensee is using some of its vast resources to drive up litigation costs.
Over the course of the last seven days, Apple brought seven IPR petitions against Ericsson patents, and will likely file more in the days or weeks ahead. None of those seven U.S. patents has been asserted by Ericsson against Apple (or is the subject of a declaratory-judgment action by Apple), but each was challenged by Samsung last year. It's somewhat ironic that Apple, which for many years denounced Samsung as a copycat, is actually building on Samsung's 2021 inter parties review (IPR) campaign against Ericsson, even rehashing invalidity contentions previously advanced by Samsung.
I'm a longstanding supporter of robust post-grant review of issued patents, but there's no denying that the process sometimes does get abused by deep-pocketed players to the detriment of innovators challenging patents because they can afford it, not because there's a need. Ericsson has so many patents that it will always find some others to assert regardless of how many Apple challenges. The problem is that such petitions clog the PTAB system and slow down the resolution of objectively urgent cases.
Apple has a serious problem with Ericsson having made all the right venue-related decisions so far: the ITC for potential U.S. import bans; the Eastern District of Texas for FRAND issues (where Ericsson won a landmark case against HTC); and the Western District of Texas for damages (companion complaints to import ban requests). Ericsson is also enforcing its rights in four other countries, with preliminary injunction requests pending in Brazil and the Netherlands. In Germany, Ericsson hedged its bets by filing cases with the three leading regional courts for patent cases. Munich and Mannheim are safe choices for plaintiffs, and Ericsson was so lucky as to have both of its cases assigned to Judge Dr. Daniel Voss ("Voß" in German), who is widely regarded as the plaintiff-friendliest of the three judges presiding over patent-specialized divisions (called "civil chambers") of the Dusseldorf Regional Court. Judge Dr. Voss is basically Dusseldorf's answer to the Munich and Mannheim judges.
Now Apple is jockeying for a better position. Part of that effort is a PTAB IPR campaign piggybacking on Samsung's 2021 challenges to many Ericsson patents, taking aim at patents Ericsson hasn't even asserted against Apple. And very surprisingly, almost shockingly, Apple proposed to have the whole dispute resolved by means of a rate-setting decision in the Eastern District of Texas, a venue Apple dreads so much that it even closed its stores there (Apple Stonebriar in Fisco, TX, and Apple Willow Bend in Plano, TX) after the Supreme Court's TC Heartland decision that made it a lot easier to get patent infringement cases moved out of a district unless the defendant has a permanent business presence there (as opposed to merely selling products or offering services nationwide).
This is a follow-up with some additional thoughts on the intra-venue fight between Apple and Ericsson over their respective FRAND actions in the Eastern District of Texas (on top of whether they should litigate infringement matters in the Eastern or the Western District, with Apple actually wanting neither but preferring the Northern District of California, just that it has no promising pathway to get there).
Another step closer to the Unified Patent Court - On 19 January 2022, Austria formally ratified the Protocol on Provisional Application of the UPC Agreement. As Austria is the 13th Member State to participate in the provisional application of the UPC Agreement, the required number of ratifications has now been reached and the Protocol has officially entered into force. The last part of the preparatory work in establishing the Unified Patent Court will now be conducted. Find the official declaration here.
After years in the making, it is expected that the new Unitary Patent system and associated Unified Patent Court (a pan-European form of protection and associated court) will come into force in late 2022. All innovators, regardless of their technical focus, will need to evaluate their patent strategies in light of the new system. Some European countries are not part of this system (including the UK, Spain and Switzerland), and so there are also factors to consider regarding the participating/non-participating countries. There are potential pros and cons to opting newly granted patents into this unitary system, which patentees will need to consider on a case-by-case basis to ensure the right decision is made for each of their patents.
The Munich District Court yesterday, January 27, stayed proceedings in a case brought by Ocado against a US developer of a warehouse-shopping robot, noting that Ocado’s utility model rights may be invalid.
It is the latest twist in a multi-jurisdictional battle between the online supermarket against US-based AutoStore.
The court considered that, despite Ocado having made significant last-minute amendments to the claims of the asserted utility models, they were likely to be invalid because they sought to cover more than the disclosures in the original applications.
Ocado brought the case, in which it sought an injunction against AutoStore, in response to a patent infringement claim filed by the US company in 2020.
The case concerns AutoStore’s B1 robot, which is used in warehouses to pick goods for online shopping.
[...]
The UKIPO is seeking views on the future of the UK’s design system after Brexit, it announced on Tuesday, January 25.
Members of the public will have until March 25 to submit their comments on a range of topics related to the design system and potential reforms.
Among the topics up for consultation are whether the current system needs to be simplified, novelty searching, and designers’ experience of enforcing their rights.
The consultation will also examine the impact of Brexit, particularly changes to disclosure requirements for unregistered designs.
It also marks the latest effort by the UKIPO to grapple with the emergence of new technologies such as artificial intelligence (AI).
The UKIPO said it would be seeking views on whether the designs system is flexible enough to protect designs created with AI.
The office is running a separate consultation on the impact of AI on the patents and copyright systems.
It is vital that the fundamental sanction in patent law—of the temporary right to exclude—along with other remedies, including enhanced damages, are readily available against infringers when Fair, Reasonable and Non-Discriminatory (F/RAND) licensing has been offered, but is rejected, evaded or unreasonably delayed.
Technical standards confer enormous value to implementers and consumers. For example, cellular standard-essential technologies enable annual revenues exceeding a trillion dollars in operator services, several hundred billion dollars in smartphone sales and hundreds of billions more in over-the-top applications and services on those devices. Undermining the fundamental patent rights of organizations that commit large R&D resources to develop those technologies and contribute them to the standards would unfairly short-change those innovators and jeopardize ongoing investments in 5G and the Internet of Things (IoT). In addition to facilitating revenue growth and cost savings in those downstream markets, standard-essential technologies, for example, help save the planet by enabling us to fly and drive less—thus reducing our carbon footprints—and reduce deaths on the road with autonomous driving capabilities.
We have an interesting split decision focusing on the doctrine of indefiniteness in the context of an “examiner’s amendment.” Judge Newman wrote for the majority and favored the patentee; Judge Dyk wrote in dissent and concluded that the patent claims were indefinite.
"Meta", originating from the ancient Greek word meaning "beyond" or "after", remains present in our language in words like "Metaphysics" (the realm of philosophy dealing with what is "beyond the natural", i.e. the branch that studies causality, necessity, the principles of being, reality and so on). It is also the new brand for Facebook, with CEO Mark Zuckerberg announcing recently an intention to develop "a company that builds technology to connect". Both applications of the word indicate an aspiration to reach what cannot be reached.
Neal Stephenson's coinage of the word "METAVERSE" pulls the same trick. In stretching back to the old to find something new, it has captured the imagination of the likes of Alibaba and NetEase and has scored a palpable hit with numerous Chinese businesses. Like forty-niners in a modern day gold rush, their applications have been pouring in to claim monopoly rights in the term's Mandarin equivalent ("yuan yuzhou").
Russian applicants tend to turn to patent attorneys even more frequently with regard to the matters regarding obtaining a European patent.
I have good news for patent holders who like to enforce their rights in Germany, and not only in Munich and Mannheim but (at least in some cases) also in Dusseldorf. Based on what two of the three judges presiding over patent-specialized divisions of the Landgericht Düsseldorf (Dusseldorf Regional Court) said in a joint presentation today, patent injunctions are going to be just as available in Dusseldorf as before last year's "reform" bill. This was certain for Munich and Mannheim, but I must admit there were some residual doubts on my part concerning Dusseldorf, which in some contexts made defendant-friendlier decisions in recent years than other German courts. Not anymore after today's presentation.
Imugene Ltd (ASX:IMU, OTC:IUGNF) has opened the doors to a large and lucrative market for immuno-oncology by securing a Notice of Grant from the European Patent Office for its HER-Vaxx immunotherapy.
The World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) published a report earlier this week on global intellectual property (IP) activity in 2020. There are some very interesting findings in this report, that provide an insight on global economic activity and trends, as summarized below.
Addressing obviousness in the context of method of treatment claims using particular drug dosages, the US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit affirmed a Patent Trial & Appeal Board (Board) final written decision holding that Teva failed to prove obviousness because it failed to show a reasonable expectation of success. Teva Pharms., LLC v. Corcept Therapeutics, Inc., Case No. 21-1360 (Fed. Cir. Dec. 7, 2021) (Moore, C.J.)
The Patent Trial and Appeal Board has set February 4th at 1:00 pm EST for the Oral Hearing in the Priority Phase of Interference No. 106,115 between the Broad Institute, Harvard University, and MIT (collectively, "Broad") as Senior Party and the University of California/Berkeley, the University of Vienna, and Emmanuelle Charpentier (collectively, "CVC") as Junior Party. The hearing will be virtual (by telephone, audio only) and will be available to the public upon request under 37 C.F.R. ۤ 41.124(c). The Parties will each have 20 minutes for argument, and each party will be able to reserve 5 minutes for rebuttal, with the Junior Party, CVC, arguing first.
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Regarding public access, interested members of the public can request access by e-mailing the request to PTABHearings@uspto.gov. The parties can object to access if that objection is provided at least five business days prior to the oral hearing date.
More and more details of the Ericsson-Apple patent dispute become known. Yesterday I provided an update on Ericsson's patent assertions against Apple, which include (inter alia) that Ericsson is seeking a preliminary injunction in Brazil over three patents and told Apple's counsel it would seek preliminary injunctions in the Netherlands, too.
Apple countersued last week. The first 2022 Apple v. Ericsson case to be discovered was a complaint with the United States International Trade Commission, requesting an import ban on Ericsson base stations over three mmWave-related patents.
During COP26, the UK Intellectual Property Office (UKIPO) released a series of reports about patenting activity on various green technology areas. Now that the dust from COP has settled, we thought we would take a closer look at some of the trends and statistics.
Many of the reports showed that the US and China dominated in terms of the pure number of patent applications filed. These territories are well known for being prolific in the world of patents and so this is as expected. In addition to the absolute filing numbers, the UKIPO provided data on a parameter called "Relative Specialisation Index" (RSI).
Usually the answer is "sorry, it's too late", as borne out in a UK IPO decision issued for British patent GB2432556 – a patent for a football goal frame.
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The problem for the patentee is that they had sold 'self-assembly' football goals that pre-dated their patent application. PMF Products knew this, and had evidence of this, and so the patent was revoked for lack of novelty because of the patentee's prior sales. The patentee didn't even try to defend the revocation action, presumably because they knew it was a lost cause.
Departing U.S. Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer's approach to intellectual property law was consistently skeptical, expressing concern that patents and copyrights can limit access to information in decisions that took a broad view of fair use and fueled patent eligibility challenges.
Justice Breyer, who announced his retirement Thursday after over 27 years on the high court, has had a keen interest in intellectual property since he was a Harvard Law School professor. His 1970 article "The Uneasy Case For Copyright" laid out a critical view of IP that informed his much later work on the high court.
After two years on top of Australian patent filing charts – including a remarkable (by Australian standards) 435 applications in 2020 – Chinese telecommunications manufacturer OPPO dropped back to third position in 2021. The top spot was taken by last year’s runner-up, South Korea’s LG Electronics, which filed 251 new Australian standard patent applications, up from 236 in 2020. China’s Huawei Technologies took second place, with 243 new applications, also increasing its filings, up from 229 in 2020. Huawei now owns nearly 1,300 live Australian patents and applications, which is a significant investment for a company that is effectively barred from the Australian market. It is likely, however, that many of these patents and applications cover standardised mobile and data communications technologies that are implemented across the industry, and which therefore provide Huawei with a substantial stream of licensing income.
The top Australian resident applicant, once again, was electronic gaming system developer Aristocrat Technologies. However, from a peak of 252 applications filed in 2018, Aristocrat’s filings have declined significantly. It filed only 72 new standard patent applications in 2021, falling to equal 21st place in the annual ranking (alongside the University of Texas System). Over the same period, Aristocrat has been engaged in a Federal Court battle with the Australian Patent Office in an effort to establish the patent-eligibility of many of its gaming-related inventions, recently suffering a setback in the form of a loss on appeal to a Full Bench of the Court.
D Young & Co will be offering its next European biotech patent law update on February 8, 2022. The webinar will be offered at three times: 9:00 am, noon, and 5:00 pm (GMT). D Young & Co European Patent Attorneys Simon O'Brien and Tom Pagdin will provide an update of new and important EPO biotechnology patent case law.
Doesn't the cryptographic community prioritize unpatented cryptosystems? Why would anyone other than Ding have been putting effort into developing a cryptosystem threatened by Ding's patent? Why were the New Hope developers starting from that cryptosystem in the first place? If they had some reason to do this, why wasn't their paper prominently warning people regarding the patent threat?
Disney has been approved for a patent that would create personalized interactive attractions for theme park visitors. The technology would facilitate headset-free augmented reality (AR) attractions at Disney theme parks.
The tech would work by tracking visitors using their mobile phones and generating and projecting personalized 3D effects onto nearby physical spaces, walls and objects in the park.
The entertainment giant was approved for a “virtual-world simulator in a real-world venue” patent on Dec. 28, 2021. It was originally filed to the United States Patent and Trademark Office in July 2020.
The news: TD Bank unveiled a series of major technology updates this week that range from a new hiring initiative to patent milestones.
In the years from State Street in 1999 to Alice in 2014, legal scholars vigorously debated whether patents should be used to incentivize the invention of business methods. That attention has waned just as economists have produced important new research on the topic, and just as artificial intelligence and cloud computing are changing the nature of business method innovation. This chapter rejoins the debate and concludes that the case for patent protection of business methods is weaker now than it was a decade ago.
It is a fundamental principle of U.S. trademark law that to serve as a trademark, a word or phrase must “indicate the source” of the goods or services with which it is associated and, conversely, that a term that is understood to be the common name of a good or service is “generic” and cannot be protected as a trademark. Yet it still seems difficult to determine exactly what each concept means, particularly when the actual “source” of any goods or services might be opaque to consumers.
In part, this difficulty comes from the fact that status as a trademark or as a generic term is necessarily contextual. The Supreme Court’s 2020 opinion in United States Patent and Trademark Office v. Booking.com B.V. emphasized the relevance of consumer understanding to this inquiry. Words are not inherently generic or distinctive out of context; APPLE is a trademark for computers but not for fruit.
Although individuals encounter trademarks in a variety of settings, we ultimately care about this understanding in the context of a consumer’s experience, since that is where relevant confusion is operationalized. To use a supermarket analogy, the consumer is, at least conceptually, first searching for the right aisle (“soft drinks” or “colas”) and then searching among the shelves for the product they want (“Pepsi” rather than “Coca-Cola”). The genericism inquiry is therefore about assessing terms to determine whether they are related to an aisle search or a shelf search.
Framing the inquiry in this way can help us to see that the question is ultimately about consumer understanding of terms, not consumer use of terms. Looking at how consumers talk about trademarks, whether through corpus analysis, surveys, dictionaries, or other sources, can be helpful, but it is equally important to consider how consumers understand those communications. By thinking of trademarks as elements of conversations among consumers, and borrowing from Gricean implicature, we might be able to determine whether a term is related to finding the right aisle or related to finding the right product on the shelf.
Color this applicant blue after the USPTO nixed its five applications to register various pastel colors (blue, green, orange, purple, and yellow) for "disposable pipette tips fitted with a customizable mounting shaft," finding that the proposed marks are not inherently distinctive, lack acquired distintinctiveness under Section 2(f), and are functional under Section 2(e)(5). Although Applicant Integra's products have been commercially successful, it failed to prove that relevant consumers perceive the "Pastel Tints" as trademarks. Furthermore, the Pastel Tints are essential to the use of Integra's goods, and therefore de jure functional, because they ensure that customers use the right tip with the right pipette. In re Integra Biosciences Corp., Serial Nos. 87484450, 87484519, 87484584, 87484617, and 87484658 (January 24, 2022) [precedential] (Opinion by Judge Marc A. Bergsman).
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Inherently Distinctive? Although "color is usually perceived as ornamentation," color on product packaging may be "inherently distinctive if '[its] intrinsic nature served to identify a particular source.'" Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. v. Samara Bros., 529 U.S. 205, 54 USPQ2d 1065, 1068 (2000) (quoting Two Pesos, Inc. v. Taco Cabana, Inc., 505 U.S. 763, 23 USPQ2d 1081, 1083 (1992)). The issue is whether the trade dress "'makes such an impression on consumers that they will assume' the trade dress is associated with a particular source." Forney Indus., 2020 USPQ2d 10310, at *6 (citing Seabrook Foods, Inc. v. Bar-Well Foods Ltd., 568 F.2d 1342, 196 USPQ2d 289, 291 (CCPA 1977)).
Farfetch will acquire beauty brand Violet Grey for an undisclosed sum, the e-commerce platform announced on Friday. In a nod to larger implications of the deal, the parties revealed that Violet Grey founder Cassandra Grey will act as chairwoman for the 10-year-old brand, while also becoming Farfetch’s global beauty advisor and the co-founder of NGG Beauty, a division of Farfetch’s New Guards Group, with both entities looking to enter into the beauty space. The launch of a beauty category on the Farfetch marketplace is scheduled for later this year. From a branding perspective, Farfetch appears to be readying for a launch, filing trademark applications for registration in the U.S. and the European Union for its name for use on a long list of cosmetics and beauty-related goods – from eyeshadow, body lotions, face creams, and hair care products to cosmetics bags, perfumes, and exfoliating brushes – on January 19.
In the midst of COP26, when our newsfeeds are being flooded with sustainability related posts and Greta Thunberg chanting "You can shove your climate crisis up your **** " - it's interesting to see the effect environmental consciousness can have on trade marks.
An EUIPO study has analysed goods and services specifications for the presence of terms related to the protection of the environment and sustainability. Examples include 'photovoltaic', 'solar heating', 'wind energy', 'recycling'. Approximately 900 such terms have been identified as 'green'.
Following the signing voluntary code of conduct between rightsholders and internet service providers in Spain, the government is now reporting on the first year's results. Overall, the vast majority of providers took action to render 869 domains and subdomains inaccessible to subscribers, with the aim of preventing illegal access to millions of movies, TV shows, videogames and ebooks.
The Story of the Treasure Seekers was originally published in 1899 and is no longer covered by copyright. I read the free Amazon Kindle version because it was convenient. My guess is that Amazon is republishing the Project Gutenberg version, but they only credit "a community of volunteers."
