IRC: #techbytes @ Techrights IRC Network: Tuesday, April 04, 2023

schestowitz[TR]

Dear colleagues,

schestowitz[TR]

The yearly environmental report of 2021, section 5.9 “Employee commuting and teleworking”, recites that “[i]t is important that, while improving our approach in estimating category 7 emissions, we will continue to incentivise the use of public transport and bicycles for staff travelling to our premises.”

schestowitz[TR]

In our opinion, there is a good chance to achieve that now in Germany, with the introduction in May of the new “Deutschlandticket”. This ticket will cost €49 per month and be valid on local transport in the whole of Germany, thus in both Munich and Berlin. There is an offer for employers offering this ticket as a “JobTicket”: if the employer supports this ticket by at least 25%, the price is reduced by 5% so that the price

schestowitz[TR]

of the Deutschlandticket for employees is at most €34.50."

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schestowitz[TR]

schestowitz[TR]

<li>

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<h5><a href="https://theevilskeleton.gitlab.io/2023/04/02/what-is-gnomes-philosophy.html">What is GNOME's Philosophy?</a></h5>

schestowitz[TR]

schestowitz[TR]

GNOME’s philosophy is sophisticated and there is a lot of room for forgetting important information, as design and user experience are, in my opinion, really difficult to understand, while being really easy to misunderstand as well.

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For starters, I will explain the key focus of GNOME. Then, I will be explaining and elaborating on how GNOME approaches it. I will also share my opinion on that matter.

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Disclaimer: I am not speaking on the behalf of GNOME.

schestowitz[TR]

</blockquote>

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</li>

-TechBytesBot/#techbytes-theevilskeleton.gitlab.io | What is GNOME’s Philosophy? | TheEvilSkeleton

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Apr 04 08:08

schestowitz[TR]

<li>

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<h5><a href="https://www.dedoimedo.com/computers/plasma-5-27-review.html">Plasma 5.27 - Can't say there are many differences, but 'tis ok</a></h5>

schestowitz[TR]

schestowitz[TR]

Recently, I've been Plasma-ing a lot. This is because I got meself a Slimbook Titan laptop, and I've already shared some half a dozen articles on the topic. Predictably, they all revolve around the fine and elegant and slick Plasma desktop environment. I also have a little Slimbook Pro2 surprise, but that will have to wait a while longer. Still, in a nutshell, you may say, how about

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a little variety, Dedo? Well, not today, I'm afraid, me hearties. Today, we will do MOAR Plasma. I used the word Plasma way too much in this opening sequence. Let's.

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</blockquote>

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</li>

-TechBytesBot/#techbytes-www.dedoimedo.com | Plasma 5.27 - Can't say there are many differences, but 'tis ok

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<li>

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<h5><a href="https://krita.org/en/item/krita-in-2022-and-2023/">Krita in 2022 and 2023</a></h5>

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So, for this year, we decided to take a different approach. We wanted to pro-actively determine what we wanted to work on, and then discuss how to do that, and go for it, instead of just reacting to bug reports, wish bugs and feature requests.

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So, early 2022, as soon as the lifting of lock-downs allowed, two Krita developers, Halla and Wolthera, sat together in Deventer, to prepare this idea. Of course, even before the invasion of Ukraine and all the problems that caused, we couldn’t get a full Krita Developers’ Sprint together. So, this was limited.

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</blockquote>

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</li>

-TechBytesBot/#techbytes-krita.org | Krita in 2022 and 2023 | Krita

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<li>

schestowitz[TR]

<h5><a href="https://blog.jonudell.net/2023/04/03/the-mastodon-plugin-is-now-available-on-the-steampipe-hub/">The Mastodon plugin is now available on the Steampipe Hub</a></h5>

schestowitz[TR]

schestowitz[TR]

Last week we released the plugin to the Steampipe hub. If you’ve installed Steampipe, you can now get the plugin using steampipe plugin install mastodon. The next phases of this project will explore using the plugin and dashboards in Steampipe Cloud, and speeding up the dashboards by means of persistent Postgres tables and Steampipe Cloud snapshots. Meanwhile, here’s a recap of what I’ve lear

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ned thus far.

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</blockquote>

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</li>

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-TechBytesBot/#techbytes-blog.jonudell.net | The Mastodon plugin is now available on the Steampipe Hub – Jon Udell

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<li>

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<h5><a href="https://baronhk.wordpress.com/2023/04/03/t-mobile-says-get-ready-to-lose-your-autopay-discount-if-you-use-a-credit-card-bonus-automated-super-depressing-mcdonalds/">T-Mobile Says Get Ready to Lose Your AutoPay Discount if You Use a Credit Card. Bonus: Automated Super Depressing McDonalds</a></h5>

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To make things worse, you have to not only log in to the T-Mobile account to see the alert. You have to navigate to “Manage AutoPay” to see the warning, so for millions of customers, T-Mobile will just start raising their bill $10 a month and they’ll never notice, but T-Mobile can say “It was posted that Earth was going to be blown up to make room for a hyperspace bypass. It’s not our fau

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lt you didn’t see that!”

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</blockquote>

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</li>

-TechBytesBot/#techbytes-baronhk.wordpress.com | T-Mobile Says Get Ready to Lose Your AutoPay Discount if You Use a Credit Card. Bonus: Automated Super Depressing McDonalds | BaronHK's Rants

Apr 04 09:54

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schestowitz[TR]

<li>

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<h5><a href="https://www.digitalmusicnews.com/2023/04/02/bytedance-lobbying-us-government-cost/">TikTok Owner ByteDance Has Spent $14 Million Lobbying US Government Officials Since 2019</a></h5>

schestowitz[TR]

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OpenSecrets analyzed the company’s reported payments to federal lobbyists since 2019. What they found is that the social platform owner is ramping up its spending. It spent $5.3 million on lobbying in 2022, becoming the fourth-largest internet company in lobbying spend, surpassed only by Amazon, Alphabet (Google) and Meta (Facebook).

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TikTok is facing increased scrutiny in Congress as many officials are expressing concerns about how much access China has to data. FBI Director Chris Wray has also expressed concerns for how the social media app could be used to sway American public opinion. Nearly two dozen state governors have enacted a ban on TikTok for government devices.

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</blockquote>

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-TechBytesBot/#techbytes- ( status 520 @ https://www.digitalmusicnews.com/2023/04/02/bytedance-lobbying-us-government-cost/ )

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<li>

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<h5><a href="https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/blogs/iransource/the-islamic-republic-is-waging-a-war-on-women-journalists-the-international-community-needs-to-step-up/">The Islamic Republic is waging a war on women journalists. The international community needs to step up.</a></h5>

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Since the eruption of mass anti-government protests in mid-September 2022, the Islamic Republic has waged a war on women journalists in Iran. The targeting of journalists is not new. However, security forces have deliberately gone after women journalists and jailed them at a rapidly increasing rate. While the international community has spoken out in support of the Women, Life, Freedom revolution,

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they have done little to protect the women journalists at the heart of this movement.

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</blockquote>

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</li>

-TechBytesBot/#techbytes-www.atlanticcouncil.org | The Islamic Republic is waging a war on women journalists. The international community needs to step up. - Atlantic Council

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Apr 04 11:21

schestowitz[TR]

Dear Mr Thomas, I am afraid that you are entirely ... ☞ http://ipkitten.blogspot.com/2023/03/g-221-did-invention-as-originally.html?showComment=1680528080649#c6749317655977232324

schestowitz[TR]

Dear Mr Thomas, I am afraid that you are entirely missing the point that I am trying to make. To be clear, what I am asking is whether it is ever OK for the EPO to require applicants to make amendments to the description that could force national courts to interpret the wording of the claims in the same way as the EPO examiner. This is not a matter of frequency of errors or exceptions vs. the rule. It is a p

schestowitz[TR]

oint of principle. You are quite correct that national courts do not like to review prosecution history. However, they do take the direct result of that history (namely, the wording of the claims) and then interpret that wording in the manner prescribed by Article 69 EPC and its Protocol. For some reason you seem to believe that the wording of the claims as granted only "indirectly" refl

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ects "the results of prosecution history". I must say that is a very strange position to take, as it can only mean that you believe that, when determining the scope of protection, national courts should pay more attention to the reasons why the claims were amended than to (the meaning of) the wording of the claims. The reason that is a strange position is that the file history will not always enabl

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e a clear and unambiguous determination of the reasons for prosecution amendments. Think, for example, of unprompted amendments made by the applicant, or amendments that could serve multiple purposes. This is no doubt why the courts prefer to save the file history for exceptional cases. In any event, the reasons behind prosecution amendments are not a factor that either Article 69 EPC or its Protocol indicates should be taken

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into account for determining the scope of protection. By way of contrast, however, both Article 69 EPC and its Protocol indicate that the description should be used to interpret the scope of protection afforded claims. This is why amendments to the description that effectively disclaim certain subject matter will be taken into account by the national courts for the purpose of determining the scope of

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protection. You seem to think that this is not an issue. Can you explain why? Do you think that the national courts would always ignore such an effective disclaimer, even if an applicant has consented to its inclusion in the description of the granted patent? If so, why? That is, on what grounds would the national court ignore a statement labelling an embodiment as "not the claimed invention"?

http://ipkitten.blogspot.com/feeds/comments/default?alt=rss

schestowitz[TR]

schestowitz[TR]

I did not intend to fu... ☞ http://ipkitten.blogspot.com/2023/03/g-221-did-invention-as-originally.html?showComment=1680515976952#c8227771605118173867

schestowitz[TR]

Dear Proof of the pudding, I did not intend to further reply to you, but you force me to. You have no reason to be disappointed or saddened by my replies. I replied to you in all honesty, whether you realise it or not. When looking at national decisions, and following statements by national judges, my conclusion is that national courts are not keen on looking at the file history and hardly ever do.

schestowitz[TR]

Beside the decision of the district court of The Hague in the famous pemetrexed case, I do not remember a national court taking into account the actual file history in deciding the scope of protection. It is thus only very indirectly that the results of prosecution history are captured in the wording of the claims. I have been too long in the patent business not to realise that every word in a claim has a meaning and a f

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unction. It is neither black nor white: There are lots of shades of grey and/or white in between. I neither dismiss nor minimise what you are saying, but you cannot make a general rule in view of some very specific situations in your field of expertise. It is a rule, reminded in lots of decisions of the boards, that exceptions should only be applied with parsimony and never generalised. I worked for a long time in the fi

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eld of medical physics and this is an area in which exceptions should be handled with precaution and never be generalised. I am thus very much aware in the situation in neighbouring areas like pharmaceuticals and biotech. As I do not know your field of expertise, I cannot say much more. What you are actually trying to establish is a general rule which boils down not to adapt the description at all. However, a general rul

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e cannot be based on cases in a specific technical area, be if of your own expertise or not. Do not tell me that national courts have blinkers and are not capable of distilling what is the bone and marrow of the invention translated in technical terms in the granted claim when looking at those under Art 69 and the protocol to it. It is not giving much credit to national courts in considering them so narrow minded as to f

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eel forced to abide by what the EPO will have decided. Unless in opposition, the EPO does not decide what the scope of protection might be and certainly not which equivalents might fall under the claims. That you actually would like to be able to get more out of the claims and that you fear the courts would be limiting the scope protection is understandable, but it cannot go against the concept enshrined in Art 84, 2d se

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ntence. I explained to Max Drei in another blog, that nothing withholds the proprietor to submit the originally filed documents to a national court should he fear a misinterpretation. When the discussion is about added-matter, recourse to the originally filed documents is necessary. Why it should not be the case when discussing IS or what might be "inherently" falling under the original claims. Wha

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t I am discussing here, is what should generally be done. This cannot end in generalising what could be done in exceptional situations. If you have good arguments, I do not see why your specific situation should not be taken into account by divisions of first instance and, more important, by boards of appeal. The general view of the boards of appeal is well known. It is clear that you do not agree with their view and rather would se

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e that they act like in the three decisions going against the general view. Your fears might be real, but I can only repeat that I have not seen one case in which a national court has misinterpreted the claims in view of what was in the description amended before grant. National courts are perfectly able to make up their own mind and they do so.

http://ipkitten.blogspot.com/feeds/comments/default?alt=rss

schestowitz[TR]

schestowitz[TR]

DXThomas thank you. Again apologies for not doing ... ☞ http://ipkitten.blogspot.com/2023/03/g-221-did-invention-as-originally.html?showComment=1680514904783#c4045616214908770921

schestowitz[TR]

DXThomas thank you. Again apologies for not doing justice to your reply. Your points are all excellent, but I am going to predict “no ab initio plausibility” and “no ab initio implausibility” are never going to crystallise into firm case law rules. My 'thesis' is that the EB has decided that plausibility will remain an 'abstract' concept to be decided by the relevant Board of Appeal 'as it wishes' to do justice to the parti

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es and to reflect the general approach taken in that field. This essentially also happened in different ways in the decisions of 'basis (added matter) for disclaimers' and 'computer simulations' where no firm rules were put forward by the EB. Everything you have said is true. What I am suggesting is another level of consideration by the EB as to the general direction it wants the case law to go into for that issue, which could broad

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ly be called 'policy'. It needs to be appreciated that this level of consideration exists (but is not talked about publically apart from occasionally in obscure conference meetings). The trick is how to spot it when the relevant decision is never going to mention what was 'really happening' in the minds of the EB. Thank you again for your very detailed response

http://ipkitten.blogspot.com/feeds/comments/default?alt=rss

schestowitz[TR]

schestowitz[TR]

The discussion between you and Daniel Thomas, toge... ☞ http://ipkitten.blogspot.com/2023/03/g-221-did-invention-as-originally.html?showComment=1680505962540#c8242992450866561153

schestowitz[TR]

The discussion between you and Daniel Thomas, together with my discussions with him on his own blog, IP.Appify, reveal the fundamental difference of opinion between us and M. Thomas. It lies in the second sentence of Art 84, EPC. What does "support" mean? Does it mean "substantiate" or does it mean "corroborate". In the dictionaries, both are reasonable. How about Art 84, 2nd sentence, in Fre

schestowitz[TR]

nch and German though, I wonder. If I understand the debate correctly, we (in English) think the former, M. Thomas the latter. Say if you see it differently.

-TechBytesBot/#techbytes-ipkitten.blogspot.com | G 2/21: Is the technical effect embodied by the invention as originally disclosed? - The IPKat

http://ipkitten.blogspot.com/2023/03/g-221-did-invention-as-originally.html?showComment=1680454050867#c3831621729262968022

schestowitz[TR]

schestowitz[TR]

Dear Proof of the pudding, I did not intend to further reply to you, but you force me to. You have no reason to be disappointed or saddened by my replies. I replied to you in all honesty, whether you realise it or not. When looking at national decisions, my conclusion is that national courts are not keen on looking at the file history and hardly ever do. Beside the decision of the district court of

schestowitz[TR]

The Hague in the famous pemetrexed case, I do not remember a national court taking into account the actual file history in deciding the scope of protection. It is thus only very indirectly that the results of prosecution history are captured in the wording of the claims. I have been too long in the patent business not to realise that every word in a claim has a meaning and a function. It is neither black nor white: there

schestowitz[TR]

are lots of shades of grey and/or white in between. I neither dismiss nor minimise what you are saying, but you cannot make a general rule in view of some very specific situations in your field of expertise. It is a rule, reminded in lots of decisions of the boards, that exceptions should only be applied with parsimony and never generalised. I worked for a long time in the field of medical physics and this is an area in

schestowitz[TR]

which exceptions should be handled with precaution and never be generalised. I am thus very much aware in the situation in neighbouring areas like pharmaceuticals and biotech. As I do not know your field of expertise, I cannot say much more. What you are actually trying to establish is a general rule which boils down not to adapt the description at all. However, a general rule cannot be based on cases in a specific tech

schestowitz[TR]

nical area, be if of your own expertise or not. Do not tell me that national courts have blinkers and are not capable of distilling what is the substance of the invention translated in the technical terms in the claim. It is not giving any credit to national courts in considering them so narrow minded as you make out. What I am discussing here is what should generally be done, but not to generalise what might

schestowitz[TR]

be possible in exceptional situations. If you have good arguments, I do not see why your specific situation should not be taken into account by divisions of first instance and, more important, by boards of appeal. The general view of the boards of appeal is well known. It is furthermore clear that you do not agree with this view. Your stance actually reminds me of the attitude of British representatives, which in the ea

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rly days of the EPO, systematically removed reference signs in the claims at grant for fear of a narrow interpretation of said reference signs. They had no objections to them during prosecution. T 237/84 put an end to this nonsense. See also Guidelines F-IV, 4.18.

-TechBytesBot/#techbytes-ipkitten.blogspot.com | G 2/21: Is the technical effect embodied by the invention as originally disclosed? - The IPKat