Bonum Certa Men Certa

Ubuntu Tweaks Patent Policy, Microsoft Has “Intellectual Property Group”, Twitter Faces Lawsuit, and Google Handles Video Patents

Bald eagle
Intellectual Vultures



Summary: Lots of patent news with direct impact on Free software

IT WAS about a week ago that Canonical said in the mailing lists that it had updated/modified its patent policy. It is only now that a news site found it worthy of coverage. From the summary:

Ubuntu has introduced a new Patent Policy to help developers and rights holders deal with software patent issues.


Of course, it would be most convenient to pretend that Microsoft did not fund SCO, sue TomTom, and sue Melco (all anti-Linux lawsuits). While us at Boycott Novell actually protest against this abusive strategy from Microsoft (akin to racketeering), other Web sites or people (opposers of Freedom fighters [1, 2, 3]) prefer to mock messengers who point this out and try to create or support a coalition against software patents and against Microsoft's intolerant behaviour.

IDG has this new article about the "Microsoft patent model".

Microsoft's Intellectual Property Group is building a financial model designed to value and predict prices for technology patents, allowing the company to better forecast and budget for intellectual property-related costs -- all inspired by a best-selling book about baseball.


Yes, Microsoft learns from baseball about extortion cycles. All it needs now is a good baseball bat and a compelling Mafia Don. There is some more analysis of this right here.

Last night we wrote about Twitter -- a company which uses Free software as its underlying infrastructure (stack) -- getting sued for alleged violation of software patents. For future reference (if any is required), this is also covered in:



Twitter is no stranger to such patent lawsuits and TechRadium is a serial aggressor. Here is the press release and a comment which says:

This is why we should not have software patents. I've been sending alerts and messages to a distribution list since I was using email. What's the difference.


As TechDirt points out, the actions of the USPTO show a certain level of incompetence, including the inability to suppress such junk patents and frivolous lawsuits.

While plenty of people are familiar with the fact that NTP got $612.5 million from RIM in a patent dispute a few years back (which drew tremendous scrutiny into the realm of patents), one of the most interesting details that many people didn't follow was that at the same time as the lawsuit was going on, the US Patent Office was re-examining those same patents, and issuing rejections of the very same patents. Despite the USPTO even rushing to announce its problems with the patents way ahead of schedule, the judge chose not to wait for the final rejections and pressured RIM into paying up.


The most interesting bit of patent news was probably to do with Google's On2 acquisition. For background, Groklaw has just highlighted the increasing problem with Web video which remains inaccessible to GNU/Linux users, giving the White House as an example.

I go to the url for the White House meeting going on right now, and nothing I own will do the live streaming. I can get the text running at the bottom, but no video. Can you guys figure out if it is possible? If it's just me, that's one thing. But if it is everyone who isn't using Microsoft products, that is something else.


Matt Asay speculates that Google's acquisition of On2 may have something to do with patents.

Is Google's open-source advocacy a patent-busting scheme?



[...]

If true, The Register's question--"Is Google spending $106.5m to open source a codec?"--calls up a different response than the author of that article gives. Maybe $106 million is cheap compared to the cost of getting hit with video compression patent suits (from Microsoft, Apple, and others), if Google open source's On2's video compression codecs.


This links to the following report:

As is typical of Googlespeak, this tells us close to nothing. But if you also consider the company's so far fruitless efforts to push through a video tag for HTML 5 - the still gestating update to the web's hypertext markup language - the On2 acquisition looks an awful lot like an effort to solve this browser-maker impasse.


Why doesn't Google just spread Ogg? According to this bit of news, Chrome is gaining <video> support.

Google has released a new Chrome beta that includes a theming engine, faster JavaScript performance, several usability improvements, and support for HTML5 video.


Sam Dean asks himself whether this is "part of [Google's] open Web video standards effort", but why doesn't Google just embrace Ogg rather than spend $106 million buying a company? Perhaps it's best to wait and see.

"Software patents have been nothing but trouble for innovation. We the software engineers know this, yet we actually have full-blown posters in our break-room showcasing the individual engineers who came up with something we were able to push through the USPTO. Individually, we pretty much all consider the software-patent showcase poster to be a colossal joke." —Kelledin, PLI: State Street Overruled... PERIOD

Comments

Recent Techrights' Posts

If You Don't Control Your Online Platform, Then Someone Else is Controlling You
be (or become) independent
The Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA) Has a Policy on Racism and Sexism
In then future we'll show the misogyny and racial slurs
Links 22/09/2025: Murdochs Might Join Fentanylware (TikTok) 'Investors' (Masters), United Kingdom Recognises Palestinian Statehood
Links for the day
The 50-Pound Note Experiment and the "War on Cash"
Britain is actually seeing a rebound in cash payments, and it's not a temporary phenomenon
 
What Scares Them the Most is Independent News Sites That They Cannot Control and Censor
Wikileaks was a good example of this
Oracle Started This Year With Slop. Then It Stopped.
Passing fads are like this
Distros That Run on PCs Made 20 Years Ago and Don't Use Systemd
Betas for now
The Complaint About Brett Wilson LLP - Part I - Abusing British Women on Behalf of American Men Who Abuse American Women
Transparency is important to us, so we've decided to make this series
Slopwatch: Google News and the Evident Slopfarm Infestation
This is what people get about Linux when they query Google for Linux
Gemini Links 22/09/2025: Esperanto Music History and Apps For Android
Links for the day
Links 22/09/2025: More American 'Censorship' (Retaliation for Journalism), Cheeto "Might Be Losing His Race Against Time"
Links for the day
The Blob Slop
Give me more words, give me some text
Slopwatch: Blaming the Victims for Microsoft's Failures and Plagiarising Phoronix
That's what Google has been reduced to: slop and slopfarms
Links 22/09/2025: Breaches, Windows TCO, and Arrests
Links for the day
Gemini Links 22/09/2025: Rabbit Hole and DeGoogling Fairphone
Links for the day
Links 22/09/2025: Russian War Planes Invade NATO Airspace While Dihydroxyacetone Man Escalates Attack on Free Speech Because of Critics
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Sunday, September 21, 2025
IRC logs for Sunday, September 21, 2025
Links 21/09/2025: "Hey Hi" (Hype) Under Fire, Fakes Identified; Tesla Burns Family
Links for the day
Google's Software is Malware and Malware in Mobile Devices
Originally posted by Rob Musial
Links 20/09/2025: Hegemony Coming to a Close, Luigi Mangione Ruled Not Terrorist
Links for the day
Gemini Links 21/09/2025: "Charlie Kirk Was a Hateful Piece of Shit" and Slop Code Attempted by Microsofter
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Saturday, September 20, 2025
IRC logs for Saturday, September 20, 2025
Gemini Links 20/09/2025: Snowy Photos and utism is a Spectrum
Links for the day
Microsoft-Sponsored Xenophobia and Nationalism
IBM is very similar in this regard
Vintage is Sometimes Better
Why can't we get back to "simple" if (or where) "simple" means better?
Climate Breakdown Means We'll be Publishing More, Not Less
Press freedom will be a common, recurring theme
Our 5-Year Geminispace Anniversary is Coming Up
I still remember when Gemini Protocol was quite new
It's Right to Point Out Violence From the Right
Violence is a recurring theme
Tentative Summary of Things to Publish in Project 2030
I'll still be in my forties by then
Web Browsers That "Do Hey Hi" (AI)
State-of-the-art plagiarism or "autocomplete on steroids" (not coined by us, nevertheless a nice description) don't have much/any prospect
Links 20/09/2025: Hardware Projects in View, Some Independent Publishers About Russia Prosper After Cheeto Cuts Funding
Links for the day
Gemini Links 20/09/2025: Options and TV Time Machine
Links for the day
Links 20/09/2025: Retrocomputer, Antique Phone Experience, and More
Links for the day
Links 20/09/2025: Internet Shutdowns, Media Censorship, and Climate Worries
Links for the day
About 700 New Gemini Capsules in 13 Months (or 54 Per Month)
4.8K would represent a 20% increase
Rust People: Drain the Swap, You're Holding It Wrong
Does Rust make sense?
Techrights the Name Turns 15
About 6 weeks from now we turn 19
Microsoft is Running Out of Time and Floating Fake Figures, Fake Projects, Fake Narratives, Fake Excuses
Also, a lot of Microsoft's "revenue" claims are circular financing (i.e. Microsoft buying from itself, which means Ponzi-like fraud)
Slopwatch: LinuxSecurity, linuxconfig.org, and Plagiarised Phoronix
Many articles out there are nowadays fake
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Friday, September 19, 2025
IRC logs for Friday, September 19, 2025
Gemini Links 20/09/2025: Navigating the Pressures of Modern Life and SpellBinding Accidentally Wrote Another Gemini Server
Links for the day