Bonum Certa Men Certa

USPTO's David Kappos Starts Blog, Should Read Blogs Also

David Kappos



Summary: In order to bring change through the Bilski case, USPTO Director David Kappos may wish to review feedback from patent critics

IN two prior posts about the latest Bilski hearing [1, 2] we showed that there was substantiable hope for the abolishment of software patents. David Kappos, the new USPTO Director who seems a little hostile towards excessive patenting, finally has a blog and hopefully he will read other blogs too.



Groklaw, for instance, has just shown that Microsoft earns a patent on something that has been around for ages and predates Microsoft's implementation maybe by decades. We wrote about this before (two and a half years ago).

Lordy, lordy, lordy. They have no shame. It appears that Microsoft has just patented sudo, a personalized version of it.

Here it is, patent number7617530. Thanks, USPTO, for giving Microsoft, which is already a monopoly, a monopoly on something that's been in use since 1980 and wasn't invented by Microsoft. Here's Wikipedia's description of sudo, which you can meaningfully compare to Microsoft's description of its "invention".

This is why what the US Supreme Court does about software patents means so much. Hopefully they will address the topic in their decision on Bilski. Sudo is an integral part of the functioning of GNU/Linux systems, and you use it in Mac OSX also. Maybe the Supreme Court doesn't know that, and maybe the USPTO didn't realize it. But do you believe Microsoft knows it?


It seems like old news (except the acceptance of this latest one) and it is only to be expected because Microsoft employees are explicitly instructed neither to look at other patents nor consider prior art. Microsoft's practices in this case may not be against the law (patenting without checking), but those instructions are worth criminalising. If lawyers are actively advocating such destruction of the function of the patent system, they no longer deserve a place in this industry. In the i4i case, Microsoft was caught willfully and deliberately infringing patents.

Pointing to this latest case of lobbying from Microsoft's Horacio Gutierrez, Glyn Moody argues that "Microsoft [is] *against* Bilski patent, but thinks software patents are yummy..."

Separately, Moody wrote about In Re Bilski. Here is a key point that our reader Jose X stresses repeatedly:

Remember, the patent system is supposed to encourage innovation of just this kind – not to snuff it out.


Groklaw's analysis of the first Bilski transcript is definitely worth a quick look. Robert writes at Linux Today: "The very concept of 'intellectual property' is an absurdity!

"A human CANNOT 'own' an idea, a sequence of words, a sound, a smell, an algorithm, an equation, a sequence of events (aka, method) - no human thought is 'property' owned by the thinker to the exclusion of all others! The very idea is insanity!"

Bob Robertson points to the paper Against Intellectual Monopoly and quotes: "We show through theory and example that intellectual monopoly is not [necessary] for innovation and as a practical matter is damaging to growth."

"[Y]ou're creating a new 20-year monopoly for no good reason."

--David Kappos, Director of the USPTO

Recent Techrights' Posts

Lookout, It's Outlook
Outlook is all about the sharing!
Updated A Month Ago: Richard Stallman on Software Patents as Obstacles to Software Development
very recent update
Is BlueMail a Client of ZDNet Now?
Let's examine what BlueMail does to promote itself
OpenBSD Says That Even on Linux, Wayland Still Has a Number of Rough Edges (But IBM Wants to Make X Extinct)
IBM tries to impose unready software on users
 
The 'Smart' Attack on Power Grid Neutrality (or the Wet Dream of Tiered Pricing for Power, Essentially Punishing Poorer Households for Exercising Freedom Like Richer Households)
The dishonest marketing people tell us the age of disservice and discrimination is all about "smart" and "Hey Hi" (AI) as in algorithms akin to traffic-shaping in the context of network neutrality
Links 29/11/2023: VMware Layoffs and Too Many Microsofters Going Inside Google
Links for the day
Just What LINUX.COM Needed After Over a Month of Inactivity: SPAM SPAM SPAM (Linux Brand as a Spamfarm)
It's not even about Linux
Microsoft “Discriminated Based on Sexuality”
Relevant, as they love lecturing us on "diversity" and "inclusion"...
IRC Proceedings: Tuesday, November 28, 2023
IRC logs for Tuesday, November 28, 2023
Media Cannot Tell the Difference Between Microsoft and Iran
a platform with back doors
Links 28/11/2023: New Zealand's Big Tobacco Pivot and Google Mass-Deleting Accounts
Links for the day
Justice is Still the Main Goal
The skulduggery seems to implicate not only Microsoft
[Teaser] Next Week's Part in the Series About Anti-Free Software Militants
an effort to 'cancel' us and spy on us
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news
Permacomputing
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License
Professor Eben Moglen on How Social Control Media Metabolises Humans and Constraints Freedom of Thought
Nothing of value would be lost if all these data-harvesting giants (profiling people) vanished overnight
IRC Proceedings: Monday, November 27, 2023
IRC logs for Monday, November 27, 2023
When Microsoft Blocks Your Access to Free Software
"Linux is a cancer that attaches itself in an intellectual property sense to everything it touches." [Chicago Sun-Times]
Techrights Statement on 'Cancel Culture' Going Out of Control
relates to a discussion we had in IRC last night
Stuff People Write About Linux
revisionist pieces
Links 28/11/2023: Rosy Crow 1.4.3 and Google Drive Data Loss
Links for the day
Links 27/11/2023: Australian Wants Tech Companies Under Grip
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news
Links 27/11/2023: Underwater Data Centres and Gemini, BSD Style!
Links for the day
[Meme] Leaning Towards the Big Corporate CoC
Or leaning to "the green" (money)
Software Freedom Conservancy Inc in 2022: Almost Half a Million Bucks for Three People Who Attack Richard Stallman and Defame Linus Torvalds
Follow the money
[Meme] Identity Theft and Forgery
Coming soon...
Microsoft Has Less Than 1,000 Mail (MX) Servers Left, It's Virtually Dead in That Area (0.19% of the Market)
Exim at 254,000 servers, Postfix at 150,774, Microsoft down to 824
The Web is Dying, Sites Must Evolve or Die Too
Nowadays when things become "Web-based" it sometimes means more hostile and less open than before
Still Growing, Still Getting Faster
Articles got considerably longer too (on average)
In India, the One Percent is Microsoft and Mozilla
India is where a lot of software innovations and development happen, so this kind of matters a lot
Feeding False Information Using Sockpuppet Accounts and Imposters
online militants try every trick in the book, even illegal stuff
What News Industry???
Marketing, spam, and chatbots
IRC Proceedings: Sunday, November 26, 2023
IRC logs for Sunday, November 26, 2023
The Software Freedom Law Center's Eben Moglen Explains That We Already Had Free Software Almost Everywhere Before (Half a Century Ago)
how code was shared in the 1970s and 80s