Bonum Certa Men Certa

With the Patent Office, State Serves Corporations, Not People

Statue of liberty and NYC skyline



Summary: How the USPTO helps support monopolies rather than the interests of individual people

THE OIN has just grown a little bigger while Microsoft, which OIN strives to defend Linux from [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6], is attacking through the court system and more Web sites are complaining about it:

Synchronising email between different devices seems like a great idea, but don't think of synching it between the web and a mobile device. Why not? Because, thanks to software patents, Microsoft owns that idea.


Apple too is attacking Linux and OIN has hardly said anything on this matter. Here is the updated lawsuits chart which includes Apple's new lawsuit:

...we've updated to put Apple's (AAPL) countersuit against Motorola (MOT) late Friday into context.


What enables those lawsuits is software patents and in particular the USPTO, which was taken over by interests of lawyers and monopolists that employ them. Corporations have no rights, people do. But in a distorted system where lobbyists set the rules (see the previous post), it is all upside down sometimes. The USPTO, for example, is being operated like a business whose goal is to sell (grant) as many patents as possible rather than function as a filter like it's supposed to and Groklaw links to an "Independent Inventors Conference" from the USPTO, which only helps show this blatant fascination with monopolies, perfumed to some degree with words like "independent" or "inventors" rather than "monopoly" and "barriers".

It is not just the USPTO which gets it wrong. NASA turns out to be pursuing patents rather than better technology (not the same thing) and it is auctioning software patents right now. A lot of the press treats this as interesting or somewhat banal, but a much better headline says that "NASA Auctions off Federally Funded Patents", as we pointed out days ago. What is NASA thinking?

In a patent trolls haven some days ago we found out that even the Supreme Court does a poor job by using entertainment/fantasy as a source:

Then, if you jump down to Footnote 21, you get:
See STAR TREK II: THE WRATH OF KHAN (Paramount Pictures 1982). The film references several works of classic literature, none more prominently than A Tale of Two Cities. Spock gives Admiral Kirk an antique copy as a birthday present, and the film itself is bookended with the book's opening and closing passages. Most memorable, of course, is Spock's famous line from his moment of sacrifice: "Don't grieve, Admiral. It is logical. The needs of the many outweigh . . ." to which Kirk replies, "the needs of the few."


These laws may be written by film enthusiasts and amateurs, who are at least honest enough to acknowledge that mythical extraterrestrial have a clue about those who the system is supposed to serve.

Over in India, software patents has been a serious issue for years and The Hindu has this new article about business method patents (which are somewhat related to software patents). It says:

Computer programs or software is stated explicitly as non-patentable subject matter within the Indian patent office, unless the invention is implemented along with appropriate hardware. In most cases, implementations of software are not independent of the hardware that they run on (I have not seen a program run in vacuum thus far, vacuum tubes are different) and one way of interpreting the law in this case (which is why India has granted several software patents, yet, this subject remains wrapped in many urban myths) is that anything except a pure API is patentable. That patents are a gross overarching right over what is essentially a copyright in the case of software is correct for purposes of argument but seldom hold during defence in any court of law. Thus, we have introduced two separate elements, business methods (which by themselves stand un-patentable) and the software that implements them (which when coupled with a machine, is patentable).


Microsoft et al. would love to legitimise software patents everywhere in the world. It matters a lot now that racketeering [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7] gets used to prevent large companies from selling products with GNU and Linux.

Recent Techrights' Posts

EPO Cocainegate: Feedback and Clarifications
Part III will come out soon
Links 29/10/2025: "US Military Is Destroying the Planet Beyond Imagination" and Boat Strikes Deemed Unlawful
Links for the day
Quality Comes First (Techrights Search)
It's generally working already, but we wish to polish it some more
Techrights Party Countdown
Late next week we'll be holding a party near our home
European Parliament and Council Directive on Privacy is Vanishing
"edited / censored some time more recently"
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Tuesday, October 28, 2025
IRC logs for Tuesday, October 28, 2025
Slopwatch: The March of Slopfarms, From UbuntuPIT to Linux Journal and to Various Fake Sites Still Promoted by Google News
It's so worrying to see what the Web has become
Links 29/10/2025: CISA, Ukraine, and Amazon Problems
Links for the day
[Teaser] The EPO's Spokesperson, a Cocaine User, Fancies Young Women
How's that for "optics" in the EU and Europe's second-largest institution?
How Will António Campinos Respond to the EPO's 'Cocainegate'?
That's the same thing we saw and still see when the press deals with enablers and partners of Jeffrey Epstein
Join Us Now and Share the News - Part IV: There Cannot be Free Software Without Free Press and Free Information
One day, one can hope, more people will recognise that for Software Freedom we need free press and free thinkers
Join Us Now and Share the News - Part III: Principled Stance Is Never Cheap
Protecting the truth and insisting that the general public is made aware of things that really happened isn't cheap
Join Us Now and Share the News - Part II: Because Scarcity of Accurate Information Breeds Collective Ignorance
we too will strive to share information that's aggressively suppressed
Gemini Links 28/10/2025: More New Arrivals at Geminispace, xkcd on "Document Forgery"
Links for the day
Join Us Now and Share the News - Part I: Defence of the Truth
This year we make a very strong, firm statement for truth, even if that means explaining our work to the top media judge in the country
Links 28/10/2025: Meta and Fentanylware (CheeTok) Age-Restricted Down Under, "Britain Needs China’s Money"
Links for the day
Links 28/10/2025: Mass Layoffs at Amazon and Charter to Cut 1,200 Jobs
Links for the day
The Cocaine Patent Office - Part II: The Person Who Planted Paid-for Fake News for the European Patent Office (EPO) is a Cocaine User, Friend of António Campinos, Now on Record as Having Been Arrested
Background: High-level manager at the European Patent Office caught in public with cocaine, arrested
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Monday, October 27, 2025
IRC logs for Monday, October 27, 2025
Google News Drowning in Slop (and Slopfarms That Hijack About Half the Results)
Google News seems to be drowning in this stuff
Gemini Links 28/10/2025: "How to Maximize Your Positive Impact" and ASCII Art and Artist Attribution
Links for the day
PETA and Activism
Being staff or volunteer in PETA isn't easy
Big Blue, Huge Debt
debt will soar again
Links 27/10/2025: Mass Surveillance Sold as "AI", People Reluctant to Lose Physical Media
Links for the day
Parties and Milestones Again
we've begun putting up about 40 balloons
Techrights' 19th Anniversary: Bronze
Time to go back to preparing for this anniversary
Our Latest European Patent Office (EPO) Series Will Last Several Weeks, Will Ask the EPO Management and the European Union (EU) Very Difficult Questions
If nobody loses a job (or jobs) over this, then the EU basically became no better than Colombia or Nicaragua
Slopwatch: LinuxSecurity, UbuntuPIT, Brian Fagioli, and Google News
We focus on stories that are fake or LLM slop that disguises itself as "news" about Linux
Links 27/10/2025: Wikipedia Vandalism, Bruce Perens Opens up on Childhood
Links for the day
This Site Could Not be Done by LLMs Even If It Wanted to (Because It's Not a Parrot of What Other Sites Say)
LLMs have no knowledge or deep understanding
Microsoft is Disloyal Towards Its Most Loyal Employees
Against its most faithful enablers
19 Years, No Censorship
No factual information is ever going to be removed, more so if it is in the public interest
We Are Not a Conventional Site, That's Why They Hate (or Love) Us
Throughout the week this week we'll be focusing on the EPO
Following the Line of Cocaine All the Way to the Top
Even a million denials and spin-doctoring won't distract from the core issue
The Cocaine Patent Office - Part I: António Campinos Brought Corruption and Nepotism to the EPO, Then Came the Cocaine
High-level manager at the European Patent Office (EPO) caught in public with cocaine, the Office has some answering to do
Purchasing/Possessing Computers Isn't the Same as Controlling Computers
Let's strive to put computers back under the control of their users, no matter who purchased these (usually the users)
Gemini Links 27/10/2025: Alhena 5.4.3 and Fixing Bash
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Sunday, October 26, 2025
IRC logs for Sunday, October 26, 2025
Thankfully We've Made Copies of More Interesting Data From statCounter
If statCounter (the Web site or the 'webapp') vanished overnight, we'd still have something left of it
More Silent Layoffs at IBM/Red Hat
when the media counts such layoffs or presents tallies the numbers are very incomplete