Bonum Certa Men Certa

Software Industry Abducted by Patent Lawyers

Present



Summary: The passage of wealth from scientists to litigators, whose confiscation of a once-thriving industry leaves Linux in a bit of a limbo

FOLLOWING our polite proposal/message to Google (thanks to all those who helped) we have received DiBona's response, which we haven't asked for permission to quote here, so we won't. But the general message is that Google is unable to distance itself from reports about intentions to buy software patents. it is probably just a matter of time. DiBona, for those who do not know yet, is their FOSS manager, so asking others in the company is unlikely to give more reassuring answers. It is a little troubling. There is more business forming around software patents because companies like Google offer top bucks for these. Who is left then to fight the good fight and actually do what's right about patents? The legalese folks are marching in to the sound of software patents (going where they smell money). FUD about licensing tends to come from these people too. FUD and confrontation is a gold mine to them (copyright disputes).



Based on a report from New Zealand (where the patent situation received a lot of coverage recently), the legalese folks are passing patents around like "property" as explained in this new report:

The Aptimize assets that will pass into the hands of Riverbed include patents and at least one software development going through application for patent in New Zealand. The latter is in a race against the New Zealand Patents Bill, which is set to ban patents on software in this country.

“Riverbed has acquired all the assets of the company including the patents,” says a Riverbed spokesman. “Further patent processing will be handled at corporate level.”

The patents relate to software for improving the efficiency of web-page access.

The present text of the bill says “a computer program is not a patentable invention”. A finer series of tests are being crafted by the Intellectual Property Office of New Zealand according to which patents may be granted for software that has a “physical effect” outside the computer on which it runs; but it is doubtful that a patent would be granted for software to improve the efficiency of the computer it runs on.

The Riverbed takeover is likely to pitch the patent application into the equally uncertain territory of US law. This has no explicit exclusion or inclusion of software in the realm of patent, while the relevance of recent decisions on patentability of business methods to general software patent criteria is disputed.

The spokesman offers no comment on whether Riverbed will consider it worth pursuing more New Zealand patents.

Commentators on previous Computerworld stories have questioned both the existence of prior art (the previous development of a similar idea by someone else) and the obvious process of the innovation claimed in Aptimize’s existing patents.

“Aptimize's patent #566291 represents a simple compilation of existing techniques such as JavaScript aggregation, CSS aggregation and CSS sprites into a convenient proxy server,” wrote Jonathan Hunt, in response to a story earlier this year.

“Each of those [is a] well established technique. Adding them together is not inventive, and should not be worthy of a patent,” he further claimed, in a comment on the Computerworld website.


Is that not amazing? Some companies would rather disregard the law and pretend that their asset is a mere idea written on paper. Isn't that what trade secrete are for? Implementations are already protected by copyrights.

We previously wrote about the state of software patents in India as well. It is reassuring to learn that patents are generally declining over there, which doesn't mean that Indian firms won't file for patents in the USPTO and then troll a lot of companies as we saw last week. Anyway, in India developers seem to be safer:

The Indian patents system, having its seeds laid in the British era (1852) and undergoing sporadic replantations (the 1912, 1970, 2005 Patents Act & amendments), was appearing to grow tall and bear fruits until a noticeable downfall last year. It was surprising and interesting to note the sudden decline in the patents filed, examined and granted with the Indian Patent Office as highlighted in the Annual Report 2009-10 of the Intellectual Property Office India.


This might further justify hiring Indian software developers. The USPTO is just doing harm to north America.

Going back to Google, although it expands in India (I was interviewed for a Google job in India or Ireland 5 years ago), the headquarters are still in the US, so Google is being attacked from many directions for selling a Dalvik/Linux distro. Groklaw has this update on the case and IDG claims that there is breakthrough as both companies get criticised for the following reasons:

According to a Reuters report, the judge also criticised Oracle when it appeared hesitant about discussing financial details in court. "This is a public proceeding. You lawyers and companies are not going to handcuff the court. This is not a wholly owned subsidiary of Oracle Corp".

The court has also been hearing about various deals that were on the table between Sun and Google. In 2006, Google says it rejected a $100M three year deal to work with Sun to jointly build Android. Judge Alsup asked why the company had discussed a licence with Sun and was told by Google's attorney, Robert Van Nest, that there was no specific discussion of patents. Van Nest also noted that while a few lines of code in Android are "identical" to Java, that code probably came from a third party. A 2007 letter from a Google executive to Andy Rubin, Google's Android project leader, was cited by the judge as saying "We conclude we need to negotiate a licence for Java". Van Nest said Google's position remained that there was no infringement and therefore no wilful infringement.


More links derived from the above are to be found here and here. We may expand on that over the weekend, time permitting (I will be away most of next week). The short story is, Sun wanted to be paid for something it oughtn't be paid for. In the world of software patents, making something which merely resembles another (in software) can be viewed as a violation that merits a fine. We must reverse those ludicrous laws.

Recent Techrights' Posts

In defence of JD Vance, death of Pope Francis
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
Three Years in Prison for Disney Employee’s ‘Menu Hacking’: The Economic Fallout of Digital Menus
Reprinted with permission from Ryan Farmer
Approaching 10,000 Articles/Pages Since Going Static
Trying to silence or derail the site was always a dumb strategy
Microsoft is Shedding Off Loads of Staff and That Can be Dangerous Too
Working for Microsoft is a choice; nobody forces you to do it
Richard Stallman and the Unix Philosophy
When asked about systemd people must remember that RMS speaks as an active Board member of the FSF and also the founder of the FSF
 
Links 26/04/2025: General Assassinated in the Town of Balashikha, US Promoting Seafloor Mining
Links for the day
Links 26/04/2025: Facebook Layoffs Again, Remembering What's Real, and Say No to Mass Surveillance
Links for the day
Links 26/04/2025: NOAA Budget Cuts and "Dog Days Ahead"
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Friday, April 25, 2025
IRC logs for Friday, April 25, 2025
Links 25/04/2025: Slop Fatigue and Patent Judges Flocking to Fake, Unconstitutional and Illegal Kangaroo Court (UPC, Captured 'Justice')
Links for the day
Gemini Links 25/04/2025: Night Manager and Devuan in Hosting
Links for the day
Windows Falls to New Lows in Nicaragua, Now Below a Quarter (It Used to be Almost 100%)
Another all-time low for Windows
The Cost (to Linux) of LLM Slop
Slop 'artists' like Fagioli are far from harmless
Links 25/04/2025: Ubisoft Spyware, Hegseth Fails at Tech on Every Level
Links for the day
Gemini Links 25/04/2025: Food Forest Update and Facebook Destroying the Net
Links for the day
Get Rid of Back Doors, Don't Obsess Over Bounties and Other Corporate PR Stunts (or Needless Reboot Rituals)
Security as a term has mostly lost its meaning due to repeated misuse for many years
Serial Sloppers Are Killing the Web (They Probably Don't Care, Either)
Slop is a disease on the Web
Streaming Apps Are “Investor Fraud” That Kills the Planet
Reprinted with permission from Ryan Farmer
Things Get Increasingly Nasty at Microsoft Ahead of the Fake Results and May's Mass Layoffs Wave
They try to get people to 'resign' so that they won't count as layoffs and the company's 'wellbeing' will seem better
IBM's Debt Ballooned by 8.5 Billion Dollars in Just 3 Months!
Hallmark of a company in a state of disarray, trying to spend its way out of trouble
Big Trouble in GNOME
even GNOME people admit the CoC went wrong
Slopping the Trough: Disney Plus Loses Billions and the Decline of Physical Media in America
Reprinted with permission from Ryan Farmer
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Thursday, April 24, 2025
IRC logs for Thursday, April 24, 2025
Links 24/04/2025: GAFAM Problems and No Peace (or Ceasefire) in Sight
Links for the day
Slopfarms on the Web Almost Always Generate Anti-Linux FUD When They Produce "Linux" Output
Welcome to the dying Web
Richard Stallman's Oxford Talk Has Just Ended, Here Are Some Photos
he might hop over to another European country
Gemini Links 24/04/2025: Birthday and Good Work of Academia in Esotericism
Links for the day
Links 24/04/2025: EU fines Apple and Facebook, Another Microsoft GitHub Security Blunder
Links for the day
New Article Explains How the GPL Came About and WordPress Having Copyleft Obligations
Having been involved in the WordPress development community since almost the beginning, I know why it chose the GPL and how it restricts abuse by Automattic
IBM Gained Almost 6 Billion Dollars in "Goodwill" Value in Just 3 Months, According to IBM
Congrats to the management!
In Belarus, Yandex is Now Measured as 50 Times More 'Popular' (by Usage) Than Microsoft
Yandex continues to gain, whereas Bing cannot even register at 1%. Last month it was registered or measured at a measly 0.65%.
IBM Cannot Lie to Shareholders Anymore
"I would not be surprised if we see a layoff every quarter this year."
Dr Richard Stallman (RMS) Gives Talk in Oxford University in 4 Hours
If you live nearby, go there (it's free as in gratis)
Using a Law Firm's Licence to Exercise Politics Through Frivolous SLAPPs and Nastygrams (to Silence People, Remove Pages, Demand Fake or Forced 'Apologies')
Things must be getting really bad when lawyers act for raving antisemites
We're Working to Make Full-Site Search Available
This site has over 1,000 'wiki' pages, many thousands of documents, several thousands of videos, and about 50,000 blog posts or articles. We need to make them easier to find/navigate.
Links 24/04/2025: IBM Loses Many Contracts, Intel to Lay Off Over 20% (Not Counting Those Who Leave 'Voluntarily')
Links for the day
Richard Stallman Can Explain to Oxford Artificial Intelligence Society Why LLM Slop is Not Artificial Intelligence and Why It Hurts Society
another 'crop' of LLM slop that damages GNU/Linux and facts
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Wednesday, April 23, 2025
IRC logs for Wednesday, April 23, 2025