Bonum Certa Men Certa

No Genuine Debates About Real Patent Reform, Just Covert Patent Expansion

Stuck in status quo

Jar on fence



Summary: The USPTO shows no real signs of changing; news still focused on the wrong questions; US-style patent system expands to other countries

THE USPTO has had a rigged debate going on to save face and Obama showed disinterest in new types of attitudes, so ignore his empty promises which the media continues to cover. Here is what the US president says:



Obama says patent reform needs to go farther



President Barack Obama, in an unusual foray into patent law, on Thursday said U.S. patent reform needs to go farther to address the trend of companies that do not manufacture any products aggressively suing other companies for patent infringement.


Notice how the 'pro-reform' people are for "limiting" patents, not eliminating them. So "if we have software patents, they should be limited to the actual algorithm disclosed by patentee," says this one person. It is similar to copyright then, patents are an overkill.

The debate has been rigged for a while now because lawyers easily outnumber developers in them.

Here is what one site said about the roundtable:

There are speakers on both sides of the software patent divide. Notable pro-reform speakers include Mark Lemley (Stanford), Colleen Chien (Santa Clara), Julie Samuels (EFF), Jon Potter (Application Developers Alliance) and Edward Goodmann (Hattery Labs).


Note that the lawyers at the USPTO call it "Software Partnership" and the introduction is rigged by design. It says:

The United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) is forming a partnership with the software community to enhance the quality of software-related patents (Software Partnership). The Software Partnership will be an opportunity to bring stakeholders together through a series of roundtable discussions to share ideas, feedback, experiences, and insights on software-related patents.


The USPTO matters to everyone due to globalisation and its practices are spreading to New Zealand more quickly than one may realise. Here is some news from this island:

A long-running court action touching on copyright law’s provisions on “reverse engineering” of computer software has resulted in a victory for Fisher & Paykel Finance, the company accused of copyright and trade-secrets breach. The software provider, Californian company Karum, has, however appealed Justice Rodney Hansen’s decision.


The EU too is affected (same trend as such) and Simon Phipps, the British president of the OSI, continues to worry about the unitary patent when he writes:

Our leaders would have us believe the Unitary Patent is good for small business. But there seems to be a fatal flaw.


Phipps does a good job busting the myths, saying that a "small British company could find itself subject to court cases it can't understand in countries it can't afford to defend itself. Any patent holder in any one of the 27 EU countries can go to a local court and get a judgment in any one of the 23 official languages. Once Cable signs this agreement, the UK government agrees a judgment like this is enforceable against any UK business."

Trolls must love this.

Recent Techrights' Posts

Rust is Starting to Seem More Like Microsoft-hosted "Digital Maoism", Not a Legitimate Effort to Improve Security
Maybe this is very innocent, but they seem to have taken a solid, stable program from a high-profile Frenchman and looked for ways to marry it with GitHub, i.e. Microsoft/NSA
Finland, Lithuania, and Latvia Fortify Their Digital Border With GNU/Linux
This month's data from statCounter is particularly interesting near the Baltic Sea
Richard Stallman Gives Public Talk at Technical University of Liberec, Czech Republic
"For programs that you could run, and for network services that could do your own computing, under what circumstances is it reasonable to trust them?"
Another Wave of Microsoft Layoffs Comes Shortly. Microsoft Propaganda Sites and Slopforms Powered by Microsoft LLMs Already Spew Out Face-Saving Nonsense.
Based on last month's leak, some very extensive layoffs are now imminent [...] Perhaps we can expect a lot of noise, some of it spewed out by bots, to distract from or belittle the impending mass layoffs
Ubuntu Becomes Microsoft GitHub, Based on Decision Made by British Army Officer
You're hopeless, Canonical
 
People Used to Talk
If pets can live a measurably happy life without gadgets and "apps", why can't humans?
Outsourcing GNU/Linux to Microsoft GitHub Promoted by Microsoft LLM Slop and Army Officers
Something doesn't seem right
Weaponisation of For-Profit Dockets - Part III: No More Media Lawsuits From Brett Wilson LLP This Year, One Can Only Guess Why
People leak a lot of material to Techrights because they know, based on the track record, that the sources will be protected and whatever gets published will stay online, in full, no matter how stubborn an effort (even lawsuits and blackmail) will be sent its way
Gemini Links 07/05/2025: Adopting GrapheneOS, Further Enshittification of Flickr
Links for the day
Links 07/05/2025: CISA Gutted, Debt-Saddled (Likely Insolvent) 'Open' 'AI' (Proprietary Slop) Faking Its Financial State Again
Links for the day
The European Patent Office (EPO) Has a Very Profound Corruption Issue, Far More Urgent an Issue Than Pronouns
a rather long document
Today We Turn 18.5
The eighteenth "and a half" anniversary
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Tuesday, May 06, 2025
IRC logs for Tuesday, May 06, 2025
Microsoft Finally Admits That XBox is ****
In this case, "enshittification" is an understatement
Slopwatch: Microsoft Slop, Anti-Linux Slop, and IBM Marketing Itself as a Slop Company
Microsoft-controlled LLM spewing out garbage about "Linux"
Links 06/05/2025: Microsoft's Assassination of Skype After Years of Failure, Slop Hallucinations Are Getting Worse
Links for the day
Links 06/05/2025: Changing Places and StarGrid for PalmOS
Links for the day
Windows and Microsoft Causing Serious Data Breaches, Media Rushes to Blame That on "Linux" Somehow
While selling us some rusty old propaganda about how moving to Microsoft GitHub (Rust) will improve security
Making Site Archives More Easily Accessible (Approaching 50,000 Blog Posts)
Efforts to censor us have always backfired badly
Weaponisation of For-Profit Dockets - Part II: Hiding Behind Lawyers and Barristers Who Lack Standards so as to Engage in Classic Corporate Extortion
They're trying to scare people and they misuse their licence to operate
Links 06/05/2025: LLMs/Chatbots Attract More Scrutiny (Getting Worse Over Time), PwC Has Many Layoffs
Links for the day
Thanks for listening. How can this Morse feed be further improved?
Right now any and all feedback on the audio would be helpful
statCounter: Bing's Market Share Lower Right Now Than It Was When LLM Hype Began (With "Bing Chat")
If anybody gains at Google's expense in search, it is BRICS' alternatives such as Yandex
Gemini Links 06/05/2025: Failure and Proxmox Cluster
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Monday, May 05, 2025
IRC logs for Monday, May 05, 2025
Weaponisation of For-Profit Dockets - Part I: Hiding Behind Lawyers (or Guns for Hire) After Abusing Many People and Even Strangling Women While Microsoft Paid Salaries
This whole thing is very typical of the Microsoft and Bill Gates mindset
From EPO to "MAGA Regime": A Shift Away From Reality to Fake News and False Metrics
Disbelief in itself isn't a bad thing; but the problem is that people are taught to believe rich people in suits more than they believe others
Skype is Officially Dead Today and This is Why People Should Use Free Software Instead (Goodbye, Microsoft)
It's also a good reminder of why people should move to GNU/Linux
'Simple Articles' in MyGemini Just One of Many New 'Sites' in Geminispace
Geminispace has grown fast lately; it's turning 6 next month
Links 05/05/2025: TikTok Still a Romanian Woe/Foe, Signal Perils Showing
Links for the day
Gemini Links 05/05/2025: Debian and GNOME and a "Welcome to Simple Articles"
Links for the day
Links 05/05/2025: US Economy Shrinks, US Presidency Spreading Deepfakes
Links for the day
Links 05/05/2025: Breaches, Environment, and Conflicts
Links for the day
SUSE the Company Now Uses LLM Slop to 'Write' Its Blog, What Does That Tell Us About SUSE?
There are many giveaways
Richard Stallman is in Alicante Today to Give a Talk, Czech Republic in Two Days (Wednesday)
Of course he can deliver the talk in Spanish
Gemini Links 05/05/2025: XL Bullies and Luddites
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Sunday, May 04, 2025
IRC logs for Sunday, May 04, 2025