Bonum Certa Men Certa

Ongoing Debate on Software Patents Brings up Trade Secrets, FRAND, and Misguided Targeting of Symptoms

Patent maze tackled

Maze



Summary: Some of the latest articles regarding software patents and ways of overcoming patent impediments

Patents are an interesting proposition in principle. In exchange for publication of devices and methods one receives a temporary monopoly. The patent system has, over the centuries, become less about publication or attribution and more about protectionism by litigation, or threats of litigation. There is this new opinion piece which says that trade secrets are better than patents. To quote:



THE conventional way to protect intellectual property is to patent it. This gives an inventor legal protection for his idea: if others want to use it, they must pay him. The snag is that he must publish his idea, making it easy for someone in a less lawful country to steal it.


Nobody can steal ideas. Devices can be copied and ideas shared, not stolen. Semantics aside, we are still seeing how leading products get held back by overzealous players to whom patents are an excuse for banning competition. Watch how FRAND is actively used against Google and as this new article implicitly puts it, Samsung is able to strike back rather than Motorola, which is now used by Google to fight back against FRAND tax. Pamela Jones writes:



I totally didn't expect this: The ITC has just posted a notice [PDF] that it wants input on the public interest in the case Samsung brought against Apple regarding alleged violations of Samsung's standards-essential patents. That's in Inv. No. 337-TA-794, In the Matter of Certain Electronic Devices, Including Wireless Communication Devices, Portable Music and Data Processing Devices, and Tablet Computers.

It has once again extended the deadline to announce its decision until May 31 as a result. It is asking for written submissions "from the parties and from the public" on the issues.

This is rather stunning. The Essential Patent Blog says this may "imply that the Commission could be leaning toward a finding that Apple infringes U.S. Patent No. 7,706,348 – a patent that Samsung has alleged is essential to the UMTS 3G cellular standard — and is now trying to decide what if any remedy it should order."


One notable example of FRAND as 'multimedia tax' is MPEG-LA, which Simon Phipps, OSI President, called a troll. In his latest piece he says:

Google's settlement with MPEG-LA is a fresh development in a decades-old story of software patents. Will it finally open video codec technology to open source developers?


Probably not. As we wrote before, it helped legitimise MPEG patents internationally, even where software patenting is not legal.

The Business Software Alliance, in the mean time, joins a leading MPEG booster (through Trash Player) in calling to pursue not reform over patent scope but only patent trolls:

Dana Rao, vice president of Intellectual Property and Litigation at Adobe Systems Incorporated (Nasdaq:ADBE), today appeared before the House Judiciary Committee’s Subcommittee on Courts, Intellectual Property and the Internet. Representing Adobe and other members of BSA | The Software Alliance, Rao testified during the hearing on “Abusive Patent Litigation: The Impact of American Innovation & Jobs, and Potential Solutions.” He spoke on the need to end abusive patent litigation and preserve the right of software developers to patent their inventions.


At-times-controversial Michael Risch, who studied trolls, has just been given Wired as a platform in which to implicitly defend software patenting while calling for another type of misguided 'reform'. "The patent system is flawed, some would say broken," he wrote. "And patent trolls — less pejoratively known as non-practicing entities (NPEs) — are to blame, no matter how good a case they might make for their role in the patent ecosystem. Or are they? Trolls are an easy target because they don’t make anything, choosing instead to enforce patents against those who do."

Wired has been having this lawyers-only debate, with few exceptions (this latest man is Associate Professor at Villanova University School of Law). This one says: "Curing the patent problem requires general solutions … not ones targeted just at patent trolls."

Sounds promising, right? But he never viewed software patents as an issue. Instead he suggests "Improving patent quality and pricing" and "Limiting and controlling damages", among other things. It sure looks like real solutions are deliberately kept off the table. In fairness to Wired, they did make room at the panel for Richard Stallman, who celebrates his birthday today.

Recent Techrights' Posts

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
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
 
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
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
When the So-called 'Cancel Culture' Sees Everything in Free Software Through the Scopes of 'Sex' (Because It Cannot Argue on Technical or Legal Grounds)
Losing the plot
Links 26/11/2023: Debunking So-called G.A.I. and Sierra Leone's National Curfew
Links for the day
In the 'Phoronix Universe', Single Job Openings at AMD Are News, But Not ~400 Layoffs
like a classifieds section
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news
Microsoft Shamelessly Attacks Both Git and Projects in GitHub, Using Plagiarism in "AI" Clothing (Exit GitHub Now!)
A mountain of plagiarism
Microsoft Loses Market Share, Market Price of Windows Plunges to Almost Nothing (28 Dollars for Vista 10)
GNU/Linux has grown so potent that Microsoft now charges only dozens of bucks for Vista 10
Professor Eben Moglen Stands with Snowden While Moglen's 'Critics' (Microsofters) Keep Defaming Prominent Whistleblowers
Don't listen to Microsoft liars and weasels, who merely try to "replace" Moglen and override his message
"Check Point" + Microsoft Partnerships Extend to Anti-GNU/Linux FUD
a close partner/pusher of Microsoft tries to alter the narrative (change reality itself)
IRC Proceedings: Saturday, November 25, 2023
IRC logs for Saturday, November 25, 2023
Links 26/11/2023: Fresh Concerns Over North Korea Satellite Ambitions and South China Sea Patrols
Links for the day
Eben Moglen Explains the Connection Between FSF and SFLC (Both of Which Under Attack by Microsofters)
Old clip