Bonum Certa Men Certa

Obama Administration Misuses the 'T Word' (Troll) to Dodge Serious Issues

Perpetual siege: Only the large corporations always get their way

President Barack Obama and Mitt Romney



Summary: Failing to see how patents themselves actually distort the market for everyone (not just some large corporations), Obama wants to wash his hands with legislation that will resolve nothing and legitimise the notoriously unsupervised patent regime

The debate about privacy notwithstanding (it's not quite a partisan/political issue, as the policy was actually put in place by Bush/Republicans, then expanded by Obama/Democrats), we must focus on the ongoing progress when it comes to patent monopolies. Just before the whole press got flooded by PRISM coverage the White House said it would target patent trolls [1, 2, 3].



Patent trolls are a bit of a phantom enemy, or an enemy to large corporations. Well, this is why they are being tackled by the government which is funded and run by large corporations, directly or by proxy (lobbyists).

According to this recent post, a troll is targeting some large corporations again -- the hallmark of a true troll. To quote:

On June 4, a patent holding company named PatentMarks Communications LLC filed patent infringement lawsuits in the District of Delaware against a slew of electronics companies. The companies accused of infringement include at least Dell, Futurewei, HTC, Kyocera, LG, Motorola Mobility, Sony Ericsson, Samsung, and ZTE. (The complaint against HTC [LINK here] is exemplary). PatentMarks — who is the assignee of six U.S. patents, according the USPTO — accuses these companies of infringing U.S. Patent No. 8,400,926, which is titled “Multi-Protocol Telecommunications Routing Optimization” — and which just issued as a patent on March 19, 2013. The ’926 patent generally claims an optimized method and system for transferring files over a telecommunications network.


A lot of the companies above are Android vendors. It's hard to miss that. Pamela Jones asked: "Now do you see why the President wants to retrain patent examiners on the topic of making sure claims are specific to the invention and not as broad as a Nebraska sky? This patent just issued in March."

What about the targets of litigation?

Anyway, trolls are not the main issue, never mind the support for Obama from large corporations and their lobbies. Expectedly, patent lawyers are trying to get their views in sites syndicated by news aggregators, contributing to a mixed debate where both 'sides' do not speak for the public at large, just for minority interests in business. Here is another example of the Android leader (Motorola/Google) getting sued and extorted massively over software patents. Therein lies the issue: patenting scope.

At the same time we find lawyers bickering over sales of patents as if that's a good idea when we see companies like Microsoft arming trolls like Vringo and MOSAID. One lawyers' site reveals this:

New Patent Exchange Hopes to Be Nasdaq for IP



Are companies ready to buy and sell patent rights the way investors buy shares of stock?

That's the idea behind a new financial exchange, Intellectual Property Exchange International Inc., that launched Wednesday with the aim of creating a standard marketplace for patent licenses.

The Chicago-based IPXI is structuring the licensing process like a public equity offering, bringing familiar financial principles and standards to the murkier world of patent licensing by assigning values that are market-driven and transparent.


This is what we find in Intellectual Ventures, Microsoft's biggest patent troll. Will Obama tackle the real issues based on market realities rather than broad generalisations and simplified classifications? Trolls are a symptom, not the problem. The President of the OSI agrees on this and I might be meeting him tomorrow.

Comments

Recent Techrights' Posts

Microsoft: Work Weekends Too
Microsoft literally working its workers to death
Stallman Has Explained Slop is "Marketing Hype Campaign" and Torvalds Agreed. The Difference is the Bribes.
So be like Stallman
 
Links 01/09/2026: Climate, Disinformation, Microsoft Overworking People
Links for the day
Richard Stallman's Site Still Offline (Third Day), But Richard Stallman is Active Online
he is busy online despite his site not being accessible so far this week
PIP Layoffs at Microsoft, Even in India
Microsoft is trying to hide the true scale of the layoffs
Layoff Trackers Are a Sham, They're Like US 'Unemployment Data'
Layoff trackers are similarly misleading as they only measure what companies openly admit and register with WARN notices
The Peculiar Case of OSNews, Which Experiments With Slopfarming
It wasn't published in error. It has been there for two months.
Russian Federation is Removing Windows From Computers
Windows is going "out of fashion"
XBox CEO Has No Clue What She is Selling
Some people believe Microsoft will parcel and offload the whole "gaming" unit to some other companies
analognowhere.com and xkcd.com Selling Physical Copies of Webcomics
That's one way to support their work
PIP/GVSA at Microsoft: Mass Layoffs Disguised as Something Else
Microsoft is trying to cheapen the workforce because the numbers don't add up
Microsoft Lunduke Uses Twitter ("X") Because It's Algorithmically Designed to Boost His Worldview/s, He Ignores What "X" Is
Maybe all those people really deserve one another
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Monday, August 31, 2026
IRC logs for Monday, August 31, 2026
Censorship by Threats
It should be noted that the Web site of Richard Stallman will soon enter its third day of downtime
In Romania, GNU/Linux Reaches 6%, According to Clownflare
Tomorrow we'll see the latest data from statCounter (for September)
Gemini Links 01/09/2026: Denali Park Train Trip, Crafts, and Community-Building in smol.pub
Links for the day
Microsoft Workers Doing 80 Hours a Week After Microsoft Culled Their Colleagues
there are days when they work 17 hours a day (barely any time left to sleep and eat) and work starts at 5AM
IBM Defrauds Shareholders With Fake News (Bribed Press) About "Quantum"
That says a lot about the state of "Tech Giants" and also the utterly shameless state of the media
Record Highs for GNU/Linux, Especially in the United States of America
the "market share" of GNU/Linux is about 9%, still about a third of what Vista 11 stands at
PIPocalypse at IBM
Silent layoffs
Spending Over a Million Bucks on Lawsuits Abroad When There's a Big Mortgage to Pay in America
Priorities, priorities...
Gemini Links 31/08/2026: Announcing ROOPHLOCH 2026, smol.pub Discussion, and LLM Plagiarism Engines Target Geminispace
Links for the day
Richard Stallman's GNU Turns 43 in 4 Weeks, FSF Growing
In a few weeks GNU turns 43
IBM's Cuts Are Worsening Security in GNU/Linux
IBM is still run by the same idiot who proposed taking over Red Hat
Links 31/08/2026: Anthropic Sued Again for Copyright Infringement of Massive Scale, 'Tokenmaxxing' Shows Slop is a Worthless Liability
Links for the day
Links 31/08/2026: "Teslas Are Still Driving Into Oncoming Freight Trains" and "LLM Moats Quickly Evaporating"
Links for the day
Debian Project Discards About 25% of the Votes on LLM Slop, Microsoft Votes in the General Resolution (GR)
"[t]he rules of the vote saw community members asked to rank each of the eight proposals. Just under 600 people voted, but Debian’s election team rejected many for unspecified reasons, leaving almost 450 valid votes to count."
Essentiality of Rest and Killing Oneself for Vicious Companies
Working for Microsoft is foolish
In the UK, Bing (Microsoft) Down to Lowest Level Since January
our tax money being passed to Microsoft via MoUs (back door deals with kickbacks)
SLAPP Censorship - Part 167 Out of 200: The Court of Appeal Might be the Next Step
Today is our last vacation day
German Government Sponsors IBM Because of GNU/Linux
Flatpak is sponsored by, run, and controlled by IBM
Richard Stallman Speaks to Christine Hall of FOSS Force, stallman.org is Down for Over a Day
interview does a good job addressing the hype about LLMs too
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Sunday, August 30, 2026
IRC logs for Sunday, August 30, 2026
Gemini Links 31/08/2026: Holidays, Stream of Consciousness, and Posting Online
Links for the day
Anniversaries Next Month
The month should be otherwise quiet and uneventful for us
Coding is Not Obsolete
we drown ourselves in chaff to meet "LOC" objectives while ignoring everything else
Microsoft Layoffs Perpetual But Silent, People Pushed Out Using Pressure or Incentive Schemes
Earlier this month we named some of the programs
Links 30/08/2026: Apple Rant and LLM (Slop) Scrapers Target Gemini Protocol and Gopher
Links for the day
Salaries Are Counted in Money, Not in Participation in the Employer's Scheme
articles greatly exaggerating GAFAM salaries
Walls in Free Software
mind your own business and move on
Even Linux Cannot Cope With Slop
Bots on the Web are truly obnoxious
What a Summer!
Tomorrow is the last day of this month
Links 30/08/2026: Soldiers in Niger Attack Presidential Palace and Airport, Nepali City Struggles to Handle the Many Dead Bodies
Links for the day
Clownflare Sees GNU/Linux Rising to 11% This Past Week
Is it the year of "Linux in China"?
Links 30/08/2026: Russian Strike on a Ukrainian Warehouse and Rhetoric Escalations
Links for the day
Gemini Links 30/08/2026: Photography, Paper Books, Linux Kernel and the Debian Projects Permitting Slop Plagiarism
Links for the day
Imagine a World Where Nobody Fights for Software (and Computing) Freedom
The community keeps fighting back, so some of these ambitions are delayed or watered down
FSF Has Grown (More Staff) After a Year of Financial Growth
On October 4 the FSF turns 41
GNU/Linux Has Become More Mainstream in the United Kingdom
It's a long weekend here and we guess some people dabble in GNU/Linux migrations, at least at home
SLAPP Censorship - Part 166 Out of 200: Garrett Wasn't Found Innocent Per Se, the Court Wanted More Evidence of Who Was Behind Particular Accounts Using Tor
It's complicated
Criminals Don't Obey Laws, California Does Not Enhance Online Safety
It has been a while since we last mentioned so-called 'age-verification' laws
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Saturday, August 29, 2026
IRC logs for Saturday, August 29, 2026