THE harassment of David Miranda, who preferred to remain out of the public eye on the face of it (Wikipedia still links/strings him to the article on Glenn Greenwald), showed us that nowhere in the world can one be safe from the wrath of the CIA/NSA. Not in Brazil and certainly not in Europe, especially not in US allies like the UK. In places like Italy, which are filled with US army bases, one can even be abducted and tortured by a CIA agent, despite being innocent (famous legal case right now). Germany, which is the other European nation absolutely filled with US army bases (see a publicly-disclosed list of bases or a map, bear in mind some are unlisted), there is a similar case. This is scary. You no longer have to be Muslim to be treated like this; you can be captured under laws originally passed to combat "terrorism" and then be sent overseas to be silently killed (yes, this happened), sodomised, be forced through torture to say you're part of Al-Qaeda (even if you're not), and sometimes have loved ones threatened or used for blackmail (the Nazis did this). Having been stopped a lot at airports recently, I can't help being bothered by this. Surveillance is not a selective thing anymore; everyone is under surveillance. We're living in a mass surveillance society. In the UK, for example, there are at least two US bases (covertly run by the NSA), one in Gloucestershire, another in Yorkshire. They're both vast. They're a surveillance hub that assists drone strikes, among other things like global surveillance and satellite signals interception. Phone calls are being recorded indiscriminately and fibre optic cables have all of their data (very high throughput) saved indefinitely, analysed, and habitually used to profile people who are law-abiding citizens.
"In the UK, for example, there are at least two US bases (covertly run by the NSA), one in Gloucestershire, another in Yorkshire."This is the symptom of a system that's totally out of control. It's debt-saddled, it has no stability because of class disparity that inevitably breeds unrest, and it faces high inflation rates. It's reminiscent of Germany in the mid 1930s when many political dissenters and later ethic groups were prosecuted, some later executed. The drums of wars were widely beaten and IBM was helping the Nazis profile the population. Months ago IBM was fighting Amazon over a massive contract with the CIA, which says it wants to amass heaps of data and keep it "forever" (think of the NSA facility in Utah). The current system is frightening to those of us who speak out against people in power. It resorts to intimidation and the CIA/NSA covertly serve the interests of corporations and plutocrats, totally disregarding 99.99% of the population. This week documents are being declassified (after 60 years) to confirm what many already knew -- that the CIA forcible removed (in a coup) Iran's democratically-elected government (there have been many more actions like that since then, continuing to this date in Syria), kick-starting a cycle of oppression which serves the interests of large corporations (oil companies).
Techrights does not write political posts. When politicians are named it is not because of their political orientation or the party they're affiliated with. Both major parties in the US are bought and paid for; everyone knows that. We don't need another site to point this out. Some matters, however, are bipartisan and we deal with them separately. To us, for instance, the USPTO is relevant. The US ITC has come under increased pressure from Groklaw, which has just shut down due to surveillance (see news links at the bottom) for its role in protectionism rather than law enforcement. Lawyers offering services of protectionism say that even outside the realm of patents there is protectionism that's facilitated by the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit. Those who do not think this whole legal framework is fundamentally corrupt and dysfunctional might need to do some further reading. If they don't change their minds, then perhaps they need to read outside the echo chamber of the lawyer-writer microcosm. Patent trolls are thriving and blogs keep emerging to confront those trolls. It's not just trolls though:
Again, we get it. And in fact, that’s one reason that the term NPE is not the same as the term Patent Troll. All patent trolls are NPE’s, but not all NPE’s are patent trolls.
Austria becomes the first country to ratify the Unitary Patent Court, software patents through the backcourt
The Agreement on establishing the Unified Patent Court (UPC) was signed in February 2013 and seeks to establish a unified patent court system across Europe to handle the enforcement of new EU Unitary Patents when they come into effect. A list of the countries who signed the agreement can be found here.
The Unified Patent Court will not have competence over national patent rights such as those granted by the UK Intellectual Property Office.
However, the Unified Patent Court will ultimately assume competence in relation to infringement and validity disputes in respect of regular (i.e. non-Unitary) European patents as currently granted by the European Patent Office.
In order for the Unified Patent Court system to become a reality it is necessary for 13 member states who signed the Agreement to take the subsequent step of ratifying the Agreement. It is also a requirement that the Agreement is ratified by the UK, France and Germany.
Austria became the first member state to ratify the Agreement by depositing its instrument of ratification in Brussels on 7 August 2013. A press release from the Austrian Foreign Ministry can be found here.