Bonum Certa Men Certa

Fee Shifting (or Patent Trolls Busting) Not the Solution to Patent Problem, Scope of Patenting the Real Issue

Summary: Corporations are still defining the problem with patents -- wrongly -- and then tackle the wrong problem so as to benefit themselves

Julie Samuels, who works for the EFF on behalf of billionaire Mr. Cuban (who invested in a patent troll, Vringo), continues to miss the point when it comes to patents. She focuses on trolls/fees rather than on software patents. "Today," she writes, "EFF—along with Engine, the App Developers Alliance, and Public Knowledge—filed a brief asking the Supreme "Court to retain some sanity in the law and tighten up the rules around fee shifting. Fee shifting, sometimes called "loser pays," is already in the Patent Act. While the statute currently says that "the court in exceptional cases may award reasonable attorney fees to the prevailing party," the Federal Circuit has created a standard that makes this law essentially meaningless—fees are granted in but the smallest fraction of cases.""



Well, Apple is said to have "spent over $60 million on U.S. lawyers against Samsung", which probably means that Samsung had to pay a similar amount. Apple has sued some other companies, notably HTC (which is how Apple's litigious war on Android began). Reuters says that "Apple Inc has paid its leading outside law firm approximately $60 million to wage patent litigation against Samsung Electronics Co Ltd in a California federal court, according to Apple legal documents filed late on Thursday."

Also, according to this other report, "On Thursday, a Korean court ruled that Apple did not violate three Samsung patents related to messaging services. The Seoul Central District Court rejected Samsung’s request that Apple should pay 100 million won ($95,000) in damages, as well as a ban on sales of older iPhones and iPads."

This shows that scope and patents themselves -- not fees -- are the problem. Apple's patents are beyond ridiculous and they relate to software. Samsung's patents, by contrast, are often hardware patents because Samsung is a hardware company (Apple is a branding company that integrates components from suppliers such as Samsung).

The bottom line is, in order to address the core problem we need to restore the debate's focus on software patents, not size of litigant (e.g. troll) or the fees. Here is Linux Foundation staff (front for corporations) writing about Samsung and Apple in the context of FRAND (which to a lesser degree relates to fees, not patent scope). Updegrove writes: "Ever since Apple set off the mobile platform wars by suing Samsung for what Steve Jobs believed were egregious borrowings of patented Apple smartphone innovations, the courts have been busy processing the disputes. One of the most effective weapons the combatants made use of has been the so-called “standards essential patent” (SEP). And the armament of SEPS is very large, because each mobile device which implements many hundreds of standards. For example, if a company owns a SEP necessary to include a camera, wireless function or other key feature, the owner of the SEP can its price to license it, or even refuse to license it at all.

"That is, of course, unless the SEP owner was part of the standards setting organization (SSO) that developed the standard in question, and had made a commitment to license that SEP on fair, reasonable and non-discriminatory (FRAND) terms."

Since huge corporations hijacked the debate about patents (and now fund the lawyers at the EFF to do the same) we have sort of lost hope when it comes to fixing the US patent system. Corporations do whatever the heck they want there. No wonder Professor Lessig, a copyright pioneer, sort of abandoned his copyright reforming efforts and now works hard to tackle political corruption in his country. Patents, like copyrights, have become a political problem. It's all about money and those who have the money set the rules. The EFF spoke about software patents a year ago; it no longer speaks about it. Follow the money.

Recent Techrights' Posts

Over at Tux Machines...
2 days' worth
Microsoft's Demise in the Global News Cycle is Rather Telling
It should be noted that Microsoft is, in general, no longer prominent or dominant in news headlines
 
Upcoming Talk by Dr. Richard Stallman: Large Language Models Are Not Artificial Intelligence
LLMs aren't truly intelligent and cannot quite grasp what they spew out
GulagTube is a Burning Platform (Exit YouTube, Invidious Won't Save Us From Google/Alphabet in the Long Run)
Alphabet Agency (Google) sees the future of video as a "skinnerbox" (running Android) that indoctrinates you like TikTok does
Fulfilling the Site's Full Potential
We remain devoted to the aforementioned goal of posting more original material
GNU/Linux Distributions as "Appliances" and DRM Platforms (the Case of ChromeOS and SteamOS)
Is this what we envisioned in the 1980s and 90s?
Gemini Migration and Backup Capsule (Archive)
At the end we'll end up with something a lot better than before and latency should be massively reduced
Links 01/10/2023: Science, Education, and pro-Russia Slovakia Leadership
Links for the day
IRC Proceedings: Sunday, October 01, 2023
IRC logs for Sunday, October 01, 2023
Links 01/10/2023: Climate, Patents, Programming, and More
Links for the day
Apple and Microsoft Problems
half a dozen links
Malware in the Ubuntu Snap Store, Thanks to Canonical Bloatware Mindset
Reprinted with permission from Ryan Farmer
Gemini Rising
There are 3523 capsules
Richard Stallman Gave a Talk Yesterday, Will Give Another Talk Today, and Will Give Two More Talks in Germany Later This Week
Those cover at least 2 different topics
Beware the Microsoft Sharks
We won't forgive and forget
IRC Proceedings: Saturday, September 30, 2023
IRC logs for Saturday, September 30, 2023
Don't be Afraid of the Command Line, It Might Even be a Friend
There's a tendency to think that only graphical interfaces were made to simplify usage, and any declarative interface is by design raw, inherently unfit for usage
One Positive Note About GNU/Linux Coverage in 2023 (Less Microsoft)
GNU/Linux users do not want this, with very rare exceptions
Snaps Were Never Good at Security, But the Media Coverage is Just Appalling
The media should focus on culling Windows, not making a huge fuss over minor things wrongly attributed to "Linux"
Better Footage of Richard Stallman's Talk Last Week: “Freedom in computing, forty years after starting to really protect it”
Richard Stallman speaks about the cancer situation early in his speech
Links 30/09/2023: A Government Shutdown and More Blizzard Layoffs
Links for the day
Links 30/09/2023: Bing Almost Offloaded Due to Failure/Losses, Nvidia Raided
Links for the day
A Lot of Technological 'Progress' Has Been Nothing But Buzzwords
Free software does not try to excite people people over nothing
Community is the Lifeblood of Freedom in the GNU/Linux World
Removing or undoing the "cancerd" (systemd) is feasible but increasingly difficult
Proprietary Software: Here Today, Gone Tomorrow
Proprietary software has an entirely different mindset, revolving around business models rather than science
Web Hostnames Down to Lowest Number in More Than 7 Years!
the number of hostnames is falling rapidly (they hide this by choosing logarithmic scale)
Over at Tux Machines...
2 days' worth
Richard Stallman Says He Will Probably Live Many More Years
"Richard Stallman has cancer. Fortunately it is slow-growing and manageable follicular lymphona, so he will probably live many more years nonetheless. But he now has to be even more careful not to catch Covid-19."
Quitting 'Clown Computing' and GAFAM is Only the Start
The Web and the Net at large became far too centralised
Stop Begging Companies That Don't Value Your Freedom to Stop Pushing You Around
That's not freedom
They Say Free Software is Like Communism When They, the Proprietary Software Giants, Constantly Pursue Government Bailouts (Subsidies From Taxpayers)
At the moment Ukraine is at most risk due to its dependence on Microsoft (inside its infrastructure)
Social Control Media Has No Future, It Was Always Doomed to Fail (Also Promoted Based on Lies)
Recent events, including developments at Twitter, meant that they lost a lot of their audience and then, in turn, sponsors/advertisers
The forbidden topics
There are forbidden topics in the hacker community
They're Been Trying to 'Kill' Richard Stallman for Years (by Mentally Tormenting Him)
Malicious tongue wanted to do him what had been done to Julian Assange
We Temporarily Have Two Gemini Capsules
They're both authentic and secure, but they're not the same
Consumerism is Lying and Revisionism
We need to reject these liars and charlatans
Links 30/09/2023: Open VFS Framework, CrossOver 23.5, Dianne Feinstein Dies
Links for the day
Security Leftovers
GNU/Linux, Microsoft, and more
Microsoft Down on the World Wide Web, Shows Survey
down by a lot in this category
IRC Proceedings: Friday, September 29, 2023
IRC logs for Friday, September 29, 2023
A Society That Fails Journalists Does Not Deserve Journalism
It's probably too later to save Julian Assange as a working publisher (he might never recover from the mental torture), but as a person and a father we can wish and work towards his release
Almost Nothing To Go With Your Morning's Cup Of Coffee
Newspaper? What newspaper?