Bonum Certa Men Certa

USPTO Watch: Patent Bubbles, Patents on Life, and No Prior Art Search

How far can patents go?

Hand of life



Summary: A quick look at some news regarding the US patent system, where the quality of patents is notoriously low and patent aggression is exceedingly common

"Qualcomm’s stock drops 15% on earnings forecast," said this headline a few days ago. The reason? "Qualcomm’s shares dropped 15 percent Thursday after the San Diego wireless chipmaker lowered its profit forecast for next year because of problems collecting patent royalties in China."

When and if a company is so dependent on patents, maybe there is something wrong with the company. Qualcomm became internationally notorious for its practices with patents (we wrote a great deal about it), so this is just the latest example of patent-created bubbles.

"When and if a company is so dependent on patents, maybe there is something wrong with the company."Another new article, authored by Glyn Moody, was titled "Will Molecular Biology's Most Important Discovery In Years Be Ruined By Patents?"

Moody, a former Cambridge mathematician, already wrote a whole book on this subject. Moody's piece says that "[a]s the Boston Review rightly points out, the Broad Institute patent is problematic for several reasons. It is very general, and lays claim to using CRISPR-Cas to edit all animal and plant DNA. The Broad Institute has granted an exclusive license for therapeutic applications, which means that the company concerned has a monopoly on what is expected to be one of the most important areas for CRISPR-Cas. Any other company wanting to use the technique, even for non-therapeutic work, must pay for a license."

Sadly, even in the EPO things like these are increasingly being viewed as patentable, in defiance of the premise of the patent system. Europe could soon end up adopting all the same decisions that the US did, including those decisions which now bring patent trolls to Europe.

As one Twitter account citing Patent Buddy put it, "patent examiners are not obligated to check if an invention already exists."

"This defies logic," it rightly added, linking to this video from the Web site of the USPTO itself. Google and Dropbox, in the mean time, "plea to end patent suit ‘forum shopping’," according to patent lawyers' media. This plea "includes many of the largest US tech companies" and it is "aiming to end patent suit ‘forum shopping’ at the Eastern District of Texas."

Others large companies in this group are Adobe, ASUS, and eBay. They are evidently not happy with how things are going, especially in the Eastern District of Texas, which the EFF is trying to put an end to.

Recent Techrights' Posts

Richard Stallman (RMS) Talk in Ethereum Cypherpunk Congress Will be Remote
This past week RMS received lots of accolades online
Links 28/08/2025: Chatbots Distorting/Fabricating History and Also Driving Suicide
Links for the day
 
Slopwatch: Fake Articles About "Linux", Slop Images in VentureBeat, Linux Foundation Spam Made With LLM Slop and Slop Images
The only relief or upside - if any exists - is that the pace of slop was down a bit this week
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Thursday, August 28, 2025
IRC logs for Thursday, August 28, 2025
Gemini Links 29/08/2025: Poems, Games, and Java 25 Performance
Links for the day
Links 28/08/2025: Greenland 'Interferences' by US and Skinnerboxes to Get Banned in Korean Schools
Links for the day
The Register MS (Run by Microsoft Operatives): Free Software is Putin, Hence Evil and Dangerous
The current editor in chief is an American Microsofter, the previous one went to work for Google (US)
Gemini Links 28/08/2025: Back in Japan and Why "Hacker News" Sucks
Links for the day
A Much-Needed Wake-up Call to Users of Wordpress.com, Blogspot, Substack and All Those Other Outsourced (and Centralised) Platforms
There are several lessons in there
The UEFI 9/11 - Part II - Campaign of Censorship and Defamation Against Critics
In dictatorships, humour serves an important role. It's tragic.
Open Source Initiative (OSI) Resists Software Freedom, Even by Attacking Its Own
The OSI is compromised
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Wednesday, August 27, 2025
IRC logs for Wednesday, August 27, 2025
Slopwatch: linuxsecurity.com, Slopfarms in Google News, and More
Some readers of ours end up sending us links that are from slopfarms, not realising those are slopfarms
Gemini Links 27/08/2025: Katrina Memories and Google Versus Software Freedom
Links for the day
Links 27/08/2025: Police Against Media Freedom in the UK, Energy-Hungry Countries Targeted by China
Links for the day
Microsoft Windows Fell to All-Time Lows in Egypt This Summer, Vista 11 Adoption Decreases While GNU/Linux Increases
Vista 11 is going down rather than up
Links 27/08/2025: Microsoft Demoralises Staff With Slop Demands, Leaving Mastodon Explained
Links for the day
12 Hours Ago The Register MS Published a Fake (Paid-for) Article, But This One for a Change Did Not Promote a Ponzi Scheme
There are also Free software alternatives, but they don't pay The Register MS for "synthetic" so-called 'journalism'
More People Need to Call Out and Put a Stop to Serial Sloppers
Unless slopfarms are stopped, people will read and share Microsoft propaganda made by chatbots
Gemini Links 27/08/2025: Headphones and Tartarus
Links for the day
Morale at Microsoft is Terrible (Proprietary Plagiarism Machines Have No Future, LLM Slop is a Bubble)
The slop sceptics/critics are going to have lots of "told you so" moments
GNOME "governance issues, staff reduction, etc." amidst Albanian whistleblowing and women trafficking
Notice the connection to Software Freedom Conservancy (SFC) and GNOME
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Tuesday, August 26, 2025
IRC logs for Tuesday, August 26, 2025