Bonum Certa Men Certa

Beware the Patent Law Firms Insinuating That Software Patents Are Back Because of McRO

Drop
McRO at the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (CAFC) is just a drop in the ocean



Summary: By repeatedly claiming (and then generalising) that CAFC accepted a software patent the patent microcosm (meta-industry) hopes to convince us that we should continue to pursue software patents in the US, i.e. pay them a lot more money for something of little/no value

THE PREVIOUS post, a short article regarding SCOTUS, mentioned the legacy of Alice. It's a living nightmare for patent law firms, some of which reportedly went out of business (we covered one high-profile example exactly a month ago).



"It's a living nightmare for patent law firms, some of which reportedly went out of business...""Once a patent is deemed to be directed to an abstract idea, the burden appears to shift against the patentee," Patently-O wrote yesterday in relation to Alice step 2 (the abstractness test), noting also that "Enfish substantially increased the overlap between Steps One and Two of the eligibility analysis. Typically, if a claim includes an eligible inventive concept then it will not be deemed directed to an abstract idea in the first place."

Enfish hardly changed anything at all, but patent law firms kept talking about it and shoving it into the media for about a month! They were hoping to change policy and practice by means of selective emphasis. It's a politician's foreign policy trick, e.g. misleading chronology or selective coverage of just one side's agony.

Take the area of digital payment patents. They're basically as dead as can be and statistics associated with failure/success rate are undermining Patently German's case when he says that "Mining giant BHP Billiton introduces Ethereum-based file sharing sys to improve suppl chain. Pioneering non-financial #blockchain application" (Accenture is trying to get patents in this area, as we noted earlier this week).

"They were hoping to change policy and practice by means of selective emphasis."Thankfully, with Alice as a precedent, software patents in this area are very much buried (about 90% of those being tested in a court or an appeal board get invalidated).

In relation to this new article, one patent attorney asks: "Will there be a war for Blockchain patents? No, because Alice is killing most all the patent applications" (well, good).

The EPO may be going in the opposite direction, but in the US there are more appeals right now and patents are being crushed in this area a lot more often than they are being upheld. It's too risky to even file a lawsuit with such patents. In fact, it's dangerous to even assume that once granted a patent, not to ever be asserted in a court of law, this patent would somehow be safe. The Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) changed a lot of this by introducing inter partes reviews (IPRs).

"Referring to the headline," Patently-O wrote about inter partes reviews (PTAB appeals), "The PTAB (acting on behalf of the PTO Director) held that traditional equitable defenses do not apply to IPR proceedings. Because this holding was made as part of an IPR institution decision, the appeal was dismissed for lack of jurisdiction."

"In fact, it's dangerous to even assume that once granted a patent, not to ever be asserted in a court of law, this patent would somehow be safe."So in this particular case, PTAB was not effective for clerical or bureaucratic reasons rather than technical reasons.

Speaking of the above-mentioned PTO Director, the previous one, David Kappos, who was responsible for a lot of the mess including a surge in patent trolling and software patents, is now in the lobbying industry. He is trying to use his previously-acquired connections to influence the law on behalf of massive corporate clients such as Microsoft, IBM, and Apple. He wants to marginalise Alice, under the guise of "clarity". He is not alone, either. The patent microcosm backs him and here we have a couple of patent law firms putting forth their interests through Watchtroll -- a site which cannot stop attacking the Supreme Court’s judgement because it wants software patents (profit). "Is it Time To Amend 101?" says their headline. But why? It's fine. Unless one is a patent lawyer that strives to patent everything...

Jonas Bosson from FFII Sweden told us about McRO, stating that "the decision is bad. Have you seen any good analysis of the effects?"

“I'd like EFF or TechDirt to put some attention to this, as it seems software patent proponents are playing this big."
      --Jonas Bosson
"I have seen dozens," I told him. "Same as in Enfish, lots of noise, no profound effect. SCOTUS won't revisit software patents any time soon."

"I'd like EFF or TechDirt" he responded, "to put some attention to this, as it seems software patent proponents are playing this big."

Yes, software patents proponents like Microsoft and patent law firms can't stop hyping up McRO, as if they want us to forget that CAFC broadly rejects software patents. Here is Bilski Blog (proponent of software patents) coming up with "More Lessons from McRo" (later reposted in some sites of patent lawyers). The site says "there are a couple of issues that McRo should have addressed but did not. First, the court could have further clarified that the preemption analysis should be from the perspective of a person of ordinary skill in the art (POSITA), and not a lay court. Using POSITA makes the analysis objective, technology neutral, and adaptive to changes in technology over time. POSITA is the only objective framework in the patent law and is already employed for claim construction, enablement, written description, obviousness, and the doctrine of equivalents. My partner Dan Brownstone and I set forth this theory, what we called Objective Preemption, in our amicus brief in Alice."

"Well, such is the nature of selling agenda (and one's own services)..."One does not need to look too far to realise what they pushed for in Alice, and the same goes for Bilski. Software patents profiteers can't stop lobbying for change and even more than 2 weeks after McRO we still see propaganda in the form of 'analysis' [1, 2] or "Free Webinar". One example we found yesterday was published by Gunnar Leinberg and Bryan Smith from LeClairRyan. "Federal Circuit Provides Additional Support to Software Patents" was their misleading headline. How come they never wrote anything about any of the decisions where CAFC looked into software patents and found them invalid? Well, such is the nature of selling agenda (and one's own services)...

Recent Techrights' Posts

GNU/Linux Adoption in Africa, a Passageway Towards Freedom From Neo-Colonialism
Digi(tal)-Colonialism and/or Techolonialism are a thing. Can Africa flee the trap?
 
There's Nothing "Funny" About Attacking Free Speech and Software Freedom
persistent focus on the principal issues is very important
Professor Eben Moglen Explained How Software Patent Threats Had Changed Around 2014 (Alice Case) and What Would Happen Till 2025
clip aged reasonably well
CNN Contributes to Demolition of the Open Web
Reprinted with permission from Ryan Farmer
Eben Moglen on Encryption and Anonymity
The alternate net we need, and how we can build it ourselves
Yet More Microsofters Inside the Board of Mozilla (Which Has Just Outsourced Firefox Development to Microsoft's Proprietary Prison)
Do you want a browser controlled (and spied on) by such a company?
IRC Proceedings: Monday, December 04, 2023
IRC logs for Monday, December 04, 2023
GNU/Linux Now Exceeds 3.6% Market Share on Desktops/Laptops, According to statCounter
things have changed for Windows in China
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news
Links 05/12/2023: Debt Brake in Germany and Layoffs at Condé Nast (Reddit, Wired, Ars Technica and More)
Links for the day
[Meme] Social Control Media Giants Shaping Debates on BSDs and GNU/Linux
listening to random people in Social Control Media
Reddit (Condé Nast), Which Has Another Round of Layoffs This Month, Incited People Against GNU/Linux Users (Divide and Rule, It's 2003 All Over Again!)
Does somebody (perhaps a third party) fan the flames?
Who Will Hold the Open Source Initiative (OSI) Accountable for Taking Bribes From Microsoft and Selling Out to Enable/Endorse Massive Copyright Infringement?
it does Microsoft advocacy
Using Gemini to Moan About Linux and Spread .NET
Toxic, acidic post in Gemini
Web Monopolist, Google, 'Pulls a Microsoft' by Hijacking/Overriding the Name of Competitor and Alternative to the Web
Gulag 'hijacking' 'Gemini'
Links 04/12/2023: Mass Layoffs at Spotify (Debt, Losses, Bubble) Once Again
Links for the day
ChatGPT Hype/Vapourware (and 'Bing') Has Failed, Google Maintains Dominance in Search
a growing mountain of debt and crises
[Meme] Every Real Paralegal Knows This
how copyright law works
Forging IRC Logs and Impersonating Professors: the Lengths to Which Anti-Free Software Militants Would Go
Impersonating people in IRC, too
IRC Proceedings: Sunday, December 03, 2023
IRC logs for Sunday, December 03, 2023
GNU/Linux Popularity Surging, So Why Did MakeUseOf Quit Covering It About 10 Days Ago?
It's particularly sad because some of the best articles about GNU/Linux came from that site, both technical articles and advocacy-centric pieces
Links 04/12/2023: COVID-19 Data Misused Again, Anti-Consumerism Activism
Links for the day
GNOME Foundation is in Reliable Hands (Executive Director)
Growing some good in one's garden
Links 03/12/2023: New 'Hey Hi' (AI) Vapouware and Palantir/NHS Collusion to Spy on Patients Comes Under Legal Challenge
Links for the day
'Confidential Computing'? More Like a Giant Back Door.
CacheWarp AMD CPU Attack Grants Root Access in Linux VMs
IRC Proceedings: Saturday, December 02, 2023
IRC logs for Saturday, December 02, 2023
Links 03/12/2023: CRISPR as Patented Minefield, Lots of Greenwashing Abound
Links for the day