Bonum Certa Men Certa

Latest Assaults on PTAB and More PTAB Bashing, This Time by Anticipat

Anticipat is showing signs of antipathy

Anticipat



Summary: The Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB), which helps eliminate patents granted in error (a lot of software patents), is still besieged by the patent 'industry'

EXPECT many attacks on PTAB, the body which keeps the USPTO in check and enforces Alice very often (probably more than once a day, on average). Why is PTAB under attack? And why now? There's an upcoming case at the Supreme Court of the United States and the patent microcosm believes it can use that case to undermine PTAB, maybe altogether eliminate it. PTAB-bashing blogs like Watchtroll and Patently-O write about it all the time. They try hard to scandalise PTAB and encourage anti-PTAB briefs (to be submitted as a sort of lobbying, addressing the Justices).



Do not expect any of this to stop. It will get worse. It keeps intensifying. These are no "friends of the court" (amici) but enemies of science and technology. All they want to do is tax scientists and technologists (who generally support PTAB).

According to IAM's new blog post, there's a potential to finding a loophole like universities to dodge scrutiny from PTAB, harnessing immunity. We wrote about this example a few days ago (Allergan, a dodgy entity) and here are the details:

Allergan may just have driven a coach and horses through the inter partes review process at the Patent Trial and Appeal Board. The company’s agreement to transfer the six patents underpinning its dry-eye treatment Restasis to the Saint Regis Mohawks has been widely reported since it was announced on Friday. Under the deal, the Native American tribe will receive a one-off payment of $13.75 million from Allergan, then annual royalties of $15 million. Over the lifetime of the assets concerned that could represent hundreds of millions of dollars – a sum which demonstrates just how valuable the pharma company believes those patents to be and how important it is they are kept away from the eyes of PTAB judges.

[...]

Because make no mistake, what is at stake here is not just the fate of six Allergan patents and some others owned by US universities, but the entire future of the PTAB as a viable tool for defendants to challenge patents asserted against them, or ones that they fear may be asserted in the future. Put simply, if Allergan can reach an agreement with a Native American tribe to protect its assets from PTAB scrutiny, so can every other patent owner in the US, operating in any kind of industry.


So basically, they're exploiting indigenous people to shield a bunch of patents. It's as dodgy as Hell and probably an insult to indigenous people, whose Traditional Knowledge (TK) is constantly under attack by patents, trademarks, etc.

In other news, also from Monday, this self-promotional blog post with an odd title (super-long headline) is trying to scandalise PTAB with statements like "PTAB Mocks Alice Supreme Court" (the very opposite is true). It's as if they try to incite the Supreme Court against PTAB ahead of the decision on PTAB...

They promote this nonsense elsewhere and it ends with "Anticipat Practitioner Analytics does just this. Click here for a free trial."

What's it all about? No scandal at all. To quote a couple of portions:

In ex parte Lynch, Appeal No. 2016-002985, the Board reversed a Section 101 rejection, holding that the claimed invention provides an improvement in the functioning of the computer. Specifically, the claimed invention allows a user to register for new websites without entering all of their information each time, but with the option of modifying the information if necessary. The Board seemed to acknowledge that the claims were directed to an abstract idea under step 1. But the Board held that the claimed conventional computer components when considered as an ordered combination do include an inventive concept sufficient to render the claims eligible for patenting. Finally, in an apparent mocking of the Supreme Court, the Board concluded that the claims include the talismanic inventive concept.

[...]

This case shows that abstract idea rejections are still tricky. But as shown here, it is not fatal to patent-eligibility for claims to recite conventional computer components as long as the ordered combination provides a specific improvement. This shows that understanding which legal authority relied on by the Board can be important in knowing how to reverse Examiners in other applications.


So basically, in short, just because PTAB sometimes overturns/reverses a Section 101 rejection the above would have us believe that it "Mocks Alice Supreme Court" (to quote the headline). The common criticism of PTAB, courtesy of the patent microcosm, is that it's overaggressive in applying Alice, so apparently, no matter what it does, the patent microcosm will blindly attack it. "Damned if you do, damned if you don't," as the old idiom or phrase goes. It should be noted that Anticipat's blog is less than a year old. Seems like a fairly new subversive opportunist.

We certainly hope that Justices will pay careful attention to who is opposing PTAB and why. Foes of prior decisions of theirs, e.g. Alice, are those who want to obliterate PTAB (so as to impede enforcement of Justices' decisions).

Recent Techrights' Posts

Rust is Starting to Seem More Like Microsoft-hosted "Digital Maoism", Not a Legitimate Effort to Improve Security
Maybe this is very innocent, but they seem to have taken a solid, stable program from a high-profile Frenchman and looked for ways to marry it with GitHub, i.e. Microsoft/NSA
Gemini Links 08/05/2025: Practical Gemini Use Case, Shutdown of the Blanket Fort Webring
Links for the day
Links 08/05/2025: "Slop Presidency", US Government Defunds Public Broadcasting
Links for the day
Lasse Fister, Organiser of Libre Graphics Meeting, Points Out the Code of Conduct is Likely Violated by the Same People Who Promote Codes of Conduct (and Then Bully Him Into Cancelling a Keynote)
I am starting to see Lasse Fister as another victim
LLM Slop Attacks Not Only Sites of Free Software Projects But Also Bug Reporting Systems (Time-wasting, in Effect "DDoS")
Microsoft, the leading purveyor and promoter of slop, is a cancer
The Richard Stallman (RMS) "European Tour" Carries on In Spite of the Nuremberg Incident
Some people spoke about how they saw yesterday's talk
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Wednesday, May 07, 2025
IRC logs for Wednesday, May 07, 2025
The CoC Means the Founder of GNU/Linux Cannot Talk and a 72-Year-Old Man With Cancer is Somehow a "Safety" Risk?
Those who don't like RMS are not forced to attend his talks
Gemini Links 07/05/2025: A Shopping Spree and Digital Gardening
Links for the day
Links 07/05/2025: Pegasus Guilty and a Path Towards EU Without Russian Energy
Links for the day
People Used to Talk
If pets can live a measurably happy life without gadgets and "apps", why can't humans?
Outsourcing GNU/Linux to Microsoft GitHub Promoted by Microsoft LLM Slop and Army Officers
Something doesn't seem right
Weaponisation of For-Profit Dockets - Part III: No More Media Lawsuits From Brett Wilson LLP This Year, One Can Only Guess Why
People leak a lot of material to Techrights because they know, based on the track record, that the sources will be protected and whatever gets published will stay online, in full, no matter how stubborn an effort (even lawsuits and blackmail) will be sent its way
Gemini Links 07/05/2025: Adopting GrapheneOS, Further Enshittification of Flickr
Links for the day
Links 07/05/2025: CISA Gutted, Debt-Saddled (Likely Insolvent) 'Open' 'AI' (Proprietary Slop) Faking Its Financial State Again
Links for the day
Finland, Lithuania, and Latvia Fortify Their Digital Border With GNU/Linux
This month's data from statCounter is particularly interesting near the Baltic Sea
The European Patent Office (EPO) Has a Very Profound Corruption Issue, Far More Urgent an Issue Than Pronouns
a rather long document
Richard Stallman Gives Public Talk at Technical University of Liberec, Czech Republic
"For programs that you could run, and for network services that could do your own computing, under what circumstances is it reasonable to trust them?"
Today We Turn 18.5
The eighteenth "and a half" anniversary
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Tuesday, May 06, 2025
IRC logs for Tuesday, May 06, 2025
Microsoft Finally Admits That XBox is ****
In this case, "enshittification" is an understatement
Another Wave of Microsoft Layoffs Comes Shortly. Microsoft Propaganda Sites and Slopforms Powered by Microsoft LLMs Already Spew Out Face-Saving Nonsense.
Based on last month's leak, some very extensive layoffs are now imminent [...] Perhaps we can expect a lot of noise, some of it spewed out by bots, to distract from or belittle the impending mass layoffs
Ubuntu Becomes Microsoft GitHub, Based on Decision Made by British Army Officer
You're hopeless, Canonical
Slopwatch: Microsoft Slop, Anti-Linux Slop, and IBM Marketing Itself as a Slop Company
Microsoft-controlled LLM spewing out garbage about "Linux"
Links 06/05/2025: Microsoft's Assassination of Skype After Years of Failure, Slop Hallucinations Are Getting Worse
Links for the day
Links 06/05/2025: Changing Places and StarGrid for PalmOS
Links for the day
Windows and Microsoft Causing Serious Data Breaches, Media Rushes to Blame That on "Linux" Somehow
While selling us some rusty old propaganda about how moving to Microsoft GitHub (Rust) will improve security
Making Site Archives More Easily Accessible (Approaching 50,000 Blog Posts)
Efforts to censor us have always backfired badly
Weaponisation of For-Profit Dockets - Part II: Hiding Behind Lawyers and Barristers Who Lack Standards so as to Engage in Classic Corporate Extortion
They're trying to scare people and they misuse their licence to operate
Links 06/05/2025: LLMs/Chatbots Attract More Scrutiny (Getting Worse Over Time), PwC Has Many Layoffs
Links for the day
Thanks for listening. How can this Morse feed be further improved?
Right now any and all feedback on the audio would be helpful
statCounter: Bing's Market Share Lower Right Now Than It Was When LLM Hype Began (With "Bing Chat")
If anybody gains at Google's expense in search, it is BRICS' alternatives such as Yandex
Gemini Links 06/05/2025: Failure and Proxmox Cluster
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Monday, May 05, 2025
IRC logs for Monday, May 05, 2025