Bonum Certa Men Certa

AIPLA, Watchtroll (the Trolls' Lobby) and Other Pressure Groups Are Still Trying to Eliminate/Weaken PTAB and Section 101

Related: IBM, IPO, AIPLA, ABA and Other Lobbying/Front Groups of the Patent Microcosm Are Trying to Change US Law for Software Patents

David Kappos as lobbyist
Lobbyists such as David Kappos are trying hard to destroy the integrity of the Office for the sake of the litigation 'industry'



Summary: The American Intellectual Property Lawyers Association (AIPLA), a front group of people who profit from mass litigation, is pressuring politicians and USPTO officials to reduce the quality of patents, remove barriers to frivolous lawsuits, and generally put the interests of prosecutors/trolls ahead of the interests of technologists

YESTERDAY we covered some of the good news regarding the USPTO, including the rumoured abolition of software patents, as a whole.



As we stated at the time, there's a reactionary lobby, namely that of the patent microcosm. Recent developments in the patent system may render them obsolete. It is important to see their reaction in order to better understand what they plan to do next.

AIPLA is a group of saboteurs who manipulate the law to encourage patent litigation (i.e. maximise profit for lawyers). That's litigation at our expense (for them to pocket).

The other day Managing IP published a long series of posts for AIPLA. These were all puff pieces, starting with this interview of AIPLA's president, who is described as "associate patent counsel at Johnson & Johnson, where she has worked since 2000. She joined AIPLA in 1995 and has done stints on the Professional Programs Committee, the Board of Directors (from 2004 to 2007) and the AIPLA Fellows."

So basically, AIPLA is now run by a massive multinational company and it is trying to water down Alice/Section 101, as the following part of the puff piece reveals:

Seeking consensus on Section 101

One example of AIPLA reconciling disparate views has been its work on patent eligibility under Section 101 of the Patent Act.

AIPLA executive director Lisa Jorgenson believes Section 101 problems remain the number one issue on members’ minds.

“Our members tell us that the Section 101 issue is still the most important issue for them,” says Jorgenson. “They are very concerned about the current uncertain state of the law. We believe this has discouraged investment in US-based research and development activities.”


In another post in this series they ask a loaded question ("When should the USPTO intervene in PTAB appeals?" is the headline) even though PTAB ought to work independently, just like the EPO's appeal boards (BOA). To quote: "The USPTO intervenes in less than a quarter of appeals of PTAB decisions to the Federal Circuit. Nathan Kelley, USPTO deputy general counsel for intellectual property law, recently shed some light on when and why the office chooses to do so" (it ought to stay out of it altogether).

The patent fanatics' groups (like AIPLA) are reportedly lobbying politicians to destroy PTAB (i.e. restore patent insanity) and they are looking for allies in Congress:

In speeches at the AIPLA annual meeting, Senators Patrick Leahy and Orrin Hatch listed a number of areas they are targeting in Congress, while Hatch said he was concerned about the effects of IPR proceedings on Hatch-Waxman cases


We are going to write more about that later on. The Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) is basically ensuring reduction in abusive litigation; there's nothing wrong with that unless one is in the business of litigation. Here we have one of Watchtroll's latest attacks on PTAB. which is yet another attack on technology itself. The trolls' lobby just hates science and labels those who actually do science "big tech infringers".

Meanwhile, as it turns out, in the above event there were pressuring the USPTO to stop PTAB. The term "PTAB improvements" was used, but by improvement they mean watering down. Here we have fanatical lobbyists pressuring USPTO to enrich them by weakening PTAB:

Joseph Matal, who is performing the duties of USPTO director, gave a speech discussing the Patent Trial and Appeal Board, including upcoming USPTO guidance on Aqua Products, how the precedential General Plastic opinion will reduce serial attacks on the same patent, the evolving 325(d) jurisprudence, and two PTAB cases he thought have a shot of being taken up by the Supreme Court


Matal has evidently come under great pressure from these lobbyists, having already seen how his colleague Michelle Lee got bullied out of her job. He is currently being sued as well (Aqua Products, Inc. v Matal among other cases and here's an update on that).

We certainly hope that PTAB won't be weakened or watered down. Given a growing number of petitions it ought to be expanded.

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
 
Links 08/05/2025: Mass Layoffs at Google Again, India/Pakistan Tensions Continue to Grow, New Pope (US) Selected
Links for the day
"Victory Day" - Part I: That is the Day Microsofters Who Assault Women Pay for Their Actions in Foreign Land (Using "Guns for Hire" Who Attack Their Own Country for American Dollars)
Adding a friend from Microsoft to the docket didn't help
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