Bonum Certa Men Certa

Joe Mullin Joins the EFF to Fight Mean Software Patents, Starting With Coverage About Unified Patents Defeating Sportbrain

Related: CAFC Meddling in PTAB Affairs; Unified Patents Fights a Good Fight by Invalidating Software Patents

Joe Mullin
Joe Mullin's Twitter account



Summary: The Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) has just smashed another troublesome patent and Joe Mullin was there, this time in EFF clothing, to cover it

THE previous post spoke about patent trolls with USPTO-granted patents and the EFF's response to them. The good news is, not only does the EFF tackle the right issues (it used to have a poorer and rather misguided strategy). The EFF has just hired Joe Mullin for activism/journalism against software patents and patent trolls -- something he had done in a blog before some media companies took him on board. Eventually he must have realised that advocacy without the whole pretense of "balance" would be better use of his time; at least that's what happened with me (more than a decade ago I wrote for media companies, but they did not give me sufficient freedom to express myself).



"The EFF has just hired Joe Mullin for activism/journalism against software patents and patent trolls -- something he had done in a blog before some media companies took him on board.""I'm happy to report I'm working at @EFF now," he announced in Twitter, "working mostly on IP-related things.

"Here's my first blog post," he wrote after had published this piece about Sportbrain [1, 2, 3] (covered here before). To quote:

The importance of the US Patent Office’s “inter partes review” (IPR) process was highlighted in dramatic fashion yesterday. Patent appeals judges threw out a patent [PDF] that was used to sue more than 80 companies in the fitness, wearables, and health industries.

US Patent No. 7,454,002 was owned by Sportbrain Holdings, a company that advertised a kind of ‘smart pedometer’ as recently as 2011. But the product apparently didn’t take off, and in 2016, Sportbrain turned to patent lawsuits to make a buck.

A company called Unified Patents challenged the ’002 patent by filing an IPR petition, and last year, the Patent Office agreed that the patent should be reviewed. Yesterday, the patent judges published their decision, canceling every claim of the patent.

The ’002 patent describes capturing a user’s “personal data,” and then sharing that information with a wireless computing device and over a network. It then analyzes the data and provides feedback.

After reviewing the relevant technology, a panel of patent office judges found there wasn’t much new to the ’002 patent. Earlier patents had already described collecting and sharing various types of sports data, including computer-assisted pedometers and a system that measured a skier’s “air time.” Given those earlier advances, the steps of the Sportbrain patent would have been obvious to someone working in the field. The office cancelled all the claims.

That means the dozens of different companies sued by Sportbrain won’t have to each spend hundreds of thousands of dollars—potentially millions—to defend against a patent that, the government now acknowledges, never should have been granted in the first place.


Joe Mullin was debunking patent myths and naming trolls even recently (he had covered other topics too). He often referred to (and cited) EFF posts, but now he's joining Ranieri and Nazer (there used to be more staff assigned to deal with the patent matters)‏. He'll be working alongside them rather than writing about them. Mullin is a very knowledgeable person; I spoke to him on the phone last year.

Sportbrain's patent has been "found invalid," Unified Patents said some days ago (a day after it was confirmed). We saw that almost immediately because we're subscribed to the RSS feed. To quote: "On February 6, 2018, the Patent Trial and Appeal Board issued a final written decision in Unified Patents Inc. v. Harry Heslop & Sportbrain Holdings, LLC, IPR2016-01464 invalidating all challenged claims of U.S. Patent 7,454,002, owned and asserted by Sportbrain Holdings, LLC. The '002 Patent, which describes a system for monitoring and providing feedback on a user's physical data, has been asserted 148 cases (17 of which were pending at the time of this decision). Defendants in these cases span across multiple industries and include such companies as Verizon, Fitbit, Microsoft, LG, TomTom, Garmin, Louis Vuitton, ZTE and Apple."

"Joe Mullin was debunking patent myths and naming trolls even recently (he had covered other topics too)."Apple is named last. Apple very recently settled in patent dispute, shelling out $871,500. It could possibly just fight against that patent until the end, but it chose not to. Less than a million dollars is 'slush funds' to Apple. As the article notes, it recently paid far more to settle other patent cases.

PTAB has been doing very well lately and we'll have a lot to say about it over the weekend. To quote some recent statistics: "On January 31, the PTAB Affirmed Examiners' 101 Rejections for 9 Cases; Denied Reconsideration of 101 Rejections in 3 Cases and Reversed Examiners' 101 Rejections in 2 Cases."

"In the past 2-3 years -- and not just owing to Alice -- we often get the feeling that we're finally 'winning' (as some might put it) and the US patent system gets reformed to better suit science and technology, not patenters and litigators."So they deal with quite a few patent applications, not just patents that are either used in litigation or for threats of litigation. This helps limit patent scope. One journalist focused on patent matters said the other day that "Senator Susan Collins told @BloombergLaw the Special Committee on Aging is working to draft a bill to restrict certain types of patents on drugs, such as new formulations, to limit evergreening, reports @BronwynMixter..."

"Fantastic news," I responded to her. "A push back against patent maximalism, which made the patent system lose its sight on purpose..."

In the past 2-3 years -- and not just owing to Alice -- we often get the feeling that we're finally 'winning' (as some might put it) and the US patent system gets reformed to better suit science and technology, not patenters and litigators. That's the desirable thing for a patent system anywhere.

Recent Techrights' Posts

How We Process Screenshots of Slop to Suitably Tag Them as Slop
everything is a single command
Seductive Mirage or Allure of Complex, Proprietary Coffee Machines (or Similar White Elephants)
Software is a lot like those things
 
Team GNOME Has Libeled Me for Nearly 20 Years
we are not dealing with sane people
Experience With Airlines in 'Web Sites' and in 'Apps'
In a lot of ways, Stallman Was Right about what JavaScript would turn out to be
Open Does Not Mean Free
wiser to ask if some program is freedom-respecting
The Register MS Takes Money From Companies Banned by the Biden and Trump Administrations (National Security Risk)
today's sponsor
Sabotaging GNU/Linux PCs (and Users) is Not a 'Joke'
maybe cruelty is the very objective
Links 11/08/2025: Data Breaches, Politics, and Climate
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Sunday, August 10, 2025
IRC logs for Sunday, August 10, 2025
Gemini Links 11/08/2025: Tea Caffeine Hot and Super ZZ Zero
Links for the day
Slopwatch: LinuxSecurity, Brian Fagioli, and Other Serial Sloppers
Maybe Microsoft wants to dub this "Web5"
Gemini Links 10/08/2025: Residents Management Company, Automation, and Politics
Links for the day
Links 10/08/2025: AOL Ending Dial-up
Links for the day
Links 10/08/2025: Webrings, “AI Sunglasses” and “AI Eyeglasses”, US Administration Intensifies Attacks on Science and Research
Links for the day
Sometimes Newer is Worse
We generally need to reject this dumb notion that "old" means bad
The Code Used to Make Techrights Fits on a Seventh of a Floppy Disk (or 100KB When Compressed)
For the sake of comparison I've just downloaded the latest version of WordPress. The ZIP file is 27.2MB in size, or ~27,200KB.
What They Tell Young Programmers
Coding in 2025
Simpler is Better When Simple is Enough
Over-complicating things to "sell" new versions is so 1990s
Links 10/08/2025: From Social Control Media to Prison, New Examples of Windows TCO
Links for the day
Sloppy Reporting About Slop, or How The Register MS Lowers Its Standards
Maybe the management isn't even aware of this
IBM's Strategy: Cull 'Expensive' Workers, Replace Them With Cheaper Ones
So far we saw not even one rebuttal or challenge to the claim of Red Hat layoffs scheduled for tomorrow
If You Attack Somebody Too Much You Legitimise and Strengthen That Somebody
at the end those attacks add up to a "martyr" status
The Man Who Helped Microsoft Kill Linux is Trying to Delay Our Lawsuits Against Him
By conservative estimates, and based on court documents submitted by them, they're prepared to spend over a million dollars on lawyers, fighting against me and my wife
Gemini Links 10/08/2025: Gen Con 2025 and Framework Laptop
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Saturday, August 09, 2025
IRC logs for Saturday, August 09, 2025
The Register MS (Microsoft) or The Register AI (Slop)?
What a slopfest!
Is Red Hat About to Give the Boot to GNOME People Who Helped Microsoft 'Secure' (Monopolised) Boot?
It was always a dumb idea to play along with Microsoft's hardware mischief
Sales of Windows on PCs (Windows Licences) Go Down
Microsoft has a big problem in its hands
The Hype That Microsoft and The Register MS (Among Others) Promote Helps Stage DDoS Attacks on Free Software Sites
Microsoft is, to put it bluntly, pure evil
The Goal of Coopetition Assumes You're Friends
it will never work with Microsoft
Links 09/08/2025: Putin Allegedly to Visit Alaska (Which He Deems Part of Russia), Mike Tyson Sued for Copyright Infringement
Links for the day
Slopwatch: Linux Journal, LinuxSecurity, and Google News With Its Slopfarms of Choice
SEO spam, made with LLMs
Follow the Money: The Register MS Gets Paid to Promote "Hey Hi" Ponzi Scheme/Hype, Some Fake 'Articles' Might Be Composed by LLMs Already
paid to promote slop
Gemini Links 09/08/2025: Rethinking Aliases and Posting on Gopher vs. the Web
Links for the day
Links 09/08/2025: Apollo 13 Astronaut Jim Lovell Dies, Slop Future Bleak
Links for the day
After Shutting Down Studios, Divisions, Applications (e.g. Skype) Microsoft is Also Shutting Down 'Apps'
Cuts all around as layoffs persist this month, Microsoft tries to get many people to resign, and debt skyrockets
Most of Geminispace Can Probably Fit on a CD-ROM or a DVD (the Textual Part)
If one excludes very large capsules and ones that contain non-textual contenty
Eventually UEFI 'Secure Boot' Will be Dropped (Users Will Demand Its Removal and Boycott Its Pushers)
we expect OEMs will just listen to users
The Register MS: We Know Slop is a Bubble and Mindless Hype, But We Get Paid to Participate
Call out the culprits
Hate Mail From Anonymous Cowards
if this persists, we'll need to escalate
There Are Probably Over a Million Pages in Geminispace
there are two many limitations which merit a mention when it comes to assessing magnitude
Informal Open Letter to the Lawyer of the Microsofters (on Who's Funding the SLAPPs Against Techrights)
Whenever I ask about the funding they try to change the subject and act all aggressive
Microsoft Lunduke is Just Provoking People for Provocation's Sake
Be forewarned and remember where this guy came from: Microsoft
Besieged by Plagiarists Who Play With LLMs and Image Fusions
We really need to exercise or use our collective voice to oppose Serial Sloppers
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Friday, August 08, 2025
IRC logs for Friday, August 08, 2025
Gemini Links 09/08/2025: Water Painting and Political Violence
Links for the day