Bonum Certa Men Certa

Microsoft Patent Trolls and IBM Against 35 U.S.C. €§ 101 and for Software Patents, Blackmail

They hardly even manage to keep it a secret any longer

Telling secrets



Summary: With the Defend Trade Secrets Act of 2016 gaining traction and with Section 101 limiting the scope of patents in the United States we now see increased lobbying and trolling by companies on the decline -- companies whose last remaining 'asset' is a large pile of software patents

THE enforcement of software patents has become very hard in the US. Many no longer bother with it, so litigation numbers dropped sharply. This is a positive development; unless or except for those who make a living from litigation (patent trolls, lawyers and so on).

"Copyrights do a good enough job protecting one's code from misuse."Our latest post on trade secrets certainly was a celebration of the shift away from patents, at least for software. Copyrights do a good enough job protecting one's code from misuse. Here is some mainstream media coverage about this trend:

Trade secrets claims are an increasingly common avenue companies are using to safeguard their intellectual property rights.

Trade secrets litigation has grown as the digital age has made sharing information quick and easy. In addition, the Defend Trade Secrets Act, passed in 2016, raised trade secrets from simply a state law claim to a federal one.

“Intellectual property holders are increasingly aware they have this tool in their arsenal,” Michael W. De Vries, with Kirkland & Ellis LLP in Los Angeles, told Bloomberg Law. De Vries has substantial experience representing clients in complex intellectual property disputes including patent litigation and litigation involving misappropriation of trade secrets.


We've already seen this law being used/leveraged in the context of software. One famous case concerns Sergey Aleynikov.

"Call these "AI" or "cloud" or "blockchain" or whatever, but these are still software patents and even holders of such patents know they'd be rendered invalid by courts (if brought into the context of litigation)."In the wake of Section 101 with Alice (SCOTUS) embodied in it we're seeing a fall in success rates of software patent litigation. Call these "AI" or "cloud" or "blockchain" or whatever, but these are still software patents and even holders of such patents know they'd be rendered invalid by courts (if brought into the context of litigation). Here comes Stephen O'Neal (yesterday in a blockchain-oriented/cryptocurrency-centric site) 'blockchain-washing' a bunch of software patents. To quote:

Last week, news of at least three major players applying for blockchain-related patents emerged: Bank of America sought to legally protect its blockchain-based system allowing the external validation of data, Barclays filed two patent applications relating to the transfer of digital currency and blockchain data storage, while MasterCard’s application mentioned a form of a public blockchain-based method for linking assets between blockchain and fiat accounts.

As blockchain technology continues to be one of the most discussed things in 2018 and a subject for mass adoption, the number of crypto-related patents is steadily growing — and with patent trolls joining the game, a legal war over blockchain might occur in the future.


There are indeed "patent trolls joining the game," but they too must know that those are software patents and therefore Alice is a threat to them. If they target (engage in extortion against) small companies, they will likely be able to avoid a legal battle. Other than that, they can hope and pray that Alice will just miraculously vanish. IBM lobbyists together with IPO have been working towards that for years; they have created a whole "task force" for this purpose, accompanying IBM's massive war of patent aggression. IBM's latest case of patent blackmail has been going public (due to a lawsuit). They do this to probably hundreds of firms behind closed doors and Bloomberg did a report about it last week, as did many other press outlets. Last week we saw IBM's patent chief (Manny Schecter) associating with and contributing to Watchtroll again. Citing Watchtroll about Mayo/Section 101, he said: "The Court in Alice did not state what "something more" might be? Of course they didn't. The Court declined to define "abstract" so how can one know what is significantly more than something as yet unidentified?"

"Algorithms are abstract," I told him. Software patents "are therefore over [and IBM] needs to learn to deal with it and stop blackmailing the whole world."

"It's worth noting that both IBM and Microsoft not only attempt to leverage software patents for extortion; they also attempt to change the law to facilitate this massive (multi-billion) extortion racket."As we noted here in the recent and distant past, Microsoft now pretends that it "loves Linux", so Microsoft has 'outsourced' patent litigation against GNU/Linux to various patent trolls.

We've just noticed that there's this Section 101 (35 U.S.C. €§ 101) case between Interval Licensing LLC and AOL (maybe the same "Interval" as Interval Research Corporation, the creation of Microsoft's co-founder; according to Wikipedia they overlap). It's a Federal Circuit (CAFC) case which Patent Docs covered earlier this week:

Interval Licensing brought an action against AOL and several other defendants in the Western District of Washington, alleging infringement of U.S. Patent No. 6,034,652. In a previous ruling, all asserted claims of this patent were invalidated as being indefinite. At issue in this decision are claims 15-18, which were subsequently ruled invalid for failing to recite patent-eligibile subject matter under 35 U.S.C. €§ 101.

[...]

Applying step one of Alice, the Court quickly concluded that the claimed invention was directed to "providing information to a person without interfering with the person's primary activity." This, in and of itself, is an abstract idea according to the Court due to it being analogous to news tickers on television programs, for example. The Court also frowned upon the claim's "broad, result-oriented" structure that "demands the production of a desired result (non-interfering display of two information sets) without any limitation on how to produce that result."


So Alice stopped this Microsoft-connected troll, which previously also attacked Android. It's worth noting that both IBM and Microsoft not only attempt to leverage software patents for extortion; they also attempt to change the law to facilitate this massive (multi-billion) extortion racket.

Recent Techrights' Posts

Extortion is a Crime, Even If You're Based in Another Continent and Work for Microsoft
reported to British authorities
 
Links 06/06/2025: Microsoft XBox Bracing For More Mass Layoffs, Climate Disaster, Fake 'Money' Tokens From US President
Links for the day
Gemini Links 06/06/2025: Vanishing Cultures and MElon Implosion
Links for the day
We're in 6/6 Now, Almost Halfway in 2025
2025 was probably the best year for us
South Americans Are Saying Goodbye to Microsoft
We're hardly even "Cherry-Picking" or conveniently singling out one South American nation
Abuse Inside the Polish Patent Office (UPRP) - Part III: Data Protection Failures, Just Like at the European Patent Office (EPO)
Just less than a decade ago we showed that the EPO had illegally shared staff data with third parties
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Thursday, June 05, 2025
IRC logs for Thursday, June 05, 2025
Pushing Microsoft's Proprietary Trash/Trap as "Open" and "Linux" (Windows is 'Linux' Now?)
Maybe it's time to just stop saying "FOSS". The people who use that term are promoting Microsoft.
Slopwatch: Comparing Linux to Vermin, Attacking BSD With LLM Slop, and Helping Microsoft Demonise Linux/OpenBSD/SSH Over Weak User Passwords
Microsoft must be laughing its arse off, seeing how a bunch of Serial Sloppers (no skills, no comprehension, no integrity, no creativity) and slopfarms use Microsoft LLM to flood the Web with anti-Linux FUD
Links 05/06/2025: US Poised for Another $2.4 Trillion to Debt, Cops Want GAFAM Kill Switches
Links for the day
Links 05/06/2025: First US Spacewalk 60 Years Ago, GNU Octave 10.2.0 is Out
Links for the day
Scandinavia Saying Goodbye to Microsoft
The Danes have had enough of Microsoft
GNU/Linux Measured at 6% in Bangladesh, According to statCounter
Windows isn't growing, it's going away
Nat Friedman Had Left Microsoft GitHub Exactly One Week Before Matthew Garrett Sent His First SLAPP (Which Was an Empty Threat, He Was Abusing the Legal System of Another Continent to Terrorise Critics Who Had Just Unearthed Major Microsoft Scandals)
And it was likely talked about by his lawyers around the exact same time Nat Friedman was packing up
Gemini Links 05/06/2025: Loop Earplugs Review and ANS Forth
Links for the day
Armenian Adoption of GNU/Linux
Russian influence in Armenian must be worrying to Microsoft
Abuse Inside the Polish Patent Office (UPRP) - Part II: Turning a Once-Respected Patent Office Into a Circus and Laughing Stock
It's not legal, but administrators who don't care about the law and don't fear the law would just go ahead and turn things to junk
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Wednesday, June 04, 2025
IRC logs for Wednesday, June 04, 2025
Slopwatch: Mindless Slop Pieces, Fake Images and Text, Linux FUD on the Cheap
spewed out by Microsoft-controlled LLMs
Links 04/06/2025: Workers' Strikes, Sudan Exodus
Links for the day
Links 04/06/2025: Linux Foundation PR Spam and Lee Jae-myung Wins Election
Links for the day
Gemini Links 04/06/2025: Future Leaders of the World and Platforming Jordan Peterson
Links for the day
Links 04/06/2025: WSL Backfiring on Microsoft and "Disney, Microsoft Announce Massive Layoffs"
Links for the day
Our Case is a Very Easy Win, the SLAPPs From Microsofters Were a Grave Error, and Censoring Information Won't Work (It'll Only Ever Backfire)
Censoring is what people do when they lose the argument
Say the Truth, the Rest Will Follow
There's no guarantee that writing the truth will result in an audience (or readership), but over time - in the long run - people generally gravitate towards what they know or feel to be crude truth, not just what's comforting (albeit false or self-deluding, usually groupthink dictated from above)
How to Expose High-Level Corruption Without Getting in (Too Much) Trouble
Democracy depends on free press and freedom of the press depends on being able to safely publish (and keep available) material that bad people don't want to be known to anybody
In-Depth EPO Coverage at Techrights Turns Eleven
11 years is a very long time
Windows Measured Below 10% in Afghanistan, GNU/Linux Gaining a Lot
about 80% are Android (Linux) users, compared to only about 10% for Windows
Poland's Political Predicament and Social Control Media
Democracy and fake "tech" don't mix well; the latter tends to interfere with the former and that's why we get more "Putins" out there
EPO: Taking Away From the Staff to Give More to the Rich
The Central Staff Committee (CSC) wrote to EPO staff earlier this week
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Tuesday, June 03, 2025
IRC logs for Tuesday, June 03, 2025
Abuse Inside the Polish Patent Office (UPRP) - Part I: It's a Lot Like the EPO
we can commence a series soon
Gemini Links 04/06/2025: Inescapable Questions and Quitting All "Oligarch Tech"
Links for the day