Bonum Certa Men Certa

Defending the World's Most Notorious Patent Trolls in an Effort to Smear the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) is an Utterly Poor Strategy

Just comes to show that patent zealots have run out of legitimate arguments

Patent Lawyers' Tears



Summary: The 'case' for patent maximalism is very weak; those who spent years if not decades promoting patent maximalism have resorted to attacks on judges, to defense of trolls like Intellectual Ventures, defense of patent scams, and ridiculous attempts to call victims of patent trolls "trolls"

THE USPTO nowadays limits itself using the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) with inter partes reviews (IPRs). The examiners can be stopped or their decisions overturned without the courts getting involved (someone filing an actual lawsuit). This whole process (as per AIA) has been good and it has thus far limited the scope/quantity of litigation i.e. the rates of frivolous lawsuits. Put another way, this has improved access to justice.



PTAB was until recently headed by David Ruschke, its chief judge. Ruschke's exit (from this role) has just been mentioned by a patent maximalists' site, Managing IP, where Ellie Mertens wrote the following summary this week:

As of September 2, David Ruschke stepped down from his post as chief judge at the PTAB and moved into a role across the agency as senior advisor to patents.


We don't know the motivation and cannot tell whose idea it was; did Iancu create a bogus new role through which to 'decapitate' PTAB? It's hard to tell because there's no transparency. Iancu mentioned this in passing when he spoke to Watchtroll, an aggressive site which is again sobbing for patent trolls, alluding to case we covered some days ago. "The Courts unfortunately seem content to allow the PTAB to continue unabated," Watchtroll said yesterday as if PTAB is the enemy and scammers who misuse tribal/sovereign immunity are fine people. Yes, they actually defend them! Things have gotten so bad for patent maximalists that they advocate scams.

PTAB was also smeared the day prior to that. To quote:

Relying on internal USPTO policies and former PTAB judges’ personal experiences, a recent spate of commentary has provided different explanations regarding the rarity of dissents for ex parte appeals. We were still left wondering why some judges go out of their way to write dissents. In an effort to better understand this issue and what the dissents might reveal about the ex parte appeal process in general, we conducted a statistical analysis of dissents in recent ex parte appeal decisions.


"We" as in the patent microcosm. They try hard to defend bogus, invalid patents.

PTAB does not help trolls; it does the exact opposite and those who attack PTAB often turn out to be in the business of suing (or representing trolls).

Here's a new example of PTAB being leveraged against a patent troll that attacks real companies. Sound View's patent is "determined to be likely invalid," Unified Patents wrote yesterday after it had filed an IPR:

On September 10, 2018, the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) instituted trial on all challenged claims in an IPR filed by Unified against U.S. Patent 9,462,074 owned and asserted by Sound View Innovations, LLC, a well-known NPE. The '074 patent, directed to "caching techniques to support streaming media storage and distribution in a network," has been asserted in multiple cases against such companies as Facebook and Hulu.


Facebook is a supporter of PTAB through HTIA, which was very actively promoting PTAB lately. As we noted in the weekend, Watchtroll actually called Facebook a "troll" for trying to defend itself from one. It's amazing just to what levels of distortion these people would resort.

Here is Mike Masnick saying -- in his own words -- that Blackberry "has always been more of a patent troll."

Many others have been saying the same thing, even some patent maximalists.

From Masnick's post at TechDirt, which he published yesterday afternoon:

Blackberry, the Canadian company that briefly made semi-popular devices for people at companies thanks to their physical keyboards, has always been more of a patent troll. While the company was on the losing end of one of the most famous pure patent troll cases in the past few decades, we have noted in the past that the very reason the trolling operation NTP sued Blackberry (then RIM) was RIM/Blackberry's own ridiculously aggressive patent shakedowns of other companies, which caught the attention of NTP's principles in the first place. Since the demand for actual devices from Blackberry has shrunk to "wait, those guys still exist?" levels, it's focused again on patent shakedowns.

Back in March, the company sued Facebook claiming that Facebook was infringing with some fairly basic concepts related to mobile messaging. While there were a number of different patents and claims in the original 117-page complaint, many of them are clearly bonkers. There is no reason why this stuff should be patented at all. Take, for example, US Patent 8,209,634 for "Previewing a new event on a small screen device." Believe it or not, Blackberry has patented adding a little dot showing you how many unread messages you have. Really.


To summarise, what we now have is a bunch of sites that represent the interests of the litigation 'industry'. That primarily means patent trolls as they account for the lion's share of lawsuits. They're absolutely happy to call victims of trolling "trolls", to constantly sob for patent trolls like Intellectual Ventures, and to defend scammers whose goal is to dodge PTAB by defrauding the system. The arguments of these people have become so weak and so fragile that some of them ceased their efforts, as we noted in our previous post. They're basically giving up.

Recent Techrights' Posts

YouTube is a Spamfarm, Slopfarm, and Clickfarm (a Lot of Numbers There Are Fake)
Those who don't fake look unpopular and unimportant
 
Links 25/07/2025: NOAA Cuts Endanger Lives, "Europe's Self Inflicted Cloud Crisis"
Links for the day
They Try to Lecture Us on Ethics
They even removed "master" from Microsoft GitHub
The Future of the Web is One Rendering Engine or 'Flavours' of Chrome
The future of the Web does not look bright at all
Best Sites Are Not Optimised for Any Browser, They Work Equally Well With All of Them
Red Hat (IBM) is making rubbish sites
We Don't Do JavaScript and Pages Are Small
Thankfully Gemini Protocol has nothing like JavaScript
'Tech' is Not Technology
Some people use terms like 'Old Tech'
IBM's Debt Rose by Almost 10 Billion Dollars in the Past 6 Months Alone
The "hey hi" circus is coming to an end
Yes, Master
Gaslighting by actual racists
Microsoft Bribes and Buys Politicians to Tell Europe What to Do About Free Software (Which It's Attacking)
Microsoft: we speak for the thing that we are attacking! Follow the money...
Making Backups Quickly and Reliably
Backups are imperative, more so in an age of uncertainty, unpredictable weather, and worsening standards (quality of products going down while prices go up)
Techrights Investigation: Estimating the Point in Time LinuxIac Turned Into LLM Slop (Part of the Time)
Bobby Borisov got lazy
10th Month, Ten Weeks From Now, at Ten AM
In Wentworth Institute of Technology in Boston
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Thursday, July 24, 2025
IRC logs for Thursday, July 24, 2025
A Nadella Memo Distracts From Microsoft's Cheapening Of the Workforce
Right now the "MSM" (mainstream media) is flooded/overwhelmed by garbage pieces that relay lies for Nadella
Vanishing Faces of GNU/Linux
Free software projects do not depend on any one person or company to still exist
Microsoft Says It Lost 400 Million Windows Users, Now It's Waiting for GNU/Linux to Stop Booting on 'Old' PCs
When it comes to Windows, Microsoft is fully aware of the issue and statements it made earlier this summer suggest it lost 400 million Windows users
Slopwatch: LinuxTechLab, linuxsecurity.com, LinuxIac, and More
Also: The Register's Microsoft agenda (new editor)
Gemini Links 25/07/2025: Gemtext Aware Titan Editor and Gemini Protocol Comeback
Links for the day
Links 24/07/2025: Convicted Felon Quits UNESCO, "Vibe Coding Goes Wrong", and Signalgate Gets Worse
Links for the day
Gemini Links 24/07/2025: Forgejo Woes and Smolnet Directory Week
Links for the day
Misinformation is Not Intelligence
It's low-grade plagiarism and it fails to show any signs of intelligence
Links 24/07/2025: Storage Tapes Still Kicking, Windows TCO 'on Steroids' (Microsoft-Induced Catastrophes)
Links for the day
Bobby Borisov (LinuxIac) Has Apparently Begun Experimenting With LLM Slop, So We Cannot Trust LinuxIac Anymore
So did LinuxIac become a slopfarm? Maybe not yet, but it's getting there
Informa TechTarget's ITProToday is Becoming a Slopfarm Generated by Microsoft Chatbots
Busted.
'Tech' Gimmicks Are for Advertising, Not for Usability
In the case of Microsoft, they latched onto slop
BetaNews Sacked Brian Fagioli and Deleted His Comments, But He Still Tries to Use the "BetaNews" Brand for Self-Affirmation
Fagioli takes the work of other people
[Meme] Hard to Be a Better Person?
Sooner or later they'll realise that for each pound I spend they need to spend about 1,000 times more
The LLM Con Artists Are Highly Destructive
Who will ever be held accountable for this scam?
Too Bribed by Microsoft to Move to Free Software?
Microsoft lies and Microsoft bribery (in politics)
New US Editor for The Register is a Microsoft Booster
"Avram Piltch has served as US editor for The Register since July 2025."
Microsoft Hiring European Politicians is Another Form of Bribery; There Should be a European Investigation
When Microsoft bribed people in Europe for OOXML (there's no denying this!) a European government delegate said that Microsoft operated like a cult
Reda Demanded That FSF Removes Its Founder, Now Reda Works Directly for Microsoft
A sellout and a traitor, first working for GAFAM, now Microsoft
PCLinuxOS is Raising Money to Support Development After Fire Incident at the Host
PCLinuxOS has not had announcements lately
Speed of the Site Should be Better Now
The "bot attacks" impact the speed of the sister site too
Getting More From AnalogNowhere
Recently we used many images from AnalogNowhere
Microsoft, Microsofters and 'Secure' Boot Shills Already Storming the LWN Report About Expiring Certificate, Shooting the Messenger
LWN has clearly stuck a nerve
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Wednesday, July 23, 2025
IRC logs for Wednesday, July 23, 2025
Disable "Secure" Boot Today (the Only Better Time to Do So Was Yesterday)
Don't trust anything Red Hat tells you about security
Links 23/07/2025: Windows Killed Company After 150+ Years, US Government Mimics Russia's Attacks on the Media
Links for the day
Freedom Generally Wins at the End, History Shows (But It's Constantly Attacked, Too)
At the moment people realise "Linux" (e.g. Android) isn't enough to guarantee any freedoms
Over 3 Months Later Brett Wilson LLP Still Unable to Recruit a Media Lawyer?
"Immediate start", but not found... still unfilled
“Inhumane” and “Disgusting” Mass Layoff Execution, According to Microsoft Staff
The workers are looking for other places to work
The Free Software Foundation (FSF) Has a New Slogan for Its 40th Anniversary
The freedoms are what's most important
Microsoft is Trying to "Pull a Nokia" on GNU/Linux as Desktop/Laptop Platform
We all remember that rather well, don't we?
LLM Slopfarms gbhackers.com, "Cyber Press" and CyberSecurityNews Are Drowning Google News (and Shame on Google for Feeding and Facilitating Them)
All are run by the same people
Links 23/07/2025: Droplets GUI Patent Monopoly Challenge, Nokia Leverages Illegal Patent Court Against Rivals
Links for the day
Gemini Links 23/07/2025: Community in Geminispace and Challenges With Old Computers
Links for the day
Links 23/07/2025: Slop Patents Tackled, Slop Copyright Misuses Tackled by Politicians
Links for the day
Our Three Lawsuits Against Microsofters Are About to Become a Lot More Relevant to GNU/Linux
The Master will easily understand why Garrett has been attacking me since 2012
Links 23/07/2025: Retreating From Transparency on Jeffrey Epstein, We No Longer Have Press Freedom
Links for the day
Gemini Links 23/07/2025: Piano and Food
Links for the day
New and Old
On Ageism in Tech
Slop Is Not Intelligence and It Does Not Enhance Productivity
Like voice dictation, which cannot tell the difference between "sheet" and "shit"
EPO Crimes Are Spreading to the British Court System
Society is now paying the price for failing to tackle crimes at the EPO
It's Time to Dump SharePoint and Here's What to Use Instead
Nextcloud, ownCloud, Bookstack, MediaWiki, and MediaGoblin
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Tuesday, July 22, 2025
IRC logs for Tuesday, July 22, 2025
Brett Wilson LLP Has Gone Silent
Sometimes silence says more than nothing at all
Slopwatch: LinuxSecurity, Planet Ubuntu, and LinuxTechLab
some slopfarms show no remorse and they don't value their reputation at all
Links 23/07/2025: Book Bans, Storms, and Kangaroo Court for Patents Commits More Unlawful Acts of Overreach
Links for the day