Bonum Certa Men Certa

Clouding Abstract Software Patents Using Acronyms and Buzzwords

Summary: The practice of obscuring software patents using fashionable trends from the media carries on in Europe and the United States; the main question is, will judges and examiners see past this fog?

THE European Patent Office (EPO) and the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) have got some overlap in the fashion in which they bypass the EPC and the SCOTUS Alice decision or 35 U.S.C. €§ 101, respectively. The common denominator is marketing, buzzwords, and hype.



Recently we have been writing a great deal about how the EPO grants software patents in Europe in spite of the rules. Not only do courts say "no" to such patents; they're in violation of the EPC and management of the EPO should thus be reprimanded.

"The common denominator is marketing, buzzwords, and hype."A new EPO tweet said: "Today is the last day you can register for our Patenting #Blockchain event in The Hague."

Those are just algorithms. Over in the US, the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) keeps demolishing such patents, sometimes when they're still mere applications. Exceptions to the rule are rare and Janal Kalis keeps looking for them; he has just found this one: "The PTAB Reversed an Examiner’s 101 Rejection of Claims for Video Content Networks: https://e-foia.uspto.gov/Foia/RetrievePdf?system=BPAI&flNm=fd2017007967-10-31-2018-1 …"

"Over in the US, the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) keeps demolishing such patents, sometimes when they're still mere applications."Also this one: "The PTAB Partially Reversed a 101 Rejection of Claims in a GE Patent Application for Monitoring Turbine Clearance: https://e-foia.uspto.gov/Foia/RetrievePdf?system=BPAI&flNm=fd2018002958-10-31-2018-1 …"

One can assume that in all other cases PTAB rejected a decision to grant or affirmed a rejection after an examiner had decided on the matter. Kalis, being a vocal patent maximalist, is looking for exceptions like the above.

How about the following tweet? "Not Surprisingly," it said, "there are more and more #patents filed around #AI. The numbers are even larger than those in this Wired article: Companies Rush to Patent AI Tech https://www.wired.com/story/despite-pledging-openness-companies-rush-to-patent-ai-tech/ …"

That's just because more people now label their stuff, especially in the context of patents -- in order to bypass Section 101 -- "AI". It's the same for "smart", "cloud" and other fluff du jour...

"...more people now label their stuff, especially in the context of patents -- in order to bypass Section 101 -- "AI"."And speaking of "AI", here is what the EPO has just advertised. It's an event that promotes illicit software patents (just calling them "AI") and it says: "Panellists at the EPO’s Patenting #ArtificialIntelligence conference identified three types of AI patenting. More on what they said here: http://bit.ly/AIpatents pic.twitter.com/1HbniC3Td1"

On the "AI" hype Benjamin Henrion (FFII) wrote: "That means they can pay for lobbyists and lawyers to push lawmakers or courts to support their favored approach - which seems to be making all kinds of AI techniques broadly patentable."

It should be noted that patents on software are generally rejected almost worldwide; such patents are de facto dead everywhere but China, where even courts would likely accept these. Chinese patent law is different. As PCK Perry + Currier Inc Currier + Kao LLP put it earlier this week, in Canada a new "case serves as a reminder for patentees that abstract ideas are not patentable." Just like in the US down south...

"It should be noted that patents on software are generally rejected almost worldwide; such patents are de facto dead everywhere but China, where even courts would likely accept these."Michael Borella, also writing earlier this week, was promoting patents on software again. "For the majority of the existence of computers," he wrote, "programmers wrote functions that were designed to take some input and produce a desired output. Machine learning inverts this paradigm."

This is not true. They train classifiers, don't write code. There's code, written by humans, that uses data to make decisions. When people with no clue or experience in programming (let alone particular disciplines or areas of software development) write about software patents it's bound to get embarrassing, misleading, i.e. pure propaganda. Such patents are abstract and are thus to be invalidated by courts, no matter what you call them (ML boils down to statistics/mathematics).

"Well, "ICT" is another one of those buzzwords that typically allude to software."Of course we could go on and on with other new acronyms and buzzwords; the EPO recently made up or brought up "SDV". Yes, then there are all those abstract patents or bogus software patents "on a car". The EPO wrote: "At the EPO, about half of the top 25 patent applicants for self-driving vehicle innovation operate in ICT, and the other half in transportation or related industries."

Well, "ICT" is another one of those buzzwords that typically allude to software.

Recent Techrights' Posts

Project 2030 to Cover How "Project 2025"-Styled Anti-Media Zealots From America Targeted Techrights and Tux Machines
The common denominator is also their attacks on women
Brett Wilson LLP Failed to Meet Deadlines Set by Judge 7 Months Earlier, Tried to Ruin Our Holiday, Then Had the Audacity to Ask Us for Over 3,000 Pounds for Its Own Lateness
As a matter of principle we will never respond to assassin while we are on holiday
Americans Attacking British Sites Only Months After They Leave America
We find it kind of funny if not ironic that this site, originally an American site, got legal harassment only from Americans and only months after it had moved to the UK
Despite Losing Over a Quarter Million Dollars a Year Software in the Public Interest (SPI) Gives Helping Hand to Libreboot
SPI's financial state depends a lot on its public image or its reputation
If You Want to Know the Future, Listen to the Free Software Foundation (FSF) and Andy Farnell
We're sure the FSF will have plenty of its own output
 
Brett Wilson LLP Seem to Have Had Only One Litigation Client in 2025, He Was Previously Charged, Just Like the Serial Strangler From Microsoft (Whom They Now Represent)
Karma is superstition, regulators are not
On Claims That After Bluewashing Red Hat Will Increasingly Become an Indian Company
Discussed this week (long and detailed)
Slopwatch: Google Helps Plagiarism and Sends Traffic to Ripoff Artists
That Google as a company helps spamfarms is noteworthy
Links 18/09/2025: A Taliban Ban on Internet Access and Troubled US Job Market
Links for the day
Gemini Links 18/09/2025: Computer Literacy and Accessing Alhena's Database
Links for the day
Links 18/09/2025: US War on Media (Truth Banned, Cancel Culture by the Hard Right), NYT Chief Executive Warns Cheeto is Deploying ‘Anti-press Playbook'
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Wednesday, September 17, 2025
IRC logs for Wednesday, September 17, 2025
Slopwatch: Fake Articles, Fake Text, Fake Images, Negative Slant on "Linux"
Google News has lost its value; the signal-to-noise ratio has fallen off a cliff
Gemini Links 17/09/2025: Relax-and-Recover on Proxmox and New Smolweb File Transfer Service
Links for the day
Fact: EFF Got Corrupted by Corporate Money. Microsoft Lunduke (Political Noise): The Issue With EFF is, It Kills Babies.
Microsoft Lunduke - as usual - finds a way to make it about abortions
Pacing Publication Up a Bit
The news cycles have gotten rather light and slow
Links 17/09/2025: Power Outages, Digital Controls, and Attacks on the Mainstream Media (by Insecure and Corrupt Dictators)
Links for the day
Gemini Links 17/09/2025: Flashing LineageOS and ROOPHLOCH
Links for the day
Links 17/09/2025: Long COVID Study, "Exposing Pegasus", and Chatbots Exposing Sensitive Data
Links for the day
Links 17/09/2025: Secret Settlement for Internet Archive and Google’s LLM Slop Summaries Attracting Lawsuits
Links for the day
The True Cost of 'Generative Models'
Funded and promoted by the companies that profit from the waste
'Big Slop' Attacks Contemporary Information/Knowledge and Creative Works, 'Big Copyright' (Cartel) Attacks the Old
Someone at IA will hopefully "blow the whistle" on what they actually agreed
Why We Find It Difficult to Trust Rust
A comparison between C/C++ and Rust
Slop Nihilism is Funded by Big Oil
Eventually human civilisation will destroy itself
Watching the OSI: Our Series Will Carry on Irrespective of the Chief's 'Resignation'
the OSI isn't even the real guardian of the term "Open Source"
Professor Eben Moglen Recovering From Open Heart Surgery
From his public pages (this is not secret)
Just What LibreOffice Needs? Another Language? (Rust)
what's all this concern about memory safety?
Many Microsoft Managers Are Leaving
"Hey hi" chaff or chaff about "hey hi" cannot eternally distract from the difficulties inside the company
There Are Red Hat (IBM) Layoffs, But Google News is Infested With Slopfarms
It contributes a lot to misinformation and it encourages plagiarism
Tomorrow, Microsoft's Tim Anderson's 'The Register MS' Offshoot Will Have Been Inactive for 2 Months (There's Also a Slop Problem)
We've already caught The Register MS using LLM slop for articles
Microsoft's Chief Legal Officer Leaves Microsoft After Nearly 30 Years
And not retiring
Even Windows Users Are Having Problems With "Secure Boot"
When it comes to security - Microsoft strives for the very opposite
Another Competition Crime of Microsoft, Long Facilitated and Advocated by a Bad Actor, Who is Funded by a Third Party to Commit Extortion Against People Who Have Correctly and Repeatedly Warned About It for Over 13 Year
We must always go back to the core issues
3 More Reasons to Replace Mozilla Firefox With LibreWolf
Thankfully there are de-enshittified versions of Firefox
USA Not a Place for Free Speech
In America, as in the US, the attacks seem more enhanced or advanced these days
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Tuesday, September 16, 2025
IRC logs for Tuesday, September 16, 2025
Links 17/09/2025: Google Layoffs in "Hey Hi" (AI), Perplexity Hit With More "Hey Hi" (Plagiarism) Lawsuits
Links for the day
Gemini Links 17/09/2025: Reclaiming Things in a Digital Age and Moon Phases in CGI
Links for the day
Slopwatch: Google News is Slop, Google News is Plagiarism, Google News is Dying
Google is off the rails
Links 16/09/2025: "The Censorship Alarm Is Ringing in the Wrong Direction" and ASRock Does Microsoft E.E.E. on GNU/Linux
Links for the day
Serious "Breach of Confidentiality of Personal Data" in Europe's Second-Largest Institution, the EPO
Yes, the same EPO that routinely uses "data protection" and "GDPR" as a pretext for hiding or covering up its corruption and white-collar crimes (it even uses that as an excuse for refusing to obey courts' orders)
Adrienne Rockenhaus Says Her Husband Was Arrested for Running Tor and Denied Basic Rights in the United States
the US seems to be getting "russified" in its approach towards Tor
This is What Happens When Microsoft Canonical Lets Decisions on Ubuntu be Made by a Youngster From the British Army (Where He Did Mass Surveillance)
"Is Ubuntu Compromised?"
Back Doored Windows Giving GNU/Linux a Hard Time (Under the Guise of 'Security')
Is this complication intentional? Most likely, yes
Links 16/09/2025: Science, Security, and Conflicts
Links for the day
Gemini Links 16/09/2025: Command-line Options in POSIX Shell and Introducing Acre 0.9
Links for the day
Microsoft 'Secure' Boot Versus Dual Boot With GNU/Linux
they're meant to assume everything is OK
Links 16/09/2025: While Oracle Pretends to be Rich It's Firing About 70 MySQL Workers, "Oracle's Revenge" (Faking Demand With "AI")
Links for the day
Microsoft Has Just Published a New Web Page About "Secure Boot Update Process" (Microsoft Also Admits Issues; PCs Can Stop Booting)
Why was this page issued and published only hours ago?
Microsoft Lunduke: I Spread Hate and Then I Receive Hate
Cry us a river, Microsoft Lunduke
"Use Wayland" Isn't a Bugfix for X (X11 is Still Necessary)
They tell us X is "dead" and we must all be herded into Wayland ASAP
"Disable Secure Boot and Fast Boot. Wipe and Start Over."
At least they didn't say, buy a new computer...
The Oracle Ponzi Scheme
Oracle isn't doing well, but it's nowadays fashionable to say "clown" and "hey hi" to prop up one's stock, even based on nothing at all
The New Head of OSI is an "Hey Hi" (AI) Obsessed Person
when Bryant says "AI" that doesn't mean AI
Taking Out the Battery, Opening Up Your Computer, Just Like a "Normie" Would
At this stage, any person who still says "enable Secure Boot" is misguided or persuaded by companies that sell rootkits
Slopwatch: Serial Sloppers and Slopfarms Still Infesting Google News (Fake 'Articles' About "Linux" Spreading FUD)
searching for "Linux" today yields a lot of FUD
"Governments, local authorities, schools and hospitals can lead by example by procuring only Free Software"
Crossposted from Tux Machines
Cindy Cohn Leaving the Electronic Frontier Foundation While Its Co-founder John Gilmore, Whom She Apparently Helped Oust, Will Celebrate 40 Years of the Free Software Foundation, Inc.
EFF has been busy hoarding GAFAM money, whereas the latter is where all the real activism is done
The Reach of Techrights Has Broadened
We nowadays cover a broader range of issues
"Google is Googlebombing KDE's Project Banana"
So is Google googlebombing KDE's Project Banana? You decide.
Complicating Things for No Actual Benefit, Just Added Risk and More Difficulties Adding GNU/Linux and BSDs
Watch what it's like for people who wish to use BSDs
Some Very Large IRC Networks Are Growing
IRC will turn 38 next year
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Monday, September 15, 2025
IRC logs for Monday, September 15, 2025
Links 16/09/2025: Autumn Party, RPG Planet, and Optical ROOPHLOCH
Links for the day