Bonum Certa Men Certa

Patent Attorneys Still Insult Judges Because Their Clients, Notably Patent Trolls, Hate 35 U.S.C. €§ 101 (and Courts Are Correctly Applying It)

Judges have become 'dangerous' for the same reason peacemakers are 'dangerous'

The profit motive



Summary: The Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (CAFC) and the Patent Trial and Appeal Board's (PTAB) judges still receive scorn, mockery and disdain from people who make a living out of lawsuits; it has become a stain on the reputation of law firms -- a simple fact they're incapable of comprehending or unwilling to grasp

THE new Director of the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) likes to ignore the Federal Circuit or cherry-pick only decisions which suit his personal agenda. He also routinely mocks/belittles 35 U.S.C. €§ 101, hence the highest US court. He's mostly supported by a ranting bunch of lawyers/attorneys like himself. Michael Borella, for instance, has just unleashed this latest complaint about 35 U.S.C. €§ 101, offering tips/pointers for bypassing it. "Opening scene," he declared, "our intrepid patent attorney arrives early at her office for a productive day at work. With morning coffee sitting next to her monitor, she opens her email. She finds a few messages from clients and colleagues, as well as a new office action from the USPTO. Curious, she opens the Office action and scans through it, only to find that it contains yet another 35 U.S.C. €§ 101 rejection applying the dreaded Electric Power Group LLC v. Alstom S.A. decision."



"These people dread PTAB because PTAB reduces the number of patents and limits the scope of acceptable patents."Good. Get a real job. David Boundy (Cambridge Technology Law) has also just written for this site. After a bunch of PTAB-hostile blog posts and articles he claims: "My article shows that lapses of administrative law are not confined to Gil Hyatt (a petition for rehearing of Hyatt v. PTO is currently pending, as discussed on Patently-O (see "Agency Bad Guidance Practices at the Patent and Trademark Office: a Billion Dollar Problem"), nor are lapses confined to individual examiners."

In our previous articles which mentioned Boundy (e.g. [1, 2]) we rebutted his claims, taking note of his financial motivations. These people dread PTAB because PTAB reduces the number of patents and limits the scope of acceptable patents. Anne Cullen, for instance, has just noted that "PTAB Cuts Some Huawei Patent Claims In Samsung Fight" and to quote what's not behind paywall:

The Patent Trial and Appeal Board has handed a partial win to Samsung in a dispute over three Huawei cellular network patents, chucking all of the challenged claims...


This is very typical. They re-evaluate the examination.

Thanks to the Patent Trial and Appeal Board's (PTAB) inter partes reviews (IPRs) the patent troll SMTM Technology may soon lose its sole 'business': patent lawsuits. With a "patent challenged as likely invalid," Jain stated 4-5 days ago:

On December 17, 2018, Unified filed a petition for inter partes review (IPR) against U.S. Patent 8,958,853, owned and asserted by SMTM Technology, LLC, an NPE. The ‘853 patent, directed to automatically causing a mobile device to enter into an inactive mode when the mobile device is being used in a moving vehicle, has been asserted in district court litigation against Apple and Microsoft.


Here's another chance to win a thousand bucks by helping to squash a questionable US patent:

On December 20, 2018, Unified added a $1,000 contest to PATROLL seeking prior art for US Patent No. 8553831 owned by Feng Ma. The '831 patent, generally relates to a computed tomography imaging system used for medical diagnoses.


Last but not least, a patent troll called General Patent Corp. faces another (more recent) challenge:

On December 20, 2018, the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) instituted trial on all challenged claims in an IPR filed by Unified against U.S. Patent 9,253,239 owned by Bradium Technologies, LLC, a General Patent Corp. subsidiary and NPE. As in its recent institutions against Realtime Adaptive Streaming and Mobility Workx, the Board once again rejected arguments that Unified’s members are real parties-in-interest in view of the Federal Circuit’s ruling in Applications in Internet Time, LLC v. RPX. The '239 patent, directed to a "Optimized image delivery over limited bandwidth communication channels," is not actively involved in district court litigation.


All the above are IPRs and these typically target patent trolls. Unfortunately, Steven Seidenberg has just come out again with loaded headlines, akin to those from climate change deniers. To quote:

Two recent academic papers examine whether Non-Practicing Entities (NPEs) deserve their reputation as patent trolls – but the papers reach conflicting conclusions. As discussed in the first part of this article, a paper published by Stanford’s Hoover Institution found that 26 publicly-listed NPEs invest in R&D and do little harm to America’s high tech sector. These findings, however, are less significant than they appear. Another paper, published by Harvard Business School (HBS), found that NPEs do on average behave as patent trolls. How important – and trustworthy – are the HBS findings?


"NPEs" and "patent trolls" are the same thing; they're synonymous. They exist for nothing but lawsuits/extortion.

""NPEs" and "patent trolls" are the same thing; they're synonymous. They exist for nothing but lawsuits/extortion."The other day Janal Kalis took note of a software patent's invalidation ("US Pat 9516045, Resisting the spread of unwanted code and data; Alice/101 Kill by Dist. Ct. Affirmed by Fed.Cir.") only for a patent trolls' attorney (Mr. Gross) to lose his mind and attack the judges ("Another terrible, bogus, illogical interpretation of 101 by the CAFC; I wonder if the fact that there was no 101 rejection at the PTO during prosecution affected their thinking? [...] Taranto says that "filtering in content" is not a distinction over "filtering out content" and therefore is just abstract even as it is a clear computer function http://www.cafc.uscourts.gov/sites/default/files/opinions-orders/18-1407.Opinion.12-20-2018.pdf … Amazing how he goes out of way to trivialize technical distinctions when it suits his agenda [...] Only in CAFC bizarro-land could physical operation - breaking an electronic file into pieces, and sorting conforming/non-conforming content- be considered as NOT directed to improving computer functionality. We're being ruled by techno-illiterati http://www.cafc.uscourts.gov/sites/default/files/opinions-orders/18-1407.Opinion.12-20-2018.pdf … [...] I'm convinced Judge Taranto is responsible for more than 90% of the mess concerning 101 at CAFC: http://www.cafc.uscourts.gov/sites/default/files/opinions-orders/18-1407.Opinion.12-20-2018.pdf … his opinions are arbitrary, illogical and results oriented; his attempted distinction of Finjan is completely technically incorrect...").

"The bottom line is, trolls are often litigation proxies working at the behest of other entities."Mr. Gross is supporting trolls, for whom he writes articles. His defense of Microsoft trolls like Finjan is hardly surprising either (Finjan is mentioned 4 times in page 4 of this decision).

Speaking of Microsoft trolls, Keith Bergelt from the Open Invention Network has just recalled Microsoft's funding for SCO (Microsoft also funded Finjan). To quote:

Symbolically and functionally it’s extremely significant. The Open Invention Network (OIN) was formed in the wake of the SCO litigation against IBM, Red Hat and SUSE/Novell. SCO sued claiming to have Unix related functionality that was relevant to Linux.

This litigation was quietly funded by Microsoft, lasted several years and went nowhere. In the end, there was no liability and no culpability for the alleged infringements


The bottom line is, trolls are often litigation proxies working at the behest of other entities. It is a shell game. To argue that they don't exist or that their patents do no harm is very dodgy an attitude/approach.

Maybe one day these trolls-friendly attorneys will regret what they said; this is why we need to keep this stuff well documented, properly preserved.

Recent Techrights' Posts

Coming Soon: Microsoft Fake Results, Mass Layoffs, and Silence About All the People Microsoft Pressured to "Quit" (So That They Don't Get Counted as Layoffs)
there will be more mass layoffs
Speed of GNU/Linux
The media seldom speaks of the dangers of "proprietary software"
Proprietary Windows Versus "Linux" News (Trying to Keep People on Windows, Never Exploring GNU/Linux)
Good editors know better how to recognise threats and not give them lip service
Ensuring That Every Computer User Anywhere in the World Can Take Control of All His or Her Computers
We must fight the people who attack general-purpose computing, in particular those who push this agenda very aggressively inside Linux
Gemini Links 28/04/2025: Autism and Structural Navigation
Links for the day
What Happened to the Open Source Initiative (OSI) Elections: The Purge, the Cover-up, and the Witch-hunts
OSI has gone "full Microsoft"
 
China is Already Culling GAFAM (Not Just Microsoft Windows)
OS monoculture or "OS hegemony" may be coming to an end
The "Telephone Operating System in the Vatican" is 95 Years Old, Vatican Moved to GNU/Linux
Maybe Microsoft is down to zero already
If Tesla Shares (and Alleged Value) Fell 55% (From $489 to $222) in a Few Months Maybe It's Not Worth Anything At All (It's Just Gambling)
Tesla swasticars have turned from a "status symbol" into a "public embarrassment" and cause for casual humiliation
Chromebooks' Adoption in Sweden No Longer Depends on Schools
School breaks are when classrooms are shut
No, IBM is Not Investing $150 Billion in the US and It Doesn't Even Have That Kind of Money
Here we go again... media as a vehicle of lobbying and misinformation
Leak: The EPO's General Consultative Committee (GCC) Does Not Consult Staff on Crucial Matters and Bypasses the Administrative Council (AC) to Do Illegal Things
violations against the EPO's very staff
New Leaks Coming Soon, We Maintain 100% Record of Successful Resistance to Censorship
We won't be told what we can and cannot say (especially when it's true)
Central African Republic (CAR): Vista 11 is Only ~0.2% Market Share
99.8% to go!
BSD and GNU/Linux Replaced Microsoft in Secure Servers, All Microsoft Has Left is LLM Slop for Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt (FUD)
the FUD machine never rests
Gemini Links 28/04/2025: A Simple Task Tracking and Auto-Prioritization Tool and Other Programs
Links for the day
Links 28/04/2025: Canada's Election, Pakistan-India Conflict
Links for the day
Glue Inside Your Pizza (or Why People Will Get Fed Up With Slop)
People are given "answers" from non-intelligence word dumpsters
Links 28/04/2025: Cyberattacks Happening, Chatbots Disappointing, and "Free Speech Under Fire"
Links for the day
Phone Adoption Very Low in Vatican, Windows Usage Fell Nonetheless
Even in places where people still use desktops/laptops most of the time (and have access to these) Windows is gradually losing ground
GNU/Linux 9% in Cuba, Vista 11 Waning, Android Dominant
Microsoft has pretty much lost Cuba
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Sunday, April 27, 2025
IRC logs for Sunday, April 27, 2025
In 24 Countries Observed by statCounter Vista 11 is Still Less Than a Quarter of Windows Users Despite All Other Versions Being 'Expired'
They ought to move to GNU/Linux
Links 27/04/2025: Pope Goodbyes, "Politics of Fear", Slop Redux and More Google Shutdowns (Google Debt Had Grown This Year)
Links for the day
Links 27/04/2025: Serenity Dialectics, Hockey Jersey Ethics, and More
Links for the day
Links 27/04/2025: Death of Nest Thermostats, Death of Metaverse
Links for the day
Links 27/04/2025: Projects Workflow and Discovering Technology
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Saturday, April 26, 2025
IRC logs for Saturday, April 26, 2025
Microsoft Isn't on the Map in USSR
To them, it's either Google or Yandex
In Central America Windows Became a Small Force
These are countries where Windows used to have well over 95% of the "market"
What's Very Vexing to GAFAM, EPO and Others Is That It's Incredibly Hard to Censor Us (and Nobody Ever Successfully Did That Before)
resist, do not capitulate
Site May be Even Faster Now
It basically takes less than a tenth of a second to serve the page
Receiving SLAPPs and Collecting Them Like Trophies (the SLAPPs Always Fail)
People who file lawsuits bring even more attention to themselves (or to embarrassing statements about them)
Year of GNU/Linux on the Laptop?
It's not happening only in Lenovo
What People Must Understand About the Open Source Initiative (OSI)
some facts about the Open Source Initiative (OSI)
Many of the Scandals Are Interconnected (Overlapping People and Corporations)
We're only getting started
More Copyright Lawsuits Against LLM Slop Providers and Suppliers of LLM Slopfarms Would Benefit Society
It's not just bad for the Web and for society; it's also legally dangerous
Links 26/04/2025: General Assassinated in the Town of Balashikha, US Promoting Seafloor Mining
Links for the day
Links 26/04/2025: Facebook Layoffs Again, Remembering What's Real, and Say No to Mass Surveillance
Links for the day
Links 26/04/2025: NOAA Budget Cuts and "Dog Days Ahead"
Links for the day
In defence of JD Vance, death of Pope Francis
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
Three Years in Prison for Disney Employee’s ‘Menu Hacking’: The Economic Fallout of Digital Menus
Reprinted with permission from Ryan Farmer
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Friday, April 25, 2025
IRC logs for Friday, April 25, 2025