Bonum Certa Men Certa

Invalid Patents 'Great Again'?

Andrei Iancu putting his longtime advocacy of software patents into practice (even if it's illegal)

Disappointed



Summary: Disappointed patent recipients to come? The USPTO has apparently resumed mass allowance of bogus patents which are abstract and would therefore fail 35 U.S.C. €§ 101 tests in American courts

TWO blog posts caught our attention yesterday and we've already mentioned these in Daily Links. But these merit futher debate. They show that the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) disregards 35 U.S.C. €§ 101, dis-empowers the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) where inter partes reviews (IPRs) remove fake patents, and leaves the Federal Circuit -- an actual court -- to clean up the mess.



"It's an attack on the legal mechanisms -- similar to what we've been witnessing at the EPO."Shades of António Campinos (and prior to him Battistelli) at the European Patent Office (EPO). They're using the "hey hi" (AI) hype to justify abstract software patents [1], the judges are being besieged [2], and as a result more patents are being granted [3] -- irrespective of underlying legitimacy.

As we put it yesterday in Daily Links, the USPTO "lowered patent quality again (by granting loads of illegal patents such as abstract ones, using ridiculous loopholes)" and "software patents booster Michael Borella (no, he's no coder) [wrote about] the Office cherry-picking PTAB cases so as to continue granting illegal, fake, bogus, laughable patents..."

According to Unified Patents, PTAB proceedings were down by a quarter last year, just as Iancu had planned and hoped. It's an attack on the legal mechanisms -- similar to what we've been witnessing at the EPO.

Related/contextual items from the news:



  1. USPTO Makes Ex Parte Linden An Informative PTAB Decision

    Moreover, the Examiner found that the claim also fails under the second step of Alice. To that point, the Examiner wrote that the claimed invention "[d]oes not amount to significantly more since it is just decoding a transcription using a mathematical formula or relationship."

    [...]

    This case is of note because it is one of the first in which the PTAB has confirmed that a machine learning invention can be non-abstract. While the USPTO's example 39 has suggested that one can claim a machine learning procedure without reciting any of the underlying mathematics, a mental process, or a method of organizing human activity, this decision affirms that is the case. The PTAB also seemed persuaded, based on statements made in the specification, that the claimed invention entails an improvement over previous techniques used to address the problem domain.

    Of course, a district court or the Federal Circuit might agree or disagree. But, at the very least, the reasoning herein provides a roadmap for claim drafting and prosecution that may situate an invention to pass €§ 101 muster in the USPTO.



  2. 2019 Patent Dispute Report - Year in Review

    Keeping with the trend of previous years, the volume of new patent disputes decreased yet again in 2019. However, the number of patent disputes involving Non-Practicing Entities (NPEs) increased by 4% compared to 2018, perhaps fueled in part by the sharp decrease in new PTAB petitions and low institution rates.

    Highlights:

    - The number of new PTAB proceedings (IPRs, CBMs, and PGRs) is down 23% compared to 2018. Meanwhile, the PTAB’s institution rate in IPRs has remained steady with trial being instituted in 62% of proceedings in 2019.



  3. How Many Patents Issued in 2019?

    New Record – 354,507 Utility Patents issued by the USPTO in 2019. The decade (2010s) also outstripped any other decade by leaps and bounds.

Recent Techrights' Posts

The Free Software Foundation (FSF) Has Un-cancelled the Best People, Just in Time for the Big 4-0
Mr. Oliva should have been there all along (since 2019)
Most "Modern" Technology Makes You Slower and Dumber
Because proprietary software makes you worse off
"What Comes After Free Software?" Wrongly Insinuates We've Reached the Goal (Prison is Not the Goal)
The oil tycoons use similar tactics against environmentalists, giving them fake "wins"
Making More Work Space
I learned the hard way that less is more in circumstances where more means distraction
MAHA is a Lie, Public Officials Never Valued Citizens' Health (They Still Value Private Businesses, Their Sponsors)
Reject demagogues
New Techrights Turns 2
Today starts the third year of the SSG-based Techrights
What Scares Them the Most is Independent News Sites That They Cannot Control and Censor
Wikileaks was a good example of this
If You Don't Control Your Online Platform, Then Someone Else is Controlling You
be (or become) independent
 
Links 23/09/2025: Japan Limits Uses of Skinnerboxes ('Smartphones') With Toxic "Apps", Fentanylware (TikTok) Tapped by "MAGAts"
Links for the day
Brett Wilson LLP Has Just Been Sued (by Their Own Clients!)
Vladimir and Alla Yanpolsky sued Brett Wilson LLP in BL-2025-001167 at the end of last week
The Complaint About Brett Wilson LLP - Part II - UK SLAPPs for Americans, SLAPPs for Profit
Brett Wilson LLP has a track record of this kind
Mayday: Optus emergency calling crisis
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
Links 23/09/2025: Massive Data Breach, Slop Versus Productivity, and Vista 11 Update Breaks Things Again
Links for the day
Code of Censorship
Extortion is peace
Free Software Foundation (FSF) Has a New Press Kit for the Weekend After Next Weekend (40th Anniversary)
miles better than social [sic] media [sic] quips, moderated by narcissists and oil tycoons.
Microsoft Had Two Waves of Mass Layoffs This Month (That We Know of) and It'll Get Worse for Microsoft Soon
Will the axe fall again by month's end?
Gemini Links 23/09/2025: Happy Equinox, Photronic Arts, and Perception Cognition
Links for the day
Lessons We've Learned After 17 Years of American Hosting
GAFAM is "all-in" with the "Trump agenda"
Back to Normal Now, We Plan to Do More In-Depth Series (or Multi-part Stories)
Articles (or series thereof) that contain philosophy are important to us
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Monday, September 22, 2025
IRC logs for Monday, September 22, 2025
Microsoft Media is Panicking Amid Mass Layoffs Every Month, H-1B Fees, and "Seattle’s Tech Scene in Trouble"
In "late stage Microsoft", copyleft becomes proprietary
The Next Wave of IBM/Red Hat Layoffs Being Discussed Already
Red Hat is sort of disappearing the way Tivoli did
Oracle Started This Year With Slop. Then It Stopped.
Passing fads are like this
Distros That Run on PCs Made 20 Years Ago and Don't Use Systemd
Betas for now
The Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA) Has a Policy on Racism and Sexism
In then future we'll show the misogyny and racial slurs
The Complaint About Brett Wilson LLP - Part I - Abusing British Women on Behalf of American Men Who Abuse American Women
Transparency is important to us, so we've decided to make this series
Slopwatch: Google News and the Evident Slopfarm Infestation
This is what people get about Linux when they query Google for Linux
Links 22/09/2025: Murdochs Might Join Fentanylware (TikTok) 'Investors' (Masters), United Kingdom Recognises Palestinian Statehood
Links for the day
Gemini Links 22/09/2025: Esperanto Music History and Apps For Android
Links for the day
Links 22/09/2025: More American 'Censorship' (Retaliation for Journalism), Cheeto "Might Be Losing His Race Against Time"
Links for the day
The Blob Slop
Give me more words, give me some text
The 50-Pound Note Experiment and the "War on Cash"
Britain is actually seeing a rebound in cash payments, and it's not a temporary phenomenon
Slopwatch: Blaming the Victims for Microsoft's Failures and Plagiarising Phoronix
That's what Google has been reduced to: slop and slopfarms
Links 22/09/2025: Breaches, Windows TCO, and Arrests
Links for the day
Gemini Links 22/09/2025: Rabbit Hole and DeGoogling Fairphone
Links for the day
Links 22/09/2025: Russian War Planes Invade NATO Airspace While Dihydroxyacetone Man Escalates Attack on Free Speech Because of Critics
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Sunday, September 21, 2025
IRC logs for Sunday, September 21, 2025
Links 21/09/2025: "Hey Hi" (Hype) Under Fire, Fakes Identified; Tesla Burns Family
Links for the day
Google's Software is Malware and Malware in Mobile Devices
Originally posted by Rob Musial
Links 20/09/2025: Hegemony Coming to a Close, Luigi Mangione Ruled Not Terrorist
Links for the day
Gemini Links 21/09/2025: "Charlie Kirk Was a Hateful Piece of Shit" and Slop Code Attempted by Microsofter
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Saturday, September 20, 2025
IRC logs for Saturday, September 20, 2025