It’s been a great week for fans of the KDE Plasma desktop environment as the latest release, KDE Plasma 5.22, is now finally available and it is making its way into the software repositories of favorite popular GNU/Linux distributions, including Kubuntu, KDE neon, openSUSE Tumbleweed, Fedora Linux, and Arch Linux.
On top of that, KDE users get the latest KDE Gear and KDE Frameworks software suites with lots of improvements for their favorite apps, as well as a new point release of the powerful Krita digital painting software. You can enjoy these and much more in 9to5Linux’s Linux weekly roundup for June 13th, 2021, below!
Starting this fall, I’ll be pursuing a Masters in Computer Science at Georgia Tech. And just like I did with my recent undergraduate Computer Science coursework, I’m thinking to try using my Chromebook for class. It might be a stretch and I’m not suggesting that a Chromebook is the best tool for this task. But I think Linux on Chromebooks just might get me through the program.
Over the past few posts, I covered the hardware I picked up to setup a small LXD cluster and get it all setup at a co-location site near home. I’ve then gone silent for about 6 months, not because anything went wrong but just because of not quite finding the time to come back and complete this story!
So let’s pick things up where I left them with the last post and cover the last few bits of the network setup and then go over what happened over the past 6 months.
Bill quits Manjaro and comments on documentation. We get more feedback on the Pinebook Pro, questions about browsers, and an additional alternative to LastPass.
In this video, I am going to show an overview of Ubuntu Unity 21.04 and some of the applications pre-installed.
On this episode of This Week in Linux, the KDE team announced the release of KDE Plasma 5.22 and we’ve also got news for KDE’s Plasma Mobile. In App News, we’ll talk about the latest release of the Vivaldi web browser and also an update to the Neo Chat matrix client. Then I’ll tell you about a cool project for touchpad gestures for your Linux desktop experience plus we got some great news from the Collabora team related to Wayland. Then we’ll cover some news from the folks at Purism and later in the show we’ve got some legal news from the Supreme Court. All that and much more on Your Weekly Source for Linux GNews!
Intel named Sapphire Rapids the fourth generation of Xeon processor in 2019, and disclosed support for DDR5, PCIe 5.0, and in-package memory in the years since. But for all that, they’ve never committed to a release schedule.
Last week, Intel submitted a Linux kernel change that rounds off the updates they need to run Sapphire Rapids processors with their in-package memory enabled. In theory, then, Intel is preparing to tape out samples for performance testing.
In-package memory, or in this case, ‘on-package’ memory (each of the four core complexes wears a memory die like a little top hat) is an idea to interpose another layer of memory between the L3 cache and system memory. Sapphire Rapids’ in-package HBM2e will be considerably faster than DDR5; with a little back of a napkin math, maybe five or ten times faster.
While a decade ago Intel's open-source Linux graphics driver engineers resisted TTM at the time and instead devised the Graphics Execution Manager (GEM) for kernel graphics memory management needs in its place, now with discrete graphics cards and dedicated video memory, Intel has been working on making use of TTM memory management for those purposes. With Linux 5.14 the initial bits are going to be there for using TTM by the Intel driver when running with discrete graphics having local memory.
Last month I wrote about Intel working on TTM integration for discrete video memory management with their forthcoming discrete graphics products. The Intel kernel graphics driver's existing GEM memory management code remains and no change of code path for existing hardware support.
A number of Intel's open-source projects have been seeing new released this week presumably for making Q2/H1-2021 goals, including two of the networking projects maintained by the company: the ConnMan connection manager and IWD wireless daemon.
IWD 1.15 was released on Saturday as the latest version of this wireless daemon maintained by Intel as an alternative to WPA_Supplicant. With IWD 1.15 there is support for estimating of the VHT RX data report, exporting of daemon information, and supporting FT-over-DS procedures with multiple BSS... Namely just low-level changes for this WiFi daemon.
The internet has problems, let's say there are 50 million weblogs, and it's going up, our focus here is on a new and efficient way to keep up with all the cool stuff that's happening on the Internet.
What we are talking about is using a single website that becomes your home for reading all the new stuff that's coming from your favorite websites.
RSS could be for news, also it could have links to a podcast, links to videos, it could be used for torrents basically anything you can structure into a list of elements along with metadata associated with those elements can be structured into an RSS feed this metadata highly depends on what you're trying to syndicate.
So, I'm going to talk about 10 open-source RSS feed readers for Linux operating system.
YOGA Image Optimizer is a free command line tool to convert and optimize images from various format to JPEG, PNG and WEBP.
Nowadays the majority of a website’s data is typically comprised of images. Large images slow down your web pages which creates a less than optimal user experience. Image optimization refers to the process of delivering high-quality images while keeping the smallest possible size. The result is significant load savings, an improved user experience and increased site visibility.
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If you are a Linux user you definitely need to try YOGA. It is free and open source image optimizer, which is a great choice for any site owner that cares about image optimization and performance. The image compression is very effective and optimized images being a lot smaller in size.
Added difficulty ratings Added getting hints Added optional automatic pencil marks Added playing puzzles entered by player Added printing puzzles Added restarting puzzles Added support for Qt 6 Improved new game interface Improved window spacing Refactored code Removed XPM icon Translation updates: Bulgarian, Lithuanian, Romanian, Russian, Telugu
DNS (Domain Name System) is responsible for translating domain names to IP addresses. It’s designed in 1987 with no security or privacy in mind. By default, DNS queries are not encrypted. They are sent in plain text on the wire and can be exploited by middle entities. For example, the Great Firewall (GFW) of China uses a technique called DNS cache poison to censor the Chinese Internet. (They also use other methods, which are beyond the scope of this article.)
Some years ago I started using geo replication to keep a copy of all the pictures, docs, etc
After being using BitTorrent sync and later resilio sync (even if I didn’t fully liked the idea of it being not open source), I gave up. My NAS with 16 GB of ram, even if a bit older (HP N54L), seemed not to have enough memory to run it, and was constantly swapping.
Checking the list of processes pointed to the rslsync process as the culprit, and apparently the cause is the way it handles the files it controls.
The problem is that even one file is deleted long ago, rslsync does keep it in the database… and in memory. After checking with their support (as I had a family license), the workaround was to remove the folder and create a new one, which in parallel meant having to configure it again on all the systems that used for keeping a copy.
In this tutorial, we will show you how to install ArangoDB on Ubuntu 20.04 LTS. For those of you who didn’t know, ArangoDB is an open-source NoSQL database with an open-source year and a flexible data model for documents, key values ââ¬â¹Ã¢â¬â¹, and graphs. This database is easily managed using the integrated web interface or command-line interface.
This article assumes you have at least basic knowledge of Linux, know how to use the shell, and most importantly, you host your site on your own VPS. The installation is quite simple and assumes you are running in the root account, if not you may need to add ‘sudo‘ to the commands to get root privileges. I will show you the step-by-step installation of ArangoDB on Ubuntu 20.04 (Focal Fossa). You can follow the same instructions for Ubuntu 18.04, 16.04, and any other Debian-based distribution like Linux Mint.
Doom Eternal is the 5th entry in the Doom series developed by id Software and published by Bethesda Softworks. It’s a sequel to Doom (2016) and once again follows Doomguy on his mission to foil the alien Maykr’s plans. In this guide, we’ll show you how to play it on Linux.
Got .HEIC photo images import from your iPhone? You may found that Ubuntu does not open the file format out-of-the-box.
It’s however easy to either enable this file format support or convert it to JPG or PNG image.
Samsung included a lot of bloatware on my Galaxy Note 20 Ultra 5G, and it is not possible to uninstall it using Play Store. However, it is possible to remove this stuff using adb tools. I got rid of the bloatware I don’t want very easily using the Linux version of the adb tools.
The column is a very useful Linux command-line utility that can help you to view a single long list of output data in multiple columns in a terminal. With various options available for a column, you can also use it to format data and do more than just columnating it.
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Did you see the difference column bring? Column simply distributed a single list of output into multiple columns. You can now view all output on a screen at a time without scrolling down.
When you create standard RSA keys with ssh-keygen you end up with a private key in PEM format, and a public key in OpenSSH format. Both have been described in detail in my post Public key cryptography: RSA keys. In 2014, OpenSSH introduced a custom format for private keys that is apparently similar to PEM but is internally completely different. This format is used by default when you create ed25519 keys and it is expected to be the default format for all keys in the future, so it is worth having a look.
While investigating this topic I found a lot of misconceptions and wrong or partially wrong statements on Stack Overflow, so I hope this might be a comprehensive view of what this format is, its relationship with PEM, and the tools that you can use to manipulate it.
I'm not the first programmer to look into this, clearly, and I have to mention two posts that I read before writing this one: OpenSSH ed25519 private key file format written in December 2017 by Peter Lyons and The OpenSSH private key binary format, written in August 2020 by Marin Atanasov Nikolov. I'm sure many others have done this research but these are the resources that I found and I want to say a big thanks to both authors for sharing their findings. I will shamelessly use their results in the following explanation, as I hope others will do with what I'm writing here. Sharing knowledge is one of the best ways to help others.
Please note that all the private keys shown in this post have been trashed after I published it.
Note: as the word "key" can identify several different component of the systems I will describe, I will as much as possible use the words "private key" and "encryption key". The first is the key that we generate to be used in SSH, while the second is a parameter of a (symmetric) encryption algorithm.
Nmap is a free and open-source network discovery and security audit tool. Nmap stands for “Network Mapper“.
Whether you are a network engineer or a penetration tester, Nmap is one of the most important tools in your arsenal.
Sudo allows us to provide superuser privileges to a normal user with restrictions. It allows users to run programs with the privileges of other users. One can configure sudo to give root privileges to specific commands only.
This tutorial helps you to create a new user with Sudo privileges, allow sudo access to the existing accounts or remove sudo privileges from any account.
Slack is a proprietary business communication platform developed by American software company Slack Technologies. Slack offers many IRC-style features, including persistent chat rooms (channels) organized by topic, private groups, and direct messaging.
Although we already have Majnaro Deepin Linux to download and install, however those who already have this Linux and don’t want to reinstall it can manually install Deepin Desktop Environment on their Manajro Linux.
Deepin Desktop environments is a beautiful graphical user interface developed by the Deepuin Linux developers. However, the other users who don’t want to switch to Deepin Linux can manually install DDE on their Linux with few commands whether it is Ubuntu or Arch base Manjaro.
The date command is a command-line utility for displaying or setting date and time in the Linux system. It uses the system default time zone to display the time.
In this article, I will show you 11 examples of how to best use the date command on Linux. To demonstrate the examples below I have used an Ubuntu 21.04 system. As the date command is pre-integrated in all Linux systems we don’t need to install it.
This simple tutorial shows how to add a system tray menu option to switch between Dark and Light system mode in Ubuntu.
By default, the System Settings -> Appearance page offers options to choose Standard, Light, and Dark window colors. It however only apply the app theme.
For system menu, notifications, date and time menu, etc, you have to install user themes extension, and change the Gnome Shell theme individually via Gnome Tweak Tool.
Here I’m going to introduce a new Gnome Shell Extension called ‘Ubuntu Appearance‘. With it, you can toggle fully dark and light mode easily via a few clicks.
Signal is a cross-platform centralized encrypted messaging service developed by the Signal Technology Foundation and Signal Messenger LLC. Users can send one-to-one and group messages, which can include files, voice notes, images and videos. It can also be used to make one-to-one and group voice and video calls, and the Android version can optionally function as an SMS app.
Signal uses standard cellular telephone numbers as identifiers and secures all communications to other Signal users with end-to-end encryption. The apps include mechanisms by which users can independently verify the identity of their contacts and the integrity of the data channel.
In this tutorial, we are going to add a new user in MySQL and grant different types of privileges on a MySQL database.
MySQL server allows us to create numerous user accounts and grant appropriate privileges so that the users can access and manage databases. Once you have MySQL installed on the server, you need to create a database and additional user accounts.
Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP) is a protocol that allows users to access desktops on remote systems. The XRDP service provides you a graphical login to the remote machines using Microsoft RDP (ââ¬â¹Remote Desktop Protocol). The XRDP also supports two-way clipboard transfer (text, bitmap, file), audio redirection, and drive redirection (mount local client drives on the remote machines).
This tutorial helps you to Install XRDP Server (Remote Desktop) on a Fedora Linux system. Also provides the instructions to install a Desktop environment on your system.
It’s not quite the ideal state, but Quake is still alive and kicking these days in some official form. Quake Champions is still around and Bethesda and id Software are still supporting it with new content. With Quake crossing its 25th anniversary as a franchise this year, Bethesda and id Software are celebrating the beloved arena shooter with a new “25 Days of Quake” celebration. It’s kicking off with the launch of a Classic Ranger skin in Quake Champions, as well as further premium cosmetics.
So just about a day ago, the team behind the Smach Z project has finally sent out an official message regarding the situation they are in. Previously, we knew about the state of the project via some messages to the backers’ forums, or via Reddit when refunds were issued, but now this is the real thing.
For the longest time, Linux was the ugly duckling of the gaming world with very few games made for the platform and even fewer games being ported. Thankfully, that changed with Proton, a Linux compatibility tool built by Valve that essentially emulates Windows to run Windows games.
As with all emulation software, it's not perfect, and the ProtonDB website helps give potential Linux users a qualitative score for how well Proton gets things to run. However, Valve is about to give Proton an extremely powerful tool that might make Linux gaming way more viable.
Emulating video game systems and computers is one of the things that the Raspberry Pi has always been good at, right from the start. You can do this with your own Raspberry Pi using RetroPie emulators. RetroPie is easily one of the best all-in-one plug-in-play retro gaming solutions. Even with systems that don’t work flawlessly, it’s not too difficult to tweak them to work right.
KDE Frameworks 5.83 is a monthly update and brings numerous bug fixes and improvements to make your KDE Plasma and Apps experience more stable, reliable, and enjoyable. There are over 220 changes included in this update, which is a highly recommended update for all users using the KDE Plasma desktop.
Highlights include the ability to select folders in the folder selector dialog in Flatpak apps, as well as other apps that use XDG portals, new KMyMoney icon, new Goodvibes icon, support for blur effect behind plasmoids, a fix for a memory leak that occurred when updating Cover images in the ASF (WMA) file format, as well as a fix for a regression that caused the Dolphin file manager to crash when searching for files.
One year of KWinFT meant a lot of change and a lot to learn. While there were many uncertainties in the beginning, now in its second year KWinFT's future is more clear than ever before. Let's take a look back at the beginnings, what you can expect with the recent release and a short teaser at what lies ahead.
Heated Beginnings
The project was officially launched on 15 April 2020 by a post on this blog. As you can read back in this announcement my motives were mostly centered around the ability to move quicker with less compromise for other stakeholders, improving the development process itself and being more open in reaching out to other projects and communities than KWin traditionally has been.
This gained some attention and people tried KWinFT out, which has been available on Manjaro from the very beginning and also quickly afterwards in the Arch User Repository. It is awesome that many of these people are still around today testing new versions and giving feedback.
The first few months after KWinFT went public I concentrated mostly on a fundamental rewrite of Wrapland's server library which was a great success in regards to stability and long-term maintainability.
Announced last year was KWinFT as a fork of KDE's KWin to focus on improving the Wayland support more rapidly and incorporating other modern technologies. KWinFT has been making progress on advancing its code-base while in recent months it was seemingly more quiet. However, it turns out KWinFT is alive and well and has been going through some code refactoring while preparing for the next wave of feature work.
KWinFT lead developer Roman Gilg published a new blog post today outlining the recent and upcoming work around this fork. Some of the highlights include:
- Reworking central parts of KWinFT and other core code had been much of the focus over this past winter while also taking somewhat of a break for the "5.22" cycle. With the KWinFT 5.22 state the code should be further stabilized and ready to bring on the next round of feature development.
Hello friends today’s update brings us KDE Plasma frameworks packages updated to 5.83.0. KDE Frameworks are 83 addon libraries to Qt which provide a wide variety of commonly needed functionality in mature, peer reviewed and well tested libraries with friendly licensing terms. This release is part of a series of planned monthly releases making improvements available to developers in a quick and predictable manner.
Hello friends today’s update includes a whole mess of KDE application updates bumped to 21.04.2. This is a maintenance/bugfix update from 21.04.1.
A long long time ago, we had a C utility in Puppy, /usr/X11R7/bin/yaf-splash, which draws splash popups on the screen. Later on, a script /usr/bin/gtkdialog-splash was written, that is mostly a replacement for yaf-splash, and a symlink /usr/bin/yaf-splash was created to link to it.
Anti-piracy outfit Web Sheriff is somewhat of an icon in the copyright protection industry. The company has protected rightsholders for over two decades and has seen many piracy platforms gone and gone. However, Sheriffs can make mistakes too, and flagging several Ubuntu URLs as copyright-infringing content, seems to fall in that category.
The Web Sheriff, founded by copyright lawyer John Giacobbi, has protected the Internet from pirates for more than two decades.
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The Sheriff once had a lively discussion with The Pirate Bay folks, who then sent him this invoice fax. Not much later relationships deteriorated even further after the Sheriff announced he would sue the site’s operators in the US, France, and Sweden, but not much came of that.
In recent years the Web Sheriff hasn’t been in the public eye much but his firm continues to patrol the web. Every week, it sends thousands of takedown notices to various online services, targeting allegedly infringing links. These links are at least in part generated by automated tools, which are far from perfect, it seems.
The availability of several Ubuntu open-source Linux distribution variants is one reason why Ubuntu has remained so popular for so long. However, picking the right one for your needs is critical when it comes to PC operating systems. Thus, we compare the original Ubuntu with the most common Ubuntu flavor, Lubuntu, in this post, highlighting both similarities and differences.
Despite the variation in their names, all of these are based on the same Ubuntu operating system. As a result, the Linux kernel and low-level machine utilities are the same in both. However, each one of them has its desktop and flavor-specific applications. As a result, some are more feature-rich, while others are more lightweight, giving each a unique feel.
BCM Advanced Research ECM-3455J is an upcoming 3.5-inch SBC designed for industrial application with 9-36V wide range DC-in support, an Intel Celeron J3455 quad-core Apollo Lake processor, up to 8GB SO-DIMM memory, and 32GB on-board eMMC flash.
The single board computer also comes with HDMI and LVDS video out, dual Gigabit Ethernet, an M.2 socket a micro SIM socket for cellular connectivity, as well as up to eight USB interfaces, and a thick and large heatspreader for fanless operation.
Huawei, the Chinese tech company, is now planning to update over 100 smartphones and tablets to the HarmonyOS. This is to replace Huawei EMUI - an Android-derived mobile operating system developed by Huawei. All of the devices should receive HarmonyOS by mid-2022 by the latest.
These 100+ smartphones are as old as the Mate 9 and P10 - they were released in 2016 and 2017 respectively. Huawei's Watch 3, Watch 3 Pro and MatePad Pro all have the HarmonyOS 2.0. Smartphones receiving the 2.0 version of the OS is also the Mate 30, P40 series and the Mate Xs. The HarmonyOS 2.0 is described as a new OS. However, many outlets are referring to it as an Android fork.
I’ve always felt machines should be doing what I want them to do, not the other way round. That’s why Google’s Android operating system immediately appealed to me when it first hit the market in 2008. At the time, Google’s open-source approach was genuinely refreshing. I spent hours customizing my HTC Hero phone. Little did I care that it was uglier than my friends’ iPhones or Symbian devices. My new gadget was infinitely more versatile.
Fast forward a decade. Google has become a tech giant, dwarfed iOS and killed Symbian OS. Today, the company captures over 90% of search traffic and dominates the browser market. This stellar growth came at a cost, as illustrated by the removal of Google’s “don’t be evil” clause. The search giant is entangled in court cases, such as the one over data collection and tracking malpractices. Researchers also found privacy flaws in Google’s contact tracing app. To top it off, the tech giant announced a controversial new algorithm that tracks browsing behaviour to better serve ads.
People are optimistic about having a third smartphone OS on the market – last week’s poll shows that 2 in 3 voters think that Huawei’s new HarmonyOS looks promising. The new version of the OS is already in the hands of over 10 million users and the AppGallery boasts 134,000 apps they can choose from.
The most common criticism we heard was that HarmonyOS (at least on smartphones and tablets) is a fork of Android. That seems to be the case, though Huawei claims to have a significantly different architecture on the inside.
We don’t see it as a deal-breaker either way. In fact, it may have been the only viable option – those 134,000 apps weren’t written in the few days since HarmonyOS 2.0 launched. Also, it would have been practically impossible to port a brand new OS to 100 old devices.
Thanks to my ‘100 Paper Cuts’ project mentors Muhammet Kara and Heiko Tietze for their guidance and code reviews; and thanks to everyone who helped me a lot for finding code pointers.
In addition to the recent WebAssembly project releases of Wasmer 2.0-rc and WASM3 v0.5, the Bytecode Alliance that is made up of Intel and Mozilla and other organizations has announced Wasmtime 0.28.
Wasmtime is the work of the Bytecode Alliance that was formed back in 2019 with the idea of being able to run WebAssembly everywhere. Their main focus has been on Wasmtime as a standalone JIT-style WebAssembly runtime. With Wasmtime that led to their Cranelift code generator as a target-independent IR that is translated into the executable machine code and also written in the Rust programming language.
Earlier this week it was time for GitOps Days again. The third time now and the event has grown quite a bit since we started. Born out of the desire to bring GitOps practitioners together during pandemic times initially, this time we had a proper CFP and the outcome was just great: lots of participation from a very diverse crowd of experts - we had panels, case studies, technical deep dives, comparisons of different solutions and more. Among many other great things, Weave GitOps was announced by Cornelia, Weaveworks' CTO, so if you haven’t seen it, go check it out. If you register, you will get a link to all the session recordings.
As at the last two times, I was supporting the event as a DJ. Everything worked seamlessly. Only thing was I had to leave everyone with pre-recorded bits for the last break, as it was getting quite late for me (it was Americas friendly times this time) and I had some personal matters to tend to.
After watching Raku, the Big by Bruce Gray I can only agree with the assessment of how difficult it is to teach Raku to a beginner. I have been a Raku beginner myself since 2010. And that means learning the language can’t be hard. After all, even I managed. I had the Synopsis and IRC. The docs were pretty spotty and in some places outdated already (thanks to the GLR). Since there were no books or guides, the best I could do was start coding and asking questions. I’m quite happy with the result.
This device, dubbed SolsTiS, has a cavity containing titanium-doped sapphire. This is a common material for lasers, but SolsTiS’s cavity is shaped, by precise engineering and the locking of the components into place after calibration, in a way that both encourages single-frequency emission and ensures that waste heat is dissipated rapidly.
The purity of the resulting beam permits it to do something that seems extraordinary to those (ie, most human beings) who are used to dealing with the world of classical, rather than quantum, mechanics. This is, in effect, to divide atoms temporarily in two using a trick which takes advantage of the fact that all particles, however apparently substantial, are actually also waves.
Last week, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) announced that the agency has approved two new missions to the second planet from the Sun. One of them will be the first U.S.-led mission into Venus' atmosphere since 1978. Both are expected to launch between 2028 and 2030.
The consequences of this are striking. Less than half (48%) of all American adults were proficient readers in 2017. American fourth graders (nine-to ten-year olds) rank 15th on the Progress in International Literacy Study, an international exam. And that was before covid-19 closed schools. According to UNESCO, American schools were closed either fully or partially for 56 weeks, compared with 47 in Canada and 27 in the United Kingdom and China. In theory the need to make up for lost schooling could be an opportunity to try something new. But America remains stuck in debate about teaching children to read that has been rumbling on for decades.
Eric Adams, among the leading Democratic candidates in New York City's heated mayoral contest, came under fire from outside progressives and fellow New York Democratic lawmakers Saturday for saying that a single public school teacher should be responsible for the education of between 300 to 400 students at one time.
"Our kids are not machines. They need attention and care. That can't happen through a screen." —Rep. Jamaal Bowman
The legislation still has to pass the Assembly, but the Senate became the first legislative body in the US to pass a bill that would make it easier to fix your things.
The New York State Senate has approved landmark right-to-repair legislation which forces original equipment manufacturers to provide schematics, parts, and tools to independent repair providers and consumers.
S4104, which advances the Digital Fair Repair act, was passed with overwhelming bipartisan support. At a virtual session, 51 senators approved the motion, with just 12 voting against.
Some distance remains before the bill ultimately becomes law. It must win the approval of lawmakers from the lower house, the New York State Assembly, which is currently considering its own version of the bill (A7006).
The 2021 legislative session concluded on Thursday. It is hoped that A7006, which is currently being considered in the committee stage, will be passed in the 2022 sitting, which is scheduled to convene on January 6, 2022.
That number was around 2.5 when the pandemic started in Wuhan and could be as high as 8.0 for the Delta variant, according to disease modellers at Imperial.
As for the rest of the inquiries, so far, money and power appear to have eluded the investigators. It's unclear whether Senator Warren's and Representative Porter's requests met with any response from the former administration, or even whether they've continued their inquiry into Big Pharma and no-bid contracting. They have made no further announcements and neither office replied to requests for updates.
The Star Trek series seems, well, galaxies away, from our struggles with COVID-19. Until it isn’t. Consider the following.
The Star Trek series was singular in multiple ways, not the least its contribution to our cultural lexicon: “Go where no man [later: “no one”] has gone before”, here; “Beam me up, Scotty” (although the precise phrase was never actually uttered, here); and “warp speed”.
This Kat is partial to “beam me up, Scotty”, probably since he once encountered at O’Hare Airport the actor James Doohan, who played Montgomery "Scotty" Scott in the series. [I sheepishly approached Doohan, who said, “Let me guess what you want to say-- beam me up, Scotty”. “Right”, I replied. Alas, it did not work: I remained within the confines of the airport while Doohan went on his way.
As part of the plan, the DOJ will double the number of “enforcement staff for protecting the right to vote” in its Civil Rights Division. Garland also said that the department will use existing laws to “ensure that we protect every qualified American seeking to participate in our democracy” in addition to “scrutinizing new laws that seek to curb voter access.”
“Where we see violations we will not hesitate to act,” Garland added.
Because of a rapid increase in violent threats against state and local election workers, Garland said the department “will investigate and promptly prosecute any violations of federal law.”
The violence used by Myanmar's armed forces against unarmed opponents since the coup in February has shocked the world; more than 800 people have been killed, most by military gunfire. But the deaths in custody of two officials from the National League of Democracy - the party led by Aung San Suu Kyi - have cast an even grimmer light on the military's actions.
A Civil war between Ethiopia’s federal government and the ousted ruling party of the northern region of Tigray has caused widespread hunger. The UN’s humanitarian chief, Mark Lowcock, has warned it could spark the world’s worst famine in a decade amid evidence that forces allied to the government are using “starvation as a weapon”.ââÂ
Some Tigrayans say that food is being used as a weapon of war in the war-torn northern Tigray region, a claim the Ethiopian government denies. Top United Nations officials say the region is experiencing the worst famine conditions in a decade. Over 350,000 people in the region face starvation due to food blockages and theft by Ethiopian and Eritrean soldiers — who are also accused of killing livestock and looting farm equipment in the area. At least 2 million people have fled months of violence as Tigray rebel fighters continue to battle for control in the region.
On one hand, it was major news that the U.S. government had flexed its cybersecurity muscles on behalf of the owner and operator of the country's largest fuel pipeline, taking over a bitcoin account and marking the first public recovery of funds ever from a known ransomware gang.
On the other hand, it raised a question: Why hadn't the U.S. done this before?
The chairwoman of the House Oversight and Reform Committee is pressing JBS USA to explain why it paid $11 million in ransom to a criminal group earlier this year.
In a letter released Friday, Rep. Carolyn Maloney (D-N.Y.) asked JBS chief executive Andre Nogueira to turn over all documents related to the ransomware attack and records of its communications with REvil, the group the FBI believes to be responsible, by June 24.
The rapid development of IoT has enabled companies to add value to their services and enjoy a wide range of advantages. Especially during the pandemic, when many businesses were affected adversely, IoT made its way into the existing business operations and practices and reached its peak. Even the recent reports portray that about 31 billion devices will become connected with the IoT infrastructure in the near future. But whenever there is an advancement in any technology, you can expect a series of drawbacks as well. The same goes for IoT, as hackers are now more active, and you can easily lose access to your system and sensitive information if you do not take proper actions. That is when secure IoT devices come into play to prevent unauthorized access and protect you from unpleasant situations.
The fast food mega chain McDonald’s is the latest company to have private data stolen by a third party, The Wall Street Journal reports. Unlike other recent attacks on CNA Financial and the Colonial Pipeline, McDonald’s claims it isn’t dealing with ransomware, but store information in the US was taken, along with some customer information in South Korea and Taiwan.
Humanity's urgent trillion-dollar question is what will stop war and violent conflict?
Concerns are growing in Washington over the possibility that China could try to invade Taiwan in the next few years.
Top U.S. military officers have warned in recent months that Beijing might try to make the explosive move this decade, and recent saber rattling, including a Chinese military amphibious landing exercise near the island, is further raising the alarm.
Still, the Pentagon’s top general cautioned Thursday that China would find an invasion of Taiwan to be “an extraordinarily complex and difficult operation.”
Azerbaijan said on Saturday it had handed over 15 Armenian prisoners in exchange for a map detailing the location of landmines in Agdam, a region relinquished by ethnic Armenian forces as a part of a deal to end a six-week war last year.
A Russian-brokered cease-fire halted fighting that saw the Azeri army drive ethnic Armenian forces out of swathes of territory they had controlled since the 1990s in and around the Nagorno-Karabakh region.Irregular skirmishes continue, highlighting the fragility of the cease-fire.
U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken welcomed the news and said he hoped it would lay the groundwork for more cooperation.
Anti-pipeline activists feel energized after the company behind the Keystone XL pipeline announced it would terminate the project following a more than decadelong battle.
The news that the fight over that pipeline ended in victory for environmental and Native advocates left opponents of another major pipeline feeling optimistic.
Keystone’s termination came amid an intensifying fight over Enbridge’s Line 3 pipeline, which likewise pits some Indigenous and environmental groups against a Canadian firm.
The credits are financial instruments generated by projects that reduce or avoid the release of greenhouse gases, such as solar farms or tree-plantings. The projects' owners can sell the credits to companies who then use them to make claims of offsetting the climate impact of their operations.
Microsoft bought nearly 200,000 of the farm-based credits at an undisclosed price - among the largest-ever purchases of agricultural credits - as part of a larger deal to buy 1.3 million credits. But the tech giant rejected far more of the more than 5 million credits offered by agriculture projects because of systemic problems with measuring their climate benefit.
By Brett Wilkins, Common Dreams. Originally published on€ Common Dreams€ under€ CC€ BY–SA€ 3.0€ US.
A new report published€ Wednesday, June 9, by a trio of progressive advocacy groups lifts the veil on so-called “net zero” climate pledges, which are often touted by corporations and governments as solutions to the climate emergency, but which the paper’s authors argue are merely a dangerous form of greenwashing that should be eschewed in favor of Real Zero policies based on meaningful, near-term commitments to reducing global greenhouse gas emissions.
Greater Las Vegas is one of the fastest-growing metropolitan areas in the country, home to more than 2.2 million people, and it gets just over 4 inches of rain in a good year.
Around 90 percent of the water comes from Lake Mead, the reservoir on the Colorado River formed by the Hoover Dam, which is currently 36 percent full.
Wall Street has been making huge investments — not in businesses or stocks, but in the American political process. At nearly $3 billion, the financial sector spent record sums on campaign contributions and lobbying during the 2019-2020 election cycle.
Historic, game-changing, revolutionary: such has been the widespread reaction to the recent agreement by G7 finance ministers on a global minimum effective tax rate of “at least” 15% for large multinational firms. The ministers also agreed on a new formula for apportioning a share of tax revenues from these companies among countries.
Reddit is one of the world’s most influential news and social media platforms. The website attracted over 1.2 billion visits in April 2021 alone, making it the United States’ eighth most visited site, ahead of other leviathans like Twitter, Instagram and eBay. Now majority-owned by a much larger corporate publishing empire, Reddit is also far ahead of more established news sites, garnering three times the numbers of Fox News and five times those of The New York Times.
I endorse Maya Wiley for the Democratic candidate for Mayor of New York City.
The Associated Press reported it is unknown what content the apps failed to remove, but the Russian government has recently been going after content that is anti-government.
The letter, signed by 14 not-for-profits and published on Friday, called upon the government to suspend the implementation of India’s new IT rules, which came into effect last month. These include organisations like Electronics Frontier Foundation, Access Now, Article 19, Human Rights Watch, Internet Sans Frontières and Internet Society.
The letter asked the government to make public its blocking orders for websites and social media accounts along with reasons for the blocking. India should commit to not using these orders, and rule-making powers, to curtail the rights to free speech, access to information and privacy, it urged.
The NLRB first filed its complaint against Google in December 2020, saying the company was “interfering with, restraining, and coercing employees” who were exercising their legal rights to discuss workplace issues with their colleagues, including firing two employees. In an amended complaint filed this Wednesday, the San Francisco regional office of the NLRB stated Google was similarly in the wrong for firing three other employees involved in workplace organizing around the same time.
Google fired the three former employees who were added to the complaint — Paul Duke, Rebecca Rivers, and Sophie Waldman — in November 2019 after they protested the company’s decision to provide cloud computing software to CBP. The former employees said they had human rights concerns about the immigration agency’s role in deporting and detaining immigrants.
Known as the Pentagon Papers, the documents were part of a classified study that showed the extent of American involvement in the Vietnam War.
Internet access is, according to New York’s Eastern District Judge Dennis R. Hurley, a “modern necessity.” Unfortunately, Judge Hurley wrote those words in an injunction, filed today, to stall a piece of progressive legislation which would have mandated affordable internet availability to all living in New York State — and which would have come into effect early next week.
The bill, known as the Affordable Broadband Act, would have required ISPs serving more than 20,000 households to offer two low-cost plans: one offering speeds of 25 Mbps down for no more than $15 per month, and another offering 200 Mbps down at no more than $20 monthly. It was passed by the state legislature and signed by Governor Cuomo back in April, and would have gone into effect on June 16th.
A bipartisan group of lawmakers in the U.S. House of Representatives introduced four bills on Friday aimed at reining in the power of the tech giants, with one potentially leading to their break-up.
Two of the bills address the issue of giant companies, such as Amazon.com Inc and Alphabet Inc's Google, creating a platform for other businesses and then competing against those same businesses.
One measure bans platforms from owning subsidiaries that operate on their platform if those subsidiaries compete with other businesses - potentially forcing the Big Tech firms to sell assets.
On Friday, House Democrats introduced five new bills meant to chip away at the power of big tech companies, targeting a variety of practices that antitrust advocates say are stifling competition.
These measures are the House Judiciary Committee’s historic, 16-month long investigation into the business tactics of companies like Apple, Amazon, Facebook, and Google. With this new slate of bills, Congress is getting ready to legislate based on the concerns raised by that investigation — and the move could reshape the tech industry as we know it.
This is an IP and libertarianism Q&A. It was originally supposed to be a debate with an intellectual property attorney on IP but after challenging me, she bowed out. I went live at the appointed time anyway and discussed it briefly, and fielded questions from those that tuned in.
We all might be working too hard. Patent law is supposed to be easy. See Black’s Law Dictionary (11th ed. 2019) (defining “patent ” to mean obvious or apparent).
The professional conduct of US patent attorneys and agents are governed by the rules regarding “Representation of Others before the United States Patent and Trademark Office” found in the Code of Federal Regulations, Title 37, Part 11. 37 CFR 11.1 – 11.901. Patent attorneys are also regulated by the rules of professional conduct of their home states. Although there are some patent specific differences, the USPTO has been shifting its rules to be more in line with the ABA’s Model Rules of Professional Conduct that have been adopted, at least in part, by all fifty states.
In 2020, the USPTO proposed a number of changes to its rules to better align them with the ABA Model Rules. Recently, the agency finalized those proposals (with minor changes) to be effective June 25, 2021.
Advancements in technology play a vital role in people's life as they create advantages that make human life easier and simpler. The research and development in the field of vehicle manufacturing, structural design and innovation make for ease and comfort. However, traditional combustion vehicles have some inherent disadvantages also. The gases emitted by these vehicles adversely impact both human life and the natural environment. The toxic gases like carbon monoxide and carbon dioxide are emitted by the vehicles due to the combustion of conventional driving fuel like petroleum and diesel, which result in negative impacts on environment and life and also harm the protective ozone layer of the earth which also leads to global warming. The growing human population constantly raises the demand for energy and technologies, resulting in more production and increased use of vehicles, further deteriorating the environment and drastically depleting the conventional driving fuel reserves, leading to fuel price rises which in turn negatively impacts economies.
The European Parliament urged the European Commission to reverse its position on the COVID waiver on Wednesday, June 9, and support the temporary lifting of intellectual property (IP) rights for COVID vaccines.
EU MEPs backed a resolution by 355 votes to 263 supports waiving patents for vaccines, the parliament announced on Thursday.
The European Commission had presented a plan to the World Trade Organization on Friday, June 4, as an alternative to the sweeping IP waiver for COVID vaccines and other therapies first proposed by India and South Africa in October 2020.
The plan focused on limiting export restrictions and making use of the so-called TRIPS flexibilities that allow countries to bypass IP restrictions.
The commission’s plan also encouraged pharma companies to make licensing deals with vaccine producers in low-income countries and to pledge to increase the supply of doses.
The EU and Switzerland are home to many multinational pharmaceutical companies, which have voiced concerns that lifting IP will not increase access to vaccines.
In a surprise move in May, US president Joe Biden voiced support for an IP waiver, but only for vaccines.
Counsel at three semiconductor firms say managing confidentiality and procedural differences between the US and other countries is one of their biggest issues
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has approved Biogen's aducanumab (Aduhelm) treatment for individuals with Alzheimer's disease. The FDA used an accelerated regulatory pathway for the approval.
The FDA's accelerated approval pathway is "used for a drug for a serious or life-threatening illness that provides a meaningful therapeutic advantage over existing treatments."
"As we have learned from the fight against cancer, the accelerated approval pathway can bring therapies to patients faster while spurring more research and innovation," said Dr. Patrizia Cavazzoni, director of the FDA's Center for Drug Evaluation and Research, in a statement.
Alzheimer's is an irreversible, progressive brain disorder characterized by changes in the brain, including amyloid plaques and neurofibrillary, or tau, tangles, that result in loss of neurons and their connections.
European Patent Office (EPO) opposition procedure comprises two parts: opposition division (first instance), and, if relevant, appeal. A typical procedure is set out on the attached flow chart. It is also possible to petition the Enlarged Board of Appeal for review of the appeal decision under certain very limited circumstances. There are some fixed time limits in the overall procedure, such as the deadline for filing an opposition and an appeal. However, there is also some flexibility in the procedure. The EPO announced in June 2016 that it aims to issue first instance decisions on "straightforward" oppositions within 15 months. Typical appeal proceedings take at least two to four years.
Sports can bring people together (as participants or spectators) in a way that very few other collective activities can. At their most impressive, athletes accomplish feats (both individually and as teams) that invoke responses as emotional and visceral as reactions caused by the greatest art, and the games they play can serve as uniting forces, however fleetingly, in trying times. They can also drive people nuts, but that is a discussion for another day.
When we imagine the elements of sports, we often think of players, rules, styles of play, equipment, venues — things of that nature. Chances are, we do not think of patents or even Intellectual Property as a whole (aside from team logos and names being trademarked). But most sports would not exist as we know them today without many patented inventions — more than 22,000, in golf's case! — and other registered IP.
In-house sources at four companies reveal best practices for broadening patents, navigating international filings and strengthening enforcement
Sources say updates to the Chinese Patent Law regarding design patents are likely to bring in a wave of new filings, and a surge in litigation along with it
Junior Party University of California/Berkeley, the University of Vienna, and Emmanuelle Charpentier (hereinafter, "CVC") and Senior Party The Broad Institute, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and Harvard University (hereinafter, "Broad") each filed Motions to Exclude Evidence and Requests for Oral Hearing in Interference No. 106,115.
CVC's motion to exclude is directed to "declarations of Benjamin Davies (Ex. 3435), Mark Kay (Ex. 3436), Alan Lambowith (Ex. 3437); Paul Simons (Exs. 3438 and 3440); Erez Lieberman Aidan (Ex. 3439), Greg Hannon (Ex. 3441 and 3442), Mark Isalan (Ex. 3443), Caixao Gao (Ex. 3446); Adam Bogdanove (Ex. 3449), Thierry VandenDriessche (Ex. 3450), Bryan Cullen (Ex. 3451), Paula Cannon (Ex. 3452), portions of the Third Declaration of Ronald Breaker (Ex. 3448)," and certain documentary exhibits. The legal basis for the motion is that these exhibits and testimony "seeks to exclude violates the Federal Rules of Evidence, the Standing Order (Paper 2), and the Supreme Court's decision in Daubert v. Merrell Dow Pharmaceuticals, 509 U.S. 579, 593-94 (1993)."
Allergan subsidiary Forest Laboratories LLC must face a jury over a union health and welfare fund's class action antitrust claims that pay-for-delay deals kept generic versions of Alzheimer's drug Namenda off the market after a New York federal judge largely rejected the parties' competing bids for a quick win Friday.
U.S. District Judge Colleen McMahon refused to grant the Sergeants Benevolent Association Health & Welfare Fund, or SBA, summary judgment on its unlawful monopolization and maintenance of monopoly power claim. At the same time, she largely rejected summary judgment bids from Forest or fellow defendant Merz Pharmaceuticals.
Onxeo S.A. (Euronext Paris, NASDAQ Copenhagen: ONXEO) (hereafter “Onxeo” or “the Company”), a clinical-stage biotechnology company specializing in the development of innovative drugs targeting tumor DNA Damage response (DDR), in particular against rare or resistant cancers, today announced that it has received from the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO), a Notice Allowance for a patent which enhances in the United States the protection of AsiDNAââ¢, its first-in-class inhibitor of tumor DNA repair, in combination with any PARP inhibitor (PARPi). This patent protects both the combination of AsiDNAâ⢠with a PARPi and its use for the treatment of certain cancers for which the DNA repair pathway via homologous recombination (HR) is not impaired or deficient. These so-called HR-proficient tumors are significantly less sensitive to treatment with PARP inhibitors.
The patent system in the United States differs markedly from that in the European Union, where biosimilar developers can challenge patents with far greater ease and less expense, according to a report from Matrix Global Advisors, a public policy consulting firm.
The report explains how US patenting laws enable originator companies to build almost impenetrable walls of patents to protect their drugs from competition.
[...]
Nothing prevents an originator company from filing scores of patent applications for a single product, and in fact, they do.
For the 8 top-selling biologics in the United States, the least number of patents obtained for any individual biologic was 41 (Enbrel, etanercept), Matrix said, citing I-MAK data. The most was over 130, for AbbVie’s adalimumab product (Humira).
“Originators have a strong incentive to amass as many patents as possible on reference biologics with high asset value. They also have ample opportunity to accumulate patents,” according to Matrix.
For the time being, the $2.175 patent damages verdict from the first VLSI Technology v. Intel patent trial in the Western District of Texas is still the record holder. But it would be unprecedented for a verdict like that to survive post-trial and appellate proceedings without the slightest adjustment--and even "slight" would be a lot in absolute terms here.
Intel was cleared of infringement in the second VLSI v. Intel trial, and the third one was originally slated for this month, but has been pushed back to December. So the first case is still where the action is.
Last month I commented on Intel's post-trial motions and VLSI's responses. Intel brought four different motions, one of which would do away with about a third of the amount while the other three would either resulted in the verdict being tossed or a new trial being held.
I want to be perfectly honest: I didn't follow the March trial, and I can't claim to have studied the publicly-accessible documents in full detail. So if I express an opinion now on what I believe may happen, it's just the gut feeling of someone who's been watching U.S. patent cases for more than a decade. I'm talking about what instinctively looks to me like it might tip the scales. It might not--or other arguments might be better. But at the end of the second trial I had a hunch that Intel's non-infringement arguments might sway the jury, and they did. Also, we're getting ever close to the appeal now.
Having said that, I really can't imagine the $2.175B verdict would stand. Verdicts have been vacated or substantially adjusted on lesser grounds than some of the arguments Intel makes here. The short-term question is, however, what Judge Alan Albright of the United States District Court for the Western District of Texas decides. He could uphold the verdict, but would then be highly likely to be reversed; he could order a new trial and avoid at least some of the issues; or he could make adjustments as a matter of law. It's not a foregone conclusion that the verdict will be turned into the district court's judgment.
[...]
If the judge agreed with Intel's JMOL motion on the patent accounting for two thirds of the damages verdict, that would have a huge impact--and the other patent could be found non-infringed under the Doctrine of Equivalents. The DoE argument that I found pretty good is the first one: the original claim referred to "at least one master device" or "at least one of the plurality of master devices"--but that passage was changed into "a master device." VLSI denies that this was meant to narrow the claim scope. But Intel's contextual arguments seem reasonably strong. The Federal Circuit has pronounced a strong presumption against claim changes at the application stage being just editorial and not having a substantive effect. Intel's reply brief cites to Laitram v. NEC ("difficult to conceive of many situations in which the scope of a rejected claim that became allowable when amended is not substantively changed by the amendment").
The part I can't form an opinion on is Intel's unclean hands argument. The reply brief is so heavily redacted that I really can't figure out where the discussion stands. Based on the previous filings, I had the feeling that some parts of the other post-trial motions were more likely to succeed. Again, I could be off base. But I've often speculated, and my hit rate is not too bad.
IBM is famous for obtaining a lot of patents. Year after year, they’re the top recipient of U.S. patents (or, once in a while, in second place when you account for related entities.)
But they’re also infamous among patent practitioners for abandoning a lot of patents after they issue. Like, a lot of patents. IBM actually abandons nearly 60% of their patents post-issue.
Why would you pay money to get a patent and then get rid of it?
The answer lies in some arcane details of how much the USPTO gets paid and when. Bear with me here, we’re going to talk about unit costs and maintenance fees.
[...]
In reality, the PTO doesn’t actually break even on a patent application until the 8 year maintenance fee is paid. Let’s break it down. (All of this is based on the USPTO’s unit cost data from 2019, and it’s all about large entities—small entities pay significantly discounted fees.)
The average unit cost of examining a patent application through grant is approximately $6,035. This represents the unit cost for filing, search, examination, and for an average of 0.33 RCEs per application.
But to get to that point, an applicant only pays an average of $2,268. That means that, when an applicant gets a notice their patent is allowable, the PTO is—on average—in the red by $3,767.
At allowance, the PTO starts its recovery. The cost to issue a patent is $319, but the PTO receives $1200 for it. That puts them down $2,886.
Then, at the four year maintenance fee, the unit cost is zero, but the patent owner pays $2,000. PTO’s still down, but only by $886 now.
Finally, at the eight year maintenance fee, the unit cost is zero, but the patent owner pays $3,760. Remember, this is eight years after the patent issued, not after application. The PTO has finally recovered its costs—a decade after the application was filed.
(The 12 year window nets the USPTO another $7,700. The surplus money from large entity fees mostly goes to pay for the discounted rates that small and micro entities pay.)
That’s a problem—if you had to wait a decade to get paid back for your work, it’d wreak havoc on your budget process. And it does create serious challenges for the PTO’s operations, since the number of patent filings isn’t necessarily predictable.
But there’s one piece of behavior that makes this even more complicated.
January 2020, San Francisco-based app development company Voxer began proceedings against social media giant Facebook in Germany. Voxer accused Facebook of infringing its patent EP (UK) 23 93 259 through Facebook and Instagram’s live broadcast feature.
Voxer contends that Facebook’s live broadcast feature, available through the website and through the Facebook and Instagram apps, infringes the patent. However, Facebook then counterclaimed for invalidity in the UK. Now the UK High Court has upheld that EP 259 is non-infringed and invalid, and revoked the patent. The current dispute covers only the functionality on the iOS operating system, which runs via Apple products.
Another case pursued by Voxer concerned the application on Android devices. However, before the trial Voxer clarified the functionality of its Android apps and withdrew its accusation of infringement. The UK High Court dismissed this, granting Facebook another declaration of non-infringement.
[...]
Parallel infringement and validity actions are taking place in Germany, concerning two patents (case numbers: 21 O 517/20 and 21 O 577/20, and 21 O 158/20 and 21 O 170/20 respectively). Voxer claimed infringement of the patents against the US and the European Facebook subsidiary, and Instagram, with Facebook challenging the patents at the Federal Patent Court. However, observers do not expect the court to release its judgment until later in June.
However, in the US, decisions have gone the other way for Facebook. In May, the Patent Trial and Appeal Board in the Western District of Texas found four Voxer patents valid (case numbers: IPR2021-00112, IPR2021-00113, IPR2021-00114, IPR2021-00115.)
In the US, Keker Van Nest & Peters represents Facebook and Instagram, while Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan represent Voxer.
The annual meeting of the Standing Advisory Committee before the EPO took place online for the second year running, on 8 and 9 June 2021. The 53rd meeting of SACEPO presented the opportunity for EPO President Antonio Campinos to welcome all newly appointed members in their new term of office which started in January and will last until December 2023. Membership of SACEPO has been greatly extended this year with representatives from European and international IP associations such as AIPPI, FEMIPI, FICPI, UNION-IP as well as members from national patent attorney and industry associations from the IP5 countries.
A few hours ago, at midnight local time, the German Bundestag (Federal Parliament) voted to amend the country's Patentgesetz (Patent Act). The plenary rubberstamped the version of the bill (PDF, in German) that came out of the legislature's Legal Affairs Committee on Wednesday.
Munich and Mannheim will remain the world's top venues for patent injunctions. If you're not worried about the new bill, you can also sue in Dusseldorf, where the appeals court likes to take extreme outlier positions (including public statements on this legislative measure) that are at odds with any other German court; if you don't want to take any risks that you can avoid taking, go to Munich or Mannheim (your "Swiss francs" of patent enforcement in Germany).
[...]
With a view to my future premium service, I've already had some good initial conversations with parties on both sides of the patent enforcement debate, and some more calls and video conferences have been scheduled. In a jurisdiction where there are no transcripts (and as one of my counterparts accurately noted, even transcripts of U.S. court proceedings sometimes miss important information such as demonstratives), and where there is no PACER for downloading the pleadings, one simply has to send someone to a courtroom to find out what happens. In addition to systematic coverage of the injunction-related aspects of each and every Munich and Mannheim case, I may also offer special reports for individual clients. Those special reports might also address the technical aspects of a case, provided that I receive the information I need to properly prepare. Law firms have asked me to do this on some occasions (as early as 2012).
The government is consulting on the UK’s future regime for IP exhaustion, but as sources note, any decision could be fraught with controversy
Here’s what I’m writing to announce: JPTOS was in a publishing hiatus over the past year...
It is very unlikely that the new complaints against the Unified Patent Court Agreement, which were filed last December with the German Federal Constitutional Court (FCC), will delay the Unitary Patent project for two or three more years. Kevin Mooney, partner of Simmons & Simmons and one of the driving forces behind the UPC and UP, had said this in an interview with Kluwer IP Law.
[...]
As to the UK’s non-participation in the project, Mooney especially regrets that experienced UK judges will not be able to make judgements in the Unified Patent Court. “UK judges will take into account and respect decisions of the UPC and vice versa, but a chance for real European harmonization has been lost.”
Regardless of the June 23, 2016 vote on Brexit, all owners of European patents, and all applicants seeking patents in Europe, will have both new options, and a new set of important decisions to make. Most commentators anticipate that the Unitary Patents (UPs) and the Unified Patent Court (UPC) will come into effect and patentees will still need to make decisions about their granted EPs and applications. Owners of European patents (EPs) likely will need to make decisions about their portfolios by the end of 2016.
[...]
Current predictions are that by Q2 2017 patentees will be able to opt for a UP, a single patent covering up to 26 participating member states of the EU. The UPC, a central court that will for patent litigation in the EU should also open at or about the same time. It is time now to review and prepare existing patent portfolios anticipating these changes, as there may be as little as 6 months’ notice of the UPC going live.
At this early stage, the initial review and decisions will be focused on whether to opt patents out of the jurisdiction of the UPC.
In G 3/14 the EPO Enlarged Board of Appeal ruled on the extent to which amendments made in EPO Opposition (and Opposition Appeal) proceedings may be examined for clarity, conciseness and support (Article 84 EPC). They confirmed that compliance with Article 84 EPC may be examined only when, and to the extent that, the amendment introduces non-compliance with Article 84 EPC. In particular an amendment which introduces the feature of a dependent claim may not be examined for Article 84 where the feature introduced corresponds to the complete dependent claim or is a simple alternative in such a claim.
Under Article 84 EPC, claims are required to be clear and concise and to be supported by the description. However lack of compliance with Article 84 EPC may not be used as a ground of opposition (Article 100 EPC). Nevertheless when an amendment is made in the course of opposition proceedings (or in the course of an appeal from an opposition) then the patent will be maintained only if the amended patent "meets the requirements of the EPC" (Article 101(3) EPC). This point was confirmed by the Enlarged Board of Appeal in G 9/91 though that case was more concerned with the extent to which new grounds of opposition may be raised beyond those in the notice of opposition. Thus, when an amendment is made to the claims in the course of EPO opposition proceedings, then normally the requirement of clarity must be considered.
It has been less clear whether an amendment to incorporate the feature of a dependent claim into the independent claim should be examined for clarity. Such an amendment can be considered to be merely writing a dependent claim in independent form, and not therefore substantive. Also, the claims will have already been examined for clarity before grant. This point arose in decision T 373/12 where the case related to "a prosthetic medical device comprising a prosthetic liner comprising an umbrella attachment...". In the course of the appeal, an auxiliary request was filed incorporating an additional feature from claim 3 as granted that "the prosthetic liner is coated over substantially all of its surface area". The Board was clearly concerned about the clarity of this feature and in view of a perceived conflict in the case law referred to the Enlarged Board of Appeal the issue of whether clarity can be looked at under such a circumstance.
The China National Intellectual Property Administration (CNIPA) and the European Patent Office (EPO) launched a two-year pilot on December 1, 2020…
Sulphobutyl ether ò-cyclodextrin (SBE-ò-CD) is used as an excipient to improve the solubility and stability of a range of active pharmaceutical ingredients, prominent among which is the antifungal drug, voriconazole. Working with Professor Steve Wicks and his team at the University of Greenwich, Curadev developed a new method for producing sulphoalkyl ether ò-cyclodextrins. The method also enabled the production of SBE-ò-CD with a high average degree of substitution (ADS), something which was not previously possible. This is particularly advantageous as it is thought that increasing the ADS of SBE-ò-CD will decrease its toxicity. Curadev applied for and were granted a European patent on 18 April 2018 which protected both the method of producing SBE-ò-CD and the novel SBE-ò-CD compositions per se having a high (ADS).
As those familiar with the patent process will know, a European patent is obtained via the European Patent Office (EPO). In order to get a European patent granted, it has to meet a series of requirements set by the European Patent Convention (EPC). At least in some respects, the EPC's requirements are considered stricter than for many other jurisdictions, and patent applications drafted and prosecuted without an eye on its quirks can often run into trouble – sometimes fatal trouble.
The patenting process is collaborative. A good invention may fall short of a patent if poorly drafted and prosecuted. Likewise, even a great patent attorney will struggle to make a silk purse from a sow's ear. So how can a patentee get the patent monopoly they want in Europe? Our attorneys at Gill Jennings & Every have extensive experience of handling applications in the chemical field during examination, as well as in opposition and appeal proceedings before the EPO. Across a three-part series, we look at how our experience can help in the preparation of your patent applications, and how to avoid the pitfalls of the EPC.
Consider clarity and sufficiency before filing
Chemical inventions by their very nature can be difficult to define clearly, which is all the more reason for patentees to consider this carefully before filing a patent application to ensure it meets the EPO's standards. One of the first formal assessments of a patent application is to question whether the claims, which define the scope of patent protection, are clear, such that they can be easily understood by the reader.
A European patent application must also disclose an invention in sufficient detail for it to be performed across the scope of the claims. Although strictly speaking this requirement ("sufficiency") is a separate legal requirement to clarity, in reality, the two requirements can overlap. For example, an invention may be so poorly defined that the lack of clarity can lead to the patent application falling foul of the sufficiency requirement. It is advisable that patentees consider these issues fully before filing in order to ensure their patent applications are as water-tight as possible. After all, it is not possible to add information to the patent application once it has been filed – all of the fall-backs, definitions and support must be present at the filing date.
The EPO's Enlarged Board of Appeal (EBA) is currently considering in case G1/21 the legality of holding oral proceedings by video conference without the consent of the parties (see our reports here and here). Oral proceedings took place before the EBA on 28 May 2021 by video conference. However, the substantive issues were not considered during the hearing and the oral proceedings were instead postponed until 2 July 2021.
The appellant (opponent) had previously objected to the composition of the EBA on the grounds of suspected partiality and, as reported here, the Chairman and a legally qualified member were replaced. On 24 May 2021, the appellant raised further objections on the grounds of suspected partiality against members of the EBA and made several procedural requests. Of the procedural requests, the EBA accepted the request to discuss the objections relating to suspected partiality at a hearing and, in order to deal with the objections in a timely manner, decided to dedicate the first part of the 28 May 2021 oral proceedings to a non-public discussion of the objections.
Following the non-public discussion, the EBA rejected the objections of suspected partiality and the various other procedural requests. However, a further procedural objection raised by the appellant during the non-public discussion was then re-iterated publicly. In particular, the appellant objected that they had only been given formal notification of submissions made by the President of the EPO on 26 May 2021, i.e. two days ahead of the hearing, and therefore had not been given sufficient time to consider the submissions. In view of the short time frame, the appellant wanted the hearing to be postponed. It was highlighted by a member of the EBA that the President's comments were published online on 28 April 2021. However, the appellant argued that the submissions should have been timely forwarded and it is not incumbent on the appellant to check the EPO's website for submissions.
As leaders of the G7 were criticized for failing to rise to the challenge of the Covid-19 pandemic during their summit in the United Kingdom this weekend, Oxfam International on Saturday warned that failure of the world's richest nations to fully embrace a lifting of intellectual property protections for life-saving vaccines could ultimately raise the cost of administering shots to the entire world by as much as $74 billion with most of that money going directly into the wallets of pharmaceutical companies and their wealthy shareholders.
"Big pharma greed is adding over $70 BILLION to the cost of vaccinating the world. We need to suspend the patents NOW!"
The AI team offers a wealth of experience across a broad range of AI inventions from telecommunications protocols to photophosphorylation and from Smart Cities to Natural Language Processing. Pooling our extensive knowledge in regular update meetings, we have a cutting-edge understanding of the latest technology and of the latest legal precedents and strategies. We also work to spread understanding of AI patenting, presenting at seminars, lobbying for better protection of AI by contributing to official consultations, and spreading the word about what currently is and is not patentable in articles and blogs.
Yanbin Yu and Zhongxuan Zhang are the inventors and owners of U.S. Patent No. 6,611,289 (‘Digital cameras using multiple sensors with multiple lenses’). The pair sued Apple and Samsung for patent infringement, but the district court dismissed the cases for failure-to-state-a-claim. In particular, the court found the claims directed toward an abstract idea and thus invalid under 35 U.S.C. €§ 101. On appeal, the Federal Circuit issued a 2-1 decision affirming with Judge Prost and Taranto in the majority and Judge Newman in dissent.
The asserted claims are directed to a digital camera having multiple analog image sensors with lenses mounted on the image sensors. The claims also include analog-to-digital circuitry to digitize images from each camera so that they can be stored in memory. The claims then require creation of a “resultant digital image” based upon images from the two different cameras. Note, the patent application was filed back in 1999; issued in 2003; and has now expired.
BioWorld MedTech presents Patent Highlights, an excerpt of the most important med-tech patents from this week's Cortellis Patents Gazette.
Medtech companies have rebuffed their efforts in becoming a part of the digital transformation narrative the developed world has charted. They are keenly growing patent filing in Europe and North America.
The medtech sector has remained at the forefront of innovation during the pandemic with a multitude of new technologies being developed to help tackle the coronavirus crisis, from modified ventilators to lateral flow test kits. This can be seen in the data recently published by the European Patent Office which indicates that there has been an upsurge in patent filing activity within the medtech field. The European Patent Office's Patent Index 2020 shows that there have been 14,295 medical technology patent filings at the European Patent Office in 2020, which is up 2.6% from the previous year. Interestingly, although the medical technology field leads the way by volume of European patent filings in 2020, it has been the neighbouring pharmaceutical and biotechnology fields that have seen the strongest growth in European patent filings with 8,589 filings (up 10.2% from 2019) and 7,246 filings (up 6.3% from 2019) respectively. Much of this growth is likely to have been crisis-driven, as financial investment has been committed to these sectors and innovators have developed new therapies targeting the health issues which have followed in the wake of the virus. As we slowly move towards post-pandemic times, those within the medtech community are predicting that this upward trajectory in innovation will continue as the medtech sector undergoes a digital transformation.
On 21 April 2021, the EU General Court issued its ruling in Chanel, Tââ¬â44/20, ECLI:EU:T:2021:207, concerning the relative grounds for refusal established in Articles 8(1)(b) and 8(5) of previous Regulation No 207/2009 (now Articles 8(1)(b) and 8(5) of Regulation 2017/1001).
The action for annulment was brought by Chanel before the EU General Court against the decision of the Fourth Board of Appeal of EUIPO relating to opposition proceedings between Chanel and Huawei.
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On 28 December 2017, Chanel filed a notice of opposition. The first ground was based on Article 8(1)(b) of Regulation 2017/1001 and the earlier French mark 3977077 (filed and registered in 2013), which covers many classes, including goods in class 9 (inter alia computer software, sunglasses, glasses, and chronographs [time recording apparatus]).
The second ground was based on Article 8(5) of Regulation 2017/1001 and the earlier French mark 1334490 (filed in 1985 and renewed until 2025), which also covers most of the classes, including goods in classes 3, 9, 14, 18 and 25 (inter alia perfumes, cosmetics, optical apparatus and instruments, costume jewellery, leather goods, and clothes).
This guest post is brought to you by Simone Mallett-Forde, a former athlete, who recently completed the LLM LPC with Distinction. She is an aspiring solicitor with hopes to focus her career in the sport, technology, media and entertainment sectors. Here is what Simone has to say on the question of the impact of social media on ambush marketing, in context of the 2020 Tokyo Olymics, due to take place in 2021:
As seen at the London 2012 Olympics, Nike tested the limits of the Olympic ambush marketing rules by launching a global campaign featuring everyday athletes competing around the world in places named ‘London’. Based on social media metrics alone, Nike’s ‘ambush marketing’ campaign was much more successful than its rival, official sportswear partner of the London 2012 Olympics, Adidas.
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Drawing revenue from spectator and transfer fees, sponsorship and broadcasting rights; elite sport has significant commercial and economic value. The media recognition appeals to viewers which improves ratings and increases advertising revenues thus has transformed sports into a multibillion-pound industry with sponsorship fees measuring in the millions for events such as the Olympics, World Cup, NBA and Formula 1. These major international sporting events create an ideal platform for companies to implement their target group specific communications due to their large international reach. Consequently, companies spend millions in marketing to exploit their sponsorship rights to establish themselves as the uncontested brand in their category.
Infringers are focusing less on direct trademark infringement and are instead mimicking the feel of brands, say in-house counsel
I practice a form kundalini yoga that is somewhat in the tradition of Yogi Bhajan. Bhajan died in 2004 leaving his widow (Puri) as well as an Administrative Trust (YBAT). In recent years, Bhajan’s history of sexual abuse has come to light as well.
Puri and YBAT have a fairly long history of litigation over ownership and control of Bhajan’s estate. The most valuable aspect today is probably YOGI TEA that is sold by a third party, the East West Tea Company, but with Puri and YBAT each having a 50% undivided ownership of intellectual property rights.
For a flat fee of $225, creators get an audio editing software that can generate songs complete with synthetic human voices. Yamaha is now developing technology to make the voices more lifelike and allowing musical expressions unique to vocaloids.
Last month the High Court in Delhi ordered WhatsApp to suspend accounts that allegedly shared a pirated movie. The Court also told WhatsApp to take similar action against other accounts following demands from a copyright holder. While WhatsApp did suspend accounts, the company has now convinced the Court that due to end-to-end encryption, copyright holders shouldn't have "unfettered discretion" over account suspensions.
