How do you write great code? By being efficient. If you want to create something awesome, you’ll have to eliminate the time dumps that slow you down. With just a few tricks, you can speed up your work and focus on what matters.
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Say you’re searching for the file foo.txt, but you have no idea where you’ve put it. Then from your home directory, type: find . -name foo.txt
Here, the . stands for the current working directory, and you specify the file name with the option -name. You can also use wildcards. For example, this command will return all files in txt format: find . -name *.txt
There are more terminal applications for Linux systems than you can shake a stick at... And frankly, most of them are like choosing what socks to wear; very little difference, save maybe for some special purposes, like thermal socks, or tiling terminals...But, every once and a while I come across one that does things a little differently, and makes me curious to check it out further; such as Alacritty.
This guide will show you how to run an Internet speed test from the Linux command-line interface (CLI) and cron. You will also see a sample Jenkinsfile if you want to use a Jenkins for the automation instead of cron.
Borealis, the official Steam gaming support in Chromebooks, has been in development for at least a year now (and likely much longer). Let’s go over some new revelations we’ve found and then take a look back at what we know so far. There are many signs that point to a release of Borealis in the coming months so let’s dive right into the details!
RPCS3 was initially released in May 2011 and has gradually been improving its compatibility over the past decade. Each game is classified on a compatibility list as Nothing, Loadable, Intro, Ingame, and Playable. As Kotaku reports, the emulator has now reached a point where no known game is classed as "Nothing" anymore, so every title is at least Loadable, which means "games that display a black screen with a framerate on the window's title."
Last week we just launched (silently) our Boiling Steam Subreddit. You can find it at the expected address, i.e. www.reddit.com/r/Boiling_Steam. There is already a large community of Linux Gamers on Reddit (as evidenced by the recent 200k subscribers on r/linux_gaming) so it’s probably a good idea for us to be present there as well with our own channel. After all, we also like to touch upon a variety of different topics not just limited to games – we do hardware reviews, we interview people with different backgrounds, we write about how we operate, so it’s not always strictly about gaming only.
When it comes to DIY maker technology, few bits of hardware have had the versatility and outright longevity of the Raspberry Pi. Launched in 2012, the Raspberry Pi is a silent, energy-efficient, single-board computer that fits inside the palm of your hand—or inside just about anything you might want to make computer-controlled.
The Pi planet has seen four main releases of Raspberry Pi boards, along with various mods and variants, over the last decade, with the Raspberry Pi 4 Model B the latest and greatest revision. (That will stand, at least, until the Raspberry Pi Foundation reveals the next rumored Pi model in 2022 or 2023.)
Some of the older pre-Pi 4 models, though, are still available for less than the cost of an entrée at your local diner, and the creativity they have spawned is near limitless. Let’s take a look at some of the best Raspberry Pi projects we’ve seen in 2021.
The price of a 2GB Raspberry Pi 4 single-board computer is going up $10, and its supply is expected to be capped at seven million devices this year due to the ongoing global chip shortage.
Demand for components is outstripping manufacturing capacity at the moment; pre-pandemic, assembly lines were being red-lined as cloud giants and others snapped up parts fresh out of the fabs, and the COVID-19 coronavirus outbreak really threw a spanner in the works, so to speak, exacerbating the situation.
Everything from cars to smartphones have been affected by semiconductor supply constraints, including Raspberry Pis, it appears. Stock is especially tight for the Raspberry Pi Zero and the 2GB Raspberry Pi 4 models, we're told. As the semiconductor crunch shows no signs of letting up, the Raspberry Pi project is going to bump up the price for one particular model.
It’s a cliché, but why are we still reinventing wheels?
It is increasingly clear that the real value and opportunity in open-source isn’t so much the actual software itself, but the collaborative mindset and ecosystem that produces and maintains it. All too often, though, it can be a challenge for open-source advocates to persuade risk-averse board members who are used to conventional methods and thinking.
The Cloud Native Computing Foundation's flagship Kubernetes (K8s) conference, KubeCon + CloudNativeCon North America 2021 (aka "KubeCon"), was held as a live event at the Los Angeles Convention Center and virtually Oct. 13-15, 2021 (with a pre-event on Oct. 11-12). The virtual event had around 17,000 attendees, and around 4,000 attended in person. Below are some of the items that I found especially interesting at KubeCon.
A test version of Donald Trump’s Twitter-like social network violated open-source software licensing terms, according to the not-for-profit Software Freedom Conservancy.
The Software Freedom Conservancy, which enforces open-source software agreements, said Trump’s Truth Social website — launched by the newly formed Trump Media & Technology Group — failed to provide the source code to users, as required under the Affero General Public License (AGPL), a “copyleft license” published by the Free Software Foundation.
Truth Social’s site was using the free, open-source Mastodon social networking software, which is governed by the AGPL. TMTG ignored the licensing terms and “once caught in the act, Trump’s Group scrambled and took the site down,” Bradley Kuhn, policy fellow and hacker-in-residence at Software Freedom Conservancy, wrote in a blog post Thursday.
But we wanted specifically to know how innovation and creativity can happen more often in Hawai‘i, so Hawaii Business Magazine spoke with and listened to local artisans, art festival organizers, creative consultants, and even political leaders and businesspeople. We heard about how to foster creativity, and about the shared spaces, technological infrastructure and information sharing that might help Hawai‘i become a more innovative place.
The UK is facing a sustained shortage of radiologists across the country, which is having a devastating impact on patients and the healthcare system. Currently, the NHS is short of nearly 2,000 radiologists and 200 clinical oncologists, numbers which the UK’s Royal College of Radiologists (RCR) says could hit 6,000 and 700 respectively within just nine years.
The NHS is currently facing the biggest backlog in its history, expanding to all areas of medicine from surgery to general practice appointments. Around a third of patients are currently waiting over six weeks or more from referral for diagnostic imaging procedures like MRI and CT scans, with some waiting as long as three months.
The Molecular Sciences Software Institute, based in Virginia Tech’s Corporate Research Center, has received a $15 million renewal grant from the National Science Foundation.
The five-year grant is a massive boost of support for the multi-university organization of software scientists dedicated to designing and building new, powerful software tools that can help researchers of all stripes tackle wide-ranging, complex, data-heavy issues, such as cancer, diabetes, and Alzheimer’s disease, as well as creating new energy storage systems that can help stem climate change. It also led the creation of an international open-source website that allowed biomolecular scientists from around the world to share computer-aided drug-testing simulations targeting the protein at the center of COVID-19.
You might not remember what Gpsd is but it is in the news every 19.6 years, or more specifically every 1024 weeks, thanks to lazy timekeeping implementation for GPS satellites, which keep track of the number of weeks since January 5, 1980 as an unsigned 10-bit integer. That means when it hits 1023, the next week it rolls over to 0 and many systems which interface with GPS using timestamps will suddenly have corrupted location data.
Gpsd is an example of this, it is a a service daemon that translates data from Global Positioning System (GPS), Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS), and Automatic Identification System (AIS) and is used in a huge variety of applications. Some applications such as Kismet, GpsDrive, and roadmap will be affected but are not necessarily mission critical but more an annoyance when they stop functioning properly. However Gpsd is also used in things driverless cars, marine navigation, and military IFF; small errors in those systems can have large real world effects.
The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) warned that GPS deices might experience issues over the weekend because of a timing bug impacting Network Time Protocol (NTP) servers running the GPS Daemon (GPSD) software.
On Sunday, you might find some equipment thinks it’s 2002. That’s because of a weird bug in gpsd—the code on which a bunch of Network Time Protocol servers rely.
Come Sunday, October 24, 2021, those using applications that rely on gpsd for handling time data may find that they're living 1,024 weeks – 19.6 years – in the past.
A bug in gpsd that rolls clocks back to March, 2002, is set to strike this coming weekend.
The programming blunder was identified on July 24, 2021, and the errant code commit, written two years ago, has since been fixed. Now it's just a matter of making sure that every application and device deploying gpsd has applied the patch.
The Network Time Protocol (NTP) provides a way for devices and services to keep accurate time using a hierarchical set of servers rated in terms of precision, with "stratum 0" representing the most accurate time sources.
The Humboldt County Library is providing free online learning and career development opportunities through LinkedIn Learning.
Stanford professor Joe Bankman helped guide California through a test run of a “return free” tax system and still advocates for the project that he said participants loved. “People were thanking the government for taking something that drove them crazy and improving it.”
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An unexpected letter from the state tax board is the kind of thing known to spike blood pressure. But the note that arrived in tens of thousands of Californians’ mailboxes in 2005 promised to ease anxiety.
The state proposed that these mostly modest-income taxpayers skip the aggravations of hunting for W-2s, the hassling with tax software, the lost evenings and weekends completing returns. Instead, the state could do it for them.
Californians participating in this test run of a “return free” tax system — a goal tax reformers had been chasing since President Reagan proposed it to the nation in 1985 — were so impressed that the thousands of comments that poured into a survey brought tears of joy to Joe Bankman, the Stanford Law professor who guided the state’s effort, which was branded “ReadyReturn.”
“They were just so touching,” he said of the comments about ReadyReturn, which was designed as a voluntary offering targeted at taxpayers on the lower end of the income scale. “One said, ‘Finally the government is doing something to make my life better for a change.’ Almost all the comments had the words ‘thank you.’ People were thanking the government for taking something that drove them crazy and improving it.”
In the world of the computer and cloud networks however, things are different. In September 1991, Linus Torlvalds, created a family of ‘open source’ operating systems kernels that were similar to Unix, a prevalent operating system at the time for multi-user computing. Being open source, Linux gained quick popularity with computer programmers who wanted to write programs independent of closed operating systems, and since 2004, Linux has been able to run on Windows based operating systems. It also runs seamlessly on Macs and other hardware.
Christien Rioux (DilDog), one of the original authors of L0phtCrack while a member of hacker collective L0pht Heavy Industries more than 20 years ago, first said he planned to release an open source version of the tool in early August, around the time of the DEF CON conference.
The Open Group, the vendor-neutral technology standards consortium, is hosting its upcoming “Open Digital Standards” event October 25 – 27, 2021.
The Open Digital Standards event will bring together vendors and end-user organizations from across the globe to discuss how the cross-industry development of open standards is helping businesses become digital-first.
AMD's Secure Memory Encryption (SME) feature has been found to be causing issues to certain Linux systems and as such, the feature will be disabled by default from now on. The issue was discovered on October 5 by Linux engineer Paul Menzel.
The SME feature is apparently causing boot failures on certain AMD Raven Ridge systems The issue was detected on a Ryzen 3 2200G system which was paired up with an MSI B350M MORTAR motherboard. In other Ryzen PCs, with SME enabled, black screen problems - something AMD is closely familiar with - have also been reported. Hence, the problem might be present on other Zen-based processor families too.
A quick search on the Chrome Web Store can give us hundreds of results for VPNs. Some of those services can be as malicious as the sites we’re trying to protect ourselves from when online. It is hard to know which VPN extensions are safe, secure, and easy to use. To help you choose, here are 3 of the top Google Chrome-compatible providers that you can trust. The list is based on the security, reliability, and performance of each service. Let’s start with a little bit more information about Google Chrome.
The REvil ransomware operation has likely shut down once again after an unknown person hijacked their Tor payment portal and data leak blog.
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After REvil conducted a massive attack on companies through a zero-day vulnerability in the Kaseya MSP platform, the REvil operation suddenly shut down, and their public-facing representative, Unknown, disappeared.
Projects that create fuel from agricultural waste, restore coral reefs and green hydrogen technology are among the winners of the Duke of Cambridge's Earthshot Prize and will now receive support from businesses to scale their solutions.
More than half the world's seabirds have accumulated plastic chemical components in their bodies, a recent study showed.
A forty year study on a remote Antarctic island shows that while populations of two penguin species are declining, while a third is increasing. Analysis of census data from Signy Island in the South Orkney Islands reveals that, between 1978 and 2016, the number of chinstrap penguin pairs declined by nearly 70%.
Pairs of Adélie penguins dropped by more than 40% but the number of gentoo penguin pairs more than trebled.
As we plunder the planet, we risk rendering it uninhabitable—a crisis that cries out for global solidarity and collective action.
It was late September when Andrew Torba, founder of the social media platform Gab, tapped out a message to his users declaring the website would update its online infrastructure. Upgrades are common in the tech industry, but Torba’s reasoning for expanding Gab’s data center was anything but: He wanted to touch up the tech, he said, to “preserve a parallel Christian society on the internet for generations to come.”
“One day our great grandchildren will learn what really happened during the greatest Spiritual war of our time,” Torba wrote, “and how we laid the foundations for a new parallel Christian society.”
A Taiwan-owned bookstore in Hong Kong said it has no more in-store copies a historical book arguing that the eight-nation invasion of China at the turn of the 20th century was justified, amid reports in media backed by the ruling Chinese Communist Party (CCP) that it had removed the book from its shelves.
"The Eight-Nation Alliance Was a Just Cause," penned by Canada-based author Liu Qikun and published in democratic Taiwan, was reportedly "removed" by Eslite bookstores in Hong Kong, the CCP-backed Global Times newspaper reported.
The pro-CCP South China Morning Post cited an Eslite employee as saying the book was sold out, but may not be fully restocked due to "the current situation."
When did the Internet begin? It all gets a bit hazy after so many years, but by the early 1970s, research work in packet-switched networks was well underway, and while it wasn’t running TCP at the time (the flag day when the ARPANET switched over to use TCP was not until 1 January 1983) but there was the base datagram internet protocol running in the early research ARPA network in the US. Given that this is now around 50 years ago, and given that so much has happened in the last 50 years, what does the next 50 years have in store? This was the question posed in a recent workshop hosted by IBM Research on “Future of Computer Communications Networks,” and I was invited to present at this workshop. I’d like to share my thoughts on this rather challenging topic, based on a presentation I made to this workshop.
Canon USA has been accused of forcing customers to buy ink cartridges when they only want to scan and fax documents using the manufacturer's so-called All-In-One multi-function printers.
David Leacraft bought a Canon PIXMA MG2522 All-in-One Printer from Walmart in March, and was appalled when his device was incapable of scanning or a faxing documents if it ran low, or out, of ink. Unlike printing, scanning and faxing documents do not ordinarily require ink.
He wouldn’t have spent the 100 bucks on Canon’s printer if he had known this, his legal team noted. Feeling cheated, Leacraft fired a lawsuit at Canon USA, seeking class-action status on behalf of other disgruntled customers.
In the course of carrying out its business activities, the company may face unfair actions of a competitor. One of the common methods of unfair competition is the illegal use by a competitor of a designation that is identical or confusingly similar to the trademark of another business entity. In Belarus, the prohibition on committing such actions is established in the civil and antimonopoly legislation.
The Civil Code of the Republic of Belarus (hereinafter - the Civil Code) stipulates that all actions that can in any way cause confusion in relation to legal entities, individual entrepreneurs, goods, works, services or business activities of competitors should be recognized as unfair competition (Article 1029 of the Civil Code ).
The U.S. Supreme Court rejected review of a Second Circuit decision regarding a group of researchers alleging that Illumina Inc. and others misused their trade secrets in patent applications.
The researchers waited too long to bring claims against Illumina, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit ruled in December 2020, affirming a Manhattan federal court decision. The circuit court said the researchers should have been aware of earlier public proceedings, adding that the statute of limitations had run out.
Nippon Steel Corp. is seeking an injunction against Toyota Motor Corp. to prevent the automaker from manufacturing and selling electric and hybrid vehicles that use a type of steel critical for the performance of motors.
In an earlier post, Professor Crouch discussed the Federal Circuit’s recent decision in In re Surgisil. In that decision, the Federal Circuit recognized that 35 U.S.C. €§ 171 provides for the grant of patents for designs for articles of manufacture, not designs in the abstract. In doing so, the court’s decision was in accord with the rationale—if not the limited express holding—of its earlier decision Curver Luxembourg.
Professor Crouch is correct that this holding means that the scope of ۤ 102 prior art for designs is limited. And yes, it means you could take a shape developed for one article of manufacture and apply it to a different type of article and potentially get a design patent for it. But there is nothing wrong with that. Designing a shape for a binder clip, for example, is a different design problem than designing a shape for a handbag. Using the shape of the former for the latter could be a valuable act of design, as I argued in this article (which was relied on heavily by Surgisil though not cited by the court).
There may be cases where this kind of shape adaptation might be obvious, but that is a problem for ۤ 103, not ۤ 102. It is true that, for utility patents, the universe of prior art for ۤ 102 is broader than it is for ۤ 103. But, given the different nature of the inventions protected and the different claiming conventions, it makes sense to treat designs differently.
In July 2021, the South African Patent Office granted a patent for a patent application relating to "food container based on fractal geometry" with an Artificial Intelligence (AI) system named "DABUS" (Device for Autonomous Bootstrapping of Unified Sentience) listed as an inventor. This happens to be a world's first, wherein an AI system has been recognized as an inventor. Why has recognition of AI created so much buzz in IPR? What's the fuss with the inventorship of AI all about?
S.2891 – Restoring the America Invents Act. Substantial changes to the IPR system to favor the patent challenger. (Sponsored by Sen. Cornyn, R-TX; Sen. Crapo, R-ID; and Sen. Leahy, D-VT).
Senior IP sources at five companies say the Winston & Strawn litigator could be great or ‘more of the same’ – either way, they want someone in the role soon
Stockholm-based floating offshore wind company Hexicon will be granted a European patent by The European Patent Office for a floating platform with two tilted towers that makes it possible to install two turbines on the same platform.
Gilbert Hyatt, a prolific patent filer and litigant, sued the PTO in district court under 35 U.S.C. €§ 145 after receiving undescribed “adverse results” in connection with certain patents. The district court ordered the PTO to issue some of the patents and awarded attorneys’ fees to Mr. Hyatt as a prevailing party. The district court also denied the PTO’s request for expert witness fees under €§ 145, holding that the statute’s shifting of “[a]ll expenses of the proceedings” to the applicant does not overcome the American Rule presumption against shifting expert fees.
In an earlier appeal, the Federal Circuit vacated and remanded the district court’s decision ordering the issuance of patents, making Mr. Hyatt no longer a prevailing party. Therefore, the Federal Circuit vacated the award of attorneys’ fees.
In this appeal, the Federal Circuit addressed—and affirmed—the district court’s denial of expert fees “because €§ 145 does not specifically and explicitly shift expert witness fees.”
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In affirming, the Federal Circuit described the American Rule presumption that litigants pay their own fees unless a statute or contract provides otherwise. The Federal Circuit also discussed at length the Supreme Court’s NantKwest decision, where the Court held that the reference to “expenses” in €§ 145 does not invoke attorneys’ fees with enough clarity to overcome the American Rule.
Ultimately, the Federal Circuit recognized that “this is a close case” and that “there are many arguments” why expert fees should be included under the phrase “[a]ll expenses of the proceedings.” The Federal Circuit also acknowledged “that district courts have been awarding expert witness fees under the statute ever since the PTO began using experts.” And the court stated that it does not “lightly overturn decades of practice in federal district courts.” But in the end, “€§ 145 does not specifically and explicitly invoke expert witness fees,” and therefore they are not covered.
Mercedes-Benz recently filed a new name patent with the European Union Intellectual Property Office. The name in question is Vision One-Eleven.
A split panel of the US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit concluded that the structure and functions of the Patent Trial & Appeal Board (PTAB) survived yet another constitutional challenge, this time based on the PTAB’s fee and compensation structure, lack of director review over the institution decision and applicability of the Takings Clause. Mobility WorkX, LLC v. Unified Patents LLC, Case No. 20-1441 (Fed. Cir.) (Dyk, J.) (Newman, J., dissenting).
With the dust barely settled after the Supreme Court’s ruling in US v. Arthrex, Inc. that the PTAB’s rendering of final written decisions without director review violated the Appointments Clause, this case presented a whole new slate of potential deficiencies with the PTAB. Although none of these deficiencies were initially raised with the PTAB, the Court exercised its discretion to nonetheless consider the challenges based on publicly available records that it could judicially notice.
The first challenge, already made in many other cases, was that the Federal Circuit remand for the director to consider a rehearing petition in view of Arthrex. This remedy, already afforded in other post-Arthrex challenges, was a simple grant. Yet, here, Mobility asked for something more, arguing that because the director did not resolve the inter partes review (IPR) within the 12-month statutory period, the director must confirm the claims or dismiss the IPR. The Court declined to rule on this issue, instructing Mobility to raise the issue on remand.
Hughes, J. Vacating award of attorney’s fees and affirming denial of expert fees. “The central logic of NantKwest is applicable to our decision here, indicating that €§ 145 does not shift expert witness fees. The American Rule sets a high bar that vague definitions cannot overcome, particularly considering the many instances in which Congress has explicitly shifted expert fees. We therefore affirm the district court’s holding that the PTO is not entitled to reimbursement of its expert witness fees… We do not lightly overturn decades of practice in federal district courts. But the phrase ‘[a]ll the expenses of the proceedings’ in €§ 145 does not specifically and explicitly invoke expert witness fees.”
T1197/18 provides some clarity on the scope of the term “impairing” in the order concerning video conferencing (ViCo) issued on G1/21 by the Enlarged Board of Appeal.
There are currently thousands of different types of plastic available and the lion's share of new plastic soon ends up as waste. As mountains of the used stuff continue to pile up around the world, people are looking for new ways to reduce, reuse and recycle some of it. But getting rid of even a tiny amount of it will be a gargantuan job, especially with the popularity of hard-to-recycle products and single-use plastic.
A new study published by the European Patent Office (EPO) shows that from a global perspective, Europe and the US are leading innovation in plastic recycling and alternative plastics technologies.
The industrial revolution began in Great Britain in the late 18th century, with new devices such as the power loom and the spinning mule increasing output. Then, in the early 19th century, as industrialization spread to the United States and continental Europe and factories became more common, machines meant to speed up economic activity and industrial and agricultural production soon flooded the market. Here are five of the most important such inventions patented in the United States between 1794 and 1851.
Jaguar Land Rover Automotive Plc has settled patent fights it lodged against Volkswagen AG and its brands over a feature used in luxury sport utility vehicles that simplifies off-road driving for affluent but inexperienced drivers.
The Chartered Institute of Patent Attorneys is to become an affiliated nominator organisation to the Earthshot Prize, an awards scheme run by Price William to award inventors’ environmentalist efforts.
The final part of the conference provided definitive clarity. First, Presiding Judge Dr. Matthias Zigann of the 7th Civil Chamber of the Munich I Regional Court said that it's his task to apply the law as it is, and it's clear that this year's amendment to the German Patent Act is designed to ensure continuity. In other words (my words), there's nothing disruptive or revolutionary there.
During his closing remark, Munich-based law professor Ansgar Ohly shared the latest information he had just received from a co-worker. At a Shanghai conference, Presiding Judge Klaus Bacher of the 10th Civil Senate of the Federal Court of Justice--the highest-ranking German patent judge--reported said that the 2021 patent bill is merely "a clarification and consolidation of the case law" (i.e., Heat Exchanger).
Let that sink in. It's game over for all those who thought infringers could avoid patent injunctions in Germany. There's not going to be any change on the bottom line. What the judiciary is concerned about is the potential for delay of some proceedings, and I'm not even worried about that: the courts will figure out shortcuts.
Yesterday I reported on the first panel of the CIPLITEC online conference on German patent reform, where it became very clear once again that injunctions will remain the customary patent remedy as I had been predicting all along. The conference is continuing today, and what just happened this morning was nothing short of astounding.
In a virtual panel discussion, Judge Fabian Hoffmann of the patent-specialized 10th Civil Senate of the Bundesgerichtshof (Federal Court of Justice) replied to certain infringer-friendly positions taken by others on the question of how punitive the compensation owed by an infringer to a patentee should be in cases in which an injunction is denied or, far more likely, tailored by means of a use-up or workaround period.
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This is a lot of food for thought for some people, and I'd like to leave it at that for the time being. I'm going to continue to make the very same distinction as Judge Hoffmann made today: there's the question of what innovation policy is desirable, and there's the question of what the law--in its current form--says. There's the world in which some would like to live, and the world in which we actually live. The German patent enforcement system is going to be the same except that time and money will be wasted on proportionality arguments (mostly by defendants). There's room for lots of academic discussion, and parts of the CIPLITEC conference--with the greatest respect--were more about the trees than the forest. But patentees will still get the same leverage from bringing infringement cases in Germany as before. In fact, compared to where statutory and case law stood when the reform process began, patentees even have a lot more leverage now.
Ford Motor Company appears to have a history of standard-essential patent (SEP) hold-out. It was unwilling to take an actual long-term license from Nokia a few years ago, so the parties entered into what was more of a standstill than license agreement. Last week I found out about an IP Bridge v. Ford infringement action in Munich. An injunction looms large, and just today Germany's chief patent judge said that a recent amendment to the patent injunction statute was merely "a clarification and consolidation of the case law". One of his side judges told another audience that any proposals to soften patent enforcement should be directed to the legislature. Therefore, Ford can expect to be enjoined in Germany unless it agrees to take a FRAND license or is cleared of infringement of any valid SEP.
Following countless number of false starts over the last few years, the Unified Patent Court (UPC) and unitary patent (UP) may have dropped to the bottom of many patent owners’ “to do” lists. September and October 2021 have seen, however, a flurry of activity and as a result, both the UPC and UP may actually become a reality between mid-2022 and early 2023.
This in turn may be because the definition of an individual module typically will be “closed” in the sense that it is self-contained. This of course is desirable from the standpoint of patent office clarity requirements such as Article 84 of the European Patent Convention; but it can lead to a situation of a dependent claim (to a plurality of interconnected modules) implying modification, or perhaps even outright contradiction, of an independent claim directed to a module when considered on its own.
In other words, the module as defined in its closed, individual format may not reflect the feature combination that arises when modules are combined - for example because connections between the interiors of modules need to be defined, thereby taking away any characteristic of imperviousness.
Whether one addresses this problem by (a) defining an open module in the first place - thereby perhaps excluding from protection a single, closed module but allowing connection and substance exchange features; or (b) including a second independent claim directed to two or more operationally connected modules, will depend on circumstances and budgets. However, it should prove possible to argue that when two independent claims (to single and connected modules) are included they are unitary with one another, and this may make such claims easier to contemplate.
With the implementation of the UPC Agreement imminent, Bayer’s Joerg Thomaier believes the EU should act quickly to address lack of harmonisation in Europe’s SPC system.
This is the first post in a series about our new research project on mandamus practice in the federal courts of appeals generally and the Federal Circuit’s peculiar use of mandamus in patent cases specifically.
There has been a lot of talk recently about the Federal Circuit and mandamus. Our current research project aims to answer whether the Federal Circuit is an outlier among the circuit courts in its use of mandamus, and if so, what explains the court’s apparent infatuation with mandamus?
Yesterday’s post described the high number of petitions for a writ of mandamus that the Federal Circuit has granted relative to other federal appellate courts over the last few years. In this post I’ll give further context and detail about the petitions for writs of mandamus at the Federal Circuit.
Even if a plaintiff has filed its case in a federal court in which personal jurisdiction and venue exist, 28 U.S.C. €§ 1404(a) permits the judge to transfer the case to another district “[f]or the convenience of parties and witnesses, in the interest of justice.” Transfer motions under €§ 1404(a) are a common tactic in patent litigation, particularly for California-based tech companies sued in the Eastern and Western Districts of Texas. When defendants lose those motions—as they often do in Texas—they frequently seek immediate review in the Federal Circuit by petitioning for a writ of mandamus.
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The Federal Circuit is exceptional among the federal courts of appeals in using an extraordinary writ to engage in what is essentially interlocutory error correction. On first glance, we might view this as a flaw with the Federal Circuit: the specialized court is too zealously exercising its final authority over patent law and wasting party and judicial resources by policing discretionary district court rulings on an issue that’s entirely separate from the merits of the case. But Judge Albright’s aggressive efforts to attract patent cases to Waco—and his seeming disregard of appellate precedent on transfer of venue—have forced the Federal Circuit’s hand. Predictable judge assignments have encouraged what is essentially a race to the bottom among district judges who want to attract patent infringement plaintiffs. The mechanism for competition is procedural rules—and procedural rulings—that are extremely favorable to plaintiffs. And so the stakes over transfer of venue decisions are unusually high in patent cases. This suggests that the writ of mandamus—a procedural mechanism from the dustiest corner of civil procedure—will play a crucial role in determining the future of the U.S. patent system.
This is my second of at least three consecutive posts on automotive patent licensing issues. The previous one discussed the L2 Mobile Technologies v. Ford Motor Company case that is pending in the District of Delaware.
At the annual conference of the Italian Antitrust Association, the European Commission's Executive Vice President and competition commissioner Margrethe Vestager gave a speech yesterday that ushered in--as its title promised--"a new era of cartel enforcement." The manuscript was published on the Commission's website.
1+1+1=3. Mrs. Vestager vowed to crack down, inter alia, on (i) novel types of cartels and (ii) buyer cartels, and (iii) recalled recent enforcement action against (German) car makers. Automotive standard-essential patent (SEP) licensing negotiation groups (LNGs) are the combination of all of that. Further below I'll quote the relevant passages, which speak for themselves. If this doesn't serve to discourage car makers from advocating a solution that is inherently worse than the alleged problem it purports to solve, what else will?
As modern life continues to revolve more and more around technology, artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning have quietly assumed a major role in shaping how we interact and live within the digital world. Machine learning and AI algorithms operate behind the scenes of our social media platforms and news feeds, online shopping carts and Netflix, silently organizing what we see and interact with. As these programs have grown more sophisticated and expansive in their application, the societal (and technical) implications of them require exploration and consideration. For example, the U.S. House of Representatives Financial Services Committee (HFSC) Task Force on Artificial Intelligence continues to examine how AI and machine learning are impacting social justice and equality in financial services markets, holding a hearing this month titled “Beyond I, Robot: Ethics, Artificial Intelligence, and the Digital Age.” As HSFC Chairwoman Maxine Waters (D-CA) explained, the goal of the task force and such hearings, including one previously on May 21, is to “make sure policy can keep up with the changes to our financial services, and do its part to make sure technology is not being used to discriminate or exacerbate existing biases under the guise of innovation.”
On October 19, 2021, the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) instituted trial on all challenged claims of U.S. Patent 9,715,691, which is being asserted by Caselas, LLC, a Raymond Anthony Joao entity. The '691 patent is generally directed to providing transaction history information including charge-back information.
TikTok Inc. and its parent, ByteDance Ltd., lost their bid for review of a second set of claims in rival Tiller Inc.’s video synching patent, as an administrative tribunal expressed concerns about “road mapping.”
TikTok challenged a number of claims in U.S. Patent No. 9,691,429 in the fall of 2020. The Patent Trial and Appeal Board agreed in April to review those claims. Less than two weeks before the institution decision, TikTok filed a second petition challenging the rest of the patent’s claims.
Today, it is impossible to imagine life or business without a computer – whether it is an electronic wristwatch, a food mixer or a mobile phone. All these devices contain a computer, of varying levels of complexity, for controlling the function of the device. But a computer cannot operate without instructions. These instructions are summarised in computer programs or software and may be incorporated in a computer or other apparatus, but are often stored, reproduced and distributed on portable media (eg, CD-ROMs) or transmitted online. This software is not tangible and once created it can be reproduced easily at very low cost and in unlimited quantities. Much like the development of tangible assets, the development of software consumes many resources. Therefore, the owner of a software product has a justified interest to protect their investment. Although copyright protection is available for the source code of software, it does not protect the idea of the software, which is a core part of its commercial value. The patent system might therefore be an adequate means for protecting the software designer’s rights. Patent protection is – among other requirements – granted for an invention that brings a new and non-obvious technical solution. After a patent is awarded, the patent owner has an exclusive right to prevent others from commercially using the patented invention.
In this decision, the European Patent Office refused to grant a software patent on an efficient spam filter. Here are the practical takeaways of the decision T 2147/16 of September 7, 2021 of Technical Board of Appeal 3.4.03:
Google’s Nest Hub doesn’t infringe a patent owned by Profectus Technology for a digital picture frame, a federal jury in Waco, Texas, found.
Artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) are not new concepts – they have been the subject of academic investigation for decades. However, real-world applications have had to wait longer for the availability of the computing power and rich data sets necessary to successfully implement such approaches.
The TTAB recently ruled on the appeals from the three Section 2(e)(1) mere descriptiveness refusals summarized below. No hints this time. Let's see how you do with them. Answer will be found in the first comment.
An overseas online retailer that allegedly sold counterfeit items bearing trademarked sports logos will ask the Seventh Circuit to hold that a federal court in Illinois lacks jurisdiction to hear claims by the NBA, MLB, NFL, NHL, and others.
Pakistan’s claim that the latest EU court judgement upholds its rights over Basmati rice is unsubstantiated, says expert.
Sometime in 2012, Nigeria began the process of reforming her over three-decade old copyright law. The extant Copyright Act was enacted in 1988, with some amendments in the early and late 90s. The reform process led to the production of a Draft Copyright Bill (DCB), which was open for comments sometime in 2015 by the Nigeria Copyright Commission (NCC), to repeal the extant Act and re-enact a new Act in Nigeria.
The DCB was eventually approved by the Federal Executive Council (FEC) in 2018 for transmission to the National Assembly for consideration. The National Assembly in Nigeria, the legislative arm of government, comprises the Senate (upper chamber) and the House of Representative (lower chamber). The FEC approved bill was eventually sent to the Senate in May 2021. Before then, however, another Copyright Bill developed by private individuals drawing from the DCB, but sponsored by a Senator had found its way to the Senate and had passed through the second reading. Thus, two Copyright Bills – the executive or public Bill (SB769) and the private Bill (SB688) – are currently before the Senate.
