Welcome to this week's Linux Weekly Roundup!
We had a great week in the world of Linux releases with a brand new Makulu Shift Ubuntu Variant, Nitrux Linux 2021.10.29 and, Elive 3.8.24.
Have a great week and enjoy it!
I often see people and companies moving their workloads to the cloud. Speaking with them, they explain that the cloud is cheaper, more flexible, and more reliable than their current infrastructure. To further increase investment return, they often target a specific (single) cloud to reduce management costs and complexity.
By itself, this trend seems a very reasonable one. The risk is that, sometimes, people do not consider the less immediate risks around this move. There are many of those risks, and if there is an appetite for it, I’ll be talking further about the other dangers, but now I would like to focus on a specific one: the risk of a shutdown.
I define the “risk of a Cloud shutdown” as the potential risk that all resources of a single customer go offline. Major events such as data center going down or a global BGP failure can create downtime, but we are not talking about those since those would affect much more than a single customer.
Today we are looking at Makulu Shift, based on Ubuntu. It comes with Linux Kernel 5.11, based on Ubuntu 20.04, Gnome 3.38, and uses about 71.5GB of ram when idling. Enjoy!
In this video, we are looking at Makulu Shift Ubuntu Variant. Enjoy!
You've seen an email address, you think you understand how they work but you don't even remotely know how mistaken you are and today I go over why writing a regex to fully handle emails is nearly impossible
Reflections on Python.
It's been calm, and I have no excuse to add an extra rc, so here we are, with v5.15 pushed out, and the merge window starting tomorrow.
Which is going to be a bit inconvenient for me, since I also have some conference travel coming up. But it's only a couple of days and I'll have my laptop with me. Sometimes the release timing works out, and sometimes it doesn't..
Anyway, the last week of 5.15 was mainly networking and gpu fixes, with some random sprinkling of other things (a few btrfs reverts, some kvm updates, minor other fixes here and there - a few architecture fixes, couple of tracing, small driver fixes etc). Full shortlog appended.
This release may have started out with some -Werror pain, but it calmed down fairly quickly and on the whole 5.15 was fair small and calm. Let's hope for more of the same - without Werror issues this time - for the upcoming merge window.
Linus
Highlights of Linux 5.15 include a brand new NTFS file system implementation from Parangon Software that’s fully functional and supports all NTFS versions up to 3.1, an in-kernel SMB3 server called ksmbd, Btrfs now supports fs-verity file integrity assurance and ID-mapped mounts, as well as DAMON (Data Access MONitor) for monitoring the memory access pattern of user-space processes.
The code name for this release has been set to "Trick or Treat".
Significant features in this release include: the realtime preemption locking code, descriptorless files for io_uring, BPF timers, the removal of mandatory file-locking support, the ksmbd SMB filesystem server (but see this article), printk() indexing, the process_mrelease() system call, The DAMON memory-management optimization system, the ntfs3 filesystem implementation, and much more. See the KernelNewbies 5.15 page for more information.
Back in September at the end of the Linux 5.15 merge window was our Linux 5.15 feature overview but given the time since then and that the Linux 5.15 stable kernel will likely be released this evening, here is a recap of the most interesting changes in this new kernel version.
Linux 5.15 will be released by tonight unless Linus Torvalds decides to be conservative with an additional release candidate, which would push the final release back to next Sunday. In any case, here is a look at the most interesting changes and new features from our perspective with this next kernel...
Linus Torvalds went ahead and released Linux 5.15 today on Halloween rather than delaying the kernel for another week.
Linux 5.15 has many prominent changes including the introduction of DAMON, the new NTFS file-system driver, initial Xe HPG and DG2/Alchemist support code, Zen 3 APU temperature monitoring, and much more.
What better way to kickstart a brand new month than with a brand new Linux kernel.
Yes, Linux 5.15 is now officially released.
Announcing the new kernel’s arrival on the Linux Kernel mailing list Linux founder Linus Trovalds [sic] writes:
“The last week of 5.15 was mainly networking and gpu fixes, with some random sprinkling of other things (a few btrfs reverts, some kvm updates, minor other fixes here and there – a few architecture fixes, couple of tracing, small driver fixes etc)”, adding that “…on the whole 5.15 was fair small and calm (sic)”.
One of the keystones of any operating system is a properly configured firewall for complete system security. UFW (Uncomplicated Firewall) is installed on Ubuntu operating systems default; however, it is not enabled. One of the great benefits of UFW is its simplicity, user-friendly and easy-to-use command line, making it great for beginners in Linux to the most advanced power users.
In the following tutorial, you will learn to install and set up UFW Firewall on either Ubuntu 20.04 LTS Focal Fossa Desktop or Server using the command terminal.
Title of this blog post isn’t a collection of every Kubernetes related buzzword I could think of. It’s a collection of technologies that went into creating an automated, resilient and scalable WordPress setup.
The AUR (Arch User Repository) is one of the most alluring features of Arch Linux, and its derivative Linux distributions like Manjaro.
Normally, new software would be downloaded via pacman on Arch and Manjaro. When software isn’t available in official repositories, users can turn to the AUR, where they’re likely to find what they’re looking for.
Our homelab runs on dedicated hardware, therefore there is no Cloud provider cost involved in order to run it.
The cost of electricity is all there is to it. The average homelab power consumption is approximatelly 80W.
Monthly, this works out as follows: (((80W * 24h) / 1000) * €£0.16/kWh * 365days) / 12months = €£9.34 (~13$).
Apache Module mod_ssl is available to install for getting SSL support in our HTTP server. Here we let you know how to enable mod_ssl & mod_http2 for Apache webserver on Almalinux or Rocky Linux 8 (RHEL based).
To get SSL v3 and TLS v1.x support on Apache, this article is here that helps in generating the required SSL certificate including the associated private key.
We may want to organize the result of an Ubuntu operation in a specific way. Perhaps we should avoid bloated results and present information in a concise style. The commands echo and printf are also constructed. Printf provides for the creation of a formatting string and offers a non-zero quit status when it fails. Whereas echo normally leaves with a 0 status and typically outputs inputs headed by the end of line character upon this standard result. The “printf” gives you more options for the output format than the “echo”. Throughout this brief lesson, we will look at how to style the results of the terminal using the echo and printf instructions on Ubuntu 20.04 Linux system.
The sed stands for stream editor that is used for basic editing operations on a text that comes from a file or on an input that is directly passed to sed from another command. Like its inputting criteria, sed can process an input file and give output to another program (as it takes input from other programs directly). It can be used to track the same word that is used in a document in different ways and the users can set them for better understanding. As the foundation of sed is based on a text editor but it can be used to write complex scripts also.
This article will cover a guide on using the “gdu” command line utility in Linux. This tool can be used to analyze free as well used space on any storage device connected to your Linux system. Written in Go programming language, gdu claims to be fast at analyzing solid state drives. According to a benchmark provided on its GitHub repository, it can analyze an entire disk faster than other similar tools.
Environment variables are a collection of dynamic specified values kept inside the machine that has been utilized by programs running in terminals or subshells in Ubuntu and Linux platforms. The environment variable, in basic terms, is an attribute with a title and a value. Environment variables involve changing the way a system functions as well as the behavior of the device’s programs. The environment variable can hold data such as the regular word processor or search engine, the route to executable documents, the machine locale, and keypad layout preferences, among other things.
You may find yourself in many situations where you have to split string values into arrays or other data structures while working on a bash script in a Linux system. Here, you have to clear that bash doesn’t provide us with the built-in split function to split any string. But there is always an alternative to such problems. Hence, we will be using the delimiters to convert or split some strings into an array. Let’s start looking at some examples within Ubuntu 20.04. Open the shell terminal first using the “Ctrl+Alt+T” on the desktop.
VLC Media Player doesn’t need any introduction it has been around for a very long time to run media files on almost all operating systems. Here we learn how to install a VLC media player on AlmaLinux or Rocky Linux 8 (RHEL based Linux).
VLC is available for Linux, Windows, macOS, Android, and iOS. It is an open-source application and can play files of all important audio and video formats. A double click is enough, alternatively you can load files into the VLC interface using drag & drop or tap a video DVD using the menu bar command.
The users can easily switch ON Subtitles and lyrics, if available along with the preferred language for films in VLC. The VLC media player can also be used as a streaming client for various Internet streams – such as YouTube videos and the like. With a little bit of skill, you can also use this function to download media such as the aforementioned YouTube videos from the network and save them locally. If the format does not yet fit, you can convert it with the VLC media player and extract the audio track from videos in order to save them as an MP3 file, for example.
Apache is the most widely used and popular open-source web server on the Internet. It can be flexibly configured and expanded using a large number of modules. Here we learn how to install Apache webserver on AlmaLinux or Rocky Linux 8 using the command line.
Most of the time we use Apache web server in combination with MySQL and PHP or Perl or Python to create a LAMP server ( Linux, Apache, MySQL, and P such as PHP, Perl, or Python) for running various CMS and other web applications.
The Linux system contains many options to be set in it by a user. One of the very well-known and useful groups of commands is “Set builtin”. The Set Built-in has many flags to set any environment variables in Bash with its simple commands. Today, we will discuss and implement some examples to see different Set Built-in commands in Ubuntu 20.04 Linux operating system. Start by logging in from your system first. Open your shell terminal using the “Ctrl+Alt+T” shortcut key on the desktop. To get information regarding the “Set Built-in” command, use the “help” command along with the “set” keyword in your terminal as shown.
Samba is a utility present in Linux that allows sharing of folders and printers across different operating systems over a network. It means you can access the folders present in Linux in one system from another system having Windows using Samba.
In this tutorial you will learn about the Samba server in detail; how to install and configure the Samba server in Ubuntu Linux, along with different cases of its use and different issues that might arise.
In Bash scripts, there seem to be a variety of ways to accept data from the user. Allowing participants to enter input, on the other hand, might cause some issues. The major difficulty is data integrity, which necessitates taking into consideration all potential inputs. Creating a multiple-choice panel for the Bash code is a simple way around all of this. To use this approach, you may construct a simple, predefined set of choices from which the user can select. In this brief tutorial, we’ll look at how to make a basic numerous option menu within Bash scripts to use a select structure and case clauses via the Ubuntu 20.04 system terminal.
In mathematics, the modulo operator is widely known to determine the remainder of two values upon division. This mathematical operator can also be used in the bash script. Therefore, we will see how a modulo operator can be used in bash with different ways to get the remainder. Let’s start by logging in from the Ubuntu 20.04 system. Try “Ctrl+Alt+T” to launch the shell terminal on the Ubuntu desktop. Let’s have a few examples.
You may have encountered many situations when you have to quit your bash script upon some inconvenience. There are many methods to quit the bash script, i.e., quit while writing a bash script, while execution, or at run time. One of the many known methods to exit a bash script while writing is the simple shortcut key, i.e., “Ctrl+X”. While at run time, you can exit the code using “Ctrl+Z”. This guide will show how the batch script can be quitted using the different exit clauses while executing. Let’s get started by logging in from the Ubuntu 20.04 system first and opening the shell using “Ctrl+Alt+T”.
In this tutorial, we will show you how to install KDE Plasma on Debian 11. For those of you who didn’t know, KDE Plasma is one of the most popular Desktop Environments available for Linux Desktop users. KDE dedicate based on creating a free and user-friendly computer experience by offering advanced graphical desktop and a wide variety of applications for entertainment, learning, communication e.t.c
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 through the step-by-step installation of the KDE Plasma Desktop Environment on a Debian 11 (Bullseye).
IonCube is a code encryption tool, created in 2003. It was introduced to protect codes written in PHP language so that an unlicensed user could not view, change or run the file. It secures the file through the encryption/decryption method.
So one thing I’ve been doing past four months is the porting of Formats KCM, but now the scope is no longer restricted in only porting. Alone the process, first the old KCM design isn’t that mobile friendly so I did a re-design. And then Nate pointed out that the Formats KCM is in conflicted with Language KCM, which leads to the merging of Language and Formats KCM. Also the post I made eariler about locales in Linux, that also needs to be addressed. It’s still some work to be done, namely locale generation and relevent package installation via PackageKit. I really want to get this merged before Plasma 5.24, the soft freeze of which happens at 30/12/2021.
While I bounce around from one Linux distribution to the next like a hyper-active flea on its sixth cup of coffee, it's not very often I switch from one web browser to another. I used Opera almost exclusively for about a decade (from around 2002-2010), then mostly used QupZilla from then on. The QupZilla browser got rebranded to Falkon shortly before it was put out to pasture. Along the way I've occasionally used other browsers, either for testing purposes or when working with a client, or just to see what "this new Chromium thing is everyone keeps talking about", but I tend to be a creature of habit when it comes to browsers. I might run Firefox or Chrome for a week, but then I'm back to whatever was working for me before, often because I've grown accustomed to shortcut keys or having my bookmarks sorted a certain way.
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Earlier I mentioned Brave blocks advertisements and tracking by default. It actually goes a step further than this. Brave allows the user to right-click on ads they do see to hide them in the future, and it blocks invisible trackers on websites. It then goes even further and randomizes its own fingerprint.
Browser fingerprinting is a way of collecting data a browser leaks, such as its user agent, extension information, version, and supported plugins. This allows websites to uniquely identify most users, even with cookies disabled and the user's IP address changed. Brave works around this by randomizing its fingerprint in a way to mask its users. In theory it should be difficult for a website to tell one Brave user from another. According to Digital Trends, Brave was the first mainstream browser to pass the Electronic Frontier Foundation's Cover Your Tracks test.
These features cover my comments on advertising and tracking, but what is BAT? BAT is short for Basic Attention Tokens. While Brave defaults to hiding ads from the user, we have the option of enabling ads from the browser itself. Brave will optionally pop-up a notification in the corner of the window from time to time asking if we wish to see an ad (the frequency of these notifications can be adjusted). If we click the button to see an ad we can earn tokens. These tokens are a form of cryptocurrency which can then be sent to participating websites as donations (or tips) for their content. We can choose which websites get our tokens and the sites can then cash in to pay for hosting or paying contributors.
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The Brave browser hits most of the points I want from my primary portal to the Internet. It's quick, open source, fairly flexible, and it has been surprisingly stable. It uses a medium level of memory and CPU compared to the other browsers I tried and it's fairly easy to set up on multiple platforms (GNU/Linux desktops, mobile phones, and so on).
I greatly appreciate the browser's privacy defaults, the fact it ships with Tor as a built-in option, its private mode, and randomized browser fingerprint. The ability to right-click on unwanted elements of a web page and hide them is a great bonus and allows the user to hide ads or other items we do not wish to see on a website.
The one complaint I have about Brave is that it tends to make me switch between using the keyboard and mouse occasionally. This is fairly common, it's something I also need to do with Chromium and Firefox. However, I have been spoiled in the past by browsers like Falkon which make it easy to set almost any action, including accessing specific bookmarks, as a keyboard shortcut. Often times I didn't need to touch a mouse when using Falkon and I find the transition back and forth slows me down a little. Over time I've been learning ways to substitute in shortcuts to speed up my work on Brave, but it would be nice if this was a more naturally occurring feature.
One final thing I appreciate about Brave is that it feels like it is intended to be a web browser and just a web browser. While we can add extra extensions and enable BAT ads, by default Brave doesn't try to work with mail, or nag me to set up an account to synchronize my passwords. It just offers a portal to websites and this is primarily what I was looking to find.
As many of you know, global supply chains are in a state of flux as we (hopefully) emerge from the shadow of the COVID-19 pandemic. In our own industry, semiconductors are in high demand, and in short supply: the upsurge of demand for electronic products for home working and entertainment during the pandemic has descended into panic buying, as companies try to secure the components that they need to build their products.
Over the past week, I’ve seen quite a few nice Halloween-themed artworks made with free/libre software. Here are my personal picks of the ones made with Blender and Krita.
The Motoko programming language has a built-in data type for optional values, named ?t with values null and ?v (for v : t); this is the equivalent of Haskell’s Maybe, Ocaml’s option or Rust’s Option. In this post, I explain how Motoko represents such optional values (almost) without allocation.
Pragma is a compiler directive that allows us to add additional information to the compiler so that it can compile the code effectively. This information, once added, is not then in our hands to control it and can change the details of compilation. This directive is used to access compiler-related specific processor extensions.
[Kevin Norman] got himself a smart body scale with the intention of logging data for his own analysis, but discovered that extracting data from the device was anything but easy. It turns out that the only way to access data from his scale is by viewing it in a mobile app. Screen-scraping is a time-honored method of pulling data from uncooperative systems, so [Kevin] committed to regularly taking a full-height screenshot from the app and using optical character recognition (OCR) to get the numbers, but making that work was a surprisingly long process full of dead ends.
In this tutorial, you will learn about lists and data frames. Also, we discussed different list conversion methods to the data frame in python language. The list in python is the most vital data structure. The important thing about the list is that the list items are not forcibly the same data type, and all the string operations are equally applied on the list data types. Come let’s talk about the data frames.
In python, panda’s library is used for data handling and analysis. Pandas Dataframe is a 2D size-changeable and varied tabular data constructor with marked axes. In Dataframe, knowledge is ranged in a tabular way in columns and rows. Pandas Dataframe contains 3 main essentials, i.e., data, columns, and rows. We will implement our scenarios in Spyder Compiler so let’s get started.
In Python, sets and lists both contain collections of objects, but there are significant differences between these two. If we talk about sets, they are valuable for executing a massive range of intersections and unions. On the other hand, lists provide those operations that help you to find duplicated items. In other words, a list contains identical items, while a set contains exceptional values. Another distinct quality is that the list uses square brackets, while the set uses curly brackets. Keep in mind that a dictionary in Python also uses curly braces. The common thing in sets and lists is that they hold strings, floats, integers, or other data types. So, if you have a set of elements in Python, you can also make a set of strings in python.
In python language, writing or reading files is a significant functionality. If you want to read or write files, then computer languages provide input or output libraries with built-in approaches that allow the formation, modification, reading, or writing of data from the files. Python has no exemption. Python also provides various in-built techniques to perform file operations. In Python, the I/O module is used for file handling.
Today, our focus is python writing lists to a file. We elaborate the whole process of python write list by applying different operations with the help of Spyder Compiler in Windows 10. Since there are numerous ways of python writing lists, we also discuss different example codes to elaborate on them further.
Several times when programming, a programmer needs to remove the very last item from a list. The pop() method eliminates and returns the final item of the list if there is no index. This function returns the element you deleted, permitting you to see what variations were made to your list. The index of the element you have to remove is the only parameter to pop(). You might opt to remove a particular item from a list. Assume you are creating a program to keep track of the books accessible in a bookstore. When a book is taken out, you may choose to remove it from the set of possible books and return it. Pop is a built-in method in the Python language that may be used to eliminate an item from a list. The pop() method returns the removed item after removing an element from a given place in a list.
This article will look at the pop() function in Python, how it’s utilized, and what parameters it accepts. Then, to demonstrate how the function can be used with lists, we will look at a few examples.
Python List is a changeable and ordered sequence, as we all know about this fact. It may contain both heterogeneous and homogeneous elements. In Python, it is a widely used data structure. We occasionally need to know the length of a list to traverse it or perform other operations on it. Len() is a built-in function that returns the total number of elements in a list, sequence, arrays, dictionary, or other data structure. The length of a given list is returned by the len() method, which accepts a list as an input. In Python, the len() function is one of the most popular methods for determining the size of a provided list.
This part will look at the various methods for determining the length of a list in Python. The length of the list refers to determining the size of the list’s size or the number of items.
Note: All three examples demonstrated in this guide will use the “temp.py” file that is created in the Spyder IDE tool. The operating system used for the implementation of these three examples is “Windows 10”. The choice of operating system and compiler are all dependent on user convenience.
Learning a new programming language like Python becomes effortless if you have a comprehensive roadmap detailing which concepts to learn as a beginner and how to progress further to reach the next milestone. Even intermediate programmers should frequently brush up on their basics to build a solid foundation for themselves.
By the end, you'll find yourself stuck to your computer writing Python code using the fundamental commands enlisted in this article. We'll also discuss how you can set up a Python environment on your machine to be able to write and execute Python code.
A fundamental method to search and replace a string is using regular expressions. RegEx is powerful in finding patterns, filtering, and more.
In this guide, we will discuss various ways to manipulate strings in Ruby. We will cover how to perform string substation, insertion, and replacement.
String interpolation refers to the process of adding placeholders that reference other values in a string object. The values interpolated into a string are evaluated to their corresponding values. String interpolation can be seen as a form of template injection.
In this guide, we will discuss how to interpolate strings in the Ruby programming language.
Strings are an array of one or more alphanumerical characters and symbols. It is almost a guarantee you are going to use strings in your programs. They allow you to accept input from the users and display information to the users.
This tutorial will help you understand how to create strings, print strings, and string concatenation.
Strings are a fundamental building block in programming, and it is nearly impossible to imagine a functional program that doesn’t use strings.
This guide will look at various ways we can reverse a string in the Ruby programming language.
In Ruby and other programming languages, arrays allow you to store related information in a list and manage them by a single variable.
Once you have an array, you can manipulate the elements stored in it, such as creating, reading, updating, and deleting elements.
In this short guide, we will explore various ways to find elements in an array.
Arrays are a collection of ordered items. Arrays are crucial in many programming languages because they provide flexibility, performance, and refactored code when used appropriately.
An individual item in the array is an array’s element. Each element is identifiable by an index which is a value that describes the element’s position in the collection.
In Ruby, the index of elements in the array starts at 0 from left to right. Hence, the first element in the array is at an index of 0.
Last week’s blog article was about counterpart clauses, and IP Draughts’ preference to omit them, in the interests of focussing on key issues.
The positive reactions of some readers have prompted IP Draughts to think more generally about the techniques he uses when trying to make his contracts user-friendly.
It is important, in IP Draughts’ view, to draft the contract in a clear, accurate, concise and consistent way. But today’s article is not about the wording of individual clauses.
But what has become evident recently is that most of these genomes were in one way or another incomplete, due typically because there were regions of this or that genome that were resistant to accurate sequencing or come other biologic idiosyncrasy. The most recent example of this reminder of the complexity of biological organisms is our old friend the domestic cat, which built (as most of the new studies do) on the earlier genomic elucidations. In this case, the earlier study in question was published in 2014, when an international effort led by Stephen J. O'Brien at the Oceanographic Center, Nova Southeastern University, Ft. Lauderdale, Florida reported the complete genomic sequencing of the domestic cat, Felix catus. The report, entitled "Annotated features of domestic cat – Felis catus genome," was published in GigaScience 2014, 3:13 (August 5, 2014) (see "Domestic Cat Genome Sequenced"). The study reported sequencing of a female Abyssinian cat named Cinnamon, a mixed-breed cat from Russian named Boris, and Sylvester, a wildcat ancestor of domestic cats. The report showed that domestic cats have retained "a highly conserved ancestral mammal genome organization" in comparison with ancestral cats (see Driscoll et al., 2007, "The near eastern origin of cat domestication," Science 317: 519–23). Both species, F. catus and Felix silvestris, have 38 chromosomes, 18 pairs of autosomes, and two pairs of dimorphic gender-determining chromosomes. Details of the domestic cat genome structure included the presence of 217 loci of endogenous retrovirus-like elements (amounting to 55.7% of the entire genome, comprised of long interspersed elements (LINEs), short interspersed elements (SINEs), satellite DNA, retroviral long terminal repeats (LTRs) and "others"); 21,865 protein coding genes (open reading frames or ORFs), detected by comparison with eight mammalian genomes (from human, chimpanzee, macaque, dog, cow, horse, rat, and mouse); and a wealth of genetic variability in single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs), insertion/deletion events (indels); novel families of complex tandem repeat elements; and short terminal repeat (STR) loci.
The richest Americans avoid paying $600 billion a year in taxes, in part through lack of income reporting to the IRS that Biden is trying to change.
CJEU says rights owners are not obliged to make available each part of a product separately in order to benefit from unregistered design rights
The Hong Kong High Court has issued an order granting a landmark preliminary injunction in favour of US-based nutrition supplement brand ChildLife and restraining passing off in mainland China via e-commerce platforms.
It is the first-ever preliminary injunction issued in Hong Kong SAR concerning passing-off activity in China. The court, in a ruling last Wednesday, October 20, took into consideration torts committed by the defendants outside of Hong Kong SAR and restrained them from passing off in mainland China.
The decision holds major significance as it lays the ground for parties to use Hong Kong SAR as a venue for pursuing infringement and passing off actions against suspected violations taking place in mainland China.
Trade secrets and disclosure would seem to be clearly demarcated opposites, but the reality is that the relationship between them is often more nuanced. In this case, the nuance is expressed in the context of the balance between the ‘right of information’ of the participants to a public tender and the possible presence of ‘trade secrets’ in the bidding documentation. A claim of trade secret protection is one of the objections to disclosure that may be raised by the bidder against a competitor who seeks to examine the tender documentation in order to evaluate his further legal steps.
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It is clear that: (a) the ‘trade secrets defence’ has in recent times (especially since the implementation of the Trade Secrets Directive in 2018) been used frequently, often as strategic measure in administrative proceedings in Italy; (b) the contracting authorities show a tendency to deny access when such a defence is raised and, therefore, force the party that requested access to ask the court to allow disclosure; and (c) the administrative courts, when addressing a request to lift the secrecy defence, tend not to enter into a detailed analysis of the facts of the cases, limiting themselves to high-level discussion and analysis, remanding the case back to the contracting authority and requesting further examination.
As such, an annoying back-and-forth between contracting authorities and courts takes place. In the context of public tenders, there is in fact no specific procedure/regulation/set of rules aimed at simplifying the evaluation of the presence of trade secrets and thereby avoid lengthy legal proceedings to assess the presence of proper secrets.
Also, it must be taken into consideration that once access is allowed, the party requesting access may then try to have the tender annulled on the basis of the disclosed documentation. This, due to the length of the administrative proceedings on the request for access, can carry on for months after the tender has been awarded, casting uncertainty on the tender awarding process.
As many brands know all too well, the best laid strategy to manage the channels through which their goods are sold can be quickly disrupted by unauthorized sellers. Because online marketplaces like Amazon are essentially open platforms, virtually anyone able to source a brand’s products can sell there – regardless of a brand’s specific channel management strategy. Often, these sellers do not adhere to brand quality standards; they do not contribute to marketing and conversion efforts; and they do not adhere to manufacturers’ minimum advertised price policies.
While many brands are plagued by unauthorized sellers, there is still a massive amount of confusion regarding what tactics are most effective in shutting down such unauthorized sales. For example, there are seemingly countless brand protection and monitoring software companies that tout their ability to remove a percentage of unauthorized sellers using automated cease-and-desist letters. Some companies claim to have highly effective marketplace takedown tricks, while others claim to “know” secret marketplace tactics that others do not. The reality is ultimately not quite so rosy, and in fact, none of these tactics are especially effective because: (1) the law generally protects product resellers, and (2) these tactics – even if successful against some number of small, unsophisticated sellers – do not drive meaningful commercial outcomes, which is what brands need.
Online trade channels have become a substantial aspect of many brand owners’ business. As part II of its ongoing series relating to online sale controls and enforcement strategies, The Fashion Law discussed the importance for brand owners to lay down the necessary legal foundation for tackling (anticipated) defences raised by unauthorised sellers (e.g. the first sale doctrine) and then engaging in a data-driven, precision enforcement process tailored to drive real commercial metrics.
t is a legal maxim that patents, like any other intellectual property rights, are territorial rights. Patents are granted on a national basis and so patent holders seeking protection in multiple countries are invited to procure multiple national rights. Historically, courts, and most notably in the United States, have opted for a narrow understanding of the concept of territoriality of patents. This has more recently been reaffirmed by the United States Supreme Court in Deepsouth Packing Co. v. Laitram Corp, 406 U.S. 518 (1972) and Microsoft Corp. v. AT&T Corp, 550 U.S. 437 (2007) where the Court refused to extend the U.S. Patent Act extraterritorially based on the presumption that federal statutes, including patent statutes, shall not extend to acts occurring abroad.
The traditional notion that patents are territorial rights is, however, under considerable stress. Just as commerce is becoming increasingly global, so do infringing activities coincide less neatly with national borders. Depending on the technical field, the subject-matter is also becoming increasingly prone to disseminate across borders. Because patent statutes differ between different jurisdictions, there is and will continue to be a tension between these economic and technological developments and the territorial limitation of patent rights.
What are we talking about? Let us take a simple hypothetical example. Assume that a patent covers a system for a machine learning model, which involves the use of computing devices configured to receive sourced data, process data, configure an algorithm and to complete a particular machine learning model. For each claimed configuration there is a set of routine operations to be completed, including receiving requests to perform the computational services and validating such requests. Further assume that a third party uses the same machine learning technique to create a mobile application that sources substantial amounts of user data and then reads and transforms that data into usable content in the application. If each operation is performed on servers in different countries, and if users whose data is sourced and users who use the mobile application reside in different countries, some where there is a patent and some where there is none, where does a prospective infringement take place? A number of possibilities could be thought of, ranging from where data is collected and where servers are located to where users are residing. Each point of contact could in theory be sufficient to render liability, but that seems to ignore that a full and complete infringement is not performed anywhere. The inclination to catch all infringing acts in one go clearly struggles with the fact that patent protection remains territorial.
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Can we find any unifying legal principles that can be extended across jurisdictions? At the end of the day, whether a particular conduct falls under a particular patent claim or not is a technical test. This fundamental criteria for assessing patent infringement should not be abandoned merely because the conduct is now cross-border. Just as we examine when there is infringement from a technical standpoint, so should we evaluate where an infringement occurs from that same lens. This is possible to do without dissecting claim elements, by instead focusing on where the technical contribution of the invention as a whole is achieved. This analysis is however still largely one-sided from a contacts point of view, as it is limited to contacts linked to the relevant country of protection, which is typically the forum. After defining the contacts to the relevant country of protection, it should also be deemed necessary to weigh those contacts established in other countries. Perhaps, and with some effort when adopting a more uniform and balanced legal test, the patent loophole may indeed be closed across borders.
Don't worry, the "where's the problem, we have a solution" squad over at Ford has been busy, apparently, with figuring out a way to make your truck's exhaust tips disappear.Well, at least retract back into the safety of the rear of the truck when you're going off-roading, for example, in order to allow for better departure angles.
A judge has refused generic-drug maker Mylan's request to stay Neurim's patent infringement litigation to wait for a European Patent Office ruling on the validity of the Israeli pharmaceutical company's melatonin patent, saying on Friday that the patent would have expired by then.
Deputy High Court Judge Ian Karet said that, although the patent office could deliver a final view on the patent for the drug Circadin in a relatively short time, Neurim Pharmaceuticals (1991) Ltd. will still have lost its opportunity to obtain an injunction to block Mylan's melatonin product from the market.
Canada’s innovation challenges are well-documented. Among the G7, we are the only country to have experienced a decline in R&D spending as a fraction of GDP over the last 20 years. Only Italy produces fewer so-called triadic patents, innovations that are patented in each of the main three patent offices of the European Union, Japan, and the United States. And while 50 years ago we had the second highest labour productivity among the G7, we now have the second lowest, ahead only of Japan.
The European Patent Office (EPO) has a notoriously strict approach to assessing added matter according to Article 123(2) EPC. In the recent decision T 2842/18, the EPO’s Technical Board of Appeal 3.3.04 scrutinized the basis for a therapeutic effect in a second medical use claim. The decision demonstrates that speculative language can undermine a verbatim statement of a therapeutic effect in the application as filed.
According to Article 123(2) EPC, a European patent application or European patent may not be amended in such a way that it contains subject matter which extends beyond the content of the application as filed. Established case law sets out the ‘gold standard’ for assessing added subject matter according to Article 123(2) EPC: the claimed subject matter must be directly and unambiguously derivable from the application as filed. After the amendment, the skilled person may not be presented with new technical information.
In T 2842/18, the claim in question had been amended to include the medical use “for preventing or slowing down the progression in structural joint damage and erosion caused by rheumatoid arthritis”. The question was whether this effect could be directly and unambiguously derived from the application as filed.
The Opposition Division had previously held that the requirements of Article 123(2) EPC were met because the therapeutic effect was disclosed verbatim in Example 3 of the application as filed: “It is expected that re-treatment under the protocol herein […] will be effective in preventing or slowing down the progression in structural joint damage and erosion caused by RA”.
How a win in the Supreme Court challenged a linchpin of the genetic-testing industry.
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Not so long ago, if you asked someone about the US Patent and Trademark Office’s practice of granting patents on human genes, you’d probably get one of two responses. Biotechnology insiders would shrug — such patents had been standard practice for decades. They were considered a linchpin of the burgeoning genetic-testing industry. Those less intimate with the inner workings of biotech often had a different reaction: “But that’s just … wrong,” said lawyer Chris Hansen. “Who can we sue?”
In 2009, Hansen, a veteran of civil-rights cases at the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) in New York City, embarked on a lawsuit that ended gene patenting in the United States. The effort seemed doomed, yet Hansen went on to win at the US Supreme Court, challenging the very idea of what patents are and what they should do.
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But Contreras succeeds in his main mission: to detail the narrative history of a landmark patent case. The personal stories of key players are rich with detail. We learn about Tania Simoncelli, who, as an ACLU intern with a passion for science and social-justice issues, first brought gene patents to the attention of Hansen. And we encounter Herman Yue, who, at the time that the case was launched, was an intern for a federal district judge, and who just happened to have a doctorate in molecular biology. Yue was pivotal in crafting a surprise early court decision in favour of the ACLU.
Readers are also treated to the inside story of the schism in the US government, with some agencies, most notably the patent office, in favour of gene patents, and the National Institutes of Health, among others, against them. It fell to acting solicitor general Neal Katyal to walk a tightrope between arguing parties, eventually developing a federal government stance: namely, whole-gene sequences as they are found in genomes should not be patentable, but the assembled protein-coding regions of a gene — minus intervening bits of non-coding DNA often scattered throughout — should. The compromise satisfied no one completely.
By 2013, when the Supreme Court issued its unanimous decision in favour of the ACLU, gene patents and Myriad-style testing of single genes were already falling out of fashion. Medical diagnostics had moved on to multi-gene testing, and now, increasingly, the emphasis is on whole-genome sequencing. But this story stands as a guide to the forces that shape an increasingly important industry — and to the vexed influence of patents.
Haseltine Lake Kempner prides itself on its specialists. We have formed a new Materials Science team, bringing together attorneys from across the firm, all of whom have a wealth of knowledge and experience in materials science – many having doctorates and/or years of professional experience in the area. With the discipline being of increasing importance to many of our clients, we wanted to introduce you to the team, which is led by partner Alex Rogers and senior associate Michael Ford.
"A high proportion of cancer patients are deprived of the benefits of chemotherapies because of toxic side-effects. Other patients either are too ill or too elderly or just unwilling to even start chemotherapy. That is the gap that we see Veyonda€® filling by allowing the patient to still gain the benefit of the chemotherapy but at dosages that are much better tolerated," says CEO.
Phone and tablet mount maker GPS Lockbox was unable to convince an administrative tribunal to review patents that National Products Inc. has sued over.
GPS Lockbox asked the Patent Trial and Appeal Board to review three NPI patents covering a docking sleeve. The requests came after NPI filed an infringement lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Washington.
The PTAB denied all three requests, with the last decision Thursday. There, GPS Lockbox argued various claims in U.S. Patent No. 10,630,334 were invalid because they were anticipated or would have been obvious.
Ten years after the Agreement on the Application of Article 65 of the Convention on the Grant of European Patents (the London Agreement) entered into force in Hungary, the long-awaited clarification about the enforcement of European patents was provided by the courts. According to the courts, the national scope of protection of a European patent is established by the filing of a full Hungarian translation of the patent description. Where the patentee does not file a full Hungarian translation along with the validation of the European patent, and if the translation is not made available to potential infringers through either publication by the Hungarian Intellectual Property Office (HIPO) or by directly serving it before initiating a legal dispute, a preliminary injunction may not be claimed. The recent Metropolitan Court of Appeals decision (8 July 2021, 8.Pkf.25.564/2021/3) confirmed the first-instance Metropolitan Court decision (3.Pk.20.925/2021/9), in which its precedent-setting previous decision (3.Pk.24.079/2018/10) was cited and confirmed. Based on these decisions, patentees should be aware of potential pitfalls regarding the enforcement of European patents and must take every possible step before they can start a preliminary injunction procedure.
The Unified Patent Court’s Protocol on Privileges and Immunities comes into force
On 27 October 2021, the first of the three treaties underpinning the new Unified Patent Court (UPC) and unitary patent (UP) system comes into force. It is the ‘Protocol on Privileges and Immunities of the Unified Patent Court’ (PPI). Every Member State hosting premises of the court (i.e. the Court of Appeal, CFI Central Division, CFI Regional division and CFI Local division) must accede to the PPI, which underpins the legal status of the court within hosting Member States.
The PPI comes into force on 27 October because it is 30 days following Germany’s 27 September 2021 deposit of its instrument of ratification of the PPI with the General Secretariat of the Council of Europe – Germany’s deposit completed the minimum ratification threshold for the PPI.
Koh’s nomination advances; US’s $100m patent infringement blow; IBA considers compulsory licences; Cleveland Indians in name dispute; High Court targets ISPs; JPO launches manga guidelines; EUIPO issues e-commerce counterfeit warning
Alphabet Inc.‘s Google will avoid patent infringement litigation in Waco, Texas, after the Federal Circuit ordered Judge Alan D. Albright to surrender another case.
The case involves allegations by Jenam Tech LLC that Google’s use of an internet transport protocol infringed eight patents. Albright denied Google’s motion to transfer the case from U.S. District Court for the Western District of Texas to the Northern District of California where its headquarters is located.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit said the suit’s “center of gravity” is clearly in Northern California, and not in West Texas. “There is ...
In 2015, the IEEE made changes to its Patent Policy for standard-essential patents (SEPs). Among other things, that policy strongly disfavored seeking injunctive relief for SEPs because injunctive relief permits using the threat of enjoining an entire product to extract a royalty that covers more than the value contributed by the patent. The policy also set forth three non-limiting factors to be used in determining a reasonable royalty rate—the value contributed by the SEP to the smallest salable compliant implementation (analogous to the smallest saleable patent practicing unit in US law), the value contributed by the SEP to that implementation in light of all other SEPs that also contribute value to that implementation, and comparable licenses. These factors are not mandatory, only encouraged.
IEEE received criticism of this approach, primarily from patent licensing companies who were obtaining high license fees and were concerned that the changes would reduce their profit margin. In contrast, the majority of standards participants were happy with these changes—after the policy change, contributions to IEEE standards reversed a declining trend and began to increase once again.
But, given the vocal criticism from licensors, the IEEE decided to request feedback on whether to reverse course and change the 2015 Patent Policy.
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Now that the comments have been submitted, it’s time for IEEE to review them and determine what path forward the organization should take. But based on the content of these comments, and the relative balance, the IEEE should feel very comfortable that much of industry supports their existing patent policy and sees no reason to go back to in terrorem injunctions and completely amorphous valuation procedures.
Mathys & Squire has featured in an exclusive article published by The Telegraph, covering the introduction of so-called 'security bonds' of at least €£50,000 for UK businesses seeking to litigate in the EU post-Brexit.
Partner Andreas Wietzke, from the Mathys & Squire Munich office, commented: "For British businesses, defending your intellectual property (IP) in the EU has become a much more costly affair since Brexit. This could have a chilling effect on actions by UK litigants in Europe, particularly for startups and SMEs with limited funding.
"For those in the UK with valuable patents or trade marks that are being infringed by businesses in Europe, the decision whether to pursue litigation is not quite so simple as it was before Brexit. Having to put up €£50,000 or €£100,000 to have your case heard in Germany, France or the Netherlands will give some of them pause for thought."
In April 2020, the South African patent office granted a patent to an artificial intelligence (AI) program called DABUS, an acronym for ‘Device for the Autonomous Bootstrapping of Unified Sentience’, for the novel way in which it used fractal geometry to come up with a better design for food containers that both improves grip as well as heat transfer. Professor Adrian Hilton, director of the Institute for People-Centred AI at the University of Surrey, hailed this decision as an indication of the shift from “an age in which invention was the preserve of people to an era where machines are capable of realising the inventive step, unleashing the potential of AI-generated inventions for the benefit of society."
It’s been thrilling and even entertaining to watch constitutionality challenges to the Patent Trial and Appeal Board go through the courts – but enough is enough
In-house counsel at Sanofi and two tech companies reveal how they manage these proceedings and what private practice lawyers can do to help
The EPO uses the “problem/solution” approach to assess inventive step. This approach involves determining the technical effect that the invention contributes over the closest prior art. It has become common practice before the EPO to look at whether the technical effect of an invention is “plausible” from a patent application or patent and therefore if it is permissible to file post-published data to confirm the technical effect. This is often critical to whether or not subject matter is considered to be inventive.
However, divergent approaches have developed regarding the circumstances in which post-published data can be taken into account. Firstly, there has been divergence in how the “plausible” standard is applied. Some Boards have decided that post-published should be considered provided the technical effect is not “implausible”, a lower bar than requiring the technical effect to be “plausible”. Secondly, there has been divergence away from the “plausible/implausible” concept entirely, with some Boards holding that this approach is incompatible with the EPO’s requirement that the “problem/solution” approach is used to analyse inventive step. The rationale here is that an applicant cannot be expected to necessarily know what the closest prior art is when the application is filed.
In this week's Saturday Opinion, Grant Shoebridge of Pearce IP argues that the Australian Federal Court's recent DABUS decision is a progressive one that recognises the potential for AI-driven life sciences innovation
In our community it’s certain that there will be many people with very strong views about patents. It’s fair to say that the patents system is at times not fit for purpose, with such phenomena as patent trolls, submarine patents, and patent war chests doing nothing but leading it into disrepute. So it’s interesting to read the words of 3D printer hotend manufacturer E3D, as they talk about why they feel the need to patent some of their inventions, and how they intend to proceed with them.
The result is a no-nonsense explanation of why their work being reproduced by overseas competitors has brought them to this point, and in short: they’re patenting very specific inventions rather than broad catch-alls, they are making what they call a legally binding promise not to enforce the patents against non-commercial or academic experimenters, and they will continue to open-source as much as they can.
Novartis said Crystal Pharmaceutical’s proposed generic version of Entresto infringes two patents related to the blockbuster treatment for heart failure, expanding the companies’ legal fight.
The innovation patent has been Australia’s second tier patent right since 2001, but it is now being phased out. Just over two months have now passed since the final day on which new, original (i.e. not derived from an existing application) innovation patents could be filed. As of 26 August 2021, the only way to obtain an innovation patent application is by division or conversion from an application that itself has a filing date on or before 25 August 2021. Innovation patents have a maximum term of eight years from the initial filing date, and thus after 25 August 2029, at the latest, there will be no more innovation patents. Predictably, the number of innovation patent applications being filed grew significantly during the weeks and months leading up to the final deadline, driven in large part by applications of dubious merit originating in China and India.
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In the final days, Australian resident applicants filed innovation patent applications in unprecedented numbers, apparently driven primarily by those who had received advice from patent attorneys about the final deadline and the implications of the phase out of the innovation patent. Indian and Chinese applicants continued to fleece the system for cheap patent certificates, accounting for over half of the applications filed in August. Filings originating elsewhere in the world increased only modestly, suggesting that genuine demand for innovation patents by foreign applicants remained relatively low until the end.
The rate at which the Patent Trial and Appeal Board uses its discretion to deny patent reviews under the precedential Fintiv decision declined over the last six months, a drop that attorneys largely attribute to the board giving less weight to the trial date in parallel infringement litigation and petitioners growing more comfortable with stipulations.
The PTAB's Fintiv decision, which was issued in March 2020 and became precedential in May of that year, laid out six factors the board must consider when deciding whether to use its discretion not to review patents involved in district court suits. These include weighing the...
Sources believe that licensing of IP and personality rights may be beneficial, but judicial and legislative solutions are needed in the longer run
Patrick Coyne, partner at Finnegan, becomes AIPLA’s new president at the organisation’s annual meeting in National Harbor this week
Although CoviDTH diagnostic results are intended to be visually interpreted, additional patent claims include data capture and analysis via optical, infrared, and ultrasonic images processing methods.
In Japanese patent litigation, calling expert witnesses is very rare and the parties usually try to prove common technical knowledge (CGK) by submitting documentary evidence, such as publications available as of the priority date and written expert declarations. Thus, parties need to be aware that descriptions in the publications are crucial and cannot be supplemented by experts’ live testimony.
The importance of proving CGK was highlighted in a recent IP High Court case (Merck Sharp & Dohme Corp. v. Wyeth LLC, IP High Court Case No. 2020 (Gyo-Ke) 10015; Decision date: May 17, 2021) filed by Merck Sharp & Dohme (“MSD”) as an appeal from a JPO trial decision holding Wyeth’s patent valid. Wyeth’s patent covers Prevenar 13€® containing 13 serotypes of pneumoniae, the most widely used pneumococcal conjugate vaccine in the world, sold by its parent company Pfizer. MSD asserted that the functional feature of the claimed invention substantially existed in Wyeth’s product Prevenar 7 containing seven serotypes of pneumoniae (“Prevenar 7”), which was commercially available as of the priority date or, based on CGK, it could have been easily conceived by a person skilled in the art as of the priority date of the patent. However, the court affirmed the JPO’s decision upholding validity of the patent on grounds that the claims had inventive step over Prevenar 7 and rejected MSD’s assertions.
Molnupiravir is the first COVID-19 product to be licensed to the Medicines Patent Pool since the start of the pandemic
The rapid integration of AI-based technology into many aspects of our lives brings with it a range of interesting legal and regulatory challenges. In the world of intellectual property, it is recognised that the use of AI techniques, in particular to analyse large data sets, is capable of providing new and valuable insights that can form the foundation of patentable inventions.
The biggest story in patent law over the past three years has been the emergence of the Waco Division of the Western District of Texas as the undisputed capital of U.S. patent litigation. The lone district judge sitting in Waco, Judge Alan Albright, has engaged in an extensive campaign to entice patentees to file suit in his courtroom. And those efforts have succeeded. In 2016 and 2017, the two years before Judge Albright took the bench in 2018, the Waco Division received a total of five patent cases. In 2019, 217 patent suits were filed in Waco. In 2020, that number increased to 761—more than the number of patent cases filed in any other district court in the country and over 20% of patent cases filed nationwide. Judge Albright is on track to receive well over 700 cases again in 2021.
Most patent suits in Waco are filed by NPEs and involve computers and communication technology. Judge Albright’s courtroom is particularly attractive to NPEs because he moves cases quickly through litigation and his procedural rulings tend to favor patentees—both of which increase patentees’ leverage during settlement negotiations. Quicker settlements for larger amounts allow NPEs to more rapidly move on to their next target.
Even though the United Kingdom is expressly mentioned in the Protocol for Provisional Application (PPA) of the Unified Patent Court Agreement as one of the states that has to give its support to the PPA, this is not seen as a stumbling block for the entry into force of the Protocol by the member states of the Unitary Patent project.
A judge ruled Friday that a BASF subsidiary is entitled to "nominal damages" only as a result of Carpmaels & Ransford LLP missing a deadline to appeal an invalidated vehicle emissions treatment patent, saying he wasn't persuaded the patent would have boosted the chemical company's profits.
High Court Judge Adam Johnson noted in his ruling that Carpmaels & Ransford, a European intellectual property-focused law firm, had admitted fault in the professional negligence matter, so the case before him was largely what losses might flow to any of four BASF units from the law firm's breach.
Shakespearean analogies fail to convince High Court that BASF’s €1bn claim has merit as company awarded only ‘nominal’ damages in Carpmaels patent row
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Although BASF argued these were its calculated losses, it invited the court to conclude the precise losses suffered.
The dispute centred on European patent 1,663,458 (‘458 patent) which, according to the claim, occupied “vital space” in relation to complying with diesel emission standards.
BASF contended that Carpmaels, which admitted negligence on its part, failed to file an appeal in time after the EPO revoked the ‘458 patent in 2012.
BASF said that had the appeal succeeded, the revocation would never have taken effect and the company would have had a valid patent until July 2024.
Changes proposed by CNIPA will give Chinese clients access to a wider range of overseas IP advisors – if foreign firms take up the offer
This week, over a thousand attendees are expected at the annual meeting of the American Intellectual Property Law Association (AILPA). Several Vorys attorneys are participating as leaders and attendees.
Today in a pre-meeting briefing, senior U.S. Patent and Trademark (USPTO) officials gave updates on key areas of ongoing activity by the Office. This activity essentially relates to improving inclusion in the patent system and harnessing artificial intelligence (AI) and automation in patent examination.
The UKIPO has partnered with the Alan Turing Institute and the University of Exeter to bring two roundtables on the topic about Artificial Intelligence and Intellectual Property - AI and IP: An AI Ecosystem Perspective and AI and IP in the Creative Industries. The events will be held online on 9 November (11:00am-12:00pm, CET) and 11 November 2021 (10:00am-11:30am, CET). Further information about the roundtables can be found here for the event on the 9th, and here for the event on the 11th.
Over the past few years, and after decades as little more than a mathematical curiosity, useful industrial applications of AI have become commonplace. AI is now recognised as one of the primary drivers of computing development. In 2018, Canadians Yoshua Bengio, Geoffrey Hinton and Yann LeCun – the ‘godfathers of AI’ – received the Turing Award, computing’s highest honour, for their foundational work on deep learning. The International Data Corporation forecasts that worldwide revenues for the AI market will grow to nearly $330 billion in 2021, and will exceed $550 billion by 2024 (IDC Semiannual AI Tracker, January 2021).
Uncertainty surrounding patent eligibility jurisprudence has been a thorn in the side of many patent applicants, patent holders, scholars, and judges for years, leading voices in the patent sector to issue repeated, though unavailing, calls for legislative action. Recent activity by lawmakers, however, suggests that rising innovation in the artificial intelligence (AI) sector may be viewed as a catalyst for change.
Central to the issue of patent eligibility is the framework set forth in Mayo Collaborative Services v. Prometheus Labs, 132 S.Ct. 1289 (2012) and Alice v. CLS Bank International, 134 S. Ct. 2347 (2014). The Patent Act permits patents for “any new and useful process, machine, manufacture, or composition of matter, or any new and useful improvement thereof …” But “laws of nature, natural phenomena and abstract ideas are not patentable.”
Checkerboard prints are everywhere – again, Wall Street Journal fashion editor Jacob Gallagher wrote recently, noting that “whether they remind you of surrealism, ’70s ska bands or [Fast Times at Ridgemont High character] Jeff Spicoli’s Vans, graphic grid prints are back,” with luxury titan Louis Vuitton and budding young brands, alike, “pushing the pattern” in a nod to the enduring appeal of the eye-catching print. Look beyond the onslaught of checkered wares – from Vans sneakers and Clare V. bucket hats to J.W. Anderson vests and Louis Vuitton bags – that have found a home on the runway and on brands’ e-commerce sites, and you will see that these prints are currently at the center of a number of noteworthy legal battles, in which brands are claiming rights in certain versions of the ubiquitous pattern for use in connection with certain goods/services.
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Against that background, Nike asserted that Vans’ attempt to “broadly register checkerboard designs in connection with apparel” by way of a number of applications for registration that it has filed with the USPTO beginning in November 2018 demonstrates the skatewear brand’s “intent to impede the ability of others to use checkerboard designs in connection with apparel.”
As of this week, that opposition is still underway, and in fact, counsel for Nike is looking to have it consolidated with additional proceedings that it has initiated since. It turns out that the Beaverton, Oregon-based sportswear titan did not stop after filing the December 2019 opposition against Vans; it filed an additional opposition to block the registration of a separate Vans checkerboard mark for use on apparel and socks that spring. And in April 2020 and March 2021, respectively, after the USPTO agreed to register two of Vans’ checkerboard marks, Nike initiated cancellation proceedings, asking the TTAB to revoke the registrations.
At the heart of these separate (but largely similar) proceedings is Nike’s argument that “each variation of [Vans’] checkerboard pattern is: (1) ornamental and fails to function as mark, and/or (2) is nondistinctive and incapable of acquiring distinctiveness,” and thus, should not be registered as marks.
Readers of this Blog are all likely to be very skilled IP experts, whether as practitioners, legal specialists or Judges. Hence, they are certainly well aware of the so-called “enhanced protection” enjoyed by well-known trade marks against junior signs.
As we know, in fact, in Europe when assessing both (i) the distinctiveness requirement of a trade mark in the face of an earlier registered well-known trade mark and (ii) the possible infringement of a well-known trade mark by a junior sign, the evaluation should not necessarily be limited to an assessment of likelihood of confusion between signs. When evaluating distinctiveness and infringement the interpreter will take into account also (a) the possible prejudice for the well-known trade mark deriving from the registration/use of the junior sign and (b) the possible unfair advantage that the applicant/owner/user of the posterior sign might enjoy because of the existence of and link with the earlier well-known trade mark.
The Italian rules applicable to this aspect are aligned to those of the rest of Europe, since Article 12 (dealing with distinctiveness) and 21 (dealing with infringement) of the Italian Industrial Property Code were and are derived from EU Directives (originally CE 89/104, now 2015/2436 Articles 5 and 10 respectively). As such, they provide that a trade mark that has a reputation protects its owner against a junior mark when a use of the latter without due cause may imply blurring, tarnishment, or ‘free-riding’ of the repute of the earlier well-known trade mark, as per (a) or (b) above.
To follow on the topic of good relationships going bad and IP disputes arising as a result, an interesting case is taking place between two companies for the ownership over the German trade marks “GL” and “GR” for vehicle radio remote controls.
The UK government has run a consultation on the future of the UK’s exhaustion of IP rights regime. This ran for 12 weeks, closing on 31 August 2021.
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The principle of exhaustion is a limitation to intellectual property rights which is mainly relevant in the context of imported goods. Generally, once a particular item has been placed on the market with the IP rights holder’s consent that IP rights holder’s rights are exhausted, meaning they cannot prevent further dealings of that particular item. For example, the copyright subsisting in a specific single item (a book, say) would be exhausted once that specific copy of the book is sold in the UK by the rights holder.
The U.S. Copyright Office is beginning a study of copyright protections for news publishers, including a look at requiring online platforms to pay publishers for aggregated content.
The study comes after several U.S. senators in May requested the office consider the viability of adding more protections to U.S. copyright law for news publishers. Additional safeguards for publishers might be necessary to maintain the news industry, the agency said in a notice scheduled to be published in the Federal Register Oct. 12.
News aggregation sites are generally online platforms that collect links and portions of articles for their readers, and sometimes ...
