System76 has revealed it is working a new desktop environment that is not based on GNOME Shell.
The US-based company already maintains its own Ubuntu-based Linux distro called Pop!_OS. Presently, that distro ships with a modified version of the GNOME desktop called ‘COSMIC‘ (all caps, not me shouting).
Word of its new project comes by way of System76’s Michael Murphy, who shared some of the rationale and motivation behind the new DE in series of comments posted on Pop!_OS Sub-reddit at the weekend.
And all told: they make for a pretty exciting read.
The USB and Thunderbolt updates for the Linux 5.16 kernel have arrived. This time around the changes are on the smaller side but there are two additions worth mentioning.
In the USB/Thunderbolt pull request Greg Kroah-Hartman summarizes this cycle's work as "nothing major in here, just lots of little cleanups and additions for new hardware."
About a week ago through the discussions we have on our Boiling Steam Matrix Room, someone mentioned in passing that they were using AppImageLauncher. This was my fist time to come across this application. Following further investigation and testing, let me now share with you as well as you might just have a use for it.
What are Appimages
In case you are not too familiar with AppImages, it’s one of the ways on Linux to encapsulate a whole application and its dependencies into a single file. For example, you can download an AppImage for the HeroicLauncher, and then ensure the file can be executed (chmod +x in a terminal for example), launch it… et voila, no need to install it, the application will launch before your eyes. It’s as simple as it can get and proving to be a very robust method to distribute applications that work across numerous distros on Linux.
There’s however a catch. AppImages, being single-file executables, are not integrated into your system. They won’t appear in your launchers or menus – instead you will have to find them and launch them one by one, or create your own launcher scripts.
Containers are highly beneficial for software development, deployment, and management in a virtual environment. Docker is useful in the containerization process, but it's not the only platform around. If you're searching for some alternatives to Docker, look no further. This list showcases some feature-rich and efficient Docker alternatives to use in your next project.
Docker is a set of platform as a service (PaaS) products that use OS-level virtualization to deliver software in packages called containers.
Docker containers are built from Docker images. These images are retrieved from Docker Hub, a registry managed by the Docker project. You can host Docker images on the Hub. It’s the most popular place to grab images with more than 100,000 container images.
However, a huge number of these images are unmaintained, so you need to be selective about which images to explore.
The latest version of VMware Workstation Pro is 16. VMware Workstation Pro 16 is one of the best Type-2 Hypervisor. It has outstanding 3D acceleration support for both the Windows and Linux virtual machines. The VMware Workstation Pro 16 supports DirectX 11 3D acceleration for Windows virtual machines. For Linux virtual machines, VMware Workstation Pro 16 supports OpenGL 4.1 3D acceleration. So, technically you can play games on your VMware Workstation Pro 16 virtual machines. The user interface of the virtual machine will also be very responsive. You will have amazing experience running virtual machines on VMware Workstation Pro 16.
In this article, I am going to show you how to install VMware Workstation Pro 16 on some common Linux distributions, such as Ubuntu 20.04 LTS, Debian 11, and Fedora 34. Now, let’s get started.
In this tutorial, we will show you how to install Memcached on AlmaLinux 8. For those of you who didn’t know, Memcached is a free and open-source high-performance distributed memory caching system. Memcached is used to speed up dynamic database-driven websites by caching data and objects in RAM. This reduces the number of times an external data source must be read, which lowers overheads and speeds up response times.
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 Memcached distributed memory object caching system on an AlmaLinux 8. You can follow the same instructions for CentOS and Rocky Linux.
There is a lot of scripts to setup your new cool Fedora Linux 35 installation
Many companies uses Ansible to setup computers, but you can also use it to setup your own local system.
If you are new to Fedora and looking for some helpful resources to help you get started with it, you are at the right place.
This is a curated collection of tutorials segregated into sections. This will guide you at various stages of your Fedora journey. You can go through the topics you like and skip the one you are familiar with or the ones that are not applicable to your system.
Docker is a set of platform as a service (PaaS) products that use OS-level virtualization to deliver software in packages called containers.
If you want to flash a custom ROM or control an Android smartphone using your Linux machine, you'll have to set up ADB and fastboot drivers.
Ruby is a dynamic, open source programming language with a focus on simplicity and productivity. It has an elegant syntax that is natural to read and easy to write.
Ruby is seen as a flexible language, since it allows its users to freely alter its parts. Essential parts of Ruby can be removed or redefined, at will. Existing parts can added upon. Ruby tries not to restrict the coder.
The language serves as the basis of the Ruby on Rails framework and is used for general-purpose programming, data analysis, and web applications.
Ruby can be used in diverse applications such as data analysis and prototyping.
In this installation guide, you will learn how to install Ruby on Ubuntu 20.04 with three different methods.
If you want to install Ruby On CentOS / RHEL 8 , Kindly visit this article Ruby on CentOS 8
You may also need to install Ruby on Rails, So visit this article Ruby on Rails on CentOS 8
In this guide we are going to learn how to install vim text editor on fedora 35.
Vim text editor is a free and open source screen based text editor program for Unix. It is highly configurable that make it easy to use and adapt to different programming languages. It also integrates well with other tools. It supports extensive plugin systems.
Fedy is a free, and open-source application that allows you to install several third-party applications in Fedora. Fedy will automatically add the respective repositories and install the selected applications in your Fedora.
This is quick guide howto install Rocky Linux 8 (currently 8.4) on real PC. I use here Rocky-8.4-x86_64-boot.iso just boot installer and then run install from fresh repo packages. Same method works for users with full DVD image (Rocky-8.4-x86_64-dvd1.iso) or minimal image (Rocky-8.4-x86_64-minimal.iso).
We have published a video with an online session we made as an introduction of GNU poke internals for new developers. We mainly covered the Poke compiler and the poke virtual machine (PVM) and how to extend them to implement new language constructions.
With the upcoming 1.11 patch Paradox will be retiring some old Linux and Mac platforms that aren't maintained by their own developers anymore, but more importantly, switching to DirectX 11.
That's right, the next HoI4 release will join Stellaris and the other more recent PDS games by adding DirectX 11 support. DirectX 9 will still be the default for now, but you will be able to select another renderer in the launcher settings.
I will forever stand by my article from 14 years ago and you can put on my gravestone that I truly think CDE is one of the best graphical user interfaces ever conceived. CDE was released as open source software about nine years ago, and is still being developed.
GNOME 41.1 is billed as a “boring bug fix” follow-up to GNOME 41 release that happened back in September.
“All operating systems shipping GNOME 41 are encouraged to upgrade” to this release, GNOME devs says.
GNOME Shell sticks band-aids on bugs affecting the GTK colour picker, scrolling behaviour in GTK apps, and inconsistent high-contrast switches.
It also restores the ability for notifications to play a sound file, and once again only allows you to open one instance of the GNOME Extensions app.
GNOME Settings app no longer crops the (all new) mouse & touchpad illustration; fixes an issue with data not being enabled after an APN is set; and uses the correct translations for power button action behaviours.
The new Remote Desktop app Connections sees some finesse, with search no longer stealing display key press events, correctly draws RDP thumbnails, and now waits for a VNC connection to connect before attempting to connect to its clipboard.
iXsystems – most well-known as a supplier of network-attached storage (NAS) software and entry-level products – has taken its hyper-converged TrueNAS Scale into general availability.
iXsystems uses open source operating systems and commodity hardware, delivering hyper-converged products that can be half the price of those from Dell EMC or HPE. However, the key aim for iXsystems has been to become competitive by adding scale-out capability.
“TrueNAS Scale brings the ability to run applications in the form of KVM virtual machines or in Kubernetes containers,” said iXsystems director general Brett Davis in an interview with Computer Weekly sister publication LeMagIT.
Added to the Arch Linux ISOs earlier this year was Archinstall as an easy-to-use installer for Arch. In the months since its introduction the code continues to be improved upon and is preparing for its next feature release.
Archinstall 2.3-rc1 was tagged today as the latest test build for this easy-to-use, text-based Arch Linux installer that can get this popular Linux distribution deployed in just a matter of minutes.
I am problem-solving some issues with firefox. The sandbox causes a problem when firefox is run in a container.
I installed Debian 11 on my computer the last weekend. I have come to the conclusion that I want to try something that’s both super simple to use and maintain. Something that works more like a classic binary based operating system, and not like a meta based operating system that’s designed to be a set of tools to help the user build their own operating system.
The reason I want something that’s as close to zero maintenance as possible, is due to the fact that my time will be—to say the least—limited next year. Not that I’m complaining! The next phase of my life doesn’t have room for me spending time tinkering with Gentoo as I used to.
More on what’s going on later in another post, but you can probably guess what’s up anyway. :)
Why Debian?
Debian has been around for a long time. It’s actually one of the oldest Linux based operating systems. And with Debian, you know what you get; a mature, stable and reliable operating system that value libre software that respects your freedom.
The Debian project is moving slowly with very few to no surprises. If you want the “latest and greatest” software, you should probably look elsewhere, but if you value stability and reability, then Debian is an excellent option for you.
I don’t really care about the “latest and greatest” software. The application stack that I use doesn’t see many changes anyway. My window manager i3 is feature complete and doesn’t see any new features anymore. My email client Mutt is 26 years old and I highly doubt that they’ll come with any new shiny futures that I must have on a regular basis. And while I use ‘modern’ software like NeoVim, all the basic features is already there for me.
Debian is also supported by everyone and everything! If there’s anyone that supports a Linux based operating system, you can be confident that Debian is the one. And while I was okay making my own packages for Gentoo, it’s nice to be able to quickly install some package, as well as not having to care about the burden with maintaining them yourself.
Motrix is a full-featured download manager that supports downloading HTTP, FTP, BitTorrent, Magnet, etc. Motrix has a clean and easy to use interface.
All of the projects are fantastic, but we chose to highlight the Wunderwaffe DG-2 from COD: Zombies because, well, vacuum tubes. For those unfamiliar with the ‘waffe’s operation, those vacuum tubes act as ammo magazines. Once they’re empty, you power them down with that big red switch and eject them one at a time with the lever, just like in the game.
Inside is a Feather M0 Express that runs the RGB LEDs and uses a Hall effect sensor to read magnets in the quick-change ammo magazine. You can see how it works in the demo video after the break.
There are BOMs for several of the prop weapons, along with assembly drawings and support forums for anyone who wants to build their own. Don’t feel like gathering all the bits and bobs yourself? [Andrew] is selling hardware packs for the ray gun, but you’ll have to scrounge the parts yourself if you want to build the Wunderwaffle.
Python has a great spreading in science because of its poweful modules to manage numbers and graph them. In some cases you may need to show these graphs outside of your Raspberry PI, without remoting your desktop or with a headless installation. Publishing Python results on web pages is achievable with Dash on Raspberry PI
In this post, I’m going to show you how to install and use Dash on Raspberry PI.
Dash is an open source python library to build and deploy data applications from a number of languages, the most common being python. It is based on Flask, but also uses Plotly to better manage graphical paths on web pages viewable from a remote computer or a mobile using a common web browser.
In the past we've posted many times about DragonOS which is an Ubuntu Linux image that comes preinstalled with multiple SDR software packages. This takes the hassle out of needing to compile and install programs on Linux, some of which can often be very difficult and time consuming to get up and running. Aaron who is the creator of DragonOS also runs a YouTube channel where he provides multiple tutorials and demos of the software installed.
Some say there’s no treasure quite as valuable as the almighty dollar. [Norbert Zare] likes alt-rock soundtracks on Youtube videos and robots obsessed with money, so set about building the latter.
The project is fundamentally a simple one. A Raspberry Pi 3B+ is outfitted with a Pi Camera, and set up to control twin servo motors attached to a simple pan/tilt assembly. The Pi runs OpenCV set up in a face-tracking mode. This allows the robot to readily track money in its field of view, as the vast majority of money out there has someone’s face on it. OpenCV is used to detect where the money is in the field of view, and guide the Pi’s camera towards the cash.
Its ready-to-use modular components can be deployed on a wide range of Programmable Logic Controllers (PLCs), protocol gateways and devices using Linux-based operating systems.
PHP Calendar is a free, open-source self-hosted web calendar. The system is built on it of PHP5.3, and MySQL 4.1. It uses jQuery and jQuery UI.
It helps you to keep track of your events, similar to Google Calendar, however, it lacks many features.
PHP-Calendar features a quick event add, events search, and multi-view for the calendar.
The Apache CloudStack Collaboration Conference, which opens Monday for a five day run, is again this year going to be an all virtual event due to the ongoing pandemic. CloudStack’s organizers have put a positive spin on the situation by saying it sees the situation as an opportunity to educate a larger number of people about Apache’s contribution to modern, multi-cloud infrastructure.
Some of that education would probably be making people more aware that cloud native software projects aren’t exclusively under the care of the Linux Foundation’s Cloud Native Computing Foundation, but that the Apache Foundation and others contribute to cloud native space as well.
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The event seems to be timed to make it convenient for as many people in Europe and North America as possible, which means waking up early for those on the West Coast in North America, where the event will get going at 5 am on Tuesday and Friday, and at 4 am on Wednesday and Thursday. It’s not known whether recordings of the workshops will be available for on-demand viewing for those who might balk at such early hours.
Here's a look at the best open-source, cloud-native security tools that contribute to a culture of DevSecOps.
Mohan Ram, the go-to-market lead for the Asia-Pacific region at cloud infrastructure provider Digital-Ocean, said its annual Hacktoberfest, a month-long celebration during which developers contribute to open-source projects, drew over 150,000 enthusiasts this year. Hacktoberfest, as the name suggests, is held in October.
Given the rapid technological advancements, making your children future-ready is the need of the hour. Abhishek, Founder at JetLearn - an Amsterdam-based coding & robotics academy for kids - helps you pave a path for your child’s successful digital future.
Technology is transforming the world “The last decade has been the decade of software eating the world.” - Marc Andreessen, co-founder of famed Silicon Valley venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz and inventor of the web browser.
What’s wasmCloud and what are its use cases? Liam Randall and Stuart Harris spoke to us about wasmcloud: a higher level abstraction for the cloud that uses WebAssembly to run everywhere securely. See what’s new in the 0.50 release, what’s in store for the future, and what its benefits are.
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Liam Randall and Stuart Harris: The entire wasmCloud team and project is built with best-of-breed open source projects, including Nats, Elixir/OTP and the Smithy project from AWS. Nats, from Synadia, has emerged as the internet’s dialtone – and in wasmCloud we use this to seamlessly connect wasmCloud hosts at the application layer. Elixir/OTP has over the last 20 years become the default way to scale to millions of processes and we adopted it on our backend in order to offer that incredible approach to our community. And while Smithy is a new project, it has been used successfully within AWS to model and design hundreds of APIs.
From a consumer’s perspective, according to Red Badger: As a consultancy that helps large organizations with their digital product transformation, we have many clients who need a true multi-cloud platform — possibly better expressed as location transparency for their workloads. For many years, the cloud has been seen as the destination, but wasmCloud allows us to rethink the cloud as just a stop on the way, a utility on top of which we can build a homogenous surface for hosting truly portable workloads. Our clients can finally contribute resources from many clouds, on-premise data centers, near and far edge — even browser tabs — to a single, potentially global, platform that is secure, whilst being totally agnostic of underlying network topology. Not only does this give us flexibility, and way more reliability, but it dramatically simplifies the dark art of building modern distributed applications, allowing us to concentrate on what really matters — generating value for our clients.
Toolbx (formerly known as Toolbox) is our tool to allow you to use containers as a tool to make development simpler and better. It allows you to put each project you work on into a separate container and have a different set of tools and libraries installed for it. It even allows you to work on a different operating system, like RHEL, on top of Fedora. To learn a little about both the history and the future for this project we will interview Debarshi Ray who created Toolbx.
Christian Schaller: Hi Debarshi. To kick this interview off, can you tell us a little about yourself and how you became involved with open source development?
Debarshi: Hi Christian. I am Rishi. I am part of the Red Hat Desktop Team where we work on the Fedora and RHEL Workstations, and these days also on Silverblue. I first heard of free software or open source in 1999 through a newspaper article on Linux. I knew a little bit of C, and had been told that one could write everything from operating systems to video games with it. Hence the idea that I could actually look at the sources of a real piece of software was very appealing. However, I didn’t have access to the Internet and all I had was the shared family computer running Windows, so I had to wait.
A few years later, when I got my own computer, I decided that I had to put Linux on it. Somebody passed me a Fedora Core 1 DVD, and I was hooked. At some point I heard of this thing called Google Summer of Code, and in 2007 I applied and was selected for an internship at Fedora. Then in 2009, Rahul Sundaram, from Fedora, told me that this application called Gnote that we were shipping in Fedora needed a new upstream maintainer. I was already lurking around the GNOME community by then, and had been doing C++ as part of my day job. So I picked it up. Two years later, I applied for a position in some team at Red Hat. The recruiter spotted my Fedora and GNOME background, redirected me to the Desktop Team where an opening had miraculously shown up, and here I am.
Christian Schaller: So tell us a little about the origin of Toolbx, what were the ideas and goals at the outset of the project?
Debarshi: In the beginning of 2018, there was a surge in interest around what was then called Fedora Atomic Workstation. A decision was taken to rebrand it as Silverblue for better visibility, but it had one big problem. While Silverblue was already a fantastic option for non-technical users, it was quite annoying to set up a development environment on it for writing software. Typically, developers have to install a bunch of development tools, frameworks and editors on top of the core operating system, and on Silverblue every equivalent of ‘dnf install’ requires a reboot. Moreover, every such operation tampered with the core OS image and could potentially negate the two biggest advantages of Silverblue – robustness and testability.
Released this week was Rav1e 0.5 as the newest feature release for this Rust-written AV1 video encoder backed by Xiph.Org and self-proclaimed to be the world's "fastest and safest" AV1 encoder.
With Rav1e 0.4 having debuted back in January, there has been a lot of code churn since that point now part of Rav1e 0.5. There has been rebalancing of the speed levels and a variety of other enhancements over the course of the year.
The promise of using Docker during development is to deliver a consistent environment for testing across developer machines and the various environments (like QA and production) in use. The difficulty is that Docker containers introduce an extra layer of abstraction that developers must manage during coding.
Docker enables application code to be bundled with its system requirements definition in a cross-platform, runnable package. This is a graceful abstraction for solving a fundamental need in deploying and managing software runtimes, but it introduces an extra layer of indirection that must be dealt with when programmers are doing what they do: iteratively modifying and testing the internals of the software and its dependencies.
Something like 99% of the people on the road at any given moment will consider themselves an above-average driver, something that’s as statistically impossible as it is easily disproven by casual observation. Drivers make all kinds of mistakes, but perhaps none as annoying and avoidable as failure to use their turn signal. This turn signal monitor aims to fix that, through the judicious use of negative feedback.
Apparently, [Mark Radinovic] feels that he has a predisposition against using his turn signal due to the fact that he drives a BMW. To break him of that habit, one that cost him his first BMW, he attached Arduino Nano 33 BLEs to the steering wheel and the turn signal stalk. The IMUs sense the position of each and send that over Bluetooth to an Arduino Uno WiFi. That in turn talks over USB to a Raspberry Pi, which connects to the car’s stereo via Bluetooth to blare an alarm when the steering wheel is turned but the turn signal remains untouched. The video below shows it in use; while it clearly works, there are a lot of situations where it triggers even though a turn signal isn’t really called for — going around a roundabout, for example, or navigating a sinuous approach to a drive-through window.
Half of those in the USA who are unwilling to be vaccinated against SARS-CoV-2 report that nothing will change their mind, according to a representative national survey reported in a study published in Scientific Reports.
Jeffrey Lazarus and colleagues surveyed 6,037 American adults in April 2021 to identify their attitudes towards vaccination against SARS-CoV-2. One third of the participants came from across the USA and two thirds were from New York, Los Angeles, Dallas, or Chicago.
The authors found that 21.4 percent of participants from across the USA were unwilling to be vaccinated against SARS-CoV-2, compared to 19.7 percent in Dallas, 11.5 percent in Los Angeles, 11.2 percent in Chicago, and 10.1 percent in New York. Of those unwilling to be vaccinated, half stated that nothing would convince them to receive the vaccine and the majority reported that their unwillingness was caused by concerns about vaccine safety. Unwillingness to be vaccinated tended to be higher among those who worked outside of the home, held conservative political views, had a lower household income, and had not previously tested positive for COVID-19. Education levels, race, age, and sex were not uniformly associated with unwillingness to be vaccinated. Although over 82 percent of participants agreed that COVID-19 is a dangerous health threat, over 18 percent did not believe that the dangers of COVID-19 exceeded those of the vaccine and over 15 percent did not believe that COVID-19 can be prevented by vaccination. Over 50 percent of participants were in favor of the government requiring vaccination against SARS-CoV-2 and over 68 percent supported vaccination requirements for international travel.
The Linux Foundation has raised $10 million in new investments to expand and support the Open Source Security Foundation (OpenSSF), a cross-industry collaboration that brings together multiple open source software initiatives under one umbrella to identify and fix cybersecurity vulnerabilities in open source software and develop improved tooling, training, research, best practices and vulnerability disclosure practices.
Zero trust might feel like just another cybersecurity trend, but it has been around for a while.
In 2014, hackers breached the U.S. Office of Personnel Management, exposing the confidential data of more than 22 million federal employees and contractors. The breach led the U.S. government to establish a working group on zero trust. In August 2020, NIST released a general guidance document laying out details on zero-trust network architectures.
An executive order signed by President Joe Biden in May 2021 brought zero trust back to center stage. Critics have questioned the integrity of the order and whether it a marketing ploy.
Polkit explained What is PolKit PolKit is a standard authorization method for Linux. It usually consists of PolKit daemon, PolKit session agent and the helper program shipped by applications who use PolKit. As an user, you don’t really deal with PolKit itself, normally you interact with PolKit session agent. Like KDE’s PolKit agent: You can think it as Gui’s sudo. But it works totally different from sudo. I spent two days to figure what is PolKit, how does it work, and how one can utilize it to write a Gui tool that requires root permission but can’t be started as root itself.
Online privacy advocates in recent years pushed Illinois lawmakers to force school districts to protect student data — but some Chicago Public Schools teachers say they were “blindsided” by the district’s enforcement of the law that’s led them to lose access to key programs used to teach thousands of students.
Gov. J.B Pritzker signed amendments to the Student Online Personal Protection Act in 2019, strengthening the law that regulates how local and state officials handle student data and giving parents greater control over their children’s personal information.
School systems had until July of this year to move into compliance. The changes spurred suburban and downstate schools to rethink their contracts with software companies to safeguard student data while finding new ways to give kids and educators access to the applications they know and need for school.
But at CPS, the way officials have applied the law has meant popular educational tools have been taken away from thousands of students and forced teachers to reinvent their curricula.
Trick-or-treating is over and the post-Halloween litter season has arrived.
For months, parents will be finding candy wrappers shoved under their kids’ beds, crushed in the bottoms of backpacks and lying in the washing machine after loads of laundry.
And with the National Retail Federation projecting that consumers spent $3 billion on candy this Halloween season, that’s a whole lot of garbage.
Ben Palmer, patent attorney at Withers & Rogers, examines how many patents have been filed for hydrogen energy inventions – what does the number say about clean energy technology?
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According to the EPO data, the rise in low carbon energy (LCE) innovations has comfortably outpaced those in fossil fuel technologies with an overall uptrend in patent filings over the period 2000 – 2019. In contrast, filings for fossil fuel technology innovations, whilst having higher overall growth than is observed across all technology areas, have declined for each of the four years from 2016 to 2019. This is the first such decline since the second world war.
New software can help determine the movements of large wild animals, thereby minimising conflicts with people.
Large land animals have a significant impact on the ecology and biodiversity of the areas they inhabit and traverse, writes University of Oxford in a press release. If, for example, the routes and stopping places of cattle, horses, sheep, and also those of wolves or bears overlap with those of people, this often leads to conflicts.
Knowing and being able to predict the movement patterns of animals is, therefore, of utmost relevance. This is not only necessary for nature and landscape protection, and to safeguard agriculture and forestry, but also for the safety of human travellers and the security of human infrastructures.
As of today, Netflix will begin to provide a tiny portfolio of games to Android users, indicating that the integration of games into the Netflix service was a success during the testing phase.
They are free of charge in addition to the subscription and will be available in the Netflix application, even if they are downloaded through Google Play or another third-party app store. Users of Apple's iOS operating system will have to wait a little longer.
Patent counsel should think about exhaustion law during prosecution and how it might apply to their clients’ products, a panel told delegates at the AIPLA 2021 Annual Meeting on Friday, October 29.
Panellists Kristin Murphy, lead divisional intellectual property counsel at technology company ZF Group in Michigan, Yar Chaikovsky, global co-chair of the IP practice at Paul Hastings in Palo Alto, and Robert Mazzola, IP counsel at Pied Parker in San Francisco, delved into exhaustion during the first panel of the day.
“Exhaustion is definitely relevant to prosecution in that you have to define each patent as its own standalone property right, so to speak,” said Murphy.
The IPO is receiving higher quality trade mark applications following the launch of a new service powered by AI. In the year since the IPO’s trade mark pre-apply service was launched, the average number of trade mark applications rejected due to unsuitable Nice classification terms has dropped by 14%. Pre-apply is the IPO’s first service powered by AI. The AI tool identifies similar trade marks that already exist, and presents these to the customer, which helps improve the chances of successfully registering a trade mark. Additionally, by helping customers identify the right groups of goods and services for their proposed trade mark, using the pre-apply service means applications are more likely to be accepted.
The IPO has seen a 70% drop in the length of goods and services lists since the service was launched. This means customers will have more suitable trade marks that are more likely to only protect the right goods and services, leaving them less open to challenge. It could also save applicants money, because there is a fee payable for each additional category of goods and services that is selected.
Recent developments have demonstrated the need for a political solution to the escalating use of anti-suit injunctions in standard essential patent (SEP) litigation. But they also demonstrate how far away such a solution appears to be.
The UK Government is considering the shape of the UK's future regime for the 'exhaustion' of intellectual property rights. The regime settled upon will govern future rules on parallel imports of genuine goods into the UK.
An investigation into Amazon’s use of proprietary information to create knockoffs has made counsel wonder how to balance IP protection with making money
The next Industrial Revolution will not only affect the smartphone and computer world but will also have an impact on considerably more industrial verticals, including automotive, home appliances, manufacturing, energy and healthcare. Estimates suggest that half of the worldwide data traffic of the next five years will no longer result from people’s usage, but instead will be generated by vehicles, machines, meters, sensors, medical instruments, or various other types of networked devices without any human interaction. Standards such as 5G allow for the handling of extensive amounts of data to connect industrial machinery and robots, thus enabling remote control, monitoring and repair actions, as well as industrial automation. From smart grids to drone control, energy and utilities, companies will rely on standards to handle connectivity demands.
For decades now the fault line between patent law and competition law has given rise to friction and a lot of litigation. The divide still exists, and over the last decade the competition authorities have moved into the space to conduct their own investigations to consider whether patent ownership gives rise to anti-competitive behaviour.
Intellectual property is a catch-all term to describe the rights arising from the intangible assets that define your business branding and your innovative ideas. The rights the business owner or creator holds to such assets require protection, they fall into four broad categories: copyright, patents, trademarks, and design rights. Intellectual property rights are extremely valuable and should be robustly protected from the inception of the business.
J A Kemp will be offering a webinar entitled "IP for Plants and Plant Protection Products in Europe and UK" on November 2, 2021 from 4:00 pm GMT. Andrew Bentham and Chris Milton of J A Kemp will provide an update on legal developments and practical tips for practitioners active in the agri-tech sector.
This is something I hear quite frequently when I meet people involved with very early stage technology businesses, or those with aspirations to start a business.
My first response is usually to commend them on the fact that they are considering an intellectual property (IP) strategy at this point. As many readers will know, patents are time-sensitive. Most jurisdictions, and all the popular ones, now grant patents on a “first-to-file” basis, rather than “first-to-invent”. This means the first one to file a patent application to an invention is the one able to get full patent protection. Therefore, early consideration of patentable IP can be decisive.
My second response is usually to reassure the business that, even if they do not have a patent, the right investors, i.e. those willing to take on the risk of a brand new business, might in fact take more confidence from a well thought out IP strategy than a pending patent application with an unknown fate. That said, having a well written patent application on file, if appropriate, will certainly help.
This week sees the EPO run a free online event "Patent Knowledge Week", https://www.epo.org/news-events/events/conferences/patent-knowledge-week.html. The event is, primarily, to show attendees how to use the vast amount of meta-data published by the EPO and other patent offices.
This event has run in one form or another for the last few years and has generally been focussed at patent information departments in attorney firms or large corporations. However, what makes this year's event different is that there are streams geared towards non-IP professionals and specifically SMEs and Universities.
The UK government has published its National AI Strategy, which outlines the government's plan for turning the UK into a global Artificial Intelligence (AI) powerhouse in the next ten years. This follows in the footsteps of earlier industrial and digital strategies published by the UK government which advocated for the adoption of AI. This announcement comes only a few months after the European Commission published its own comprehensive proposals for regulating AI technologies.
The European Commission was the first to address AI-related challenges and present a complete and concrete plan for the future, in its proposal for a draft Artificial Intelligence Regulation (the “EU AI Regulation”), published on April 21, 2021 (read here). The EU AI Regulation provides a detailed regulation, having as a main objective to govern the use of high-risk artificial intelligence systems and, at the same time, ensure that the safety and fundamental rights of EU citizens are protected in the AI era.
On 23 June 2021 the German Constitutional Court (Bundesverfassungsgericht) rejected the application for a preliminary injunction against ratification of the UPC Agreement. The grounds for the rejection made it clear that in the view of the Court the case on the merits has no merit. Germany then completed its ratification process. The ratification act was published on 12 August 2021.
Whilst patenting a diagnostic method in the US remains challenging following the infamous decision in Mayo, other jurisdictions have, by contrast, recently confirmed their willingness to recognise the patentability of diagnostic inventions. Across the border in Canada, the Patent Appeal Board recently confirmed that a diagnostic method could be patented provided the method could be construed as including physical means for measuring, and so not related exclusively to mental activity (Re Antibodyshop A/S 2021 CACP 35). In Australia, the Federal Court recently confirmed that the test for the patent eligibility of a diagnostic method is whether the method has economic utility (Ariosa Diagnostics, Inc v Sequenom, Inc [2021] FCAFC 101).
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The patentability of diagnostic methods was recently confirmed in Australia, in the case of Ariosa Diagnostics, Inc v Sequenom, Inc [2021] FCAFC 101. The patent in question (AU 727919) related to a method of non-invasive prenatal blood testing (NIPT). Sequenom owns some of the broadest patents in the competitive field of NIPT, and has a patent pool agreement with Illumina. Illumina and Sequenom have joined forces in a global patent battle with other players in the field. In Ariosa v Sequenom, the patent claimed a method of detecting the presence of foetal DNA in a blood sample from a pregnant woman. Ariosa argued that the claimed methods related to the detection of a naturally occurring product (foetal DNA) and was thus not a patentable invention.
A new study published today reveals the growth of patent filings (2001-2020) for quantum technologies (QT) which are used in space technologies for earth observation, navigation and communication.
Today's space sector is an ever more service-driven domain, with a growing number of public and private actors across all continents pursuing scientific, military and commercial purposes, ranging from space exploration and human spaceflight to communication and navigation enabled by satellites.
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This report, prepared by the European Patent Office and the European Space Policy Institute (ESPI) in collaboration with the European Space Agency (ESA), investigates the patent filing trends in quantum technologies directly linked to their application in space.
As foreshadowed in our previous blog, the first of the three treaties, ‘Protocol on Privileges and Immunities of the Unified Patent Court’ (PPI) has now come into force on 27 October 2021. A Preparatory Committee meeting was held on the same day and confirmed this to be the case.
CardioNet lost at the district court with a summary judgment of non-infringement. On appeal, the Federal Circuit has shifted its judgment–now finding the heart monitor claims ineligible under Section 101. U.S. Patent Number 7,941,207.
In a report released last month, the European Patent Office (EPO) found that advanced and chemical recycling generated almost double the number of patents than mechanical recycling, with the majority of this activity based in Europe and the USA – suggesting this is an expanding industry.
Ahead of COP 26, the European Patent Office (EPO) have released a report looking into the global patenting trends in technologies related to plastics recycling and alternative plastics.
The reality is that we need plastics in our everyday lives, but how do we overcome the problems surrounding plastic pollution? This is where innovation steps in, and Europe and the United States are leading the way in terms of patent family filings (IPFs) (see page 8 of the report).
The report highlights two ways in which innovators are looking to solve the world’s plastic problem: recycling traditional plastic materials and developing alternative plastic materials.
With the "Indian" variant now raising its ugly head in other parts of the world, the idea that nobody is safe until everybody is safe feels more relevant than ever. Nevertheless, President Biden's support for an intellectual property waiver to allow low and middle income countries to make the vaccines themselves came as a surprise. Normally, the US takes a strong stance on intellectual property (IP) protection, but its trade representative, Katherine Tai, made it clear that these were extraordinary measures in extraordinary times. It was left to the CEO of Abbvie to put the classic intellectual property argument - who will make the vaccine next time if the incentives provided by the patent system are threatened in this way?
In recent years, interest has been growing in the development of artificial intelligence (AI) and the potential use of AI in different technologies for improving our lives. One example of high interest is the application of AI in self-driving cars. Other areas of technology such as medicine, where AI might be used in automated diagnosis of disease, are also of interest. However, recent advances in the AI field has led to a particular question – if AI development becomes advanced enough that some form of AI might itself develop a new invention, how would the patent system deal with this?
We have previously reported (US, Europe, and UK) on the unsuccessful attempts by the University of Sussex and Dr Thaler to have his AI machine "DABUS" recognised as an inventor by patent offices around the world. Although those decisions are under appeal, the overwhelming approach of patent offices to this concept has, so far, been extremely negative.
Imagine you have spent years building a successful business, backed up by a strong patent protecting your core activities. Out of the blue, an old acquaintance claims they made and own the invention your business is based on, are entitled to the patent you have paid for, and want a share of your profits. That might sound like a ridiculous demand, but the law might just be on their side.
We reported in August 2021 that the EPO's Enlarged Board of Appeal (EBA) would be considering the doctrine of plausibility at the EPO. The written decision of Board of Appeal making the referral is now available (see here), and the referral has been assigned the number G2/21. The final questions referred to the EBA are as follows:
"If for acknowledgement of inventive step the patent proprietor relies on a technical effect and has submitted evidence, such as experimental data, to prove such an effect, this evidence not having been public before the filing date of the patent in suit and having been filed after that date (post-published evidence):
The open-source movement has been around for decades and has provided freedom to users and programmers to use and develop existing software. Unlike industries involving physical products, the low barrier of entry to software development and distribution has meant that many users find themselves having the knowledge and resources to contribute to software development, but at times prevented from doing so due to existing intellectual property (IP) rights. This has led some to view IP rights, such as patents, as a hindrance to innovation.
In this FRAND case, the claimants (Mitsubishi Electric Corporation and Sisvel International SA) sought to persuade the defendants, Oneplus Technology (Shenzhen) Co Ltd and others, to take FRAND licences of a pool of patents (the Pool) administered by Sisvel, which were alleged to be essential to one or more telecoms standards.
Businesses are likely to have to wait longer than previously anticipated for guidance on whether implementers of standard-essential patents (SEPs) can force the patent holders to seek licensing agreements from their suppliers rather than with the implementers themselves, according to an expert in patent law.
The Australian government is intending to introduce a ‘patent box’ regime with the objective of boosting life sciences innovation across the region and incentivising investment in the sector in response to the Covid-19 pandemic.
It is a popular approach to file patents in a few key countries around the globe, normally this will include the US, Germany, China, South Korea and Japan. One of the ideas behind the approach is that it will sufficiently deter infringement as a right to exclusivity is held within key markets. It therefore reduces accessible manufacturing capabilities and profitability for anyone wanting to use the patented technology outside the protected markets. It is a sensible approach, as it keeps portfolio costs at bay while also protecting revenue.
It will be interesting to see whether and how this scheme will change the landscape of innovation in the UK. One indicator of commercially focused innovation is the number of patent applications being filed, and so we would expect to see a rise in the number of new patent applications being filed by the companies benefitting from this scheme.
Commentators have been concerned that implementation of the Unitary Patent (UP), which is intended to be a single patent right having effect in the territory of participating EU members, overseen by the Unified Patent Court (UPC), could be delayed due to the UK's withdrawal. This is because of the express mention of the UK and London in the Unified Patent Court Agreement (UPCA), the Protocol for Provisional Application (PPA) and the Protocol on Privileges and Immunities (PPI), all of which need to come into force in order for the project to go ahead. The UK has indicated that it will not be participating in the UPC and UP, thereby potentially making it impossible for the UPC and UP to go ahead without rewriting and re-ratification of the UPCA, PPA and PPI, which would likely take years.
A Federal Circuit panel didn’t seem swayed by a patent owner’s argument on the effect of its decision to voluntarily relinquish the claims of a rollover prevention invention.
Arsus LLC abandoned its U.S. Patent No. 10,259,494 after the Patent Trial and Appeal Board instituted review requested by Unified Patents LLC. The board construed the statutory disclaimer as a request for adverse judgment.
Companies and law firms with a transnational presence in Islamic countries should recognize that patents may present different considerations in countries with less secular legal systems. Islamic law has primacy in Islamic countries that comprise nearly one-fifth of the world’s population. Many of these countries are members of Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS), which excludes from patentability certain inventions that offend morality in that society. As Islamic countries have begun to embrace patents in recent decades, theories of patents have presented conceptual and theological debates under classical Islamic law, including for construing patentable subject matter and assessing patent infringement.
Patents in Islamic Law present religious considerations that are unique compared to U.S. patent law. First, there are tensions between intellectual property and Islamic law, which is silent on the permissibility of intangibles yet allows for their interpretation. Second, justifications for patents within Islamic law present ethical and morality considerations based on religious limitations that present public policy choices of patentable subject matter and the ordre public meaning of TRIPS Article 27.2 . Third, public interest should be a consideration not only in terms of a potential harm to plaintiff (who is seeking injunctive relief or preventing importation of an infringing article) in the patent infringement context, but also in terms of justification of patents in an Islamic legal system.
In Mobility Workx, LLC v. Unified Patents, LLC, [2020-1441] (October 13, 2021), the Federal Circuit concluded that Mobility’s constitutional arguments were without merit. Without reaching the merits of the Board’s decision, in light of Arthrex, it remanded to the Acting Director to determine whether to grant rehearing.
Mobility argued that the structure and funding of the Board violates due process. First, because “the fee-generating structure of AIA review[] creates a temptation” for the Board to institute AIA proceedings in order to collect post-institution fees (fees for the merits stage of the AIA proceedings) and fund the agency. Second, because individual APJs have an unconstitutional interest in instituting AIA proceedings because their own compensation in the form of performance bonuses is favorably affected.
The Federal Circuit found no merit to these defenses.
The Federal Circuit’s recent Strathclyde decision focuses on claim limitations that require the invention to be effective. One oddity of the decision is that the court (and the PTAB below) treat the limitation with full respect just like any other structural limitation.
Researchers at Strathclyde conducted a set of experiments and found that certain blue light (~405 nm wavelength) was effective at inactivating methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) even at low intensity and without first applying a photosensitizing agent. The resulting method claim focuses on this discovery and includes one simple step — inactivating MRSA bacteria by exposing it to blue (400-420 nm) light and without using a photosensitizer. U.S. Patent No. 9,839,706.
It turns out that the prior art (Nitzan) discloses a series of experiments using the same blue light and testing its effectiveness at inactivating MRSA bacteria. The tests compared the response of untreated bacteria as compared with bacteria treated with a photosensitizing agent.
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On appeal, the Federal Circuit has reversed and reinstated the patent. The court noted the complete absence of any prior art indicating that blue light alone would kill MRSA without a chemical pre-treatment to sensitize the bacteria. Further, there was evidence that such an approach would fail. Still Strathclyde succeeded and, according to the Federal Circuit, deserve its patent.
This exciting new service, which has been developed in collaboration with our user focus groups, will be open to participants from patent attorney firms and industry for an initial period of six months. Participants will be able to access their EPO Mailbox, view their application portfolio and documents, perform tasks and file procedural requests in response to communications from the EPO.
A leading firm of patent attorneys which admitted negligently failing to lodge an appeal against a decision to revoke a client’s patent need only pay nominal damages after a High Court ruling.
The BASF Group, a major chemical products conglomerate, had claimed losses of more than $1bn resulting from the error by Carpmaels & Ransford.
But Mr Justice Adam Johnson held that the firm did not have a retainer with the claimants most affected and in any case nothing would have happened differently had the error not been made.
BASF instructed the firm to prosecute a patent (called Patent 458) for an emissions treatment system and method for use in the automotive industry.
In July 2012, in proceedings in the European Patent Office, Carpmaels negligently failed to lodge an appeal from a decision to revoke Patent 458 for lack of inventive step.
On October 1, the developers of the COVID-19 antiviral molnupiravir issued a press release announcing positive Phase 3 clinical trial results, with a 50% reduction in the risk of hospitalization or death. On November 4, the UK’s Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency authorized molnupiravir for use in the UK. While the results have yet to be reviewed by a scientific journal, they have generated excitement not only because of the potential lives saved but also because molnupiravir can be taken orally in tablet form, greatly reducing the difficulty and cost of administration. (Monoclonal antibodies require intravenous administration, as do the less promising treatments remdesivir and plasma therapy.) While it remains to be seen whether molnupiravir is as effective a weapon as its namesake Mjölnir (Thor’s hammer), the news so far is promising. But why, in a global pandemic where vaccines could be pushed through in record-breaking time, were new treatments like molnupiravir so much slower to find? (It’s worth noting that molnupiravir isn’t the only drug in this situation; as this post was going to press on November 5, Pfizer announced that its experimental antiviral, Paxlovid, reduced COVID-19-related hospital admissions for high-risk adults by 89%.)
In this post, we explore the role of innovation policy in molnupiravir’s development, the FDA’s role in balancing access to promising treatments with the need to generate evidence of their efficacy, questions about molnupiravir access, and the implications for antiviral innovation going forward, for COVID-19 and beyond.
he identification of new chemical or medical compounds, and the development of complex clinical schemes for treatment requires heavy investments and is very time-consuming.
A central part in protecting these types of businesses involves filing of patent applications, and recurring questions relate to the timing of filing.
Many applicants are eager to file their patent applications as early as possible to avoid scooping by competitors, minimise risk of having their own published prior art against them, or generate a legal foundation for their businesses in order to attract the substantial funding that is usually needed for e.g. the development of clinical trials.
Judgments from the Spanish Supreme Court on patent cases are a rare occurrence. In a recent decision, the Court rules on insufficiency of disclosure, a revocation ground which – once somewhat of a sideshow – is nowadays a staple of Spanish revocation proceedings. The Supreme Court provides some guidance on trial and error and undue burden and, in the process, also rules on the complex divide between “extraordinary appeals for breach of procedural rules” and substantive appeals on the merits. Given the extreme complexity of getting Supreme Court appeals done right, Spanish patent lawyers might want to read this judgment carefully.
According to a joint European Patent Office (EPO) and International Energy Agency (IEA) study, patenting activity of battery technologies grew at an average annual rate of 14% between 2005 and 2018. Currently, the most abundant type of battery is the one that helped kick-start fully electric vehicles: the lithium-ion (Li-ion) battery.
Delaware was already a popular venue for patent cases before the Supreme Court’s 2017 venue decision in TC Heartland. Since 2017, it has moved from popular to hot since so many companies are formally incorporated in the state. (State of incorporation => proper venue in patent cases). Delaware particularly been seen as a fair jurisdiction where both plaintiffs and defendants receive a full and fair hearing. Thus, it is a popular spot for operating companies to sue as plaintiffs, knowing that they may face affirmative counterclaims in the same lawsuit.
The Federal Court in Delaware has four judges, all of whom now have a substantial patent litigation caseload. This includes the most senior, Hon. Leonard P. Stark who was appointed by President Obama back in 2010. At the time, Joe Biden was Vice President of the United States and I am confident that he had a hand in selecting Judge Stark for that position. Judge Stark was previously a magistrate judge and an assistant US attorney, all in Federal Court in Delaware.
Artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) are already key technologies of the 21st century and have found applications in diverse fields, from search engines and social media algorithms, to self-driving cars and medical diagnostic tools. AI also has the potential to revolutionise the development of new materials, which until now has been an empirical and relatively slow process. In this article, we take a look at the prospects for developments in this field, as well some of the pitfalls which will have to be overcome when it comes to patenting AI inventions in Europe.
Len Stark, who stepped down as chief judge of the District Court for the District of Delaware in July after seven years, has been tapped for the appeals court
In a letter sent yesterday to Supreme Court Chief Justice Roberts, senators Leahy and Tillis have asked for the US Judicial Conference to re-examine rules on venue and assignment of judges in patent cases
Rather, in a bipartisan letter Senators Tillis and Leahy have asked Chief Justice Roberts to provide a report on the “extreme” and “problematic” situation in the Western District of Texas where pro-patentee Judge Albright is hosting about 25% of all pending district court patent litigation.
Gilbert Hyatt, who has spent more than $7 million on USPTO fees but has not received a patent since the 1990s, discusses the ups and downs of his fight
Apple was faced with a UK-wide FRAND injunction unless it agreed to pay the still-unknown global FRAND rate
The automotive industry is facing a learning curve with respect to standard-essential patent (SEP) licensing. Given what I heard at yesterday's IAM Auto IP Europe conference in Munich, I see partial progress--such as Avanci's announcement of 4G patent license agreements with three more automotive brands--while some automotive industry players appear to be learning too slowly for their own good. As a result, we're going to see more litigation, such as the cases recently brought by Intellectual Ventures (not an Avanci licensor) over a mix of three SEPs and even more non-SEPs.
In my previous post I reported on a Qualcomm executive's perspective on the illegality of licensing negotiation groups. In this post I'll discuss some of the other things that were said.
It is a major win for Huawei’s defence against SolarEdge’s lawsuits over solar technology. In 2018, the Israeli solar technology manufacturer filed suit against competitor Huawei and its German sales company Wattkraft in Mannheim for infringing three patents. Now the European Patent Office has upheld the patent’s revocation.
In mid-October, the Boards of Appeal at the European Patent Office rejected SolarEdge’s appeal against the revocation of the patent in suit EP 29 30 839 B1 (case ID: TO678/20-3.5.02). The patent, which protected a multi-level inverter, is now obsolete. Furthermore, SolarEdge is likely to withdraw the lawsuit in Mannheim in the next few days before the Israeli company faces a costly dismissal of the infringement suit.
The market for solar technology is considered highly competitive. In 2019, Hanwha Q-Cells brought cases over solar technology against Jinko, REC and Longi before Düsseldorf Regional Court. Hanwha Q-Cells and Longi are also battling in France and the Netherlands over the technology.
The commencement of a new unified patent system in 2022 is set to revolutionise the EU's patent protection regime. While EU regulations establishing the Unitary Patent system entered into force in 2013, they will only apply when the Unified Patent Court ("UPC") Agreement has been ratified by 13 member states (including mandatory ratification by France, Germany and Italy as the Member States in which the highest number of European patents had effect in 2012).
In a decision that came down yesterday, Judge Hacon of the England and Wales High Court (EWHC) denied OPPO's request to stay the UK proceedings regarding Nokia's assertions of a couple of standard-essential patents pending the resolution of a Chinese case in which OPPO is seeking a global portfolio license from Nokia. After Nokia brought its infringement cases against OPPO in multiple jurisdictions, OPPO raised various FRAND issues with the No. 1 Intermediate People's Court of Chongqing Municipality of the People's Republic of China, with the ultimate objective of obtaining a global portfolio license on terms to be set by the Chongqing court.
At first sight, the outcome is simply consistent with the UK Supreme Court's jurisdictional decisions in Unwired Planet v. Huawei/Conversant v. ZTE: the UK judiciary has no qualms about setting global portfolio rates and forcing implementers, under the threat of allowing the enforcement of patent injunctions, to take worldwide licenses on terms set in the UK.
Just an ultrashort post while I'm attending the IAM Auto IP Conference: Avanci Senior VP Laurie Fitzgerald mentioned new standard-essential patent license agreements in her panel presentation with Jaguar, Land Rover, and Aston Martin. She said those agreements had been concluded last week. I haven't been able to find any media coverage of those deals yet, so I thought I should share the information in time for today's email notifications, which most of my subscribers will receive in a couple of hours.
In recent European Patent Office (EPO) Decision T 116/18, the Board of Appeal has referred important questions to the Enlarged Board of Appeal (EBA) regarding the issue of to what extent an invention must be plausible from the application as filed. A decision on this issue by the EBA would have important ramifications for how much experimental data is required to be included in a patent application, especially in the chemical and pharmaceutical sectors.
Christopher Fitz-Hardy, patent examiner at CIPO, talks about how he starts his mornings and the joys of playing hockey with his colleagues
Germany’s recent ratification of the Protocol on Provisional Application of the Unified Patent Court Agreement (Protocol) brings the establishment of the Unified Patent Court (UPC) another important step closer.
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Italy qualifies as the third biggest EU Member State for UPC purposes following the UK’s withdrawal from the EU. It is expected that Italy will therefore replace the UK by hosting one of the sections of the central division of the UPC, with the others being in Germany and France. Initially the allocation of disputes to the three sections of the central division was according to the top level codes of the International Patent Classification. Paris was allocated (B) performing operations and transporting, (D) textiles and paper, (E) fixed constructions, (G) physics and (H) electricity, Munich was allocated (F) mechanical engineering, lighting, heating, weapons, blasting and the London was allocated (A) human necessities and (C) chemistry and metallurgy. It is not yet clear whether Italy will take over the UK’s allocation or whether the allocation of subject matter will be redistributed.
On October 28, 2021, the Enlarged Board of Appeals released the full text of the Decision G1/21 that concerns the admissibility of oral proceedings via video conference against the expressed will of the parties.
The European Patent Office has, starting with the travel restrictions after the outbreak of the corona virus in Europe, initiated a pilot program to hold oral proceedings in examination and opposition proceedings as video conference. Moreover, the rules of procedure of the Board of Appeals were amended and allow to hold oral proceedings in Appeal proceedings via video conference at the discretion of the deciding Board of Appeal. Thus, the rights of the parties of the proceedings were restricted. Shortly after the implementation of the new rules, the legality of the new rules was questioned by a referral to the Enlarged Board of Appeals, the highest instance at the European Patent Office.
The EPO Enlarged Board of Appeal has published its final reasoning regarding the outcome of the G 1/21 referral. In March 2021, in case T1807/15 electronics firm Rohde & Schwarz referred the question “[can] oral proceedings under Article 116 EPC be replaced by a video conference without the parties’ consent?” to the Enlarged Board of Appeal.
The EPO had begun the practice in 2020, in order to avoid a backlog of cases during the coronavirus pandemic. Now the EBA has followed up a preliminary decision released in July 2021 with, theoretically, its final answer.
The Intellectual Property Owners Association (IPO) will offer a one-hour webinar entitled "Post-Grant Attacks on Patents: Understanding the Benefits and Perils of All Options"
The Intellectual Property Owners Association (IPO) will offer a one-hour webinar entitled "Strengthening Your Patent Portfolio to Resist AIA Post-Grant Attacks" on November 2, 2021 from 2:00 pm to 3:00 pm (ET). Ashita Doshi of Thermo Fisher Scientific, Nichole Valeyko of Merck & Co., Ben Searle of HP Inc., and Todd Walters of Buchanan Ingersoll & Rooney PC will discuss strategies and practical tips for obtaining patent portfolios that survive post-grant attacks, including a discussion of the following topics: PTAB statistics, application drafting, claim drafting strategies, prosecution strategies, obtaining a robust portfolio, and knowing when and where to assert your patents.
In order to prepare applications for filing in multiple jurisdictions, practitioners should be cognizant of claiming styles in the various jurisdictions that they expect to file AI-related patent applications in, and draft claims accordingly. For example, different jurisdictions, such as the U.S. and EPO, have different legal tests that can result in different styles for claiming artificial intelligence(AI)-related inventions.
The UK Supreme Court introduced a doctrine of equivalents into UK patent law in the summer of 2017 (see http://eplaw.org/uk-actavis-v-eli-lilly-supreme-court/). In this short judgment arising from a Pre-Trial Review (PTR), Lord Justice Birss provided guidance on how, and at what stage of proceedings, a party should plead a case based on the doctrine of equivalents.
The patent in issue was EP (UK) 2 393 259 entitled "Telecommunication and Multimedia Management Method and Apparatus", which Voxer alleged was infringed by the Facebook Live and Instagram Live functionality offered by Facebook.
On October 26, 2021, Unified filed an opposition proceeding against another patent owned by InterDigital, EP 1872588 B1. The EP ’588 patent is part of a family purportedly essential to HEVC and part of the Access Advance patent pool. This filing is a part of Unified’s ongoing efforts in its SEP Video Codec Zone.
Counsel at Western Digital, Siemens, Bitmovin and IBM weigh in on whether AI-generated inventions would and should change the standard for obviousness under Section 103
Bad faith is the ground du jour in the EU due to the SkyKick saga, which recently held that Sky did not act in bad faith when filing broadly. But what happens when the proprietor of a Chinese registration is ‘beaten to the punch’ in the EU? Is it bad faith? A recent decision of the General Court (GC) answered "yes". The GC affirmed a decision of the Board of Appeal (BoA), holding that a registration for AGATE was invalid, having been made in bad faith [BoA decision here, GC decision here, case no T-592/20].
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The EUIPO’s Cancellation Division upheld the request on the grounds of bad faith (here). It did not examine the second ground for invalidity. The Division found that UNIVERS had filed the application to exploit the lack of formal protection of Shandong’s mark in Bulgaria, and to take over Shandong's clients and the market share created by Shandong’s distributor, Omnifak Ltd.
UNIVERS filed an appeal, which was dismissed by the BoA (here). The BoA held that the two marks were identical and the goods at least highly similar. In light of the evidence filed and the chronology, it thought it practically impossible that (1) UNIVERS had no knowledge of Shandong/Omnifak’s use of the AGATE Logo in Bulgaria, and (2) that it intended to honestly use the contested mark, not to block Shandong from the Bulgarian market. UNIVERS then appealed to the GC.
In a recent judgment, the Patent and Market Court of Appeal emphasised the conceptual differences between the trademarks LEGALROOM and LEGALZOOM. The Court considered the relevant Swedish public to have good knowledge of English and therefore to be capable of grasping the different meanings of "room" and "zoom". The Court concluded that the visual and phonetic similarities between the trademarks did not outweigh their conceptual differences.
Holding Pte Ltd and Lukes Seafood LLC, are the respective franchisee and franchisor of a casual takeaway restaurant chain specialising in lobster rolls known as "Luke's Lobster". Both TMRG Pte Ltd and Lukes Seafood LLC are the registered owners of the trade mark pertaining to their respective restaurants (the "Luke's Oyster Bar mark" and "Luke's Lobster mark" respectively) in Class 43. The plaintiffs also use an unregistered mark containing the Luke's Oyster Bar logo (the "Unregistered Mark"). The defendants also registered the Luke's Lobster mark overseas.
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Sixth, the reliance by the plaintiffs on out-of-court statements from interviewees as evidence of actual confusion in the Survey was improper and breached the rule against hearsay evidence.
This case provides a useful roadmap for businesses planning to operate restaurants with commonly-used names. Care should be taken to ensure that the marks used by these restaurants are both visually and conceptually different from existing establishments. When conducting a survey to ascertain the likelihood of confusion, businesses would also do well to ensure that the questions asked are fair and not tend to elicit a certain response from interviewees.
In the national proceedings, the Italian car manufacturer Ferrari sued Mansory Design, a car modification company, for infringement of UCD rights in several parts of the Ferrari FXX K [see also an earlier post by The IPKat for a more detailed overview of the national case].
Ferrari FXX K was first made available to the public through the publication of a press release, which included several images of the new racing car. Mansory Design, a German car modification company, sells tuning kits (ie, a front bumper lip spoiler), which allow one to modify earlier Ferrari models to make it look like the FXX K. Ferrari alleged that the publication of images of the Ferrari FXX K as a whole gave rise to individual protection a separate UCD for various parts of the car (such as the front bumper lip spoiler, which Mansory Design sold).
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The first and second instance courts sided with Mansory Design, ruling that Ferrari had arbitrarily chosen parts of the Ferrari FXX K for UCD protection, when such rights were “non-existent”, this because the claimed parts lacked “certain autonomy” and “certain consistency of form” to be a valid UCD. In the view of the German courts, the publication of a product only amounted to UCD protection for the product as a whole. Ferrari appealed to the Bundesgerichtshof, which stayed the proceedings and asked the CJEU:
(1) whether UCD protection for individual parts of a product arise as a result of disclosure of an overall image of a product; and
(2) if so, whether additional legal criteria are to be considered when assessing the individual character of a component part of a complex product (as characterized by the referring court in terms of “certain autonomy” and “certain consistency of form”).
In August, Advocate General (AG) ÃËe advised the Court to answer that partial designs may indeed be protected under UCD rights. For such protection to arise, the appearance of the part of the product must be ‘clearly identifiable’, and, if made available through a photograph, such part shall be ‘clearly visible’. The AG also opined that no additional criteria shall be applicable (ie ‘autonomy’ or ‘consistency’, as advanced in the second question from the Bundesgerichtshof).
Recently, both Australia and New Zealand have reached ‘agreement in principle’ on proposed free trade agreements (FTAs) with the UK. Details of the Australia-UK agreement in principle can be found on the Australian Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT) website, while the NZ-UK agreement in principle is available from the NZ Foreign Affairs and Trade website. Each document states that Australia/NZ will make all reasonable efforts to join the UK as members of the Hague Agreement, which provides an international registration system for industrial designs. An article which appeared on the Lexology site last month stated that these developments imply that ‘Australia has (finally!) agreed to join the Hague Agreement on Industrial Designs’.
This is not true. I do not see Australia joining the Hague Agreement in the foreseeable future, Australia-UK FTA notwithstanding. I am less familiar with the political position in New Zealand, but suspect that the situation is not much different in the Land of the Long White Cloud.
Distinctiveness of well-known brands: It can sometimes seem contradictory that brands with an enhanced distinctive character are afforded broader protection.
Aren't consumers less likely to be confused when faced with copycats of a luxury brand?
During the summer, The IPKat discussed the content of some of the most ‘interesting’ draft provisions that Italy was considering adopting to implement the Directive into its own law. The final text of the Italian Legislative Decree does not substantially depart from that draft legislation.
Let’s take a closer look at of some of the provisions – online content sharing service providers (OCSSPs), text and data mining (TDM), press publishers’ right – eventually adopted and see what mark the new Italian provisions may deserve from the perspective of compliance with their EU counterparts – respectively: Articles 17, 3-4, and 15 of the Directive.
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Insofar as the transposition of Article 15 of the Directive is concerned, the Italian solution has been the subject of heated discussions in the country.
The draft Italian provision was drafted in such a way that an obligation would subsist – on the side of both information society service providers (ISSPs) and press publishers – to negotiate a licensing agreement. The draft text also referred to a ‘fair compensation’ (equo compenso) to which press publishers would be entitled and the possibility for AGCOM to determine the amount of such fair compensation in the event that no agreement was reached between the parties.
Following the unveiling of the draft transposition text, last September, even the Italian Competition Authority (AGCM) issued a highly critical opinion, holding that a system in which public authorities like AGCOM are involved would be not just contrary to EU law but also such as to represent an undue restriction of private parties’ contractual freedom.
Well, the final text of the Italian press publishers’ right (Article 43-bis) does provide that AGCOM shall not just issue a regulation containing the criteria to determine the fair compensation due to press publishers, but – lacking an agreement between the parties and standing the right to start judicial proceedings – shall be also competent to determine the fair compensation due in specific cases.
