This week’s episode of Destination Linux, we’re going to take a look back at this year in Linux. There are so many amazing things that happened with Linux and we’re going to cover all the highlights. Then we’re going to discuss the future of the Linux Desktop in Virtual Reality! Plus we’ve also got our famous tips, tricks and software picks. All of this and so much more this week on Destination Linux. So whether you’re brand new to Linux and open source or a guru of sudo. This is the podcast for you.
I'm announcing the release of the 5.15.12 kernel.
All users of the 5.15 kernel series must upgrade.
The updated 5.15.y git tree can be found at: git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/stable/linux-stable.git linux-5.15.y and can be browsed at the normal kernel.org git web browser: https://git.kernel.org/?p=linux/kernel/git/stable/linux-s...
thanks,
greg k-h
For those with systems making use of an Intel "Titan Ridge" Thunderbolt 3 controller, a Linux kernel driver improvement working its way to mainline should yield thermal/power benefits.
Intel's Titan Ridge are the JHL7440 / JHL7540 / JHL7340 controllers providing Thunderbolt 3 in some desktop motherboards. Titan Ridge was launched back in 2018 and has been supported in the mainline Linux kernel since that point.
Last year there was some work for getting Gallium3D Zink working on macOS for this OpenGL-on-Vulkan implementation to in turn run it atop the MoltenVK library for translating the Vulkan calls to Apple's Metal graphics/compute API. That work fell into disrepair but now the fixed up code for allowing Zink to build on Apple's operating system has been merged into Mesa 22.0.
Earlier this month AMD released AOCC 3.2 as the newest version of their LLVM/Clang-based compiler focused on delivering optimized Zen performance. With our initial AMD AOCC 3.2 benchmarks on Zen 3, there is nice incremental improvement compared to the prior 3.x releases. But how does this AMD-optimized compiler stack up against the upstream LLVM Clang and GCC compilers? Here is a look at the AMD AOCC performance against the current Clang and GCC C/C++ compilers.
This round of compiler testing was carried out on the frequency-oprimized AMD EPYC 72F3 (Zen 3) server processor with Supermicro H12SSL-i motherboard, 8 x 16GB DDR4-3200 memory, and running Ubuntu 21.04 with the Linux 5.14 kernel. Following the AOCC 3.0 / 3.1 / 3.2 compiler benchmarks, the comparison was extended to include LLVM Clang 12.0.1, LLVM Clang 13.0.1, GCC 10.3, GCC 11.2, and GCC 12.0 in its current development form.
While testing all of these compilers with their release builds, the CFLAGS/CXXFLAGS were set to "-O3 -march=native" throughout. The main focus of this testing is seeing how AMD's in-house AOCC downstream of LLVM/Clang is performing against the common GCC and Clang releases for the performance of the resulting binaries from these compilers. AOCC has also been maturing its Fortran support with the FLANG front-end and comparison tests that will come in due course with the LLVM FLANG support still maturing.
Python is one of the finest open source languages for data scientists mainly because of its incredibly powerful ecosystem with its huge array of machine learning/deep learning libraries, and powerful visualization software. To get a flavour of the ecosystem, check out our recommended Python Deep Learning and Python Visualization software.
One of the many use cases for the Python ecosystem is in the field of investment research. Can’t see the wood from the trees? Are you uncertain of the next investment decision to make? Step forward Gamestonk Terminal.
Gamestonk Terminal provides a modern Python-based integrated environment for financial investment research. It aims to provide a comprehensive tool to help make better investment decisions. This terminal-based tool is free and open source software written in Python.
Recently I purchased a small telescope to look at solar spots. When choosing a mount, I checked whether it can be controlled with OSS.
In this context INDI is mentioned everywhere and my desired mount was supported. indi and kstars are already part of Debian, so “apt install”, selecting my mount, …. oh, wait, the menu shows it, but I can not select it.
Ok, that was the time when I learned about the difference of indi and indi-3rdparty. The indi package just contains a few drivers and others are available from a different repository. This split has been done either due to different release cycles of the driver, a different OSS license of it, or just due to binary blobs without source being part of some drivers.
Fine, there are already packages of the 3rdparty-repository available from an Ubuntu PPA, so it should be no problem to add them do Debian as well.
This tutorial will explain for QEMU virtual machine users how you can make two-ways network connection between host and guest on Ubuntu Desktop. This enables internet access automatically for the guest if available on the host. This tutorial gives you an example exercise, that is, to remote login with SSH from host to guest and reversely from guest to host. Now let's start!
In this tutorial, we will show you how to install Icinga on Linux Mint 20. For those of you who didn’t know, Icinga is an open-source computer system and network monitoring application. It is one of the most popular monitoring tools on the internet that provides high availability and distributed monitoring. Icinga 2 has a user-friendly web interface, but it also comes with a command-line interface that can be used for monitoring.
This article assumes you have at least basic knowledge of Linux, know how to use the shell, and most importantly, you host your site on your own VPS. The installation is quite simple and assumes you are running in the root account, if not you may need to add ‘sudo‘ to the commands to get root privileges. I will show you the step-by-step installation of the Icinga 2 monitoring tool on a Linux Mint 20 (Ulyana).
In this video, I am going to show how to install Manjaro 21.2.0.
Grype is an open-source vulnerability scanner that finds weaknesses within container images and filesystem directories. Grype is developed by Anchore but works as a standalone binary that’s easier to get to grips with than the Anchore Engine.
Known vulnerabilities make their way into your software via outdated operating system packages, compromised programming language dependencies, and insecure base images. Actively scanning your artifacts keeps you informed of issues before malicious actors find them. Here’s how to use Grype to find problems in your code and containers.
Parrot OS lays a heavy focus on providing extensive security and penetration testing capabilities to the end-users. Even though most advanced users might only use Kali Linux for their pen testing needs, the reality is that Parrot OS is an equally efficient operating system that is useful as a privacy-focused distro.
Since Parrot OS draws its inspiration from Debian, the Linux distro continues to be easy to install for users. It inherits some intelligent features from its counterparts, including the APT package manager and a full-fledged suite of penetration testing and privacy tools.
To test Parrot OS, you can install the distro on Oracle’s VirtualBox.
While working with the client’s system, I noticed that the database would come under load due to increased demand. After reviewing the code, the developer and I conclude that something like memcached will improve performance by caching queries. This page explains how to install a memcached server on OpenSUSE or SUSE enterprise Linux server using the ssh command.
A couple of weeks ago, I’ve wrote an article about how I’m (kinda) in love with gnome boxes. Well, I’m still working with gnome boxes every day. And that simpleness I’m kinda in love to comes with a cost: to do some things are the exact opposite to simple.
Here’s a small list of things that annoyed me and how I’ve solved it.
Distrobox is a tool that allows you to create and manage container-based development environments without root privileges.
Distrobox can use either podman or docker to create containers using the Linux distribution of your choice.
The created container will be tightly integrated with the host, allowing sharing of the HOME directory of the user, external storage, external USB devices, graphical apps (X11/Wayland), and audio.
As a project, it is inspired by Container Toolbx (all the props to them!), but it aims to have broader compatibility with hosts and containers, without having to require a dedicated image to use in Distrobox.
Linux is an ocean of different kinds of file systems. Some distributions ship Ext4 as the default file system, while distributions like RedHat stick with an XFS.
Besides Ext4 and XFS, there are around 10+ file systems in Linux with unique features and few drawbacks. To know, your Linux system is running in which type of file system use the below method.
In this tutorial, we will show you how to install RStudio IDE on Fedora 35. For those of you who didn’t know, RStudio provides free and open-source tools for R and enterprise-ready professional software for data science teams to develop and share their work at scale. RStudio makes it easier to write Python, Shell, SQL scripts with syntax highlighting, code completion, and smart indentation.
This article assumes you have at least basic knowledge of Linux, know how to use the shell, and most importantly, you host your site on your own VPS. The installation is quite simple and assumes you are running in the root account, if not you may need to add ‘sudo‘ to the commands to get root privileges. I will show you the step-by-step installation of RStudio IDE on a Fedora 35.
Steps and commands to install the latest version of MongoDB server and client on Linux Mint 18, 19, and 20 using the command terminal.
What is MongoDB? MongoDB is an open-source database that is different from Oracle MySQL, Microsoft SQL, and other popular SQL database servers. Because this one is based on a non-relational document model. That’s why we called NoSQL database (NoSQL = Not-only-SQL) and makes it differs fundamentally from conventional relational databases. The meaning of its name is “humongous” founded by developer Eliot Horowitz in 2009.
MongoDB is available in both community and Enterprise editions. The community version is good for SMBs, developers, individuals for testing and learning; whereas the enterprises with a heavy workload and require large-scale implementation should go for the Enterprise version. In the enterprise version, the user will get Technical support, Kubernetes Integration, advanced access control, and data security, LDAP Proxy Authentication, Encryption at Rest, Auditing, Kerberos Authentication, and other features…
When we run an article with “DOOM” in the title, it’s typically another example of getting the venerable game running on some minimalist platform. This DOOM-based VR rig for rats, though, is less about hacking DOOM, and more about hacking the rats.
What started as a side project for [Viktor Tóth] has evolved into quite a complex apparatus. At the center of the rig is an omnidirectional treadmill comprised of a polystyrene ball about the size of a bowling ball. The ball is free to rotate, with sensors detecting rotation in two axes — it’s basically a big electromechanical mouse upside down. The rat rides at the top of the ball, wearing a harness to keep it from slipping off. A large curved monitor sits right in front of the rat to display the virtual environment, which is a custom DOOM map.
Some new CSS classes are coming to icons courtesy Janet Blackquill, and I’m excited to cover what exactly this will let icon artists do in 2022! This post is part tutorial and part news. For those looking for a quick TLDR; icons are going to get even better. I’m also going to clear up some inaccuracies in existing documentation (which I plan on updating at some point later)
Porting Files to GTK 4 has been helping me learn and appreciate even more the legacy of the nautilus software package. Its two-decades-long history is closely entangled with the history of the GNOME project.
As I prepare to merge the removal of more than 20 thousand lines of code, I’ve decided to stop and pay some tribute to the legacy widget that’s about to be decommissioned.
[...]
At some point renamed/forked to FooCanvas and later EelCanvas, this base widget continued to serve as the fundamental base for the GNOME desktop files and file browser’s icon view across major versions.
However, as GNOME 3 no longer featured icons on desktop, a free-position canvas was no longer required. Various efforts were made to implement a less complex grid view, but the canvas refused to be dethroned easily.
Clearly, XeroLinux isn't for the new user. Anyone who prefers their desktops work with a certain level of reliability will want to steer clear of this entry. But if you love eye candy and you don't mind spending a bit of extra time getting things to work, XeroLinux might be just the sidetrack from the standard-issue desktop.
This is one of those distributions that I sincerely hope continues growing. Even with the issues, what Anindo Neel Dutta has done is impressive. XeroLinux has the makings of what could be the most beautiful Linux desktop on the market. If he can work out some of the quirks, he'll have something special on his hands.
Fedora is often on the bleeding-edge of changes for tier-one Linux distributions but not all of them are very technical in nature but sometimes just cosmetic alterations. Among the latest batch of change proposals for next spring's Fedora 36 is to change the default font.
Currently Fedora relies on the DejaVu fonts for European and other language scripts. But not all languages are covered by DejaVu so there are also other fonts involved.
Of the many changes created by the pandemic, one of the more enduring is that remote work is still the norm. Networking makes this possible. Understanding and appreciating how networks work and are designed is a needed skill, especially in this digital world.
This year, Opensource.com ran several great articles focusing on open source in business. These articles show the power of open source in business as tools, platforms, or integration points. Let's review some of the top open source business stories from 2021:
The hybrid work model is here to stay, and the way organizations shape their new work models in early 2022 will influence the structure of the workforce for many years to come. It’s becoming clear that the most practical approach for larger companies is a combination of remote and in-person structure, focused on high engagement, connection, and collaboration.
Your goal for the first quarter of 2022 should be to create a work environment that is valuable for both those working in the office and those working remotely, while recognizing that the two experiences will never be the same. Your office structure 2.0 must also address pain points created by the pandemic, like video meeting fatigue and feeling disconnected from colleagues.
Still based on the Ubuntu 16.04 LTS (Xenial Xerus) operating system series, the Ubuntu Touch OTA-21 update is yet another bugfix release that fixes various issues reported by users from previous OTA updates.
For example, it fixes support for setting up a Google account, it fixes microphone access in the default web browser, and fixes a weird animation issue in Clock app’s timer mode that occurred when the clock hands were moved across the 12-hour clock position.
Linux Mint’s final point release in the 20 series, nicknamed “Una,” is now in beta. It builds on version 20.2 “Uma” with some new features and refinements. Are those changes more substantial than the name change? Let’s find out.
Raspberry Pi UPS solutions have been available for years with products like PiJuice Zero, PiVoyager, or LiFePO4wered/Pi+. But the team at SB Components has designed another UPS HAT for Raspberry Pi with a holder for two 18650 batteries.
The HAT is designed for 5V operation up to 2.5A, connects with the Raspberry Pi SBC through the I2C bus from the 40-pin GPIO header, and is equipped with a 0.91-inch OLED for information display.
It's the end of another year, and we're happy to announce the v21.12 release of postmarketOS, based on Alpine Linux 3.15!
Thanks to our amazing contributors, the amount of supported devices has been increased to 23 (from 15 in v21.06). As in previous releases, we ship pre-built images for phones and tablets with the mobile-optimized Phosh, Plasma Mobile and Sxmo interfaces. Other form factors, such as the PineBook Pro get images with different interfaces as it makes sense. In the picture above it runs Plasma Desktop, and besides that we have Gnome, Sway, Phosh and Console. Find all images at the download page.
v21.12, like previous releases, is geared mainly towards Linux enthusiasts; it may be a bit rough around the edges so expect some bugs. Help identifying and resolving issues is always greatly appreciated.
WebRTC is an open-source framework that enables real-time communications for the web through your web browser.
In contrast, it is the basic protocol that allows web apps and websites to capture and stream videos and audio and exchange data between web browsers.
WebRTC is created first by Google to make peer-to-peer communication possible for web browsers and mobile apps, leading to dozens of video and audio communication apps that we use every day.
It is a free and open-source project, which means it does not require any cost to run and use it
Another Advantage for WebRTC is it is fast, and because, unlike UDP-based apps, it does not require any handshake between the client and the server.
Many people are holding their breath waiting for a jury to decide whether to convict Ghislaine Maxwell, sidekick of Jeffrey Epstein.
It appears strange for a woman to be involved in crimes against women and children but it is not uncommon. Here at Debian Community News we recently covered the similarities between Debian and the NXIVM sex cult.
Debian is a combination of the names Debra and Ian, Ian being the founder of Debian and Debra his girlfriend at the time Debian was conceived. The name Debian is now being used to brand volunteers in much the same way that NXIVM convicted criminals branded their initials on slaves genital skin. It is a tragic coincidence. Debra and Ian would not condone this, yet this is what eventuated under the cult-like regime of Chris Lamb and Molly de Blanc.
As we close out this challenging year, we look back at the most popular FOSSlife articles of 2021 and look ahead to the opportunities that 2022 may hold.
In the coming year, we will continue to provide news and features to keep you informed of the latest open source trends and technologies and continue to build a collection of resources to help you understand the array of opportunities that open source has to offer.
release notes:
Quick-fix release.
README excerpt:
GNU Serveez is a server framework. It provides routines and help for implementing IP-based servers (currently TCP, UDP and ICMP). It supports named pipes for all connection-oriented protocols.
We think it is worth the effort because many people need server functionality within their applications. However, many people experience problems with select(2) or poll(2) loops, and with non-blocking operations.
GNU Serveez demonstrates various aspects of advanced network programming in a portable manner. It is known to compile and run on GNU/Linux systems, as well as on other 32-bit and 64-bit flavours of Unix and on Microsoft Windows (9x/ME/NT/2000/XP).
You can use it for implementing your own servers or for understanding how certain network services and operations work.
NEWS for 0.3.1 (2021-12-11):
- build regression fixed
Part of the documentation build process uses programs to scan both Scheme and C files for "doc strings" (actually, comments). The Serveez 0.3.0 (2021-12-06) release introduced a bug whereby the Scheme-scanning program was passed a flag that is only valid for the C-scanning program. Result: FTBFS (sometimes).
- URLs now predominantly https
The world is less trusting, alas. Docs and ‘--version’ output updated, as well as all the copyright notices in the source (of course). URLs found in ChangeLog files are the same.
- bootstrap/maintenance tools
upgraded:
Guile-BAUX 20211208.0839.a5245e7 GNU gnulib 2021-12-10 21:54:54
as before:
GNU Texinfo 6.8 GNU Autoconf 2.71 GNU Automake 1.16.5 GNU Libtool 2.4.6
tarballs and detached signature:
https://ftpmirror.gnu.org/serveez/serveez-0.3.1.tar.lz https://ftpmirror.gnu.org/serveez/serveez-0.3.1.tar.lz.sig
source code:
https://git.savannah.gnu.org/cgit/serveez.git?h=p
homepage:
https://www.gnu.org/software/serveez/
-- Thien-Thi Nguyen ----------------------------------------------- (defun responsep (query) ; (2021) Software Libero (pcase (context query) ; = Dissenso Etico (`(technical ,ml) (correctp ml)) ...)) 748E A0E8 1CB8 A748 9BFA --------------------------------------- 6CE4 6703 2224 4C80 7502
What I want is when plugin a USB audio device, that it will be detected, and if it is a sink device launch the Multiple Sound Card Wizard. Yes, I will explain that, but also want to point out a serious potential bug that still exists in woof-CE built pups.
You may have seen the news that we released Web Assembly as Tech Preview in Qt 6.2 LTS a while ago (please find the latest Qt here). This blog post is a Qt6 refresh of a similar post done earlier for Qt 5, starting a series of Qt Web Assembly posts discussing the recent developments on Qt6 side.
I had a reasonably productive year, releasing several modules that I think/hope are useful for the wider ecosystem.
Perhaps you don’t think of it this way, but the way that we interact with the objects we own is not necessarily a given. And this is proven when those not-a-given things change unexpectedly out of the blue. I wanted to talk about one of those things, a small but confusing shift to the way we use computers, a default that befuddles many, but others don’t mind. When it comes to “natural scrolling,” I fall deeply into the befuddled camp. Released with version 10.7 of Mac OS X just over a decade ago, the attempt to reinvent the way our mice and trackpads work felt like an unnecessary flip, but it’s still around a decade later, and most other operating systems now do it as well. Apple convinced people that its way of scrolling was “natural.” Now, while I missed the 10th anniversary of this subtle-but-not-so-subtle change by about five months, I still wanted to get my thoughts about it down way before the 15th anniversary. While the embers of 2021 are still emitting light, today’s Tedium looks back at the moment Apple flipped the way we scroll through things on our computers on its head.
Have you ever wanted to make your own surfboard, but felt held back by a lack of tools, materials, or the cost of it? Drawing almost entirely from what can be found at a well-known home improvement retailer, [AndrewW1997] details the steps needed to craft your board.
In his guide, he details the difference between XPS (expanded polystyrene) and EPS (extruded polystyrene) and how each product’s closed cell and open cell nature affects the final board. Starting with two pink sheets of XPS, he laminated them together with glue to form his blank. A stringer is a long piece of wood in the middle of the surfboard that provides additional flex and strength. Some flooring plywood curved with a jigsaw provides the shape needed. Unfortunately, the blank needs to be split in half to install the stringer. However, he has a trick for gluing the blank back together without it buckling, and that trick is ratchet straps.
Bluster around the advent of self-driving cars has become a constant in the automotive world in recent years. Much is promised by all comers, but real-world results – and customer-ready technologies – remain scarce on the street.
Today, we’ll dive in and take a look at the current state of play. What makes a self-driving car, how close are the main players, and what can we expect to come around the corner?
If you follow the world of small microcontrollers you will certainly be familiar with the usual fare of Atmel, ARM Cortex, PIC, and others. But these aren’t the smallest or cheapest devices, below them is an entire category of grain-of-dust microcontrollers with minimal capabilities and at rock bottom prices. Maybe the most well known are the Padauk series of chips, whose PIC12-like architecture can be had for literal pennies. These are the famous 3 cent microcontrollers, but despite their fame they have a bit of a reputation in our community for being difficult to work with. [Ben Lim] dispels some of those ideas, by Padauk-enabling a motor and encoder from a printer to make a three cent motor controller.
When it comes down to it, we humans have two major concerns when venturing away from home for an extended period of time: what we’ll eat, and where we will sleep. Depending on the mode of travel, you might take some snacks along, or else rely on restaurants and/or the pantry of your possible hosts. Until the day we can reliably grow many types of food in space, or that Milliways, that five-star eatery at the end of the universe is operational, astronauts and other space-bound travelers will have to bring most of their food with them.
Security updates have been issued by Debian (firefox-esr, python-gnupg, resiprocate, and ruby-haml), Fedora (mod_auth_mellon), openSUSE (thunderbird), Slackware (wpa_supplicant), and SUSE (gegl).
Environmental Engineering [Prof Jaeweon Cho] at South Korea’s Ulsan National Institute of Science and Technology specializes in water and waste management. He has developed an energy-generating toilet called BeeVi (pronounced beevee) that recycles your waste in three ways. Liquid waste is processed in a microbial reaction tank to make a liquid fertilizer. Solid waste is pumped into an anaerobic digestion tank, which results in methane gas used to power a silicone oxide fuel cell to make electricity. The remaining solids are composted to make fertilizer. The daily waste from one person is about 500 g, which can generate about 50 L of methane.
or nearly a hundred years, the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) and the National Education Association (NEA) – the two largest teachers’ unions in the United States – have cozied up to corporate foundations, such as the Rockefeller philanthropies and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, along with multinational technology companies, including IBM and Microsoft. After almost a century of cutting side deals with Robber Barons and Tech Barons alike, the AFT and the NEA are now parroting the Gates Foundation’s “Reimagine Education” campaign, which is being buoyed by the World Economic Forum (WEF) and the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO). Altogether, the AFT, the NEA, the WEF, and UNESCO are all “reimagining” a new post-human education system as they simultaneously push for ed-tech overhauls. As documented in my investigative series, “Teachnocracy,” these overhauls seek to privatize public schools through partnerships with Big Tech corporations that facilitate online “distance learning” to accommodate indefinite classroom health restrictions in a post-COVID world.
In fact, the AFT and the NEA are tethered to the WEF and UNESCO through an entity known as Education International (EI). EI is a Global Union Federation (GUF) that combines “383 member organisations,” including the AFT and the NEA, and collaborates with the WEF and UNESCO. As the intermediary between America’s teachers’ unions and the WEF and UNESCO, EI has been galvanizing the AFT and the NEA into conformity with the “reimagine” ed-tech agendas of these global governance institutions. To put it bluntly, EI puppeteers the AFT and the NEA using marionette strings that are tied to the WEF and UNESCO. In turn, the AFT and the NEA, along with the other 381 member organizations belonging to EI, are being spurred to “reimagine” schools through corporate ed-tech innovations geared towards advancing the Fourth Industrial Revolution (4IR) that is being accelerated by the WEF and the United Nations (UN) through the policy agendas collectively known as the “Great Reset.”
Last week, the UK Intellectual Property Office (UKIPO) released an intriguing report measuring and analyzing (apparently for the first time) the influence that social media influencers exert on consumers also when it comes to purchasing counterfeits.
[...]
The UKIPO’s findings are based on a quantitative survey of 1,000 female (studies suggest that influencer marketing is “highly gendered”) consumers in the UK, aged 16 to 60 and who use social media at least once per week.
In addition, the notion of ‘counterfeit’ was taken to refer to “items that look identical to a genuine product with or without the official branding/logo, but are not made by the brand and may be of lower quality, for example, a handbag of identical design to a “Chanel” with or without the Chanel logo.”
While the majority (70%) of those who have knowingly purchased a counterfeit (17% of the surveyed consumers) are aged 16 to 33, 13% of the surveyed persons have their purchasing behaviour relating to counterfeits influenced by social media endorsements and 10% are prompted to buy counterfeits by social media endorsements. The most popular product categories for counterfeit shopping are fashion, accessories, jewellery, and beauty.
I have already mentioned on many occasions on this blog the difficulties that FRANDs were causing regarding the choice of jurisdiction and the increasingly favorable position of French Courts to SEPs holders. The two decisions rendered by the Paris High Court in the XIAOMI vs. PHILIPS case confirm this trend by holding that the Paris High Court has jurisdiction to set a global FRAND rate, as ETSI is in Nice, France (December 7, 2021, [RG 20/12558] and [RG 20/12558]). I will return below to the context of this decision, before referring to the decision itself and giving my comments on it.
2021 has been year brimmed full with juicy case law from the Enlarged Board of Appeal (EBA). The biggest (or at least the most controversial) story of the year was the referral to the EBA on the legality of mandatory ViCo oral proceedings (G 1/21). This year also saw release of the EBA decision on double-patenting and a new referral on the thorny issue of plausibility and post-published evidence. As the year draws to a close, we also have news of a new referral to the EBA on the EPO's co-applicant approach to priority.
Following on from our IPKat EBA 2021 Year in Review, here is some more festive holiday reading on some of the important decisions to come out of the EPO Boards of Appeal this year. 2021 saw key decisions on claim supremacy, types of antibody claims, the data threshold for second medical use inventions and the AI inventor debate.
The issue of standing can be outcome-determinative: without it, no matter how worthy a party's position or arguments, a court will not consider them without standing. The vagaries of standing and its importance were illustrated this fall in the Federal Circuit's opinion in University of South Florida Research Foundation, Inc. v. Fujifilm Medical Systems U.S.A., Inc.*
The action arose over a dispute involving an invention described in the opinion as "Workstation-User Interface for Digital Mammography." This invention was initially disclosed by faculty at the University of South Florida who assigned their rights to the University. A later assignment of what is presumably a "new and improved" version of the invention was assigned by these inventors five years later, leading to filing an application resulting in U.S. Patent No. 6,630,937, entitled "Workstation Interface for Use in Digital Mammography and Associated Methods."
The details of the relationship between the University and University of South Florida Research Foundation (USFRF) are obscured by redactions, but under a nunc pro tunc license agreement (putatively) relating to the '937 patent between these Florida entities, the USFRF filed suit against Fujifilm for infringement.
Pharma-focused in-house and law firm counsel highlight the most important supplementary protection certificate issues for next year
The USPTO interference sided with the first-filer Kepner and so Sanford took the case to Federal Court. Sanford argued (1) that Sanford should have priority as the first-to-invent and thus get the patent; and (2) even if Kepner gets priority, Kepner’s patent should still be invalidated based upon the prior art. (“Void for lack of invention.”) The Pennsylvania district court sided with the first-filer Kepner on priority grounds, and refused to decide the question of patentability. Sanford v. Kepner, 99 F. Supp. 221, 222 (M.D. Pa. 1951). On appeal, Sanford argued that the district court should have decided the validity question also, but the appellate court affirmed. Sanford v. Kepner, 195 F.2d 387, 390 (3d Cir. 1952). In particular, the 3rd Circuit explained that once the priority issues are decided, the plaintiff would need some additional justification to maintain standing: “some manifest threat … or interference with the activities of the petitioner beyond the issuance of a patent to another is required to create a controversy justiciable under the Declaratory Judgment Act.” Id. The Supreme Court then took up the case and again affirmed, with Justice Black writing a short opinion for a unanimous court. Sanford v. Kepner, 344 U.S. 13 (1952).
Germany's leading business weekly, Wirtschaftswoche, has just been first (and I might still be second) to report that Daimler has finally taken a standard-essential patent (SEP) license from the Avanci pool, whose licensors include Qualcomm, Nokia, Ericsson as well as dozens of other companies from around the globe.
If you can't beat'em, join'em.
It was actually Avanci's approach of licensing the end product--the vehicle as opposed to a component thereof--which Daimler had originally rejected. As a result, the Nokia v. Daimler patent infringement dispute lasted more than two years and ended in a bilateral (just Nokia and Daimler) license agreement that was announced on June 1, 2021. Daimler had also brought an EU antitrust complaint (over Nokia's refusal to grant Daimler's suppliers an exhaustive SEP license) that it withdrew after the settlement.
Prior to settling with Nokia, Daimler had already taken bilateral licenses from Japanese electronics giant Sharp and non-practicing entity Conversant Wireless. All those companies--plus Japan's IP Bridge--had sued Daimler in Germany over patent infringements. And all of them are among the Avanci pool's more than three dozen licensors.
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C-level interest in IP differs greatly between the automotive industry and Big Tech. Big Tech CEOs have subscribed to this blog and the related Twitter account, but I'm not aware of the top brass of automotive companies ever having subscribed to FOSS Patents.
As Daimler's Avanci license shows, the automotive industry has to come to terms with the fact that major wireless companies are now in the position to impose their preferred business models on car makers, no matter how much the auto industry may point to century-old traditions regarding their supply chains and what have you.
The battle over the business model is practically over. Daimler's legal fees are a sunk cost, and its financial controllers will be crying tears. What all car makers--above all, Volkswagen--need to reflect on now is how to achieve the best results possible under a framework that wasn't their first choice, but which has simply prevailed. They've all learned a few lessons in recent years--and they've paid their tuition fees. The problem they face is that the world around them is changing faster than their organizations can adjust. Increasingly they're going to face competition from companies that hold SEPs, such as Apple, Google, or Xiaomi. In times of transformation, leadership from the very top of those organizations is needed. Otherwise the only beneficiaries will continue to be patent litigation firms.
The European Patent Office this week published its decision revoking a previously granted patent on indoor farming. PlantLab, which owned patent EP2348841, and Certhon together with partner Signify have been fighting a legal battle over the patent for years.
Last month, when the decision was made, both parties responded.
John van der Sande, Chief Innovation Officer at Certhon, commented, "The fact that the European patent on indoor farming is not valid is, as we indicated earlier, a victory for the entire industry."
This decision relates to a European patent application that concerns displaying e-mail messages with E-mail read status indication. The Board decided that the rule defining when the flag is to be switched is not based on any technical considerations as it reflects an administrative choice or the user's subjective preferences. Here are the practical takeaways from the decision T 1227/17 (E-mail read status indication/UNIFY) of November 19, 2021, of Technical Board of Appeal 3.5.01:
The NAKED condom case returned to the TTAB after a CAFC reversal [TTABlogged here] and the Supreme Court's denial of the registrant's petition for writ of certiorari (September 2021). The CAFC ruled that the Board erred in concluding that Petitioner Australian Therapeutic lacked "standing" to bring its petition for cancellation, pointing out that a petitioner need not have a proprietary interest in a mark to have standing. On remand, the Board has denied all three of Australian's claims: Section 2(d) likelihood of confusion (due to lack of proprietary rights in its purported marks NAKED and NAKED CONDOMS), lack of bona fide intent, and Section 2(a) false suggestion of a connection. Australian Therapeutic Supplies Pty. Ltd. v. Naked TM, LLC, Cancellation No. 92056381 (December 16, 2021) [not precedential] (Opinion by Judge Marc A. Bergsman).
Sources say proposed amendments to the region’s copyright law are necessary to ensure that its IP regime doesn’t fall behind other major jurisdictions
