The most powerful feature of the Linux Bash shell is its capability to work around files and redirect their input and output efficiently. Linux uses special characters or symbols known as metacharacters that add special meaning to a shell command with respect to file search and commands connection.
The metacharacters are helpful in listing, removing, and copying files on Linux. However, the function of each metacharacter differs depending on the command you are using it with.
This article provides an in-depth guide on different types of metacharacters in Linux. Lastly, we explain how these special characters help in connecting and expanding commands.
Welcome to this week's Linux Roundup, the second of 2022! May it be a great hear for you.
We had a full week in the world of Linux releases with KaOS 2022.01, Bodhi Linux 6.1.0 Beta, Manjaro 21.2.1, and Linux Mint 20.3.
Linux Mint is one of the most popular desktop Linux distributions, and they just had a big new release (version 20.3 codenamed "Una"). Today, I'm going to take a quick first look at Mint 20.3 Cinnamon and see what's new and what's the same.
In this video, we are looking at Linux Mint 20.3, the Cinnamon edition.
Today we are looking at Linux Mint 20.3, Cinnamon edition. It is based on Ubuntu 20.04, Linux Kernel 5.4 (but you can easily upgrade it to 5.13), Cinnamon 5.2, and uses about 1GB of ram when idling. Enjoy!
Every so often someone asks me to look at a new chat application, the problem is none of them have any users so here's the solution I don't care if it exists until there is a bridge available.
It's time once again for The Weekender. This is our bi-weekly departure into the world of amateur radio contests, open source conventions, special events, listener challenges, hedonism and just plain fun. Thanks for listening and, if you happen to get a chance, feel free to call us or e-mail and send us some feedback. Tell us how we're doing. We'd love to hear from you.
Not a lot here since -rc8, which is not unexpected. We had that extra week due to the holidays, and it's not like we had lots of last-minute things that needed to be sorted out.
So this mainly contains some driver fixes (mainly networking and rdma), a cgroup credential use fix, a few core networking fixes, a couple of last-minute reverts, and some other random noise. The appended shortlog is so small that you might as well scroll through it.
This obviously means that the merge window for 5.17 opens tomorrow, and I'm happy to say I already have several pending early pull requests. I wish I had even more, because this merge window is going to be somewhat painful due to unfortunate travel for family reasons. So I'll be doing most of it on the road on a laptop - something I generally try to avoid.
That said, the merging part of the merge window works perfectly well on a laptop, it's just that I normally really want to do more local build testing between merges than a laptop really allows me to do. So the main downside during travel is that I end up relying much more on the automated build testing in the cloud. And so really hope that everything has been properly cooking in linux-next so that there are no unnecessary issues that pop up when things hit my tree.
Of course, realistically our automated build testing is so good anyway, and people have been pretty good about linux-next, that maybe my local builds aren't _that_ important. I do end up occasionally hitting issues that should never have made it as far as my tree, but it's not like it's a common - or generally serious - issue.
Knock wood.
Anyway, I don't expect any real issue, but I'll probably be jetlagged and in odd timezones, so my response time might be "variable".
But hey, before that merge window even opens, you still have some time to give a shiny new kernel release some TLC and testing.
Linus
After two months of development, Linux kernel 5.16 is here to introduce the futex_waitv() kernel system call from Collabora, which promises to make your gaming experience faster when playing both native Linux games and Windows games via Wine.
Linux kernel 5.16 also adds support for Intel’s Advanced Matrix Extensions (AMX) 64-bit programming paradigm for servers, cluster scheduler support to the task scheduler, a new fanotify event type for file system health reporting, a new page folios mechanism for faster memory management, and improved write congestion.
As expected the Linux 5.16 kernel has been promoted to stable.
Linux 5.16 has many new features including the FUTEX2 futex_waitv system call for helping Steam Play (and Wine), memory folios have been mainlined, AMD Ryzen 6000 mobile series support is getting into better shape, Intel Alder Lake S graphics are now considered stable, Intel AMX support for Sapphire Rapids has landed, big AMD Ryzen with Radeon graphics performance improvements, and a wealth of other hardware improvements.
Linus Torvalds has released the 5.16 kernel, as expected. Significant changes in 5.16 include the futex_waitv() system call, cluster-aware CPU scheduling, some internal memcpy() hardening, memory folios, the DAMON operating schemes user-space memory-management mechanism, and much more. See the LWN merge-window summaries (part 1, part 2) and the KernelNewbies 5.16 page for details.
Sway 1.7 is up to its second release candidate for this popular i3-inspired Wayland lightweight compositor.
Sway 1.7 kicked off its release candidate phase in late December. Notable with Sway 1.7 is adding support for zero-copy direct scanout for better performance when rendering full-screen windows.
Sway 1.7 also has better support for virtual reality (VR) headsets via DRM leasing support on Wayland, xdg-activation-v1 support as some additional Wayland protocol work, and various other compositor enhancements.
After more than half a year of development, the qBitTorrent app released version 4.4.0 with many new features and various bug-fixes.
qBitTorrent 4.4.0 added Qt6 support. It offers better HiDPI compatibility for Windows 10+ and Linux using AppImage package. Though, it has known issue about text display on the progress bar. The Qt5 build is still the primary packages, though the next major release will probably drop Qt5 support.
The new release also supports BitTorrent v2 protocol and libtorrent 2.0.x, that use SHA-256 to provide a safer cryptographic hash function.
KeePass is a free open source password manager, which helps you to manage your passwords in a secure way. You can put all your passwords in one database, which is locked with one master key or a key file. So you only have to remember one single master password or select the key file to unlock the whole database. The databases are encrypted using the best and most secure encryption algorithms currently known (AES and Twofish).
KeePass is really free, and more than that: it is open source (OSI certified). You can have a look at its full source and check whether the encryption algorithms are implemented correctly.
Spotify is not the only music streaming app for Linux users. Here are some free-to-use Spotify alternatives you can install on your system.
Using an open-source operating system such as Linux calls for using open-source entertainment apps. Even though Spotify has plenty of native versions available for desktop and mobile platforms, many users prefer using alternatives packed with exciting features.
If that sounds like you, you're in for a surprise, as Linux has a ton of fine-tuned Spotify alternatives, which allow you to listen to music right from your desktop.
HandBrake is an open-source, GPL-licensed, multiplatform, multithreaded video transcoder, available for MacOS X, Linux and Windows. Handbrake can process most common multimedia files and any DVD or BluRay sources that do not contain any kind of copy protection.
Matlab alternative Octave is an open-source special-purpose high-level level programming language. let’s see the commands to install Octave on Ubuntu 22.04 Jammy or 20.04 Focal LTS Linux.
Under GPL license Octave is available to use by anyone free of cost; it uses its own script language, which is very similar to Matlab and therefore makes switching particularly easy. This is a program package for the numerical solution of mathematical and scientific tasks as well as for general data analysis and visualization. Using it developers can also create a math program completely compatible with Matlab with free additional packages and add-ons. In this way, the data you have already created will not be lost. In particular, an Octave program can usually also be executed by MATLAB without changes.
Well, it is a command-line tool natively but also comes with a graphical user interface in the standard installation. It is available for Linux, Windows, and Mac OS.
Whether you're a Linux administrator or user, having a secure server or PC should be a top priority. Although Linux is a secure operating system, it is also susceptible to attacks or security breaches just like other OSes.
In this guide, you'll learn how to audit and scan for security vulnerabilities and loopholes on your Linux machine using Lynis. Lynis is an open-source tool and is available on most Unix-based operating systems such as Linux, macOS, Solaris, FreeBSD, etc.
The date command is part of the Coreutils package, and it is mainly used to get the date in a different type of format with various available options.
At first, the date command may seem like a simple utility to you, but once you try to execute the date command with different utilities, you will realize the real power.
A date command can be handy in bash scripting, backup, and the limation is your imagination.
In this article, you will see the basic to advanced usage of the date command in Linux.
In this tutorial, you will learn how to analyze network traffic using Zeek. Zeek is a world’s leading passive network security monitoring tool that sits on the network and read all the traffic passing through the network, parses them into a high-level events that can then be passed through Zeek policy script intepreter which then generates comprehensive record/logs of every connection seen on the wire including all HTTP sessions with their requested URIs, key headers, MIME types, and server responses; DNS requests with replies; SSL certificates; key content of SMTP sessions e.tc.
Cinnamon desktop is one of the most trendy and easy-to-use desktops for Linux. Most Windows users or newbies switch to Cinnamon desktop from Windows to taste Linux for the very first time. The way Cinnamon adopts the system UI of GNOME but still keeps it traditional, which is eye-catching. Once you get the Cinnamon desktop installed on your computer, there are many steps and methods to customize the Cinnamon desktop in Linux. With open-source, you can customize the desktop exactly as you want it. There can be options to make it look like Mac, Windows, or a completely new look.
Here in this tutorial, we will learn the two easy ways to upgrade Ubuntu 20.04 LTS To 22.04 LTS. One of the most important things that you should remember while upgrading your system to the latest version is to take the proper backup for your important files and the system configuration. We hope that you will have a backup before going through the upgrading process to Ubuntu 22.04 LTS from Ubuntu 20.04 LTS.
Ubuntu 22.04 LTS is the latest long-term version from Ubuntu. Ubuntu 22.04 Jammy Jellyfish LTS will be supported till April 2027. In this tutorial post, we are going to show you the easy way to install Ubuntu 22.04 LTS container on Docker.
In this tutorial, we will show you how to install Htop on Fedora 35. For those of you who didn’t know, Htop is an interactive real-time process monitoring utility or command for Linux and also a handy alternative to top command, which is a default process monitoring tool that comes pre-installed on all Linux operating systems. Htop allows scrolling the list of processes vertically and horizontally to see their full command lines and related information like memory and CPU consumption. Also, system-wide information, like load average or swap usage, is shown.
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 Htop real-time system monitor process on a Fedora 35.
Discord was initially released in 2015, and it has been revolutionary up to date. This term is not new for gamers as it is one of the most used ways to interact with other gamers regardless of their locality. The discord platform has continued offering tremendous value to the community as it is an open-source app. Since its inception, Discord has helped develop new methods of connecting its users through video, voice, and messaging.
With so many streaming choices available now, it is hard for users to select the best streaming option. Therefore, with this challenge in place, it is vital to ensure you choose an app that suits your need to attain maximum productivity. Like Discord, you can opt to use alternate applications that offer online streaming services such as Twitch and YouTube.
Due to its lightweight nature and easy-to-use GUI (Graphical User Interface), Discord has arguably become one of the best streaming services. This has mainly been aided by its unparalleled compression quality that guarantees users a stable streaming connection. Besides, the fact that Discord’s voice chat is reliable and of high quality poses a challenge to its competitors, and users love it as it is easy to set up and use.
I tried to find a way to remove that name from the certificate before renewing it, but it seems like the only way to do it is to create a new certificate without that alternative name.
A central processing unit (CPU), also called a central processor, main processor or just processor, is the electronic circuitry that executes instructions comprising a computer program.
The CPU performs basic arithmetic, logic, controlling, and input/output (I/O) operations specified by the instructions in the program.
This contrasts with external components such as main memory and I/O circuitry, and specialized processors such as graphics processing units (GPUs).
CPU is considered as the brain of a Computer. You may want to know the basic details of your processor, processor speed, architecture, number of cores and cache size.
Ansible is an open source automation tool that can be used in a variety of ways. Here are a few examples of last year's most popular Ansible tutorials and stories.
Automation just keeps improving the lives of everyone on the IT team. Ansible helps anyone who uses IT automation, whether for keeping files organized or configuring printers, or for anything else someone can imagine and build. These are some of the most notable use cases and experiences shared on Opensource.com in 2021.
I have to pull the log out of a docker process to figure out why it is crashing. The Docker container name is ironic_ipxe.
Even though Epic Games announced recently how they expanded support for Easy Anti-Cheat to have full support of native Linux, plus Wine / Proton (and so the Steam Deck), it seems it's not as easy as we hoped.
In the original announcement, Epic mentioned how it can be enabled with "a few clicks in the Epic Online Services Developer Portal" but the situation is never that simple. A developer of Warhammer: Vermintide 2 has written a post on Steam to explain, noting that there are two versions of EAC. There's the original and the newer version used via Epic Online Services. The majority of games are likely still with the old version, since the newer one needs SDK upgrades and newer integrations.
I was first introduced to Linux in 2001. A colleague of mine in college handed a set of CD-R discs containing Red Hat Linux 7.2. This was before Red Hat split the distribution into Red Hat Enterprise Linux (for enterprise customers) and Fedora Linux (maintained by the open source community). The install came with with a version of GNOME 1.x and doing a bit of Google searching, it leads me to believe it was 1.4. From that point I became extremely familiar with the GNOME desktop environment, enough so where if I was not using GNOME, I was not being very productive. This was not the result of laziness. Far from it. It was solely because of my comfort level.
I am not doing a Desktop Environment review here. This is merely an opinion piece based on my personal experience and computing style.
Fast forward to the present and the graphical user interface of a modern desktop distribution has changed drastically. There are many reasons for these changes, one of which is adapting to modern technology. Mobile computing, touch input, etc. I look at GNOME today which is at version 40 and I am really struggling to get comfortable.
With the infrastructure I built in qml-lsp for parsing and analysing QML files, I thought “hm, since doxyqml is just a glorified qml parser –> c++ header file converter, wouldn't it be trivial to write the same thing in go reusing qml-lsp's infrastructure?” And that's exactly what I did. I wrote a 130-line program that faithfully replicated doxyqml's functionality in Go.
By virtue of being a Go program that calls on a pretty optimised parser in C, it ended up being a little over 10 times faster than doxyqml on my system.
I wasn't done there.
[...]
The next thing I'm planning to do is to resolve the concrete type of an alias property, so that documentation generation for aliases can be improved without developers needing to explicitly tell the computer what type the alias points to.
This release adds support for scikit-learn 1.0, which includes support for feature names. If you pass a pandas dataframe to fit, the estimator will set a feature_names_in_ attribute containing the feature names. When a dataframe is passed to predict, it is checked that the column names are consistent with those passed to fit. The example below illustrates this feature.
For a full list of changes in scikit-survival 0.17.0, please see the release notes.
While our testing has consistently shown how Clear Linux can deliver leading performance on Intel/AMD x86_64 platforms, one of the user criticisms to that distribution has been around the limited selection of packaged software especially on the desktop side. But the rather interesting Distrobox can help address that by leveraging Podman or Docker to run other Linux distribution user-space software packages atop.
Distrobox is an open-source project that builds off Podman or Docker to create containers of different Linux distributions. These Distrobox'ed containers are tightly integrated with the host for sharing the user's home directory, X11 / Wayland GUI app support, audio, and other connectivity.
Looking to add a router or firewall to your networking lineup and want some gear with relatively recent specs? A new mini PC with 6 Gigabit Ethernet ports, up to an Intel Core i5-1135G7 processor and support for open source router, VPN, and firewall software like pfSense might fit the bill.
As spotted by the the folks at FanlessTech and CNX Software, versions of the mini PC are available from AliExpress or Amazon.
The KDE Plasma Frameworks packages have been updated to 5.90.0. This is a service release update.
Are you looking to make an operating system change? It might be time to give elementary OS a chance. Version 6.1 of the OS has arrived, and it brings with it some really exciting changes that make it more than worth a look.
Unsurprisingly, the Wacom support on Linux is very good and my tablet worked out of the box. The only real problem I had was by default, the tablet sometimes boots up in Android mode, making it unusable. This is easily solved by pressing down on the pad's first and last buttons for a few seconds, until the LED turns white.
The included stylus came with hard plastic nibs, but I find them too slippery. I eventually purchased hard felt nibs, which increase the friction and makes for a more paper-like experience. They are a little less durable, but I wrote quite a fair bit and still haven't gone through a single one yet.
Tank aficionado [Daniel Zalega] has enjoyed playing around with armored fighting vehicles in the digital realm for years, but only recently realized he had the technology and skills necessary to take his passion into the physical world. Albeit on a slightly reduced scale. So he bought a 1:35 plastic model kit for the German WWII Panther tank from Tamiya, and started working on a way to make it move.
Luckily for [Daniel], the assembled model is essentially hollow. That gave him plenty of room to install the geared drive motors, batteries, motor controllers, voltage regulators, a servo for the turret, and the Raspberry Pi Zero that controls the whole show. Those with an aversion to hot glue would do well not to look too closely at the construction here, but it gets the job done. Besides, it’s not like this little Panther is going to see any front line combat.
Computer monitoring systems are used to gather data for the purpose of real-time incident notification, performance analysis, and system health verification. Without such a tool, a system administrator would have to login to each machine to collect information on a regular basis. This kind of repetitive task can be automated using a system monitoring tool.
System monitoring can also help identify problems before they escalate to emergency status. This type of software is not only useful for network administrators. Home users with a small network or even just a single computer will benefit from advanced notification provided by system monitoring tools. Knowing that free space on the hard disk is running out, or that a particular server/daemon has gone down can be extremely useful.
Intuit Inc. is an American corporation that specializes in financial software. Specifically, the company develops personal finance, accounting, and tax return software.
The company is headquartered in Mountain View, California. It has more than 10,000 employees.
While Intuit has a GitHub presence with over 100 repositories for numerous open source projects, none of these repositories offer any substantial desktop software. Instead, the repositories focus on tools and libraries for developers. None of these projects appear to have attracted significant interest from the open source community.
Language Tool 5.6 is available now.
Russian, English, Ukrainian, French, German, Portuguese, Catalan, Dutch and Spain language checking modules were updated in this release.
To show your support for the bill, and software freedom in New Hampshire, you must testify in person at the New Hampshire Legislative Office building at 33 N. State St. in Concord, NH at 10:30 AM. For more information, such as where to park at the Legislative Office Building, and any COVID-related precautions to take, please refer to this Nitter thread written by HB 1273's sponsor, NH state representative Eric Gallager.
As it is likely that representatives of proprietary software companies will be giving testimonies of their own, it is imperative that the free software community in New Hampshire and surrounding states give a strong show of support to computer user freedom.
When giving your testimony, it is important that you keep your comments concise and accessible to a nontechnical audience. It would also be helpful to prepare a rebuttal of common false claims.
If you can't make it to the hearing, please be sure to spread the message on social media, perhaps by using the #userfreedom or #SOFTWAREAct hashtags. And if you do plan on attending the hearing, try and bring a friend!
One cannot deny that programming is super fun and interesting. It is practically impossible to think of leading our lives without programming today. Every sector that we can think of relies on programming in one way or the other. Over time, many programming languages have surged in popularity and some have fallen from grace. That said, have a look at the top 5 most liked and hated programming languages of 2022.
[Kyle Gabriel] knows mushrooms, and his years of experience really shine through in his thorough documentation of an automated mushroom cultivation environment, created with off-the-shelf sensors and hardware as much as possible. The results speak for themselves, with some delicious fried oyster mushrooms to show for it!
I change jobs frequently, I travel a lot, I work in the operating system space so I like to try out new distros, installers, recovery measures… In addition, even when I am at home, in Málaga or Los Llanos De Aridane, Canary Islands, I like to take notes and write at different places since I find little inspiration at my office…
All these factors together means that I end up having several machines: laptops, convertibles, tablets, phone, RPis… and with various machines it comes the information, configurations and applications hell.
[...]
The pandemic has work against me. Such a long time without really travelling (beyond my two locations) had as a consequence that some of my good habits to keep the “machine independent” challenge under control were gone. I realized it when, despite carrying 3 machines in my first business trip since the pandemic started, back in November 2021. I still could not access to a couple of places because I did not have the credentials available or they were not up-to-date. My backpack was ridiculously heavy and I still could not perform some basic personal activities.
How could I let my self, a professional, get to this point?
In addition, I am increasingly worried about data privacy. I have taken several steps the last couple of years in this front, but for every step in the right direction I perform, I end up taking one in the wrong one. It is so hard to come into good terms with data privacy nowadays… The effort and knowledge required is simply too high for a regular citizen. I feel in this front like I did back in the days I started using Open Source. Like back then, I feel the world is against me. But I lack now the same energy level I had. A sign of getting old, I guess.
The cat: We parallel our article alongside a short parable from Paulo Coelho titled the “Importance of the Cat in Meditation.” The basic punchline is that once people started thinking the cat was an important element of mediation, it was easier for them to scientifically explain the importance rather than let go of the meaningless attachment. We argue that the Kessler Doctrine is following the same pathway, the Federal Circuit’s explanations do not make sense, and that it is time to resorb the doctrine into the general law of preclusion.
[mauriziomiscio.mm] has a way of dealing with the problem in a once-and-done fashion, by installing a female audio jack into his vintage headphones. The benefit is that if the cable is damaged, it can simply be unplugged and replaced with a new one, and is commonly seen on headphones from companies like KRK.
The hack is simple when applied to a classic pair of AKG K141 headphones. The little plastic casing on one earpiece is popped off, and replaced with a 3D-printed version that stoutly holds a female TRS jack in place. This can then be soldered up to the wiring inside the headphones.
With everything assembled, the headphones can now use an easily-replaceable cable, and one needn’t worry about having to bust out the soldering iron if the lead is damaged in future. It’s a particularly useful hack for those who use their headphones on the road, always throwing them into backpacks between gigs.
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved four biosimilar drugs in 2021 under the provisions of the Biologics Price Competition and Innovation Act (BPCIA, codified at 42 U.S.C. €§ 262) as part of the Affordable Care Act of 2010 (colloquially known as "Obamacare"). This brings to 33 the total number of approved biosimilars, although the effects of the pandemic has been felt in the last two years. From 2015 (when there was only a single approved biosimilar, Sandoz’s Zarxio€®, see chart below), the rate of approvals rose every year (3 in 2016, 5 in 2017, 7 in 2018, and 10 in 2019), but 2020 saw only 3 approvals.
The death of Dr. Li Wenliang (Feb.7.2020) sparks outrage as he was the first whistleblower for the current outbreak. Until this moment, many human rights groups and civil groups worldwide are demanding an investigation into his alleged grievance and speech suppression.
[...]
Propaganda and conspiracy lies are a means to control and keep the people busy in the dark arguing with each other while the thieves keep stealing them.
However, they always backfire and when they do, they will hit the manufacture in the face. The closes example is Iran, look consequences of that.
[...]
The solution is quite simple: if you want to fight the epidemic you have to face and fight your endemic corruption.
Court documents show that Australian Border Force officials tried to pressure Novak into accepting deportation after his 25 hour journey. They denied him access to lawyers and documents. Let us put that in context: Victoria Police do an excellent job promoting safety on the roads in our state. One of their campaigns tells us that lack of sleep is equivalent to intoxication and drugs. Therefore, if the border police ask for a traveller to give consent to a serious topic like deportation after 25 hours without proper sleep, it is not real consent. Their insistence is on par with date rape.
The Tampa affair in 2001 was just a few weeks before an election. The next election in Australia has to be between February and May. Novak Djokovic is the new Tampa. Around the world, the incarceration of Novak has provoked ridicule and anger at Australia's apartheid-like immigration system. Yet in Australia, the Government is hoping to win votes from bullying a foreign athlete.
[...]
The quarantine hotel where Novak is imprisoned is in the middle of the University precinct
I studied computer science and engineering in buildings barely 200 meters away from Novak's prison, I walked past that hotel almost every day
Novak has conjured an anti-vax mob in the street barely 500 meters from the Doherty Institute. That was the first lab in the world to cultivate Covid and sequence the genome outside China. Their brilliance in health is on par with Novak's brilliance in tennis.
Novak is a leader in sport and Australians have great respect for that. The best leaders are willing to listen to all sides of the story. While Novak is in this unique corner of Melbourne, I hope he will take the time to seek the opinion and advice of world leaders on pandemics and vaccination. In equal measure, I hope to see Novak playing in the tournament without further excuses from the Boarder Force officials.
When it comes to elections, the Republican Party operates within a carapace of lies. So we rely on the Democrats to preserve our system of government.
The problem is that Democrats live within their own insular echo chamber. Within that bubble convenient falsehoods spread, go unchallenged and make it harder to focus on the real crisis. So let’s clear away some of these myths that are distorting Democratic behavior...
Timnit Gebru, an Ethiopian with Eritrean heritage, was a leading artificial intelligence computer scientist until she was fired from Google. Recently she launched her firm that was awarded $3.7 million in funding from the MacArthur Foundation, Ford Foundation, Kapor Center, Open Society Foundation, and the Rockefeller Foundation.
Her company is an independent artificial intelligence research institute that will concentrate on the harmful outcomes technology has on marginalized groups who encounter inordinate effects from AI structures but lack the access to govern its development, as reported by The Washington Post.
In today’s ever-expanding e-commerce environment, online brand protection and enforcement has become a necessary undertaking of paramount importance for brand owners in efforts to combat the illicit trade of counterfeit and infringing products. With around 2 million active sellers on Amazon, and approximately 200 million active Amazon Prime subscribers, it’s easy to understand why brand owners choose to offer their products on Amazon.
The EPO Guidelines for Examination require the description of a patent application to summarise the background art (F-II-4.3). This requirement usually manifests with a request from the Examiner for the description to be amended to identify the closest prior art. In contrast to other types of description amendment, amending the description so as to mention known prior art seems a relatively innocuous requirement. It is hard to see how the addition of a simple summary of the prior art could be detrimental to the patentee. However, this comfortable assumption was recently put to the test in T 471/20, in which the Board of Appeal considered whether an amendment summarising the prior art could be considered to change the scope of the claim, add matter and thereby invalidate the patent. It will come as a relief to many that the Board of Appeal disagreed with the original finding of the Opposition Division, and found that introducing a prior art reference cannot add matter. However, the Board of Appeal did note that description amendments in general could add matter should they change the interpretation of the claims.
[...]
The Opposition Division (OD) found the patent invalid on the grounds that the description amendment summarising D8 added matter. The OD was particularly convinced by the Opponent's arguments that the filing unit disclosed in D8, contrary to the amendment in the patent, would be understood by a skilled person to be a robot, i.e., "a machine which can be programmed to perform tasks which involve manipulative or locomotive actions under automatic control". As such, the statement that D8 did not relate to a robot was a subjective as opposed to a factual statement. The Opposition Division further found that by introducing this subjective statement, the applicant had effectively introduced a disclaimer into the description. By stating that the disclosure in D8 was not a robot, the applicant had thereby changed the meaning of "robot" as used in the patent application, including the claims.
The OD found that the application as filed did not contain subject matter equivalent to the disclaimer indirectly provided by the applicants summary of D8, and as such, the summary of D8 added matter. The patentee was unable to delete the disclaimer as this would have been considered to broaden the scope of the patent, which is not permitted post-grant (the so-called "added matter trap"). The patent was thus revoked in its entirety.
In the US, functional antibody claims have increasingly failed to satisfy the strict "written description" sufficiency requirement. The written description requirement stipulates that a patent specification should sufficiently describe the claimed invention such that a skilled person would be convinced that the inventor had possession of the claimed subject matter at the filing date. In a Court Appeal of the Federal Circuit (CAFC) decision last year, the same reasoning was applied to a broadly claimed molecule for CAR-T-cell therapy (Juno v Kite). The decision in Juno v Kite is not a surprise in light of the recent CAFC case law on written description for antibodies, and represents yet another nail in the coffin of functional genus claiming for biomolecules in the US.
[...]
Written description is a type of sufficiency requirement, derived from the stipulation in US law that a patent specification "shall contain a written description of the invention" (35 US Code ۤ 112(a)). The written description has been understood by the US courts as requiring the patent specification to describe the invention such that it reasonably conveys to a skilled person that the inventor had possession of the claimed subject matter as of the filing date. As such, "a mere wish or plan" for obtaining the claimed invention is not sufficient to satisfy the written description requirement.
Over the years, the US courts have grown stricter and stricter in their application of the written description requirement to functional language or genus claims for biological inventions such as antibodies. The written description requirement has been interpreted as requiring demonstration in the specification that the patent applicant "has invented species sufficient to support a claim to the functionally-defined genus" (Ariad v Eli Lilly). In practice, the bar for what constitutes a sufficient number of species has been set very high. In Abbvie v Janssen, for example, a claim directed to a functionally defined anti-Il-12 antibody was found invalid for lack of written description despite disclosure in the specification of 300 example antibodies. In this case, the CAFC found that that 300 examples did not sufficiently represent all antibodies that might fall under the scope of the claim.
To this Kat's knowledge, the decision in Juno v Kite is the first time the CAFC has applied the written description case law to a CAR-T-cell invention.
Between AI inventorship, SEPs, and the UPC, there’s plenty to keep European attorneys busy in 2022
In its petition for writ of certiorari, Apotex asks the Supreme Court to revisit motivation to combine, obvious to try and whether the non-obvious contribution needs to be an improvement over the prior art. The petition argues that KSR v. Teleflex (2007) requires a flexible analysis, but that “over the ensuing decade-and-a-half, the Federal Circuit has … reverted to its old rigid ways.” The petition also complains that the Federal Circuit has again masked its jurisprudence via Summary Affirmance without opinion.
When does the absence of evidence turn into evidence of absence, and when does such absence amount to an adequate written description of the absence of a step of a method claim? This is a question that comes readily to mind when reading the Federal Circuit's opinion (and Chief Judge Moore's dissent) in Novartis Pharmaceuticals Corp. v. Accord Healthcare, Inc. (Fed. Cir. 2022).
The case arose in ANDA litigation over U.S. Patent No. 9,187,405, which recites methods for treating recurring remitting multiple sclerosis (RRMS), a degenerative disorder of the myelin surrounding nervous tissue, with fingolimod (2-amino-2-[2-(4-octylphenyl)ethyl]propane-1,3-diol) sold by Novartis under the brand name Gilenya€®.
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Chief Judge Moore's dissent, as foreshadowed in the majority opinion, focused on the adequacy vel non of the written description of the negative limitation regarding the absence of a loading dose of fingolimod hydrochloride. Perhaps sensitized to the issue by the Court's recent Biogen decision, the Chief Judge asserted that "[t]he majority dramatically expands a patentee's ability to add, years after filing a patent application, negative claim limitations that have zero support in the written description" (emphasis added), summarizing her position with appropriate pith as "[s]ilence is not disclosure." The dissent illustrates how readily answers to questions like the one before the Court can be completely divergent depending on which "policy lever" (as legal academics might call them) are considered most relevant. The Chief focused on disclosure, which carries with it a requirement for affirmative statements and definitions that without question are not found in the '405 specification (although it can be appreciated that there must be a limit to the requirement for affirmatively disclosing what an invention does not comprise, lest a specification become overburdened with unnecessary verbiage directed to irrelevancies). The dissent provided a basis for the Chief's apprehension that in this case the question of whether the absence of an initial loading dose was not so straightforward when it noted that the limitation was added in response to an obviousness rejection asserted against claims in a co-pending priority application to the '405 patent. The Chief Judge found support for her position in many of the same cases cited by the majority or distinguished them, to the point that these cases require that a patent specification must "describe[] a reason to exclude the relevant limitation," citing Sartorius (emphasis in dissent). And the Chief parsed the specification and the testimony to support her conclusion that the District Court's interpretation of the adequacy of the written description regarding the negative limitation concerning a loading dose, and the majority's affirmance thereof, was error. According to the dissent "the district court (and now the majority) [engaged in] rewriting the specification with expert testimony" to arrive at their conclusion regarding such adequacy.
The lithium-ion battery, introduced commercially in 1991, revolutionized the consumer electronics industry. Compared with older battery technologies, the lithium-ion battery was lightweight and compact, had high energy density, and required little to no maintenance, making it the ideal battery for mobile devices. It now powers the world’s most popular electronics, from smartphones to laptops to wearable devices. But the lithium-ion battery has now expanded far beyond the consumer electronics industry, sparking a gold rush of research and development aimed at producing lower-cost, higher-performance batteries that can be used in a wider range of applications. Over the past decade, developments in battery technology have led to rapid advances in the ubiquity of electric vehicles (“EVs”) and opened up new possibilities for energy solutions that will help reduce dependence on fossil fuels. With these technical advances comes an increase in legal activity, including intellectual property (“IP”) filings and litigation.
Wherever filing takes place and in whichever name(s), the making of a priority filing gives rise to a priority right which is often imperative to retain. Under Article 87 EPC, the applicant(s) for claiming priority by the end of the priority year must be the same, unless an original applicant A is added to by an applicant B or an original applicant is substituted by a successor in title. Priority entitlement must be correct at the filing date, but entitlement to a patent can be sorted later. This is the lesson to be learnt from the Marrafini priority issue which led to upholding of revocation of Broad's CRISPR- related EP2771468 on opposition appeal (EPO Appeal T0884/18).
Bolt, the European scooter operator, has become the first company in the world to introduce a tandem riding prevention system and is on its way to obtaining a patent for the feature from the European Patent Office after its submission was accepted.
In public proceedings, the Legal Board of Appeal of the EPO confirmed that under the European Patent Convention (EPC), an inventor designated in a patent application must be a human being. This was the judgement in combined cases J 8/20 and J 9/20, where the board just dismissed the applicant’s appeal. Here, both the applications were made by a Missouri physicist Stephen Thaler, whose AI-system DABUS had made the inventions.
The Legal Board of Appeal of the European Patent Office (EPO) has affirmed the decision of the Receiving Section that a patent application cannot succeed where the designated inventor is not a person, but an AI machine. An auxiliary request had also been made indicating that a natural person was to have "the right to the European Patent by virtue of being the owner and creator of" the artificial intelligence system DABUS. This did not meet the provisions of the European Patent Convention (EPC) either.
Haakon, IP Consultant in the Dehns Oslo office, shares his thoughts on high growth SMEs, referring to new reports from IP Australia, an EUIPO/EPO report and several papers on collaboration, open innovation and IP management.
I just read a new report from IP Australia on high growth SMEs and how they use IPRs. First, the report finds that SMEs' use of IPR is associated with high growth and higher wages. The conclusions align with what the EPO and EUIPO reported in their 2019 "High-growth firms and intellectual property rights."
Interestingly, both reports point to how a mix of IPR – for example of patents, trademarks and designs – associates even more with high growth than having only a single type of rights. My favourite topic: The new Australian report does not mention how trade secrets could be a part of the mix – but the EPO/EUIPO report discusses this (see p. 19).
Back in October, University of Illinois Chicago School of Law’s Center for Intellectual Property (“IP”), Information, and Privacy Law organized and virtually hosted its International IP Practice Seminar. The Seminar, co-organized by the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) and Kuhnen & Wacker, brought together international policymakers and practitioners to discuss the worldwide landscape of the most cutting-edge IP issues from a comparative perspective. Each speaker brought unique national and international perspectives across industries, technologies, and IP subject matter to the discussion. Adam Ernette (UIC) reports on the seminar.
Mazda has filed several new patents in Europe, and they appear to be regarding a new rotary-engined vehicle. The unnamed model has a hybrid configuration, along with a transaxle gearbox. This is just the tip of the iceberg, though, but that does not guarantee it will be built.
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As the Mazda aficionado who goes by the name taku2_4885 found, the rotary engine configuration that the Japanese marque has patented in Europe is part of a series of patents, and if they are put together, it appears that the company is planning a rear-wheel-drive sports car with a 48V hybrid configuration.
The transmission is a transaxle, while the engine is a three-rotor, which is entirely new. It is worth noting that not all the images in the photo gallery are recently filed, some being as old as 2019, but they do make sense and form a potential new model.
Only intermittently do I author articles in German--and it's more or less unprecedented for me to adopt a quasi-academic style with proper citations because it would just slow me down when adding content to this blog. But the rare exception has just occurred, and a German-language Wolters Kluwer publication very recently published a German-language article of mine, with various citations in the footnotes.
A few years ago Wolters Kluwer's Licensing Journal asked for permission to reprint a FOSS Patents post on a Qualcomm-BlackBerry licensing dispute that was resolved through binding arbitration. I gladly authorized it. Now, the November 2021 edition of Wolters Kluwer's Zeitschrift für das Recht der digitalen Wirtschaft (which I would translate as "law journal for the digital economy") has come out with a slight delay, and on pages 407-410 (the content of the November edition starts with page number 401) subscribers can find my article entitled Unterlassungsanspruch bleibt Hebel der Patentinhaber in Lizenzverhandlungen ("entitlement to injunctive relief continues to give patentees leverage in licensing negotiations").
The ZdiW's editors are professors Bernd Hartmann and Mary-Rose McGuire, both of the University of Osnabrueck in Northern Germany. Professor McGuire was a witness at a parliamentary hearing on patent injunction reform, frequently comments on patent enforcement rules, and under her auspices, Maximilian Schellhorn (now practicing law at Hoyng Rokh Monegier) authored a doctoral thesis that took a critical perspective on the proposal for German patent injunction reform that was on the table at the time and subsequently adopted in an almost identical fashion.
On December 23, 2021, about one month after Unified filed an ex parte reexamination, the USPTO granted Unified’s request, finding substantial new questions of patentability on the challenged claims of U.S. Patent 6,832,249. The ‘249 patent is owned and asserted by CommWorks Solutions, LLC, an NPE and subsidiary of IP Investments Group LLC, and is generally directed to multi-layered internet communication systems that allow for control over quality of service and priority of information delivery. It is being asserted against Comcast and RCN Telecom and is at issue in a declaratory judgment action brought by Altice USA. It was also previously asserted against Skybeam, Mediacom, AMG Technology Investment Group, Consolidated Communications Holdings, and Cable One, Inc.
Patent owners continued to converge on U.S. District Judge Alan Albright's Waco courtroom in 2021, though the number of patent infringement suits overall was flat, according to Unified Patents statistics.
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Patent infringement suits boomed in U.S. District Judge Alan Albright’s courtroom in 2021, but they were flat across federal courts as a whole, according to Unified Patents’ annual Patent Dispute Report: Year in Review, released Monday
America Invents Act (AIA) challenges dropped by 12 percent at the Patent Trial and Appeal Board, but ex parte reexaminations were on the rise. Unified Patents Chief IP Counsel Jonathan Stroud chalked it up to the PTAB’s Fintiv framework discouraging some AIA petitioners, plus a few reexaminations that led to stay orders in high-profile cases.
On January 6, 2022, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office announced a new program with the goal of increasing examiner efficiency. The Deferred Subject Matter Eligibility Response (DSMER) Pilot Program will launch on February 1, 2022 and end on July 30, 2022, unless extended.[1] The Program allows applicants to, in certain circumstances, not include a substantive reply to a 35 U.S.C. ۤ 101 rejection in an Office action response. The USPTO initiated the Program at the suggestion of Senators Thom Tillis and Tom Cotton (see "Senators Tillis and Cotton Propose Sequenced Examination Approach").
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For a participating application, the applicant may file a response that defers "presenting arguments, evidence, or amendments in response to the SME rejection(s) until the earlier of final disposition of the participating application or the withdrawal or obviation of all other outstanding rejections." But, the applicant must respond to all other objections and rejections in the Office action. In other words, if the claims are rejected on the grounds of subject matter eligibility and obviousness, the applicant must respond to the obviousness rejections and can choose whether to respond to the eligibility rejections.
The "final disposition" above is when the earliest of any of the following events occurs: (i) mailing of a notice of allowance, (ii) mailing of a final Office action, (iii) filing of a notice of appeal, (iv) filing of an RCE, or (v) abandonment of the application.[3] In the case that the applicant receives a subsequent non-final Office action in which only the ۤ 101 rejection remains, the applicant must respond to this rejection even though the application has not reached a final disposition.
Further, the applicant's deferral of ۤ 101 responses can be on a rejection-by-rejection basis.[4] For instance, if an Office action contains two different ۤ 101 rejections, the applicant may defer one, the other, or both. The USPTO also contemplates removing an application from the Program in certain rare situations, such as when a participating examiner resigns or retires and the application is not reassigned to another participating examiner.
Although patents are a form of private property, they are also expressly a tool of public policy. When a private patent lawsuit of interest reaches the Supreme Court, the Court regularly turns to the President’s administration for its views on how a decision may impact patent law and innovation writ large. That request for an amicus brief from the government is termed a CVSG – Call for the Views of the Solicitor General. One problem with CVSGs is that they typically add several months to the certiorari process because the DOJ spends substantial time collecting input from various government branches and outside interests before drafting and filing its brief. In patent cases, a Gov’t amicus brief is often the most important at the certiorari stage — or at least the most predictive of the outcome.
The dawn of a new year is here, and in the spirit of renovation, The IPKat welcomes new GuestKats Gabriele Girardello, Jan Jacobi and Becky Knott to our family.
I first encountered Bill Cornish in 1974 when, as a raw intellectual property doctoral student, I travelled up from Canterbury to discuss my chosen topic and seek his advice. In the 1970s, people who taught IP were almost as rare as those who studied it. We must have been a little wary of one another, since we scarcely spoke about the subject at all -- me because, as a neophyte, I was unwilling to display my ignorance of it and Bill because, as I was later to discover, had so much to talk about that interested him more than straight IP. But what I did find out, in that first meeting, was how many important people he knew and how well he had assessed their usefulness to me in my chosen subject.
It was more than a decade later, in 1985, that I next encountered Bill. He was then about to succeed the legendary Professor Friedrich-Karl Beier as President of ATRIP, the Association for Advancement of Teaching and Research in Intellectual Property. It turned out that I had made sufficient of an impression for him to summon me from the wilds of Queen Mary College's Mile End Campus in order to act as Secretary to ATRIP during his term of office. It was during Bill's two-year presidency that I got to know him much better. I can testify that he was a pleasure to work with. His instructions to me were always brief, relevant and unambiguous. To be honest, he didn't really need a secretariat. I often found that, by the time I came to carry out his orders, he had already performed to perfection the administrative chores with which he had tasked me.
ATRIP conferences displayed Bill at his best. Here he could share his deep understanding of IP with colleagues from around the world. A good and diplomatic listener, he gave his ear to all who sought it. Quiet and serious by nature, he was always on duty, though we all enjoyed watching him let his hair down at venues where a piano might be found; he would play though a series of exquisitely executed pieces with a verve and panache that stood in stark contrast with the solemnity of his set-piece speeches.
In light of the proposal to move the offices of the EPO Boards of Appeal back to central Munich, just five years after they were relocated to the suburb of Haar, counsel told Managing IP they’d be more than pleased the see the BoA return.
They noted that the move had given them pause to reflect on the whole episode and what it said about the EPO, however.
“From commercial point of view, it’s a catastrophe,” said Beat Weibel, chief IP counsel at Siemens in Munich.
Patent lawyers from China, India, Japan, South Korea and Singapore talk about SEPs, pharma patents and other matters they’re keeping an eye on this year
Four members of the Access Advance patent pool, formerly known as HEVC Advance, have been in dispute with Vestel since summer 2020 over six patents for the HEVC/H.265 standard. However, the court has declared the member licenses to be non-FRAND. The technology enables the encoding of video content and images, and is used in television sets and for streaming on mobile devices.
Pool members GE Video Compression, Dolby, IP Bridge and Philips are the plaintiff accusing Vestel of infringing patents EP 25 59 245, EP 28 42 318 (both GE), EP 27 77 270, EP 27 77 269 (both Dolby) as well as EP 17 39 973 (IP Bridge) and EP 29 50 544 (Philips). All patents are SEPs.
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The court’s decision to find the pool members’ licensing offer non-FRAND surprised the patent community. In a similar case, in summer 2020 the same judge found HEVC Advance’s licenses to be FRAND in a dispute with MAS Elektronik. That case involved some of the same patents as the present case, namely Dolby’s EP 270 and GE’s EP 245.
Recently, in almost all other major disputes in which patent pools sued implementers, German patent chambers have generally ruled favourably for patent holders. An example is in the dispute between Via Licensing against TCL or in the protracted proceedings between MPEG LA and Huawei.
On January 4, 2022, Unified Patents added a new PATROLL contest, with a $2,000 cash prize, seeking prior art on at least claim 1 of U.S. Patent 11,012,720. The patent is owned by Xperi Holding Corporation, an NPE. The '720 patent generally relates to selectively providing a buffer time prior to deletion of a media content item.
On January 4, 2022, Unified filed a petition for inter partes review (IPR) against U.S. Patent 7,178,049, owned by MicroParing Technologies LLC, an NPE. The '049 patent is generally directed to managing applications in a multi-processor system in a vehicle and was asserted against several car companies in 2021, including Mazda, Kia, Hyundai, Honda, Toyota, GM, Nissan, Mitsubishi, FCA, and Volvo.
On January 4, 2022, Unified Patents added a new PATROLL contest, with a $2,000 cash prize, seeking prior art on at least claim 1 of U.S. Patent 8,793,330. The patent is owned by HY LIT Radio Technologies Inc., an NPE. The ‘330 patent generally relates to a system and method for displaying graphics, text, animation, video, and other content.
Four lawyers tell Managing IP that they would invest in people, foreign filings and patent quality if their budgets went up by 20% or more
As MedTech patent filings grow, so do the number of rights obtained by applicants operating in the healthcare market. In addition to restricting the actions of new entrants in the marketplace, patent portfolios can be monetised to provide licensing income and returns on R&D investment. The graph below (based on statistics from the European Patent Office) shows that the number of MedTech patents granted in Europe has vastly increased over the last ten years, reflecting the expansion of R&D activities throughout this industry.
With the holiday season behind us, the vacuum cleaner is a valuable ally to get rid of leftover pine needles or bits of broken baubles. For those Kats that have a vacuum cleaner operating with cleaner bags, a decision by the EUIPO (Third) Board of Appeal (‘BOA’) may be ofparticular interest. In the case of Miele v. Green Label (of 23 August 2021), the BOA ruled that vacuum cleaner bags enjoy design right protection, overturning a previous decision by the Invalidity Division.
Attorneys may finally see the effects of the CASE Act and the Trademark Modernization Act in the new year, among other things
Professor J. Thomas McCarthy has provided to me his comments on the CAFC's October 27, 2021 decision in the Brooklyn Brewery case, in which the appellate court largely affirmed the TTAB's denial of Plaintiff Brooklyn Brewery's petition for cancellation of a registration for the mark BROOKLYN BREW SHOP (in standard form) for beer-making kits. However, as to the Board's dismissal of Brewery's opposition to the stylized form of the mark for "sanitizing preparations for household use," the court ruled that Brewery lacked Article III standing to appeal that decision because it failed to demonstrate that it would suffer injury if the registration were granted, since the Brewery does not sell sanitizing preparations. That, in Professor McCarthy's view, was a serious error. His comments are set out below.
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In my opinion, the court’s embrace in the Brooklyn Brewery case of a novel requirement of a competitive relationship is both unprecedented and alarming. I can only hope that it will not be read by this or other courts to work a sudden and far-reaching change in the legal test for likelihood of confusion. A century ago, courts did require competition between the parties for infringement by likelihood of confusion to occur. For example, in 1912 the Seventh Circuit found no infringement of the trademark BORDEN for milk by the use of BORDEN for ice cream because the goods were non-competitive. Borden Ice Cream Co v. Borden's Condensed Milk Co, 201 F. 510, 513 (7th Cir. 1912).
Under that early view of trademark law, unless there was competition between the parties, there could not be a diversion of customers and thus there could be no injury to the mark owner. Case law in the early 20th century decisively rejected the earlier precedent. For many decades since, no court, including the Federal Circuit, has held that the parties must be in competition with each other for a likelihood of confusion to occur. See McCarthy on Trademarks and Unfair Competition, €§24:13 (Competition is Not Necessary for Confusion to Occur.) The Federal Circuit itself held that the “related goods test measures whether a reasonably prudent consumer would believe that noncompetitive but related goods sold under similar marks derive from the same source, or are affiliated with, connected with, or sponsored by the same trademark owner.” In re Save Venice New York, Inc., 259 F.3d 1346, 1355, 59 U.S.P.Q.2d 1778 (Fed. Cir. 2001),
A judicial ruling has determined that “gruyere” is a generic style of cheese that can come from anywhere.
Senior Judge T. S. Ellis III of the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia upheld the August 5, 2020, precedential decision of the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office’s Trademark Trial and Appeal Board. The decision reaffirms that all cheesemakers, not just those in France or Switzerland, can continue to create and market cheese under this common name.
In the judicial decision made public yesterday evening, the Consortium for Common Food Names,U.S. Dairy Export Council, National Milk Producers Federation, and a coalition of other dairy stakeholders prevailed in their sustained fight to preserve the ability of all actors in the U.S. marketplace to use generic terms.
There have been some major innovation developments at national offices around the world in the past 18 months, as new partnerships have been struck to bring non-core tools and services to users.
In 2020, upon referral by the Supreme Court of Hungary (Kúria), the CJEU issued a leading case on the interpretation of Art. 3(1)(e) of the Trade Mark Directive related to a 3D shape (Gömböc, C-237/19, Kat post, here). The Kúria issued its decision following the CJEU ruling in late 2021 (not yet published online at the time of writing) and put an end to the case, ruling that the shape of the Gömböc cannot be protected under EU trade mark law.
Before delving into the reasoning of the Court, a refresher in Euclidean solid geometry will be helpful. Until recently, it was believed that a three-dimensional body having only two equilibrium points (one stable and one unstable) did not exist. This conjecture was tested by two Hungarian engineers who not only proved it wrong, but actually built the three-dimensional body representing such a shape, naming it the Gömböc (read more about the etymology of this word in the Kat post on the CJEU decision).
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The applicant also sought registration of the Gömböc shape for "decorative items" in class 14 and "decorative crystalware and chinaware" in class 21. The Court addressed the two product classes together.
The Court first observed that the relevant public considers the Gömböc shape to be the tangible symbol of a mathematical discovery. Hence, the relevant public wishes to purchase a Gömböc because of what it represents in terms of the history of science. The main objective of trade marks is to distinguish between products or services of competitors. The substantial value of the shape of a Gömböc stems, as the Court put it, "from an intellectual creation" and not from the intent to distinguish certain goods from goods of a competitor.
Trade mark law is not the correct intellectual property right to protect such shapes. Accordingly, the Court ruled that the shape of a Gömböc is excluded from registration for decorative items in classes 14 and 21, based on Art. 3(1)(e)(iii) of the Trade Mark Directive (and the Hungarian statutory provisions implementing it).
The Board sustained this opposition to registration of the mark ALZHEIMER'S NEW JERSEY WALK TO FIGHT ALZHEIMER'S & Design on the ground of likelihood of confusion with the common law mark WALK TO END ALZHEIMER'S & Design, both marks for charitable fundraising services. The Board readily rejected the applicant's prior registration (a/k/a Morehouse ] defense. Alzheimer's Disease and Related Disorders Association v. Alzheimer's New Jersey, Opposition No. 91245121 (December 31, 2021) [not precedential] [Opinion by Judge Robert H. Coggins].
Here are the first three TTAB decisions of the new year in appeals from Section 2(d) refusals. No hints today. How do you think they turned out? [Answer in first comment].
Retromark turns ten volumes, making it about four and a half human years old. That’s roughly 30 in dog years and closer to mid-30s in cat years (apparently). A lot has changed over that time, but the trade mark cases keep coming.
