Welcome to this week's Linux Weekly Roundup in the world of Linux releases. We had another great week with plenty of new releases and updates, like Deepin 20.4 (also they have a nightly build ISO of Deepin V23), Qubes OS 4.1.0 RC4, and Linuxfx 11.1.1103.
ArchFi the Arch Linux fast installer only considers getting Arch Linux installed, ArchDI is the follower up desktop installation script that I don't see the point of.
 This morning marked the release of Linux 5.17-rc1 that officially ends the merge window for this next stable kernel series. Linux 5.17 won't see its stable debut until around the end of March but there is a lot to get excited about for this open-source kernel in 2022.
Linux 5.17 is exciting for mainlining the AMD P-State driver that has been under review/testing for the past several months in cooperation with Valve for the Steam Deck, initial Intel Raptor Lake bring-up bits, Intel Alder Lake P graphics being promoted to stable, lots of preparations for future AMD processors, initial support for the recently launched Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 1, many tablet / laptop support improvements, x86 straight line speculation mitigation support, support for a low-cost RISC-V platform, and a whole lot more.
Linus Torvalds just announced today the first Release Candidate of Linux kernel 5.17, which looks to be a normal release with a normal amount of changes and new features. Nothing fancy, and nothing that stands out. There’s a little bit of everything for everyone.
According to Linus Torvalds, the bulk of it is various driver updates, and there’s also architecture, documentation, and tooling updates. However, the random number generator work and the rewrite of the fscache persistent local cache tool stand out in the upcoming Linux 5.17 kernel series.
The first 5.17 kernel prepatch is out for testing, and the merge window is closed for this release.
 A stock ticker is a report of the price of specific securities, updated continuously throughout the trading session by the various stock market exchanges.
The term “tick” refers to a change in a security’s price from one trade to the next. A stock ticker displays these ticks, along with other relevant information, like trading volume, that investors and traders use to stay informed about current market conditions and the interest in that particular security.
In this short and easy to follow guide, we cover how to enable MySQL/MariaDB query logging and save queries to a file.
When using a database, it often happens that developers want to know what’s going on behind the scene. Whether it is for troubleshooting, performance tuning, or out of sheer curiosity.
General query logs remain one of the most popular sources of auditing and diagnostic information in MySQL/MariaDB databases. After logging is enabled, the database server will write information to the log file when clients connect or disconnect, and it will log each SQL statement.
Zotero is a reference management system and academic network, here we learn the steps to install Zotero in Linux such as Ubuntu 22.04 Jammy JellyFish or Ubuntu 20.04 Focal Fossa.
Zotero is an open-source and free tool that helps in collecting, organizing, citing, and sharing research. It consists of two components: Zotero standalone (Mac, Windows, Linux) with a plugin for Firefox, Google Chrome, and Safari; Zotero web application: computer-independent access to your library, finding and setting up groups on specific topics (see collaboration), making contacts with others. The two components of this tool can be synchronized with each other.
If you are often involved in extensive projects at work or have to write a large-scale work during your studies, you quickly lose track of the sources used. With Zotero, you keep all information together and create a clear library for your project without much effort. It is particularly suitable for literature research on the Internet and the direct transfer of the researched data and works in groups that want to manage literature together.
While working in several operating systems, we use to add files and folders, cut, copy, edit and delete them as per our choice. Just like all these, the Linux system provides us the opportunity to copy a single folder to another folder even though the folder is empty or not. Therefore, we will discuss some easy methods to copy one directory to another in Ubuntu 20.04 system. Let’s have a fresh start by using the different ways to copy a directory from one place to another in Linux.
For this particular purpose, we must open up the terminal shell as we are going to do all things in it. There are two ways to open it. One is from the activity search area and the other is the shortcut key “Ctrl+Alt+T”. Practice one of the mentioned methods to open it and start implementing the commands in it one by one.
When clicking a magnet link in Chrome browser, it pops-up with “Open xdg-open” option allows to launch the default app to start the downloading.
Unlike Firefox, Google Chrome does not offer an option to choose which app to handle the link. Instead, it launches the default app directly. For those want to change this default app to handle magnet links, here’s how to do the trick in Ubuntu.
Today we are looking at how to install VCV Rack 2 on a Chromebook. Please follow the video/audio guide as a tutorial where we explain the process step by step and use the commands below.
Changing the icon theme on Ubuntu is an easy way to give your desktop a new look and feel. In this post we show you how to install Papirus icons on Ubuntu from a PPA.
Why use the Papirus icon set? Because it’s good — in fact, it’s one of the best icon themes for Ubuntu not to mention other Linux distros like Linux Mint, Zorin OS, and Manjaro. Thousands of users use this set, and several Linux distributions ship it as their default.
So I was trying to research what goes into generating a GIT commit hash and I thought I would try to personalize the cryptographic hash output a little bit. My computer isn’t that powerful but it may be possible to generate more zeros!
In his tutorial, we are going to learn how to install Minikube on Ubuntu 20.04. I am going to use Docker as a containerization platform. You can either VirtualBox, Podman, KVM, etc.
Minikube is a tool that makes it easy to run Kubernetes locally. Minikube runs a single-node Kubernetes cluster inside a VM on your local machine. Kubernetes quickly set up a local Kubernetes cluster on Linux, Windows, and macOS.
Brave is a free and open-source web browser designed by the Brave team and it is based on chromium.
Brave Browser comes with default AD blocker and blocks all type of ads from every website and it also has multiple extensions available from chrome web store and can be added to it.
This tutorial will be helpful for beginners to install brave browser on Ubuntu 20.04 LTS , Ubuntu 21.10 , Rocky Linux 8 , Fedora 35 and Manjaro Linux.
In this tutorial, we will show you how to install PHP 8 on Linux Mint 20. For those of you who didn’t know, PHP is a popular general-purpose scripting language that is especially suited to web development. The PHP language is released under open-source standards, also object-oriented and interpreted scripting language that can be executed at the server-side. With this release, there are many new features, improvements, and deprecations from its predecessor (PHP 7).
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 a PHP 8.1 on a Linux Mint 20 (Ulyana).
Domain Name System (DNS) is the actual directory of the internet in which the domain names of the sites containing information that the user requires or searches for are stored in the DNS servers. All the web browsers use Internet protocols (IP) addresses to look for resources and services available over the internet. The Domain name system interprets the human-friendly domain names into Internet protocol (IP) addresses, usually consisting of complex numbers and alphanumeric characters so that the browser can locate the services and devices present on that certain address. The DNS cache acts as a boost to speed up the lookup process of the Domain Name System. DNS cache, also known as DNS Resolver cache, is the temporary storage on independent devices which stores the frequently visited sites on that device and assists the Domain name system by suggesting the visited sites and resources.
Each of the drives of your Synology NAS will have different Allocation status depending on the state the drive is in. The drive Allocation statuses are:
i) Initialized: When you install the DSM operating system on your Synology NAS, it creates a system partition in all the available drives installed on your NAS. A drive will have the allocation status Initialized if the DSM system partition is installed on the drive and the drive is not used by any storage pools.
ii) Not Initialized: If a drive does not have a DSM system partition, it will have the Not Initialized status. If you install a brand new drive on your NAS, it will have the Not Initialized status as well.
Linux is a multi-user operating system. It can handle multiple users accessing the system at the same time. This is one of the key reasons why Linux is so popular in mainframes, servers, supercomputers, etc. Being a multi-user system, it’s paramount to have functional user permission management. It’s the fundamental that defines what user/group can access what part of the system.
For file access, this user permission is managed as the file permissions. In this guide, we’ll have a deep dive into the file and folder permissions in Linux.
If you are a programmer, you understand the importance of a good text editor application. Many of us spend a lot of time sitting in front of a PC and hitting the keys of the keyboard all day long. A text editor with great features can significantly boost your productivity. There are plenty of text editors available on the web, and choosing one that suits you is generally not an easy task. But if you are looking for an efficient solution, we suggest you try the Vim text editor.
Vim, which stands for “Vi Improved”, is a classical text editor which is mainly used by programmers. It is generally called “programmer’s editor”. Although built long ago, it is still a popular editor and outruns many competitors. It can be used from general text editing jobs to managing configuration files.
Vim is available for major operating systems like Mac, Windows, Linux, or Unix. Vim can run in the GUI and non-GUI console mode. For example, on Mac, you can install MacVim for the GUI version of Vim. Similarly, for Windows, you can use the “gvim” executable installer. Linux also has a graphical version of Vim known as gvim. Similar to other clones of the “vi” editor, Gvim on Linux has many powerful GUI features.
I came across this video earlier today, showing the Pinephone Pro running Half Life 2 at very decent framerates. Sure, Half Life 2 is an old game (2004), but it’s still a very impressive feat to see it run on a phone that does not even use the same architecture. The Pinephone Pro has an ARM processor, while Half Life 2 is made for x86 (Intel and AMD) CPUs in the first place.
GNOME Shell looks a little different in GNOME 42, which is currently in active development.
I wasn’t able to showcase the shell theme tweaks in my GNOME 42 alpha post but, over the weekend, fuelled by coffee ðŸËâ°, I managed to get the correct branch up and running on my Fedora install. I figured I’d write a short post to share some screenshots of the changes I’ve spotted thus far.
Just keep in mind GNOME 42 is under active development. Everything shown here is a work in progress and very much subject to change.
GNOME 42 embraces libadwaita and its rounder, softer look. So it’s no surprise that the latest GNOME Shell theme tweaks echo these changes within the Shell UI. That said, while the overall effect of the changes is pronounced (i.e. you’ll notice it’s change) we are still talking subtle refinement on what went before, rather than a wholesale departure.
For example, most Shell elements now use a
At the end of 2021 I posted a review about the PinePhone and what it was like running the device's default operating system: Manjaro Linux featuring the Plasma Mobile interface. While I've had decent experiences with Plasma Mobile in the past, the combination of Manjaro, the PinePhone, and this interface left a lot to be desired. It was slow, it was unstable, and there were issues with the battery charge indicator. To make matters worse, the default applications were not polished or well named. It was a rough experience and, though I can see where there is hope for Manjaro on the PinePhone, I was eager to try something different.
In the past I have had mostly good experiences with the UBports distribution. UBports is a community project which has continued Canonical's Ubuntu Touch operating system for smart phones and tablets. Since I've run UBports on devices which didn't have any more memory or processing power than the PinePhone, I was optimistic about trying out the PinePhone with this alternative distribution.
In my Keyboard Fun post from last year I talked a bit about my interest in mechanical keyboards.
Since then, I played around with a few more keyboards/switches/keycaps/…
Interesting enough, beside the actual hardware, naturally there is some software component to all these keyboards, too.
Whereas most commercial keyboards still come with proprietary firmware, there is the trend within the keyboard enthusiast scene to go for open-source firmware.
This allows you to properly update the firmware even from your Linux machine and do proper configuration of e.g. the keymap, too.
A year ago today we launched our Raspberry Pi Pico board, the first product powered by the RP2040 microcontroller, a brand-new chip developed right here at Raspberry Pi. A year later we’ve sold nearly 1.5 million Picos, and thousands of you have used RP2040 in your own electronic projects and products.
Sandy Macdonald from York quickly cobbled together a Raspberry Pi and a pressure/humidity sensor board and added a little code to create a recording barometer.
The system consists of a small screen that can be worn on the chest or other part of the body, and a lapel microphone to record the wearer’s speech. Using the Deepgram AI speech recognition API running on a Raspberry Pi Zero W, the system decodes the speech and displays it on the Hyperpixel screen.
Hands on a W5100S-EVB-Pico board. Let’s discover this microcontroller and its main features
In this tutorial, I’m going to show you what is the W5100S-EVB-Pico microcontroller board and how to use it.
I’ll explain the main features of this IoT board, then show a few usage examples with the basic Ping example and a Mosquitto (MTTQ) example to interface an MTTQ broker like Thingsboard.
When writing an Arduino code to perform a task or working on a project the data has to be classified in different types. The microcontroller understands the information in the form of 0 and 1 and it is difficult for a user to declare the number of bites for each data. To organize and categorize the data in different forms is quite helpful for programmers to understand the data given and perform the assigned task. For these different data types are used in the Arduino programing.
There are two basic data types that are used in Arduino programming: one is variable data type and the other is constant data type.
Arithmetic operators in Arduino programming are used to calculate the mathematical operations taking two or more numbers as operands.The use of operators in Arduino programming plays an important role as it defines the conditions on the basis of which the program works. There are different types of arithmetic operators that are used in Arduino programming.
In Arduino programming when there is a need to determine on which conditions the code will work, we use an if-else statement. In other words, the if-else statement determines the working flow of the Arduino program based on conditions.
In Arduino programming, many times we have to write a code in which a repeated cycle of execution of the code is needed, to execute it we use conditional loops, and the “while loop” is one of the conditional loops. In this write-up, we will understand what is the while loop and how it works in Arduino programming.
In Arduino programming there are different types of operators. These operators play an important role in functioning of any specific task or working of a code. Most of the decisions in the code are taken on the basis of results given by these operators, in other words they have a direct influence on the output. The comparison operators are used where the conditions of the Arduino code are made for deciding the flow of the program by comparing the values.
When writing an Arduino code for any specific project different operators will be needed for performing various functions, they can either be mathematical or logical operations and for each type of functions there will be specific operators. Here in this article the Boolean operators are discussed briefly.
There are multiple types of operators used in Arduino programming for making different conditions. These conditions then regulate the flow of the code designed to perform a specific task. One of the most important types of operators used in Arduino programming are bitwise operators and, in this article, bitwise operators and their types are explained briefly.
To determine the flow of a program or a code in Arduino Programming the compiler should understand how to perform multiple operations which can be either mathematical or logical. For this, different types of operators are used. Here in this article the compound operators will be briefly discussed.
To access your work on an Arduino board from anywhere on any system Arduino Web Editor can be used.This web editor is just like the online version of the Arduino IDE used for writing, editing and compiling codes in C and C++ languages. To use the web editor, follow the given guidelines
Kelly’s work takes a concept that would have many of us get the digital toolkit, and makes it wonderfully life-like using a small bouquet of simple parts. It’s a challenge to our beliefs and approaches, compelling in its grace, urging us to consider and respect analog circuits more when it comes to modelling consciousness and behaviours. If it’s this simple to model sounds and behaviour of a biological organism, a task that’d have us writing DSP and math code to replicate on a microcontroller – what else are we missing from our models?
Kelly has more PCBs to arrive soon in preparation for her NYC exhibit in February, and will surely be posting updates on her Twitter page! We’ve covered her work before, and if you haven’t seen it yet, her Supercon 2019 talk on Electronic Naturalism would be a great place to start! Such projects tend to inspire fellow hackers to build other non-conventional projects, and this chirping pendant follows closely in Kelly’s footsteps! The direction of this venture reminds us a lot of BEAM robotics, which we’ve recently reminisced upon as something that’s impacted generations of hackers to look at electronics we create through an entirely different lens.
Microcontrollers are also known as mini-computers; they consist of a microchip on which a small CPU and other components are embedded. Microcontrollers have a wide range of applications, the most common ones are the automation of electronic equipment, robotics, and industries to control the temperature. The microcontrollers are of different types like 8-bits, 16-bits, and 32-bits.
In the market, there are a lot of microcontrollers that are used for different purposes and have different architectures. In this article, the top microcontrollers are discussed with their architectures and applications.
Conditional operators in Arduino are used to decide the output on the basis of conditions. For different applications, conditional operators can be utilized. For example, they can be used in making the logic of street lights, such that the lights remain off during day time and on otherwise. In this write-up, we will discuss the conditional operators in Arduino and also understand its usage with the help of an example.
An array is a data structure used to store multiple values of the same data type in it; for example an array declared with the integer data type can store multiple integers in it. In Arduino, sometimes we have to use multiple values, for example, we are supposed to blink five LEDs, we will declare an integer array that will store the 5 pin numbers where we will attach the LEDs.
The use of Arrays in Arduino is similar to the other programming languages so in this write-up, we will explain the arrays and the way of utilizing them in Arduino.
Strings are the data types that are used to store the characters and a series of characters in them. The working of Strings in Arduino is similar to “char” in C programming. The values stored in the Arduino can be displayed on the LCD as well as on serial monitor output.
The Strings used in Arduino are of two types which are discussed in this write-up. We will discuss the functions of Strings with the help of examples.
To generate the pseudo-random numbers in Arduino, we use the built-in functions random(), first, understand why we need to generate the pseudo-random numbers? In real life, we have to generate random codes for verification purposes. Similarly, in digital gaming, we have to generate random passwords. For this purpose, we have to generate the random numbers in Arduino.
In this article, we will discuss the techniques by which we can generate random numbers with the help of examples.
In many Arduino projects, we often extract data from some devices like raspberry pi, or a web database for some arithmetic commutation, but the data is in the form of strings. There is a function in Arduino through which we can convert the strings into integers so that we can perform arithmetic operations on them.
In this write-up, we will conversion of the string to integers in Arduino by using a built-in function toInt().
A friend recently reminded me of the existence of chrony, a "versatile implementation of the Network Time Protocol (NTP)".
pgBadger is a PostgreSQL performance analyzer, built for speed with fully detailed reports based on your PostgreSQL log files.
pgBadger 11.7 was released today, this release of pgBadger fixes some issues reported by users since past five months as well as some improvements.
Ariadne Conill writes about the FSF's policy toward proprietary firmware and, specifically, the rules for "Respects Your Freedom" certification.
Socket programming is well-known and common in C programming between developers and users. Within this kind of programming, we tend to connect two endpoints. These endpoints can be two servers, one server, one socket, etc. As the name suggests, the “getsockname” function is utilized to get the name of a socket working in the network. It may or may not be the socket name, but the address of that particular socket would be displayed using this function. Therefore, we have tried a simple method to illustrate the getsockname() function in C within this guide. Let’s take a fresh look at its example while working on the program using Ubuntu 20.04 Linux system.
Jupyter Notebook is a client-server application in which users can edit and run their notebook documents through a browser. The notebook documents that are created in Jupyter notebook consist of python or programming code and rich text elements such as paragraphs, images, links, and equations. When you work as a programmer, you like to use quick keyboard shortcuts to solve the routine work. These shortcuts help you to complete the programming code easier and quickly.
In Jupyter notebook, various functions and notebook cell options are available that you can manage efficiently using the keyboard shortcuts. Most of the users do not know how they can find and use these shortcuts in the Jupyter notebook. However, today you will learn about all the keyboard shortcuts used in the Jupyter notebook.
No matter how good you are at writing computer programs, it is hard to remember all function names, syntax, and function parameters. So, programmers are required to use the auto code completion or IntelliSense menu feature in the Jupyter notebook. Usually, programmers and developers are familiar with different auto-completion tools.
The code autocomplete feature by default included in most of the source code editors through which you can view IntelliSense menu or code suggestions inside the drop-down in a program file. The code autocomplete functionality saves you time for writing complex programs, receives fewer bugs, and you can quickly include methods, attributes, and classes in your code using drop-down suggestions.
In this tutorial, we will show you how to install Django on Fedora 35. For those of you who didn’t know, Django is a free and open-source high-level Python Web framework built by experienced developers to encourage rapid development and pragmatic design of web applications for programmers and developers. Its main goal is to ease the creation of complex applications and take care of the internal structure.
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 Django Python Framework on a Fedora 35.
Annoyed by excessively-long cables? Tired of the dull drudgery and ugly results of bunching up the slack and wrapping it with a twist-tie? Suffer no longer, because the solution is to make your own coiled cables!
The European Parliament on Thursday endorsed a plan to increase the powers of the European Medicines Agency, which will be better equipped to monitor and mitigate shortages of drugs and medical devices.
When facing a malware situation, the usual “guaranteed solution” is to reinstall your OS. The new developments in malware world will also require you to have a CH341 programmer handy. In an arguably inevitable development, [Kaspersky Labs] researchers have found an active piece of malware, out in the wild, that would persist itself by writing its bootstrap code into the BIOS chip. It doesn’t matter if you shred the HDD and replace it with a new one. In fact, so-called MoonBounce never really touches the disk at all, being careful to only store itself in RAM, oh, and the SPI flash that stores the BIOS code, of course.
MoonBounce is Microsoft-tailored, and able to hook into a chain of components starting from the UEFI’s DXE environment, through the Windows Loader, and finishing as a part of svchost.exe, a process we all know and love.
This approach doesn’t seem to be widespread – yet, but it’s not inconceivable that we’ll eventually encounter a ransomware strain using this to, ahem, earn a bit of extra cash on the side. What will happen then – BIOS reflashing service trucks by our curbsides? After all, your motherboard built-in BIOS flasher UI is built into the same BIOS image that gets compromised, and at best, could be disabled effortlessly – at worst, subverted and used for further sneaky persistence, fooling repairpeople into comfort, only to be presented with one more Monero address a week later.
Josh and Kurt talk about the Global Security Database (GSD) project. This is a Cloud Security Alliance (CSA) effort to build community around vulnerability identifiers.
I use MetroMile for my car insurance.
With what my ex did to ruin my credit, they’re the only car insurance company that isn’t taking it out on me with really sky high insurance premiums for minimum coverage.
But one feature they claim their OBDII dongle can do is detect engine trouble codes and report on them to you.
Earlier this month, my Check Engine Light came on and it turned out it had been storing a pending code for three cylinders misfiring and just not displaying the light yet, and what finally made it come on was the upstream O2 sensor totally failing, which caused the engine to run so poorly that the computer went ahead and turned on the light.
For two days until I could get the car towed down to the shop, I kept waiting on MetroMile’s insurance dashboard to give me the engine codes, but it kept saying nothing to report, and then I noticed in tiny letters that it may not detect everything.
If it can’t detect three cylinders misfiring and a dead oxygen sensor, what will it detect?
And it’s not even the first time this has happened. It also didn’t detect any problems any of the times my ABS warning light was on or when my EGR valve failed.
with Felony Hate Crime, trespass, and disorderly conduct after racist tirade at a coffee shop.
On the most serious offense, intimidation as a Hate Crime, a Class D Felony, James Iannazzo faces up to five years in prison and up to a $5,000 fine, in addition to two misdemeanors on the indictment.
Bank of America Merrill Lynch claimed that they were shocked by his behavior and took immediate action. However, the pattern of big banks employing people like this is disturbing.
A Connecticut man in a rage over the inadvertent use of peanuts in a smoothie went on a threatening, racist tirade against a shop's young employees, leading to his arrest, Fairfield police said.
James Iannazzo, 48, of Fairfield, faces charges of intimidation based on bias, breach of peace and criminal trespass.
Today, the new European Union Agency for Asylum starts work with its reinforced mandate, building on the achievements of its predecessor, the European Asylum Support Office. The new agency is a key deliverable under the New Pact on Migration and Asylum. It will help ensure that asylum decisions are taken in a fast and fair manner and that reception standards converge across the EU, bringing more uniformity in decision making and alignment between Member States’ asylum systems.
In the Epic v. Apple App Store antitrust case, Epic Games filed its opening brief with the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit yesterday.
I already shared some thoughts on the Epic Games v. Apple appeal earlier this month and it's really only going to get interesting when Apple responds, but I'd like to share a few observations now.
Similarly, many business cats would like to know in advance whether or not one of their products could be considered to infringe the intellectual property rights of a competitor. For domestic cats, the only way to know whether a certain activity is infringing is to use a try-and-see approach. On the other hand, (business cats and) commercial operators, at least in Italy, have the possibility of bringing an action for negative infringement (being an activity doesn't infringe) before a competent Court, so that a third and impartial judge can possibly settle the matter.
In particular, when a company wants to receive a rapid response it may file a precautionary action for negative declaratory relief (an urgent ‘declaration of non infringement’, or ‘DNI’). In Italy such a request must be supported by three fundamental requirements. First of all, there must be a legal interest in bringing the action (the negative assessment of infringement presupposes a situation of objective uncertainty caused by a dispute with another party, so that a conflict may arise - subjective uncertainty is not sufficient), then there must be a danger of delay (the so-called periculum in mora or urgency requisite, i.e. an urgent need for the petitioner to obtain a provisional measure in order to prevent irreparable harm from occurring or consolidating in the time needed for an ordinary case to reach its outcome), and finally, of course, there must be a substantial prerequisite (i.e. the Court must consider that the product is not actually infringing).
In the light of these prerequisites, the path for the party fearing infringement to obtain an urgent DNI is not a very easy one to follow.
On Dec. 15, 2021, a U.S. district judge ruled that American fromagers are allowed to make gruyere cheese, despite the product’s Swiss pedigree. A week later, Japan became the 44th country to formally recognize Tennessee whiskey as a “distinctive product” of the United States. These aren’t just names, they’re intellectual property. But just as trade deals are helping to proliferate these geographical indications (GIs) around the world, the judge’s ruling on gruyere suggests that, for many of them, trade may also be their Achilles’s heel.
The battle over gruyere cheese has been heating up for years. In 2020, U.S. dairy claimed a victory when gruyere was denied trademark protection. Swiss vendors wanted American fromagers to call their product “Alpine cheese,” arguing that real gruyere can only be had from Switzerland. Well, not quite. The production of gruyere reached across the French border long ago, and since the early 2010s, Brussels has recognized it as being from both Switzerland and France. Yet, Austria, the Netherlands and Germany, among a host of other European countries, also make the stuff. So, too, do Egypt and Tunisia.
Senate Judiciary Committee is considering two bipartisan legislative proposals focusing on the operation of “app stores” and requiring that large app stores allow for a competitive marketplace without the tight controls that we see today...
Addressing the applicability of interference proceedings to patent applications filed after the Leahy-Smith America Invents Act (AIA) was enacted, the Patent Trial & Appeal Board (Board) found it proper to declare an interference between a patent application with a priority date before March 16, 2013, the AIA implementation date, and a patent with a priority date after March 16, 2013. SNIPR Technologies Limited v. The Rockefeller University, Pat. Interf. No. 106,123 (DK) (PTAB Nov. 19, 2021) (Katz, APJ).
The AIA switched the US patent system from a “first to invent” to a “first inventor to file” system. In line with this change, the AIA eliminated the patentability requirement under 35 U.S.C. €§ 102(g), regarding whether another inventor made the invention first, and the interference proceeding under 35 U.S.C. €§135 for determining who invented the claimed invention first. Section 3(n)(2) of the AIA provides a timing provision relating to this change. Under this section, the interference proceeding “shall apply to each claim of an application for patent, and any patent issued thereon, for which the amendments made by this section also apply, if such application or patent contains or contained at any time, a claim [having a priority date before March 16, 2013].”
European businesses can’t agree on how to move forward with talks on harmonising international patent laws
Nanotechnology: building materials and devices by controlling matter at the atomic and molecular level. An interdisciplinary field with far-reaching applications. Monica Patel explores five particularly interesting patents in this area...
The Unified Patent Court has today, the 19th January 2022, officially come into existence as an international body, following the deposit by Austria of its ratification of the protocol on the provisional application of the UPC Agreement.
The consultation describes how AI has and can play a positive role in the development of innovation and new technology. It also acknowledges that AI will be capable in the future of inventing and creating things that have no discernible input from humans. When this happens, and some feel it has happened already, an IP system needs to be in place that strikes a balance between protecting the human benefit of the invention while also supporting AI-led technical innovation and artistic creativity.
[...]
The UK Government previously called for views on AI and IP in September 2020, releasing a follow-up response in March 2021 to the 92 contributions that were lodged. In that response, the Government acknowledged that there were mixed views on whether AI could be considered an inventor. There were many respondents who were both for and against a change in inventorship criteria. Some felt that all inventions would need human input at some point and couldn't be devised solely by AI while others said that ruling out the recognition of AI as an inventor would discourage innovation and technological advancement.
Have you heard of a “design” patent? Maybe someone you know mentioned this as a less expensive alternative to a “regular” U.S. patent. The U.S. patent laws actually define three basic types of patents: utility patents, design patents, and plant patents.
As reported previously, the UK government has been consulting on the future regime for exhaustion of intellectual property rights following the UK's departure from the EU.
In an update posted on 18 January 2022, it was indicated that the government has completed an initial analysis of the responses to the consultation, but found that there is not enough data to understand the economic impact of any of the potential alternatives to the current post-Brexit system (the so-called "UK+ regime"). Given the potential of any change to affect a wider variety of business sectors and end consumers, the government has decided to defer making any changes pending further evidence and policy developments.
Patents for intralymphatic administration of GAD to treat and prevent autoimmune diabetes including type 1 diabetes and Latent Autoimmune Diabetes in Adults (LADA) have already been approved in Europe, Japan, Russia, Australia and Israel, with additional countries pending.
A new study published by the European Patent Office (EPO) and the European Union Intellectual Property Office (EUIPO) shows that companies that own at least one patent, registered design or trademark generate, on average, 20% more income per employee than companies that do not have any of these industrial property rights (IPR). In addition, it was found that these IPR-owning companies pay 19% more wages on average than other companies*.
The European Union Intellectual Property Office (the “EUIPO”) has implemented ‘The Ideas Powered for Business SME Fund' (the “Fund”), a European Commission initiative, for the year 2022. The first version of the Fund was launched during 2021. Unlike the previous initiative which only covered the re-imbursement of administrative fees relating to trademark and design registrations (at both national and EU level), the Fund now also covers the administrative fees associated with the registration of patents on a national level.
Our previous blog posts, Artificial Intelligence as the Inventor of Life Sciences Patents? and Update on Artificial Intelligence: Court Rules that AI Cannot Qualify As “Inventor,” discuss recent inventorship issues surrounding AI and its implications for life sciences innovations. Continuing our series, we now look at the appeal recently filed by Stephen Thaler (“Thaler”) in his quest to obtain a patent for an invention created by AI in the absence of a traditional human inventor.
Our previous blog posts, Artificial Intelligence as the Inventor of Life Sciences Patents? and Update on Artificial Intelligence: Court Rules that AI Cannot Qualify As “Inventor,” discuss recent inventorship issues surrounding AI and its implications for life sciences innovations. Continuing our series, we now look at the appeal recently filed by Stephen Thaler (“Thaler”) in his quest to obtain a patent for an invention created by AI in the absence of a traditional human inventor.
As we previously reported, on September 3, 2021, the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia ruled that an AI machine cannot qualify as an “inventor” under the Patent Act, in a case that Thaler filed seeking, among other things, an order compelling the USPTO to reinstate his patent applications. Those patent applications name an AI system called “Device for Autonomous Bootstrapping of Unified Sentience” aka “DABUS,” as the sole inventor. Thaler, who developed DABUS, remains the owner of any patent rights stemming from these applications. The first application is directed to a design of a container based on fractal geometry. The second application is directed to a device and method for producing light that flickers rhythmically in a specific pattern mimicking human neural activity. According to Thaler, he could not list himself as the inventor, as he did not contribute to the conception of the inventions; instead DABUS performed what is traditionally considered the mental part of the inventive act.
Since June 1, 2021 the Eurasian Patent Office has started accepting and examining applications for the issuance of Eurasian patents for industrial designs, which allows obtaining legal protection for an industrial design simultaneously in several member states of the Eurasian Patent Convention.
On December 31, 2021, the President of Belarus signed the Law No. 137-Z "On the Accession of the Republic of Belarus to the Protocol on the protection of industrial designs to the Eurasian Patent Convention of September 9, 1994". The Protocol on the protection of industrial designs will enter into force for Belarus three months after the deposit of the relevant Act of accession with the depositary.
The U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday refused to review a highly controversial U.S. Patent and Trademark Office rule allowing the Patent Trial and Appeal Board to deny patent challenges based on the timing of related litigation.
The justices denied both Mylan Laboratories' and Apple Inc.'s petitions asking the court to evaluate whether the USPTO improperly implemented a rule defining factors for when PTAB judges can use their discretion to deny challenges. While the Supreme Court has repeatedly held that PTAB institution decisions are not appealable — which doomed these cases at the Federal Circuit — the companies say they should be allowed to challenge an...
The European Patent Convention excludes from patentability “methods for treatment of the human or animal body by surgery”. The intention behind this exclusion is to leave medical and veterinary practitioners free to act in the best interests of their human or animal patients without fear of patent infringement.
A recent report from the European Patent Office (EPO) - Patents for tomorrow’s plastics: Global innovation trends in recycling, circular design and alternative sources - provides an in-depth review of patenting trends across various aspects of polymer-related technologies that can help guide us towards a more sustainable future.
It is, of course, important to reduce our reliance on plastics, but the report recognises that plastics are an essential material for many industries – not least in the health sector where the recent pandemic has seen an exponential increase in the use of PPE, testing kits, etc. (all relying on plastics). Innovation in recycling technologies and alternative plastics has a critical role to play as we move towards a more sustainable society.
2021 was a busy year for policy proposals and lawmaking related to artificial intelligence (“AI”) and automated technologies. The OECD identified 700 AI policy initiatives in 60 countries, and many domestic legal frameworks are taking shape. With the new Artificial Intelligence Act, which is expected to be finalized in 2022, it is likely that high-risk AI systems will be explicitly and comprehensively regulated in the EU. While there have been various AI legislative proposals introduced in Congress, the United States has not embraced a comprehensive approach to AI regulation as proposed by the European Commission, instead focusing on defense and infrastructure investment to harness the growth of AI.
When drafting patents for mechanical inventions, insufficiency issues are rare. The majority of insufficiency case law relates to chemical inventions, however, there are still some nasty traps that one can fall into accidentally. In this article, we look at a few examples and discuss potential issues when filing patent applications directed to mechanical products and processes.
Arecor is also pleased to announce that the European Patent Office has granted patent EP3496734B, with claims protecting novel compositions of insulin glargine with improved thermostability. This grant further demonstrates the strength of the patent portfolio protecting the Group’s proprietary ArestatTM technology.
Following yesterday’s deposit by Austria of its instrument of ratification of the Protocol on Provisional Application of the Agreement on the Unified Patent Court, the General Secretariat of the Council of the European Union has just declared that the Protocol has now entered into force. Similar statements were issued by the European Patent Office and the Preparatory Committee of the Unified Patent Court.
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The Preparatory Committee also announced that the inaugural meetings of the governing bodies of the Court, namely the Administrative Committee, the Advisory Committee and the Budget Committee, will soon take place. It is unclear whether these meetings will be preceded by the signing ceremony of the draft Declaration on the authentic interpretation of Article 3 of the Protocol, which had been anticipated by the Preparatory Committee to address the uncertainties following the United Kingdom’s withdrawal from the Unitary Patent System (for additional details, see here) and support the view that Article 3 of the Protocol is to be interpreted as mirroring Article 89 of the UPCA.
As attorneys report huge increases in filing numbers, suspicion over the address for service provision has arisen
The Unified Patent Court is a new European Union court with jurisdiction over infringement and revocation actions for a new Unitary Patent as well as…
We know that U.S. patents are territorially limited. Although Deepsouth was barred from using Laitram’s patented inventions throughout the United States, Deepsouth began selling its deveining machine to folks outside of the US in a partially constructed form.
In view of the forthcoming introduction of the Unitary Patent, the European Patent Office (EPO) has now declared that it will allow requesting a delayed grant and early requests for unitary effect, and has provided the rules applying to such requests.
By publishing two Notices and one Decision of the President on 19 January 2022, the EPO provided an immediate reaction to the start of the provisional application of the Agreement on a Unified Patent Court (UPCA) that was triggered by Austria€´s deposit of ratification on 18 January 2022.
While the US biosim€i€lars in€dus€try has gen€er€al€ly been a dis€ap€point€ment since its in€cep€tion, with FDA ap€prov€ing 33 biosim€i€lars since 2015, just a frac€tion of those have im€me€di€ate€ly fol€lowed their ap€provals with launch€es. And more than a hand€ful of biosim€i€lars for two of the biggest block€busters of all time — Ab€b€Vie’s Hu€mi€ra and Am€gen’s En€brel — re€main ap€proved by FDA but still have not launched be€cause of le€gal set€tle€ments.
Part of the rea€son that many of these brand-name bi€o€log€ic com€pa€nies have proven suc€cess€ful at block€ing biosim€i€lar com€pe€ti€tion is through their use of patent fortress€es, de€signed to make it im€pos€si€ble, or ex€treme€ly ex€pen€sive, to wage le€gal bat€tle.
Patent Act of 1836, Section 15. Thus, the defendant is required to automatically identify the names and residence of the people with prior knowledge as well as the location where the item was used.
In Wise v. Allis, 76 U.S. 737 (1869), the Supreme Court was asked to opine on the level of specificity required by the statute. The case involved an improvement in balancing millstones for grinding grain. The defendant had provided notice that the invention had been previously used in “Utica, Rochester, Buffalo, Albany, New York City, and Brooklyn, in the State of New York.” At the time, New York City had about 1,000 different mills where the millstone might have been used, and so that part of the notice did not really provide much information. The plaintiff complained that the notice was thus insufficient and that the defense should be barred.
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Wise v. Allis, 76 U.S. 737 (1869). Today, Rule 26(a)(1)(A)(i) operates in parallel to this old patent rule, but for all civil actions. It requires automatic disclosure of the name and address and phone number “of each individual likely to have discoverable information … that the disclosing party may use to support its claims or defenses, unless the use would be solely for impeachment.”
Counsel list the top tech trends for 2022, saying the likes of NFTs and the metaverse will lead to increased democratisation of IP
Use of blockchain and metadata analysis to track e-commerce sales could help modernise customs authorities, say IP owners
After the disruption brought on by the pandemic, it seems that this year the Mobile Word Congress (“MWC”), the largest mobile trade event in the world and one of the most significant trade fairs held in Barcelona, will take place from 28 February to 3 March 2022 under normal conditions. Against this background, on 10 January 2022, the Boards of the Commercial Court Judges of Barcelona and the Judges of the EU Trademark Courts in Alicante held a joint meeting where they approved a Protocol setting out a number of measures aimed at expediting judicial proceedings related to the MWC. This is the 8th Protocol adopted so far (the 4th, in the case of the Alicante Judges).
The UKIPO opts to keep the EEA exhaustion regime but does not rule out future change
According to the European Patent Office, patenting in low-carbon emitting supply technologies such as renewables (wind, solar, geothermal or hydroelectric power) has been falling since 2012 and accounted for only 17 percent of all clean energy technology patents in 2019. Since 2017, the key drivers of innovation in this sector have been technologies that cut across these fields, like batteries, hydrogen and smart grids, as well as carbon capture, utilization and storage (CCUS). These crucial enablers of the energy transition all involve some form of energy storage.
Innovators and entrepreneurs received some welcome news this week, as a plan that promises to slash costs and protect IP throughout most of the EU came closer to fruition. It has been a long time in the making.
Nearly fifty years ago, the idea of a single patent within the then European Communities was on the drawing board of officials and diplomats in Brussels. The concept was simple: if you were granted protection for your intellectual property in one EU member, you would get it everywhere else.
This week, the EU finally took a step towards fulfilling at least the fundamental principles of that project.
The long-awaited Unified Patent Court (the UPC), which will provide a new forum for patent litigation in 24 EU countries, is finally getting ready to open its doors. With the UPC will come the new unitary patent, a single validation of a granted European patent application that will take effect as a single patent spanning the participating countries. All European patent holders will need to review their patent portfolios and their patent prosecution strategies during the coming months, in particular to decide whether to “opt out” existing European patents from the jurisdiction of the new court.
The provisional application period of the Unified Patent Court Agreement has begun, with effect from 19 January 2022, following Austria’s deposit of its instrument of ratification of a protocol to the UPC Agreement. Technical and legal judges will now be appointed and trained, court buildings fitted out and IT systems completed. A lot of preparatory work has already been completed, such as the drafting of detailed rules of procedure for the new court. However, it cannot be said with any certainty how long the provisional application period will last. It appears that it is likely to be at least 6 months, perhaps nearer to a year. As well as completion of the administrative preparations, the participating countries will need to agree where the new location will be for the branch of the court’s Central Division that was originally to be in London. Various options have been suggested, including locating the branch in Italy or the Netherlands, or splitting the work of the branch between Paris and Munich, where the two other branches of the Central Division are already located.
Prominence of UKIPO actions emanating from Chinese firms prompts fears that hard-fought AFS rules could be being flouted
On January 14, 2022, Unified Patents filed an amicus brief with the Supreme Court in support of the petition for certiorari in Intel Corp. v. VLSI Tech. LLC, challenging the USPTO's reliance on their own NHK-Fintiv ruling, as well as the reviewability of such a de facto rule on appeal.
The South African patent office made history in July when it issued a patent that listed an artificial intelligence system as the inventor.
The patent is for a food container that uses fractal designs to create pits and bulges in its sides. Designed for the packaging industry, the new configuration allows containers to fit more tightly together so they can be transported better. The shape also makes it easier for robotic arms to pick up the containers.
The patent’s owner, AI pioneer Stephen L. Thaler, created the inventor, the AI system known as Dabus (device for the autonomous bootstrapping of unified sentience).
The patent success in South Africa was thanks to Thaler’s attorney, Ryan Abbott.
John North was an employee of American Book and Paper Folding Company, hired to design and improve various paper folding machines. That company ceased operation in 1857 and Bacon purchased all the patents, including one issued to North.
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On appeal, Bacon argued that he owned the invention based upon the prior employment agreement. However, the Supreme Court sided with Appleton, concluding that the keys to the invention came-about after North’s contract had ended.
The Protocol to the Agreement on a Unified Patent Court on provisional application (PPA) enters into force today, following the deposit of the instrument of ratification by Austria yesterday. The final preparations for the Unified Patent Court will now start.
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The Unitary Patent and the Unified Patent Court (UPC) are the building blocks of the Unitary Patent package which will supplement and strengthen the existing centralised European patent-granting system. Unitary Patents will make it possible to obtain uniform patent protection in up to 25 EU Member States by submitting a single request to the EPO, making the protection of inventions for patent holders simpler and more cost effective.
The UPC will be an international court with jurisdiction for infringement and revocation actions concerning patents granted by the EPO. This specialised court will make the Europe-wide enforcement of patents easier, offer greater legal certainty and reduce litigation costs. The Court is based on an international treaty, the UPCA.
I thought I had covered the Ericsson v. Apple 5G patent royalty dispute pretty exhaustively during the course of this week, only to find multiple informative filings in the Eastern District of Texas, all of which were made on Wednesday (January 19). So let me recap what was already known before the weekend and add what I've just found out from the Wednesday documents
I hadn't seen three simultaneous ITC complaints (requests for U.S. import ban) by one party against another in more than ten years of watching smartphone patent disputes. Then I looked up the electronic docket of the United States International Trade Commission, a trade agency with quasi-judicial powers, and just found Ericsson's third complaint against Apple (this post continues below the document). So there are two non-SEP complaints and one SEP complaint.
The number of the most recently-discovered complaint is 337-TA-3597 and the title is In the Matter of Certain Mobile Phones and Table Computers, All With Switchable Connectivity, and Products Containing Same.
Earlier today I noted that three patents were asserted in the 22-cv-61 case in the Western District of Texas but not in the 337-TA-3596 ITC complaint. Those three non-standard-essential patents, which have not previously been asserted against any party, are now at the heart of Ericsson's third ITC complaint against Apple.
Apple countersues Ericsson in the latest move in the Ericsson v Apple battle. The company seeks a U.S. import ban on mobile base stations from Ericsson, reports FOSS Patents.
This is my third post on Ericsson v. Apple in a row. Not only does it feature an additional ITC complaint I had not previously seen (because it surfaced on the U.S. International Trade Commission's electronic docket more than an hour after the first one) but it also provides some context relating to the two federal lawsuits (Western District of Texas) and the other USITC complaint (the one over four standard-essential patents (SEPs)). This is a monumental patent dispute (that has all the ingredients for further escalation), so litigation watchers like me have to put the mosaic together step by step.
This is the current landscape of Ericsson-Apple cases pending in the United States, just so we have a forest here and not just a lot of trees...
Ericsson files new suits against Apple in patent-friendly Western District of Texas
Ericsson and Apple are back in court in Texas, months after firing a volley of lawsuits against each other in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Texas. Ericsson picked a different venue to file two new 5G patent lawsuits against Apple: the Western District of Texas.
In new filings on Monday, Ericsson alleged that Apple is in violation of essential patents for 5G. Ericsson cited a total of twelve patents between the two. In a previous statement provided to the press, Ericsson said that Apple using its technology without a license, following the expiration of a 2015 settlement. The companies have fired lawsuits back and forth since last October, after talks to renew that 2015 settlement went nowhere.
Ericsson AB filed U.S. trade complaints seeking to block imports of Apple Inc. devices, escalating a legal battle that shows licensing talks between the two over 5G telecommunications technology are going poorly.
In complaints filed with the U.S. International Trade Commission in Washington, Ericsson targets a wide swath of Apple products -- the iPhone, tablets, smartwatches, smart speakers and digital media players -- that it says infringe some of its patents. Ericsson also lodged suits Monday in a west Texas district court known to be friendly to patent owners, claiming Apple...
Swedish manufacturer of network technology Ericsson has filed further lawsuits for patent infringement against Apple. So far, the market was only aware of patent and ITC lawsuits of both companies in the US.
However, Ericsson has now confirmed to JUVE Patent that the company also filed lawsuits against Apple in Düsseldorf, Mannheim and Munich earlier this week. The party also filed additional lawsuits in the Netherlands and Brazil, with Ericsson accusing Apple of infringing several patents, including 5G patents.
Carmaker and cable industry groups are joining Unified Patents LLC in supporting Intel Corp.‘s bid for U.S. Supreme Court review of a much-debated U.S. Patent and Trademark Office rule that makes it harder to initiate patent challenges.
Intel is challenging the agency’s Fintiv rule—which allows the Patent Trial and Appeal Board to deny review based on the state of a parallel infringement case—and the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit’s refusal to hear appeals of denied petitions.
Unified Patents LLC, the Alliance for Automotive Innovation, and Cable Television Laboratories Inc. argue in an amicus brief in support ...
In today's digital age an entity's intellectual property (IP) is of significant value, which ought to be adequately protected. The registration of EU and national trade marks, domains, patents and / or designs offers safeguards against free-riding and copying by third parties, which in turn brings about dilution of the brand or design and unfair advantage to competitors.
The European Commission, the European Union Intellectual Property Office and the Maltese Commerce Department have issued a scheme to encourage the registration of trade marks, designs and patents by offering partial refunds on fees.
Cantargia AB today reported that a third party has filed a Notice of Appeal after their previous unsuccessful attempt to challenge the validity of one of Cantargia's European patents. The appeal concerns the decision by the Opposition Division of the European Patent Office (EPO) to reject the opposition of Cantargia's patent, EP 3020730, for treatment of solid tumors by IL1RAP-targeting antibody. This patent is part of Cantargia's robust IP portfolio and as it is based on a divisional application, the parent patent is not subject of the appeal.
"As Cantargia is reporting new results supporting the commercial value of IL1RAP-targeted antibody treatment of cancer, we have noted increased activity from potential competitors. Based on previous unsuccessful attempts to invalidate our patent portfolio around IL1RAP, and the clear decision by the European Patent Office, we anticipate the appeal to be groundless." said Göran Forsberg, CEO of Cantargia.
Barbie and Balmain recently launched a new 50 piece ready-to-wear collection. This is not the first time that Barbie has collaborated with a fashion brand, with the first designer to dress Barbie being Oscar de la Renta, but what is interesting here is that this collaboration also sees the two brands come together to launch a series of NFTs.
Rather than these being digital versions of the ready-to-wear collection, these NFTs will be Balmain-clad Barbie and Ken avatars and the winners of these exclusive NFTs will receive a matching Barbie-sized Balmain outfit.
On 18 January 2022, the Austrian government deposited its instrument of ratification of the Protocol on Provisional Application of the Unified Patent Court. Austria's formal ratification of the Protocol means that sufficient member states have now ratified the Protocol, and thus the Protocol has now come into effect.
Ratification of the Protocol is a key step in the creation of the Unified Patent Court because it allows the Preparatory Committee to interview and appoint judges to the Court on a preliminary basis so that the Unified Patent Court itself can come into existence. The exact date when the Court will open is still uncertain. However, the Preparatory Committee for the Unified Patent Court has previously indicated that they expected the interviewing, training and appointment of judges to the Court would take around 8 or 9 months. In practice, now that provisional application has been approved, the Unified Patent Court is likely to come into existence at the end of 2022 or the beginning of 2023.
Law360 named Gibson Dunn a Firm of the Year for 2021 in its January 17, 2022 article “The Firms That Dominated in 2021,” featuring nine firms that received the most Practice Group of the Year awards. The publication noted that “Gibson Dunn & Crutcher LLP led the pack, picking up the top Firm of the Year spot with eight wins.”
Final preparations to establish the Unified Patent Court (UPC) in Europe will ramp up in 2022 after an important legal treaty entered into force. It is now expected the new court system will become operational early next year. The Protocol to the Agreement on a Unified Patent Court on provisional application (PAP-Protocol) was formally ratified by Austria, which deposited its instrument of ratification on Tuesday, meaning the number of ratifications from participating UPC system members had reached the required threshold – 13 – to enable the PAP-Protocol to enter into force on Wednesday.
The European Patent Office has developed a consistent approach to the examination of patent applications relating to alloys, taking into consideration the unique nature of these important industrial materials.
But thanks to scientific advancements, there may be hope still. The recent report from the European Patent Office (EPO) Patents for tomorrow’s plastics describes promising innovation over the last decade in two key areas
After years of delay caused by legal challenges in Germany to ratification of the Agreement on a Unified Patent Court (also known as the “UPC Agreement” or “UPCA”), it now seems that the Unified Patent Court (UPC) and the European Unitary Patent (UP) will come into effect in 2022. Indeed, the UPC and the European Patent Office are indicating that the UPC is expected to commence operations in mid-2022.
Protecting your intellectual property (IP) is essential to ensure that your brand, ideas, products and services are not used or copied without permission. IP rights, including patents, trade marks and designs, can form valuable assets for a business, and can be an important consideration for investment in, or valuation of, a business.
The ‘Ideas Powered for Business' SME Fund is a European Commission initiative implemented by the European Union Intellectual Property Office (EU IPO), through which successful applicants can receive grant funding towards intellectual property costs.
Are web archives stored in Wayback machines (including Archive.org) admissible in legal proceedings and, if so, what would be their probative value? Lawyers specializing in settlement of disputes relating to domain names constantly utilize this mine of information, as evidenced by the following examples:
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Whether it is a question of demonstrating the bad faith of the holder of a domain name or, on the contrary, proving the legitimate right/interest of the latter, the Wayback machines can be of considerable help. A remarkable CEPANI decision recently demonstrated, once again, the efficacy of the Wayback Machine (CEPANI, 444149, La SRL ASBL / La SA Perceval Technologies, December 8 2021, <asbl.be>, denied, sole panelist Emmanuel Cornu). A Belgian company called ASBL planned to obtain control of the domain name <asbl.be>, held by Perceval Technologies since 2000. ASBL claimed that Perceval Technologies had registered the domain name in bad faith. According to the complainant, the passive holding of the domain name for more than twenty years revealed the Respondent’s bad faith. However, the latter established a legitimate use of the domain name, at least for a time. Indeed, Perceval Technologies had effectively used <asbl.be> to offer Internet services (including subdomains, such as <name.asbl.be>) to non-profit associations (Associations Sans But Lucratif, in French).
The reasoning of the CAFC makes a striking contrast to how the doctrine of "obvious-to-try" is applied by the EPO and the national courts of Europe.
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As directed, Corcept conducted a clinical trial of mifepristone and strong CYP3A4 inhibitors combination therapy (Nguyen et al.). The patent (US10195214) was based on the results of this clinical trial, which was carried out in healthy volunteers. The patent particularly claimed a method of treating a patient by reducing their mifepristone dose from 1200 mg or 900 mg per day, to 600 mg in combination with a strong CYP3A inhibitor.
Teva brought post-grant review proceedings against the patent, arguing that the invention would have been obvious-to-try in view of the KORLYM label, alone or in combination with the FDA's guidance on drug-drug interaction studies. From Teva's point of view, the case was "an uncommonly clear-cut obviousness case", given that the prior art disclosed the problem, the solution and the way to find the solution.
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In Europe, the obvious-to-try hurdle for dosage regime cases is thus much higher than the standard set by the CAFC in Teva vs Corcept. Whilst the fact of the cases differ, the PTAB and CAFC reasoning in Teva vs Corcept is markedly different, for example, to the reasoning of the UK High Court in Bayer v Teva [2021] EWHC 2690 (Pat) (IPKat) and Actavis v ICOS (IPKat), in which inventions arising from multi-step drug development programs were found obvious-to-try in view of a known treatment effect for a particular drug, regardless of whether there was an unpredictable technical effect. By contrast, in Teva v Corcept, a direct and public instruction from the FDA to carry out a clinical trial at the claimed doses was not considered detrimental to the inventiveness of the claimed doses.
From a US perspective, the decision in Teva v Corcept appears to incentivise later filing for dose inventions. Nonetheless, for global filings, the trickier challenges to patentability of dose claims in Europe cannot be ignored.
With the deposit on 18 January 2022 by Austria of its instrument of ratification for the Protocol on Provisional Application Period (PAP- Protocol; see here), the UPC's Provisional Phase can now begin. The Provisional Phase allows for the finalisation of secondary legislation and Rules of Procedure, the Court filing system and IT infrastructure, financial budgets, and most importantly, the hiring of the UPC's staff, including the appointment of judges.
I held a contest and Apple wins–for having the patent with the largest number of cited prior art references (patents issued 2005-2021). Apple’s U.S. Patent No. 11,037,565 is directed to a version of Siri that works across devices – an “Intelligent digital assistant in a multi-tasking environment.” The total, 9,441 cited references — 3 of which were cited by the examiner. Apple.Patent.
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in accordance with a determination to continue providing the media output at the second electronic device: cause the second electronic device to continue providing the media output by resuming the media output based on where the media output was previously stopped at the first electronic device.
The European patent system is undergoing major changes that will impact all patent filers in Europe. After years of legal and political hurdles, the long-awaited Unitary Patent and Unified Patent Court should soon see the light of day, and possibly by the end of 2022.
Recently, the UK Intellectual Property Office (UKIPO) has launched a call for views in order to better understand how effective the current Standard Essential Patents (SEPs) framework is in encouraging creativity, innovation, and promoting competition. Ultimately, the call aims to determine whether legislative changes are required. An interesting aspect of this call is that an emphasis is made on arbitration as an alternative to litigation.
This is an audiobook version of my Against Intellectual Property.
Norwegian robotics company AutoStore has said it will add two more patent claims to an ongoing intellectual property battle with Ocado, rebutting claims by the online grocery chain that it is abandoning its lawsuit.
AutoStore said on Wednesday that it has focused on three of its patent claims in its High Court row with Ocado Group PLC, which has contracts with British high street chains including Marks & Spencer, over automated warehouse technology. The company said it plans to widen the lawsuit by bringing two more patents into the mix.
Failure to disclose the best method known to the patentee of performing the invention[1] has proven to be a powerful ground of attack in Australia – if successful, it is capable of rendering all claims of the patent invalid. While other key jurisdictions have abandoned the best method requirement (it was abolished in the US in 2011, the UK in 1977, and is not a consideration under European laws), it is still a requirement under Australian patent law – despite calls for its abolition.
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In the case of Les Laboratoires Servier v Apotex Pty Ltd [2016] FCAFC 27 (Servier) Servier’s patent was found to be invalid on the sole basis that it did not disclose the best method known to it of performing the invention. The primary judge found that the patentee’s description of its best method was “wholly inadequate’,[2] and the Full Court of the Federal Court of Australia upheld the primary judge’s findings. The patentee had provided a high level description that the invention directed to arginine salt of perindopril was ‘prepared according to a classical method of salification of organic chemistry’ (emphasis added).[3] While it was common ground between the experts that it was possible to produce an embodiment of the invention claimed, this was insufficient to meet the requirement of best method as the skilled person would have had to engage in ‘extensive trial and error experimentation’.[4] The Court found that even though the invention was for a product and not a process, the best method obligation was not met by simply identifying the claimed compound.
On November 19th, Senior Party Sigma-Aldrich filed its Substantive Preliminary Motion No. 1 in CRISPR Interference No. 106,133 (where the University of California, the University of Vienna, and Emmanuelle Charpentier, collectively "CVC" is Junior Party) asking the Board to substitute the Count pursuant to 37 C.F.R. ۤۤ 41.121(a)(1)(iii) and 41.208(a)(1).
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Citing 37 C.F.R. €§ 41.201, Sigma-Aldrich maintains that an interference count should not encompass two patentably distinct inventions. This principle is supported by Judge McKelvey's and subsequent Board decisions, citing Ashurst v. Brugger, Int'f No. 105,482 (McK), 2008 Pat. App. LEXIS 5953, *51-52 (BPAI July 16, 2008), and Edelman v. Stomp, Int'f No. 105,261 (SGL), 2006 Pat. App. LEXIS 17, *18-19 (PTAB Apr. 14, 2006). CVC's portion of the Count as declared encompasses "cleaving or editing the target DNA molecule or modulating transcription of at least one gene encoded by the target DNA molecule" whereas Sigma-Aldrich's portion of the Count as declared is expressly limited to "modifying a chromosomal sequence in a eukaryotic cell by integrating a donor sequence" (emphasis in brief). (And, facing inventors who were awarded the Nobel Prize for their achievements it is perhaps understandable that Sigma-Aldrich characterizes "its" portion of the Count as "this final integration step represents a milestone accomplishment in CRISPR-Cas9 genome engineering—not simply cleaving a DNA strand, but thereafter actually modifying the chromosomal sequence by integrating into that cleaved strand a donor polynucleotide by HDR.") And importantly for arguments set forth later in the brief (and the non-obviousness argument supporting patentable distinctiveness), Sigma-Aldrich states that at the time of its first filing date, December 6, 2012, "while . . . a POSITA would have hoped that this advance in genome engineering could be accomplished, whether such an achievement would be accomplished remained speculative."
The move up came after the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit affirmed the U.S. Patent Trial and Appeal Board’s decision upholding the validity of Netlist’s U.S. 7,619,912 (‘912) patent that applies to DDR server memory modules. The (‘912) patent is a seminal patent; an invention so impactful that it creates or shifts the technology space.
What an understatement. In the standard-essential patent (SEP) space, any dispute that last more than two years is already "long-running" by my definition--and I doubt anyone watching that space would dispute that a four- or five-year patent spat is "long-running." This one here lasted more than a dozen years--an eternity that has finally come to an end.
Over the years I attended several IPCom v. HTC trials in Germany, mostly in Mannheim, where Deutsche Telekom recently sued for a refund to the tune of 270 million euros. HTC and Nokia were the first two smartphone makers IPCom sued after acquiring a 3G SEP portfolio from Bosch, a company that used to make phones but exited that business even earlier than the likes of Nokia and Ericsson. The fact that HTC and Nokia had to defend against many of the same patents turned those two competitors--otherwise rivals--into brothers-in-arms. In-house and outside counsel of both companies coordinated their defenses like they were one company. Even when Nokia sued HTC over non-SEPs in 2012 (and ultimately got HTC to pay some additional royalties), their friendship survived. They were seen drinking beer on high-speed trains from Mannheim to the Cologne-Dusseldorf region just hours after fighting hard in court.
While I occasionally disagreed with him and disapproved of a couple of remarks he made at the Nokia-HTC settlement party (after inviting me as a surprise keynote speaker), I do wish to give credit to the late Manuel Chakraborty, a Hogan Lovells partner and HTC's outside counsel against IPCom and Nokia at the time.
The Bavaria-based NPE has announced that HTC signed a licence agreement covering all of IPCom’s assets. IPCom holds over 200 patent families involving mobile communications, with over 1,000 patents registered in Europe, the US and Asia. Most of these patents have been granted.
IPCom and HTC end dispute
The companies have not released financial details of the agreement. However, it ends their patent litigation which began in 2007 when IPCom sued Nokia and HTC. Later, the NPE added lawsuits against Apple, Samsung and other mobile phone manufacturers in Germany. IPCom tried to enforce former UMTS patents from Bosch.
According to a report by IAM, Apple is also said to have recently accepted a licence from IPCom. However, the parties have not yet confirmed this.
About two years later, IPCom also sued Nokia in the UK over the former Bosch patents. Later, the NPE launched lawsuits against HTC for infringement of the 100a patent.
Back in October 21, 2021, the Court of Federal Claims decided to award over $100 million dollars concerning patent infringement against the United States Transportation Security Adminsitration (TSA) in SecurityPoint Holdings v. United States. Independent claim 1 of the patent
On January 19, 2022, the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) issued a final written decision in Unified Patents, LLC v. Engle Grange, LLC holding all challenged claims of U.S. Patent 8,548,645 invalid. The ‘645 patent is generally directed towards a two-step key fob authentication system for an automobile. The patent was asserted against Ford in early 2020.
View district court litigations by Engle Grange. To read the petition and view the case record, see Unified’s Portal. Unified was represented by in-house counsel, David Seastrunk and Roshan Mansinghani, in this proceeding.
The Unified Patent Court entered into its final preparatory phase on Tuesday, January 18, meaning that the court could open by the end of the year.
Austria confirmed on Tuesday that it had completed its ratification of the protocol to the UPC Agreement, allowing the court’s provisional application period (PAP) to begin.
The PAP protocol lets the UPC become a legal entity and allows organisers to complete their remaining work. Outstanding tasks include the hiring of staff and judges, as well as the completion of a new IT system.
The UPC Preparatory Committee estimates that this process will take at least eight months.
The UK’s withdrawal from the UPC threatened the success of the project at one point, as did a series of constitutional challenges in Germany. But the decision from Germany’s Federal Constitutional Court last year to dismiss two complaints cleared the way for the UPC to move forward.
Not all signatories to the UPC Agreement have finished ratifying it, meaning countries such as Ireland are now under pressure to complete this process by the time the court becomes operational.
In-house lawyers in pharma, tech, telecoms and NPE businesses say they’re keeping an eye on Kathi Vidal, litigation funding and western Texas
Toby Sears (36) has joined the IP team at CMS Cameron McKenna Nabarro Olswang as a partner. Previously, Sears was at Allen & Overy, where he was a senior associate for four years. Prior to this, he spent six years at Bird & Bird.
I've just been able to obtain the complaint Ericsson filed against Apple yesterday with the United States International Trade Commission, seeking a U.S. import ban of 4G and 5G Apple products (iPhones, iPads, and Apple Watches; I'll provide the full list further below). As I speculated in my previous post on Ericsson v. Apple, one of the two patent infringement lawsuits Ericsson filed yesterday with the United States District Court for the Western District of Texas is a companion complaint to an ITC complaint--and as I figured, it's the one in which Ericsson is asserting four patents:
U.S. Patent No. 8,102,805 on "HARQ [Hybrid Automatic Repeat reQuest] in spatial mutiplexing MIMO [multiple-input multiple-output] system"
U.S. Patent No. 9,532,355 on "transmission of system information on a downlink shared channel"
U.S. Patent No. 10,425,817 on a "subscription concealed identifier"
U.S. Patent No. 11,139,872 on "codebook subset restriction signaling"
[...]
In principle, Ericsson can try to add to that list any Apple products released in the coming months.
The flurry of Ericsson-Apple filings with the United States International Trade Commission (USITC, or just ITC), a U.S. trade agency with the quasi-judicial power to U.S. import bans, continued yesterday. For information on Ericsson's three compaints against Apple, may I refer you to my most recent post on the dispute, which contains a hierarchical overview of the seven U.S. cases I had previously discovered (one FRAND action by either party, two federal lawsuits by Ericsson, and three ITC complaints by Erisson).
As I wrote, it was a given that Apple would countersue, though the wide discrepancy in the parties' exposure to patent assertions makes it unlikely that Apple can gain decisive leverage that way. And indeed, Apple has now also brought a request for a U.S. import ban against Ericsson's mobile infrastructure products, asserting three mmWave-related patents...
For an overview of Ericsson's U.S. patent infringement actions against Apple (three USITC complaints and two federal lawsuits in the Western District of Texas), may I refer you to a very recent post. Apple filed a countercomplaint with the ITC over three patents and all of a sudden declared itself a big fan of the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Texas.
The choice of the three German courts is unsurprising, and if I interpret Juve Patent correctly, Ericsson filed two cases each in Dusseldorf and Mannheim, but more than two in Munich (as would I in their shoes).
One or more filings with the Dutch court were also more than predictable, given that Ericsson sought an anti-antisuit injunction there last year. And just like the three German courts, the Dutch court is also one of the venues Ericsson chose for last year's dispute with Samsung (which got settled pretty quickly).
In Brazil, Apple is not the first company against which Ericsson enforces patents: the Swedish company already did so against TCL, as articles from Brazil like this one confirm.
Ericsson's patent cross-license agreement with Apple has expired, and no renewal has been agreed upon, which is why infringement litigation became inevitable. IAM was first to spot two filings by Ericsson against Apple in the Western District of Texas over four patents in one case and eight in the other. Apple will predictably retaliate, but Apple's exposure to patent assertions dwarfs Ericsson's. When there was no announcement of a renewed license agreement or renewed litigation after the turn of the year, I thought the middle of the month was going to be when we would hear more.
[...]
Having seen Ericsson enforce patents against Apple and other parties in the past, I assume that one of the two complaints is a companion complaint to a Sec. 337 complaint with the United States International Trade Commission ("ITC"), seeking an exclusion order (aka import ban). Most likely the 22-cv-60 case (over four patents) is the companion complaint as the ITC urges complainants to focus on a small number of patents so it can keep its schedule (it is also possible to start an ITC case with many patents and to then narrow it by dropping most of the patents-in-suit, but I doubt that that is the plan here). I'm also pretty sure that Ericsson has near-simultaneously filed complaints with courts in other jurisdictions, among them almost certainly Germany, where Munich is the new number one and Mannheim continues to be a key venue.
It appears that yesterday, as recorded here, Austria finally deposited with the Council of the EU its instrument of ratification of the Protocol on the Provisional Application (PPA) of the Unified Patent Court Agreement (UPCA). This means that sufficient countries have now met the requirements for the PPA to commence (see here). In this provisional application phase, the UPC’s legal capacity and organisational capability is established and final preparations for the opening of the Court can be made. The Preparatory Committee has estimated that these preparations may take about 8 months, with the work including assembly of the Court’s governing bodies, adoption of all the secondary legislation, and finalisation of the budget, the IT systems and the recruitment of the judges. The EPO will also make final preparations for the introduction of the unitary patent.
The entry into force of the Protocol on Provisional Application of the UPC Agreement has been a major milestone for the actual birth of the Unitary Patent Court.
According to the Commission’s Website, Austria has deposited its instrument of ratification yesterday, which means that the Period for Provisional Application begins today.
Though the pandemic has driven record-breaking profits for tech firms, as demand for at-home leisure and communications hardware rises, it has also brought a growing threat from patent trolls.
Companies specializing in exploiting patent rights have been buying up intellectual property from firms struggling with the pandemic and using it as ammunition against Korean firms.
The approach is often seen as a “file-and-settle” strategy, as their targets often prefer to avoid fighting a time-consuming court battle and the costs associated with it, even if they are likely to win the case.
Austria was the 13th member state that still needed to deposit its instrument of ratification and trigger the PAP. At the beginning of December 2021, the Austrian parliament ratified the UPC protocol. At the time, it did not deposit the instrument with the European Council. However, from today, the UPC can officially begin its preparatory phase.
Protocol dictates that 13 UPC countries must ratify and deposit the instrument in Brussels, in order for the protocol to enter into force.
The next interesting decision is the selection of judges. Furthermore, it must be decided where the UPC Central Divisions will locate its pharmaceuticals and chemicals parts, following the UK’s departure from the project.
Following Austria’s deposit of its instrument of ratification of the Protocol on the Provisional Application (PPA) of the Unified Patent Court Agreement (UPCA) (reported here), the UPC Preparatory Committee has reported here that the PPA came into force today. The Committee has outlined the final work for establishing the Court that can now start and states this period will last at least 8 months.
The UPC is pressing ahead, but Ireland has plenty left to do if it wants to take part
This was an easy mandamus transfer. The plaintiffs, CA Inc. and Avago Technologies Int’l, are both subsidiaries of Broadcom Corp. The plaintiffs are both headquartered in San Jose and Broadcom is down in Southern California. Netflix is also Silicon Valley. Still, the plaintiffs sued Netflix for patent infringement in the Eastern District of Texas. Although Netflix itself does not have a place of business in EDTex, the district court found that its intimate relationship with ISPs to provide local content delivery was sufficient. The vast majority of Netflix content is delivered directly from local residential Internet Service Providers (ISPs).
In Mati Therapeutics, Inc. v. Ocular Therapeutix, Inc., the Federal Circuit issued a Rule 36 opinion affirming the Patent Trial and Appeal Board’s (“PTAB’s”) Final Written Decision (“FWD”) holding all challenged claims unpatentable. Ocular Therapeutix, Inc. v. Mati Therapeutics, Inc., IPR2019-00448, Paper 56 (P.T.A.B. June 18, 2020), aff’d (Fed. Cir. Nov. 8, 2021).
The Court of Appeal (Arnold LJ, Laing LJ and Birss LJ) handed down its judgment in Thaler v Comptroller General of Patents Trade Marks And Designs on 21 September 2021. The court held, with Birss LJ dissenting, that the judge of first instance (Marcus Smith J) was correct in his dismissal of the appeal.
The appellant, Dr. Thaler, had originally applied for two patents at the UKIPO, listing his artificial intelligence (“AI”) machine DABUS as the inventor for both. The UKIPO found that DABUS is not a person as envisaged by s. 7 and s. 13 of the UK Patents Act 1977 (the “1977 Act”) and so cannot be considered an inventor, and that Dr. Thaler had not provided a satisfactory derivation of his right to be granted the patents. The patent applications were therefore deemed withdrawn. Dr. Thaler then appealed this decision to the High Court, where his appeal was dismissed by Marcus Smith J.
On November 30, 2021, the Federal Circuit affirmed the Northern District of West Virginia’s invalidity finding as to a method-of-treatment patent, based on a lack of written description.
Plaintiffs Biogen International GmbH and Biogen MA Inc. alleged Mylan Pharmaceuticals Inc. infringed several patents listed in the Orange Book for Tecfidera€®, a dimethyl fumarate capsule indicated for the treatment of certain forms of multiple sclerosis. Among the asserted patents was U.S. Patent No. 8,399,514, which claims a method of treating MS with DMF and which was the sole patent addressed in the opinion.
In decision no. ï¼Ë2020ï¼â°Ã¦Åâ¬Ã©Â«Ëæ³â¢Ã§Å¸Â¥Ã¦Â°âç»Ë954å· dated November 25, 2021, China’s Supreme People’s Court ruled that if the co-owners of a patent or patent application right do not make an agreement on the exercise of the right and one of the co-owners independently practices the patent, the other co-owner cannot claim the distribution of the proceeds from the separate practicing of the patent on the grounds of co-ownership of the patent right.
US technology giant Apple has successfully argued that it is not responsible for infringing a patent for technology that supports continued connectivity during mobile phone calls.
Although the Court of Appeal in London rejected Apple’s claims that the patent owned by telecoms company Optis Cellular Technology was invalid, it accepted its case that the patent was not ‘essential’ to a communications standard and that it had not infringed the patent.
In a Director’s Forum blog post published December 10, 2021, the USPTO announced plans to issue proposed rule changes relating to the format in which U.S. patents are issued, making electronic patents the norm, with something akin to today’s ribboned copies available upon request (and for a nominal fee). Many of you reading this may wonder what took so long, but as with many government agency practices, it turns out there’s a statute that had to be reckoned with before the USPTO could go paperless.
Last month we wrote about the Full Federal Court’s decision in Commissioner of Patents v Aristocrat Technologies Australia Pty Ltd [2021] FCAFC 202 (Aristocrat), which concerned the patentability of computer implemented inventions (CIIs).
This month, the Full Court determined another appeal regarding CIIs: Repipe v Commissioner of Patents [2021] FCAFC 223. The decision concerned two patent applications by Repipe Pty Ltd that disclosed systems and methods for providing information to field workers by way of a central computer server connected to a GPS-enabled mobile device (i.e. a smartphone). The applications were treated as the same for all relevant purposes at trial and during the appeal.
On January 4, 2022, Unified Patents added two separate PATROLL contests with an opportunity to collect up to $4,000 in cash for prior art on at least claim 1 of two patents - U.S. Patent 8,559,914 and U.S. Patent 8,737,951. The patents are owned by Big Will Enterprises, Inc., an NPE. The patents generally relate to an interactive personal surveillance and security (IPSS) system for users carrying wireless communication devices. The patents have been asserted against Montblanc, Unaliwear, and Kronoz.
On January 18, 2022, Unified filed a petition for inter partes review (IPR) against U.S. Patent 10,396,592. The ‘592 patent is owned by Causam Enterprises, Inc., an NPE. The ’592 Patent relates to active load management systems and has been asserted in district court and the ITC against Ecobee, Resideo, Alarm.com, Xylem, and Itron.
On January 11, 2022, the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) instituted trial on all challenged claims in an IPR filed by Unified against U.S. Patent 7,333,770, owned by WSOU Investments, LLC. The ‘770 patent is generally related to broadcasting data in a telecommunications system and is being asserted against TP-Link Technology Co.
The most recent IAM Sunday Digest mentioned the Access Advance pool firm's VVC Advance announcement as well as the Dusseldorf Regional Court's conclusion that the HEVC Advance pool's terms are non-FRAND. I had mentioned the latter in a recent post on a wireless SEP dispute. While I haven't been able (yet) to obtain a copy of the Dusseldorf decision, I have meanwhile seen reports by IAM (as I mentioned) and Juve Patent, and would like to add some observations.
This is not going to be my last post on that set of cases and the underlying conduct, which I find egregious. A few organizations' greed threatens to bring the very concept of patent pools into disrepute unless we all make the proper distinction between the vast majority of pools that serve their purpose--and an abusive outlier like Access Advance. It is equally important to understand that just because a company joined that pool as a licensor doesn't necessarily mean that it has unclean hands. They aren't all wrongdoers, but the Dusseldorf disaster should give the more reasonable ones among those Access Advance licensors pause, above all with a view to the latest and greatest in video codec standards: VVC.
There's a certain complexity and some specialized terminology, so let's get an overview first.
There are important ways in which the European and the UK patent offices differ when assessing the patentability of AI inventions, write Gemma Robin, Greg Ward and Ariana Sadr-Hashemi of Haseltine Lake Kempner in this co-published article
Inventions relating to Artificial Intelligence (AI), and more particularly to machine learning, have been raising questions for the patent community since they first started appearing as the subject of patent applications.
This decision relates to a European patent regarding a method for optimizing a chronological developing of consumption of electric energy by a group of different consumers with regard to a supply of electric power. The patent has been unsuccessfully opposed after grant and the opponent has filed an appeal. Here are the practical takeaways from the decision T 0199/16 of 27.8.2021 of Technical Board of Appeal 3.5.02:
We are delighted to announce the launch of the Women in Business Law Awards Americas 2022 research.
Please follow the link below to nominate leading women practitioners, rising stars, firm initiatives, and in-house counsels and teams.
Dallas Invents is a weekly look at U.S. patents granted with a connection to the Dallas-Fort Worth-Arlington metro area. Listings include patents granted to local assignees and/or those with a North Texas inventor. Patent activity can be an indicator of future economic growth, as well as the development of emerging markets and talent attraction. By tracking both inventors and assignees in the region, we aim to provide a broader view of the region’s inventive activity. Listings are organized by Cooperative Patent Classification (CPC).
There are important ways in which the European and the UK patent offices differ when assessing the patentability of AI inventions, write Gemma Robin, Greg Ward and Ariana Sadr-Hashemi of Haseltine Lake Kempner in this co-published article
Inventions relating to Artificial Intelligence (AI), and more particularly to machine learning, have been raising questions for the patent community since they first started appearing as the subject of patent applications.
In the era of fake news, reliable sources of information are more valuable than ever. When it comes to official registers held on a governmental level, administrative bodies are often tasked to ensure such registers are accurate and complete. Accessing those registers usually comes at a cost, prompting some commercial parties to offer the same information at a lower price.
In a recent case before the Dutch (district) court of Midden-Nederland, the question arose whether database rights can be invoked to prevent third parties reusing and offering data retrieved from the national company register. For those Kats accessing a company register frequently, the decision is certainly worth the read.
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According to VVZBI, database right protection is based on the ‘economical incentive theory’, entailing that database protection should only be granted to risk bearing investments in a database. Without database protection, so the theory assumes, the database would not have been created in the first place, as an economical incentive to do so would be missing.
Given that the KvK is statutorily tasked with creating and maintaining the company register, VVZBI argued that the investments could never qualify as risk-bearing economical investments. Consequently, the KvK had not substantially invested in the database in the sense of article 7(1) Database Directive, which is a prerequisite to exercise any rights over it.
The Dana-Farber Cancer Institute opposed an application to register the mark SCOOPERFEST for "organizing community festivals featuring primarily ice cream and also providing entertainment," alleging a likelihood of confusion with the registered mark SCOOPER BOWL for "charitable fundraising by means of an ice cream festival." Applicant Craig Marquardo claimed that the SCOOPER BOWL mark is conceptually weak, that the parties provide their services on opposite sides of the country, and therefore that confusion is not likely. How do you think this came out? Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, Inc. v. Craig Richard Marquardo, Opposition No. 91255611 (January 20, 2022) [not precedential] (Opinion by Judge Melanye K. Johnson).
Trademark expert Anne Gilson LaLonde, author of Gilson on Trademarks, has provided her comments on the CAFC's recent Brooklyn Brewery decision [here], with errata [here], agreeing with Professor J. Thomas McCarthy's criticism of the court's view on standing [TTABlogged here] and adding her own criticism regarding the CAFC's misinterpretation of its role in reviewing a TTAB decision.
J & J opposed an application to register the proposed mark PISSTERINE for non-medicated mouthwash, claiming likelihood of confusion with, and likely dilution of, its registered mark LISTERINE for, inter alia, medicated mouthwash, toothpaste, and dental floss. J & J established that its mark is famous for Section 2(d) purposes. The goods are overlapping or related, but what about the marks? What about parody? Johnson & Johnson v. Pissterine, LLC, Opposition No. 91254670 (January 18, 2022) [not precedential] (Opinion by Judge Jyll Taylor).
[...]
Applicant did not submit any testimony or evidence, nor did it file a brief. In its answer, however, it did raise the issue of parody, claiming no likelihood of confusion and fair use. The Board observed that "Applicant's intention for its mark to be a parody does not necessarily negate a finding of likelihood of confusion." In short, "parody is not a defense if the marks would otherwise be considered confusingly similar." Nike, Inc. v. Maher, 100 USPQ2d 1018, 1023 (TTAB 2011) .
Topco Holdings opposed registration of READY4LIFE for sanitizers for personal use, alleging a likelihood of confusion with its registered marks READY FOR LIFE and SIMPLY DONE READY FOR LIFE for various personal goods and cleaning products. On August 3, 2021, after Applicant Hand 2 Hand had answered, Topco filed a motion to amend and supplement its notice of opposition to add to its Section 2(d) claim by pleading two applications filed after this opposition was commenced (March 4, 2021), and also pleading common law rights, in the mark READY FOR LIFE for "[a]nti-bacterial hand wipes for personal use" and for "disposable sanitizing personal wipes," claiming use of its mark since 2017. The Board granted the motion. Topco Holdings, Inc.v. Hand 2 Hand Industries, LLC, 2020 USPQ2d 54 (TTAB 2022) (Order by Interlocutory Attorney Katie Bukrinsky).
[...]
"Affirmative Defenses": Finally, The Board sua sponte struck the applicant's "affirmative defense" of failure to state a claim because is "not a true affirmative defense." See John W. Carson Found. v. Toilets.com, Inc., 94 USPQ2d 1942, 1949 (TTAB 2010). It allowed several other purported affirmative defenses to remain in the Answer, although they were merely amplifications of the applicant's denials. See, e.g., ProMark Brands Inc. v. GFA Brands, Inc., 114 USPQ2d 1232, 1236 n.11 (TTAB 2015). And the Board struck as improper the applicant's claimed "reservation of right" to assert additional affirmative defenses, since such addition would require a motion for leave to amend. See Philanthropist.com, Inc. v. The Gen. Conf. Corp. of Seventh-Day Adventists, 2021 USPQ2d 643, at *4 n.6 (TTAB 2021).
The USPTO refused to register the mark FLOREO for "real estate management services for properties owned by third parties" and for "reservation of temporary accommodations for vacation real estate properties that are owned by third parties," finding confusion likely with the registered mark FLOURISH HOMES & Design (shown below) for "Providing temporary housing accommodations" [HOMES disclaimed]. The Board found that the services are either related or overlapping. But what about the marks? Applicant Unsalted argued that the marks differ in sound and appearance, and that the Spanish word "floreo" has many translations and meanings and in any case has not been significantly used in almost 200 years. How do you think this came out? In re Unsalted Vacations LLC, Serial No. 90312784 (January 12, 2022) [not precedential] (Opinion by Judge Christoper Larkin).
[...]
The Board acknowledged that "flourish" is not the only translation of "floreo," but "it is the translation that Applicant alludes to in its specimen." The Board found that "the existence of meanings of 'floreo' in addition to 'flourish' does not preclude the application of the doctrine of foreign equivalents to Applicant’s mark because 'flourish' is the literal and direct translation most likely to be associated with it."
While this Kat was inquiring about the role of alternative designs in examination of Art. 8(1) Regulation 6/2002, the Düsseldorf Higher Regional Court (OLG Düsseldorf) sent a referral to the CJEU on just this issue (C-684/21). The case goes as follows.
The claimant in the national case, Papierfabriek Doetinchem, is the owner of Community Design No 001344022-0006 for a “packaging device” i.e., a holder for paper rolls (see the image to the right). The claimant filed an infringement suit against a competitor, Sprick GmbH & Ho, in the Düsseldorf District court (LG Düsseldorf). The competitor, filed a counterclaim, seeking a declaration that the claimant’s Community design was invalid, on the ground that it is dictated by its technical function per Art. 8(1) Regulation 6/2002.
On August 18, 2021, TPTO published and updated guidelines pertaining to examination of trademark applications laying down principles/standards to be followed for assessment of confusing similarity between rival marks including evaluation of the likelihood of confusion as per Article 6(1) of IP code.
Following a public consultation that took place between June and August 2021, the UKIPO recently announced that the government is not proposing to change the current IPRs exhaustion regime in the UK. MARQUES has provided further insight and commentary on this announcement.
In June 2021 the UK government launched a public consultation on the UK’s future exhaustion of intellectual property (IP) rights regime.
The system of exhaustion of rights means that distributors and other traders are able to move goods (including component parts that make up goods) around a specified territory without the rights holder’s permission. This supports a market of secondary sales of legitimate goods, also known as parallel trade.
Now that the UK has left the EU, the UK has an opportunity to decide its future regime for the exhaustion of IP rights. This decision is vitally important for the UK as it will govern future rules on parallel imports into the UK.
The purpose of the consultation was to seek evidence and views from respondents to understand what the most appropriate exhaustion of IP rights regime would be for the UK. There were 4 options tested through consultation, with evidence and views required on what regime should be implemented, and if there were to be a change, how a new regime should be implemented.
The UK IPO has announced that the government is not proposing to change the current exhaustion regime, following a consultation held last year.
Louis Vuitton has been handed a loss in its attempt to block the registration of a trademark that it claims looks a bit too much like one of its most well-known indicators of source. On the heels of initiating an opposition proceeding with the European Union Intellectual Property Office (“EUIPO”) in November on the basis that a mark that consists of an interlocking “N” and “L” is likely to confuse consumers about the source of the products upon which it appears (primarily, clothing, as well as belt clasps, zippers, and closures/buttons for clothing), the EUIPO’s Opposition Division has sided with the filing party, an unaffiliated individual named Aina Yang.
Counsel from four tech-based startups in India discuss how IP is perceived in-house, its role in raising funding and why businesses must scale up IP capabilities
Brazil’s backlogs are getting better, Mexico’s IP office is preparing to decide damages, and Chile, Argentina and Colombia are going through other shakeups
Pharmaceutical products can often attract patent protection. This affords the owner a monopoly in that product; however, the monopoly will only last a fixed period, after which it is open season for competitors. Choosing a strong, resilient brand name will help foster brand loyalty and encourage customers to continue purchasing your product even when other (potentially cheaper) products have become available. Obtaining a trade mark registration for your brand name allows you to stop other businesses cashing in on your brand loyalty/success. It also affords protection against inferior products tainting your hard-earned brand recognition.
Pharmaceutical trade marks require regulatory approval. In the UK, the appropriate body is the Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency (MHRA). The MHRA will reject a proposed pharmaceutical brand name if they believe that: (i) consumers will confuse the chosen name with the name of an existing medicine; (ii) the chosen name is misleading; or (iii) the chosen name is considered unsafe. Regulatory approval is required before a pharmaceutical product can be sold under the chosen name.
Registering your own name as a trade mark for your business may seem a good way to build up a reputation in your chosen industry. However, business owners should also be aware of the potential danger of doing so.
If a business owner registers their own name as a trade mark and eventually wants to, or needs to sell that business, it is likely this will involve selling the trade mark rights in their name. This is because much of the value of a business is often in the name itself, particularly in the creative industries, such as fashion design. As a result, ex-owners may be prevented from conducting business under their own name in the future, as this may amount to trade mark infringement.
MEPs agreed a draft set of measures to tackle illegal content, to ensure platforms are held accountable for their algorithms, and improve content moderation. The text approved today by Parliament with 530 votes to 78, with 80 abstentions, will be used as the mandate to negotiate with the French presidency of the Council, representing member states.
After the vote, Christel Schaldemose (S&D, DK), who is leading the Parliament’s negotiating team, said: “Today’s vote shows MEPs and EU citizens want an ambitious digital regulation fit for the future. Much has changed in the 20 years since we adopted the e-commerce directive. Online platforms have become increasingly important in our daily life, bringing new opportunities, but also new risks. It is our duty to make sure that what is illegal offline is illegal online. We need to ensure that we put in place digital rules to the benefit of consumers and citizens. Now we can enter into negotiations with the Council, and I believe we will be able to deliver on these issues”
On 15 December 2020, the European Commission submitted a proposal for a Regulation on a Single Market For Digital Services (Digital Services Act, DSA) and amending Directive 2000/31/EC. In November 2021, the Council of the European Union reached agreement on an amended version of this proposal, and on 20 December 2021, the European Parliament’s Committee on the Internal Market and Consumer Protection (IMCO) released a draft for an EP legislative resolution. The legislative project “seeks to ensure the best conditions for the provision of innovative digital services in the internal market, to contribute to online safety and the protection of fundamental rights, and to set a robust and durable governance structure for the effective supervision of providers of intermediary services”. To achieve these aims, the DSA sets out numerous due diligence obligations of intermediaries concerning any type of illegal information, including copyright infringing content.
Copyright enforcement online is a major issue in the context of the DSA, and the DSA will be of utmost importance for the future of online copyright in the EU. Against this background, the European Copyright Society (ECS) issued on 17 January 2021 a comment on “Copyright and the Digital Services Act”. We reproduce below the Executive Summary of that comment.
In 2012, US NASA’s robotic rover touched down on Mars. NASA uploaded a video of this historic event onto YouTube. It was taken down after one hour, as it was subject to a copyright notice by a news channel relying on the US DMCA. This news channel had used the (open source) NASA video for its own news video and ended up raising unjustified claims against other copies on YouTube, including NASA’s original video. A commentator noted that “NASA’s new rover arrives on Mars, crash lands in YouTube’s DMCA hell”. Another – more recent – example involves the video of a 2020 copyright panel at New York University where music was played to explain the application of the US fair use rules. The video was caught by a takedown – but ended up being put back online on YouTube.
These and other well-known examples tend to create the public impression that abusive or otherwise unjustified copyright takedown requests are the general rule on YouTube. But is this really true? To answer this question, it seems important not to rely on illustrative single stories. “We are naturally drawn to extreme examples, and they are so easy to recall”, says Hans Rosling in his book Factfulness (2018, p. 42). Rather, it is necessary “to learn about the world as it really is”, to quote Rosling again (p. 255).
As a new lawsuit involving the popular comic book and animated series “Invincible” shows, the failure to properly document the copyright status of a jointly-created work at the beginning can lead to messy consequences later.
Can someone be tricked into giving up copyrights he may never have owned in the first place? That’s just one of the interesting questions raised by a new lawsuit filed by William Crabtree, colorist of the first 50 issues of the comic book series “Invincible,” against the series’ writer and co-creator Robert Kirkman.
Please gather around, and listen to this cautionary tale of schadenfreude and greed. This is not a tale for the faint of heart; it involves a cabal of crypto-enthusiasts involved in a decentralised autonomous organisation (DAO), a failed film adaptation by Alejandro Jodorowsky of the classic book Dune , and industrial amounts of misunderstanding about copyright.
Frank Herbert’s Dune is a science fiction classic that speaks to audiences across cultures and time, it was published in 1965 and became an instant hit, winning the Nebula and Hugo Awards in 1966, and it’s been declared the best selling sci-fi novel of all time. The intricate world building, the political intrigue, the memorable characters, the worms, and the ecological angle have made it a fan favourite. Personally, I have loved the book since I was a teenager, and I have used the litany against fear in some of the most stressful times of my life. It’s been put on screen by none other than David Lynch in a flawed masterpiece in 1984, then it was turned into a miniseries in 2000, and more recently it became a global hit in 2021 directed by Denis Villeneuve. It has spawned several books, Frank Herbert wrote a number of sequels, and his son Brian Herbert published a much derided series of prequels with author Kevin J Anderson (which I have tried to remove from my memory, but I digress).
This is a review of Performer's Rights by the Rt Hon Sir Richard Arnold, Judge of the Court of Appeal of England and Wales. The book covers the rights of performers, particularly the rights conferred under Part II of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 (as amended). Recognising the challenges for performers in the position and enforcement of their rights, the book also includes discussion on other forms of protections and remedies for performers, such as moral rights, contracts, passing off and copyright infringement.
