We had a peaceful week in the world of Linux releases with the releases of Manjaro 21.2.2 and Bluestar Linux 5.16.2.
A year or two ago, I came into posession of a 1993 Compaq Presario 425. It's a Mac-ish all-in-one with a 14" color (S?)VGA screen capable of 800x600 in full 256-color glory. On the inside it features a 25MHz i486SX (the sort without a floating-point unit), paired with 20MB of RAM - a significant upgrade over the stock 4MB. When I received it it had a nearly-dead 1.6GB hard drive[1] in it, which I replaced with a far overkill 150GB drive[2]. It also has a single 3.5" floppy drive. On the back it has two PS/2 ports for keyboard and mouse input, serial and parallel ports, and two ports for the built-in modem. There is also what appears to be a sound card, along with a single 36-pin connector I don't recognize.
The “KDE Community” is an international team that develops free and open-source software for both desktop PCs and mobile devices. The core product of KDE is currently the Plasma desktop environment for Linux and UNIX platforms. Also, offers Plasma for mobile devices.
Apart from the beautiful desktop full of widgets, KDE offers hundreds of programs in many categories such as the Internet, multimedia, entertainment, education, graphics, and software development. KDE software is translated into more than 60 languages ââ¬â¹Ã¢â¬â¹and runs natively on Linux, BSD, Solaris, Windows, and Mac OS X. Nevertheless, many of the applications that can also be used under GNOME without any problems are released as “KDE Applications” every four months.
The key reason to choose KDE Linux distros out of the box is better optimization and integration of the GUI.
Computers used to be luxury devices that only the wealthy could afford, but now you can carry a phone in your pocket that’s many times more powerful than the computers that sent men to the moon. However, even the cheapest phones are still $50-100 thanks to the cost of licensing and cellular components. Developer Brian Benchoff wanted to see just how cheap a functional computer could be. He came up with the Minimum Viable Computer, a pocket-sized Linux box that could cost as little as $15.
Depending on what you expect a computer to have in order to be “viable,” you might be pleasantly surprised or completely uninterested in the MVP. It uses a simple two-layer PCB, integrated with an Allwinner F1C100s system-on-a-chip. Its single CPU core is clocked at a mere 533MHz, but it does have support for running modern versions of Linux. Don’t expect a GUI, though. This is a purely command line affair, as envisioned by Benchoff. It can run scripts, ping remote servers, and power a variety of USB devices. Also, there’s a physical keyboard.
Stop bothering with all of those neofetch style applications and use the one true application that does everything you'll ever need, that application is nofetch.
nother week, another -rc.
Nothing hugely surprising here - it's a bit on the bigger side for being an rc2, but maybe part of that is that there's a NFS client merge-window pull request that got merged late due to it having been marked as spam.
But more likely it's just the usual random fluctuation, with no deeper reason.
The stats are a bit unusual, with drivers being just a third of the patch. But that's hardly due to the nfs changes - they show up, but not nearly as much as all the arch updates. There's just a fair amount of random spread-out architecture fixes - kvm updates for both arm64 and x86, but also misc perf event updates, powerpc and mips updates etc.
The rest is random other noise - documentation, networking, tooling. The appended shortlog gives an overview of the details.
Go forth and test, please,
Linus
One of the additions with EPYC 7003 "Milan" processors introduced last year was SEV-SNP as the "Secure Nested Paging" addition to AMD's Secure Encrypted Virtualization found with EPYC processors. While they have maintained an out-of-tree Linux source repository with the SEV-SNP patches, the mainline kernel is still lacking support for these latest security features but the code continues to undergo revisions and review for its eventual upstreaming.
Over SEV and SEV-ES "Encrypted State" introduced with prior EPYC processors, SEV-SNP is able to offer greater integrity with replay protection, data corruption safeguards, and fend off a variety of other possible attacks to VMs.
The proposed PAN is Process Adaptive autoNUMA and is an adaptive algorithm calculating the AutoNUMA scan period. AMD's Bharata B Rao further explained in the request for comments (RFC) Linux kernel patch series, "In this new approach (Process Adaptive autoNUMA or PAN), we gather NUMA fault stats at per-process level which allows for capturing the application behaviour better. In addition, the algorithm learns and adjusts the scan rate based on remote fault rate. By not sticking to a static threshold, the algorithm can respond better to different workload behaviours. Since the threads of a processes are already considered as a group, we add a bunch of metrics to the task's [memory management] to track the various types of faults and derive the scan rate from them. The new per-process fault stats contribute only to the per-process scan period calculation, while the existing per-thread stats continue to contribute towards the numa_group stats which eventually determine the thresholds for migrating memory and threads across nodes."
The New Year is just beginning, and we already have a few important CVE's to discuss, this time around Polkit and LUKS. The CVE numbers for these vulnerabilities are CVE-2021-4034 and CVE-2021-4122 respectively. In this episode, Jay and Joao discuss these vulnerabilities.
While it shouldn't be too surprising given Intel's open-source track record, but with the in-development Linux 5.17 kernel are once again many prominent additions from new/future hardware support to enabling exciting features.
Intel remains one of the top contributors to the Linux kernel not only when it comes to managing the code that enables their hardware support directly but continuing to oversee many other kernel features and their engineers maintaining various kernel subsystems for upstream. With Linux 5.17 their contributions vary from starting next-gen Raptor Lake (Alder Lake successor) enablement to the ongoing DG2/Alchemist discrete graphics bring-up to AMX for KVM guests to introducing PFRUT for run-time firmware updating of capable components.
Back in 2020, Resizable BAR was all the buzz with both AMD & NVIDIA enabling support for the feature on their graphics cards but now, Intel has also confirmed to be adding support for the technology on their upcoming Arc Alchemist GPUs.
HAProxy or High Availability Proxy, is a well-known open-source TCP/HTTP load balancer and proxy solution which is able to handle a lot of traffic. HAProxy consumes a very low amount of memory, and it is commonly used to improve the performance of servers by distributing the workload across multiple servers to handle a large number of concurrent connections. If you have busy websites, you can install and configure HAProxy as the reverse proxy to your webservers.
In this tutorial, we will show you how to install and configure HAProxy on Ubuntu 20.04, one of the most popular operating systems in the world.
Ghost is a lightweight open-source blogging platform. The Ghost user interface is very simple and straightforward making it great for beginners as well as advanced users.
In the following tutorial, we will show you all the requirements and instructions needed to install Ghost on Ubuntu 20.04 OS.
In this tutorial guide, we are going to learn how to install MongoDB 5.0 on Rocky Linux.
MongoDB is an open-source NoSQL database that provides high throughput for data-driven applications. Unlike relational databases such as MySQL, Oracle, and SQL servers which store data in tables according to a rigid schema, MongoDB stores data in documents with flexible schema.
For security reason, user may disable printing of documents & files in Linux to prevent them from being photocopied and then shared. Here’s how to do the trick in Ubuntu or other Linux with GNOME desktop.
NOTE: after running steps below ALL applications’ “Print” dialog will no longer accessible either via keyboard shortcut or menu button. Though, this ONLY affect the current user in system!
Rooting your Android device is easier than ever before. There is a wealth of tools available to make the process as simple as possible, no matter what device you’re looking to root. Magisk is one such tool, and it really is easy to use.
There are some other modifications that you’ll need to make first, though, in order to use Magisk on your device, mainly installing the TWRP custom recovery. That’s simple enough using Google’s ADB and Fastboot tools, and it provides you with a lot of additional functionality, like the ability to flash custom ROMs easily.
This is already the third episode in a series of articles I am writing about using Slackware as your private/personal ‘cloud server’. Time flies when you’re having fun. We’re still waiting for Slackware 15.0 and in the meantime, I thought I’d speed up the release of my article on Video Conferencing. My initial plan was to release one article per week after Slackware 15 had been made available. The latter still did not happen (unstuck in time again?) but then I realized, an article about Docker and another about Keykloak still won’t give you something tangible and productive to run and use. So here is Episode 3, a couple of days earlier than planned, to spend your lazy sunday on: create your own video conferencing platform. Episodes 4 and 5 won’t be far off, since I have already written those as well.
Check out the list below which shows past, present and future episodes in the series, if the article has already been written you’ll be able to click on the subject. The first episode also contains an introduction with some more detail about what you can expect.
Learn the commands to install Unrar tool on AlmaLinux 8 and Rocky Linux 8 to uncompress or compress RAR archive format files using the terminal.
Packing files into archives and reducing their size using compression algorithms is a common operation in the data processing. A basic distinction is made between archives and compressed files. An archive is an uncompressed container for files. This archive can be compressed using compression methods. However, there are a few formats that also include compression, such as RAR, gzip, bzip2, 7z, Brotli, and more…
Well, Unrar is not available to use by default for AlmaLinux or Rocky Linux because it is not available to install using the base or APPstream repository. Then how will you extract RAR compressed files? For that, you can follow this tutorial.
There may be a couple of reasons why you need to extract initramfs or initrd images. As of now, I want to fix my computer, which was not allowing me to use my laptop with the following error: “Failed to start VirtualBox Linux kernel module”.
After diagnosing, it’s a clear error that it’s missing the Linux header. Although you know, we can install Linux headers using uname-r. However, the installer failed to install and threw the error message “Unable to locate.”
Welcome back! Here today we are going to learn how to configure LVM or Logical Volume Manager with Ubuntu 21.04. While working in the live production environment it’s very obvious to get out do space sometimes. For critical file systems like / or /etc, it will be complicated to expend if no Logical Volumes provisions are taken care of initially.
What all Local Volumes do is that it create chunks of hard drives which are known to be logical volumes. Such volumes can be considered as slices of the hard drive. These slices can be added to the desired file system when required. For the production environment, it is recommended to keep Logical Volumes provisioning all the time.
Red 5 standing by! How about a little more Star Wars on the go? It appears that MOTIVE and EA and getting ready for the Steam Deck release with tweaks to their anti-cheat.
We don't yet have confirmation of what's happening, and we don't know if it will be a success but they're definitely trying to get it ready. Over on SteamDB you can see there's an "eac_fix" branch, with a description of "EAC fix for steam deck test branch" - so work is clearly happening (EAC being Easy Anti-Cheat). Being able to play Squadrons on the Steam Deck and online against others sounds like it could be pretty awesome.
In a recent update on the Steamworks Group on Steam, Valve gave an update on Steam Deck Verification and testing appears to be ramping up lately.
Valve confirmed in the post that they have already tested "thousands of titles" for Deck Verified. Their previous focus has been to prioritize titles based on playtime and interest from people who have reserved a Steam Deck, which appears to be an automatic process. They've also now given access to a small set of developers and publishers the ability to directly submit titles for review.
The latest GNOME 42 feature work to mention is a ten month old merge request landing that cleans up and improves the XWayland termination for when there are no more X11 clients running within the GNOME Wayland session.
GNOME already has handled XWayland on-demand for only running the XWayland code when needed and to be able to terminate it when no more X11 clients are active. With GNOME 42 releasing in March, there is improved code for XWayland to terminate cleanly and more reliably.
Welcome Back! What can be the top 5 Linux distro for Laptops? We are going to discuss it here today. Whether you have bought a new laptop or have some pretty old laptop. For both cases having a decent Linux OS installed would be a good idea. There are multiple lightweight options ad Linux Distro that can give life to old laptops. Such hardware which otherwise of np use can be used for educational purposes or even for some basic day-to-day utilities such as making some media server, or DHCP server, etc. For high-end brand new laptops having the latest configuration can be used for penetration testings, graphics, animations, DevOps or even for programming, etc. But, this is an important aspect to opt for what will be the most favorable Distro for your specific need.
Here, based on my experience I tried to choose and suggest the top five distros which could be used for laptops. Have a look.
For those interested in using Distrobox to augment your operating system's package selection, not all containers are created equally. Distrobox developer Luca Di Maio recently did some tests for looking at the Linux container performance.
Luca carried out some tests as he became curious about the performance benefits to Intel's Clear Linux if running confined to a container on a conventional Linux distribution. From a Fedora 35 host he compared the performance of using a Clear Linux container in that environment to then running a Fedora 35 container, the same as the host.
If you live in the Northeastern United States like me, there's a very good chance you are snowed-in right now. For instance, my town on Long Island got nearly two feet of snow dumped on it, so I am stuck indoors. While I have been passing the time by watching movies and playing old-school video game ROMs, I am starting to get a bit bored.
Thankfully, there is a new Linux-based operating system version to play with! You see, version 2.0.0 of the Debian-based Nitrux distribution is finally available. The distro comes with KDE Plasma 5.23.5 as the desktop environment, MESA 21.3.5, and the XanMod-modified Linux kernel 5.16.3 by default.
The team announced the release of Nitrux 2.0 that brings the latest Linux Kernel 5.16, several visual refreshes in this KDE Plasma based desktop. We wrap the release in this post.
The latest Nitrux 2.0 release brings a fresh Plasma desktop, the latest kernel, and applications. We round up the release with a quick review.
Nitrux is a KDE Plasma + Debian-based Linux distribution which features NX Desktop with Plasma desktop with its own flavor. For anyone not familiar with NX Desktop, it is a customization layer for the Plasma 5 desktop environment.
NX Desktop offers a different style, its own implementation of the system tray, notification center, and various plasmoids. It uses the Latte-dock at the bottom of the screen with a panel at the top of the screen and features a global menu.
Nitrux 2.0 is now available to download. Powered by Linux 5.16 kernel series, you can see plenty of improvements and the addition in the new version of Debian-based, systemd-free GNU/Linux distribution Nitrux OS. Nitrux uses the Calamares installer and includes KDE Plasma 5 desktop environment and KDE Applications.
We are pleased to announce the launch of Nitrux 2.0.0. This new version brings together the latest software updates, bug fixes, performance improvements, and ready-to-use hardware support.
One of the promising new BSD projects started over the past year was helloSystem as "the macOS of BSDs" and built atop FreeBSD but with a macOS-inspired design. A Phoronix reader has pointed out another entrant in this field with airyxOS as a FreeBSD-based operating system designed to be similar to Apple's macOS experience.
The airyxOS operating system advertises itself as the "finesse of macOS" and the "freedom of FreeBSD." The developers describe this BSD OS in development since 2021 as "We love macOS, but we’re not a fan of the ever-closing hardware and ecosystem. So we created airyxOS — an OS aimed to provide the finesse of macOS with the freedom of FreeBSD."
The Nintendo Game Boy and its many permutations represent one of the most well-known and successful gaming platforms ever produced. There was a decades-long stretch of time where the most popular kid in the lunch room was the one who brought in their Game Boy so the rest of the class could huddle around and check out the latest Pokemon title.
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With the ESP32 wired between the handheld’s LCD and main PCB, the microcontroller can also act as a capture device using I2S camera mode. Compared to what ends up showing on the handheld’s LCD, the recorded gameplay [kgsws] shows off looks fantastic. Visuals are crisp and fluid, and naturally devoid of the Game Boy’s iconic (if slightly nauseating) greenish tint.
An intrusion detection system is a device or software application that monitors a network or systems for malicious activity or policy violations.
IDS types range in scope from single computers to large networks. The most common classifications are network intrusion detection systems (NIDS) and host-based intrusion detection systems (HIDS). A system that monitors important operating system files is an example of an HIDS, while a system that detects malicious traffic on a network is an example of an NIDS. NIDS let you monitor network traffic, looking for specific activity, and generating alerts.
In the curl project we switched to using git for source code control in March 2010. Since then we have exact tracking of every commit author to the project. In the times before git, we used CVS which doesn’t properly separate committers from authors.
The number of commit authors in curl has gradually been increasing over time.
I’ve worked in and with teams who would identify as agile for many years. I’ve written about how I think the most interesting part of the agile manifesto is the “uncovering better ways” mindset.
Many software teams struggle with ever growing cost of change, and technical debt that risks overwhelming them.
It’s always interesting to talk with folks and understand, how the system and incentives created this state.
Often I hear from software engineers that management doesn’t give them permission for (or doesn’t prioritise) work such as tidying, refactoring, testing, observability.
Blaming management in this way may be accurate in many situations (they are indeed probably accountable for the system that created this outcome). However, the problem with blame is that it tends to short-circuit further thinking. How could the system be improved with the influence and control you do have, perhaps with minimal authority.
But what about from the management side? I often hear from engineering and product managers that they’re unaware, or learn too late, that folks were accumulating debt. It becomes visible when teams are no longer able to achieve goals.
We don’t often get a Tips line submission where the “Subject” line auto-translates as “Yoshi Yoshi Yoshi”, linking to a short video by [Yasunari Industries] (embedded below). For many, it might be hard to tell what this is at a first glance – however, if the myriad of relays clacking won’t draw your attention, the four Nixie digits on the top definitely will! The gorgeous black PCB has two buttons on the bottom, incrementing hour and minute hours respectively, and observant readers will notice how the LEDs near the relays respond to binary-coded-decimal representation of the digits being shown. This appears to be a relay-based clock with Nixie tubes for digit outputs, and on a scale from “practical” to “eye candy”, it firmly points towards the latter!
Roomba aside, domestic robots are still in search of the killer app they need to really take off. For the other kind of home automation to succeed, designers are going to have to find the most odious domestic task and make it go away at the push of the button. A T-shirt folding robot is probably a good first step.
First and foremost, hats off to [Stefano Pontoglio] for his copious documentation on this project. Not only are complete instructions for building the laundry bot listed, but there’s also a full use-case analysis and even a complete exploration of prior art in the space. [Stefano]’s exhaustive analysis led to a set of stepper-actuated panels, laser-cut from thin plywood, and arranged to make the series of folds needed to take a T-shirt from flat to folded in just a few seconds.
We all know that you can convert heat into electricity. Usually, you do that with some form of steam, but there are other methods, too, including thermocouples. If you’ve ever seen something producing waste heat, you’ll appreciate Penn State’s work to harvest power from hot pipes. The idea is simple in theory: create a flexible thermoelectric generator that can wrap around hot pipes or other surfaces to gather otherwise lost heat. The full (paywalled) paper is also available.
After a family discussion yesterday, we all decided to cancel the family plan for Spotify. The Neil Young / Joe Rogan thing wasn’t the reason, but it was the event that kicked off the discussion and made it easier to say goodbye to a service we’ve used together and enjoyed for years.
The Antitrust Division of the United States Department of Justice, speaking on behalf of the United States of America, has filed the following brief, formally in support of neither party but practically supporting some of the most important elements of Epic's appeal (this post continues below the document):
To answer this, we must first consider the two conditions of patentability; in other words, the legal requirements that will be examined by patent offices when deciding whether or not to grant a patent on an invention. These two conditions are: novelty and sufficiency of disclosure.
Earlier this week I expressed my view that even superstar appellate lawyer Tom Goldstein may not be able to turn Epic's case against Apple around unless there's a lot of support for Epic Games in the form of amicus curiae briefs to be filed with the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. The spectacular turnarounds Mr. Goldstein achieved for Qualcomm (against the FTC) and Google (against Oracle) depended in no small part--the latter to a hugely greater extent than the former--on such dynamics.
On 18 January 2022, the ratification of the Protocol to the Agreement on a Unified Patent Court on provisional application (PPA) by the Austrian Parliament was notified to the Council of the European Union. This means that the UPC enters the Provisional Application Phase (PAP) and that the entry into operation of the Unitary Patent system is one big step closer.
You've probably asked Siri lots of questions, like "what's the weather outside?" or "how long do you cook a soft-boiled egg?" But what if Siri was a little more sophisticated? What if you could ask Siri to design something or to improve a process?
Imagine you were working on something, say an engine, and while building it you asked Siri, "how could I make this better?" Further, imagine Siri answered your question with an innovative solution.
The chart below shows a histogram of the total number of references per patent. (Utility patents issued in 2021) with the mode, median, and average noted.
Earlier this month, the Intellectual Property Owners Association (IPO) and Harrity Analytics announced the release of the 39th annual list of the top 300 organizations receiving U.S. utility patents (see "Top 300 Organizations Granted U.S. Patents in 2021"). Patent Docs readers may recall that the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office stopped releasing its annual list of top patent recipients in 2006 in order to "discourag[e] any perception that we believe more is better."
Campbell Forsyth is the latest addition to Mishcon de Reya‘s London IP and patent practice. Forsyth, who is set to move to the firm from the London office of Dentons, is the second patent-specialist partner to join Mishcon in the last year.
At Dentons, he was global co-head of the European litigation practice and the firm’s UK head of IP. Clients at Dentons include fibre-optic cable manufacturer Emtelle and generic drug manufacturer Zentiva.
In-house counsel hope Intel’s challenge to discretionary denials will succeed where Apple and Mylan’s failed, but suspect it may be a longshot
The Munich patent attorney team has a strong focus on pharmaceutical and biotech patents. Lahrtz and Nottrott are also known for their work in EPO proceedings and nullity actions. In addition, they have worked alongside external lawyers in German infringement proceedings.
Simmons & Simmons has understood that the future of European patent litigation lies in cross-border cases, if not in the Unified Patent Court.
A patent relating to combination claims is the subject of the latest referral to the CJEU on the interpretation of the SPC regulation (IPKat). Even before you get to the question of whether SPCs are available for combination therapies, demonstrating the patentably per se of combination therapies is a challenge in and of itself. As recent Boards of Appeal case law confirms, a claimed therapeutic combination must not have been the subject of accidental anticipation (T 2056/17), must show more than a mere additive technical effect, and must not have been "obvious-to-try" out of a number of possible alternatives (T 2168/17).
Legal Background - Combination claims
The ongoing questions of whether combination SPCs are precluded by one or more sub-provisions of the SPC Regulation reflects the high development cost and value of combination therapies. Combination claims also face a high bar patentability bar in Europe. In particular, in order to embody inventive character, a combination invention must not merely result in an aggregation of the features of the underlying components (Case Law of the Boards of Appeal, I-D-9.2.1). In practice, this requires the patent applicant to demonstrate that the combined features produce a synergistic as opposed to mere additive effect. Whether or not the applicant can rely on post-published evidence to support a synergistic effect is currently the subject of a pending referral to the Enlarged Board of Appeal (EBA) (G2/12, IPKat). In the absence of an unexpected synergistic effect, combinations of known drugs for use in therapy are often considered obvious-to-try by the EP patent Examiners.
The recent remarks of FTC Commissioner Rebecca Kelly Slaughter on standards essential patents (“SEPs”) are commendable, as is her emphasis on the role antitrust law plays in curtailing anticompetitive abuses of them. The abuses Slaughter highlights mostly impact small- and medium-sized businesses, “the ‘little engines that could’ of our economy,” who lack the resources to navigate complex legal issues and are “more likely to cave to supra-FRAND rates out of fear of exclusion.” Patents do not grant companies a free pass to abuse their dominant market positions through anticompetitive means.
Commissioner Slaughter emphasized that patents are not—and cannot become—an absolute shield for anti-competitive conduct by SEP holders: “When patent holders obtain market power by virtue of being included in standards, the way they exercise that market power is not immunized from the antitrust laws merely because patents are involved.” Specifically, owners of SEPs are obligated to license their patents to willing licensees on fair, reasonable, and non-discriminatory (“FRAND”) terms, and U.S. antitrust policy plays an important role in policing those matters.
Clear antitrust policies are imperative to ensure sincere FRAND licensing practices. Without definite antitrust policies, SEPs can skirt FRAND requirements, leading to “holdup,” or the practice of prohibiting businesses from implementing technologies that implement standards unless they agree to higher royalties and more unfavorable licensing terms than the SEP owner could have obtained before the standard was set, when alternative technologies were available.
On January 24, 2022, Unified added 14 new PATROLL contests, with a $2,000 cash prize for each, seeking prior art on the list below. The patents are owned by DataCloud, LLC, an NPE and subsidiary of IP Investments Group. The contests will all end on April 30, 2022. Please visit PATROLL for more information or click on each link below.
In two recent decisions the District Court of The Hague assumed cross-border jurisdiction in FRAND / Standard Essential Patent (‘SEP’) proceedings. In a first case the Court assumed jurisdiction on claims related to the FRANDness of a SEPs (patent pool) license. In a second case the Court assumed jurisdiction on an anti-anti-suit injunction (‘AASI’) claim related to SEPs. Both cases confirm the Dutch Court’s willingness to consider cross-border relief in international (FRAND) disputes.
The first case concerns proceedings started by Vestel against HEVC Advance patent pool administrator Access Advance (US) and pool members Philips (NL), GE Video Compression (US) and IP Bridge (JP). Vestel requests, inter alia, a declaratory judgment that neither Access Advance’s pool license offer nor the bilateral offers of its members Philips, GE Video Compression and IP Bridge are FRAND, that Vestel’s license offer(s) are FRAND or, in the alternative, that the Dutch court set a global FRAND rate.
Access Advance and the non-Dutch pool members challenged the Court’s jurisdiction to hear Vestel’s claims. By the recently published interlocutory judgment of 15 December 2021 the Court rejected this challenge. The Court held it has jurisdiction to hear the claims against pool administrator Access Advance and the non-Dutch pool members based on connectivity of claims against Dutch pool member Philips (jurisdiction undisputed).
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The second case concerns an AASI filed by Ericsson against Apple Inc. (US), two Dutch Apple entities and two Irish Apple entities. Ericsson feared that the Apple defendants would start proceedings somewhere in the world to obtain an anti-suit injunction (‘ASI’) against Ericsson, which might involve an action to prevent Ericsson from enforcing its (standard essential) patents, as well as an ASI to enforce a ‘covenant not to sue’ against Ericsson.
One day after the Vestel decision, the PI judge of the District Court of The Hague assumed jurisdiction vis-à-vis Apple Inc. on the basis of Article 7 (1) DCCP (using similar reasoning as in the Vestel case) and vis-à-vis the Irish Apple entities on the basis of Article 8 (1) Brussels I (Recast) Regulation. The jurisdiction as to these foreign defendants was limited to claims with respect to the Netherlands and Belgium. In short, because the Dutch Apple entities are only active in those countries and therefore there might only be a threat of the foreign Apple entities (co)filing ASI claims there.
Ericsson’s AASI claims were however rejected in these PI proceedings due to a lack of urgent interest. In short, the Court concluded – on the basis of the facts put forward – that it had not become plausible that there was a (real) threat that the Apple defendants would file for a preventive ASI against Ericsson, so that the urgent interest of the claims insofar as based on this assertion was lacking. This finding was not changed by Apple being unwilling to undertake that it would not request a preventive ASI in the future, as Ericsson was not entitled to such a general undertaking. The Court’s decision can be found here (in Dutch).
A French government press release dated January 20, 2022, announces the creation of a harmonized intellectual property framework with the entry into force of the Unified Patent Court following the ratification of the international agreement concerning it. But what does it means exactly for us?
Each January, there is great interest in the leading recipients of US patents issued during the previous year and, in particular, whether IBM will once again retain the leading position it has held for over two decades. The answer to that question for 2021 is ‘yes’, although the size of IBM’s lead depends upon which data provider you choose to believe. IFI CLAIMS Patent Services – which has provided an annual summary for many years – has IBM receiving 8,682 US patents in 2021, comfortably ahead of Samsung Electronics on 6,366, followed by Canon with 3,021. In comparison, Harrity Patent Analytics – which began publishing its own independent reports in recent years – has IBM on 8,540, with Samsung nipping at its heels on 8,517, and both comfortably clear of LG in third spot with 4,368. (Harrity has Canon in fourth, with 3,400 US patents issued in 2021, while IFI CLAIMS has LG at eighth, on 2,487 US patents.)
So, who to believe? My guess is that they are both right-ish – subject to the challenges of correctly identifying and matching applicant and assignee information in the raw USPTO data – but that IFI CLAIMS and Harrity are probably accounting differently for patents granted to related companies, such as subsidiaries and corporate group members. It is notable that the two largest discrepancies among the top patent recipients are between Samsung and LG, both of which are South Korean chaebol – family conglomerates – which can be notoriously labyrinthine in their structures, and diverse in their product offerings.
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In 2021, Australian residents accounted for just 6.4% of granted patents, although this was a significant improvement on the previous four years during which – in 2019 – the proportion fell below 5%. Between 2011 and 2021, Australians filed, on average, 9% of all standard patent applications each year, so it is apparent that Australian applicants are more likely that non-residents to abandon their applications prior to grant. If actual granted patents are used as a metric, Australians make less use of their own national patent system than the annual filing figures indicate.
While this is disappointing, it should probably not come as a great surprise. A foreign applicant has, by definition, already made a decision prior to filing in Australia that the invention disclosed in their patent application is sufficiently valuable to warrant protection internationally. A domestic applicant, on the other hand, may have filed only in Australia, and may have done so speculatively, before being in a position to assess the value of the invention. Additionally, around 10-15% of resident filings are made by self-represented applicants, and a substantial majority of these have very poor prospects of proceeding to grant. I expect that a similar pattern of higher levels of abandonment by domestic applicants would be also observed in other jurisdictions.
Pichlmaier took over as head of the 21st Civil Chamber in 2016. Since 2000, he has helped shape case law in both the 7th and 21st Civil Chambers as an associate judge. Both chambers are responsible for patent law.
In January 2021, Pichlmaier’s chamber appealed to the European Court of Justice in the dispute between Phoenix Contact and Harting. The CJEU will clarify the question of whether a court can refuse a preliminary injunction if the patent-in-suit is not yet proven in opposition or nullity proceedings. The German patent courts have not yet issued uniform rulings on this.
Most recently, Pichlmaier has become internationally known for his work in proceedings concerning connected cars patents involving the plaintiffs Nokia, Sharp and Conversant against defendant Daimler. He also played a role in the Munich patent court’s decisions on anti-suit injunctions (ASIs). Antitrust issues play a major role in such SEP and FRAND actions.
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As a court spokeswoman told JUVE Patent, Pichlmaier’s move means that the revolving door at the patent chambers continues to turn.
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Matthias Zigann, who now has the highest seniority among the presiding patent judges, is also said to have great ambitions for the Unified Patent Court. Users of the system had recently voted Zigann as one of the most popular judge candidates for the new court in a JUVE Patent survey. Many think it likely that Zigann will partially work for the UPC from the end of the year, when the court opens its doors.
“The granting of this key US patent continues the momentum for the intellectual property portfolio underpinning our CLTX CAR pipeline assets, following the recent patent grant in Europe in September,” Ms Chow said.
Juve Patent was first to report that Judge Tobias Pichlmaier, who is still presiding for a couple more days over the Munich I Regional Court's 21st Civil Chamber (a patent-specialized division), will become the antitrust-specialized 37th Civil Chamber's new Presiding Judge next week, triggering one promotion and one reassignment among his current colleagues. He told Juve Patent that he personally requested this reassignment.
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Nothing is changing for now about the 7th Civil Chamber under Presiding Judge Dr. Matthias Zigann. I photographed the 44th Civil Chamber on the occasion of its first-ever hearing in November. Now you can see two of the judges presiding over the three patent-specialized divisions of the Munich court in that picture. Judge Dr. Zigann's face is probably familiar to many of you, either because you've been to his courtroom or have listened to one or more of his eloquent and always very well-structured webinar presentations. Seriously, you can't be professionally interested in German or cross-jurisdictional patent litigation and not know Judge Dr. Zigann...
Unlike Juve Patent, I don't have the slightest concern over the timing of this chain of reassignments. Without a doubt, the court's patent divisions will operate just as smoothly and efficiently as we know them. They have the talent pool there--and the expertise--to keep going at the same pace, and render high-quality decisions.
A 30% increase in lawyers quitting in Singapore highlights several problems that persist within the legal industry – and I should know, I used to be in it
Consider information from the joint study, “Innovation in batteries and electricity storage – a global analysis based on patent data,” published in 2020 by the European Patent Office (EPO) and the International Energy Agency.
Sources from the High Tech Inventors Alliance, the Senate IP Subcommittee and NPE Dominion Harbor weigh in on the rise of the Western District of Texas
Last July, the Enlarged Board of Appeal of the EPO issued decision G1/21, which authorises oral proceedings before the Boards of Appeal via videoconferencing during a period of general urgency, even if all parties have not given their consent. Cyrille Poindron outlines what this means in practice.
Oral proceedings are explicitly provided for by the European Patent Convention (EPC) if the European Patent Office (EPO) deems it useful, or upon request of one of the parties. In fact, it is often the last possibility for those parties to discuss a case under examination, opposition or appeal before the decision that closes the procedure. Accordingly, the oral procedure is almost always requested as a precaution; in particular, if an unfavourable decision is expected.
Our team of patent, trade mark and design attorneys have considered the legal landscape, recent technical developments and inventions, as well as the marketplace, to predict the likely intellectual property (IP) trends that businesses should look out for in the next 12 months.
Next in our ‘IP trends for 2022’ series, we look at areas of particular interest for startups and SMEs who are critical to advances in technology and contribute significantly to the economy. Mathys & Squire is delighted to support such researchers, engineers and entrepreneurs in identifying and protecting the IP in their technological inventions.
Challenged claims of Engle Grange LLC’s patent directed to a keyless ignition start system in which authentication of a coded key fob is carried out twice, first to activate the ignition switch to allow starting the engine and second at the time when the brake pedal is depressed to put the car in a drive gear are unpatentable as obvious over prior art, the Patent Trial and Appeal Board held, in an inter partes review by Unified Patents LLC. The board said that the challenged claims are obvious over patent applications directed to vehicle systems and methods of operating vehicle ...
Crunchfish Gesture Interaction has received an Intention to Grant from the European Patent Office (EPO) regarding gesture interaction with a virtual or physical display to type passwords or PIN codes in a distinct way each time.
The patent protects scrambling the display or keypad in order to ensure a different and touchless interaction whenever passwords or PIN codes are entered to lock or unlock the wearable. The patent number is EP18197711.7 and it is valid until September 2032.
It is often said that there is a rivalry between the different patent courts of Europe. When it comes to enforcement, they each have different processes and personalities. As well as Germany’s quick, split system popular with patentees, the centralised Dutch system is well respected and popular. On the other hand, perhaps unfairly, the Italian courts gained a reputation in the 2000s as a ‘torpedo’ jurisdiction.
In this strange competition, the UK has always placed highly. They have specialist courts with specialist judges, an emphasis on technical investigation, and a disclosure system that leaves nowhere to hide. All this effort can be expensive – but that is a manageable risk and a calculated one – offset by the fact that the winner recovers their costs (or most of them).
Nokia and Nordic Semiconductor--a company that makes wireless communications chips for the IoT industry and one of whose executives spoke at my 2019 Brussels conference--just announced a "pioneering new approach to licensing the use of cellular IoT Standard Essential Patents": IoT device makers (specifically, those building smart meters, payment terminals, and vehicle telematics) who incorporate Nordic's chips into their products can now opt in and take a pre-negotiated standard-essential patent (SEP) license from Nokia covering their devices.
Nordic Semiconductor celebrates the "added transparency and predictability early in the design process, giving the increased clarity and certainty Nordic cellular IoT customers have been seeking over the past three to four years." Nokia calls it "a win-win for Nordic’s customers and Nokia, simplifying the SEP licensing process in the IoT space and making it easier for licensing agreements to be concluded amicably and efficiently."
Like in that Hot Chocolate song, "Everyone's a winner, baby, that's the truth." Is it? I mean, is it equally great news for both sides? And more broadly speaking, looking beyond this particular deal, is it equally positive for SEP holders as it is for SEP implementers?
The salaries for newly qualified lawyers keep rising, but throwing money at young talent may not be the solution
Status Report on the Unitary Patent and the Unified Patent Court: Ratification, Implementation, and Protocols
Here is a fun chart showing the percentage of U.S. patents that cite to Wikipedia as prior art. I created this from data downloaded from the USPTO.
Companies must now make tough decisions about which rights to opt out of the new unified European patent system
Following tradition, on the last day of 2021, Chief Justice Roberts provided his annual year-end report on the federal judiciary. In the report, he addressed three issues that have “been flagged by Congress and the press” over the last year. Among them was “the arcane but important matter” of judicial assignment and venue for patent cases.
Let the arcana commence! Let’s talk about judicial assignment of patent cases.
For those unfamiliar with how cases are assigned in district courts, let’s use the Western District of Texas as an example. The Western District of Texas is a vast district, stretching more than 600 miles across from El Paso (on the western limits of the state) to Waco (which is much nearer to Louisiana than New Mexico). When a plaintiff files a suit in the Western District, the suit is assigned to the judges within one of seven divisions that make up the district: Austin, Del Rio (Alpine), El Paso, Midland/Odessa, Pecos, San Antonio, and Waco. But the case is not assigned randomly to one of the divisions; rather, the plaintiff selects (from a drop-down menu) to which of the divisions the case will be assigned. Only after a division is selected by the plaintiff does random assignment occur, with each judge within the division receiving a certain percentage of the cases filed, per a standing order filed (and updated in 2021) by the Chief Judge of the Western District of Texas.
But for certain divisions within the district, individual judges receive 100% of the cases filed, meaning plaintiffs can pick their judge. In the Western District of Texas, this 100% assignment occurs in the Midland-Odessa division (assigned to Judge David Counts), the Pecos Division (also Judge Counts), the Del Rio Division (Judge Alia Moses), and—most importantly for patent law—the Waco Division (Judge Alan Albright). That means that Western District of Texas plaintiffs can “judge shop” for the judge they prefer, at least in those four divisions. Judge shopping is, shockingly, possible in a large portion of district courts across the land, not just in Texas.
Thus, it is great to hear that Chief Justice Roberts is investigating the problem of judge shopping.
The UK Intellectual Property Office (IPO) has published an open consultation Standard Essential Patents and Innovation: Call for views in order to better understand the current legislative and policy framework’s function to support innovation in the context of SEPs. Views are sought on whether the framework is functioning efficiently and strikes the right balance for all entities involved. Its stated aim is “to produce the optimal IP framework for the UK that will promote innovation and creativity both now and, in the future” whilst ensuring the Government’s ambitions set out in the ‘UK Innovation Strategy: leading the future by creating it‘ are supported.
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It is interesting to note that another proposal mooted is the greater use of alternative dispute resolution, including arbitration and mediation. The consultation asks about industry led solutions, as well as the possibility of the government providing alternative means for resolving FRAND disputes.
The UKIPO conducted a similar “call for views” in relation to IP rights and AI, prior to launching a full scale consultation which is still in progress (see here). These “call for views” are seen by the UKIPO as essential to establish the issues for business and other interested parties that need to be more formally consulted on. Thus any businesses involved with SEPs should consider responding to the call for views in order to highlight key areas for any future full scale consultation.
Generic-drug maker Mylan is free to challenge the validity of Israeli pharmaceutical company Neurim's melatonin patent at an upcoming trial after a London judge ruled Monday that it did not run afoul of procedural rules about the timing of an appeal.
High Court Judge Richard Meade rejected Neurim Pharmaceuticals (1991) Ltd.'s arguments that rival Mylan U.K. Healthcare Ltd. cannot contest the validity of Neurim's patent for the drug Circadin, an insomnia medication, due to expire in August.
Mylan, which is trying to become the first generic supplier for the drug, was not required to appeal a High Court judge's findings in December 2020 that...
The CPTPP grew out of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) which did not enter into force after the US withdrew. The CPTPP was signed in March 2018 and came into force at the end of December 2018 after it was ratified by six countries. From 19 September 2021, the agreement will be in force in 8 countries (Australia, Canada, Japan, Mexico, New Zealand, Singapore, Vietnam and Peru).
November brought another busy month for the ITC. Final Determinations were issued by the Commission in two Section 337 Investigations: Certain Electronic Devices, Including Streaming Players, Televisions, Set Top Boxes, Remote Controllers, and Components Thereof, Inv. No. 337-TA-1200 (Nov. 10, 2021) and Certain Cloud-Connected Wood-Pellet Grills and Components Thereof, Inv. No. 337-TA-1237 (Nov. 18, 2021). The Commission instituted one Section 337 Investigation: Certain Oil-Vaping Cartridges, Components Thereof, And Products Containing the Same, Inv. No. 337-TA-1286 (Nov. 4, 2021). Five Section 337 Investigations were either stayed or dismissed pending settlements: Certain Skin Rejuvenation Devices, Components Thereof, and Products Containing the Same, Inv. No. 337-TA-1262 (Nov. 3, 2021); Certain Flocked Swabs, Products Containing Flocked Swabs, And Methods of Using Same, Inv. No. 337-TA-1279 (Nov. 15, 2021); Certain Portable Battery Jump Starters & Components Thereof, Inv. No. 337-TA-1256 (Nov. 15, 2021); Certain Vehicle Control Systems, Vehicles Containing the Same, and Components Thereof, Inv. No. 337-TA-1235 (Nov. 18, 2021); Certain Electronic Devices Having Wireless Communication Capabilities and Components Thereof, Inv. No. 337-TA-1284 (Nov. 30, 2021). And the Commission received two complaints: Certain Integrated Circuits, Chipsets, and Electronic Devices, and Products Containing the Same, Inv. No. 337-TA-1287 (Nov. 1, 2021); Certain Playards and Strollers, Inv. No. 337-TA-3577 (Nov. 23, 2021); Certain Video Processing Devices, Components Thereof, and Digital Smart Televisions Containing the Same II, Inv. No. 337-TA-3578 (Nov. 24, 2021).
The major FRAND trial will test how UK courts grapple with jurisdictional issues in the global SEP market, in-house and law firm sources tell Managing IP
Ericsson just released its report for the fourth quarter and the full year of 2021 (PDF). It's the first written communication to investors on Ericsson's financials since the outbreak of renewed patent litigation with Apple (BTW, a German Apple v. Ericsson countersuit was discovered yesterday), so I wanted to take a look at the numbers.
The US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit concluded that a representative claim was directed to a patent-eligible improvement to computer functionality, and therefore reversed a decision authored by Judge Leonard P. Stark as a sitting judge in the US District Court for the District of Delaware. Mentone Solutions LLC v. Digi International Inc., Case Nos. 21-1202, -1203 (Fed. Cir. Nov. 15, 2021) (Moore, C.J.) (nonprecedential).
Mentone Solutions sued Digi International for infringement of Mentone’s patent directed to an improvement in dynamic resource allocation in a GPRS cellular network utilizing shifted uplink status flags (USF). Digi moved to dismiss under Fed. R. Civ. P. 12(b)(6), arguing that the patent claims were not patent eligible under 35 U.S.C. €§ 101. The district court granted the motion to dismiss, holding that the representative claim was patent ineligible for being “directed to the abstract idea of receiving a USF and transmitting data during the appropriate timeslots.” Mentone appealed.
RhoVac AB ("RhoVac") announces today, 24th January 2022, that the Canadian Intellectual Property Office ("CIPO") has issued a "Notice of Allowance", which means that it intends to grant RhoVac's patent application for RV001 (onilcamotide) cancer vaccine. The company has previously been granted patents relating to onilcamotide in USA, Europe and Japan. The Canadian patent will provide RhoVac's onilcamotide vaccine with broad protection in a key market and significantly strengthens the company's patent portfolio.
A recent series of German injunctions (on the merits) granted by the Düsseldorf Regional Court in respect of generic versions of Novartis' Afinitor (everolimus) has been flagged to the AmeriKat's attention by a dear Scottish Kat friend. Why are they of interest? Because the injunctions were granted in respect of second medical use patents, which - readers will recall from the Lyrica experience - have not had a resounding history of success. They also continue to reinforce the importance of parallel EPO proceedings in supporting the grant of injunctions in Germany. So what happened in Novartis Pharma AG and others ./. Ethypharm GmbH (4a O 53/20) and betapharm Arzneimittel GmbH (4a O 13/21)?
Following an oral hearing on 16 November, the Düsseldorf Regional Court on 7 December 2021 ordered injunctions in respect of the infringement of Novartis patent EP 3 351 246 B1 by Ethypharm' GmbH's "Everolimus Ethypharm" product (docket no. 4a O 53/20) and betapharm Arzneimittel GmbH's "Everolimus beta" product (docket no. 4a O 13/21). The December injunction judgments were issued in the first instance and are not yet final, but are provisionally enforceable despite Ethypharm and betapharm having filed appeals against these judgments. The latest judgments follow another series of successes Novartis enjoyed in November 2020 in parallel first-instance judgments against Zentiva Pharma GmbH and Aliud Pharma GmbH (docket nos. 4a O 60/19 and 4a O 63/19 - also subject to appeals).
"We're very pleased that the Patent Offices in Europe have recognized our technology innovation and awarded us patent protection as we expand sales and distribution of TUT Fitness products throughout Europe." said Aaron Fader, Chief Product Officer for TUT Fitness Group.
The examiners of ARIPO also have cited documents mentioned in a correspondent Supplementary European Search Report (ESR), which is drafted by the European Patent Office (EPO), when this regional office is not the International Search Authority during the Chapter I of the PCT.
An administrative tribunal’s decision to accept validity challenges to VLSI Technology LLC patents supporting a $2.18 billion verdict against Intel Corp. invites profiteers to abuse the system, some attorneys warn.
The Patent Trial and Appeal Board in recent weeks has agreed to review VLSI’s patents based on challenges brought by two entities—OpenSky Industries LLC and Patent Quality Assurance—that were formed weeks after the March verdict.
Some attorneys fear the board’s willingness to institute inter partes review creates an incentive for opportunistic entities to emerge after a large verdict in hopes of getting paid off.
S&P Global will ask a Delaware federal judge next week to keep alive parts of its trademark suit against a call service center named S&P Data, in the face of claims that lawyers for the market ratings giant knew of the smaller business for years before suing.
On Feb. 3, lawyers for S&P Global Inc. are scheduled to request that U.S. District Judge Richard Andrews turn down a dismissal bid from S&P Data LLC and its affiliates that takes aim at the Delaware state law claims raised in S&P Global's trademark suit, which was filed against the call service business in...
Since the 1970s when genetically-engineered bacterium capable of breaking down crude oil was held to be patentable subject-matter,1 much attention has been paid to the patenting of living inventions. This topic continues to elicit passionate responses. The curious case of xenobots, which are living machines assembled from frog cells, highlights some of the challenging questions living inventions pose to the patent system. The potential of xenobots is enormous, including use as a novel vehicle for intelligent drug delivery. At the same time, xenobots raise important questions regarding the patenting of living inventions.
Laboratory experimentation often invokes images of scientists in white lab coats and bubbling flasks. However, the rapid advancement of computational techniques and computing power have significantly changed how research and development occurs in the 21st century. Artificial intelligence ("AI") now allows researchers to conduct experiments by computer modeling or simulation (i.e. in silico), with those computer-implemented experiments being integral to the conception or reduction to practice of a related "AI-assisted invention". Xenobots are one such AI-assisted invention. Xenobots are living machines made from frog cells (Xenopus laevis) and developed with the assistance of an evolutionary algorithm. When individual frog skin and heart muscle cells are removed from their native embryonic microenvironments and reassembled in a specific fashion, they form xenobots with a functional morphology that exhibits distinct behaviours from the genomically specified default. Xenobots have shown to exhibit coordinated locomotion via cilia present on their surface. They can navigate aqueous environments in diverse ways (including swimming and walking), heal after being damaged, show emergent group behaviors, and reproduce (by kinematical replication). See our earlier publication: The Curious Case of Xenobots Part I - Patenting of Living Machines.
In a Patent Alert email distributed earlier today, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office announced that an updated First Office Action Estimator online tool is now available to Applicants for use in obtaining time estimates for the issuance of first Office actions in applications. The updated First Office Action Estimator online tool can be accessed here.
In announcing the availability of the updated tool, the Office noted that the methodology for assigning patent applications to Examiners had changed in FY 2021, and as a result, the First Office Action Estimator tool was updated to account for the new methodology. The Office also noted that the estimates provided by the First Office Action Estimator are not guaranteed, and that a first Office action estimate will not be available for an application if the application has not yet been classified under the Cooperative Patent Classification (CPC).
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In a notice published last month in the Federal Register (86 Fed. Reg. 74406), the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office announced that it was extending the modified COVID–19 Prioritized Examination Pilot Program, and that requests to participate in the pilot program would be accepted until March 31, 2022. The pilot program, which was implemented in May of 2020, allows applicants that qualify for small or micro entity status to request prioritized examination without paying the fees typically associated with such prioritized examination (see "USPTO Announces COVID-19 Prioritized Examination Pilot Program").
In addition to the requirement that applicants qualify for small or micro entity status, the claims of a participating application must cover a product or process related to COVID–19, and such product or process must be subject to an applicable FDA approval for COVID–19 use. Such approvals may include, for example, an Investigational New Drug (IND) application, an Investigational Device Exemption (IDE), a New Drug Application (NDA), a Biologics License Application (BLA), a Premarket Approval (PMA), or an Emergency Use Authorization (EUA). Other requirements for participating in the pilot program include making the request at the time of filing of a non-continuing original utility or plant nonprovisional application; at the time of filing of an original utility or plant nonprovisional application claiming the benefit of an earlier filing date under 35 U.S.C. €§€§ 120, 121, or 365(c) of one prior nonprovisional application or one prior international application designating the United States; or at the time of filing or after the filing of a Request for Continued Examination of a plant or utility application or a national stage of an international application. However, any application that claims the benefit of the filing date of two or more prior filed nonprovisional U.S. applications or international applications designating the United States under 35 U.S.C. €§€§ 120, 121, or 365(c) is not eligible for participation in the pilot program. In addition, requests to participate in the pilot program must include an Application Data Sheet, be made via the Office's patent electronic filing systems (EFS-Web or Patent Center), and qualifying applications cannot present more than four independent claims, more than 30 total claims, or any multiple dependent claims.
Following the release earlier this month of its annual list of the top 300 organizations receiving U.S. utility patents (which Harrity Analytics compiles with the Intellectual Property Owners Association (IPO)), Harrity Analytics announced the release of its 2022 College, University & Institute Patent 100 earlier today. Harrity Analytics notes that the 2022 list is a compilation of the top 100 colleges, universities, and other educational institutes based on the number of issued U.S. patents those entities received in 2021.
Patent Docs readers may recall that we have reported on a similar list of the top 100 worldwide universities receiving U.S. utility patents that has been published annually by the National Academy of Inventors (NAI) and the Intellectual Property Owners Association (IPO). Over the past few years, the NAI/IPO list has been released in the summer. Our report on the 2020 NAI/IPO list can be found here.
JUVE Patent asked international patent experts from companies and patent law firms for their favourite judges for patent infringement cases in Germany. Daniel Voß, presiding judge of the Düsseldorf Patent Chamber 4b, came top with 12.7% of the votes. Thomas Kühnen, presiding judge of the 2nd Civil Senate at the Higher Regional Court Düsseldorf, follows closely.
Stakeholders have high hopes for the JPO during a review of Japan’s licensing guidelines, even as the economy ministry leans towards implementers
Many patent holders and pools designate their patents as relevant or essential to a standard without proper scrutiny or analysis. As part of an ongoing series examining this dubious practice, we highlight U.S. Patent 10,575,014. The ‘014 patent is owned by the Electronics and Telecommunications Research Institute (ETRI) and Korea’s Kyung Hee University. The ‘014 patent is purportedly essential to the H.265 (HEVC) standard as part of the Access Advance Patent Pool and it is part of a family of at least 30 applications globally. It should not be considered essential.
The ‘014 patent is directed to the encoding/decoding and partitioning/reconstruction phases of video coding. Generally, instead of transmitting every frame (i.e., image) of every video, including its corresponding data, the encoder and decoder will each generate a prediction of the image and only transmit the difference between the prediction and the original image (i.e., the residual). The decoder will then use its prediction (and the residual, if one was sent) to reconstruct the image.
I've recently written about Access Advance's High Efficiency Video Coding (HEVC, H.265) pool (one post discussing the logic of the recent Dusseldorf ruling against Access Advance, and another on how the problem appears to persist).
Today there's an announcement (PDF) by a more reputable pool administrator, MPEG LA, of a Versatile Video Coding (VVC, H.266) pool. So let's look at VVC, but start with Access Advance, which was first to announce its initial group of licensors.
On its homepage, Access Advance says about its VVC Advance Licensing Program that its terms are FRAND, "providing rates that balance both Licensor and Licensee interests and complying with worldwide laws applicable to patent pools." (emphasis added) The highlighted part of that quote is "rich." I mean, either they haven't read their own website in a while or they still haven't read the writing on the Dusseldorf court's wall.
The only patent pool administrator (to the best of my knowledge) to license patents (HEVC in that case) on terms that a court even thought entitled unlicensed implementers to damages is not in a great position to assist the rest of the world with FRAND compliance. It happened to them in a court in which MPEG LA had dozens of successes, and still has a clean white shirt when it comes to FRAND.
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While VVC Advance--by virtue of being early and not having to poach MPEG LA licensors--may be able to avoid some of Access Advance's HEVC-related FRAND problems, my concerns are still structural. The unfair refund terms are not the root cause of their problems. The fundamental issue is that Access Advance optimizes all of its terms for the purposes of its four owners, only one of which (Dolby) appears on IPlytics's list of 21 major VVC patent holders. If they operated their pools more independently and transparently, they could also have acted more constructively with respect to refunds. But the cut taken by Access Advance and those special deals with companies who are both licensors and major implementers (like Samsung) complicated everything. In some other way, shape or form, that root cause may lead to problems--if not for Access Advance, then at least for the standard in question.
It's a rhetorical question which of these two patent pool administrators has always understood (and which one still doesn't seem to realize) that if licensing terms are reasonable, a standard is more likely to be adopted by many implementers, which in turn makes the licensing revenue cake bigger for patentees than a scenario of high fees and low adoption.
On January 28, 2022, Unified Patents added a new PATROLL contest, with a $2,000 cash prize, seeking prior art on at least claim 1 of U.S. Patent 7,221,220. The patent is owned by Guzik Technical Enterprises, an NPE. The '220 patent generally relates to a method for low-frequency bypassing in broadband RF circuitry.
In the 4th quarter (October to December) of 2021, only 2 positively decided cases were added to our knowledge base in which relevant aspects of the claimed-subject-matter were considered technical. For those who do not have the time to read all of our selected decision, in the following, we will briefly summarize these cases.
T 2010/17: Selection of an available memory size
The application underlying this decision relates to the configuration of circuits. More specifically, a configuration can be locked and protected by a signature.
The feature of "generating a signature representative of the selected memory size by the integrated circuit" was considered technical by the Board in charge. However, the Board also ruled that this feature is rendered obvious to the skilled person.
This is a follow-up to 'Access Advance' patent pool can rename itself 'Suffer Setback' after Dusseldorf court ruling: flagrant FRAND abuse concerning video codec patents. In the previous post I discussed the logic of the Dusseldorf Regional Court's holding that certain Access Advance licensors owe Vestel damages for FRAND abuse, and cannot obtain injunctive relief against the Turkish TV manufacturer.
Weeks before I commented on this, Access Advance already sent an email to its existing and prospective partners, claiming that the outcome of the Dusseldorf cases was largely a win (as all of the asserted patents were deemed essential to the HEVC standard), and the denial of injunctive relief was disappointing but based on a narrow holding, which according to Access Advance wouldn't even have come down if a recent change to its Duplicate Royalty Policy had been made before--not after--trial.
Even a mark that has been on the International Registry for 40 years does not assure registration of a subsequent national designation. Kat friend Marijus Dingilevskis reminds us of this in reporting on a recent decision by the Lithuanian Supreme Court.
On 12 January 2022, the Lithuanian Supreme Court upheld the rejection of the Lithuanian designation of Chanel SARL’s two-dimensional trademark (see below) in Class 3 for perfumery products. The trademark depicts the shape of the Chanel No. 5 perfume bottle. The international registration of the given trademark is valid as of 1980; the Lithuanian designation was made in early 2014.
The application had been rejected by the Patent Bureau, and by three instances of the Lithuanian courts. From this, Chanel filed the appeal to the Supreme Court, which considered registrability both in terms of (1) ab initio distinctiveness, and (2) acquired distinctiveness. (Interestingly, unlike in Lithuania, protection for this trademark was granted successfully in other jurisdictions, such as Latvia and Poland, in which the request on designation was also submitted in 2014.)
The Trademark Trial and Appeal Board (Tee-Tee-Ãâ¬-Bee) has scheduled ten (10) oral hearings for the month of February 2022. The hearings will be held via video conference. Briefs and other papers for each case may be found at TTABVUE via the links provided.
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February 3, 2022 - 2 PM: In re Artsana S.p.A., Serial No. 79233670 [Section 2(d) refusal of the mark COONTROL for, inter alia, massage gels other than for medical purposes and sexual stimulant gels, and for "condoms; adult sexual stimulation devices and sex toys comprised of vibrators; artificial vaginas; love dolls, namely, sex dolls; sex toys; benwa balls; artificial penises, being adult sexual aids" on the ground of likelihood of confusion with the registered mark MAX CONTROL for "medicated, desensitizing preparation for sexual performance."]
Staging the World Cup has spurred a major commitment to IP enforcement, sources at FIFA and Qatar’s organising committee tell Managing IP
Loukoumades are Greek pastries consisting of fried dough balls soaked in honey syrup and topped with cinnamon or walnuts. Close enough for the Board to uphold a mere descriptiveness refusal of the mark LUKUMADES in the stylized form shown below, for "doughnuts; pastry; crepes; confectionery flavored ices; chocolates; chocolate syrup; topping syrup; pancake syrup; honey; candy; coffee; tea; cocoa; cocoa products, namely, cocoa powder, cocoa spreads, cocoa drops, cocoa biscuits; cocoa mixes; fruit sauces; dough mix; dairy ice cream, ice milk and frozen yogurt" in International Class 30, and for “services for the preparation of food and drink; services for providing food and drink” in International Class 43. However, the Board reversed the same refusal as to the applicant's Class 29 goods: "yogurt drinks; beverages made from or containing milk; butter; milk; prepared fruits; fruit jellies; jams; milk products excluding ice cream, ice milk and frozen yogurt; dairy puddings, namely, white pudding." In re Lukumades AGD Limited, Serial No. 88844592 (January 25, 2022) [not precedential] (Opinion by Judge Christopher Larkin).
3D trade marks are always a topic of interest, with some proprietors despairing as to whether trade mark law will provide them with any practical protection. The recent decision of the EUIPO’s Board of Appeal may provide some comfort.
In its decision, the BoA considered whether two 3D trade marks could block an application for a figurative mark containing a similar representation of one of the perspectives. Ultimately, it decided that they could, disagreeing with the EUIPO’s Opposition Division [Opposition Division decision here, BoA decision here].
As a fan of early 90s hip hop, I have noticed over the years that the pioneers of this art form are acutely aware of the power of their brands and their ability to generate revenue streams via a myriad of uses.
It's no surprise to see that Snoop Dogg has recently filed a US trade mark application to register the term SNOOP DOGGS for hot dogs. Snoop Dogg also owns registrations for the terms SNOOP DOGGIE DOGGS, for a range of pet products; SNOOP YOUTH FOOTBALL LEAGUE, for an American Football youth program; and SNOOP JUICE, for a range of non-alcoholic beverages.
Can something be simultaneously iconic and lack distinctiveness under trade mark law?
Last week, the General Court (GC) answered this question in the affirmative in its decision in T-483/20 Tecnica Group, concerning trade mark protection of the shape of an icon of Italian fashion design and history: the Moon Boots.
Inspired by the boots worn by Neil Amstrong to walk on the surface of the Moon in 1969, the Moon Boots were the first, dedicated after ski footwear. Since then, over 20 million pairs have been sold. The Moon Boots have been also displayed in world-class museums like the MoMa and the Louvre.
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Readers might recall that, last summer, The IPKat reported on the then fresh GC decision relating the Guerlain’s Rouge G lipstick shape mark and regarded it as offering some hope for those seeking to register less conventional signs. In that case, in fact, the Court found that the shape at issue satisfied the significant departure test and could be therefore registered. Last week’s Moon Boot decision brought us back to (a non-distinctive) reality, adding to the (long) list of (in)success stories.
Another interesting aspect of the Moon Boot saga is that, while the trade mark registration has been regarded as partly invalid, Italian courts have, on different occasions (including in the context of the aforementioned Venice decisions), found that the iconic after ski footwear is deserving of copyright protection. Most recently, this is what the Milan Court of First Instance held (Trib. Milano, Tecnica Group S.p.A. v Diana S.r.l., decision No 493/2021, 25 January 2021) in a copyright infringement case – decided nearly a year ago – that Tecnica successfully brought against the maker of Chiara Ferragni-branded after ski boots. In any case, the requirements for trade mark registration and copyright are and remain obviously distinct. Last week's GC decision also provides an indirect reminder in this sense.
On January 18, 2022, the CAFC denied Appellant Brooklyn Brewery's petition for panel rehearing and rehearing en banc in the recent Brooklyn Brewery case. [CAFC opinion here; denial of rehearing here], in which the court held that the Brewery lacked Article III standing to challenge the Board's ruling on likelihood of confusion involving non-competing goods. On that same day, the court issued an "Errata" page [pdf here] making two changes in one sentence in the opinion, as set out below. Professor McCarthy criticized the court's stance regarding Article III standing [TTABlogged here]. Do the two changes made by the CAFC make any real difference? Professor McCarthy remains unimpressed.
In a 51-page opinion, the Board affirmed a refusal to register the product configuration shown below, for "handbags," finding the design to be generic and, alternatively, lacking in acquired distinctiveness: "Handbags embodying the proposed mark are so common in the industry that such product design is not capable of indicating source and ... Applicant's proposed mark is at best a minor variation thereof." The applicant's alternative Section 2(f) claim failed due in part to the same lack of exclusivity of use. In re Jasmin Larian, LLC, Serial No. 87522459 (January 19, 2022) [not precedential] (Opinion by Judge Martha B. Allard).
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Genericness: Generic product designs cannot be registered. See, e.g., Stuart Spector Designs, Ltd. v. Fender Musical Instruments, 94 USPQ2d 1549, 1555 (TTAB 2009) (guitar shape). "[C]ourts exercise particular caution when extending protection to product designs because such claims present an acute risk of stifling competition." A design may be so common in the industry that it cannot identify a particular source, in which case registration should be refused "on the ground that the proposed mark fails to function as a mark." [Genericness may be thought of as a form of "failure-to-function" - ed.]. There was no dispute that the genus at issue is "handbags" and the relevant consumers are the general public - i.e, ordinary consumers who purchase handbags. The issue, then, was the primary significance of the proposed mark.
Applicant has sold its "Ark" bag since January 2013, with sales increasing sharply in 2017. The evidence included third-party bags sold prior to 2013, commentary regarding handbag designs, articles about fashion, the applicant's own acknowledgement that its design is a copy of a common design, Internet postings, and third-party handbags sold after the applicant's Ark bag was introduced but before it became popular. "The record shows that third-parties offered identical or nearly identical handbags for sale in the United States prior to Applicant's first use date."
The Industrial Property Law No. 6769 (the Industrial Property Law) became the primary legislation on trademarks after it was published in Official Gazette No. 29944 and came into force on 10 January 2017. Previously, Decree-Law No. 556 on Protection of the Trademarks (the abolished Decree-Law) was in force from 1995 until 10 January 2017 when it was abolished. After the Industrial Property Law came into force, trademarks began to be regulated under it, including patents, designs and geographical signs. Although there are crucial changes in the new Law, there are still particular provisions of the abolished Decree-Law that remain in effect.
Remote hearings and forum selection can help parties tackle backlogs, but they aren’t perfect solutions
Carestream Health was awarded 45 new patents in 2021 for global advances in artificial intelligence (AI), digital radiography (DR) workflow and detectors as well as other healthcare imaging technology areas. Twenty-three of the patents were awarded by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, while an additional 22 patents were received in European and Asian countries.
The number of standard patent applications filed in Australia exceeded 30,000 for the first time in 2021, increasing by nearly 3.6% over the previous year, and following on from two successive years of decline. Growth was driven primarily by direct national filings, with PCT national phase entry (NPE) filings up by less than 1% on 2020. Standard application filings by Australian residents experienced particularly strong growth, increasing by 21% over 2020 numbers, while applications by foreign residents grew by just 2%.
At first blush this looks like good news for Australian applicants, and thus for innovation in Australia. But the headline figures conceal a distorting influence on filing behaviour in 2021, namely the phasing out of the innovation patent system. It was entirely predictable that thousands of new innovation patent applications would be filed in the weeks leading up to the final deadline of 25 August 2021. What might have been less obvious is that the beginning-of-the-end of the innovation patent system would also lead to a spike in filings of new standard patent applications. Australian residents, in particular, filed more than six times as many direct standard applications in August 2021 as compared with a ‘normal’ month, accounting for a majority of the overall growth in resident filings for the year. All of these applications with a filing date on or before 25 August 2021 are able to provide a basis for future divisional innovation patent filings, for as long as they remain pending, and up to the final expiry date of the innovation patent system on 25 August 2029.
The EUIPO’s Board of Appeal recently addressed whether consumables shall be regarded as component parts of complex products (R2843/2019-3). The BoA decision has been appealed, so the General Court (and potentially, the Court of Justice) will provide guidance as to whether consumables fall under the scope of Art. 4(2) Design Regulation. In the meantime, this Kat explains, why consumables matter.
The decision in R2843/2019-3 concerned an invalidity application brought against Community design No 1 292 122-0001. The design (to the right) depicts an electrode for a plasma- cutting torch and is registered for “Welding torches (part of -)”. The invalidity applicant argued that the electrode is a component part of a complex product (the plasma- cutting torch). Because it is invisible during normal use of the torch, the invalidity applicant claimed that the visibility requirement set out in Art. 4(2) is not met.
In turn, the design holder argued that Art. 4(2) was not applicable to consumables. This is because they are to be treated separately from component parts and the electrode is a consumable.
Design Regulation 6/2002 includes a special category of products protected by design rights, namely, a complex product (e.g., a car or a lawnmower). Under Art. 4(2), a component part of a complex product shall only be protected by design rights, if, once incorporated into the complex product, it remains visible during normal use of the latter. Examples of component parts of complex products include vacuum cleaner nozzles or a mop head. If such component parts are not visible during normal use (for instance, when mowing a lawn), design protection is not available.
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The EUIPO BoA sided with the design holder, affirming that consumables are not component parts of complex products (similar reasoning was later relied on in a case concerning vacuum cleaner bags). According to the BoA, the main criterion for distinguishing a consumable from a component part is whether a product would be considered “complete” without it. According to the example given in the decision, if the trigger of the torch is missing then the torch would be considered “broken” and would require repair.
However, if a torch lacks an electrode, it would not be considered “broken”, rather the electrode would simply need to be replaced. An electrode being a consumable, the requirement of visibility in normal use is not applicable to it. Thus, the BoA found the contested design valid.
After amendments were defeated, one by a single vote, brand owners say the chances of securing much-needed changes are “close to impossible”
Works of art, in the form of the reproduction of a painting, frequently adorns the cover of a reissued edition of a renowned novel. Beyond the obvious attempt to draw a connection between the artwork and the book based a shared sense of the "classical", the artwork also seeks to evoke a more specific connection with the contents of the book.
"You can't judge a book from its cover". True, except when a book and its cover are involved. Consider the following book cover of the Penguin Classics edition of Jane Austen's novel, "Mansfield Pak".
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So why this picture? It is meant to suggest Fanny Price, who is the hero of the novel. Both Fanny Price and Eugénie-Pamela Larivière are about the same age from the same time period (early 19th century); Fanny Price is located in England, while Eugénie-Pamela Larivière, the sister of the artist, is in France. Fanny Price in the novel is not considered especially attractive (although this perception does change as the novel progresses). All and all, the countenance of Eugénie-Pamela Larivière on the cover comports with the character of Fanny Pride in the text, sending a coherent message to the reader.
There is still time to provide input to the UKIPO on copyright protection of computer-generated works, copyright exceptions for text and data mining and AI inventorship of patents as the government bids to make Britain a global AI superpower within the next ten years.
The UK Intellectual Property Office is conducting a consultation on artificial intelligence and intellectual property (the Consultation). In light of the Government's call for views on the interaction between AI and IP (March 2021), the consultation looks to help deliver on the long-term aims set out in the UK Innovation Strategy (July 2021) and the National AI Strategy (September 2021). There is still time to contribute to the consultation as the closing date for submissions is 07 January 2021. The government will then publish a response document in due course.
Managing IP can exclusively reveal details of the case, including those related to the claims of damaged goodwill and copyright and trademark infringement
