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12.15.15

In a Case Involving Microsoft, Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (Originator of Software Patents) Squashes Software Patents

Posted in America, Courtroom, Microsoft, Patents at 10:48 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Software patents are getting old and patently rusty

Metal

Summary: With Alice and with Bilski as prominently cited cases, a software patent of Allvoice gets thrown aside by the most software patents-friendly court in the United States

THIS afternoon we take a little break from Benoît Battistelli’s EPO. One longtime foe of ours has certainly been CAFC, which not only brought software patents into existence several decades ago (in spite of public opinion and public interest) but also continued to rule overzealously in favour of them, time and time again.

Patent Buddy wrote about Allvoice v. Microsoft, calling it “a 101/Alice case” in CAFC. We have made a copy of this decision [PDF] and found that both Bilski and Alice are mentioned in page 14, quoted as follows: “Section 101 thus specifies four independent categories of inventions or discoveries that are eligible for protection: processes, machines, manufactures, and compositions of matter. ‘In choosing such expansive terms . . . modified by the comprehensive ‘any,’ Congress plainly contemplated that the patent laws would be given wide scope.”’ Bilski v. Kappos, 561 U.S. 593, 601 (2010) (quoting Diamond v. Chakrabarty, 447 U.S. 303, 308 (1980)). If a claim is drawn to subject matter that falls outside the four statutory categories of § 101, it is not patent eligible. In re Nuitjen, 500 F.3d 1346, 1354 (Fed. Cir. 2007). This is true without regard to whether it might otherwise be ineligible because it encompasses a law of nature, natural phenomenon, or abstract idea. See Alice Corp. Pty. Ltd. v. CLS Bank Int’l, 124 S. Ct. 2347, 2354 (2014).”

“It’s good to see growing awareness of the fact that software patents are generally “stupid”.”And from the conclusion: “Because the district court did not abuse its discretion in enforcing the local patent rules, we affirm the district court’s grant of summary judgment of non-infringement as to claims 28, 37–38, 49–51, 56–57, 71–74, and 77 with respect to the “link data” limitation. In light of this ruling, we need not reach Allvoice’s other arguments regarding infringement of these claims. Additionally, with respect to the validity of claims 60–68 of the ’273 Patent, Allvoice conceded that these claims were limited to software instructions without any hardware limitations. In the absence of such limitations, the claims as written fail to recite a manufacture, or any other statutorily recognized invention. Accordingly, we also affirm the district court’s grant of summary judgment of invalidity of claims 60–68 of the ’273 Patent.”

We find such cases curious because they serve to reinforce the trend which Bilski Blog dubbed "Alicestorm", showing that ever since Alice very rarely can software patents endure or survive in a courtroom. It thus greatly devalues them and reduces the incentive to pursue them in the first place. No wonder the USPTO has formally altered its examination guidelines.

“Today’s US patent system is clearly becoming quite hostile towards software patents.”Mr. Nazer from the EFF, an activist against “bad” patents (who sometimes specifically names software patents) has just made it into the trend-setting media in the US, under the headline “The 4 worst patents of 2015″. Guess what? It’s about software patents, not just bad (or worse) patents. “In April,” to give one example, “the patent office approved US Patent No. 9,013,334, which covers “notification” systems that handle changes in the quantity of items being delivered or picked up by a customer. The “inventor” of this brainchild is not an entrepreneur but rather a patent lawyer clearly gaming the system. The holder filed a provisional claim in 2003, which he has used to shoehorn some 20 patents, all of them vague, broad and abstract.”

Also see Forbes with “Monday’s Must-Reads For Entrepreneurs: The Stupidest Patents Of The Year”. It’s good to see growing awareness of the fact that software patents are generally “stupid”. Contrast this with blogs of patent lawyers, where the priority seems to be amplifying the selective (biased by omission) claims of software patents viability and authors explain how to trick judges or examiners into allowing software patents. Today’s US patent system is clearly becoming quite hostile towards software patents. That’s great news. For patent systems to be worth something they need to be strict and demanding; they must carefully evaluate the wider (collective) impact of each patent granted and each domain that’s affected. Overpatenting became an epidemic in the US and more recently in China; Europe can hopefully still be rescued from the maximalists and monopolists. █

Links 15/12/2015: CentOS Linux 7 1511, Enlightenment DR 0.20.1

Posted in News Roundup at 8:41 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNOME bluefish

Contents

GNU/Linux

  • Core Developer Jeff Garzik on the Similarities Between Bitcoin and Linux

    Before making any contributions to Bitcoin, Bloq Co-Founder and Bitcoin Core Developer Jeff Garzik was a longtime Linux developer who started working on the operating system in the early nineties — before the creation of Red Hat. As someone who was involved in the early development of both Linux and Bitcoin, Garzik has a unique perspective on the common themes found in the two respective development communities.

  • Person of Year, Podcasts, and Polls

    Today in Linux news, several reviews lead the pack today. Jesse Smith and Das U-Blogger Prashanth reviewed Chakra 2015.11, Swapnil Bhartiya tested newly released Mint 17.3, and a couple of quick openSUSE reports were posted. Elsewhere, Donald Stewart posted an update on Mageia Cauldron and Antonio Rojas said Arch is dropping KDE 4. A couple of interesting polls warrant a mention as well and more in tonight’s Linux news recap.

  • So you want a lean mean Linux machine?

    No matter what people say, efficiently utilising the resources of your computer is very important. Sure disk space is cheap they say, but one thing they never tell you is that no matter how big your hard disk is, a way will be found to fill it up. Especially for older machines, as operating systems are getting bigger and bigger, requiring more memory and disk space than ever before.

  • Desktop

    • Qubes OS will ship pre-installed on Purism’s security-focused Librem 13 laptop

      Qubes OS, the security-focused operating system that Edward Snowden said in November he was “really excited” about, announced this week that laptop maker Purism will ship their privacy-focused Librem 13 notebook with Qubes pre-installed.

    • Here a Chromebook, there a Chromebook, everywhere a Chromebook

      I used to carry ThinkPads, starting with the IBM models and then Lenovo’s versions, with me everywhere. They were, and still are, great laptops. Then I started using Chromebooks. I still have a couple of ThinkPads, but they never leave my office. Why? Because a Chromebook can do anything I want, typically deliver battery life that can see me through a whole day of work at a coffee shop, and are immune to almost all of Windows’ security woes. I’m not the only one who loves them.

    • Chromebookify Your Laptop Now!

      A few years ago there was a project designed to boot generic laptops so they functioned as Chromebooks. It was a cool project, but unfortunately, the compatibility wasn’t great, and it wasn’t reliable to use on a daily basis. Although Chromebooks are old news these days, it still would be quite useful to transform aging laptop computers into Chromebooks. Because they have such low system requirements, older laptops running the ChromeOS can become quite useful again.

  • Audiocasts/Shows

    • 7 Linux Podcasts You Need to Listen To

      If you’re a die-hard Linux user, or a command-line newbie, you’re going to find something worth listening to in this list of seven download-worthy Linux podcasts.

  • Kernel Space

    • Linux Foundation Scholarship Recipient: Eduardo Mayorga Téllez

      Eduardo Mayorga Téllez, a Teens in Training scholarship recipient, is 17 and lives in Nicaragua. He plans to become a Linux kernel developer and use his knowledge of device drivers to help Linux support the most hardware possible. He says he often hears classmates and colleagues argue that Linux is not suitable for them because they cannot make the most of their hardware. Eduardo says he will change that.

    • Newest Linux Foundation Video Highlights Open Source In Space

      Linux in space is the subject of the Linux Foundation’s latest “World without Linux” video, which highlights how open source software helps power the world we live in — or, in this case, the things orbiting around it.

    • Dell and Red Hat Deliver Easier Firmware Updates for Linux Users

      Dell — the first big company to sell Linux computers — is catering to open source fans again by announcing plans to make user-friendly firmware upgrades possible on Linux.

      In a blog post, Richard Hughes, who works for Red Hat (RHT) and contributes to the GNOME project, writes that Red Hat and Dell have been collaborating on a system that will allow users of Dell hardware to update firmware from Linux. If that doesn’t seem significant to you, it’s probably because you either do not use Linux or have not spent enough of your life geeking out to know what firmware is.

    • Linux Kernel 4.3.3 Is Now the Most Advanced Stable Version Available

      The latest iteration of the stable Linux kernel, 4.3.3, has been released by Greg Kroah-Hartman, making this the latest and best version available right now.

      The 4.3 branch of the Linux kernel is a really popular one and it’s been adopted by many distros. From the looks of it, the maintainers will continue to provide support for it, but it’s not clear for how long. There is already a 4.1.15 version that has been declared long-term, so it’s difficult to say if another branch will be tagged LTS as well, after such a short time.

    • Microsoft offers its first-ever Linux certification on Azure
    • Microsoft offers MCSA qualification for IT workers using Linux on Azure
    • Microsoft wants you to train using its rival, Linux operating system
    • New Certification Announced for Linux on Azure Cloud
    • Technology Sector Trend Analysis Report: Microsoft (MSFT), Sunedison (SUNE), Cisco Systems (CSCO), Corning (GLW)

      Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ:MSFT) on December 9, 2015 announced the creation of a Microsoft Certified Solutions Associate (MCSA) Linux on Azure certification. Created in conjunction with the Linux Foundation, the nonprofit organization enabling mass innovation through open source, this certification represents one more important step in broadening the technology integration between Microsoft and the open source community.

    • Files Are Hard

      I haven’t used a desktop email client in years. None of them could handle the volume of email I get without at least occasionally corrupting my mailbox. Pine, eudora, and outlook have all corrupted my inbox, forcing me to restore from backup. How is it that desktop mail clients are less reliable than gmail, even though my gmail account not only handles more email than I ever had on desktop clients, but also allows simultaneous access from multiple locations across the globe? Distributed systems have an unfair advantage, in that they can be robust against total disk failure in a way that desktop clients can’t, but none of the file corruption issues I’ve had have been from total disk failure. Why has my experience with desktop applications been so bad?

    • It’s okay, break your kernel

      The reality is much simpler: the kernel is a software project. There is nothing particularly special about being a kernel developer. Jumping into any code base is going to involve a learning curve. You don’t need to be the best programmer ever to make modifications. The core kernel is completely self-contained in one project which means fewer dependencies than a lot of userspace projects. (yes, there are modules out of tree but the most important parts are in a single project). The self-contained nature means that it’s easy to switch back to a stable kernel from an unstable one which makes testing easier.

    • The Nexus 4 & 7 Will Be Closer To Handling An Upstream Linux Kernel

      Rob Clark submitted his MSM-Next DRM driver changes today in preparation for the Linux 4.5 kernel cycle.

      He was quick to note that with this MSM DRM driver update from the Freedreno project there is now DSI support for Qualcomm’s MSM8960 and APQ8064 hardware. He explains the impact as, “should be helpful for getting an upstream kernel working on nexus7/nexus4/etc.” DSI is short for the Display Serial Interface and is a MIPI specification for communicating between the host and display device.

    • Exynos DRM In Linux 4.5 To Support Runtime Power Management
    • AppStream 0.9 Brings Many Changes, Breaks API/ABI

      Version 0.9 of AppStream is now available. As a refresher, AppStream is a FreeDesktop.org specification backed by multiple major Linux distributions as a cross-distribution effort of standardizing Linux component metadata.

    • Graphics Stack

    • Benchmarks

      • 7-Way Linux Laptop Comparison From Sandy Bridge To Broadwell

        For those curious about how Intel’s laptop/ultrabook CPUs have evolved over the past few generations and whether it’s worthwhile upgrading from one generation to the next, here’s a fresh Linux laptop comparison with seven different laptops being tested on Ubuntu 15.10 x86_64 and comparing these laptops from Sandy Bridge to Broadwell on a variety of workloads while also doing some performance-per-Watt measurements.

  • Applications

  • Desktop Environments/WMs

    • Enlightenment DR 0.20.1 Release

      This bugfix release improves on the 0.20.0 release and resolves a number of issues.

    • Enlightenment 0.20.1 Released With Fixes

    • K Desktop Environment/KDE SC/Qt

    • GNOME Desktop/GTK

      • GNOME: Shortcuts love

        Keyboard shortcuts can be a powerful feature, particularly for actions that are repeated often and are consistently available. In GNOME 2, shortcuts could be learned through menu bars, but we moved away from these with GNOME 3. There were a number of reasons why we did this, and it was a good thing, but it did leave users without an easy way to learn keyboard shortcuts. This is something that we’ve wanted to address for some time, and are now finally resolving.

      • Evolution Email and Calendar Client Updated for GNOME 3.20 with Over 40 Changes

        The GNOME 3.19.3 desktop environment is under heavy development these days, and many of its core components and applications are being updated by the hour.

      • GNOME Maps 3.20 Is Going to Be a Really Big Update

        GNOME Maps is one of the many components of the GNOME stack, and it looks like the upcoming 3.20 version will get some pretty cool features.

        Not all the packages get big improvements when they move from one version to another. In fact, for many packages in the GNOME stack, not a lot happens. GNOME Maps is not one of those apps, and it’s becoming more useful with each new release.

      • GNOME Maps App Now Lets Users Edit Locations in OpenStreetMap
      • Video Series

        I’m nearly a month down on a branch for Builder 3.20. It’s goal is to radically simplify the process of creating plugins, and prepare for external plugins. We really wanted to create a solid plugin story before doing that and things are progressing nicely.

  • Distributions

    • Best distro of 2015 poll

      Let’s do it again. Last year, in a first-of-its-kind Dedoimedo best distro vote poll, I asked you about your favorite operating system, and you responded in kind. With exactly 1,900 votes, you opined on the state of the Linux. It’s that time of the year once more.

      I am going to post an article reflecting my own view on how this year of distro testing went, but I would also very much like to hear from you. Like in 2014, I used the THP on Distrowatch and selected the top ten entries for the poll. But there’s also a free field for you to add any other distro you like, as well as comments. It ought to be interesting, and hopefully not too quiet. After me.

    • Reviews

      • Review: Chakra 2015.11 “Fermi”

        Not only has it been a while since I’ve done a Linux distribution review on this blog, but it has been an especially long time (over 2.5 years, in fact) since I’ve looked at Chakra. I figured that now that KDE 5 (technically incorrect terminology, I know, but please bear with me, as I’m using this for the sake of brevity) is being used in Chakra, it may be time to see how a distribution I’ve rather liked in the past has evolved. In case you don’t remember, Chakra was originally based on Arch Linux, but a few years ago, it branched off into its own independent distribution with its own repositories, though certain tools (like the package manager Pacman) are based on things found in Arch Linux. It focuses exclusively on KDE, and it uses a semi-rolling release model in which core system packages are updated less frequently in order to maintain stability, while front-end applications seen by users most often are updated more frequently to provide a competitive desktop experience.

    • PCLinuxOS/Mageia/Mandriva Family

      • Some news of what’s boiling in the Cauldron

        For those of you who are most familiar with Mageia and its development, you are starting to know the drill: Cauldron is the place where we break stuff by upgrading everything that we tried to keep stable during the previous release cycle, and then we work on making it stable again. We are now in this stabilization phase and we were aiming internally for a first development snapshot of Mageia 6 as a set of ISO images, but there are still a number of factors that make it difficult right now.

    • Arch Family

      • Dropping Plasma 4

        Since the KDE 4 desktop has been unmaintained for several months and it’s becoming increasingly difficult to support two versions of Plasma, we are removing it from our repositories. Plasma 5.5 has just been released and should be stable enough to replace it.

    • Ballnux/SUSE

      • OpenSUSE LEAP: A Great Free Linux Server Distribution

        So what exactly is LEAP? What’s it for? The easiest way to approach something like OpenSUSE LEAP is to think of it like a beefed-up, more stable Fedora-type thing. The main goal of this Linux distribution is to create an enterprise grade distribution designed for workstations and servers free of charge.

      • I accidentally openSUSE

        I am sorry for this silly article. But it is important. Just as important as my other failures over the years. They teach as much as image-rich guides and prosaic, finely worded reviews, albeit with much less beauty and style. The moral of the story is, as you may have guessed already, DON’T DO IT. Wait for openSUSE to gets its due major and minor version increment and come around with Plasma 5 natively and a suave, integrated Gecko or Chameleon theme, as it just recently did.

        At this point, thinking in retrospect, I probably should have used BTRFS, and this might have given me the necessary snapshot to go back in time and undo the damage. Maybe. Furthermore, I am disappointed with the SUSE team. They should protect their system a little more robustly from aesthetic escapades. All I did was install a bunch of packages and let the system remove some of the conflicting dependencies with the previously installed desktop environment. Not something we should let happen in 2015. Food for thought. As for Plasma on openSUSE, I owe you that one. Leap 42.1. Very soon. Take care.

    • Red Hat Family

    • Debian Family

      • Ordering mount points in Jessie (systemd < 220)

        In the previous post I had mentioned that I didn’t figure out how to add dependency on mount points so as to achieve correct ordering of mount points. After a lot of search today I finally figured it out thanks to the bug report and the patch which adds x-systemd.requires and other option to systemd.

      • Freexian’s report about Debian Long Term Support, November 2015
      • Reproducible builds: week 33 in Stretch cycle

        Exchanges have started with F-Droid developers to better understand what would be required to test F-Droid applications. (h01ger)

      • Derivatives

        • Parsix GNU/Linux 8.5 “Atticus” Gets Linux Kernel 4.1.13 LTS in Second Test Build

          Today, December 14, the Parsix GNU/Linux developers announced the release and immediate availability for download of the second TEST build of their upcoming Parsix GNU/Linux 8.5 “Atticus” computer operating system.

        • Canonical/Ubuntu

          • Ubuntu Touch to Get FM Support for Aquaris e4.5 and E5 HD First

            A couple of developers have started to work on bringing FM support to the Ubuntu phones, and they already made some progress, but it’s more complicated than it sounds.

          • OnePlus One Ubuntu Touch Developer Is Helping Other Projects Do the Same

            The community is working on a OnePlus One Ubuntu Touch port, and the developer who’s doing the heavy lifting is also trying to help other people port the OS to their devices.

          • Meizu MX4 Ubuntu Edition Project Seems to Be Still Alive

            The Meizu MX4 Ubuntu Edition is the elephant in the room, and it looks like people don’t want to talk about it. It’s been pulled from sales, and it’s virtually invisible on social media, but all hope is not yet lost.

          • Mycroft Is Now an Official Ubuntu IoT Partner

            Mycroft is a home automation Linux-based device that promises to change the way we interact with our homes. The guys who are making this hardware decided to show us how it’s made.

          • Ubuntu Bugs That Won’t Go Away

            I grew up on a farm and ranch up until I was fourteen. It’s a tough life, best suited for tough people who can beat their environment into submission and produce the results needed to thrive. Should I ever have displayed the poor judgement to complain about something within earshot of my dad, I would get the same advice every time.

          • Flavours and Variants

            • Linux Mint 17.3 Cinnamon Review

              Linux Mint is among the most popular GNU/Linux-based operating systems. Although DistroWatch is not a metric of popularity, Linux Mint has claimed the #1 ranking on the website, which means it’s the most sought after distro on the site.

            • Monthly News – November 2015

              Our apologies for posting these news so late. Since the website and forums went down, we’ve been hit by two new server issues. Two of our repository servers lost their hard drives. That’s a total of 3 servers going down in just a few weeks. This time around we had full backups though and we were able to minimize downtime (no downtime at all on the Mint and LMDE2 repositories, a few hours yesterday on the LMDE 1 repositories). We’re eager to resume work on Linux Mint but at the moment most of our focus is still on server administration, on recovery, on configuration but also on making sure we’re stronger and issues like these have less of an impact on us going forward.

            • Linux Mint 17.3 OEM images available

              Reminder: OEM images are for computer vendors and manufacturers. They allow Linux Mint to be “pre-installed” on a machine which is then used by another person than the one who performed the installation. After an OEM installation, the computer is set in such a way that the next reboot features a small setup screen where the new user/customer has the ability to choose his/her username, password, keyboard layout and locale.

  • Devices/Embedded

Free Software/Open Source

Leftovers

  • Manchester City will be happy with draw but London clubs get rough ride

    For the three English clubs left in the Champions League there must be a sense of deja vu about the draw for the last 16 but not a great deal of satisfaction. Arsenal’s supporters could be forgiven for thinking the worst after drawing Barcelona, with the prospect of going out at this stage for the sixth year in a row. Manchester City, for the second season in succession, will not be allowed to take fans to a Champions League tie because of the racism of others and the bad news for travellers on the Paris Métro is that Chelsea are on their way back to the French capital.

  • Yahoo told: cut 9,000 of your 10,700 staff

    Yahoo is facing shareholder pressure to pursue other alternatives besides a complex spin-off of its internet operations while chief executive Marissa Mayer struggles to revive the company’s revenue growth.

  • Las Vegas Review-Journal Now Owned By… ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

    The last time we wrote about the Las Vegas Review-Journal — the largest newspaper in Nevada — it was owned by Stephens Media and was making headlines for using the LVRJ as a copyright troll, pretending to sell its copyrights to a company called Righthaven. That scam fell apart when it was discovered that Righthaven didn’t really own the copyrights it was suing over. Since then, the LVRJ has changed hands a couple times. Stephens Media sold the paper to New Media Investment Group earlier this year. And then, last week, it was announced that “New Media Investment Group” had sold the newspaper to News + Media Capital Group LLC, for $140 million. News + Media Capital Group LLC is a brand new Delaware-based company, and no one has the slightest clue who they are, including all the folks working for the LVRJ.

  • Practical guide for avoiding burnout and living a happier life

    As open source fans, we tend to spend a lot of time curled up in front of our computers. Many of us we work in front of computers during the day, and some of us even work on or with open source projects, too. If you are anything like me, spending an entire day in front of a screen and then spending most of the evening there, too, is not uncommon. Today is a good example: I started work at 8:00AM, and at 8:21PM I am starting to write this article…

  • Microsoft apologizes for riling OneDrive users, restores some free storage space on request

    Microsoft on Friday apologized for how it conveyed last month’s decision to slash OneDrive storage allotments, and restored the 15GB of free cloud storage space to current users who asked for it. But it did not back down from its determination to eliminate the unlimited allowance.

    “We are all genuinely sorry for the frustration this decision has caused and for the way it was communicated,” wrote Douglas Pearce, a group program manager for OneDrive, in a message that shut down a massive plea on Microsoft’s own website for the restoration of the allotments.

  • Health/Nutrition

    • United Nations agency gives EU a tobacco warning

      The United Nations public health agency in charge of tobacco control has warned EU policymakers to keep their distance from industry as they consider reforms to fight cigarette smuggling.

      The head of the World Health Organization’s Framework Convention on Tobacco Control secretariat, Vera Da Costa e Silva, wrote senior European Commission officials earlier this month, saying the EU’s close working relationship with tobacco companies to fight cigarette smuggling may violate Europe’s international commitments.

    • ‘On the Back of a Cigarette Packet’ – Standardised Packaging Legislation and the Tobacco Industry’s Fundamental Right to (Intellectual) Property

      Standardised packaging (also known as plain packaging) legislation has recently been adopted in some states as a tobacco control measure. Under such laws, tobacco products must be sold in drab coloured packaging without branding other than a written indication of the name under which the product is sold. Its aim is to reduce the attraction of tobacco products, particularly to young smokers, and to prevent advertising imagery from interfering with prominent mandatory textual and visual health warnings. In March 2015, the Standardised Packaging of Tobacco Products Regulations 2015 received Parliamentary approval in the United Kingdom. The tobacco industry vigorously opposed their introduction. Amongst other objections, it claimed that the restrictions on branding introduced under the Regulations violate its fundamental right of property under Art 1 of the First Protocol of the European Convention on Human Rights and Art. 17 of the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union because they deprive it of its ability to use marks, designs and inventions protected by intellectual property law. In this article, this argument is tested by reference to the case law of the European Court of Human Rights and the Court of Justice of the EU. It is demonstrated that the absolutist view of property rights promoted by the Industry is very different from that prevailing in European fundamental rights law and that, as a result, the Industry’s suggestion that the Regulations violate A1P1 and Art. 17 is seriously misleading.

  • Security

  • Defence/Police/Secrecy/Aggression

    • Peter Dale Scott and David Talbot

      David Talbot’s latest book, The Devil’s Chessboard: Allen Dulles, the CIA and the Rise of America’s Secret Government, examines the post-WWII U.S. intelligence sector and the power it wields, by following the career of Wall Street lawyer, diplomat and spymaster Allen Dulles. Talbot discussed his new book with fellow author Peter Dale Scott, in a public event at the Mechanics’ Institute Library in San Francisco on December 2, 2015. Talbot says he believes CIA assassins were responsible for the death of John F. Kennedy.

    • U.S. Visa Process Missed San Bernardino Wife’s Zealotry on Social Media

      Had the authorities found the posts years ago, they might have kept her out of the country. But immigration officials do not routinely review social media as part of their background checks, and there is a debate inside the Department of Homeland Security over whether it is even appropriate to do so.

  • Transparency Reporting

  • Environment/Energy/Wildlife

    • Pumped beyond limits, many U.S. aquifers in decline

      Just before 3 a.m., Jay Garetson’s phone buzzed on the bedside table. He picked it up and read the text: “Low Pressure Alert.”

      He felt a jolt of stress and his chest tightened. He dreaded what that automated message probably meant: With the water table dropping, another well on his family’s farm was starting to suck air.

      The Garetson family has been farming in the plains of southwestern Kansas for four generations, since 1902. Now they face a hard reality. The groundwater they depend on is disappearing. Their fields could wither. Their farm might not survive for the next generation.

    • Rampant Indonesian fires causing havoc in Papua

      Greenpeace says the impact of rampant forest and peatland fires in Indonesia’s Papua region is having a devastating effect on West Papuan society.

      Fires from land clearance on drained peatland have caused rampant fires across the republic including in Papua, catapulting Indonesia to being one of the world’s largest emitter’s of greenhouse gasses.

      Greenpeace’s Indonesia forest campaigner Yuyun Indradi says the fires have belched carbon haze across the region which is a health hazard for many communities.

    • How Indonesian Fires Are Affecting Global Climate

      Raging fires in Indonesia’s forests and peat lands since July this year are precipitating a climate and public-health catastrophe with repercussions across local, regional and global levels, experts told IndiaSpend.

      Acrid smoke and haze have enveloped Indonesia, Singapore and Malaysia, and have reached Thailand, choking people, reducing visibility and spiking respiratory illnesses, according to Susan Minnemeyer, Mapping and Data Manager for Washington-based World Resources Institute’s (WRI) Global Forest Watch Fires initiative.

    • North Carolina citizenry defeat pernicious Big Solar plan to suck up the Sun

      The citizens of Woodland, N.C. have spoken loud and clear: They don’t want none of them highfalutin solar panels in their good town. They scare off the kids. “All the young people are going to move out,” warned Bobby Mann, a local resident concerned about the future of his burg. Worse, Mann said, the solar panels would suck up all the energy from the Sun.

      Another resident—a retired science teacher, no less—expressed concern that a proposed solar farm would block photosynthesis, and prevent nearby plants from growing. Jane Mann then went on to add that there seemed to have been a lot of cancer deaths in the area, and that no one could tell her solar panels didn’t cause cancer. “I want information,” Mann said. “Enough is enough.”

      These comments were reported not in The Onion, but rather by the Roanoke-Chowan News-Herald. They came during a Woodland Town Council meeting in which Strata Solar Company sought to rezone an area northeast of the town, off of US Highway 258, to build a solar farm. The council not only rejected the proposal, it went a step further, voting for a complete moratorium on solar farms.

    • [Satire] Koch Brothers Get Each Other Same Election For Christmas

      Chuckling and shaking their heads as they described their annual family gift exchange to reporters, Koch Industries executives Charles and David Koch confirmed Wednesday they had unwittingly gotten each other the same election for Christmas this year.

      The two brothers and energy industry magnates, who for decades have gathered to share a holiday meal and open presents next to the Christmas tree in Charles’ Wichita home, admitted they were a bit embarrassed to learn they had each given the other U.S. Rep. Lee Zeldin’s congressional seat, but said they ultimately shrugged off the coincidence.

  • Finance

    • Poorest areas have low student debt, highest defaults

      The study comes as student loan debt continues to grow nationwide. Outstanding student loan balances increased by $13 billion to $1.2 trillion as of Sept. 30. That’s more overall debt than consumers owe on credit cards or auto loans. Nearly 12% of the money owed on student loans is 90 days or more delinquent in the third quarter of 2015.

      In the federal loan portfolio, which makes up $896 billion of the $1.2-trillion overall student loan debt, 20% of all borrowers, owing 13% of the debt, are in default, or more than 90 days late on a payment.

    • Prof. Wolff on The David Pakman Show: “Will Automation End “Full Employment?”

      Professor Wolff joins David Pakman to discuss the the future of employment in the context of automation and technological unemployment.

  • PR/AstroTurf/Lobbying

    • NRA Uses The San Bernardino Mass Shooting To Compare Liberals To Terrorists

      A commentary video from the National Rifle Association labeled those who called for more than thoughts and prayers following the mass shooting in San Bernardino, California the “Godless Left” and claimed that they “march hand-in-hand” with terrorists “toward the possible, purposeful destruction of us all.”

  • Censorship

    • UK ISPs Unleash 85+ New Blocks on ‘Pirate’ Domains

      Internet service providers in the UK have begun blocking around 85 new ‘pirate’ domains following demands from rightsholders. All six major ISPs will implement the ban which targets, among other things, various clones, proxies and mirrors associated with The Pirate Bay plus major torrent and MP3 download sites.

  • Privacy

    • Twitter Says Possible State Sponsored Hack

      There is no indication what “government” Twitter suspects is connected with the hack, but online news sources are speculating the usual suspects, China and North Korea. PCWorld reports that many of the account holders receiving the Twitter notices are “privacy advocates and security researchers, some of whom tweet under pseudonyms.” Reuters is also reporting that Google and Facebook have also started warning users of possible state-sponsored attacks, but offers no details.

    • Let’s encrypt — because we really ought to

      Last week, Let’s Encrypt came out of beta. Let’s Encrypt is a collaborative effort that provides free SSL/TLS certificates for use by anyone with a valid Internet domain. It’s also a trusted certificate authority, and it’s currently issuing 90-day certificates free of charge. The upside is free SSL/TLS certificates. The downside is that 90-day expiration, though there are methods to renew the certificates automatically as the expiration approaches.

      Further, the tools provided by Let’s Encrypt make it pretty much effortless to implement. The Let’s Encrypt Python tool available at GitHub runs on a Web server, requests a valid certificate, and even does the Apache configuration for you, all with a pretty ncurses UI. Basically, you run this on a host with a bunch of non-SSL domains, and when it’s done, they’re all secured with free valid certificates.

    • A Victory for Privacy and Transparency: HRW v. DEA

      In a victory for millions of people in the U.S. who have placed telephone calls to locations overseas, EFF and Human Rights Watch have confirmed that the Drug Enforcement Administration’s practice of collecting those records in bulk has stopped and that the only bulk database of those records has been destroyed.

  • Civil Rights

    • Blair and Straw face questions over complicity in Shaker Aamer’s treatment

      In his first interview since returning home to London in October after being detained without charge for 14 years in the US military facility in Cuba, British resident Aamer suggested the former prime minister and the former foreign secretary were aware that he was being tortured.

      “The not unreasonable allegation that Shaker Aamer makes is that both the [then] prime minister Tony Blair and … Jack Straw must have known not just about his illegal abduction, but also about his torture at the hands of the US authorities,” Salmond told BBC One’s The Andrew Marr Show.

      The SNP foreign affairs spokesman and former Scottish first minister said that “as with so many other things”, Blair and Straw had a great deal to answer for. “They have to be asked the straight question of how could they possibly not have known about the fate that had befallen a British citizen,” he said.

      “Governments have many responsibilities, but the primary responsibility of all governments is to keep their own citizens safe from harm, and governments aren’t meant to collaborate on the illegal abduction and the torture of one of their own citizens. So both the then prime minister and home secretary have to face up and tell us exactly what they knew and when they knew it.”

    • Teenagers under 16 face being banned from social media and email under EU laws

      Teenagers under the age of 16 could be banned from Facebook, Snapchat, Instagram and email if they don’t have parental permission, under last-minute changes to EU laws.

      The European Union is on the verge of pushing through new regulations that would raise the age of consent for websites to use personal data from 13 to 16.

      Officials quitely amended proposed data protection laws last week to increase the age and put the EU out of step with rules in other parts of the world.

    • Publicity hound, coward, liar: Whistleblowers are inevitably demonized by their enemies — Edward Snowden is no exception

      The most powerful gun in the damage-control arsenal isn’t truth. It is demonization—a vicious assault on the character of the whistleblower in order to destroy credibility and distract from the message. The damage controller’s bag of tricks is as old as Machiavelli.

      Find anything that borders on illegal behavior in the whistleblower’s past, such as court convictions, messy divorces, arrest reports, domestic violence complaints, a history of alcohol, child support issues, or drug abuse. Attack the whistleblower’s motive by alleging that he or she was driven by malice, revenge, deceit, greed, or hunger for publicity. Dig up colleagues, neighbors, and fellow workers who are willing to say, true or untrue, that the whistleblower is vindictive, sneaky, dishonest, prone to exaggerate, not a team player, disruptive in the workplace. Allege that the whistleblower is incompetent at his or her job, cannot be trusted with responsibility, or lacks leadership skills. Accuse the whistleblower of being a thief who stole proprietary documents, illegally revealed company secrets, broke a confidentiality agreement. Label the whistleblower mentally unstable.

      Edward Snowden—“the world’s most wanted man by the world’s most powerful government”—wasn’t surprised that his enemies tried to assassinate his character. He expected as much. As he told Greenwald and the Guardian, “I know the government will demonize me. They’ll say I violated the Espionage Act. That I committed grave crimes. That I aided America’s enemies. That I endangered national security. I’m sure they’ll grab every incident they can find from my past and probably will exaggerate or even fabricate some to demonize me as much as possible. . . . What keeps a person passive and compliant is fear of repercussions. . . . I decided a while ago that I can live with whatever they do to me. The only thing I can’t live with is knowing that I did nothing.”

    • Another Trustworthy Confidential Informant Allegedly Tied To Multiple Bogus Drug Arrests

      The only thing as trustworthy as a cop’s testimony are statements made by confidential informants. These are used to secure warrants and, occasionally, as supporting evidence in prosecutions. Never mind the fact that confidential informants are often career criminals who carry with them the innate desire to stay out of jail.

    • Supreme Court Again Makes It Clear: Companies Can Erode Your Legal Rights Via Mouse Print

      For years, AT&T worked tirelessly to erode its customers’ legal rights, using mouse print in its terms of service preventing consumers from participating in lawsuits against the company. Instead, customers were forced into binding arbitration, where arbitrators employed by the company unsurprisingly rule in their employer’s favor a huge percentage of the time. Initially, the lower courts derided this greasy behavior for what it was: an attempt by AT&T to eliminate customer legal rights and save a buck. And with AT&T’s massive history of fraud, you can imagine AT&T was looking to save quite a bit.

    • New U.S. FAA rule requires drone owners to register by Feb 19

      The Federal Aviation Administration, responding to heightened concerns about rogue drone flights near airports, unveiled a pre-Christmas rule on Monday requiring drone hobbyists as young as 13 years old to register their unmanned aircraft.

  • Intellectual Monopolies

    • Copyrights

      • Grumpy Cat Sues Coffee Maker For Copyright Infringement

        Grumpy Cat is not happy. Her owners have filed a lawsuit at a California federal court, accusing a coffee maker of exploiting the cat’s copyrights and trademarks without permission. In addition to hundreds of thousands of dollars in damages, Grumpy Cat’s owners also want control of the coffee maker’s grumpycat.com domain name.

12.14.15

IRS Reveals That Microsoft Effectively Stole Tens of Billions of Dollars of Public Money Using a Network of Tax Havens

Posted in Finance at 5:03 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

“The taxpayers are sending congressmen on expensive trips abroad. It might be worth it except they keep coming back.”

–Will Rogers

Summary: Microsoft’s long history of tax evasion is finally taking some toll as the US tax authority, the IRS, is going after Microsoft and unravels its international network (or syndicate) of tax avoidance

WE find it amazing (not just interesting) to see a branch of the US government, the IRS, going after ‘big fish’ (for a change). These bodies or branches of government are usually corrupted enough to overlook abuses of powerful entities that are closely connected to the government and thus pose a threat to the career of anyone ‘daring’ to expose and litigate. Remember what happened to the judge who threatened to split Microsoft?

“Remember what happened to the judge who threatened to split Microsoft?”Microsoft is not an ordinary company. Remember that Microsoft actually threatened the IRS [1, 2] for merely ‘daring’ to look into (and potentially expose) organised tax evasion by these arrogant thugs at Microsoft. Microsoft’s avoidance of taxes is a long-explored subject at Techrights, so we are delighted to see the IRS finally tackling the issue. It’s well overdue and belated (by several decades). Never forget that Microsoft literally threatened the IRS for merely doing its job, which was to expose tax evasion. The poor little IRS thought it was big enough to take on Microsoft (like DOJ taking on Wall Street), whereupon Microsoft bullied it with deterrence lawsuits. Interestingly enough, please note that the same legal firm which lobbies alongside Microsoft on the patent front is the same one threatening to sue me over EPO coverage. The EPO started sending threatening legal letters only after (and only regarding) EPO abuses implicating Microsoft. How will Microsoft respond to the IRS other than threaten the IRS with lawsuits?

“Microsoft’s avoidance of taxes is a long-explored subject at Techrights, so we are delighted to see the IRS finally tackling the issue.”Matt Day’s detailed article about it (in the Seattle Times) says: “Court documents in a case between Microsoft and the IRS provide a detailed look at how the company, like other multinational corporations, has created a complex structure that allows it to minimize its tax bill.”

It is worth noting that the Seattle Times was paid by Bill Gates and it showed, so this article may be ‘risky’ for their financial lifeline. We have already shown how sites which receive Bill Gates’ money shortly thereafter remove criticism of Microsoft (even retrospectively!).

There’s a spurious part about “other multinational corporations”. Saying that a lot of other companies (not under IRS probe) evade tax is a Microsoft-serving evasion tactic. Microsoft is, in our experience, more criminal and corrupt than counterparts. We have provided ample evidence of this over the years.

“Remember when a whistleblower exposed Microsoft corruption (financial fraud to be precise) and Microsoft paid him $4 million to shut up and then scuttled the investigation with the SEC?”What the IRS says about Microsoft isn’t a shocking revelation but perhaps the first time (in recent history) that those in positions of (relatively) high power are “brave” enough to say the truth. Remember when a whistleblower exposed Microsoft corruption (financial fraud to be precise) and Microsoft paid him $4 million to shut up and then scuttled the investigation with the SEC? That was back in the late 90s. Microsoft’s financial situation isn’t what it seems and the company does not operate like it publicly claims. Microsoft has been mostly a piggy-bank for Bill Gates, who himself does not pay tax. Bill Gates is avoiding billions in taxes by pretending he runs a charity. Mark Zuckerberg is to latest to imitate this nasty PR ploy and Microsoft was perhaps one of the earliest software giants (if not the pioneer) when it comes to massive-scale tax evasion. Many software companies just thought, “hey, we can do this too.”

“From 2001 to 2006,” Day explains, “Microsoft completed a series of intracompany deals that, in exchange for upfront payments, shifted the rights to software code and other assets developed largely in the U.S., to subsidiaries in Bermuda, Ireland, Singapore and Puerto Rico.

“When Bill Gates bribes large newspapers they just tend to focus on tax avoidance by companies other than Microsoft.”“Those deals reduced Microsoft’s cumulative tax bill in future years by tens of billions of dollars, according to court documents and an analysis of the company’s filings.”

Read it again: “tens of billions of dollars” (and the IRS usually just cracks down on businesses over a few thousands of dollars).

Singapore, as it turns out, continues to enrich itself (by “itself” we mean few corrupt politicians and businessmen) by facilitating such tax evasion, much like Switzerland (Singapore seems to have become the Zurich of Asia, and that’s not meant to be a compliment).

Day has posted some short summaries of his article in Twitter, noting that “on taxes, Microsoft behaves like much of the rest of big Corporate America: they’ve tried to limit the cash they send to governments.”

“Why did it take two decades for the IRS to do something about it?”No, as explained above, Microsoft is quite unique. When Bill Gates bribes large newspapers they just tend to focus on tax avoidance by companies other than Microsoft. We have given examples of this, e.g. The Guardian.

Day says that “Microsoft spent 20 years building a network of subsidiaries that, among other things, avoided a lot of taxes.”

Why did it take two decades for the IRS to do something about it? Could it be Microsoft’s influence in the US government? If it wasn’t a government-embedded company like Microsoft, one would call it organised crime and it would be front page news (many tens of billions of dollars in tax evasion).

“If it wasn’t a government-embedded company like Microsoft, one would call it organised crime and it would be front page news (many tens of billions of dollars in tax evasion).”Day says that “Microsoft officially sells most products from Ireland, Puerto Rico or Singapore. In the U.S., most sales start in Nevada (few biz taxes).”

Yes, and guess who’s facilitating this. It is well documented, as some people have shown for many years, that Microsoft put former executives as moles inside the local government, perhaps in order to facilitate tax-related crime and send everything from Washington to Reno. We named the people involved about half a decade ago. Where was the IRS all this time? It couldn’t defend itself by saying that it hadn’t noticed. People from inside Microsoft complained about this.

Day says: “Each of Microsoft’s global hubs is designed to place some profit in Bermuda, the island tax haven. It’s unclear how much.”

“We named the people involved about half a decade ago.”Well, it’s time to investigate. This is a big case implicating “big” people and involving a lot of money. Don’t expect any arrests though. Rich people rarely go to prison.

Day adds: “That structure, created ~2001-2006, saved Microsoft tens of billions of dollars in taxes. Likely 100s of mill saved in Washington state.”

According to a campaigner from Microsoft — one who left Microsoft and then became a vocal critic of Microsoft’s tax evasion (he even created a whole Web site about it) — we’re talking about well over a billion, not “100s of mill”, ‘saved’ (means evaded) in Washington state. Half a decade ago it was estimated at well over a billion, so maybe it’s already $2 billion.

“It’s a massive international racket and we hope that the IRS will get to the bottom of it rather than spend a lot of time going after “easy” cases and crushing relatively poor people.”As we have said here before, based on over a decade of research, Microsoft is not an ordinary company. It’s more like a clique of power-hungry people. Microsoft continues to conveniently masquerade as “software company” when in reality it has patent trolls (satellites) bullying practicing firms and funneling untold amounts of money to offshore divisions and subsidiaries such as “licensing” (e.g. Android licensing). It’s a massive international racket and we hope that the IRS will get to the bottom of it rather than spend a lot of time going after “easy” cases and crushing relatively poor people.

Apple, to its ‘credit’ [pun intended], seems to have learned Microsoft’s dirty tricks and a new article from the financial press suggests that Apple too is in trouble over taxes, at least in Europe. Well, are governments around the world strong enough to tackle the Big Evaders? As in Big Business? Whose side are they on? Let’s see if we have a real functioning democracy.

The financial crisis of 2008 showed whose side governments tend to be on when they not only failed to arrest a lot of (likely) guilty bankers but actually took taxpayers’ money and gave it out to these bankers as a “bailout” gift. █

Watch Out For the EPO-SUEPO Parity Spin

Posted in Europe, Patents at 3:54 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

The latest media strategy on the face of it…

The Plot to Kill Google
See this classic old article for parallels

Summary: Benoît Battistelli’s EPO uses a propaganda strategy which we are very much familiar with (like Microsoft trying to cast other companies, e.g. Google in the Scroogled PR/lobbying campaign, as ‘equally evil’)

LAST week we warned about the greenwashing spin from the incredibly unpopular EPO (it continues even this week), but a more disturbing spin that we are seeing right now, both in press articles and in mysterious anonymous comments, is that SUEPO is basically “as bad as” (or as violent as, e.g. "armed" "Nazis", "snipers", or Mafia) the EPO’s management. That’s laughable, but if this kind of spin is repeated often enough, then some people might actually believe it.

“That’s laughable, but if this kind of spin is repeated often enough, then some people might actually believe it.”We don’t know if this is some kind of a plot which came about in boardroom brainstorming with FTI Consulting (a nasty US-based firm that is paid a obscene amount of money from the EPO right now to poison the media), but let’s just say that this kind of spin warrants a rebuttal.

Junge Welt published an article on the 11th of December (Friday), a day after the latest Munich protest, and it is titled “Unrechtsstaat im Staate”. We still hope that a translation will turn up as the article is in German, but we imagine that it also airs the EPO’s spin, supposedly for ‘balance’.

“Is this related to the EPO’s PR campaigns, coinciding with threats to sue publishers?”One person in Twitter says “take some popcorn and enjoy reading the comments” in IP Kat, but as we noted about a week ago, there is an increasingly-distracting element in these anonymous comments. It is discrediting critics of the EPO and distracting readers from the real issues and the real scandals. Is this related to the EPO’s PR campaigns, coinciding with threats to sue publishers? Again, we can’t tell for sure, but it seems quite probable.

The one downside of comments is that there is no quality control, not even a scoring system. IP Kat has a lot of factually-incorrect comments, usually the pro-EPO ones. Well, we don’t want to repost too many comments from there, but there is clearly some kind of spin going on (whether paid-for or gratis), culminating this morning with the following two responses. The first one says (responding to the pro-EPO “nero”):

The “dental non-issue” is only a “non-issue” inside nero’s head.

The ostensibly innocuous “top-up insurance” is very clearly a “sweetener” for the members of the smaller Eastern European delegations. The fact that nobody had needed it for the last 40 years and that it was introduced at a time of “austerity” and “cutbacks” (for EPO staff) should be enough to make any objective observer suspicious. Not to mention the fact that it was introduced by VP4 who has quite a reputation as a confectionary expert from his previous career in the Croatian State Intellectual Property Office.

If there really is nothing to hide then I’m sure that we can look forward to publication in due course of the figures of the number of incidents of “urgent dental treatment” of AC members and the costs involved. All in the interests of transparency …

nero is doing a good job as a presidential sock-puppet but like BB he has obviously never heard of the “Streisand effect”.

Here is another:

I am very sad, I would even say exasperated when reading comments that tend to imply that BB and SUEPO are behaving in a similar (bad) manner. This appears to be an absurd attempt to prove that, if BB is behaving in a poor fashion the same applies to the trade union.

Well, may be there are just a couple of heartless persons out there not aware of what is going on at epo.
The union SUEPO, set up about 4 decades ago, is committed to defend the interests of the staff and by the very same way the interests of the epo. Remember the epo would be nothing without his highly skilled staff. A couple of persons, team BB, is systematically and fiercely attacking the epo staff. Team BB started with SUEPO, imposing new rules for strikes, for electing Staff reps, then continued harassing sick staff, imposing an infamous ” house arrest”, and subsequently attacks the benefits of the pensioners and imposes unachievable working conditions for examiners etc….This being just a short list of the “achievements”.

Now please tell me, who is behaving in a poor manner?

SUEPO is trying to counter the systematic destruction of the EPO by team Battistelli. In my opinion it his an honourable task for a trade union. As a reward 3 leading members are on the runway to be fired.

Therefore putting the leading team of the epo and the trade union on the same level is mala fide
Last but not least: the “non dental issue” is a mere statement of facts: SUEPO didn’t write the minutes of the quoted AC session. AC members get free dental treatment. Fact! Whether AC members misuse this benefit is not the point here. Why should they, anyway?

Notice how the pro-EPO snippets are nitpicking the 'dental' issue, which is far from the main scandal anyway. It’s not entirely new, either. Florian Müller mentioned it last week when he wrote: “The closest thing to corruption–and “closest” is an overstatement–that I wrote about was that the EPO allegedly pays for the visits of its supervisors (especially those from relatively poor countries) to Munich doctors.”

“Watch out for two kinds of very similar spin.”This links to something he wrote about it a year ago, titled “European Patent Office pays for health insurance of members of its oversight body, staff union says”.

Watch out for two kinds of very similar spin. One is about “similarly bad” arguments from SUEPO and another about “similarly violent” SUEPO. Well, for a number of days now (if not a few weeks), the EPO’s spokespeople too have been trying to portray the biggest staff union as aggressive or at least equally aggressive (as the EPO’s management), even though its actions are largely reactionary. They’re reactions to the management’s attacks on staff (humans) and on human rights themselves. █

Heise Article Tackles EPO ‘Feud’ (Union Busting in Disguise), Techrights’ Remarks Follow

Posted in Deception, Europe, Patents at 2:57 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

There is a clever and nasty new media strategy, aided by evil peripheral firms

Summary: Benoît Battistelli’s EPO is engaged in an information war — a war of spin and deception in the mass media (a new media strategy on the face of it) and we respond to it below because many of the EPO’s arguments are either fictional or defamatory (or both)

AN EPO article which we mentioned here the other day, an article from Heise (largest news source in Germany, at least for IT), has just been translated. An accurate English translation is formally published by SUEPO, the largest EPO union whose existence predates even mine and the EPO’s (almost my parents’ existence too, if SUEPO’s predecessor/previous identity is also considered). SUEPO (SU stands for Staff Union) isn’t some “new union on the block”, it has a very long history and a huge number of members, who make it a legitimate representation of staff’s views. Its members are very well educated; many are doctors from all across Europe. There is a very well-funded (about €73,000 per month) reputation laundering campaign going on (in conjunction with union-busting with outside consultants), so we expected to see some myths making their way into the article. We hereby rebut several such myths, having researched this topic for many hundreds of hours (if not more than a thousand hours).

For completeness and for future reference we decided to make an HTML copy of the translation and highlight the curious (or relatively new) bits — those that add crucial and/or new information. Our response is at the bottom.

European Patent Office: Conflict between Management and Staff rapidly coming to a Head

The European Patent Office has suspended the Staff Union leadership; now the situation threatens to escalate. The Office President has branded the staff representatives as “Mafia”; they speak of “institutional violence”.

The atmosphere between the management cadre and the staff union at the European Patent Office (EPO) is getting more and more toxic. In the dispute over the efficiency drive by Office President, Benoît Battistelli, he has now launched a venomous flood of rhetoric on the international staff union of the institution (SUEPO) and challenged their legitimacy.

Atmosphere of Terror

Frenchman Battistelli is quoted by the online service “Politico” as insisting that the union is not a representative body but a “Mafia-like” organization. At the same time he refutes the allegation that he himself has created an “atmosphere of terror”. One member of staff had anonymously claimed that the staff felt they were being “squeezed like lemons”, which was affecting their health.

Over the past three and a quarter years, five of the around 7000 staff members have committed suicide, the last incident being in August. Suepo are insisting that the deaths should be independently investigated, in the light of the changed working conditions. Battistelli has been the chief executive of the Office since 2010.

An EPO spokesperson has complained to the WIPR service that, on a lower level, leading management and executive personnel have been increasingly confronted with “personal attacks”, excessive references in blogs and leaflets, and even “calls for violence”.

Cheap accusations

Of course, the union is not going to take this lying down. These “cheap accusations” are blatant inventions to arouse sympathy for the Office leadership, now that it is increasingly coming under closer scrutiny by the media. But it is not the managers who are the victims; on the contrary, it is they who are introducing “institutional violence”, in particular against those who have not declared themselves to be in agreement with “certain regulations”. Overall, this tactic is said to be being used to challenge the integrity and worth of honest employees, who have in no way deserved this.

Suepo has again called for a “peaceful demonstration” on Thursday at the Office headquarters in Munich. The protest is aimed in particular at the “sustained attacks” against staff representatives, which are said to have now reached a peak with the suspension and the initiation of disciplinary measures against the union executive.

Last Thursday, and the week before, according to figures from Suepo and the police, some 2000 staff members have already taken part in similar gatherings. The EPO union has support from colleagues at the Office for the Harmonization of the Internal Market (OHIM), the counterpart to the Patent Office in matters relating to Community trademarks. In a press release the staff representatives there expressed their “deep concern” about the situation at the EPO, which needs to be addressed urgently.

Fear of retribution

The Administrative Council of the Office is apparently now being approached, so that union officials can once again address the concerns of the staff members without fear of repercussions. The additional protection of their votes, which are critical to the issue, is said to be essential if an abuse of power is to be prevented. The EPO leadership is accusing the suspended Chair of the Union, Elizabeth Hardon, among other things, of having talked too much, and to have threatened and bullied Union members.

In the local (heise) online “Accusation letter”, the talk is of “sniper” methods, said to have been used against Hardon. As well as that, it seems evident that even the private E-mail accounts of the SUEPO executive have been monitored.

There had already been earlier complaints of a comparatively new “Investigation Unit” of the Office having used keyloggers and cameras and of having worked with somewhat murky service providers such as the British “Control Risk Group”, to spy on staff members. Hardon herself refutes the accusations against her entirely, and has lodged an appeal with the EPO data protection supervisory authority.

Waving patents through in a rush

Battistelli has meanwhile lavished praise in a local (heise) online circular on the ongoing efforts by the employees, which he claims have led to increasing effectiveness and greater productivity. In concordance with the new performance-based assessment system, in 2015 a total of 18.4 million Euro was distributed by way of bonus payments to the workforce. This is said to be 20 percent more than in the previous year. Suepo contends that the remunerations are hardly an issue, and in any event are only a “perverse incentive” not to examine patent applications adequately and wave them through as rapidly as possible. (kbe)

Points that Techrights wishes to make very briefly about this article:

  1. It’s not SUEPO that’s “Mafia”, Battistelli is merely projecting to give an illusion of parity (as if both sides are aggressive and subversive). This seems like the latest PR/media strategy as we’re seeing it quite a lot these days.
  2. The incredibly cliquish Team Battistelli challenges the legitimacy of SUEPO simply because, by Battistelli’s warped standards, opposition is neither warranted nor allowed. He is a spoiled brat from a rich people’s school and it still shows. Contrast that with Alison Brimelow. What a spectacular difference!
  3. Team Battistelli has been trying to paint itself as preventer of suicides and blame such tragedies on SUEPO; what a nerve they have…
  4. The “calls for violence” which Team Battistelli speaks of are fictional. There is no evidence of them. We wrote several articles about this and it is conveniently related to point (1) above. Journalists oughtn’t print such nonsense without fact-checking.
  5. The "sniper" narrative is a shameful personal attack, intended to bias or incite the reader of a poor (and otherwise very narrow/limited) set of accusations against Hardon
  6. With Control Risks Group in the mix, we urge people to encrypt or use Tor. Control Risks Group isn’t just some ordinary company/firm; it’s now a military-grade union busting-service (with reputation for that in Europe).
  7. SUEPO is right to suggest that patent applications are now being examined rather poorly. Staff is put under pressure to grant in bulk or otherwise risk losing the Christmas vacation

The last point suggests to us that the Team Battistelli-led EPO is gradually emulating the notorious USPTO (very deeply involved in and dominated by large corporations, with terrible grant rates).

“We wrote thousands of articles about the USPTO and we have great (and growing) fear that those same disasters (and patent predators) will reach Europe.”This new blog post titled “Another depressing year for patent law?” says a lot about how practitioners in the US view the USPTO. Watch how this US patent lawyer, Lawrence B. Ebert, quoting Larry Downes as saying: “On just one day in November, for example, over 200 new patent lawsuits were filed, as plaintiffs rushed to beat a change in federal procedure that could require more specific claims. Most were from companies that buy up patents of dubious quality and use them to extract nuisance settlements from actual innovators.”

Is this what Europe is hoping to achieve? We wrote thousands of articles about the USPTO and we have great (and growing) fear that those same disasters (and patent predators) will reach Europe. Some already do. █

Battistelli’s Furious Love Affair With French Power: Part I

Posted in Europe, Finance, Patents at 8:35 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Who can possibly stop such a sloeber?

President Battistelli

Summary: Benoît Battistelli’s connections to rich and powerful people in France (and also internationally) are explored, with the aim of explaining the EPO’s current sordid state of affairs, which sometimes seems uninterruptible, no matter the severity of EPO abuses and respected courts’ rulings on them

Several days ago we dropped some hints about this new long series about the EPO's current President. He is connected not just to Christine Lagarde but to a wide array of people whose power is beyond doubt and by far exceeds Lagarde’s. A year ago, on December 12th (2014) to be precise, we mentioned Battistelli’s roots at École nationale d’administration, which was created in 1945 by Charles de Gaulle and boasts a lot of powerful people. François Hollande, Emmanuel Macron, Jacques Chirac and many others are among the better known alumni.

“Our story begins with Battistelli and Lagarde.”In order to understand the EPO‘s ability to get away with almost every conceivable abuse (quite the sloeber as Belgian TV put this) it is imperative that we speak about who it is really serving and who it is run by.

Earlier this month we started to research the sloeber’s background — that’s Battistelli by the way — and investigated various allegations, asking numerous sources around the world in order to verify and ensure nothing leaves leeway for the EPO to threaten me again. We now feel ready and comfortable enough to publicly comment on this sloeber’s past.

In order to add some context to this series, we shall begin with Battistelli’s recent past in INPI, before the suspicious diaspora from INPI to the EPO.

Our story begins with Battistelli and Lagarde. The link between Lagarde and Battistelli is relatively easy to explain. Lagarde was the Minister of Economic Affairs, Finance and Employment from 2007 to 2011 serving in the government of the Prime Minister Francois Fillon. The French National Intellectual Property Office (INPI) came under her ministerial remit so she would have been Battistelli’s political “boss” in his then role of Director-General of the INPI.

“Some background information about Lagarde may be needed for the uninitiated.”Lagarde supported Battistelli’s candidacy as EPO President and issued a congratulatory press release following his election in 2010. See “Christine LAGARDE se réjouit de l’élection de Benoît BATTISTELLI à la présidence de l’Office européen des brevets”.

Some background information about Lagarde may be needed for the uninitiated. Lagarde was appointed as Managing Director of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) on the 5th of July, 2011. Previously she had been Minister of Economic Affairs, Finance and Employment serving in the government of the Prime Minister Francois Fillon from 2007 to 2011. Before pursuing a career in French politics she had worked for about 25 years in the United States for the international law firm Baker & McKenzie (from 1981 to 2005).

French critics of Lagarde considered her to be a promoter of US and multinational corporate interests in France and Europe rather than a defender of French or European interests. See for example the following article (in French) which was published on Réseau Voltaire in 2005. It says: “En supposant que Christine Lagarde ait abandonné ses fonctions précédentes sans l’intention d’y retourner, on pourrait admettre qu’elle ne se place pas dans un conflit d’intérêts. Cependant, au vu des positions politiques défendues par les groupes de travail qu’elle a présidé, on ne peut que constater qu’elle est en totale opposition avec la position française défendue par Dominique de Villepin à l’ONU.”

“French critics of Lagarde considered her to be a promoter of US and multinational corporate interests in France and Europe rather than a defender of French or European interests.”Well, here is a link to an English version of the “Voltaire Network” article from 2005 about Lagarde. In English it says: “Only supposing that Christine Lagarde abandoned her former duties and that she has no intentions of going back to them, would it be possible to admit that we are not witnessing a case of conflict of interests. However, when the political positions defended by the groups she presided over are analyzed, it is impossible to ignore that they are completely against the French position defended by Dominique de Villepin before the United Nations.”

There is a lot more in that article.

Lagarde appears to have been a regular attendee of the annual Bilderberg Conference from about 2009 onwards when she attended as a member of the French government. More recently she has attended in her capacity as Managing Director of the IMF [1, 2].

In part two we will proceed to speaking more about Lagarde and the current EPO President. It may well go back to INPI. Anyone who can provide additional input as this series proceeds, please come forth… █

The Open Invention Network and Software Patents

Posted in OIN, Patents at 7:18 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Summary: The Open Invention Network’s latest addition and resultant publicity calls for a timely explanation of its goals and its inherent weaknesses

THE Open Invention Network, or OIN for short, recently did a publicity stunt because it had turned 10. I spoke to the OIN on numerous occasions (phone, E-mail), but I was never able to see the logic of their strategy, nor was I able to see a single example where they foiled a patent attack on Linux. They might argue that they are merely a deterrent, but with only barks and no bites, how much of a deterrent can they ever be? They’re 100% ineffective against patent trolls, including satellites of aggressors such as Microsoft. They weren’t even effective against Oracle’s patent aggression (direct action).

“As longtime readers may know too well, we’re not against patents but against software patents.”A few days ago I found this article/press release which said: “Today Hyundai Motor Company and Kia Motors Corporation are joining the Open Invention Network as community members. Linux and Open Source software are becoming a mainstay in automotive computing. With the first global automotive companies joining OIN, a trend has been set towards Open Source collaboration and patent non-aggression in the automotive industry. The news is in the press here on Yahoo Finance, here on Fortune.com and in many other places.”

As we have pointed out numerous times over the years, among OIN backers there are many software patents proponents, and it’s not just IBM. They serve to legitimise these patents rather than battle to put an end to them. That’s what OIN is often all about. It sets apart so-called ‘good’ software patents — ones that are supposed to be incapable of attacking Linux (Oracle refuted this claim when it attacked Android despite its OIN membership).

As longtime readers may know too well, we’re not against patents but against software patents. This positions of ours is supported by the vast majority of software professionals. Surely there are some problems with today’s patent systems as a whole (scope and motivation gone awry), but this oughtn’t be interpreted as a case for abolition of all patents. The Onion has this new satire on “How To File A Patent”. It has some funny bits in it like “Wait one to two decades” (for A patent to be granted) and “carefully review patent legal documents, occasionally stopping to nod your head as if you understand what they mean” (if they’re written in legal terms, patent lawyers sometimes become necessary, i.e. a tax).

We hope that patent examiners too will agree with us that not all domains should have patents in them, e.g. genetics and software. Over-patenting leads to devaluation, cheapening, self-discretisation, and retardation of innovation. We don’t expect patent lawyers — collectively speaking — to ever agree with us because to them it’s clearly a case of the more (patents), the merrier. Thankfully, there are some patent lawyers who have been enlightened by the former group, especially after decisions such as Alice in the United States. Some of our sources in the campaign to change the EPO are actually patent lawyers. █

EPO No Longer in the ‘Business’ of Just Granting Patents But Politics and Lobbying Also

Posted in Europe at 6:45 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

The European Patent Office became a political-corporate body

EPO for UPC

Summary: An interpretation of the EPO’s ambitions (at the managerial level) and how it relates to its bizarre role inside the EU (back in the latter’s infancy)

OVER the weekend, due to an unprecedented backlog (we receive a lot of material), we published almost a dozen articles, mostly about the EPO (see our Wiki for a complete list of these articles). Both on Saturday and on Sunday we took note of UPC lobbying by Battistelli, which wasn’t exactly news to us. We wrote about EPO lobbying for the Unitary Patent several times before, e.g. [1, 2], and this previous lobbying served to show that — to use SUEPO’s older words — the EPO is "out of control".

“The I.U. or Control Risks might be exempted from these Office-wide bans and we already know, based on accusations against staff representatives, that Techrights is really worrying to both the I.U. and Control Risk.”Just before the weekend we implemented new anti-DDOS (or DDOS prevention/mitigation) techniques and this morning, despite the fact that Techrights has been banned from inside EPO networks, IP addresses from inside the EPO (unambiguously registered as “European Patent Office”) got banned for traffic floods. The I.U. or Control Risks might be exempted from these Office-wide bans and we already know, based on accusations against staff representatives, that Techrights is really worrying to both the I.U. and Control Risks. The latter might be able to use parallel construction to gather ‘evidence’, in our humble assessment — a subject of ongoing discussion [1, 2]. If these aren’t the symptoms of a out-of-control public service, what is?

Someone has sent us several pointers suggesting that the EPO has been out of control for quite a long time.

To quote Jean-Dominique Giuliani, président de la Fondation Robert Schuman:

On ne peut donc exclure de voir se développer, sous le contrôle de la Cour de justice, voire du Parlement ou de la seule Cour des Comptes européenne, des Autorités indépendantes qui réguleraient le marché intérieur ou même qui jugeraient des contentieux spécialisés en première instance. C’est une évolution qui a commencé. Déjà la Banque centrale européenne échappe au contrôle de la Commission. L’Office européen des Brevets ne relève pas de sa compétence. Sur les 31 agences de l’Union, trois seulement relèvent de programmes communautaires, 6 dépendent du « troisième pilier », c’est-à-dire de la coopération intergouvernementale et les 22 autres « agences communautaires » disposent, pour certaines d’entre elles, d’une quasi-indépendance comme l’Agence européenne des médicaments.
Il y a de fortes probabilités pour que les nouvelles compétences européennes, et même certaines plus anciennes, relèvent dans un avenir proche de régulateurs européens. Pensons à l’énergie, à la télévision, aux télécommunications. Ces évolutions conditionnent les changements qui pourraient intervenir dans ce qu’il est convenu d’appeler la « méthode communautaire ».

Here is one in English. Herein (Internet/Web Archive) Richard Poynder discusses the European patent system with Gert Kolle, Director for International Legal Affairs at the European Patent Office in May 2000:

RP: I have seen it suggested that the Community patent should be combined with the EPO system, and the EPO made an EU organisation. Is that a likely way forward?
GK: This is of course a highly political question. Certainly so far no such proposal has been made officially. Rather it is likely there will be an agreement between the EU and the EPO, which would specify what our tasks were in carrying out the regulation of the Community patent.

Alfons Schäfers, German lawyer and representative of Deutsche Vereinigung für gewerblichen Rechtsschutz und Urheberrecht (GRUR), was interviewed [PDF] by SUEPO and said:

Suepo: What should the relationship between the EU and EPO?

Alfons Schäfers: The EPO should become part of the European Union, like the OHIM in Alicante. To keep the EPO outside that framework is quite ridiculous at a time when the EU is expanding to the political and historical boundaries of Europe. The EU institutions — especially the European Parliament, must be given the wherewithal to exercise firm democratic control and to frame and implement European patent legislation. That is the only way to overcome the European Parliament’s growing suspicion of patent law.

Regarding the European Patent, as it was known at some point (the name changed many times over the years), here is a classic:

5.1. General structure of the European patent

Do you share the view that the current structure of the European Patent Office, a body which is independent of the Community institutions, does not entail disadvantages for users which should be overcome through a different legal structure which is more closely integrated into Community law?

No, the chemical industry does not share this view, as the current structure is wrong. The EPO should become an EU Institution, and pursue its task to manage the European patent, which is a bundled one, and run as well the new Community unitary patent. It should be run efficiently and at running costs. Arrangements should be made with those countries which are not member of the EU so that they still have access to the European patent.

Source: Web Archive [PDF]

Notice just how far back it all goes.

“Who needs ludicrous stuff like I.S.D.S. when you have the EPO Trojan horse right inside the government, complete with politicians and political connections, not to mention spies (like covert operations), immunity from the law, and exemptions from basic human rights?”From being merely a quasi-private institution (we have future articles about it) the EPO has become part of the state and now serves multinational corporations. Who needs ludicrous stuff like I.S.D.S. when you have the EPO Trojan horse right inside the government, complete with politicians and political connections, not to mention spies (like covert operations), immunity from the law, and exemptions from basic human rights? Remember that, moreover, the EPO is a state-mandated monopoly, so it’s effectively “too big to fail”.

The EPO is worse than the Vatican. At least the Vatican isn’t a corporate entity but a religious one. The Vatican does not have a suicides epidemic, either. █

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