11.11.11

The Acacia Tax on Life

Posted in Patents at 12:30 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Troll toll booth

Summary: How a patent troll helps reinforce the claims that software patents have a mortal cost, too

The Acacia troll (legalised extortion) has not been mentioned here for a while, but Acacia is still busy extorting and/or suing companies that actually make stuff. The latest example is a company that makes medical software, which makes one wonder about the human toll of patents.

Going back to 2007, we wrote a great deal about the subject of patents that restrict use of knowledge that either: 1) refers to anatomy/genetics or 2) can be applied to saving of lives. Some of the most compelling arguments against patents piggyback the medical field as a good example of the high societal cost of patents. It is a bit like the “think about the children” line. More on that in the next post. █

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Nothing Truly Unique in OpenSUSE 12.1 Compared to Fedora 16 and Ubuntu 11.10

Posted in Novell, OpenSUSE at 12:08 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Summary: Advice regarding the new release of OpenSUSE

A NEW OPENSUSE is just about here and it is the main news from this project except for the new WebYaST. Considering the fact that a new Ubuntu and a new Fedora are out (using very recent package releases), this goldmaster of OpenSUSE will contain nothing of particular importance. Just like Ubuntu and TDF, OpenSUSE has a new G+ page, but the number of volumteers who follow SUSE is small. SUSE is genrally intended to appease companies that insist on paying Microsoft for GNU/Linux, .e.g. SAP. This is why Micosoft sponsors SUSE. █

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Techrights and Boycott Novell Turn 5, Boycott of SUSE Persists

Posted in Site News at 11:54 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Summary: A 5-year anniversary for this Web site is marked

5 years ago this site was created to concentrate action against the Microsoft/Novell deal — a deal that expires on January 1^st, 2012. Microsoft has already extended parts of this deal back in July. It did this with SUSE and therefore we now call for a boycott of SUSE as well.

Thanks to all those who have read the site and supported it since the start. There are no barriers to further coverage in the foreseeable future. █

Note: The address was created on November 7^th 2006 at 14:21, but it took some days to get going, so the exact date depends on what’s considered most crucial.

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Links – DRM Graveyard, Microsoft’s Candidate, Apple’s Shunning, Corruption

Posted in Site News at 12:16 am by Guest Editorial Team

Reader’s Picks

• Microsoft mouthpieces confirm the death of Silverblight.

  to be abandoned after the launch of Silverlight 5, expected later this month. This information comes from multiple sources cited by the usually well-informed Mary Jo Foley.

  There were unofficial announcements more than a year ago but Microsoft boosters continue to push the dead tech.

• Science

  • New malaria discovery.

    “Our findings were unexpected and have completely changed the way in which we view the invasion process,” said study author Dr Gavin Wright, from the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute in Hinxton, Cambridgeshire. “Our research seems to have revealed an Achilles’ heel in the way the parasite invades our red blood cells.”

    This is distinct from other encouraging results and may be more effective.

• Health/Nutrition

  • Panel Emphasizes Safety in Digitization of Health Records.
    

    Poorly designed, hard-to-use computerized health records are a threat to patient safety, and an independent agency should be set up to investigate injuries and deaths linked to health information technology, according to a federal study released Tuesday. [The report] comes as the government is spending billions of dollars in incentive payments to encourage doctors and hospitals to adopt electronic health records. … [and] evaded the issue of regulation by not calling on the Food and Drug Administration to be responsible for the safety of electronic health records.

    It’s too bad they don’t take the same view towards non free software as the FDA takes to patent medicine. The parallels are obvious, unknown and often harmful ingredients promoted by quacks and advertisers who violate privacy and damage the reputation of everyone involved.

• Security

  • Apple Punishes Researcher Charlie Miller For Finding Potential Security Flaw

    A former security researcher for the National Security Agency, Miller has become famous in security circles for finding bugs in popular Apple products … He developed an application that he believed could download malware onto iPhones and iPads. To prove this, he disguised his app as a stock ticker program and got it approved for distribution in Apple’s App Store. … Apple revoked his app developer license … He was also suspended for one year from Apple’s developer program. …

    There is no security when you have to beg for a license to make things or even to run the device you own.

• Cablegate

  • NYT hangs Wikileaks out to dry.

    While the NYT piece makes it seem as though all of this is somehow a natural course of events and nothing to be upset about, the reality is that both Assange and WikiLeaks have been the targets of a sustained attack by the U.S. government and companies like PayPal and Visa.

    The author of this article should be ashamed of smearing Assange and Birgitta Jonsdottir as responsible for bad publicity instead of being victims of smear attacks. Protest groups should not expect or depend on help from corporate media.

• Environment/Energy/Wildlife

  • EU Parliament Votes To Oppose Most Farm Antibiotic Use

    In a vote that’s non-binding but high profile and influential, the European Parliament has resolved to end “prophylactic use” of antibiotics in farming, and to prevent any “last resort” antibiotics from being used in animals, in order to keep resistance from developing so that the drugs will still be effective in human medicine.

  • NPR: Toxic Air

    Interestingly, they use Open Street Map.

  • 10% of Chinese farmland is contaminated and people are getting sick.

  • World headed for irreversible climate change in five years, IEA warns

    Anything built from now on that produces carbon will do so for decades, and this “lock-in” effect will be the single factor most likely to produce irreversible climate change …

    Without serious carbon sequestering of the type Lovelock recommends, it may already be too late.

• Finance

  • The Koch Industries culture of corruption.

  • New job creation plan, a tax holiday for corporate dodgers

    Even if they buy more yachts and … corporate jets and all that, it’s bound to have some effect.

  • Predatory JP Morgan Swap Deal Pushes Alabama County Into Largest Municipal Bankruptcy In U.S. History ($3.1 billion sewer deal)

    The swap deal that sunk Jefferson County was crafted by the mega-bank JP Morgan Chase (in concert with other banks, including Goldman Sachs). As Rolling Stone’s Matt Taibbi put it when describing JP Morgan’s actions in Jefferson County, “here you can see a trail that leads directly from a billion-dollar predatory swap deal cooked up at the highest levels of America’s biggest banks, across a vast fruited plain of bribes and felonies…” And while Jefferson County was pushed over the cliff, JP Morgan has bounced back to record profits, and its municipal business has continued “unscathed.”

• PR/AstroTurf/Lobbying

  • Koch brothers: secretive billionaires to launch vast database with 2012 in mind

    In classic Koch style, the project is being conducted in great secrecy. … set up by the Kochs 18 months ago with $2.5m of their seed money, and is being developed by a hand-picked team of the brothers’ advisers. It has been given the name Themis, after the Greek goddess who imposes divine order on human affairs. … a member of a Koch affiliate organisation who is a specialist in the political uses of new technology and who is familiar with Themis said the project was in the final preparatory stages.

    Team Themis also the name of a vicious corporate spying and disruption group that Aaron Barr was part of. It is likely that this database will serve the same purpose as well as the mission Koch claims.

  • Republican presidential candidate works for Microsoft.

    8:20: Santorum pledges to give a windfall tax holiday on corporate profits made in other countries. He didn’t mention, however, that the lobbying firm that he consults for, the American Continentel Group, works on behalf of Microsoft on the issue of tax repatriation.

    Santorum is also noted for homophobia.

• Censorship

  • EFF: The Stop Online Piracy Act: A Blacklist by Any Other Name Is Still a Blacklist

• Civil Rights

  • Rep. Steve King Says Asking Hospital Patients Their Immigration Status Would Not Be Going ‘Too Far’

    Portions of the nation’s most harmful immigration law went into effect last month in Alabama, causing widespread fear and panic among the state’s Latino population. It requires school officials to verify students’ immigration status, prompting thousands of frightened Latino students not to show up for school. The new law even makes it a felony for utility companies to provide water in undocumented immigrants’ homes.

    King seems to have been raised in a some kind of police state.

  • Apple Crops In Washington At Risk Because Of Other States’ Extreme Immigration Laws

    Washington apple growers could have had one of the best apple harvests in the state’s history — if not for the lack of workers. Orchard owners say a federal immigration crackdown and extreme anti-immigrant laws in states like Alabama and Arizona have scared off many of their workers.

    Maybe it’s time to improve pay and working conditions on farms and welcome immigrants as citizens and good neighbors.

• Education Watch

  • Studies shows that US Charter Schools don’t do as well as traditional public schools.

    On average, charter schools are not performing as well as their traditional public-school peers, according to a new study [CREDO, 2009] that is being called the first national assessment of these school-choice options. … Even though a swarm of urban school colonizers from Gates, Walton, and the New Schools Venture Fund helped set up the parameters for this study [Mathematica, 2011] in order to get the most favorable outcome, and even though the Gates “research” hothouse, the Center for Reinventing Public Education co-authored the study, there’s enough bad news for charter proponents that mirrors years of previous research

    Though fake research was unable to hide the problems, bad media might. The differences in math were particularly stark, which is not surprising because there are serious problems with the Everyday Math program. Seattle Education details media spin to misinterpret or bury the bad news.

  • Schools in states that adopted Gates/Broad pomoted “Race to the Top” are now failing in predicted ways.

    “I’ve never seen such nonsense,” he said. “In the five years I’ve been principal here, I’ve never known so little about what’s going on in my own building.” Mr. Shelton has to spend so much time filling out paperwork that he’s stuck in his office for long stretches. … Will, morale is in the toilet … This destroys any possibility of building a family atmosphere. It causes so much distrust.

• DRM

  • A Digital Handcuff Graveyard

    “What happens to the music you paid for if that company changes its mind?” It was one thing when it was a theoretical question. Now it’s a historical one. Rhapsody just had the next in a line of DRM music services to go.

    This article uses industry propaganda terms like piracy and consumer, but it’s a nice history.

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11.10.11

Links 11/11/2011: Fedora 16 Reviews, Desura Linux Client

Posted in News Roundup at 7:51 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

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As Microsoft Extortion Continues, Submission Filed to the Department of Justice for Patent Abuse

Posted in America, Antitrust, GNU/Linux, Google, Microsoft, Patents at 1:53 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Barnes & Noble has had enough of that bullying

Summary: The abusive monopolist and patent racketeer from Redmond (plus its proxies, e.g. IV and MOSAID) may come under federal scrutiny at long last

EVER since the story of CPTN we have hardly seen federal agents doing anything about Microsoft’s patent abuses (abuses with patents). Even the Nortel episode hardly brought up any federal perils, unlike the Motorola one. Microsoft cannot play by the rules, so it does not play by them, it changes them. Instead, it attacks the competition’s right to exist and it recruits proxies to help with it, just like it did with SCO.

“Microsoft cannot play by the rules, so it does not play by them, it changes them.”B&N is back in the headlines after its somewhat old complaint because it seeks a Department of Justice probe into Microsoft extortion against Linux/Android. To quote: “Barnes & Noble says Microsoft is attempting tamp down competition in the mobile market by demanding licensing fees for the use of Android, and has asked the Department of Justice to step in.

“Barnes & Noble has accused Microsoft of attempting to stifle innovation in the mobile device market by demanding royalties for the use of Android, for which Microsoft owns a number of key software patents, reports Bloomberg. The book giant has asked the US Department of Justice to launch an antitrust investigation against Microsoft.”

Here is excellent coverage, but for corporate press lovers there is another shallow report:

Barnes & Noble is asking the U.S. Department of Justice to investigate Microsoft’s patent-licensing tactics, accusing the software giant of trying to thwart competition with flimsy infringement claims.
“Microsoft is attempting to raise its rivals’ costs in order to drive out competition and deter innovation in mobile devices,” Barnes & Noble lawyer Peter T. Barbur wrote in an October 17 letter to Gene I. Kimmelman, the chief counsel for competition policy in the Justice Department’s antitrust division. “Microsoft’s conduct poses serious antitrust concerns and warrants further exploration by the Department of Justice.”

It is clear why Microsoft became borderline criminal. It cannot compete. According to its partner ComScore, Windows keeps losing share in mobile despite all the PR, intimidation, etc.

In spite of marketing blitzes and many available phones, the latest numbers from comScore show that Microsoft continues to struggle to gain market share, actually losing .2 in percentage of subscribers running a Microsoft mobile OS in the latest figures.

We also learn from a Microsoft-friendly source about Microsoft’s latest extortion attempt. One FOSS proponent writes: “Watching #BBC2 Newsnight to hear the piece on Software Patents.”

Was it objective at all? Were patent lawyers interviewed? Monopolies? We ask this because of the very shallow seminal article from the MSBBC (it seems like it was first) that set the tone for coverage about extortion (which got described using euphemisms, instead). To quote one article:

Microsoft wants a share of Huawei’s Android profits

[...]

“Microsoft has come to us,” said the Chinese manufacturer’s chief marketing officer at an event in London last night,

AOL goes with this angle: “Eric Schmidt: Microsoft Pushes Patent Deals Out Of Fear Of Android”

The Guardian, which likes to quote and give a platform to one manipulative Microsoft lobbyist (on the subject of patents) disappoints a bit and another British publication chose the headline “Google lawyer: Microsoft is leeching off Android”

Going back to the complaint from B&N, it is included in the page from a Microsoft booster who writes:

A 29-page slide deck – made public this week in Microsoft’s patent lawsuit against Barnes & Noble — outlines, in great detail, the bookseller’s objections to the software company’s campaign to collect patent licensing fees from Android device makers.
According to the cover page, the presentation was given by Barnes & Noble’s lawyers to Justice Department antitrust officials this summer.

As another Microsoft booster puts it:

Beyond Microsoft’s own patents, Barnes & Noble also raised concerns over deals that Microsoft has entered into with Nokia and MOSAID. In September, MOSAID acquired 2,000 wireless technology patents from Nokia. Instead of paying for these patents, MOSAID announced that it had entered a revenue-sharing scheme with Nokia and Microsoft; two-thirds of any revenue generated by licenses or lawsuits will be given to Microsoft and Nokia.

At least they did not lose sight of MOSAID [1, 2, 3].

SFGate (San Francisco Chronicle) finally balances old propaganda from Microsoft with Google’s willingness to bash the patent system, which helps show hat Google did not quite forget where it came from, unlike Microsoft. [via]

Google lawyer: Why the patent system is broken

Google stands at the center of the escalating mobile patent wars, as the developer of the Android operating system that triggered scores of lawsuits and countersuits.

Depending on whom you ask, the company is either the high-minded adult in the debate du jour over intellectual property – or a blatant patent thief.

In an interview with The Chronicle, Google’s patent counsel, Tim Porter, argues that the system itself is broken.

For too long, the patent office granted protection to broad, vague or unoriginal ideas masquerading as inventions. That inevitably led to the legal dramas now unfolding, he said.

There’s certainly no question that the Mountain View online giant’s smart-phone software has been hugely successful. By offering a free operating system, it enabled companies like HTC, Motorola and Samsung to deliver devices that could compete with Apple’s breakthrough gadgets.

Android now claims 43 percent of the smart-phone operating system market, compared with 28 percent for the iPhone and 18 percent for RIM’s BlackBerry, according to a recent Nielsen report.

It is nice to see that Google is still going head to head with the USPTO. But it is not doing enough. Google can hopefully help B&N in its case against Microsoft, which even Rupert Murdoch’s press reports on. Bloomberg also has a widely cited report that says:

Barnes & Noble Urges U.S. to Probe Microsoft on Patents

Barnes & Noble Inc. (BKS) asked U.S. regulators to investigate whether Microsoft Corp. (MSFT) seeks to monopolize the mobile-device market by demanding patent royalties on electronics running on Google Inc.’s Android operating system.

“Microsoft is embarking on a campaign of asserting trivial and outmoded patents against manufacturers of Android devices,” Barnes & Noble said in an Oct. 17 letter to Gene Kimmelman, the Justice Department’s chief counsel for competition policy. “Microsoft is attempting to raise its rivals’ costs in order to drive out competition and to deter innovation in mobile devices.”

The world’s largest software maker accused New York-based Barnes & Noble of infringing five patents and filed a complaint with the U.S. International Trade Commission in Washington, seeking to block imports of the Nook readers. Barnes & Noble made public four letters and a presentation to the Justice Department in a filing with the commission yesterday.

Microsoft, based in Redmond, Washington, contends it owns patented inventions that are used in the Android operating system, and has struck licensing deals with companies including Samsung Electronics Co. and HTC Corp. (2498), two of the biggest makers of Android phones.

“All modern operating systems include many patented technologies,” Microsoft said in a statement. “Microsoft has taken licenses to patents for Windows and we make our patents available on reasonable terms for other operating systems, like Android. We would be pleased to extend a license to Barnes & Noble.”

The H which is pro-FOSS, writes that:

Barnes & Noble, book seller and maker of Android based Nook devices, has called on the US Department of Justice to investigate Microsoft’s demands for patent royalties on devices that run Android. Bloomberg reports that, in a letter to Gene Kimmelman, the DOJ’s chief counsel for competition policy, Barnes & Noble says that “Microsoft is attempting to raise its rivals’ costs in order to drive out competition and to deter innovation in mobile devices.”

This is important, but there is also other important news, which happens to come from the OIN. Many companies have just joined it, namely:

During the third quarter of 2011, the list of new corporate OIN licensees affirming their support for Linux and freedom of action included the following:

1. Ark Linux 2. BackBox Linux 3. Bigtux 4. CAINE-Live CD 5. Clique Studios 6. Conecta Research 7. Edimax Technology Co., Ltd.

8. Endless Ideas BV 9. Fuduntu 10. Helal Linux 11. HTC Corporation 12. iGolaware 13. Lactien Computing 14. LG Electronics, Inc. 15. Likinux 16. LinuxCertified Inc. 17. Linux-EduCD 18. LuninuX OS 19. NEWTOOS Project 20. nLight, s.r.o. 21. OpenAPC Project Group 22. Otakux GNU/Linux 23. Poseidon Linux 24. Socialinventurebiz 25. Solderpad Limited 26. Sophos Limited 27. Swift Linux 28. UbuBox SalentOS

OIN is important when Microsoft is sending out its proxies with the aim of increasing ther cost of Android. Here is the new post titled “Microsoft will be happy to hear that Google is to keep Android free” and the opening line says:

Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer: ’Android has a patent fee. It’s not like Android’s free. You do have to license patents.’

A Microsoft proxy has just extorted LG, which had also signed a Linux patent deal with Microsoft. It’s all about elevating the costs. The Microsoft lobbyist promotes this and defends this extortion from a Microsoft proxy called Intellectual Ventures. LG and HTC both joined the long list of Microsoft’s extortionist’s victims but also the OIN. Where is the OIN and is it silently helping against Intellectual Ventures?

To quote the article derived from the cryptic announcement:

Both HTC and LG announced patent licensing agreements today, as activity in the mobile patent space continues to heat up. First, both companies joined the Open Invention Network (OIN), an intellectual property company formed to protect Linux-based innovation by pooling patents. Members donate certain patents from their portfolios to the community on a royalty-free basis, agreeing not to assert those patents against other member companies over Linux-related products or innovations. While it’s debatable whether this patent alliance can provide HTC and LG significant protection from the various threats to Android, it seems clear that both companies believe that there’s safety in numbers – with OIN touting companies like Google, IBM, HP and Sony as community licensees.

Not so long ago it was claimed that Microsoft patent trolls were getting attention they did not want. Microsoft’s former CTO, for example (now the world’s biggest patent troll), was quite formally suggested as federal scrutiny target. Microsoft and its lobbyists really hate the OIN, which probably means that the OIN plays a secret role in all this, mitigating the issue albeit not to a sufficient degree.

“Google’s Eric Schmidt to visit Taiwan to promote Android,” says a headline from DigiTimes. Ballmer may visit Taiwan to engage in racketeering. According to a headline from the Times of India, Google says that Microsoft is abusing patentsand “Google’s legal boss is fed up with patent warfare,” writes Anna Leach in the British technology press. They get the message across:

Legal tangles over patents are stifling innovation and will lead to stagnation in the tech industry, said Google’s chief patent lawyer in a newspaper interview in the San Francisco Chronicle.

“The concern is that the more people get distracted with litigation, the less they’ll be inventing,” said Tim Porter, Google’s patent counsel.

Google are particularly touchy on the patent issue, with their mobile OS Android on the receiving end of several attacks from Oracle, Microsoft, and Apple. Apple have specifically targeted Android’s partners – Samsung and HTC – in obstructive lawsuits that span the globe.

With evident ongoing extortion it is important to see articles like this one. To demonstrate how outrageous this is, consider the part which says: “Huawei could soon be added to the list, after Huawei Device’s chief marketing officer Victor Xu said talks with Microsoft were “in progress,” according to reports.”

Having to “license” products from a company that has nothing to do with Android except its crimes against Android (racketeering)? Who would conceivably permit this? What type of lesson does that teach future generations?

Here is another article on the subject and a good roundup:

Google: Microsoft uses patents when products “stop succeeding”

A Google patent lawyer says that the patent system is broken, and he accuses Microsoft of abusing the system. Speaking to the San Francisco Chronicle on Sunday, Google’s Tim Porter pointed to Microsoft’s attacks on Linux as an example of its broader corporate strategy.

“When their products stop succeeding in the marketplace, when they get marginalized, as is happening now with Android, they use the large patent portfolio they’ve built up to get revenue from the success of other companies’ products,” he said.

Microsoft has argued that the patent royalties it seeks from Android vendors are part of the natural evolution of a new industry. Porter disagrees.

“Microsoft was our age when it got its first software patent,” he said. “I don’t think they experienced this kind of litigation in a period when they were disrupting the established order. So I don’t think it’s historically inevitable.”

Of course, the reason Microsoft didn’t have to worry about patents during its first dozen years was because the courts and the patent office didn’t allow patents on software until the 1980s. Indeed, the idea of patents on software alarmed Bill Gates, who wrote in 1991 (when Microsoft was already older than Google is now) that “the industry would be at a complete standstill” if software had been eligible for patent protection in the early days of the industry. He worried that “some large company will patent some obvious thing,” enabling the company to “take as much of our profits as they want.”

“When products begin to falter, pursue patents” says this headline from ZDNet adding:

Five things I learned from the Q&A:

1. “Innovation happens without patents.” In other words, deregulation helps.
2. A large part of the current mobile court scrum is due to “a 10- or 15-year period when the issuance of software patents was too lax.”
3. “You shouldn’t patent something that’s obvious.” The question, of course, is what’s obvious to whom.
4. Huge damages awards are fueling patent lawsuits. Bring these more into scale with the complaint and reduce the backlog of frivolous claims.
5. This environment has pressured companies like Google to spend enormous sums of money to purchase patent portfolios for legal defense.

Vint Cerf (Google )is quoted on the subject in the BBC:

Lodsys is a new type of business – one that doesn’t actually make anything or come up with new ideas – but lives by registering patent claims and then taking court action against companies it claims have used its technology.

For those targeted by such firms there is a choice – employ expensive patent lawyers or simply agree to hand over licensing fees.

For a small business, without the resources to fight lengthy legal battles, it is deeply worrying. “It’s another risk that we will now have to consider,” David Hart told me. “When you do anything of an innovative nature there’s a danger it won’t work, that’s one risk, now this is another.”

What’s at the heart of this is something that is much easier to obtain in the US than in Europe – software patents. For many on both sides of the Atlantic, they should not be allowed at all.

Vint Cerf, one of the fathers of the internet, seems to agree. When we interviewed him at Google, where he now works, he told us that software patents posed a real threat to innovation. “I see it as hindering innovation in a really dramatic way.”

Mr Cerf looks back to the seventies when, with another computer scientist Bob Kahn, he was developing some of the key technologies that led to the birth of the Internet. He says they never patented any of their ideas.

In conclusion, there is a lot going on this week and it is covered in the corporate press (so we needn’t urgently report on it). Microsoft is being reported to the Feds for its abuses with patents, Google speaks out against the patent system, the OIN grows a lot bigger, and Microsoft’s patent trolls also face risk of federal action. Microsoft’s malicious plans might collapse, just like its platform (WM7) that failed so miserably. █

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Apple’s Latest Attacks and Problems Clearly Show That Apple is Losing

Posted in Apple, Australia, Europe, GNU/Linux, Google, Patents at 1:13 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Letting Apple jump the shark

Summary: Latest news about Apple’s embargo wars on Linux/Android and some of the causes for Apple’s panic

APPLE increasingly became a threat to freedom not because it is “successful” but because it is aggressive. It’s Apple that started it.

Apple has been banning Android devices in Australia, but there are those who defy the injunction, notably (from the latest news):

AN AUSTRALIAN RETAILER is continuing to sell the Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 despite an injunction obtained by Apple in the land down under.

According to the Sydney Morning Herald, retailer Dmavo is restructuring its business in the hope of overcoming Apple’s legal threats.

Apple won a temporary injunction against Samsung last month stopping the company from selling the Galaxy Tab 10.1 in Australia until a full hearing in the Australian Federal Court that’s scheduled for 25 November.

Apple has made a real mess in Australia where it opted for litigation rather than fair competition. There is generally a lobby there for software patents (led by proprietary software companies) and the Australian Pirate Party spoke about the dangers recently (how revolutionary! A party that speaks out for people’s interests, not corporations), further to amplify its message in an imminent event.

Over at ZDNet, the Pirate Party did not really name the culprits but it addressed the issues. This was mentioned by a pro-Free software journalist, who in his post about it, “Kill software patents, says Pirate Party”, said that “[c]riticising the Australian Government, David Campbell, President-elect of Pirate Party Australia, said in a statement that the current patent system sabotaged local innovation and creation of jobs. “There will come a time when innovation is no longer possible due to innovation itself being patented. Patents are intended to recompense inventors for their efforts in developing products and methods that will benefit society. This is clearly not being achieved when patents for everything and anything are being granted,” Campbell said.”

This is all very important because Apple’s patents are weak and soft. They should be easily abolishable in a sane system and perhaps disregarded altogether. Failing systemic answers, there is also the weakness of Apple’s claims in general. Google’s Schmidt says that Android “started before the iPhone effort” — a point that we saw earlier and elsewhere before. ‘”Our lawsuit is saying, ‘Google you f***ing ripped off the iPhone, wholesale ripped us off,” Jobs told his biographer, Walter Isaacson, about the lawsuits that Apple is engaged in with Android vendors Samsung, HTC, and others. “I will spend my last dying breath if I need to, and I will spend every penny of Apple’s $40 billion in the bank, to right this wrong. I’m going to destroy Android, because it’s a stolen product.’”

What a charming gentleman, eh?

In the EU, unlike in Australia, is it Apple that faces a ban now, not Android. It’s Apple that started it. [via “Apple Banned in Germany!”]

Sales of iPhones and iPads are on the brink of being banned in Germany as a result of a court battle over Apple’s alleged infringement of Motorola patents – but the fruity fondleslab maker reckons it can get the injunction suspended even though it failed to turn up.

The German hearing on Friday was brought about by Motorola Mobility, which is seeking an injunction to ban sales and thus prevent Apple gaining customers while the patent hearings continue. Quite why Apple didn’t attend remains a mystery – suggestions range from a lawyer stuck in traffic to a ploy designed to consolidate cases – but it did result in a German court rendering a default judgement which will see Apple products removed from sale in Germany, unless the company gets it suspended.

For more on the same theme, also see “The UGLY Side of Software Patents and Apple”.

Steve's Job included sheer aggression against Linux/Android. We know this for sure now and a Microsoft booster has published the article “New Yorker on Steve Jobs: More tweaker than inventor”. To quote:

In a column for the magazine’s new issue, the New Yorker’s Malcolm Gladwell relates several stories from Walter Isaacson’s bio as evidence that Jobs’ real contribution was zeroing in on an existing item, no matter how minute, and refining it until it fit his vision of perfection.

Here is what the LA Times published a few days ago:

Steve Jobs’ legal war on Google, Android rages on

Steve Jobs’ legacy at Apple Inc. goes well beyond cool gadgets, a thriving retail chain and a music empire.

He also launched the company’s all-out legal war on Google Inc.

In the last months of Jobs’ life, Apple unleashed a patent-suit blitzkrieg on its Silicon Valley rival, filing 10 lawsuits in six countries that accuse the Internet search giant of stealing its smartphone and tablet computer technology.

Apple — like Microsoft — pretends to be a victim by using words like “steal” and pointing to cases like this new one. But Apple is not a victim, Apple started the war on Android not because it felt unfairly treated by the patent system.

Apple’s problem is that Google stole its thunder. Google did not steal anything real from Apple and Android development predates iPhone. Watch what goes on with the iPhone now:

• Apple fails to fix Iphone daylight savings time bug

  Apple’s IOS has suffered from a bug that leaves some Iphone users with devices that do not update their time to take account of daylight savings time changes. Over the weekend, while the US changed back to standard time, some Iphones did not.

• Apple boots security guru who exposed iPhone exploit

  Miller announced the news on Twitter this afternoon, saying “OMG, Apple just kicked me out of the iOS Developer program. That’s so rude!”

  Earlier today Forbes’ Andy Greenberg published a story featuring Miller, who is a well-known security researcher who targets Apple’s products and services. Miller’s latest discovery was a security hole in iOS that let applications grab unsigned code from third-party servers that could be added to an app even after it has been approved and is live on Apple’s App Store.

• Apple caves in to the Magsafe adaptor lawsuit by offering replacements

  FRUIT THEMED TOYMAKER Apple has proposed a settlement in the class-action lawsuit against it over faulty Magsafe power adaptors, offering users a replacement unit.
  Apple was presented with a class-action lawsuit claiming that its T-shaped Magsafe connector was faulty. Users complained that parts of the cable would melt or fray exposing the underlying wire and, in typical Apple fashion, it chose to ignore the problem – that is, until now.

Users are furious about other issues:

FLOGGER OF SHINY TOYS Apple’s Iphone 4S has yet another problem, this time with an irritating static sound being heard by users while making calls.

Apple has gone aggressive and angry (with a PR toll), which is just another indication of the real problems it is having. Microsoft is the same and the next post will deal with it in isolation. █

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Patent Law Corrupted by Billionaires and Their Lobbyists

Posted in Law, Microsoft, Patents at 12:46 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

From NASSCOM. Microsoft’s chief lobbyist.

Summary: To the “1%”, patent justice is “just us”

THE WORLD’S biggest patent troll, created largely by Microsoft folks (including funding from Bill Gates), is lobbying the government on patent laws. And guess whose side the government is choosing? Dvorak speaks of the “Gates PR machine” in his very recent article which reminds us to get back to coverage about Gates Foundation. Dvorak writes:

The Gates PR machine, which is always waiting in the wings to pounce if needed, was apparently called into action.

Writers recognise that Gates not only employ many lobbyists (for profit at others’ expense); he also stole the press and it shows. Just because he smiles and wears a sweater does not make him harmless. There is a new headline in Boing Boing and it says ‘James Murdoch, “the first Mafia boss in history who didn’t know he was running a criminal enterprise”‘.

Here we have a new video where Gates’ attempts to privatise schools and influence them for profit gets criticised but only gently. Watch this:

With a lot of influence over the government, Gates has probably been able to defuse Microsoft oversight and months ago we found out that he was lobbying for more outrageous patent laws in the United States (not just in other countries). It is new stuff like “OnePatont” trolling big companies [1, 2] that serves as evidence of how broken things really are. It’s business as usual at the patent offices of north America and the government refuses to listen to the people; it listens to its private rich funders instead, resulting not just in bogus lawsuits but also an elevated cost for everyone. Well, at least patent lawyers are happy. To quote just one new example:

In a verdict that could have significant implications for the Internet software industry, a federal court jury in Central Islip, N.Y. found AOL liable for infringing the patent of BASCOM Global Internet Services, Inc., a Long Island Internet software company. The jury also found that BASCOM’s patent, which covers remote filtering of adult or other inappropriate content, among other things, is valid and enforceable. The jury awarded BASCOM $10 million dollars in damages as a royalty for AOL’s infringement.

If this is “innovation”, then innovation is dead. To quote another new article of interest:

The White House weighs in on software patents, doesn’t say much

[...]

So, what does this mean? It’s difficult to say. There isn’t a lot of substance to examine in this statement. In a nutshell, the administration is a big believer in the new patent legislation the President just signed (to be expected), and it seems to have an affinity for “open source energy.” On the issue of what can, or should, be done to address people’s concerns over software patents in the US, the White House isn’t saying much.

So the government does not listen to the people and, quite importantly, it ignores what developers want. What would be the best course of action then? Here is another new perspective from a developer:

MIME creator: Developers face patent trap

Patent infringement lawsuits have become a very real concern for independent developers and big companies alike, a situation highlighted by the growing number of high-profile courtroom battles over intellectual property.

In order to resolve the copyright issue (Hollywood driving policy against the people) Professor Lessig decided to leave aside Creative Commons and embark on a political crusade about unjust influence that corrupted his government. To remove software patents from the USPTO, a similar strategy may be necessary. The answers in both cases are simple and obvious. It is clear what citizens prefer. But it’s not them who decide, it’s that “1%” that calls all the shots. The illness is systemic and we know who controls the system. They are public figures and the real economy does not depend on them; it suffers from them every single day because they squeeze it like a squeegee to get richer and richer, hoarding whatever capital/property is left. Patent law today is an instrument for legalised looting. █

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