07.03.12
Posted in America, Asia, Australia, Patents at 9:43 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Imperialism through law
Summary: India, Australia and New Zealand lobbied by some corporations-backed US politicians to approve US patent monopolies
CABLES from Cablegate have shown us how diplomatic pressure is put on nations in order for them to embrace a US-style rule of law. Recently, the US tried doing this in Australia and/or New Zealand, bringing software patents there, amongst other things. The following article may be mixing copyrights with patents, but it does show how US pressure is applied to india’s law making:
- Patent proceedings: The United States displayed concerns over inefficient streamlining of patent opposition proceedings and ineffective system for protecting against unfair commercial use, as well as unauthorized disclosure of test or other data generated. It has urged India to take additional steps to improve coordination with enforcement officials of certain state governments within India, address its judicial inefficiencies and to strengthen criminal enforcement efforts by imposing deterrent level sentences and giving IPR prosecutions greater priority. The report added that the United States will monitor developments concerning compulsory licensing of patents in India following the broad interpretation of Indian law in a recent decision by the Controller General of Patents, while also bearing in mind the Doha Declaration on TRIPS and Public Health found in the Intellectual Property and Health Policy section of this Report.
Over in New Zealand this is happening as well and we wrote about this at the time. So did others:
In its latest 420-page National Trade Estimate Report on Foreign Trade Barriers, the USTR expresses concerns at Australia’s National Broadband Network, and government concerns at offshore storage of personal data; while New Zealand is in the crosshairs for legislation currently before parliament that would ban software patents.
They use blackmail to impose software patentability. Here is criticism of the TPP, a vehicle for wiping many existing laws in one feel swoop:
This week, San Diego is hosting the latest round of talks over the Trans-Pacific Partnership.
Australia and New Zealand are at loggerheads over this secretive new trade treaty spanning the Pacific Rim. The rift between the neighbours over the Trans-Pacific Partnership was revealed after the investment chapter of the agreement was leaked to the public.
Australian Trade Minister Craig Emerson has argued that the Trans-Pacific Partnership is the first step toward a regional free trade agreement in the Asia-Pacific. But Australia, it appears, has refused to submit to the “investor-state” tribunal system in the negotiations over the agreement.
A while ago there was this Australian forum on software patents and Australia’s IDG sites asked if software patents harm innovation:
Do software patents stifle innovation?
Software patents are stifling innovation and should not be applied to computational information processing, according to a Victorian software developer.
At least they quote those whose opinion matters the most.
The lawyers got their way in Israel based on this piece from Australia:
The patentability of software and computer implemented technologies has been a veritable hotspot in patent law over recent years in many countries. The Israeli Patent Office has now, after lengthy deliberations, settled on a formal policy….
Given US influence on the nation, this is not shocking.
Over in Poland, which we mentioned before in relation to software patents, Glyn Moody claims there is something rotten going on:
Earlier this year, Poland played a crucial role in igniting street protests that pretty much stopped ACTA in its tracks. That’s not the first time it has had a major impact on European tech policy. Half a decade earlier, it derailed a proposed EU software patent directive, which had sought to make software patentable in Europe — something that Article 52 of the European Patent Convention had appeared to rule out. That led to a later vote in the European Parliament where software patents were decisively rejected.
The polish presidency did a lot of harm when it comes to software patentability [1, 2, 3, 4]. At the end of the day, it’s clear that European citizens have nothing to gain from such policies; it’s for multinational corporations, many of which are headquartered in the US. If only there was as much popular resistance to software patents as there it to ACTA… █
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07.01.12
Posted in America, Europe, Patents at 11:17 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Summary: The unitary patent — that which can potentially take the USPTO more global — is impeded by the European Council
SOFTWARE patents in Europe are for multinationals [PNG], not European industries. Despite that, the EPO helps the US and Japan in software patents agenda (global patent system in sight) and the unitary patent is one manifestation of this. Some German sites wrote about the subject and the site solely dedicated to the subject said that the European Council did well by blocking the foreign agenda:
On Friday June 29th 2012, the European Council has reached an agreement between heads of State and government over a unitary patent and a flanking unified patent court. But, under the pressure of British government, such a deal was done at the expense of removing any overview from the Court of Justice of the European Union over patent law, through the deletion of provisions in the regulation on the unitary patent. But the Union law does not allow for such a move. Therefore the agreement reached by the European Council is doomed to be nullified.
Meanwhile, criticism of patents grows. One large site states:
Patents weren’t designed to stifle innovation and take a massive toll on holders
A recent study by a pair of law professors at Boston University School of Law sheds light on the financial impact of patent litigation, and the results may surprise you. For example, would you have guessed that “non-practicing entities” (NPEs), which are individuals and companies that own patents but only use them for litigation (or “patent trolls,” as the study’s authors refers to them), were able to accrue $29 billion (BILLION!) in 2011 by suing hardware and software companies, many of them classified as small and medium-sized businesses? In other words, patent trolls are targeting the little guys and lining their pockets with an obscene amount of dollars that could otherwise be used on research and development in the field of technology. The actual cost is even higher.
On the academic side, Bessen and his colleagues delivered another supportive piece that puts to shame the US patent system. Contrariwise, some companies continue leaning on patent laurels:
Qualcomm’s formal reorganization is in large part designed to protect its patent portfolio as it anticipates using more open source software in the development of its technologies. The move is a smart one even if the company has not carved out an impenetrable zone of patent suit protection, said attorney Kevin C. Taylor. “I think the structure will go far to protecting its IP assets.”
This often leads to the selling of patents to hostile large entities which then declare monopoly rights on broad sections of the industry. We saw that in Novell and Nortel. █
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05.21.12
Posted in America, Free/Libre Software, Microsoft at 7:00 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Spreading Democracy Microsoft
Summary: A look at new tactics and moves which omit freedom and autonomy from nations foreign to Microsoft
SEVERAL months ago we covered diplomatic cables which show how concerned the US government was (on behalf of Microsoft) when Venezuela was using Free software. To name some of the relevant ones:
Based on the post “Venezuelan Government Blasted for Buying That Other OS” Microsoft eventually got its way:
The government of Venezuela which supplies computers, was caught agreeing to buy 205K licences for ’7′ despite its own policies to prefer FLOSS. The blast in a blog by COLIBRIS is quite thorough and debunks all the usual myths trotted out to prop up the monopoly. They demand a reversal and other action.
This type of forced sale is made after a lot of propaganda which calls Free software “piracy”, shaming government officials into a Microsoft deal. We saw this getting done before. ZDNet Asia helps it happen with pieces like this new one which uses “piracy” propaganda against Free software (it calls it “OSS”):
Open source software (OSS) has picked up in the region with different levels of adoption in different countries, however, it is not a silver bullet to combat piracy, say market watchers.
What watchers? The BSA? This is more of the same nonsense which tries to use shame and guilt to drive Free software out and have Microsoft blanket deals signed. Watch how in the UK, for example, Microsoft uses a familiar “discount” propaganda to imprison the government under an all-Microsoft deal (same trick as used by BECTA):
The British government will not feel the squeeze of Microsoft price rises on volume licensing when the three-year Public Sector Agreement (PSA)12 launches on 1 July, The Register can reveal.
The company yesterday gave UK resellers and customers a preview of the new look price list, also due to kick in at the start of July, confirming hikes of more than a third as it aligns licensing prices across the EU to the Euro.
This is part of the “discount” propaganda (giving away one’s freedom as a “bargain”) that we often see used by Microsoft and politicians to justify their selling of the future and the minds to a convicted monopolist. When will people elect those who actually truly serve the population as opposed to corporations? It is trivial to see what’s going on here. █
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04.17.12
Posted in America, Law, Patents at 4:33 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Pressure is mounting
Summary: A collection of items from the past month, all of which show the need and desire for a serious patent reform
THE USE of patents against software products is getting very widespread, especially in the lucrative mobile arena (lawsuits en masse with multiple defendants). Julie Samuels from the EFF urged SCOTUS to do something (we already covered the nonchalance of the SCOTUS) and so did CATO, which wrote:
In his famous essay “The Use of Knowledge in Society,” Friedrich Hayek argued that the socialists of his day falsely assumed that knowledge about economy could be taken as “given” to central planners. In reality, information about the economy—about what products are needed and where the necessary resources can be found—is dispersed among a society’s population. Economic policies that implicitly depend on omniscient decision-makers are doomed to failure, because the decision-makers won’t have the information they need to make good decisions.
In a new paper to be published by the NYU Annual Survey of American Law, Christina Mulligan (who drafted a recent amicus brief for Cato) and I argue that the contemporary patent debate suffers from a similar blind spot. A patent is a demand that the world refrain from using a particular machine or process. To comply with this demand, third parties need an efficient way to discover which patents they are in danger of infringing. Yet we show that for some industries, including software, the costs of discovering which patents one is in danger of infringing are astronomical. As a consequence, most software firms don’t even try to avoid infringing peoples’ patents.
There is more and more scholarly work pointing out the obvious (e.g. newest study from Bessen and his co-workers), but decisions to permit patenting of algorithms are not fact- or evidence-based, they are lobbying-based.
A month ago someone wrote this essay which says:
Impractical Software patents
[...]
Software patents are utterly impractical to promote innovation. Here are a few American articles that we recommend you to read to broaden your clear understanding of numerous and inextricable software patents issues. The multiplication of insane litiges is an additional proof that software patents are an inadequate tool. In reality the patent establishment is the main pushing force towards software patentability in Europe with the support of some major IT companies. Their main and sad aim is not to promote but to impede technology and distort markets.
Yahoo employees were furious at the time as “Aspiring Patent Troll Yahoo Shakes Down Facebook” with patents from engineers who never wanted software patents anyway. Yes, even many of those who earn software patents are fundamentally against it; their employers prod them for it. Why are those patents legal in the first place? Who are they really for? There is "institutional corruption" at play — a disparity between reality and practice, public opinion and existing law. █
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04.07.12
Posted in America, Patents at 9:53 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Important case about patents on life can help reform the system, but there’s more…
Summary: News analysis and patent lawyers’ take in light of some encouraging developments in the fight against algorithmic exclusions
THE past year has brought a lot of press coverage that’s hostile towards software patents. Increasingly, people are being informed and are brought into the side of real justice, not what’s written on paper because some lawyers (typically politicians) help fellow lawyers.
“You really can receive a software patent for almost anything these days,” says this new article from CNET. The context is this: “This time, Facebook is countersuing Yahoo, charging that Yahoo violated 10 of its patents. This move, of course, comes less than a month after Yahoo sued Facebook for allegedly infringing on 10 of its patents.
“Facebook’s countersuit shouldn’t surprise anybody; it was always going to fight fire with fire, especially since Yahoo started this unnecessary fight. It’s the same reason Facebook purchased 750 patents from IBM last month — it needed more ammunition in a patent arms race that is quickly escalating.
“But I’m shocked by some of the patents over which these two companies are suing each other. One of Yahoo’s patents focuses on the “optimum placement of advertisements on a webpage”, while Facebook has two patents that cover a “system for controlled distribution of user profiles over a network.” Yahoo owns the patent for a “method to determine the validity of an interaction on a network”, but “generating a feed of stories personalized for members of a social network” belongs to Facebook.”
A lawyer and proponent of software patent seems concerned about the following new development:
Last week the United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit issued a curious decision in Ergo Licensing, LLC v. CareFusion 303, Inc. This decision should send chills down the spine of everyone who has patents in the software space, and needs to be carefully considered by all those who draft patent applications in the software space.
It does seem like, provided more people are made well-informed about software patents, the lawyers who run for office will need to deliver real change and remove software patents. Engineers never approved the emergence of such patents, it was never really for them but for the leeches.
With this good news we return to Easter idleness. More patent news will come soon. █
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04.02.12
Posted in America, Patents at 11:21 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Washington working for the trolls
Summary: IBM gives ammunition to Facebook and NASA gives public patents to private companies
THE behaviour of IBM, whose lawyer is now running the USPTO, helps show what a farce the patent system really is. IBM is a proponent of software patents and it makes a profit from this burdensome mechanism of protectionism. A patent aggressor which is partly owned by Microsoft is said to have just been sued again:
Mitel, a provider of business communications and collaboration software, has filed a lawsuit against Facebook, claiming the social network is infringing on two of its patents.
Facebook, in response to such litigation, buys patent ammunition from IBM [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6], but what everyone seems to be missing is that Facebook cannot use those patents against patent trolls. The “defensive” nonsense is merely a talking point.
Quoting one article on the subject:
Facebook has bought a portfolio of 750 technology patents from IBM to help it counter allegations of intellectual property infringement, according to a source.
The company’s patent aggression has already been demonstrated and those patents cannot be used to squash patent trolls. The Yahoo! case is an exception here and the cost of deterrence is very high. It’s a cost that will be passed to the public one way or another.
Speaking of public interests, NASA has been distributing software patents acquired using public money [1, 2] to make a profit. In the process we see press releases for self promotion of private entities, piggybacking what the public was forced to fund [1, 2, 3]. This is an injustice that we wrote about before. It makes NASA look bad.
NASA is now using public money to feed trolls, not even for notable profit. “The market can be cruel,” says Wired, “but it doesn’t lie: Software development algorithms are worth more than cool nanotechnology swarming technologies.
“That’s what the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) found out this week when it tried to auction three lots of its Goddard Space Flight Center software patents at an event run by the ICAP Patent brokerage.
“It’s a cost that will be passed to the public one way or another.”“The software development patents sold for $75,000. With a starting price of $50,000, nobody bid on the nanotechnology stuff. And they also steered clear of a bargain-basement $30,000 NASA patent that covered a fancy way of reporting a broken smoke detector.”
Here is another article about it. If NASA does not mind becoming a disgraced agency, then it can carry on passing what was public to the private sector, raising the costs of products owing to public support. All those patent lawsuits we keep hearing about are simply making up a tax. NASA is essentially the middleman. █
“Software patents have been nothing but trouble for innovation. We the software engineers know this, yet we actually have full-blown posters in our break-room showcasing the individual engineers who came up with something we were able to push through the USPTO. Individually, we pretty much all consider the software-patent showcase poster to be a colossal joke.” —Kelledin, PLI: State Street Overruled… PERIOD
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03.21.12
Posted in America, Patents at 4:09 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
The government wants to take your marbles
Summary: Participation needed from citizens of Brazil in order to prevent software patents from entering Brazil
A day or so ago Glyn Moody saw an “important” E-mail which we too saw on the FFII’s mailing lists. The Brazilian PTO opens public consultation on patent examination that includes computer programs. This page (accessed on the 19th of March 2012) was last Updated on “Fri, March 16, 2012 11:49″ and written by CGCOM. The messenger says: “To provide greater uniformity and predictability in tests, the Brazilian PTO will hold the first public consultation on patents. The first theme will be: procedures for the examination of patent applications involving inventions implemented by computer program.
“Brazil needs to reject the PTO from up north.”“Since the publication of the public consultation in the Official Gazette on March 16, interested parties have a period of 60 days to send suggestions to the e-mail saesp@inpi.gov.br. This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. By fax +55 (21) 3037-3638 or directly to one of the receptions of the PTO, through the appropriate form (in doc). To use the odt format, save the file available at this link. [...] All content has been prepared and reviewed by the Technical Board of Patents. With the suggestions, the aim is to harmonize procedures for the technical examination of patent applications relating to inventions implemented by computer program and disseminate them widely to society.
“The guideline for the examination of patent applications involving inventions implemented by computer program is one of the priority projects of the PTO for the period 2011-2015, managed by the researcher Telma Lucia Alcantara da Costa Silva, of the Board of Patent.
“In a second step, the goal is to obtain quality certification procedures for the PTO, in partnership with the General Coordination of Quality Authority.
“For more information, write to saesp@inpi.gov.br. This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
This “Brazilian Software Patenting Consultation” as André Rebentisch calls it is very important. We already saw public policy in Brazil disrupted by Microsoft, so we do not wish to see software patents entering Brazil from the back door. Just watch how bad things are in the USPTO. Emoticons are a subject of litigation, not just mere dispute:
In an apparent quest to make the patent system look even more ridiculous, a firm on Thursday sued Samsung and Research in Motion for allegedly infringing a patent titled “emoticon input method and apparatus.”
“It is known that for many users, their email and instant messaging communications… often involve the use of emoticons, such as the ‘smiling face’ or the ‘sad face,’” the patent says. “However, few email or instant messaging applications offer any assistance to a user to enter and use emoticons in their communications.” The plaintiff, Varia Holdings Inc., claims it owns the concept of allowing users to choose emoticons from a menu of options rather than typing them out one character at a time.
Brazil needs to reject the PTO from up north. █
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03.19.12
Posted in America, Patents at 10:36 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Summary: A statement from the president of The Pirate Party of Canada
WE recently wrote about a bill from Canada — one that relates to patents as well. In light of this, we got in contact with the president of The Pirate Party of Canada. He is in our IRC channels at the moment, chatting with fellow Canadians. He told us that “software patents should die.” █
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