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09.23.16

Links 23/9/2016: Latest Microsoft and Lenovo Spin (Now in ‘Damage Control’ Mode)

Posted in News Roundup at 6:56 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNOME bluefish

Contents

GNU/Linux

Free Software/Open Source

Leftovers

  • Science

    • Indigenous Australians the oldest living civilisation on Earth, study affirms

      An extensive DNA study confirms what Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people have always believed: they’re the oldest living civilisation on the planet.

      “We know that we were here forever, but Western science is slowly catching up,” says a Facebook post from Indigenous Australian rights organisation Sovereign Union, led by activist and Euahlayi leader Ghillar Michael Anderson.

      In fact, their relationship to the land stretches back over 50,000 years, according to new scientific research published in the journal Nature. Led by Professor Eske Willerslev of the University of Cambridge, in collaboration with a host of Indigenous elders, the research team sequenced the genome of 83 Aboriginal Australians (from groups covering 90 percent of Australia’s land mass) and 25 Highland Papuans.

    • Horses can use symbols to talk to us

      There will never be a horse like Mr. Ed, the talking equine TV star. But scientists have discovered that the animals can learn to use another human tool for communicating: pointing to symbols. They join a short list of other species, including some primates, dolphins, and pigeons, with this talent. Scientists taught 23 riding horses of various breeds to look at a display board with three icons, representing wearing or not wearing a blanket. Horses could choose between a “no change” symbol or symbols for “blanket on” or “blanket off.” Previously, their owners made this decision for them. Horses are adept at learning and following signals people give them, and it took these equines an average of 10 days to learn to approach and touch the board and to understand the meaning of the symbols.

  • Health/Nutrition

  • Security

    • A pile of security updates for Thursday
    • What this Yahoo data breach means for you

      On Thursday afternoon Yahoo confirmed a massive data leak of at least 500 million user accounts, which is a very big deal.

      Though the data breach obviously spells trouble for those with YahooMail accounts, users with hacked accounts need to keep in mind that the breach goes so much further.

      Yahoo owns a bunch of other major sites like Flickr, Tumblr and fantasy football site Rivals.com, which means the 500 million users affected by the data breach also have to worry about their personal information associated with all additional Yahoo services.

    • Hackers now have a treasure trove of user data with the Yahoo breach
    • Half! a! billion! Yahoo! email! accounts! raided! by! ‘state! hackers!’

      Hackers strongly believed to be state-sponsored swiped account records for 500 million Yahoo! webmail users. And who knew there were that many people using its email?

      The troubled online giant said on Thursday that the break-in occurred in late 2014, and that names, email addresses, telephone numbers, dates of birth, hashed passwords and, in some cases, encrypted or unencrypted security questions and answers, were lifted.

      This comes after a miscreant calling themselves Peace was touting copies of the Yahoo! account database on the dark web. At the time, in early August, Yahoo! said it was aware of claims that sensitive information was being sold online – and then today, nearly two months later, it alerted the world to the embarrassing security breach.

    • Brian Krebs’ blog banged in bloody massive DDoS

      YOU KNOW that Brian Krebs guy? Well, his website has been hit with a huge denial-of-service (DDoS) attack that he couldn’t handle on his own.

      Krebs is that security guy. He is bound to have some enemies out there, so we expect that sooner or later someone will take the credit for ruining the pathway to his pages.

      For now we have Krebs to explain what happened and who helped him deal with it. The short version is that there was great big whack of an attack on him, and that he needed assistance from security firm Akamai.

  • Defence/Aggression

    • Next-Generation Destroyer Zumwalt Sidelined for Repairs After Engineering Casualty

      Less than a month ahead of its commissioning, the Navy’s next-generation destroyer Zumwalt (DDG-1000) suffered an engineering casualty that could take up to two weeks to repair, Navy officials confirmed to USNI News on Tuesday.
      The ship’s crew – currently pier side at Naval Station Norfolk, Va. – found the fault in the ship’s engineering plant on Sept. 19 ahead of at-sea tests. Zumwalt is now undergoing repairs that may take anywhere from 10 days to two weeks.

    • Obama vetoes 9/11 bill

      President Obama on Friday vetoed legislation that would allow families of 9/11 victims to sue Saudi Arabia in U.S courts, setting up a high-stakes showdown with Congress.

      “I recognize that there is nothing that could ever erase the grief the 9/11 families have endured,” Obama wrote in his veto message. “Enacting JASTA into law, however would neither protect Americans from terrorist attacks nor improve the effectiveness of our response to such attacks.”

      Obama’s move opens up the possibility that lawmakers could override his veto for the first time with a two-thirds vote in both chambers.

      Republican and Democratic leaders have said they are committed to holding an override vote, and the bill’s drafters say they have the support to force the bill to become law.

      The Justice Against Sponsors of Terrorism Act (JASTA) unanimously passed through both chambers by voice vote.

      But the timing of the president’s veto is designed to erode congressional support for the bill and put off a politically damaging override vote until after the November elections.

  • Transparency/Investigative Reporting

    • EFF Heads To Court To Fight Off Smart Grid Company That Can’t Wrap Its Mind Around Section 230 Protections

      Apparently the legal battle between a bunch of contractors providing “smart meter” equipment to the city of Seattle and FOIA clearinghouse MuckRock isn’t over. The last time we checked in, a judge had overturned his own hastily-granted injunction, relieving MuckRock of the impossible demands placed on it by miffed tech provider Landis+Gyr — which included handing over the details of everyone who might have seen Landis+Gyr’s documents and “retrieving protected information that may have been downloaded” from the site.

      MuckRock was allowed to reinstate the documents and Landis+Gyr walked away from a debacle of its own making. Another contractor utilized by Seattle Power and Light (Ericsson) had pursued a similar injunction but dropped MuckRock from its complaint, following Landis+Gyr into battle against the entity that had released the documents to requester Phil Mocek: the city of Seattle.

      But there’s still one company pursuing a case against MuckRock. The EFF, on its way back into court to fight the tenacious litigant, points out that Elster Solutions, LLC is still hoping to hold MuckRock accountable for publishing documents received from the city of Seattle. But it’s impossible to ascertain why it’s going after MuckRock.

  • Environment/Energy/Wildlife/Nature

    • Recalculating the Climate Math

      The future of humanity depends on math. And the numbers in a new study released Thursday are the most ominous yet.

      Those numbers spell out, in simple arithmetic, how much of the fossil fuel in the world’s existing coal mines and oil wells we can burn if we want to prevent global warming from cooking the planet. In other words, if our goal is to keep the Earth’s temperature from rising more than two degrees Celsius—the upper limit identified by the nations of the world—how much more new digging and drilling can we do?

      Here’s the answer: zero.

  • Finance

    • The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has been arm-twisting journalists into relinquishing their reportorial independence, our investigation reveals. Other institutions are following suit

      CNN Money has found multiple whistleblowers from Wells Fargo who were willing to go on the record and report that they were fired in retaliation for coming forward to report the massive fraud in which Wells Fargo employees opened up 2,000,000 fake accounts in their customers’ names, raiding their real accounts to open them, then racking up fees and penalties, and trashing their customers’ credit ratings.

      CNN also spoke to a former Wells Fargo HR manager who explained how the retaliatory firings worked: employees who blew the whistle would be monitored closely for minor infractions (e.g. being two minutes late for work), then fired “with cause.”

      The Sarbanes-Oxley Act, passed in the wake of the Enron fraud, makes it a jailable, criminal offense to fire whistleblowers; it also makes the CEO and CFO personally, criminally liable for failures to create secure means by which whistleblowers can come forward without fear of retaliation.

    • China’s elites appear to be exfiltrating billions while on holidays

      China has a massive “tourism deficit” — the difference between the money that tourists spend in China and the money that Chinese people spend abroad: $206B from June 2015-June 2016, up from $77B in 2013. The missing money is hard to explain, since China doesn’t export that many tourists.

      But there’s one explanation that fits the facts, according to Bloomberg: Chinese millionaires going abroad with “suitcases full of cash,” which they convert to overseas real-estate, undeclared luxury goods, or just anonymous deposit accounts in offshore banks. Chinese corruption has hit surreal levels: for example, one civic official had so much cash in his apartment that the police who raided him were unable to count it with bill-counting machines. Instead, they weighed it by the ton and estimated its value by weight.

    • Tesla wants to sell cars directly in Michigan, so it’s suing state officials

      On Thursday, Tesla filed a lawsuit against three Michigan officials (PDF)—Secretary of State Ruth Johnson, Attorney General Bill Schuette, and Governor Rick Snyder—on the grounds that the state is violating the electric vehicle company’s right to sell Teslas directly from the manufacturer instead of through a dealer.

    • Barroso says Goldman is ‘no drug cartel’, blasts EU judgment

      Former European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso on Friday put up a spirited defense of his right to work for U.S. bank Goldman Sachs, after the commission opened an ethics probe into his move, and he accused it of acting arbitrarily.

      “Why would I not have the right to work where I choose, if it is a legal entity, obviously, not a drug cartel?” a visibly agitated Barroso, who is a former Portuguese prime minister, said in his first public comments to reporters at an event in Cascais near Lisbon.

      Goldman appointed Barroso as non-executive chairman of its international arm in London two weeks after Britons voted for Brexit in June and he said he would advise it on issues arising from the negotiations for Britain to leave the European Union.

  • AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

    • Could Jill Stein Be Invited To The Presidential Debates? All Hope Is Technically Not Lost

      The presidential election cycle will progress to the next phase with the much-anticipated presidential debates. Democratic Party presidential nominee Hillary Clinton and Republican Party presidential nominee Donald Trump will take the debate stage on Sept. 26 at Hofstra University for the first of three scheduled debates. But for the third party candidates – Independent Party presidential nominee Gary Johnson, and Green Party presidential nominee Jill Stein – did not qualify to participate and therefore will not be included in the televised event. But, could Stein be invited to the presidential debates? Well, not to the first one, but she still has a chance to participate in the debates following.

      In order to qualify to participate in the presidential debates, candidates must be polling at 15 percent in five national surveys leading up to the debates. As it stands now, according to a NBC News poll, Johnson is polling at 10 percent and Stein is polling at 4 percent. Different polls show varying percentages; for instance, a recent Reuters poll put at Johnson at 6.6 percent and Stein at 2.2 percent. Regardless, the two candidates are well below the threshold and will not participate in next week’s debate. Instead, Clinton and her running mate, Virginia Sen. Tim Kaine, and Trump and his running mate, Indiana Gov. Mike Pence, will have their voices heard on Monday as they battle it out on the issues.

    • 5 Signs NBC Is Unofficially Endorsing Trump For President

      The mainstream media is getting a lot of flack for not doing enough to stop Donald Trump’s rise to the cusp of having all the power, and deservedly so. In fact, I’m going to that exact thing here today. But rather than focus on the news as a whole, I want to focus on one outlet in particular: NBC. I’m singling them out because it’s not just that they haven’t done enough to stop the potential threat that is Donald Trump’s impending presidency — it’s that they’re actively endorsing it, all while pretending they cut ties well over a year ago with the man they helped make a star. We talk about it on this week’s Unpopular Opinion podcast …

    • Powell leakers strike again with alleged White House staffer emails, Michelle Obama passport

      The hacker website that leaked Colin Powell’s politically embarrassing emails struck again Thursday, this time releasing what appears to be the personal emails of a White House staffer working with Hillary Clinton’s campaign — and what purports to be an image of Michelle Obama’s passport.

      An initial scan of the messages appear to show chatter mostly regarding event planning details, such as requesting an invoice for a stage used at a Clinton campaign event. In one exchange, the advanced planning team expresses concern that the media might notice a group of protesters at one event.

    • Palmer Luckey: The Facebook Near Billionaire Secretly Funding Trump’s Meme Machine

      A Silicon Valley titan is putting money behind an unofficial Donald Trump group dedicated to “shitposting” and circulating Internet memes maligning Hillary Clinton.

      Oculus founder Palmer Luckey financially backed a pro-Trump political organization called Nimble America, a self-described “social welfare 501(c)4 non-profit” in support of the Republican nominee.

      Luckey sold his virtual reality company Oculus to Facebook for $2 billion in 2014, and Forbes estimates his current net worth to be $700 million. The 24-year-old told The Daily Beast that he had used the pseudonym “NimbleRichMan” on Reddit with a password given him to by the organization’s founders.

      Nimble America says it’s dedicated to proving that “shitposting is powerful and meme magic is real,” according to the company’s introductory statement, and has taken credit for a billboard its founders say was posted outside of Pittsburgh with a cartoonishly large image of Clinton’s face alongside the words “Too Big to Jail.”

      “We conquered Reddit and drive narrative on social media, conquered the [mainstream media], now it’s time to get our most delicious memes in front of Americans whether they like it or not,” a representative for the group wrote in an introductory post on Reddit.

    • Green party may try to ‘escort’ Jill Stein into the presidential debates

      Kevin Zeese told the Guardian that Stein, her vice-presidential candidate Ajamu Baraka and 100 of her supporters were willing to risk arrest at the debates, the first of which will be held at New York’s Hofstra University on Monday.

      “About 300 people have already signed up to protest, 100 are willing to risk arrest,” Zeese said.

      “We hope Jill and Ajamu will not get arrested as we want them to respond in live time to the debate but when you are on the frontlines, things are not always in our control.”

      The Commission on Presidential Debates announced on Friday that the third-party candidates Stein and Libertarian Gary Johnson had failed to qualify for the first debate.

      To earn a spot on the debate stage, the commission requires each candidate meet a 15% support threshold, determined by an average of five pre-selected national polls, and qualify for the ballot in enough states that it would be mathematically possible to receive the 270 electoral votes needed to win the presidency.

      The commission calculated that Stein had 3.2% support in an average of the five selected polls. Johnson also failed to make the cut, with a polling average of 8.4%.

    • DNC Files Scathing Rebuttal, Wants Fraud Lawsuit Filed by Bernie Backers Thrown Out

      ‘The DNC was biased in favor of one candidate – Hillary Clinton – from the beginning and throughout the process,” the plaintiffs wrote in their original lawsuit. The complaint, which was filed in federal court in Florida, alleges fraud, as well as negligence as it relates to a Russian Hack on the DNC server. The Bernie backers contend that the trove of DNC emails posted by Wikileaks further proves that the Democratic Party was working against Bernie Sanders from the start.

      However, in a motion to dismiss the lawsuit filed this week, attorneys with the DNC fired back. They believe that the lawsuit is completely without merit, and that the Bernie supporters are using “litigation as a political weapon against a national party (and to support their SuperPAC) in the middle of an election.” They also don’t believe the Bernie backers have standing to even bring the lawsuit.

    • If Trump Wins, Blame Clinton

      Now that Hillary Clinton is statistically tied with Donald Trump in the polls according to Real Clear Politics, Democratic Party loyalists are looking for a new scapegoat. Some individuals have decided to attribute blame to millennials. Mother Jones’ Editor-in-Chief, Clara Jeffery, took to Twitter to declare her hatred for millennials after learning that Hillary Clinton loses a substantial amount of millennial voters to third-party candidates.

      Echoing this frustration with millennials, James Kirchick of The Daily Beast—an outlet that does not disclose to readers the fact that Chelsea Clinton sits on the board of their parent company, IAC—smugly purports that these pesky millennials would probably be more inclined to support Hillary Clinton if it weren’t for their “moral relativism, historical ignorance, and narcissism.” Some want to hold Jill Stein accountable for a potential Trump victory, while others argue Bernie Sanders will be culpable if Trump wins, given that he “convinced” millennials that “Clinton was in the pocket of Wall Street,” and is “a tool of wealthy elites.”

      I, too, would like to jump on this bandwagon and advance my own hypothesis as to which individual we can blame in the event Trump wins. If Clinton loses, really, there’s only one person you can blame: Hillary Rodham Clinton.

  • Censorship/Free Speech

    • How Nigeria’s cybercrime law is being used to try to muzzle the press

      Since Nigeria’s cybercrime act was voted into law in May 2015 authorities have used the accusation of cyber stalking to harass and press charges against at least five bloggers who criticized politicians and businessmen online and through social media.

      Cyber stalking, which falls under Section 24 of the act, carries a fine of up to 7 million naira (USD$22,000) and a maximum three-year jail term for anyone convicted of knowingly sending an online message that “he knows to be false, for the purpose of causing annoyance, inconvenience danger, obstruction, insult, injury, criminal intimidation, enmity, hatred, ill will or needless anxiety to another.”

    • EDITORIAL: Instagram allows customizable censorship

      If you have been using social media for a while, you’re probably familiar with people being offended by online content.

      The debate over how media should censor their apps is not new.

      What is new, however, is Instagram’s new feature in answer to this complaint. They have created a way that users can make personalized lists of words they don’t wish to see in the comments on their feeds.

      The words can be anything, from swear words to words surrounding discourses such as gender and race. If you don’t want those words commented on your pictures, poof, they’re gone.

      We think this is a great move. In the past, many people have been angry with companies for their censorship policies.

      Twitter bans many offensive words altogether. Instagram’s solution seems to be a simple yet brilliant one. Instead of banning words for every user, the individual gets to make their own choice on what their Instagram comments will show, based on what offends them personally.

      This makes a lot of sense, since offensiveness, like many things, is very subjective. Words, particularly swear words, that offend one person may be a common part of another’s vocabulary.

    • Beijing’s great wall of film censorship
    • ‘No ghosts. No gay love stories. No nudity’: tales of film-making in China
    • Why Hollywood Needs To Cease Grovelling To China
    • YouTube Gets Step Closer to Full Censorship With ‘Heroes’ Program, and YouTubers Aren’t Happy
    • Don’t censor content, consumers flag issues: YouTube India official
    • Sanders: YouTube demonetizing YouTubers
    • YouTube Heroes program seeks crowdsourced moderation, but panned as censorship

      YouTube is looking for “heroes” to help moderate its content and comments sections, but early feedback has been overwhelmingly negative with users describing it as crowdsourced censorship.

      Users who join the Heroes program, which was announced Tuesday, will earn points for adding captions and subtitles to videos, flagging inappropriate videos and answering questions on the site’s Help forum.

      Accruing points will earn them privileges like joining video chats with others in the Heroes program, exclusive previews of upcoming product launches and the ability to flag abusive videos en masse instead of one at a time.

  • Privacy/Surveillance

    • As Kuwait imposes world’s first DNA collection law, attorney tries to fight it

      A Kuwaiti lawyer has filed a formal constitutional challenge to his country’s controversial mandatory DNA law, which is reportedly set to take effect in November 2016.

      The law mandates DNA collection from all citizens and resident foreigners, a total of about 3.5 million people, plus all visitors to the tiny Gulf state. The law was quickly passed by the Kuwaiti Parliament after a July 2015 terrorist attack in the capital left nearly 30 people dead. By having a large database of everyone’s DNA, presumably it would be easier to identify victims of terrorism or perhaps even criminal suspects.

      The law, believed to be the first of its kind anywhere in the world, is viewed by many critics as being not only ineffective as a tool to combat terrorism but as being a potentially huge privacy liability if this database were to be stolen or hacked. Still, anyone who refuses collection could be subject to imprisonment or a fine of about $33,000, according to the Kuwait Times.

    • On Her Majesty’s secret servers: GCHQ taps startups to fight cyber attacks

      Britain’s spooks are tapping startup geeks to help fight the growing battle against cyber threats, opening the insular intelligence agency to innovation and kickstarting ambitious plans for Britain to become a world leader in cyber security.

    • Big Security Bug Affects Hundreds Of Thousands Of Cisco Devices

      Hackers using NSA-related hacking tools could exploit a major cyber security vulnerability impacting hundreds of thousands of Cisco switches, routers, and other networking gear.

      The vulnerability, disclosed by Cisco csco last week, has impacted at least 859,000 devices, according to Shadowserver Foundation, an independent cyber security group and Cisco partner that has been scanning Cisco routers and switchers worldwide.

      Of those devices affected, 259,000 are located in the U.S., 44,000 are in Russia, and another 43,000 are in the U.K. Cisco said Shadowserver would share data with owners of the affected devices and related IP addresses. If customers want detailed reports, they “can contact Shadowserver and get their section of the scan results,” said a Cisco spokesperson.

    • A Good American review – troubling, fascinating glimpse of NSA surveillance

      Less scoping with its all-seeing eye than apparently shooting itself in the foot, the NSA gets another battering in this intriguing but troubling documentary, released in the slipstream of Oliver Stone’s Snowden. It’s a tale of two surveillance systems: Trailblazer, the pre-2006 digital-comms sweep that failed to anticipate 9/11, vs ThinThread, the DIY precursor developed on the downlow by former NSA technical director-turned-whistleblower Bill Binney. A crack analyst who pioneered the concept of meta-data (“the data about the data”), Binney is a conduit for a fascinating run-through of postwar intelligence-gathering, starting with the 1968 Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia, which he claims he predicted. Yet lambasting rival security factions for their incompetence and cronyism, while compacting bigger issues about privacy and democracy, A Good American is in danger of coming across like an NSA internal review. Rather than adversarially pinning him, it cheerleads Binney as a homespun American mathmo maverick bucking big government. At one point he says of his methodology: “You never ask for permission, only forgiveness.” In the film, as in real life, the crucial questions are posed too fleetingly too late.

    • Up Creatives designs posters and titles for NSA film A Good American

      London design studio Up Creatives has created posters, titles and animated sequences for A Good American, a documentary about NSA whistleblower William Binney and his ThinThread surveillance system

    • What’s Going on with Ed Snowden and the Washington Post?

      As Oliver Stone’s Snowden struggles at the box office—moviegoers, apparently, prefer the unambiguous heroism of Captain “Sully” Sullenberger—the fate of the real Edward Snowden, and the meaning of his actions, is once again the subject of heated debate.

      To bring you up to speed: Last week, the United States’ three largest human rights organizations—the American Civil Liberties Union, Human Rights Watch, and Amnesty International—launched a campaign to pressure the Obama administration to pardon Snowden. A few days later, in a rather ham-fisted effort to counter the flattering portrait in the Stone film, the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence released three pages of a classified report denouncing Snowden as a “serial exaggerator and fabricator,” who did “tremendous damage to national security.” As my colleague Barton Gellman, who received and reported on the Snowden leaks for the Washington Post, put it, the House’s report was “one-sided,” “incurious,” “contemptuous of fact,” and “trifling.” (Bart, you’ll notice, has misplaced his word-mincer. In fact, he may never have owned one.)

    • Judge Orders Release Of Information On Cases Involving Electronic Surveillance

      This is a response to a petition by Leopold and Vice to unseal court dockets containing electronic surveillance affidavits, orders, etc. The step forward towards more transparency is welcome news, but it appears the wheels of justice aren’t grinding any faster. This petition was submitted to the court in 2013.

      Default mode for nearly any case involving law enforcement surveillance is pitch-black darkness. The government asks for cases to be sealed with alarming (and annoying) frequency, often claiming the potential exposure of law enforcement means and methods would be detrimental to the business of catching criminals. This makes no sense considering the technology used is decades old and the methodology has been common knowledge for nearly the same length of time.

      And yet, these requests are granted more often than not. Howell’s district (Washington DC) presides over an extremely high percentage of sealed cases.

    • Opera’s Free VPN Takes On Internet Privacy Challenge

      Opera earlier this week released a new version of its browser, Opera 40, which comes with a free virtual private network service built in. The official rollout follows five months of user experimentation with a beta version. The company evaluated beta users’ feedback and subsequently brought on additional servers, added options for global or private browsing, and created versions that would run on iOS and Android. The VPN creates a secure connection to one of Opera’s five servers around the world, letting users spoof their IP address.

    • FBI investigation of leaked NSA hacking tools examines operative’s ‘mistake’

      A careless agent. A cache of hacking tools left on a remote and unsecured computer. A shadowy group of Russian hackers. A fire-sale on the deep web.

      This is the current focus of a inquiry into a cache of NSA exploits that were dumped on to public websites last month by a group calling itself the Shadow Brokers, four people with direct knowledge of the probe investigation told Reuters.

      The tools enabled hackers to exploit software flaws in computer and communications systems from vendors such as Cisco Systems and Fortinet.
      Hacking group auctions ‘cyber weapons’ stolen from NSA
      Read more

    • Probe of leaked U.S. NSA hacking tools examines operative’s ‘mistake’
    • NSA cyberweapons leak: FBI probe investigating former operative’s mistake during active operation
    • NSA hacking tools were reportedly left unprotected on remote computer
    • Report: NSA hushed up zero-day spyware tool losses for three years

      Sources close to the investigation into how NSA surveillance tools and zero-day exploits ended up in the hands of hackers has found that the agency knew about the loss for three years but didn’t want anyone to know.

    • I have found a secret tunnel that runs underneath the phone companies and emerges in paradise

      Calyx is a famous, heroic, radical ISP that has been involved in groundbreaking litigation — they were the first company to ever get a secret Patriot Act warrant unsealed, fighting for 11 years to overturn the gag order.

      Calyx is structured as a 501(c)3 nonprofit, meaning that they can accept donations and provide tax-receipts for them.

      Here’s where things get interesting!

      In 2013, Sprint acquired a competitor called Clearwire in order to gain control of the company’s wireless spectrum in order to launch Sprint’s LTE/4G business. Now, that spectrum was originally allocated for educational purposes before being sublicensed to Clear, and it came with the requirement that non-profits get unlimited access at very low prices.

      And Calyx, remember, is a nonprofit.

  • Civil Rights/Policing

    • A Good American – Bill Binney

      I have for a number of years now been involved with a global group of whistleblowers from the intelligence, diplomatic and military world, who gather together every year as the Sam Adams Associates to give an award to an individual displaying integrity in intelligence.

      This year’s award goes to former CIA officer, John Kiriakou, who exposed the CIA’s illegal torture programme, but was the only officer to go to prison – for exposing CIA crimes.

      The award ceremony will be taking place in Washington on 25 September at the “World Beyond War” conference.

      Last year’s laureate, former Technical Director of the NSA Bill Binney, is currently on tour across Europe to promote an excellent film about both his and the other stories of the earlier NSA whistleblowers before Edward Snowden – “A Good American“.

    • Chelsea Manning’s disciplinary board happens today

      As soon as we get a call from Chelsea, we will let you know the news. (It will most likely be in the mid-late afternoon Central Standard Time.)

      In a blog post that Fight for the Future released yesterday, Chase Strangio, Chelsea’s ACLU attorney, explained that there is some concern about whether she will even be able to call us after the hearing. (This is because the board could decide to punish her with indefinite solitary confinement, which could start immediately.)

    • Jill Stein on Charlotte Shooting: In All These Cases it’s a Matter of Very Aggressive Policing

      Along with Stein’s concerns about aggressive policing, she viewed the climate of fear as adding to the tension.

      “There are background elements here in which there is fear across the board. We live in a Garrison State now, we live in a society divided by fear. That’s why we call not only for accountable policing and community control, but also for a truth and reconciliation commission.”

      Stein says these fears are particularly prevalent in the African-American community.

      “People are up in arms and feel like they are on the firing lines simply for sitting in their car while black.”

    • This photo from Charlotte tells you all you need to know about policing in America

      A line of police officers stand in the dark on a Charlotte, North Carolina, highway. They look like an occupying force with their helmets and face shields and various weaponry strapped all over their armored clothing. A large bus illuminates them with its headlights. The front of the bus declares in bright lights: “NOT IN SERVICE”.

      It’s as if these police responding to protests of Tuesday’s shooting death of Keith Scott are carrying with them a lighted banner that declares what black Americans already know: they are not in service. Not for us.

      It’s the message that police have always been sending black Americans. Blacks make up about 13% of the US population, and yet accounted for 27% of the approximately 1,146 people killed by police in 2015. “Not in service” is the message we got when Tamir Rice was killed, when Freddie Gray was killed, when Eric Garner was killed. This was the message we got when Terence Crutcher was killed this week while asking for service. We understand that if our police force really does exist to protect and serve, it does not exist to protect and serve us.

    • Before Forfeiture Is Finalized, Sheriff Racks Up 54k Miles On Seized Vehicle, Sells It To Private Buyer

      The department’s actions are indicative of an agency that seldom has trouble retaining anything it designates as “guilty” property. So secure was the sheriff’s office in its belief that it would ultimately prevail — despite never bringing criminal charges against the couple whose assets it seized — that it moved ahead with converting the property to cash without having any legal right to do so.

      The Ostipows are now suing [PDF] the sheriff and his deputies in federal court for blithely blowing past even the minimal protections granted to victims of asset forfeiture. In addition to $1 million+ in damages, the Ostipows are seeking declarations that the asset forfeiture processes deployed by the sheriff’s department are Constitutional violations and the compelled released of documents requested by the couple in an earlier FOIA request.

    • Falsely-accused Dane accepts settlement from New York

      Malthe Thomsen on Tuesday accepted a settlement offer amounting to 500,000 kroner in his lawsuit against the New York City Police Department and the State of New York for unlawful detainment and coercing a false confession in a sexual abuse case.

      Thomsen had sought $7 million (48 million kroner) in the case but settled for the much smaller amount, his lawyer Jane Fischer-Byrialsen told Danish media.

      “I think that Malthe deserved much more and should be compensated with much more than he was. But sometimes one needs to be realistic and weigh the risks of continuing a legal case against the money you know you can get here and now,” she told TV2.

      Thomsen sued both the former coworker who accused him of sexually assaulting children at an upscale Manhattan daycare institution and the New York City Police Department, which he says coerced a false admission out of him.

    • SWEDEN IN CHAOS: Number of ‘no-go zones’ INCREASED as police lose control over violence

      In February Express.co.uk reported the Scandinavian country has seen a huge surge in crime since the start of the migrants crisis in Europe with a rise in sex assaults, drug dealing and children carrying weapons.

      The force’s increased lack of control in the country was revealed in a report by Sweden’s National Criminal Investigation Service, where attacks on officers were detailed, including police cars being stoned by masked groups.

      At the time around 50 areas were put on a “blacklist” which are then divided into three categories from “risk areas” to “seriously vulnerable”.

    • Charlotte protests: governor of North Carolina declares state of emergency

      Violence and confusion has spread across Charlotte after a second night of protests was interrupted by gunfire when one protester shot another.

      North Carolina governor Pat McCrory declared a state of emergency on Wednesday, and called for help from the National Guard and the Highway Patrol.

    • Charlotte police chief says why he won’t release video of cop killing black man

      A day after North Carolina’s governor declared a state of emergency amid violent protests following the police killing of a black man, Charlotte’s police chief said Thursday the agency will not publicly release video footage of Keith Lamont Scott’s death.

      A black officer from the Charlotte Mecklenburg Police Department killed Scott, 43, on Tuesday outside an apartment complex while serving a warrant on somebody else. The officer, who has been placed on administrative leave, said Scott had a handgun as he got out of a vehicle and did not follow orders to drop it. Friends and family members maintain Scott was carrying a book—an assertion flatly denied by Kerr Putney, the police chief. At a press conference, he said the authorities retrieved a handgun Scott “was holding in his hand when he got out of the vehicle.”

      [...]

      The Charlotte police agency requires officers to wear body cams. At least three officers on the scene were wearing body cams. Officer Brentley Vinson, the shooter, was not wearing one at the time of the incident.

    • Man who murdered Glasgow shopkeeper for ‘disrespecting Islam’ calls for beheadings in prison YouTube video

      A man who murdered a Glasgow shopkeeper for “disrespecting Islam” has released messages from prison calling on supporters to behead other “insulters”.

      Tanveer Ahmed, 32, admitted stabbing Asad Shah to death in his shop because he felt his victim was “disrespecting the prophet Mohamed” with his beliefs as an Ahmadi Muslim.

      Now, he is encouraging others to do the same in extremist audio messages that appear to have been recorded and released after he was jailed for life.

    • Army Punishes Chelsea Manning With Two Weeks Of Solitary Confinement

      Chelsea Manning went before a three-member disciplinary board at Fort Leavenworth on September 22 and was punished with 14 days of solitary confinement.

      The punishment stems from administrative charges the United States Army brought against Manning after she attempted suicide in July. The Army charged her with “resisting the force cell move team,” “prohibited property,” and “conduct which threatens” the “good order and discipline” of the facility.

      In a statement from Manning, she indicated the Army acquitted her of the “resisting” charge. But she was found guilty of the “conduct which threatens” offense and the “prohibited property” charge, which was for having an “unmarked copy” of Hacker, Hoaxer, Whistleblower, Spy: The Many Faces of Anonymous by Gabriella Coleman.

    • Women in Iran post photos and videos defying new fatwa against cycling

      Iranian women have been posting photographs and videos of themselves cycling in public, in defiance of a fatwa that claims riding a bike poses a threat to a woman’s chastity. Journalist Masih Alinejad, the founder of My Stealthy Freedom, has urged women to post the images of themselves with the hashtag #IranianWomenLoveCycling.

      Earlier this month, Iran’s leader Ayatollah Ali Khameini issued a fatwa prohibiting women from cycling in public. “Riding a bicycle often attracts the attention of men and exposes the society to corruption, and thus contravenes women’s chastity, and it must be abandoned,” he told state media.

      In one courageous video, a mother and daughter are seen riding together, and issuing a direct message to Ayatollah Khameini, saying, “It is our absolute right and we are not going to give up.”

      In July, it was reported that a group of women in the country’s north were stopped by law enforcement while riding bicycles and required to sign pledges not to repeat the ‘violation.’

  • Internet Policy/Net Neutrality

    • Senate Comes To Its Senses: Does NOT Support Ted Cruz’s Plan To Block Internet Governance Transition

      So, just a few hours ago, the reports were still spreading that the Senate would absolutely include Ted Cruz’s preferred language that would block the (largely symbolic, but really important) transfer of control over the IANA functions of ICANN away from the Commerce Department. We’ve explained over and over and over again why this is important — including once this morning in response to Donald Trump suddenly taking a stand (an incredibly ignorant one, but a stand) on the issue.

  • Intellectual Monopolies

    • Trademarks

      • Texas Rangers Oppose Bacardi’s Logo For Green Tea Spirit Because Of The ‘T’

        Now, while the letters “T” in both logos do look kinda-sorta similar, there’s a slight chance that’s because it’s a single freaking letter in the English language and there are only so many ways to depict a capital “T” in a recognizable way. The only real stylistical similarity in the two “T”s is the outjuts in the mid-section of the stem in each letter — known as “median spurs” and found on lots and lots of typefaces. Other than that, the letters are actually fairly distinct in style. And, of course, the rest of each logo has a shit-ton of other components which all severely demonstrate the source of each logo. This makes customer confusion laughably unlikely, particularly given that the Texas Rangers are known by the public to be in the sporting industry, even though the team claims it holds trademarks on its logo for use on beverages and food services.

    • Copyrights

      • ISP Trolls Copyright Troll With A Taste of Its Own Medicine

        Swedish Internet service provider Bahnhof is giving copyright trolls a taste of their own medicine. The company has sent a settlement request to the group that’s spearheading the copyright trolling efforts in Sweden, asking them to pay up for alleged trademark infringement, or else.

      • European Commission promises harshened copyright and untraceable free wifi everywhere on the same day

        The European Commission has promised a number of things related to IT in its State of the European Union address. Two promises that stand out are another harshening of the copyright monopoly in combination with a promise of public and free wifi from all public authorities. These are obviously in direct conflict, as a public wifi is easily (and commonly) used to circumvent digital distribution monopolies – and politicians seem completely unaware that these two promises probably shouldn’t be in the very same set of press releases.

        In the European Commission’s Digital Agenda RSS feed, there was a recent barrage of press releases related to the evaluation of the European Union Copyright Directive – the EU’s equivalent of the DMCA – where the Commission decided it was a good idea to introduce the “ancillary copyright” on news snippets for legacy news organizations. Yes, that’s the complete moronity commonly known as the “Google Tax”, which I wrote about in a previous post.

White Male-Dominated EPO Management Sinks to New Lows, Again

Posted in Europe, Patents at 8:41 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Next photo op: puppies?

EPO Boxer

Summary: Benoît Battistelli continues to make the EPO look like Europe’s biggest laughing stock by attempting to tackle issues with corny photo ops rather than real change (like SUEPO recognition, diverse hiring, improved patent quality, and cessation of sheer abuses)

ONE of the many things that EPO management is routinely criticised for is lack of diversity (both gender and race). Today, tactlessly enough, Benoît Battistelli published himself posing for photo op with a black boxer. It’s like US politicians who pose for photos with black baseball/basketball/football players (or other athletes) to ‘prove’ they are not racist and thus attract votes/consent from the black population/community. Remember that Battistelli is inherently a politician, so he has these tricks/routines up his sleeve. These tricks might be effective in charming the general population, but EPO examiners are not this gullible. It’s embarrassing for them. It’s like the EPO has become a political party. Employees of the EPO are not sure whether to laugh or sob. Not too long ago Benoît Battistelli did a photo op along with Cambodia (with zero patents at the EPO!).

“It’s like US politicians who pose for photos with black baseball/basketball/football players (or other athletes) to ‘prove’ they are not racist and thus attract votes/consent from the black population/community.”We expect a Battistelli photo op with Neelie Kroes (with Bahamas shell companies) and José Manuel Barroso (Goldman Sachs revolving doors) next… because photo ops can supposedly solve all issues (ask FFPE-EPO which helped Battistelli create a perception of peace with ‘unions’). █

Journalism 102: Do Not Become Like ‘Managing IP’ or IAM ‘Magazine’ (the Megaphones of the EPO’s Management)

Posted in Deception, Europe, Patents at 8:06 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

How ‘professional’… media repurposed as a shadow EPO platform

Managing IP and EPO

Summary: Another look at convergence between media and the EPO, which is spending virtually millions of Euros literally buying the media and ensuring that the EPO’s abuses are scarcely covered (if ever mentioned at all)

THE previous post about the EPO bemoaned poor press coverage that merely propagated lies of the EPO. Stakeholders were not at all contacted as part of fact-checking. That’s churnalism, not journalism.

“As rebutting/debunking the lies requires some basic knowledge of this system and also no professional loyalty to it, Techrights is often alone in responding to such misinformation.”In this second part we plan to tackle some more of the same things and bring to light unexplored issues pertaining to the EPO under Benoît Battistelli.

AIPPI World Congress

James Nurton (aforementioned EPO ‘stenographer’ of sorts) attended the AIPPI World Congress and wrote a bunch of articles. As we don’t think these relate directly to the UPC we won’t dig into each one of these, but MIP (Managing IP, Nurton’s employer) omitted disbelief that the UPC will become a reality from its reports, as we already noted the other day. Agenda by omission? Nokia, based on this new report from WIPR, shares this view on UPC disbelief. To quote:

The UK’s ratification of the Unified Patent Court (UPC) Agreement is politically “very unlikely” at the moment, according to Nokia’s head of European litigation Clemens Heusch.

He was speaking in a session yesterday, September 20, at the 2016 AIPPI World Congress in Milan about the implications of Brexit on the UPC.

Heusch said that instead, negotiations were likely to play out over two years once article 50 of the Lisbon Treaty has been invoked.

Commenting on the negotiations, Heusch said it was essential for the UK to stay in the common market or some form of free trade agreement, so the talks will be a great chance to include the UPC.

Sadly though, on UPC among other topics, the IAM and MIP staff are just megaphones amplifying the EPO’s liars like Margot Fröhlinger [1, 2, 3]. See IAM’s “The UK risks losing current UPC goodwill if it dithers on ratification for much longer, warns Froehlinger”. We already wrote about these appalling lies from Battistelli (alarmists for UPC), but it doesn’t bother those who have an agenda to sell or drive. It would be rather saddening if people had actually read these sites and believed everything they say. As rebutting/debunking the lies requires some basic knowledge of this system and also no professional loyalty to it, Techrights is often alone in responding to such misinformation.

Puff Pieces Become the Norm

Going back to MIP, “Meet AIPPI’s first Chinese President” was published and an interesting discussion developed around this tweet. “Here’s EPO and Managing IP in the same bed,” I said. “Soon, another Battistelli puff piece (lies) [is going to come] from them (re “social”),” I added, knowing what Nurton said in part 1 of a so-called Battistelli ‘interview’. “I hope you’ll consider fact-checking before publishing a piece which claims (outright lies) EPO staff is happy,” I told them. “A lot of EPO staff are on the verge of suicide and deem it a nightmare to work there; many quit, life over money.”

As one person put it, “”communications duets” are old-PR-style stuff – don’t hv to declare ad interests on soc med.”

One person (maybe an insider) said s/he was “waiting for the explosive amba interview.”

“We are still waiting for a response from AMBA,” MIP replied, so there has been no progress.

“Sadly though, on UPC among other topics, the IAM and MIP staff are just megaphones amplifying the EPO’s liars like Margot Fröhlinger.”“I would not be AT ALL surprised,” I told them, “if they fear even replying (for fear or retribution); the contrary would shock me; You do a sterling job covering some issues, but please don’t become another Battistelli ammo against EPO staff; you would not only be on the wrong side of history but also, to some degree, potential contributor to future suicides; in case you ever wonder why you made yourself ‘the’ story, it’s because you picked a side, and it’s the wrong side of history; Yes, journalism requires hearing the other side, even if not independent and still under fear from Battistelli.”

So certainly it seems like MIP will continue to be Battistelli’s platform, unless they change their mind after public criticism [1, 2, 3, 4]. Don’t they know that AMBA is afraid? Therein lies the core of the story they should write.

Hardly Even Trying to Look Separable Anymore

“Thanks @ManagingIP,” the EPO wrote, “for the highlights from the #AIPPI2016. See what the EPO President pointed out: http://www.managingip.com/Article/3586954/Read-the-highlights-from-the-AIPPI-World-Congress.html …”

It’s like MIP is now cooperating with the EPO and watch the article the EPO cites, with an image of Battistelli (accompanied by his lies) on the right-hand side. We previously highlighted similar signs of cooperation/coordination between those two (part 1 of the interview).

“So certainly it seems like MIP will continue to be Battistelli’s platform, unless they change their mind after public criticism.”In the mean time, the EPO itself has just promoted (in Twitter) Battistelli’s self-congratulatory puff piece (warning: this is a link to the EPO’s site which they can use for tracking/harvesting IP addresses). The “EPO’s Early Certainty initiative” that Battistelli speaks of is basically a way of ensuring lowered patent quality, i.e. the very opposite of what the EPO needs.

Repeating anything Battistelli says, Annsley Merelle Ward from Bristows is still pushing/promoting the UPC for her employer, as usual [1, 2]. Here are the relevant parts of from what she published this morning: “The core theme running through EPO President Benoit Battistelli’s address was the importance of quality and efficiency at the EPO in the face of an increasing quantity and complexity of applications. [...] Alongside these efforts, M. Battistelli described the “Early Certainty from Search (ECfS)” scheme which requires that all incoming searches are issued with written opinions within 6 months and for which the backlog of searches was cleared in mid 2016. Importantly, as of 1 July 2016, the Early Certainty scheme was expanded to cover examination and opposition as well. The aim is for timelines by 2020 of 6 months for a search and its opinion; 12 months on average for examination; and 15 months for a standard opposition.”

Absolutely terrible. We shall say more about it some time soon (with accompanying documents). it’s a rat race, or a race to the bottom.

“A lot of the IP-centric media — rather than help expose the abuses of the EPO (Merpel is hardly active anymore) — chose to play along with Team Battistelli.”“Finally,” she added, “M. Battistelli touched on the Unitary Patent (UP) and stressed his view that despite Brexit the UP will happen – it was just a question of when. If the UK ratifies (which he believes is legally and politically possible), the EPO expects to grant the first UP next year; otherwise it will be delayed several years as it will not be possible to launch the UP until after the UK has left the EU. In the Q&A session, in response to a question about his vision for 2025, he said (with only a touch of irony) that he hoped the UP would finally be a reality by then!”

Yes, that says 2025! Battistelli might be nearly 80 by then (and maybe deceased).

But anyway, never let a good opportunity to “build relationships” with the EPO, right? A lot of the IP-centric media — rather than help expose the abuses of the EPO (Merpel is hardly active anymore) — chose to play along with Team Battistelli. That’s where the big money is. █

Journalism 101: Do Not Believe Anything That Benoît Battistelli and the EPO’s Management Say (Also Don’t Fall for the UPC Hype)

Posted in Deception, Europe, Patents at 7:14 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Battistelli’s Ministry of Truth is no reliable source of information

Pinocchio

Summary: A survey/review (or an overview) of recent articles about the EPO and why they’re wrong (mostly because they parrot the official lies from Battistelli’s department)

THE Battistelli campaign (or coup d’état) recently entered a new phase. A year ago we noted that the EPO had begun deliberately lying both to journalists and to staff. It’s inexcusable and it causes irreparable damage to the EPO both as a service and as an employer (or prospective employer). Battistelli appears to have become a man without accountability; he’s liable to nobody, except Sarkozy perhaps. What a joke the EPO has become under this man’s so-called ‘leadership’. Even IP-centric circles lost respect for him, but they have to keep pretending that he’s President even when the staff pretty much disowned him and Board 28 views him as a liability. How this man managed to maintain his position might one day become the subject of some incredible book! Eponia is an autocrat’s fantasy land.

Today we would like to counter or respond to several reports we saw. Some of them are so shallow that one starts to wonder if the EPO directly paid for them (we already know that the EPO pays publications to print out puff pieces).

Façade of Independence

A couple of months ago we wrote about how Battistelli (in part) would be appointing another one of his cronies, in order for this crony to be framed as "independence" for the appeal boards. Earlier this week we found this article titled “EPO seeks to allay independence fears with new appointment”; problem is, they don’t mention who makes this appointment and why it’s merely an illusion of independence, as explicitly pointed out by AMBA. To quote this report:

The European Patent Office is seeking to appoint a president of its boards of appeal, a newly created post aimed at addressing longstanding independence concerns.

In a notice published on its website, the EPO said the appointment would ‘foster autonomy and efficiency’ at the appeal boards, which are responsible for hearing appeals against examination decisions.

Under the European Patent Convention, the framework that instituted the European Patent Office, the 28 boards of appeal are supposed to be independent from the rest of the office and only answer to the EPO’s supervisory body the Administrative Council.

But in 2014, their autonomy was thrown into doubt when EPO president Benoit Battistelli (pictured) placed a ‘house ban’ on the then head of the enlarged board of appeal.

Those who have paid close enough attention know that by various means Battistelli is crushing these boards while merely maintaining the illusion that he is not doing so (maybe because of the EPC).

Repeating EPO sound bites like “foster autonomy and efficiency” is a disservice to truth. It’s the repetition of lies. We’re not sure why the Law Gazette decided to issue such a shallow piece while neglecting to highlight the other side of the story — the side which is not merely lying to save face.

Façade of Patent Quality

Patent quality will certainly be a big topic in the Administrative Council’s next meeting which is only a month away (based on document we saw), so Battistelli and his cronies have begun lying about it and planting puff pieces in the media (whether by collusion or by finding ‘useful idiots’ who would play along for free we are not sure).

This new article, like many others, compared EPO to the USPTO, quite frankly as usual. It’s not as though the USPTO has high patent quality. “This is part of what the US Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) and European Patent Office (EPO) have to consider in order to determine” who will sink to the bottom of the barrel and accept widely-rejected patent applications. We heard theories about how Battistelli was trying to attract really bad applications by lowering the acceptance bar. That would be a terrible mistake which drains or squeezes out everything that’s left of the EPO’s 40+-year reputation.

James Nurton, the favourite poodle of Battistelli (doing so-called ‘interviews’ to prepare puff pieces with him), repeats the EPO’s lies this week. It’s not journalism but churnalism and it does nothing to highlight the terrible patent quality we have been hearing about and writing about. Low patent quality might be fine for attorneys in the short term (more business), but what happens to society as a whole?

Yesterday we found this new article about the “English approach to obviousness” of patents and the comments were revealing. To quote both of them:

For some time it has seemed to me that the UK courts’ approach to obviousness makes little overall commercial sense. Obviousness is a difficult, fairly subjective question, based on a number of legal fictions. The UK court approach leads to massive expense in terms of gathering evidence to try to definitively demonstrate points that are not real but are wrapped up in the legal fictions.

So is the current UK approach in fact causing massive expense to arrive at a fairly artificial, one might say arbitrary result?

It seems that the current approach leaves little certainty and it is hard to advise (especially without all the evidence that the current approach seems to demand) – as this case/blog suggests.

To me adopting, say (or whisper..) an EPO style approach might make more sense. Yes justice might be rougher. But it would be much easier to know the likely outcome, and the cost of litigation could be massively reduced.

Wouldn’t better certainty, reasonable cost and a likelihood of a reasonable result (most of the time) be attractive to business?

Hear him, hear him. well said Herr Faulkner.

Given that, for determination of obviousness objectively, the addressee is the hypothetical skilled person, it is well to set up his or her hypothetical task to match. The EPO PSA rubric does that. The skilled person is given the objective technical problem (OTP), and required to scroll through the state of the art for a hint or suggestion how to crack it. Isn’t that what real researchers do, in real life?

As to the OTP, that is determined by Applicant. Full faith and credit for what the application as filed states to be the technical field and the technical problem solved by the invention. Nothing fairer, than that, or simpler to explain to the patent litigation community.

When granting a patent an office (or examiners) doesn’t need to consider business needs of the applicant and his/her lawyer but rather the inventiveness. Battistelli, being a business type rather than a scientist, is turning the Office into a production line. Examiners don’t benefit from it, specialist patent judges (like those at the boards) certainly don’t benefit from it, and the whole spirit/principles that made the EPO a world leader become just history.

It’s truly a problem that Battistelli and his loyalists now frequently resort to lying (to the public and staff) about what they do. It’s costly in the long run because trust is eroded and applicants will sooner or later find out that the EPO is just an expensive (overpriced) rubberstamping exercise/operation. Battistelli will soon find out that his chronic lying needs to stop. Even when he and his cronies say the truth people won’t believe the EPO anymore.

“They don’t care about costs,” one insider told us. “Obviously Battistelli is ready to reach his goals by any means necessary. SUEPO dismissal=collateral damage [...] Someone should tell IAM that there are also dodgy social studies initiated by the EPO to mislead the press and politicians ;)” (comment regarding the upcoming ‘Social Conference’).

“We shall see if IAM has the integrity to engage in journalism when the EPO lies about the social climate,” I told them, after IAM slagged off Professor Bessen, saying: “Someone should tell Mr Bessen there are academics who’ll take cash to produce dodgy studies for corporates seeking to change patent laws ;-)” (says the site that takes money from the EPO's PR agency that receives over a million Euros per year from the EPO).

“For what it’s worth,” the insider added, “they don’t have the guts to object King Battistelli and his thugs. Fear of repercussions?”

He or she later explained: “Distraction form actual problems and distortion of the truth and the facts is Battistelli’s footprint and tactics in this dirty game!”

“As a former EPO examiner, and current practicing attorney, I had to bite my tongue not to scream a nasty expletive when I read that.”
      –AnonymousBattistelli is trying to appeal to US businesses by rubberstamping almost everything while his friends at IAM propagate his talking points, namely: “Battistelli told the audience that this was “a clear sign that there is a growing interest from you in the EPO and the European innovation market”. To help manage that growing interest the EPO has appointed its first attaché to the US, hiring Albert Keyack who previously served as the USPTO’s attaché for South America.”

We wrote about Keyack before [1, 2] and explained why it’s rather alarming. Quality control before Battistelli was reasonably OK, but EPO insiders tell us they’re mortified at how sharp a decline they’re seeing. We shall cover this in depth another day. Battistelli basically exploits the image created or defended by his predecessors while shifting policy in the opposite direction.

“The European Patent Office (EPO) has argued that Berkeley’s initial, provisional application does not adequately describe the invention because it fails to mention the importance of certain DNA sequences, called PAM sequences,” according to this new article from Nature. It’s an article about patents on life and the outline/outset says:

Geneticist George Church has pioneered methods for sequencing and altering genomes. He has been called a founding father of synthetic biology, and is probably the world’s leading authority on efforts to resurrect the extinct woolly mammoth.

Now, a battle over who owns the patent rights to a revolutionary gene-editing technique could hinge, in part, on whether Church’s scientific skill could be considered ‘ordinary’.

Such are the arcane and often bizarre issues the US Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) must consider in the fight over CRISPR–Cas9 gene editing. But the proceedings, which could drag out for years, have taken an ugly turn from scientific minutiae to accusations of impropriety. “There seem to be a number of allegations of bad actors and bad faith,” says Jacob Sherkow, a legal scholar at New York Law School in New York City. “It’s aggressive.”

Once upon a time it was really hard to be granted an EPO patent, but now it’s somewhat of a joke (even to insiders who are patent examiners). They’re rightly concerned because a shoddy (rushed) job would cost them their job in the long run.

“Well, the UPC Preparatory Committee is the very core of Team UPC and it’s basically a bunch of self-serving propagandists and lobbyists.”“As a former EPO examiner,” wrote this one person the other say, “and current practicing attorney, I had to bite my tongue not to scream” (at EPO lies).

The specific part which angered this person was: “Alfred Spigarelli, European Patent Office (EPO), disagreed with the trade-off premise, and stated that at the EPO, a focus on quality results in productivity.”

Complete nonsense. A symptom of what the EPO has become under Battistelli.

Façade of UPC as Inevitable

Based on this tweet from yesterday, CIPA and the EPO will soon converge in London (we’re guessing to push and lobby some more for the UPC after Brexit, among other things). We previously explained the role of CIPA in all this, including the push for the UPC.

Here come some alarmists from Team UPC. Cohen & Gresser LLP say “Brain Drain? How Brexit may affect intellectual property rights in Europe” (hardly a problem as long as the UK has its own office, UK-IPO).

Another new article asks (in the headline), “Where Next For Patents In Europe?”

It’s actually UPC promotion by proxy (embedded in the article), as for patents in Europe the British people can still use the EPO, albeit the EPO hardly hired any Brits anymore (maybe they don’t even bother applying, as we showed last month). Here is what the article says:

An experienced patent lawyer, commenting on the basis of anonymity, believes the UK patent landscape has changed decisively post Brexit: “The Unified Patent Court [in the UK] and Unitary Patent [in the UK] will almost certainly now not go ahead. There is some talk of them still happening, with various permutations being suggested, but I think it is unlikely as it would be politically odd to sign up to a European court with such wide powers so soon after the vote”.

Alexander Ramsay, Chairman of the UPC Preparatory Committee is slightly more optimistic “For the time being the United Kingdom remains a Member State of the European Union and a Signatory State of the Unified Patent Court Agreement and an integral player in its preparation”. However he concedes, the referendum result raises questions “…in particular as regards its possible impact on the UK participation and on the UK ratification of the Agreement”.

“They built their portfolio or career on the premise that the UPC would become a reality, so they’re pushing for it by all means possible, even if everyone but Team UPC antagonises the UPC (most people know nothing about it, but they would be harmed by it).”Well, the UPC Preparatory Committee is the very core of Team UPC and it’s basically a bunch of self-serving propagandists and lobbyists. They built their portfolio or career on the premise that the UPC would become a reality, so they’re pushing for it by all means possible, even if everyone but Team UPC antagonises the UPC (most people know nothing about it, but they would be harmed by it).

The “consequences of Brexit on the UPC amongst many in the patent community (especially by the EPO) is naïve at best,” says the following new comment, which also notes that any “attempt [to] proceed with UPC also ignores a critical voice which is that of the user”. Here is the comment in full:

I agree with the previous post. Unfortunately the reaction to the consequences of Brexit on the UPC amongst many in the patent community (especially by the EPO) is naïve at best and wilfully blind at worse. To be clear UK participation in the UPC is dead, and the UPC itself is seriously wounded -perhaps fatally so. UPC will not happen any time soon. I appreciate this is frustrating given it came so close. But it does not serve the interests of UK based applicants or those who desire UK patents to pretend otherwise and to do so is in danger of making a bad situation much worse.
I comment as a passionate European and patent attorney who has worked in house for many multi-national patentees. I have spent many years living in the EU as a UK ex Pat. After recently returning to live in the UK, I was bitterly disappointed by Brexit, which I believe will be a disaster. However UK ratifying the UPC notwithstanding the June result (even if possible) would simply play into the hands of those who voted to leave as it would be an illustration of elitist arrogance which rather makes their point for them.
UPC won’t happen with the UK as the political obstacles to UK participation in UPC are insurmountable. The patent community just doesn’t have the political clout to persuade the UK government to take the political risks and use up their limited political capital in Europe by doing so.
For the UK to attempt proceed with UPC also ignores a critical voice which is that of the user. The UPC was always a solution looking for a problem. Even before Brexit, despite the EPO propaganda, I did not sense a large push for industry to use the UPC, who were largely ambivalent at best. Indeed the risk of pan EU injunctions was as much a potential huge downside for EU industry from UPC as it was an opportunity.
The present post grant arrangements have largely worked well for 40 years. As a very low proportion of EU patents are ever litigated, I always felt UPC was a post grant tail wagging a pre-grant dog. The UPC has always been a political not economic project based on questionable assumptions and statistics from EPO, and did not properly reflect what industry or most users wanted.
The critical risk from Brexit (and for that matter the UPC) is prolonged uncertainty. For the UK to ratify UPC now will merely heap yet more legal uncertainty on top of a massive post Brexit legal black hole. Who is to say that any fudge that allows UK to join UPC, however cleverly thought through, would be confirmed by the CJEU, given their intense suspicion of the whole endeavour? Why would any applicant take the risk of obtaining UPC patents, if their UK patent rights may be at risk at some unknown point in the future?
For UK to ratify UPC now could drive applicants who desire UK protection away from the EPO to file direct at the UKIPO. It may even put at risk EU patents outside the UK thus making the UPC even less attractive for all users. Worse case it might deter all applicants from using the EPO at all, if they are forced into a system based on legally shaky foundations.
The only sensible option is to pause, wait until the UK leaves the EU and then introduce a revised UPC to cover the remaining EU states who still wish it. Of course a UPC without the UK is less attractive to applicants and a disaster for the UK patent profession. It means no UK based court. But that is one of the very many unfortunate consequences of a poor decision to leave the EU. Revision of the UPC agreement may indeed open up debate that will question the merits of the UPC at all – no bad thing given the rushed and poor quality debate in the EU parliament. However the UK is on our way out, that is no longer our concern and we can have no say on this. Again this is the harsh reality of what leaving the EU means, a lack of influence of UK stakeholders in EU affairs.
But to follow the UPC to the bitter end without pause could seriously weaken a supranational patent granting system in Europe that has worked effectively and served applicants well for many years.

Dr Ingve Björn Stjerna, a longtime antagonist of the UPC, has a new paper about the UPC in light (or shadow) of Brexit. His summary says: “The majority vote of the British electorate in favor of leaving the European Union has delivered a serious blow to the European patent reform. The usual protagonists nonetheless immediately started advocating for an instant ratification of the Agreement on a Unified Patent Court (“UPCA”) by the UK, now even deeming possible the participation of a non-EU member which so far, due to CJEU opinion 1/09, was held to be excluded by the same people. When looking at the situation from a less biased perspective, a UPCA with the UK may only be possible after a structural revision of the Agreement.”

In our next post we shall tackle some more of the EPO’s lies. █

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