12.23.11

Apple Does Malicious Stuff With Patents as More Courts Sidle With Linux/Android

Posted in Apple, GNU/Linux, Google, Patents at 4:47 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Back to the basket for the bullies from Cupertino

Summary: A roundup of news about Apple’s patent wars (against everyone) and a bit of good news, arriving just before Christmas

AS we return to covering the patent issue we regret to say that there is mostly bad news. Being aware of the news, however, is regretfully essential.

The subject we chose to tackle last is Apple. This company is fast becoming just as much of a nuisance as Microsoft has been. The Inquirer (British tech tabloid) has a nice way of covering Apple stories and it is filled with subtle humour that cushions the blow of horrible news. Recently it covered the news about Apple getting sued for caller ID patents. Previously, a caller ID app for Android was killed this way, demonstrating the terrible state of the patent system.

“Apple’s behaviour with patents is not just harming Linux or Android users; it is harming everyone and even Opera is complaining, noting that Apple patents undermine open standards.”Apple the patent bully might learn to dislike software patents if it gets sued by them quite a lot. So in a way the above news can be classified as good news.

Apple’s behaviour with patents is not just harming Linux or Android users; it is harming everyone and even Opera is complaining, noting that Apple patents undermine open standards. Mike Masnick put it like this and “going for leadership in evil” wrote Glyn Moody (via Jérémie Zimmermann).

Let us recall Apple’s support for MPEG-LA. Apple promotes video tax in yet more ways based on this new report which says:

Royalty-free web vid spec sets sail with Apple’s help

A proposed standard to stream video online smoothly, regardless of network conditions, has been pushed forward with some rather unexpected patent-holder help.

MPEG-DASH was approved in a vote by ISO national member bodies as a way to stream media over HTTP. Publication of the standard is expected “shortly”.

MPEG-DASH could supersede a raft of proprietary and royalty-protected technologies, developed by tech companies to stream media to mobile devices in particular – which are at the mercy of varying network speeds and connectivity conditions.

To Hell with Apple for helping those patent trolls. Another person who helps them is Microsoft Florian, who has pushed their agenda since last year. Florian no longer tries to endorse Microsoft in public because people already know that Microsoft pays him. That would further discredit this deceitful lobbyist.

“Florian no longer tries to endorse Microsoft in public because people already know that Microsoft pays him.”Looking at what Apple does to Linux/Android, here we have a report on “Apple’s first major legal win against Android,” which is “no slam dunk” because despite attempts to remove Linux devices from the shelves, Apple is not quite there yet. But to quote Reuters: “Patent firm IPCom said on Tuesday it had asked top German cellphone retailers to stop selling phones of HTC, threatening them with legal action, as HTC has not complied with a court ruling on injunction of its sales.”

FOSS-hostile patent lawyers write about Apple’s embargo attempts in the US and Murdoch’s fake news claims that HTC phones are “banned from store shelves” although it’s not quite true in practice. As the FFII’s president puts it:

Laughing loud on Apple’s patent “tap on a phone number or address contained in an email to immediately call the number”

Due to this kind of stupidity “Apple May Get To Remove Obvious Features From Android”. Here are some of the details:

Apple May Get To Remove Obvious Features From Android

[...]

Copying an idea and building on it is not “stealing.” And if Apple had to build its devices without building on the ideas of others, it wouldn’t have very much today. This whole thing is a joke, and it’s rulings like this that make engineers have even less respect for the patent system.

Apple brings is bullying to Britain now, i.e. it comes to new countries where software patents are in principle not permitted. Slashdot tells us that “Apple Transfers Patents Through Shell Company To Sue All Phone Makers 422″. We covered this some days ago, but here is the summary which has a huge discussion at the end:

“A patent lawsuit (PDF) by patent licensing firm Digitude Innovations curiously targeted all mobile manufacturers except Apple. A TechCrunch story has revealed that the patents used were transferred from Apple via a shell company to DI, and appear to cover features found in virtually all smartphones. The lawsuit even extends to companies that don’t make Android phones, like Nokia and RIM, and to Android OEMs that Apple have not directly sued yet, like Sony. The business model of DI clearly implies that Apple would benefit financially from the lawsuit as a company that contributed patents to DI’s portfolio.”

Slashdot shows another ridiculous patent from Apple and notes that:

“Apple has had quite a week in patents for the iPhone, and it’s only Tuesday. First was the victory at the International Trade Commission over HTC. And now there’s a shiny new patent on switching to an app during a live phone call (#8,082,523). There may be non-infringing ways of doing something similar, but they probably will be clumsy in comparison.”

Supporters of Apple’s ways should take a moment to objectively assess what Apple is doing here.

Here is how Muktware put it: “In a nutshell its about how you can switch between call and an app. Almost every touch-based phone uses this ‘process’ and potentially infringes upon this patent. It will be a challenge for Apple competitors to find other ways to do the same thing. Yet another example of the software/process patent mess that the flawed US patent system is creating.”

Google has been getting its own share of ridiculous patents, but it has no history of using patents offensively. This ought to invalidate concerns about Google getting more patents. Bloomberg says:

European Union regulators suspended their antitrust review of plans by Google Inc. (GOOG), the biggest maker of smartphone software, to buy Motorola Mobility Holdings Inc. after requesting more information about the deal.

The antitrust authority will continue the review after it has obtained “certain documents that are essential to its evaluation of the transaction,” said Amelia Torres, a spokeswoman for the Brussels-based European Commission. The commission temporarily stopped the review on Dec. 6, according to a filing on the regulator’s website today.

The patent angle need not be of concern because Google is not offensive with patents, contrary to claims from the Microsoft lobbyist (Florian). If anything, it can make Motorola more patents hostile and thus reduce altercations. According to this new article, patents are becoming more and more of an issue to Google because:

• Is the cloud the new front in the tech patent wars? A company headed by the founders of peer-to-peer networks Kazaa and Morpheus have reportedly banded together to sue Google, Amazon.com, VMWare and others, alleging patent infringement on cloud technology. The website of the plaintiff, PersonalWeb, says the company owns 13 “fundamental pending and issued patents,” and that it is “developing ground-breaking technologies and products,” including StudyPods, an online learning platform that’s in beta. But a patent-law specialist quoted in the Sydney Morning Herald points out that PersonalWeb filed the lawsuits in a Texas court that’s the “preferred venue for so-called patent trolls.” The eight patents in question include those related to “content addressable storage and/or distributed search engine technologies,” according to the SMH.

Going back to Apple, the company is trying to restrict designs based on ideas that it never came up with itself. To quote Slashdot:

“In a public legal brief (PDF), Apple offers numerous design alternatives that Samsung could have used for its smartphones and tablets to avoid infringing on Apple’s patents. Basically, as long as competitors’ smartphones and tablets bear no resemblance to smartphones and tablets, everything’s cool.”

To finish this with some good news (for a change), Apple lost a case in Germany and that rectangle with buttons on it will therefore be legitimate for sale, even without an apple-shaped logo:

Apple Lost Germany, Court May Allow Samsung To Sell Galaxy Tab

After Australia Apple has lost another ‘patent’ post, this time its Germany. A German court earlier banned the sale of Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 in Germany owing to ‘controversial’ design patents. The same design patents were rejected in a Dutch court. To respect the verdict, Samsung modified the design of its Galaxy Tab (which in fact enhances the user experiences as the speakers now face the user) and called it Galaxy Tab 10.1N.

Or as SJVN put it:

Take a long look at the two versions of Samung’s Galaxy Tab 10.1 on the right. One, says a German court, violated Apple’s iPad intellectual property (IP) design and thus couldn’t be sold in the European Union (EU). The other one is fine and dandy and can be sold. Can you tell the critical IP differences? Try to work it out before this story’s end.

As you may recall, Apple managed this summer to get the Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 banned from being sold in the EU (European Union) because its design looked too much like an iPad. That was a dumb decision. Any tablet has to look pretty much like any other tablet. Now, though, it appears that the tide has turned against Apple. The German court has preliminarily decided that Samsung’s revised design no longer violates Apple’s iPad design.

We are probably going to hear a lot more about it next year. Until then, let us savour the taste of this small victory. █

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Boycott GoDaddy

Posted in Site News at 4:05 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Guest post by iophk

Summary: Despite an attempt to respond to public backlash, GoDaddy is an enemy of your Internet freedom

GoDaddy has gone from supporting SOPA to a more luke warm position of not supporting it. Not supporting is not the same as actively opposing it. It might help fight SOPA to encourage users to move their domains from GoDaddy now and send them a note to help *prevent* this bill being passed. E-mail them directly.

There are many other registrars available. Listed below in no particular order are some of them, to get the ball rolling. Some are offering coupon codes related to SOPA or GoDaddy for further discounts.

+ http://internet.bs/
+ http://www.domainsite.com/
+ http://www.dynadot.com/
+ http://www.namecheap.com/ SOPASUCKS
+ http://order.1and1.com/
+ http://www.hostgator.com/ NOSOPA
+ http://dreamhost.com/ NOTOSOPA
+ http://gandi.net/
+ https://dnsimple.com/goodbye-godaddy
+ http://www.networksolutions.com/

It is possible to transfer even if recently renewed or registered. Years paid in advance for a domain will always transfer to a new registrar.

Vote with your wallet. █

NB – This site was originally registered with GoDaddy, but we dumped them last year.

Update: A contributor of Techrights has just received the following:

—–Original message—–

From: Fight For The Future info@fightforthefuture.org
Date: Sat, 24 Dec 2011 14:29:58 -0500
To: -
Subject: Boycott GoDaddy

Happy Holidays — we have some great news to share.

We’ve just won two huge battles in the fight against Internet censorship — everything you are doing is working! First off, the House of Representatives failed to move SOPA out of committee! Why? Because their offices got swamped with phone calls and overwhelmed by the snowballing opposition. Thank you for helping make that happen.

Second, in response to the boycott of GoDaddy, the web hosting company just made a public announcement that it’s dropping its support of SOPA. Amazing what you have made happen.

Yet, we can’t let GoDaddy off the hook just yet. GoDaddy supports the Senate version of SOPA, called the PROTECT IP Act (PIPA). The boycott has to continue — Please click here to pledge to join it:

www.godaddyboycott.com

Please join us in holding GoDaddy accountable, until they drop any and all efforts to support not just SOPA, but also its Senate cousin, PIPA. The boycott already worked to get GoDaddy to change their position on SOPA, now we urgently need to hear from GoDaddy about PIPA too.

So what’s next?

The PIPA bill is still alive and strong in the Senate, and could be voted on in January. Like SOPA, it threatens free speech, innovation, and the basic structure of the Internet.

Keep transferring your domains from GoDaddy until they fully come out against PIPA and SOPA. They need to send a letter to Congress making their opposition to both bills clear — Click here to join the cause.

www.godaddyboycott.com

Thank you for all that you do — it is working!

Tiffiniy & Phil

Fight for the Future

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Microsoft Stacked Patent Panels, Front Groups for Patents, and Proxy Patent Trolls

Posted in Microsoft, Patents at 3:57 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Summary: A roundup of Microsoft patent lobbying and aggression that go on mostly unnoticed

A stacked panel was described by Microsoft as “a stacked deck: it is packed with people who, on the face of things, should be neutral, but who are in fact strong supporters of our technology. The key to stacking a panel is being able to choose the moderator. Most conference organizers allow the moderator to select die panel, so if you can pick the moderator, you win. Since you can’t expect representatives of our competitors to speak on your behalf, you have to get the moderator to agree to having only “independent ISVs” on the panel. No one from Microsoft or any other formal backer of the competing technologies would be allowed -just ISVs who have to use this stuff in the “real world.” Sounds marvellously independent doesn’t it? In feet, it allows us to stack the panel with ISVs that back our cause. Thus, the “independent” panel ends up telling the audience that our technology beats the others hands down. Get the press to cover this panel, and you’ve got a major win on your hands.” See the full Microsoft document [PDF] for more details.

We already know, based on prior incidents, that Microsoft loves to stack panels, e.g. for OOXML. Microsoft and its front groups are entering another forum, where just like the Gates Foundation agents they spread the pro-patents talking points. Gates has more political power outside of Microsoft and we previously showed what he and his new minions/’foundamentalists’ do on the subject of patents. As one good journalist points out:

In short, Gates is a spent force. He says he will not lead Microsoft again as rumoured in some media outlets recently – but then it wouldn’t matter even if he did.

Microsoft’s MSN says that a “[s]oftware group spends $190k on lobbying in 3Q,” but this number from a third-party source is far lower than the real amount and patent policy is part of the lobbying, with focus on the USPTO:

The Software and Information Industry Association spent $190,000 on lobbying on such issues as intellectual property in the third quarter, according to federal disclosure reports.

[...]

The group lobbied Congress, the Education Department, the Commerce Department, the State Department, the U.S. Copyright Office, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office

As we showed before, Bill Gates and his good friend who is the world’s biggest patent troll have also spent money lobbying for worse patent laws. Microsoft lobbies on the subject from many different directions, usually using proxies that it sponsors. Contrary to propaganda about “protection”, this is against the interest of citizens, but they just never get access to the ears of politicians, unlike for instance Microsoft’s Mundie [1, 2, 3].

Craig Mundie Is lobbying for Microsoft again, based on Microsoft’s own site. He lobbies on the subject of patents in Europe and the FFII’s president claims that “Microsoft is using Barroso, the President of the European Commission, to push for more patents and “innovation” salad”. In relation to the stack panel we wrote about earlier, he notes that:

IPweek: ACT, Microsoft and BSA discussing on the same panel, sounds like a Microsoft panel on its own

Mike Sax [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6] is part of ACT (Microsoft front group) and Ronald Zink is from Microsoft. Here is another new example of:

Microsof’s association of SMEs ACT calls for software patents via a central EU patent court

Microsoft’s patent troll, Intellectual Ventures, is also busy doing its nasty things and “[t]heir pattern of behavior indicates they are acting as a proxy for Microsoft,” notes this one poster. Quoting in context:

It should also be pointed out that Intellectual Ventures targets companies that are major competitors to Microsoft such as makers of Android phones. IV has over 35,000 patents and there is virtual certainty that every company that writes software is infringing on at least one of their patents but they are highly selective about who they extort money from. Their pattern of behavior indicates they are acting as a proxy for Microsoft. If Microsoft were to file suits they would be subject to counter claims but since IV produces nothing they are immune from counter claims of patent infringement.

Lodsys and its connection to Intellectual Ventures has just been mentioned by Timothy B. Lee, who spots a common misconception and rebuts it:

Software Patents and Barriers to Entry

On one level this just begs the question. Obviously, if software patents promote innovation, that’s a strong argument for allowing them. But if software patents actually discorage innovation, as I and people who’ve crunched the numbers have argued they do, then people who care about entrepreneurial innovation should be equally anxious to get rid of them. Rosen doesn’t really engage in the arguments that I and others have offered that software patents are bad for innovation. He seems to just take it as a given that patents promote innovation.

But since Rosen brought up Angry Birds, I’d like to zoom in on the specific case of mobile apps. Too often, the patent debate occurs in broad abstractions, so it’s important to pay attention to the actual innovators being harmed by software patents.

So let’s talk about Lodsys, a patent troll (with alleged ties to uber-troll Intellectual Ventures) that began suing independent mobile app developers for patent infringement earlier this year. Lodsys’s holds broad patents related to the purchase of digital content over a network, and claims dozens of firms have infringed its patents. Few if any of the defendants in these cases copied from the Lodsys patents, but they (allegedly) stumbled across the broad concepts in the patents and are now facing the threat of a lawsuit.

“Shuffling patents around among shell companies and suing the same company twice with the same patent” is another thing we are seeing covered as follows:

We’ve written about famed patent troll Erich Spangenberg and the variety of shell companies under his control a few times in the past. He’s the guy who a court told to pay $4 million for shuffling patents around among shell companies and suing the same company twice with the same patent, despite a settlement the first time that precluded future suits. Spangenberg is also famous for his motto, “sue first, ask questions later,” in part because he wants his lawsuits to take place in Eastern Texas.

A company that is headed by a lot of former Microsoft executives has just gone hostile with patents as well:

A lawsuit has been filed by Juniper Networks, which has accused Palo Alto Networks of allegedly infringing six of its patents relating to firewall technology.

In the lawsuit, filed 19 December in a federal court in Wilmington, Delaware, Juniper said that while the technology used in its next-generation firewalls were invented by the founders of Palo Alto Networks, the patents actually belonged to Juniper Networks.

To be fair, others do similar things by choosing aggression, but just because others are doing this does not make it acceptable. Microsoft is generally very unique in 1) its attacks on Linux and 2) its operation via proxies. Nasty yet evasive. █

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Microsoft’s Attack on Linux in the Courtroom

Posted in GNU/Linux, Microsoft, Patents at 3:27 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Image from Wikimedia

Summary: A quick overview encompassing Microsoft’s latest actions against Linux, using software patents and Linux-taxing minions like Tuxera

MICROSOFT is attacking Linux/Android with lawsuits as well as extortion that goes on behind the scenes, away from the sight of regulators. The Microsoft booster covers this along with others who neglect to denounce Microsoft. The anti-Linux lawsuits all started nearly 3 years ago when Microsoft sued TomTom over FAT and Tuxera now helps Microsoft spread this kind of Linux tax on file systems, using new products which nobody really needs. As Zonker put it some days ago:

Patent Nastiness

One of the biggest disappointments for me in the 12-plus years that I’ve been writing about technology is the increasing amount of time and attention that one has to devote to patent lawsuits. Unfortunately, that trend doesn’t seem to be reversing itself.

A quick, cursory search for “cloud” in just the title of patent claims shows more than 181 hits. (Though, to be fair, some of them are unrelated to cloud services – like this one.)

The “good” news is that the major players may have little to gain from suing each other, since they all have major patent portfolios. The bad news is that patent trolls have nothing to lose from suing Amazon, Microsoft, VMware, Rackspace or any of the other companies doing business in the cloud. I expect to start seeing some shakedowns around cloud-related patents in 2012.

Ironically, Zonker, the author, chose to work with the company that had sidled with Microsoft on patents.

Microsoft is attacking Linux very hard because it is Linux that dominates in devices, whereas Microsoft has no such products left and thus no appearance in CES, either (we won’t go into that bit of Microsoft bashing today, but Microsoft has become pathetic in this area). The only thing Microsoft can hope to win now is frivolous lawsuits with trivial patents. To quote:

Motorola Mobility’s Android devices infringe on aspects of one Microsoft patent, according to a preliminary ruling by the International Trade Commission (ITC). But in a move that has left both sides claiming victory, the judge declined to find Motorola Mobility in violation of six other Microsoft patents.

Groklaw has this update about Oracle’s case against Android, which now sees 700,000 devices activated per day (rendering Linux victorious in another area). “On December 6,” writes Prof. Webbink, “Judge Alsup issued a tentative order with respect to Google’s third motion in limine seeking to exclude portions of Dr. Cockburn’s (Oracle expert) damages report. (642 [PDF; Text]) In that tentative report Judge Alsup had largely sided with Google. However, Judge Alsup gave each party the opportunity to weigh in on the tentative order, and they have now done so.”

In this broken patent system even the use of a programming language can be viewed as a patent violation. Oracle’s case is blurring gaps between copyrights and patents and the former president of the FFII writes:

Ah, effin Ch4 is done. Last line: “Burn the patent system to the ground. There can be no compromise with a fatal disease.”

It also spreads like a disease, currently to China. Some think that reform is the solution, but reform can come in all sorts of forms and even more things worse. To quote:

As we seek to further calibrate the delicate balance so critical to our regime of incentivizing innovation, we should reform software patents, not repeal them.

It is not about incentive to innovate but about monopoly privileges. Microsoft is a great example of it and it is not alone among those examples. We will write about what Microsoft does behind the scenes also in the next post. █

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Update on Software Patenting in Australia and New Zealand

Posted in Australia, Law, Patents at 3:08 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Summary: Bits of important news from Australia and New Zealand, less so from Europe

IN THIS status quo of “patents as products” we keep hearing about patent-pending hype/bragging rights from incognito companies. They do not always have products, but they sure have pieces of papers with an idea on them. The situation is worse in the States than in most other countries and Australia, for example, still has activism fighting the issue:

When it comes to software patents, Melbourne developer Ben Sturmfels is sure of one thing: his campaign to end them in their entirety will succeed in the long run.

[...]

Though he is a free software advocate, Sturmfels campaign against software patents extends to all genres of software. Patents can affect proprietary software as much as they do free and open source software, he pointed out when I met him recently.

In February, Sturmfels’ petition was accepted by the government’s Petitions Committee, in three batches. “Collecting 1000 signatures on paper is a hard task and a huge one in terms of the amount of paper needed,” he said with a grin.

More recently we saw some similar activism in New Zealand, where there is a danger that the “Software patent law in New Zealand [might] be overhidden by the Trans Pacific Partnership Agreement (TPPA).” Here is another article about it which says: “A pending international trade treaty could override a recent New Zealand law change that excluded software from patent protection.

“All the political parties supported the controversial change. But the Trans Pacific Partnership Agreement (TPPA) could see the US pro-patent view override our local law makers.

“Last month, I met Trade Minister Hon Tim Groser and the government’s chief trade negotiator to get the inside word on what was happening with the TPPA, particularly in relation to technology and intellectual property (IP).

“Mr Groser’s openness and candour was excellent and I can’t speak highly enough about the minister’s willingness to engage and discuss these issues.”

The situation in New Zealand has been eerily similar at times to the situation in Europe — a situation so depressing that we prefer not to write about until after Christmas.

Watch how some people are treating patents like property. To quote a new example:

The Government has published draft legislation for its Finance Bill 2012, which includes draft measures aimed at creating improved conditions for business investment and growth in the UK. The proposals include a new tax scheme intended to reduce corporation tax for profits arising from patents, dubbed the “Patent Box”.

“Law” sites keep promoting software patents in the UK, under seemingly innocent titles. We are going to address software patents in Europe in a later series of posts later in the month. We need to do some activism to defend European software developers from the bureaucrats, paper-pushers, and multinational monopolists. █

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Trouble With SysVInit in OpenSUSE

Posted in Novell, OpenSUSE at 2:51 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Systemic error

Summary: An article of interest from Phoronix

THE roundup of December’s Novell news is about to come, but among OpenSUSE posts of all sorts we found this article from Phoronix — an article that got its author berated in the forums (typical Novell bullies). To quote:

OpenSUSE 12.1 introduced support for systemd but it didn’t defenestrate SysVinit as there are still some dependencies on this older init system. However, there’s a proposal now to completely phase out SysVinit within openSUSE and it’s been met by some mixed views.

We wrote about systemd in OpenSUSE a few weeks/months ago. █

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Groklaw: No Settlement Talks in Novell vs. Microsoft Case

Posted in Antitrust, Courtroom, Microsoft, Novell at 2:44 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Summary: The WordPerfect case with its imminent future is reported to have approached settlement, but experts beg to differ

THE Novell of Mr. Noorda is said to have entered settlement talks with Microsoft and according to Groklaw Microsoft made a motion to dismiss. Based on the filings that Pamela Jones shows:

Microsoft intends to renew its motion to dismiss as a matter of law Novell’s antitrust case in Novell v. Microsoft. It sent a letter [PDF] to Judge Frederick Motz informing him of its intention, saying it will file by January 13th. I gather it would prefer to avoid a second jury trial. TechFlash reports Microsoft lawyers will claim that Novell lacks sufficient evidence to support its claims. And IDG’s John Ribeiro provides more details on Network World. So, no settlement, as Law.com reports: “Despite the close call, Microsoft’s lawyers say they won’t pay to make the case go away. ‘There are no settlement discussions,’ Sullivan & Cromwell partner David Tulchin told us. ‘Microsoft believes firmly that Novell’s claims have no merit,’ he added.”

Microsoft typically pays its victims to just disappear, but perhaps not this time. █

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Links 23/12/2011: Daiwa (Bank) Selects GNU/Linux, Thunderbird 9.0

Posted in News Roundup at 7:31 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

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