01.19.11

Benjamin Orndorff From Microsoft/Gates and Ellis Represents the CTPN Patents Cartel

Posted in Microsoft, Patents at 1:44 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Summary: More evidence is suggesting that CTPN is just a proxy or a shell to Microsoft

EVERYBODY knows that Microsoft is having severe problems, so it is turning to software patents. Right now it avoids regulators by putting Novell’s patents in CPTN, which is run by the abusive monopolist that already sues Linux using software patents (e.g. TomTom case, Motorola).

Microsoft attempts to distance itself from this cartel by calling it something else and pretending that it’s independent [1, 2, 3]. Well, Microsoft’s Benjamin O Orndorff is listed there in the SEC filing about CPTN, alongside Ronald W. Hovsepian (thanks to Jan Wildeboer for the headsup). According to this page, Microsoft was “Incorporated by Benjamin O Orndorff” and others. Its key people are listed as:

Officers:

* Benjamin O Orndorff
* Bradford L Smith
* Brian Arbogast
* George Zinn
* Mary Broz
* Steven A Ballmer

I turns out that Orndorff was also an attorney at Preston Gates & Ellis. According to his LinkedIn page, he is Senior Attorney at Microsoft Corporation from August 2004 to present (6 years 6 months). Prior to this he was an Attorney at Preston Gates & Ellis (the firm of Bill Gates’ dad, which lobbies the United States government very aggressively). He worked there from June 1999 to August 2004 (5 years 3 months). Remember the role played by Preston Gates & Ellis in the SCO case (handling money from the lawsuit). █

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Patents Roundup: A Quick Look at Europe

Posted in Europe, Patents at 1:34 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Summary: Recent articles that shed light on the patent situation in Europe, including enforcement

THIS is the last part of a long series of posts about software patents. It’s more of a list of somewhat orphaned articles. Previously we dealt with disheartening news about the second version of EIF [1, 2, 3, 4, 5], which Microsoft and the BSA managed to push patents into. Jochen Friedrich says it’s a conciliation:

Sure, the value of the first European Interoperability Framework incarnation was that is got exposed to attacks. However, the policy document got hardly read and ressembled more a general work programme. In reality the EIF v1 was an unimportant document barely able to generate substantial results in the field, in particular not in those parts of its contents which were not disputed such as multilinguality. The European Commission regularly releases official “communications” which do not generate direct results but are rather followed by more of the same, the next strategy, green paper, white paper, agenda. Neither the EIF v1 nor the EIF v2 did even reach that minor document status level of a “communication”. To me it looks like India took better conclusions from the EIF v1 as it set up a straight document on interoperability. Most critics and proponents are mislead about the role of the EIF v2 in an overall upcoming EU interoperability architectural framework and fail to see how the EIF v1 was sacrificed, as a decoy we get the EIF v2.

Incidentally, EDRI issues this warning about injunctions:

Just before Christmas, the European Commission published its report on the application of the IPR Enforcement Directive.

The text, while written in fairly neutral terms, does subtly show the Commission’s plans for the enforcement of intellectual property rights and the dangers that these hold for citizens’ rights. Two points in particular stand out – the circumvention of the E-Commerce Directive, in particular to overturn the ban on imposing a “general obligation to monitor” on Internet providers, and the intended weakening of the EU’s data protection regime for the benefit of copyright holders.

The EPO is meanwhile working to extend its scope/jurisdiction beyond Europe. “European patents may become valid in Morocco” says this blog post:

The President of the European Patent Office (EPO), Benoît Battistelli and Morocco’s Minister for Industry, Commerce and New Technologies, Ahmed Reda Chami, have signed an agreement on the validation of European patent applications and granted European patents in Morocco. The agreement will enter into force once the necessary implementing legislation has been passed by the Moroccan parliament.

Last night we learned about “[e]nhanced cooperation in the area of the creation of unitary patent protection”, which is an attempt to further globalise the patent systems and along the way increase damage and probably add software patents [via FFII]. Well, not so fast! Italy and Spain are opposing despite attempted blackmail [1, 2] and Axel H. Horns, a patent attorney, says: “Long Live The EU Patent – But A New EU Patent Court System Is Dead?”

Otherwise, the Enhanced Co-operation group might rubber-stamp the required legal texts very soon, starting with the implementation early next year. However, there is another obstacle: Even the reduced system established under the Enhanced Co-operation scheme will need to revise the European Patent Convention (EPC) by means of a Diplomatic conference in accordance with Article 172 EPC. Italy and Spain might, at least theoretically, try to obstruct such conference. However, the quorum of a two-third majority in accordance with Article 172 (2) EPC can be met even without Italy and Spain. And, if, after the Diplomatic Conference, Italy and Spain don’t ratify some amended version of the EPC in due time, they will be squeezed out of the EPC in accordance with Article 172 (4) thereof.

Horns also said that the “EU Commission [is] about to conduct various interesting ICT and/or patent related studies — http://tinyurl.com/2wdjutz”

As an example of a study, see this new piece of work titled “Internet-based Protest in European policy-making: The Case of Digital Activism” [PDF]. To quote the summary:

European Institutions, especially the European Parliament, are venues of access for digital activist networks wishing to influence policy-making on issues of intellectual property rights, internet regulation and the respect of civil rights in digital environments. We refer to these networks as “digital activism”. They are more or less loosely rooted in the hacker culture and are intensively making use of online tools in order to organize and consolidate a collective identity and build a transnational public sphere. This study focuses on the “no software patents” campaign led by this movement that aimed at influencing the directive on the patentability of computer-implemented inventions (2002-2005). By discussing the advocacy techniques – both online and offline – that were developed by this digital activist network, we provide an insight into power struggles that are currently taking place in Europe, but also in other regions of the world.

Related to activism there is this new article “Blocking Patents and Political Protest”:

Another way to think of this is that a patent could be acquired for the sole purpose of stopping certain kinds of expression. You could call this content discrimination or a sort of blocking patent. I think this is really troubling once it’s combined with the expansion of patentable subject matter to business methods. Here is an illustration:

Imagine that in 1960 business methods were patentable. A segregationist group that is thinking outside of the box decides to apply for a patent on sit-in protests. The patent is granted. When the civil rights activists in Greensboro start their demonstration (at the lunch counter depicted above at the Smithsonian), they are sued for infringement.

Regarding the report which says that the “EU court [will] discuss patents for embryonic stem cells” Glyn Moody asked, “patents more important than ethics?”

The never-ending debate on patenting human embryonic stem cells (hESCs) will receive fresh wind in its sails today as the European Court of Justice (ECJ) holds a hearing to discuss the definition of ‘human embryos’ and their industrial and commercial use.

Now, watch what the EPO Boards of Appeal is doing: [via David Hammerstein]

In case T 1051/07, the EPO’s Technical Board of Appeal 3.4.03 decided on allowability of EP 1 365 368 of Korean mobile service provider SK Telecom. The application relates to a system for executing financial transactions in that a mobile account is issued to a mobile phone subscriber and is administratively managed by the service provider, while a transaction with the mobile account is effectuated by a transaction between a bank account of the subscriber and intermediate accounts (“juridical body accounts”) of the mobile service provider at different banks.

The same author, Falk Metzler, says that New Zealand’s “Guidelines Try to Render “Embedded Software” Patentable Without Specifying this Legal Term”

In April 2010, the parliament of New Zealand voted for a major Patents Reform Bill to tighten the standards of patentability of software-implemented inventions (see related posting). The bill, as drafted by the Select Commerce Committee in July 2010, accepted that “protecting software by patenting is inconsistent with the open source model” and that “computer software should be excluded from patent protection as software patents can stifle innovation and competition” – intensely accompanied by various lobbying organisations. Clause 15 (3A) of the Patents Bill now reads:

A computer program is not a patentable invention.

For background about New Zealand see this wiki page. It is a similar situation to that which prevailed in Europe, where software patents are not legal in theory, but loopholes exist to bypass the restrictions, notably by tying to a “device”, at least in the patent application. █

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Patents Roundup: Software Patent Opinions in the UK

Posted in Europe, Patents at 1:00 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Summary: Bits and pieces about patents from British Web sites

THE previous post dealt with several weeks’ worth of embarrassing news from the USPTO and its clients. The problem is not just American however. In the UK, for example, the BBC does its usual patents boosting, disguised using sob stories with “entrepreneurship” in them. Is this public service for taxpayers? It is more like indoctrination.

Dr Chan’s latest innovations, WizPatent and WizFolio, arose after he wanted to patent a product but needed to sort through existing, similar patents to check for infringement or copyright issues.

In the EU/UK blog composed only by British patent lawyers there is this post about Community Restricted-Area Patent (CRAP), which is a concept it explains as follows:

Says the IPKat, this is one of the greatest tests of democracy which the European Union has faced: if the people vote for CRAP, will they get it? Says Merpel, according to some opinions, this is no question: it has sometimes been suggested the European Union delivers CRAP whether people vote for it or not.

A versatile word: CRAP as a surname, an acronym and an place name. In the plural: a patented game played with cards and dice, as well as an unpatented one.

Gordon from TechBytes has this good post which he titled “The Road To Stagnation Is Paved With Patents”:

All of the large corporations spend a lot of time and money telling anyone who will listen that patents are a vital component to innovation. They use it in PR for the education system to indoctrinate kids, the political system to extend IP laws and treaties. Patents in fact are the path to stagnation.

A UK-based journalist, Rupert Goodwins, writes: “I love technology, but software patents are breaking my heart…”

Finally, going back to an English blog, “Court of Justice rules on Czech GUIs” says the title.

Here’s a little copyright case which, the IPKat thinks, may just be wrongly decided. The Court of Justice of the European Union has just delivered its ruling in Case C‑393/09, Bezpečnostní softwarová asociace – Svaz softwarové ochrany v Ministerstvo kultury, a reference for a preliminary ruling from a Czech Court, the Nejvyšší správní soud.

In April 2001 the BSA applied to the Ministry of Culture for authorisation for the collective administration of copyright in computer programs, under Paragraph 98 of the Czech Copyright Law, its objective being to secure the right to the collective administration of graphic user interfaces (GUIs — the bits that computer users see on the screen, like icons which they can click on when navigating a program). After nearly four years of ding-dong battle in the courts and before the Ministry itself, the Ministry rejected the BSA application yet again on two grounds: (i) the Copyright Law protected only the object code and the source code of a computer program, but not the result of the display of the program on the computer screen, since the graphic user interface was protected only against unfair competition; (ii) the collective administration of computer programs was possible in theory, but since voluntary collective administration served no purpose, mandatory collective administration was not an option in reality.

Notice the role of the BSA there. Techrights actually made it into news sites (e.g. in Germany and Hungary) for writing about it. However, the case above extends further into continental Europe, which we’ll deal with in the next post. █

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Latest Examples of the Failure of the USPTO, With Emphasis on Software Patents

Posted in America, Patents at 12:45 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Monopolies in calculus

Summary: A month-long roundup of news about software patents

THE NEWS is filled with silly software patents. These are constantly being announced by folks who believe that patenting mathematics is something commendable. “As described in the patent,” one page says, “the new technology utilizes a computational model called an artificial neural network (ANN) to reach conclusions about the content of web pages and similar documents. An artificial neural network is an adaptable computing system based on similar principles as the human brain.”

This is the type of thing people are patenting. It’s essentially maths and it can impede teaching and research. Some other company keeps pushing this old press release about a book promoting software patents. Another one about “patent-pending software service” makes it evident that in at least one country in the world one need not be shy about claiming a monopoly on mathematics.

There is a good new article titled “How Software Patents Will Ruin the World” and it goes like this:

There are methods that software developers can use to fight back against software patents. One such method is to prove that you developed the invention first. Unfortunately, this sometimes becomes difficult to prove when the “invention” is actually an idea. There are also some non-profit organizations that will take a case to defend a software developer against patent infringement accusations.

Unfortunately, fighting patents will not stop them altogether, and there is a danger that some legal actions against patents may serve to legitimize them. A better approach is to convince lawmakers to halt the blind approval of software patents by patent agencies in various countries.

If legislation is not changed, software patents threaten common software, particularly free and open source software, that is used on computers, servers, phones, and other devices all over the world. The result will be a lack of quality innovation, competition, fair pricing, and independent developers. None of that is good for the progress of society. If our technology becomes constantly entangled in patent lawsuits that take years to be resolved, development and innovation will slow to crawl, leaving the world crippled by its own laws.

The situation is already quite bad. A double-clicking patent is now a source of trouble to many:

Hopewell Culture & Design reckons it owns the act of double-clicking, and is suing Apple, Nokia, Samsung and just about everyone else for breaching its patent.

Pogson saw this patent and compared it to this:

The act of double-clicking is like rhythm in music, “rhythm is simply the timing of the musical sounds and silences“. That’s stretching things a bit but it gets to the essence of the patent, conveying instructions from the user to the computer software by varying the interval between clicks.

NPR debates one of Amazon’s more controversial patents by asking: Amazon Could Let You Return A Gift Before It’s Sent; Awful Or Awesome Idea?”

Towards the end of last year people were also chatting about playoffs being patented. See “College Football Playoffs Patented?!?; Mark Cuban Warned Not To Infringe”. There are direct links from Slashdot, too. [via]

For years, fans of college football have been clamoring for some sort of playoff system, rather than the messy rankings and bowl system that currently exists. It’s a topic that people can get pretty passionate about. Even President Obama has weighed in on the subject arguing for a playoff system. I’m not a college football fan, so I don’t really care one way or the other what happens, but there is a little tidbit in the latest discussion that I find interesting. Jarrett Streebin alerts us to the news that Mark Cuban is pushing hard to create a college football playoff system, which normally wouldn’t be of that much interest to folks around here, except in Cuban’s blog post about the topic, he posts an anonymous email from someone who claims to hold a patent on a football playoff system.

Another fine new example of bad patents is: “Location Targeted Coupons: Patented”

So it seems pretty ridiculous that, in 2005, some folks from Where Inc., applied for a patent on the concept, which has now been granted, and seems ridiculously broad (Patent number 7,848,765). The challenge was never about how to do this. That was obvious to all sorts of people. The issue was just waiting for the infrastructure to catch up. It’s ridiculous that such an idea that was widely discussed way before this patent was applied for is now locked up via a patent.

Julie Samuels from the EFF writes about a scandalous patent which we mentioned here recently. She titles it “When Bad Patents Hurt Good People: Patent Threat Shuts Down Flight Planning Site”:

In another example of using patents to stifle—rather than promote—innovation, a company called FlightPrep has come out fighting, threatening online flight planning sites with its newly obtained patent, and going so far as to sue at least one of those sites. That patent, originally filed in 2001, allegedly covers a system for generating flight plans online, hardly a novel concept. And FlightPrep is now using its patent to attempt to extract royalty payments from small companies that have been providing such a service for years—or put them out of business.

Pam Samuelson and her colleagues continue to produce good papers on the state of the patent system and they still get mentioned in the press for it.

The paper is part of a forthcoming symposium on the Bilski case, which also includes papers by Jason Schultz & Pam Samuelson (“‘Clues’ for Determining Whether Business and Service Innovations are Unpatentable Abstract Ideas”), Don Chisum (”Weeds and Seeds in the Supreme Court’s Business Method Patents Decision: New Directions for Regulating Patent Scope“), and Kevin Collins.

Patent lawyers, on the other hand, have their own biased story to tell (they have vested interests) and here is just one example of it:

First the CAFC refused to invalidate RCT’s patent on halftoning greyscale images. Next, they broadly applied Bilski to uphold a medical diagnostic patent. While the rest of us wait to see if the Supreme Court will revisit the Bilski issue in 2011 (and while I’m apparently accused of “cheering” the earlier diagnostic opinion), it’s business as usual at the PTO’s Board of Appeals. (Quick review: the Machine or Transformation (“MoT”) test–allowing a claim that is tied to a particular machine or apparatus, or transforms an article into a different state or thing–is a useful “clue” but not the sole test).

Red Hat’s site has a very different story to tell:

Much of the problem with the current U.S. patent system involves haze. Whether it is ambiguity regarding what the patent covers or murkiness about whether the technology covered by the patent is actually new, patent plaintiffs regularly use this uncertainty to their advantage. This ambiguity–often planned–allows plaintiffs to leverage settlements against businesses that are forced to either pay their own lawyers or opportunistic plaintiffs, or take their chances in court where judges and juries are often unsympathetic to companies.

This haze is particularly pronounced with software patents. Unlike electrical patents, in which the electrons of an accused circuit either move in the way described by the patent or they don’t, software patents can be manipulated to cover “inventions” far removed from the patent’s description or any intent of the patent’s inventor.

The matter of fact is, sites that target patent lawyers are increasingly willing to acknowledge the obvious: [via Glyn Moody]

The increased number of issuances raises some concern that the PTO has lowered its standard for patentability. It is true, that a higher percentage of applications are resulting in issued patents.

TechDirt has responded to this by warning: [via]

Prepare for the barrage of innovation delaying lawsuits… followed by a lot more patent applications. What’s funny is that USPTO director David Kappos actually thinks that ramping up patent approvals will help with the backlog. It won’t. Because all that will happen is that more people will try to get more ridiculous patents through, recognizing that the USPTO has massively lowered its standards, and they have a better chance of getting that magic monopoly with which they can sue other companies.

One of our readers, “buynsell”, told us in IRC that a “[c]omment on Groklaw said U.S. patent examiners “have a quota to meet.” Not sure exactly what it means, but it can’t be good. Does USPTO require a minimum number of patent approvals every year?”

Mike Masnick from TechDirt writes:

How To Make The Patent System Even Worse: Make Patent Validity Incontestable

[...]

So it seems almost laughable, then, to hear a suggestion that things should move in the other direction. However, some of the patent systems loudest defenders are now proposing that patents should become incontestable after a period of five years, meaning that no one would be able to contest the validity of those patents, even if the evidence suggests the patent was granted in error. It’s hard to fathom how this possibly makes sense. The only explanation given is that it would make patents more valuable — as if they weren’t valuable enough already. But, of course, that’s laughable. It’s based on either confusion about economics or the patent system itself. The point of the patent system is to “promote the progress.” Focusing on making patents more valuable suggests these people believe the point of the patent system is to get more patents. But the two things are not the same. Making patents incontestable, especially in cases when a patent is not valid does not promote the progress. It does the opposite.

It is clear that the patent system is becoming ever more outrageous as those who profit from patents regardless of innovation give up on quality and forget the original goals of the patent office. When a company announces “Profitable Year, Highlighted by Software Patent”, then it means patents are put before real production. TechDirt notes that “eBay Shutting Down Rubik’s Cube Knockoff Sales Due To Patent Infringement Claim (Not From Rubik’s Maker)”:

Bram Cohen, who’s known for doing quite a bit of 3-dimensional puzzle design, alerts us to the news of eBay shutting down a bunch of auctions over some Dayan Guhong and Lingyun puzzles. The Dayan Guhong and Lingyun puzzles are, basically, quite similar to the traditional Rubik’s Cube, but designed to work a bit easier. You can see a video explaining the Guhong, which shows how it’s faster than a traditional Rubik’s cube.

For an example of pro-patents propaganda (including software patents which are named specifically), see this new article written by Gary Nath, who is not an engineer but a “managing partner and founder of The Nath Law Group.” Here is an example of a pro-patents site speaking about Bilski

Bilski is no exception. Some commentators worried that the wrong decision in this case would kill the already ailing U.S. economy. At stake was what types of methods are eligible for patent protection. The patentability of “nonphysical” inventions including business methods, surgical methods, diagnostic methods and even the patentability of software itself was in question.

The impact of patents on mobile phones is one of the better demonstrations of the patent system going awry (the example of smartphones being harmed by patents is still made visible by this AP article that spreads to many more publications worldwide). How about mobile location patents for mobile phones? Well, that too is patented now: [via]

Just as geo mobile services are taking off, the U.S. Patent Office has awarded an extremely broad patent on “Location-based services” to Where. Patent No. 7,848,765 covers 31 claims ranging from sending an alert to offering a coupon when somebody crosses a geofence with a mobile device. Where CEO Walter Doyle calls it the “mother of all geofencing patents.”

What the world ends up with are embargoes like this one:

Monster Cable Keeps On Suing; Asks Court To Block Company From Attending CES

[...]

By now, you must know that Monster Cable has a rather terrible reputation for threatening and suing all sorts of other companies over intellectual property issues — often, it seems, with very little merit (remember when they went after “Monster Golf”? good times…). The latest is that Monster Cable, along with Beats Electronics, are going after competitor Fanny Wang Headphones, claiming both patent and trade dress infringement, because Fanny Wang made headphones that have some similarities in style. The patent (D552,077), by the way, is not a utility patent but a design patent, which is very narrowly focused.

[...]

As you’d expect, Beats/Monster also demand all sorts of things (treble damages, destruction of all product, etc.). The complaint also points out that Fanny Wang is planning to be presenting its headphones at CES in early January, implicitly asking the court to stop Fanny Wang from appearing at the show. Remember, kids, the lesson of the day is “why compete, if you can have the government block your competition?”

It is time to decide whether this system is productive and whether it serves its purpose at all. If it does not, it’s worth getting rid of it. █

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01.18.11

Writing Techrights Collaboratively

Posted in Site News at 3:07 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Summary: How to help by writing for Techrights

EARLIER this month we started to experiment with simultaneous composition of new blog posts, as can more or less be seen in this wiki page. It is hard keeping up with all the news and the bigger this site’s authorship becomes, the more output will be available and the more profound it will be. If you wish to help the writing of new blog posts (and get attribution for any contribution which is made), please select a page which is not marked as “done”, then edit by inserting references, opinions, or even fixing some typos. New articles can also be created by editing the “Work in Progress” page (the index). The more it is done by the community, the more effective the site will be. For those who want to read new posts before anyone else, this wiki section is also the best area to be in, even though it’s unpolished. Be aware that wiki logins are independent from blog logins, for technical reasons. Coordination of wiki edits is sometimes done over IRC and Identica too. We try to make use of the best tools to achieve accuracy and speed. Techrights is a group effort. █

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Controlling Software, Controlling Minds, Controlling Nations

Posted in Bill Gates, Deception, Microsoft at 2:42 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

“Mind Control: To control mental output you have to control mental input.”

–Microsoft, internal document [PDF]

Summary: How software tyrants pose a danger to more than just computing and sometimes to people’s entire way of life

OUR last post about the Gates Foundation hijacking US education was centred around TFA (there is a Spanish translation too), which is one among several invariable names of operations used to disguise their funders and agenda. For those who believe it’s only a US problem, it’s not. These is already expansion of it into Canada and sooner or later the rest of America. TFA stands for Teach For America and many franchises that are created in the US want to spread further and enhance their impact. Our valued reader Toby (he is Canadian) showed us a very long article this morning. It does a terrific job explaining what Bill Gates and some fellow plutocrats have been doing to public education in the US, usually by insulting the system with misinformation they paid to manufacture and then offering to ‘rescue’ the system which they label “troubled”. It is similar to the tactics used to increase quotas of foreign workers' visas and sometimes go further by taking over Haiti or Africa. It’s all about control, given the appropriate pretext. To quote some portions from the excellent new article:

The cost of K–12 public schooling in the United States comes to well over $500 billion per year. So, how much influence could anyone in the private sector exert by controlling just a few billion dollars of that immense sum? Decisive influence, it turns out. A few billion dollars in private foundation money, strategically invested every year for a decade, has sufficed to define the national debate on education; sustain a crusade for a set of mostly ill-conceived reforms; and determine public policy at the local, state, and national levels. In the domain of venture philanthropy—where donors decide what social transformation they want to engineer and then design and fund projects to implement their vision—investing in education yields great bang for the buck.

Hundreds of private philanthropies together spend almost $4 billion annually to support or transform K–12 education, most of it directed to schools that serve low-income children (only religious organizations receive more money). But three funders—the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the Eli and Edythe Broad (rhymes with road) Foundation, and the Walton Family Foundation—working in sync, command the field. Whatever nuances differentiate the motivations of the Big Three, their market-based goals for overhauling public education coincide: choice, competition, deregulation, accountability, and data-based decision-making. And they fund the same vehicles to achieve their goals: charter schools, high-stakes standardized testing for students, merit pay for teachers whose students improve their test scores, firing teachers and closing schools when scores don’t rise adequately, and longitudinal data collection on the performance of every student and teacher. Other foundations—Ford, Hewlett, Annenberg, Milken, to name just a few—often join in funding one project or another, but the education reform movement’s success so far has depended on the size and clout of the Gates-Broad-Walton triumvirate.

[...]

The smallest of the Big Three,* the Broad Foundation, gets its largest return on education investments from its two training projects. The mission of both is to move professionals from their current careers in business, the military, law, government, and so on into jobs as superintendents and upper-level managers of urban public school districts. In their new jobs, they can implement the foundation’s agenda. One project, the Broad Superintendents Academy, pays all tuition and travel costs for top executives in their fields to go through a course of six extended weekend sessions, assignments, and site visits. Broad then helps to place them in superintendent jobs. The academy is thriving. According to the Web site, “graduates of the program currently work as superintendents or school district executives in fifty-three cities across twenty-eight states. In 2009, 43 percent of all large urban superintendent openings were filled by Broad Academy graduates.”

[...]

Philanthropists Are Royalty

On September 8, 2010, the Broad Foundation announced a twist on the usual funding scenario: the Broad Residency had received a $3.6 million grant from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. According to Broad’s press release, the money would go “to recruit and train as many as eighteen Broad Residents over the next four years to provide management support to school districts and charter management organizations addressing the issue of teacher effectiveness.” Apparently Broad needs Gates in order to expand one of its core projects. The truth is that the Gates Foundation could fully subsidize all of Broad’s grant-giving in education, as well as that of the Walton Family Foundation. Easily—it’s that outsized. Since Warren Buffett gave his assets to Gates, the latter is more than six times bigger than the next largest foundation in the United States, Ford, with $10.2 billion in assets.

[...]

Investing for Political Leverage

The day before the first Democratic presidential candidates’ debate in 2007, Gates and Broad announced they were jointly funding a $60 million campaign to get both political parties to address the foundations’ version of education reform. It was one of the most expensive single issue efforts ever; it dwarfed the $22.4 million offensive that Swift Boat Veterans for Truth mounted against John Kerry in 2004 or the $7.8 million that AARP spent on advocacy for older citizens that same year (New York Times, April 25, 2007). The Gates-Broad money paid off: the major candidates took stands on specific reforms, including merit pay for teachers. But nothing the foundations did in that election cycle (or could have done) advanced their agenda as much as Barack Obama’s choice of Arne Duncan to head the Department of Education (DOE).

[...]

Ventures in Media

On October 7 and 8, 2010, the Columbia Journalism Review ran a two-part investigation by Robert Fortner into “the implications of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation’s increasingly large and complex web of media partnerships.” The report focused on the foundation’s grants to the PBS Newshour, ABC News, and the British newspaper the Guardian for reporting on global health. Of course, all three grantees claim to have “complete editorial independence,” but the ubiquity of Gates funding makes the claim disingenuous. As Fortner observes, “It is the largest charitable foundation in the world, and its influence in the media is growing so vast there is reason to worry about the media’s ability to do its job.” The Chronicle of Philanthropy, too, questioned the foundation’s bankrolling of for-profit news organizations and its “growing involvement with journalism” (October 11, 2010). Neither publication mentioned that Gates is also developing partnerships with news and entertainment media to promote its education agenda.

Both Gates and Broad funded “NBC News Education Nation,” a week of public events and programming on education reform that began on September 27, 2010. The programs aired on NBC News shows such as “Nightly News” and “Today” and on the MSNBC, CNBC, and Telemundo TV networks. During the planning stages, the producers of Education Nation dismissed persistent criticism that the programming was being heavily weighted in favor of the Duncan-foundation reform agenda. Judging by the schedule of panels and interviews, Education Nation certainly looked like a foundation project. The one panel I watched—”Good Apples: How do we keep good teachers, throw out bad ones, and put a new shine on the profession?”—was “moderated” by Steven Brill, a hardline opponent of teachers’ unions and promoter of charter schools. The panel did not belong on a news show.

Gates and Broad also sponsored the documentary film Waiting for Superman, which is by far the ed reform movement’s greatest media coup. With few exceptions, film critics loved it (“a powerful and alarming documentary about America’s failing public school system,” New York Times, September 23, 2010). Critics of the reform agenda found the film one-sided, heavy-handed, and superficial.

[...]

Can anything stop the foundation enablers? After five or ten more years, the mess they’re making in public schooling might be so undeniable that they’ll say, “Oops, that didn’t work” and step aside. But the damage might be irreparable: thousands of closed schools, worse conditions in those left open, an extreme degree of “teaching to the test,” demoralized teachers, rampant corruption by private management companies, thousands of failed charter schools, and more low-income kids without a good education. Who could possibly clean up the mess?

All children should have access to a good public school. And public schools should be run by officials who answer to the voters. Gates, Broad, and Walton answer to no one. Tax payers still fund more than 99 percent of the cost of K–12 education. Private foundations should not be setting public policy for them. Private money should not be producing what amounts to false advertising for a faulty product. The imperious overreaching of the Big Three undermines democracy just as surely as it damages public education.

A long discussion about it was started in the “boycottnovell-social” IRC channel and the key point is that Gates et al. are once again deciding for other people what to do and leaving a trail of destruction so that they can make a profit and use teachers, for example, as taxpayers-funded agents of indoctrination.

“Deciding for other countries what is right for them is the theme we see as analogous to what’s done by the wealth of the nation to public education in the US.”The situation in schools mirrors some other situations where Bill Gates and ultra-rich men of his class exploit even entire continents. To give just one example, consider David Rockefeller, who is a partner of Gates, e.g. in Africa’s “Green Revolution” initiatives that make African farmers dependent on American companies with patents on seeds. Deciding for other countries what is right for them is the theme we see as analogous to what’s done by the wealth of the nation to public education in the US. It is about what serves power structures and keeps those in power safe and moreover revered; it’s not about objectivity. People who understand that the population is being manipulated and deceived are rightly angry, but they are not sure what to do. Here for example is a famous video that comes with a strong language warning (Flash version). It shows David Rockefeller confronted at a Chilean Airport during vacations.

What the video does not say is what exactly the Rockefellers have been doing to foreign nations, including gory wars. As long as the likes of Gates are buying the press which teachers are reading (he pays them millions of dollars) and spend billions taking control of schools, most adolescent will never be told the true story behind the war on south America, for example. Lies by omission or deception by curriculum characterise a generally ill education system which strives to train rather than inform. It is almost like lobbying the children, but the children are not aware that this is happening (public education is free of charge for a reason, just like many newspapers are disseminated for free).

As a side note, earlier in the afternoon we found this article from the Economist (generally Free software-hostile paper) which advertises a book whose authors say the same thing Microsoft lobbyists are saying about “open source”. Not too surprisingly we found out that just like Microsoft and Gates ‘studies’ that are funded by them to deceive the public and warp consensus, this one too was written with Microsoft funding by Josh Lerner and Mark Schankerman. “Much conventional wisdom about programs written by volunteers is wrong” it says at the top and there are revealing paragraphs such as: [via Harish Pillay]

With “The Comingled Code”, Josh Lerner and Mark Schankerman, professors at the Harvard Business School and the London School of Economics respectively, are aiming to fill this gap. They have done a good job—although its academic tone makes it unlikely that the book will fly off the shelves, even in areas with a lot of hackers (who are sure to take offence at the fact that the authors took money for research from Microsoft, long the arch- enemy of the open-source movement— although they assure readers that the funds came with no strings attached).

[...]

Given the complex picture, they dismiss the argument that open source can solve the conundrum of innovation policy as being “too optimistic”. They do not believe that governments should intervene in favour of open-source software, as many have done through subsidies or public procurement. Instead governments should make sure that the two forms of software compete on a level playing field and can comingle efficiently.

Here again is the “choice” spin. It’s the same choice that was offered to anti-war “hippies” in order to give them an illusion of freedom (the fashion industry adapted/co-opted them). The above is not really choice, it’s the same old excuse for keeping things the way they are, i.e. predominantly proprietary. When the authors say “no strings attached” this does not mean no bias accompanies the writing. Of course, if they want to get funding in the future, being favourable to Microsoft would help. This is not the first example where Microsoft funds “Open Source” events and think tanks to get things done its own way and in the case of Ken Brown, Linux libel too gets spread with Microsoft cash in the back pocket.

The point of this whole post is basically to point out that rich people and rich companies control the channels of communication (literature, schools, consortia) so as to perpetuate and increase their own power. █

“Gates’ gimmick of becoming a philanthropist repeats the Rockefeller scam almost one to one a century later.”

–Dark cloud over good works of Gates Foundation

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Links 18/1/2011: Xfce 4.8 is Released, Firefox 4.0 Anticipated

Posted in News Roundup at 1:37 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Clip of the Day

From SiCKO: How Liberals Respond to Their “Enemies”

Credit: TinyOgg

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Microsoft’s Dangerous Obsession With Patents

Posted in GNU/Linux, Microsoft, Patents at 4:54 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Summary: Microsoft products like KINect get sued for patent violations following Microsoft’s legal action against Linux/Android, which shows the limit of this monopolist’s patent strategy

MICROSOFT is not in a healthy state and it is trying to earn patents like never before. Rather than produce a portfolio of products it increasingly produces a portfolio of patents and then pressures companies to pay Microsoft for “licences” (otherwise Microsoft sues, until the licensing deal is done). Microsoft booster Todd Bishop says that Microsoft wants to patent ‘fans’ and that it’s a “one-way public relationships”:

In a filing made public today, Microsoft is seeking a patent for something it calls “One-Way Public Relationships” in social networks and other online properties.

Even though you’ve probably never heard or used that phrase, chances are you’re involved in many of these types of relationships already. That’s because it’s more commonly known as being a “fan” of something online.

The latest item of news being debated is “Microsoft Seeks Do-Let-The-Bed-Bugs-Bite Patent”. From Slashdot‘s summary:

“In its just-published patent application for Adapting Parasites to Combat Disease, Microsoft lays out plans to unleash ‘altered parasitic organisms’ on humans, including mosquitoes, fleas, ticks, bed bugs, leeches, pinworms, tapeworms, hookworms, heart worms, roundworms, lice (head, body, and pubic), and the like. ‘Irradiated mosquitoes can be used to deliver damaged Plasmodium to individuals,’ explains Microsoft. ‘Instead of contracting malaria, an individual receiving the damaged Plasmodium develops an immune response that renders the individual resistant to contracting malaria.’ Don’t worry about runaway breeding, advises Microsoft — ‘a termination feature [that] can include programmed death’ makes this impossible. As David Spade might say, I liked this movie the first time I saw it — when it was called Jurassic Park.”

If Microsoft becomes too focused on patents and not actual products, then it puts all of its eggs in the litigious basket and risks going out of business when the law changes (more on that in a later post). Going through some Microsoft patent news which we missed over the past two months, we find that Microsoft expands its patent lawsuit:

Microsoft is rumored to extend the patent infringement lawsuit that claimed his property on the operating system (OS) of mobile Android.

Here is the WSJ blog post “What Smartphone Makers Can Learn From the Sewing Machine Patent War”:

The smartphone market is highly lucrative, has many competing players, and involves countless patents. In other words, it’s a recipe for lawsuits. In the last month alone, Microsoft lobbed a suit at Motorola, who in turn sued Apple. Nokia and HTC both have sued Apple, and Apple has sued both Nokia and HTC.

Remember that the patent system started with real inventors whose contributions included physical and complex inventions like sewing machines (not suing machines like today’s patent lawyers) and whose novelty involved sophisticated mechanics with improvements. Sure, some of these early patents were granted to people who merely improved very slightly the work of others — work that had not been patented. The likes of Edison are a good example of this form of abuse. Anyway, the sewing machine patent war is a decent analogy for the smartphones patent war.

By attacking Motorola (Android) with patents, Microsoft has put Xbox at risk, so this whole strategy is becoming rather dodgy and unpredictable. It’s all that Microsoft has left. Motorola is now using the KINect to sue Microsoft back:

Microsoft and Motorola were discovered on Friday to have expanded their countering patent lawsuits to include technology that could cover the wider industry. Motorola on Thursday filed a lawsuit in the Western District of Wisconsin to include two new patents that claim the Kinect motion controller violates its patents Microsoft responded the same day by filing its own lawsuit in a Southern District of Florida court that added seven new patents to its claims, five of which claimed infringements by Android while two more aimed at Motorola’s DVR boxes.

The mobbyists keep concentrating on this case against Linux, chatting with people who include Rob Enderle. They try to use it to cause damage to Linux’ reputation (or more specifically Android).

SCOny [sic] too is collecting more patents around its console these days:

Sony’s plans for their PS3 – A patent filing hinting on the future?

[...]

I’ve written on many occasions about Kinect, the tech which I believe Microsoft is hoping to take its 360 through the next five years. In the meantime Sony has been busy too and they have released their Move tech which won best hardware accessory at Gamescon 2010, beating Microsoft’s Kinect for the accolade.

As we showed last night, SCOny is suing rivals with patents, but mostly hardware patents. When it comes to peripherals, it’s about patents that are partly software oriented.

Going further back in time, Canesta was bought by Microsoft and resultant articles stress that patents are a major part of it, e.g.:

i. Microsoft Buys Chip Company Canesta
ii. If Microsoft Acquires Canesta, It’s Probably A Patent Play (MSFT)
iii. Microsoft buys gesture-chip maker (and patent holder) Canesta
iv. Microsoft Acquires Canesta, 3D Tech Patents

Here is another one that we missed:

i. Microsoft Patents Brain Implant Gaming Device

Microsoft Corporation Technology Chief Craig Mundie announced today that they have perfected a new “brain implant” gaming device that will assure frequent gamers of “the best gaming experience of their lives”.

And also:

i. Give your keyboard the boot? Microsoft patents foot interface

Microsoft’s research into a “foot-based user interface” seemed somewhat novel in 2006, when I first wrote about the project. Now that the company has released its Kinect full-body motion control system for the Xbox 360, the idea of controlling a machine with your feet seems like only part of the picture.

ii. Microsoft Patents Foot-Controlled Interface–Finally, A Way To Dedicate All Four Limbs To Work

Microsoft has apparently been kicking around the idea of a foot-controlled computer interface for some time now. They don’t want you to type with your toes, fortunately, but rather to use your feet for simple tasks like scrolling and opening email. But now that the company has finally patented the idea, will foot-powered computing usher in an era of healthier and more efficient screen time or just tie people to their machines by four limbs instead of two?

iii. Microsoft Earns Patent for Foot-Based Human-Computer Interface Technology

This one is familiar:

i. Microsoft applies for a patent for a verifying a ‘safe’ operating system

Microsoft has applied for a patent for an “automated, static safety verifier” that will help verify the type- and memory-safety of an operating system.

And notably:

i. Microsoft Files Patent for Tactile Touchscreen
ii. Microsoft physical touchscreen patent app tips dynamic Surface
iii. Microsoft patents a more tactile touchscreen
iv. Microsoft patents shape-shifting display
v. Microsoft tries to reinvent the mobile keyboard

To quote from the first (number i) item:

In what is touted as what could be the future of touchscreen keyboards, Microsoft filed a patent on Nov. 25 for a “shape-shifting” touchscreen.

The technology would let users feel contours of a keyboard as if they were typing on a real physical keyboard even though they are really typing on a touchscreen which has a projected image of a keyboard.

Raining on Microsoft’s parade is the following: “Microsoft Research’s tactile touchscreens: Is it really circa 1970s PARC?”

These patent applications always spark a mixed reaction from me. You cheer the innovative ideas and then the capitalist cynic kicks in. The other item about Microsoft Research worth pondering is whether commercialization even matters.

Also worth mentioning: “Sony, Microsoft Patent New Touchscreen Technologies”

Patents filed by Sony and Microsoft suggest both companies may be planning to take touch screen technologies in interesting new directions, with potential applications for future game platforms.

And finally we have: “Microsoft patent bribes people to watch TV ads”

The patent, originally issued in 2000, is called “System and method for encouraging viewers to watch television programs.” It’s not a bad idea, as far as ideas that have never come to fruition go. Seeing it reminded me of Microsoft’s Magic Wand and Holographic meetings patents issued in 2009. It made me wonder what other oddball patents Microsoft has acquired recently. Answer: quite a few.

It is worth remembering that Microsoft buried Massive, which says a lot about its ventures that involve putting ads on TV.

The bottom line is, Microsoft is becoming a patents company. It’s everywhere in the news and it suggests that Microsoft’s vision is one of extortion and litigation. █

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