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06.21.16

The Conspiracy of Patent Lawyers for UPC and Battistelli’s Role in Preparing by Firing People

Posted in Europe, Patents at 6:59 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Bristows and Bird & Bird among the culprits

Trojan horse

Summary: The parasitic firms that lobby for the UPC and actually create it — firms like those that pass money to Battistelli’s EPO — are doing exactly the opposite of what Europe needs

THE EPO is in a dire and sad state because of its top-level management, which is effectively a cabal of ‘yes men’ to Battistelli. The sociopaths find these positions attractive and if they’re French and former colleagues of Battistelli, then they already have some job requirements covered. Megalomaniacal tendencies of Battistelli are rather contagious and it shows. This takes its toll on staff. Many are thankful to have never accepted a job offer from Battistelli’s EPO as there is an element of entrapment to it (Battistelli can veto employment choices even after someone leaves the Office).

“Megalomaniacal tendencies of Battistelli are rather contagious and it shows. This takes its toll on staff.”There are even worse things coming out of the EPO and they impact everyone in Europe, not just EPO staff. There’s no escaping the wrath of Battistelli and his grand plan, notably the UPC which rumours say he wishes to head (in spite of retirement age). The EPO routinely lobbies for the UPC rather than focus on patent examination (the EPO’s real purpose).

All one needs to know about the UPC is that it would harm European businesses and the media misleads about it (EPO's payments to European media companies contribute to this). The UPC is being designed and refined by and for patent lawyers, primarily in order to increase their overall profit/reputation, typically by making the number of lawsuits greater and the damages higher. Coup by occupation is all it boils down to, and it is not EU-centric either. The moment more people come to grips with what the UPC is and who it has been optimised for is the moment the whole thing comes tumbling down like ACTA in Europe, but right now a lot of UPC proceedings and intentionally kept in the dark, except when politicians are approached to ratify under the false preteses and the premise that this kind of coup is all about “unity”, “harmony”, “EU”, and “community” (among other euphemisms whose purpose is to perfume this very bad deal/bundle). A lot of the misinformation about the UPC just ‘happens’ to come from Battistelli, who has been promoting this whole scheme for a very long time along with other Frenchmen who consider French a more important language than Spanish (how convenient for them).

“A lot of the misinformation about the UPC just ‘happens’ to come from Battistelli, who has been promoting this whole scheme for a very long time along with other Frenchmen who consider French a more important language than Spanish (how convenient for them).”Based on some sad news from self-serving UPC propagandists, the Dutch people have been put aside again while the patent microcosm (includes the EPO and its clients/lawyers) used control of politicians to ram UPC down the country’s throat. This is a gross attack not only on democracy but on human rights. As I put it earlier in relation to similar plans in Germany (“UPC software patent ratification is on the agenda of the Bundestag this Thursday evening around 21H,” according to Benjamin Henrion), the UPC tests whether a nation is a client of its citizens or of patent lawyers and their foreign clients. It is a corporate takeover attempt, much like ISDS. Will it work?

Well, never for a moment believe that the UPC is inevitable. It’s not. To say so is to help the propaganda strategy of the patent microcosm, which has grown visibly stressed about UPC woes this month. Things aren’t going as they hoped because even Battistelli and his minions say that UPC might not happen. There are still many barriers.

“Can Europe beat its enemies, those scheming to undermine European laws (and the EPC) to make a new “order”?”“Kluwer UPC News blogger” is what Wouter Pors and the lads call their blog now. It’s just more UPC propaganda like Bristows’ (with “Bristows UPC” for marketing) and Wouter Pors has quite a reputation for UPC meddling, e.g. [1, 2, 3]. These are the very same people who ‘engineered’ much of the UPC and are actively pushing software patents into Europe, as well as patent trolls. To them, it’s all about money (theirs, at everyone else’s expense).

Can Europe beat its enemies, those scheming to undermine European laws (and the EPC) to make a new “order”? We sure hope that more people will join the battle. Just look which firms are behind this site (top) that promotes UPC events right now (EPLAW). UPC is for the lawyers, by the lawyers, against the people, definitely not by the people. Those same lawyers recently mentioned that Battistelli basically crushes the Office and ruins patent quality by demolishing appeal boards, in effect paving the way to UPC (where appeals would be dealt with differently).

Let’s bury the UPC before it’s too late. Now it the time to take action and expose what UPC is really all about. █

Patent Lawyers, Having Lost Much of the Battle for Software Patents in the US, Resort to Harmful Measures and Spin

Posted in America, Courtroom, Patents at 6:20 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

The gentler equivalent of Donald Trump discrediting a US-born judge for being “Mexican”?

Justice Breyer ad hominem

Summary: A quick glance at how patent lawyers and their lobbyists/advocates have reacted to the latest decision from the US Supreme Court (Justice Breyer)

TECHRIGHTS isn’t too shy to mock those who mislead the public in order to attract business. They’re selling snake oil.

Earlier today we found this piece from IP Watch which took the side of patent holders [sic] as if they and they alone are the ones who matter. This is rather typical and very much expected from so-called ‘IP’ sites. Dugie Standeford (publishing behind a paywall) tells/covers only one side of this debate — the much smaller side. The narrative is not complete.

“Personal attacks on SCOTUS Justices (especially Justice Breyer) are again quite tactlessly thrown into the mix, with focus on the same Justice whose intelligence was attacked before (see above).”IAM, which is funded by patent law firms and even patent trolls, is once again lobbying for software patents, trolls and many others that lose in the Cuozzo decision last covered here this morning (yesterday’s rant was apparently not enough for this author). Earlier today he selectively mentioned people supportive of his position (i.e. IAM’s sponsors). Just remember that IAM is not a news site but a lobbying campaign dressed up as 'reporting'. It’s an advocacy site for EPO management as well, so it’s important to see what these guys (yes, all male) are up to.

Personal attacks on SCOTUS Justices (especially Justice Breyer) are again quite tactlessly thrown into the mix, with focus on the same Justice whose intelligence was attacked before (see above). And for what? Simply for daring to put an end to (or helping towards the end of) software patents and by extension patent trolls in the US? Watch the ad hominem parts therein. How shameful. Over at Patently-O, which is a lot more professional, two related decisions are named as “their impact could shape the business model of patents licenses as property.”

Actually, patents are not property but a time-limited monopoly on an idea, a concept, and sometimes a mechanical design or chemical recipe etc. SCOTUS is not in any way challenging property rights. There’s nothing physical at stake.

“Actually, patents are not property but a time-limited monopoly on an idea, a concept, and sometimes a mechanical design or chemical recipe etc.”Speaking of physical things, this new post from the Docket Report indicates that § 101 has just eliminated another bogus patent. To quote the original: “Similarly, a lawyer’s legal assistant may provide her with messages or mail in a manner that does not interfere with her primary activity: participating in a conference call. This could be accomplished at a certain time (delivering the message between telephone calls) or in a certain location (placing the message in the corner of her desk).”

It is truly satisfying and increasingly nice to see that all those bogus patents (on old ideas implemented in software) drop like flies. With few exceptions, no doubt, software patents continue to die in the US. For the first time in over a decade (since I started getting involved in this area), patent lawyers are on the defensive and they’re terrified. Their software patents bubble is bursting and they might have to downsize a bit (maybe no yacht and one Ferrari fewer). Patents on algorithms are sinking like the Titanic in the very birthplace of software patents (it has been two years since Alice at SCOTUS; many patent applications get rejected now). It’s great, unless one is a patent lawyer. Having been let down by SCOTUS, lawyers and attorneys now lean on [1, 2] CAFC, the nepotists’ court that gave the US software patents in the first place (several decades ago with Martin Goetz). Incidentally, Patently-O writes about the very same case (Immersion Corp. v HTC Corp., which is effectively against Android/Linux) and it’s not about patentability of software patents at all; it’s about timing. Not much will come out of it and they’re trying to find some small victory to distract themselves from the major defeat (Cuozzo).

“As always, we remain committed to fighting software patents wherever they appear.”Funnily enough, in light of the Cuozzo decision Apple advocacy sites now pretend that Apple is fighting patent trolls when in fact it is Apple that acts like a massive troll, especially when it comes to its war on Android OEMs. Here is one such Apple advocacy site reminding us of Apple’s patents hoard. Another site warns that “LinkedIn’s portfolio of over 1,000 families of granted patents, though only roughly half the size of Facebook’s, is on a par with Twitter’s.” The LinkedIn deal with Microsoft “has a patent profile,” says the headline. These are two companies which are very hostile with software patents, especially against GNU/Linux and Free software.

As always, we remain committed to fighting software patents wherever they appear. Software developers do not want them, whereas many of the above-mentioned parasites want them, in order to claw/grab the money earned by hard-working professionals that actually produce things. █

Links 21/6/2016: Fedora 24 and Point Linux MATE 3.2 Officially Released

Posted in News Roundup at 4:10 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNOME bluefish

Contents

GNU/Linux

Free Software/Open Source

  • Elon Musk’s open source OpenAI: We’re working on a robot for your household chores

    OpenAI, the artificial-intelligence non-profit backed by Elon Musk, Amazon Web Services, and others to the tune of $1bn, is working on a physical robot that does household chores.

    The robot OpenAI is targeting would be as reliable, flexible, and intelligent as Rosie the maid from TV cartoon comedy The Jetsons.

    OpenAI leaders Musk, Sam Altman, Ilya Sutskever, and Greg Brockton explain in a blogpost that they don’t want to manufacture the robot itself, but “enable a physical robot … to perform basic housework”.

  • Is Open Source Right for You? Maybe, But Cost Should Be the Last Consideration

    Without a doubt, open source is making the software business better. But, if you’re considering going the open source route for software that’s critical to your company, keep in mind that “open” doesn’t mean “free.” It’s understandable that cost would be a major factor in the decision to go open source, as it’s free to license and allows you to spin up unlimited instances. However, there are a number of hidden expenses associated with using open source software that in many cases can drive up the price tag way past commercial software. The real differentiating factors in open source have less to do with cost than they do with your objectives, and the capabilities of your team.

  • Community-powered marketing succeeds where traditional marketing fails

    It’s time for us B2B marketers to stop being so transactional and impersonal—to stop believing that buyers’ purchase decisions are completely rational. Buyers, after all, are people, not cogs in a wheel spinning inside their companies.

    Traditional B2B marketing tactics are expensive and increasingly ineffective. You know them well: online banners, emails from random salespeople, sponsored golf outings, airport advertising, billboards, radio ads. Our customers are swimming in messages about why our product is better than the next guy’s. They’re messages designed to promote, persuade, and convince, and they speak to the part of us hungry for just one more tiny bit of data that might help with an important decision.

  • Understanding Ceph and Its Place in the Market

    I see a strong and promising future for Ceph. Sure, like any other data storage solution it doesn’t address all data storage needs, but it’s here, and it’s yet another contender in the software-defined storage arena.

  • twenty years of free software

    I’m forty years old. I’ve been developing free software for twenty years.

    A decade ago, I wrote a series of posts about my first ten years of free software, looking back over projects I’d developed. These retrospectives seem even more valuable in retrospect; there are things in the old posts that jog my memory, and other details I’ve forgotten by now.

  • Events

  • SaaS/Back End

  • Oracle/Java/LibreOffice

    • LibreOffice Getting Automatic Crash Reporting

      Markus Mohrhard cross-posted today on the Document Foundation blog of a new feature coming in LibreOffice 5.2. Mohrhard said, “Starting with LibreOffice 5.2 the LibreOffice project will have an automated crash reporting tool with server side analysis.” In other news, GNOME’s Sébastien Wilmet today blogged this thoughts on Mint’s X-Apps, little applications commonly forked from GNOME apps and Sam Varghese reported on the exit of Jacob Appelbaum from Debian. Gizmodo listed five reasons to install Linux, and by Linux they mean Ubuntu, onto your laptop and Matt Hartley discussed why Ubuntu LTS is better than the latest and greatest.

    • Crash reporting for LibreOffice

      Starting with LibreOffice 5.2 the LibreOffice project will have an automated crash reporting tool with server side analysis of the reports. This has been active in the builds since 5.0.0.0.beta1 and was really working since beta 2.

  • Docker

  • Pseudo-Open Source (Openwashing)

  • BSD

  • Public Services/Government

  • Licensing/Legal

  • Openness/Sharing/Collaboration

    • Open Access/Content

      • Science and Tech museums’ documents to be ‘open by default’ by fall, CEO pledges

        In a government town like Ottawa, where information has traditionally been jealously guarded, what Alex Benay is proposing could trigger a bout of cognitive dissonance.

        According to Benay, president and CEO of the Canada Science and Technology Museums Corporation, almost all documents generated by the corporation’s three national museums – Science and Technology, Aviation and Space, and Agriculture and Food – will soon be available to the public through an online portal.

        “Our hope is by the fall, roughly 90 per cent of our information is available to the public in real time,” Benay said in an interview Monday, hours after tweeting that museum documents will be “open by default” by autumn.

        Not everything will be made public: cabinet documents and material dealing with such things as personnel matters or corporate planning will remain confidential.

        But after that, pretty much anything goes, Benay said, including early drafts of historical assessments, exhibition plans and schedules for travelling exhibitions.

  • Programming/Development

    • Automating your Home with Home Assistant: Python’s Answer to the Internet of Things

      Paulus Schoutsen created Home Assistant in 2013 “as a simple script to turn on the lights when the sun was setting,” as he told attendees of his recent Embedded Linux Conference and OpenIoT Summit presentation, “Automating your Home with Home Assistant: Python’s Answer to the Internet of Things.”

    • How DevOps best practices improve team dynamics

      I’ve spent the past few months writing about the small, incremental behaviors that individuals can employ to be more successful. This month, I’d like to highlight team behaviors that I think are critical to having small successes at work. I spent time with one of the AtomicOpenShift (AOS) teams at Red Hat—the Cockpit project.

      Although I spend a significant amount of my time with the AOS teams, I rarely get the chance to work directly with Cockpit. I was lucky enough to have the opportunity to sit with them for a while when we were all in Brno earlier this year. From an outsider’s perspective, the team has an ease of speaking with each other—both on technical topics and personal ones—that makes you take notice. In fact, you might have assumed they all work together in the same office. However, all five engineers and the designer on the team are spread out across Europe and the United States.

Leftovers

  • Hardware

  • Health/Nutrition

    • IOC Upholds Olympic Ban on Russia’s Track and Field Athletes

      The International Olympic Committee (IOC) announced today that it has upheld the ban imposed by the International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF) on Russia’s track and field athletes.

      Meeting in the Swiss city of Lausanne, the IOC said that the widespread doping allegations in Russia casts “very serious doubts on the presumption of innocence” on Russian athletes and every athlete from the country who wants to compete in the Olympics will have to undergo an individual doping evaluation from an independent lab before being allowed to compete.

      Although some Russian media and officials had pinned hopes on the IOC intervening in the ban, most indications were that the Olympic body would affirm the IAAF decision. On Saturday, the IOC released a statement that it “fully respected” the IAAF decision and said it accepted the IAAF’s right to determine athletes’ eligibility to compete.

    • Rx Pizza: 1 Free Meal Can Sway Doctor Prescribing

      As little as one free meal from a drug company can influence which medicines doctors prescribe for Medicare patients.

    • Feed Me, Pharma: More Evidence That Industry Meals Are Linked to Costlier Prescribing

      Evidence is mounting that doctors who receive as little as one meal from a drug company tend to prescribe more expensive, brand-name medications for common ailments than those who don’t.

      A study published online Monday in JAMA Internal Medicine found significant evidence that doctors who received meals tied to specific drugs prescribed a higher proportion of those products than their peers. And the more meals they received, the greater share of those drugs they tended to prescribe relative to other medications in the same category.

      The researchers did not determine if there was a cause-and-effect relationship between payments and prescribing, a far more difficult proposition, but their study adds to a growing pile of research documenting a link between the two.

  • Security

    • Security advisories for Monday
    • BadTunnel: Critical vulnerability affects every version of Microsoft’s OS since Windows 95

      A security researcher from Tencent, China’s largest internet service portal, has discovered a critical security flaw in Microsoft’s Windows operating system that affects every single version of Windows over the last two decades, from Windows 95 all the way to Windows 10.

    • Decentralized Security

      If you’re a fan of the cryptocurrency projects, you’ve heard of something called Ethereum. It’s similar to bitcoin, but is a seperate coin. It’s been in the news lately due to an attack on the currency. Nobody is sure how this story will end at this point, there are a few possible options, none are good. This got me thinking about the future of security, there are some parallels when you compare traditional currency to crypto currency as well as where we see security heading (stick with me here).

      The current way currency works is there is some central organization that is responsible for minting and controlling the currency, usually a country. There are banks, exchanges, loans, interest, physical money, and countless other ways the currency interacts with society. We will compare this to how IT security has mostly worked in the past. You had one large organization responsible for everything. If something went wrong, you could rely on the owner to take control and make things better. There are some instances where this isn’t true, but in general it holds.

      Now if we look at cryptocurrency, there isn’t really a single group or person in charge. That’s the whole point though. The idea is to have nobody in charge so the currency can be used with some level of anonymity. You don’t have to rely on some sort of central organization to give the currency legitimacy, the system itself has legitimacy built in.

    • New RAA ransomware written in JavaScript discovered

      A new variety of ransomware called RAA has been discovered that has the somewhat unusual attribution of being coded in JavaScript instead of one of the more standard programming languages making it more effective in certain situations.

    • Want To Be A Cool Security Guru?

      Well it will take some work, security is not like what they show on TV. You don’t need green on black text, special goggles or an unlimited enhance function. Instead, it requires sitting down and understanding the history of the field, what it means to be “secure” and what limitations or assumptions you can work under. This summer I have decided to start my journey on the vast field of cryptography and am doing an online course at Stanford University that provides an introduction to cryptography. It is appropriately named “Cryptography I” and is the first part of a two part course, the second part being offered later in the Fall. Both are taught by a really awesome professor Dan Boneh who I find explains the material very well. I decided I would like to make some posts about what I have learned in this course as I go through the material so that I can share my knowledge and get a chance to write it down somewhere for later reference.

    • WordPress 4.5.3 Maintenance and Security Release

      WordPress 4.5.3 is now available. This is a security release for all previous versions and we strongly encourage you to update your sites immediately.

  • Defence/Aggression

    • US election: Arrested Briton ‘wanted to shoot Donald Trump’

      A Briton who tried to grab a police officer’s gun at a Donald Trump rally in Las Vegas said he wanted to shoot the US candidate, court papers say.

      Michael Steven Sandford, 20, did not enter a plea when he appeared before a judge in Nevada and was remanded in custody until a hearing on 5 July.

      He is charged with an act of violence “on restricted grounds”.

    • Medea Benjamin

      This week’s Project Censored features a recent speech by long-time peace organizer Medea Benjamin. She examines recent successes and setbacks for the antiwar movement, and discusses her current campaigns.

      Medea Benjamin is cofounder of the womens’ peace group Code Pink and the fair trade organization Global Exchange. She spoke at Sonoma State University on March 25, 2016, as part of the student-organized Social Justice Week.

    • What is Missing from the Memo 51 U.S. Diplomats Signed Urging Strikes Against Assad in Syria

      Despite over 400,000 dead and ongoing ground and air campaigns inside the country by the U.S., Russia and several others, 51 U.S. diplomats are publicly demanding the Obama administration launch strikes directly against Bashir Assad in Syria.

    • The Use of Error-Prone and Unfair Watchlists Is Not the Way to Regulate Guns in America

      Using the broken watchlist system to regulate gun ownership raises issues of fundamental fairness.

      In the wake of the attack on LGBTQ Americans in Orlando, gun control is again at the forefront of the national conversation. It is also the subject of proposed legislation in Congress. We at the ACLU, like many other Americans, are appalled by the Orlando tragedy. We have deep concerns, however, about legislative efforts to regulate the use of guns by relying on our nation’s error-prone and unfair watchlisting system.

    • If You Value Life, Wake Up!

      Do you remember how close we came to Armageddon in the early 1960s when Washington put nuclear missiles in Turkey on the Soviet Union’s border and the Soviets responded by putting nuclear missiles in Cuba? Fortunately, at that time we had an intelligent president instead of a cipher. President John F. Kennedy pulled us back from the brink and was assassinated by his own government for his service to humanity.

    • How a Shootout on a Guatemalan Highway Opened Window to Corruption

      In 2013, ProPublica reporter Sebastian Rotella got a tip on an assassination attempt against Enrique Degenhart Asturias, a 44-year-old Guatemala native who had been working as a consultant to the U.S. Embassy in Guatemala City. Rotella, a veteran Latin America correspondent, knew such violence was common in that part of the world, but this event felt distinctive.

  • Finance

    • George Soros: EU exit risks ‘black Friday’

      The world’s most famous currency speculator has warned that a vote on Thursday for Britain to leave the EU would trigger a bigger and more damaging fall for sterling than the day he forced Britain out of the Exchange Rate Mechanism almost a quarter of a century ago.

      George Soros, writing in the Guardian, said a Brexit vote would spark a ‘black Friday’ for the UK, but the devaluation of sterling would bring none of the benefits to the economy that it enjoyed after it dropped out of the ERM on 16 September 1992 – Black Wednesday.

      He said that, as in 1992, there would be big financial gains for speculators who had bet on the UK leaving the EU but that such an outcome would leave “most voters considerably poorer”.

    • Microsoft UK’s tax bill challenged… by the Sunday Times [Ed: Microsoft Jack calls story about Microsoft tax evasion “weak story”]

      Microsoft’s name has generally been missing from the reporting of tax avoidance by America’s tech giants: the brunt of the attack has been borne by Apple, Google, Facebook and Amazon, all of which have sophisticated tax reduction strategies. Now the Sunday Times has thrown Microsoft’s hat into the ring, in a half page (paywalled) story headlined “Taxman backs £100m Microsoft wheeze”.

    • Boris Johnson will make TV apology if Brexit triggers recession

      Boris Johnson has said he will apologise on national television if Britain were to plunge into recession after a vote to leave the EU.

      His promise came in response to a caller to radio station LBC, who asked the former mayor of London: “If we Brexit and we go into recession, would you have the political courage, to go on TV … and say sorry, I made it wrong and I apologise?”

    • ‘Together as a people we are strong’ – David Beckham to vote Remain in EU

      Former England and Real Madrid star David Beckham has said that he will be voting for Remain in the EU Referendum.

    • David Beckham Will Vote Remain ‘For Our Children’ In EU Referendum

      “I played my best years at my boyhood club, Manchester United. I grew up with a core group of young British players that included Ryan Giggs, Paul Scholes, Nicky Butt and the Neville Brothers. Added to that was an experienced group of older British players such as Gary Pallister, Steve Bruce and Paul Ince. Now that team might have gone on to win trophies but we were a better and more successful team because of a Danish goalkeeper, Peter Schmeichel, the leadership of an Irishman Roy Keane and the skill of a Frenchman in Eric Cantona.”

      Beckham continued: “I was also privileged to play and live in Madrid, Milan and Paris with teammates from all around Europe and the world. Those great European cities and their passionate fans welcomed me and my family and gave us the opportunity to enjoy their unique and inspiring cultures and people.

    • The writings of Gove and Boris reveal a chilling double act

      If Brexit happens, the chances of them running the country will increase. Do their books contain any clues about what they might do?

    • Barnes Denies Gove Claim He Backs Brexit

      The former footballer tells Sky News his views have been “misinterpreted” after he said Brexit would be good for English players.

    • EU referendum: England’s John Barnes calls out Michael Gove for saying he supports Brexit
    • Oracle profits surge—at the expense of Java development and software support

      On June 16, Oracle Corporation released financial results for the fourth quarter of fiscal year 2016, and corporate executives trumpeted the company’s cloud services success. According to the latest report, Oracle’s cloud infrastructure, platform, and software services collectively brought in $859 million for the quarter ending May 31, compared to $576 million for the same period in 2015. Oracle brought in $2.853 billion in revenues for cloud and had an $8.9 billion (£6.07 billion) profit for the year.

  • AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

    • No, Sanders’ Secret Service Detail Isn’t Costing ‘Taxpayers’ $38,000 a Day

      How does Messing propose that the Secret Service and Department of Homeland Security, given Sanders’ authorization to stop protecting him, turn the resulting savings into cash for the purposes of “donating to Orlando families”? She, of course, won’t be proposing any such process, because this talking point is based on shallow moralizing, not on an honest assessment of the costs of Sanders’ continuing his campaign. Even without the exploitation of the Orlando attack, it’s a talking point that doesn’t make any sense.

      [...]

      Does anyone think the Secret Service is going to fire the exact number of agents assigned to Sanders the day he drops out? Does anyone think the additional vehicles and equipment needed will quickly be pawned off and the money transferred over to Johnny Taxpayer? Does anyone repeating this talking point think that if the Sanders campaign had ended one week ago the US federal government would somehow be $166,000 richer?

  • Censorship/Free Speech

  • Privacy/Surveillance

    • Seeing Opportunity, Congress Tries To Rush Through Its Plan To Legalize FBI Abuses Citing ‘Orlando!’

      Just a few weeks ago, we wrote about the FBI pushing strongly for an update to the law that covers National Security Letters (NSLs) to cover up the fact that the FBI has been using them to get electronic communications records. The current law on NSLs doesn’t cover that information, though the FBI insists that it’s just a “typo” in the law, and still frequently asks for them in its NSLs, because NSL recipients often don’t know the law themselves and will still turn over the info. Of course, it helps that the NSLs often come with gag orders. Reports going back a decade have shown that the FBI has a serious problem with abusing its NSL powers to get lots of information it’s not supposed to have. And rather than do something to stop such abuses, the FBI’s friends in Congress have, instead, been trying to legalize such abusive practices to allow the FBI to do even more.

      And, in the spirit of “leave no crisis unexploited,” Senator Mitch McConnell is pushing forward on the amendment put forth by Senators McCain and Cornyn to expand NSLs. And, cynically, they’re citing the Orlando shootings as the reason why, despite the fact that this amendment was being pushed for before the shootings even occurred and the fact that this would have done absolutely nothing to stop the shootings.

    • Snooper’s charter: GCHQ will be licensed ‘to hack a major town’

      The security services are to receive a licence for hacking into the phones and laptops of a “major town” under the snooper’s charter legislation, which reaches the House of Lords next week.

      The broad nature of the hacking powers to be handed to GCHQ are disclosed in an obscure case study in a background Home Office document setting out the operational case for their use.

      This shows that all the phones and laptops in a “major town” could be hacked into, as long as the town were overseas and the action were necessary for national security purposes. The example used in the case study is identifying the phones and laptops being used by a terrorist group planning an attack on Western tourists in a major town

    • EU biometric data collection welcomed by US

      According to the minutes of the most recent EU-US justice and home affairs ministerial meeting, held in Amsterdam on 1 and 2 June, the US: “commended the EU collection of biometric data which had facilitated the fight against terrorism and the work of US law enforcement.”

    • Tor looks to beat off FBI hacking with Selfrando project

      YOUR PRIVACY PAL the Tor Project is going the extra mile to protect users from the spying eyes of the FBI.

      Tor, as you might already know, is a solid privacy choice that the anti-privacy people would like to see eviscerated. The Russians want it, and so does the US, which has broken into Tor already, apparently legitimately, in the pursuit of the Silk Road marketplace.

      Tor does not rest, and a document entitled On the Effectiveness of Address-Space Randomisation (PDF) shows the firm’s efforts to limit the kind of exposure that it was set up to circumvent.

  • Civil Rights/Policing

  • Internet Policy/Net Neutrality

    • NY Legislature Rushes Anti-Airbnb Legislation; Likely In Violation Of Federal Law

      A few weeks ago, we wrote about how legislators in various cities (mainly SF, Chicago and LA) were trying to push through anti-Airbnb legislation that would require homeowners doing short term rentals to register with the city — and which would hold the platform (Airbnb) liable if its users failed to do so. As we noted, that almost certainly violates Section 230 of the CDA, which bars any law that attempts to hold a platform liable for the actions of its users. At least in San Francisco, the Board of Supervisors ignored all of this with a city attorney claiming (incorrectly) that since it regulates “business activities of platforms,” it’s not regulating the content on those platforms. That’s an… interesting dodge on the Section 230 issues. It seems unlikely to hold up in court, but California’s been especially wacky on CDA 230 lately. The SF legislation has since passed, and it will be interesting to see if anyone (i.e., Airbnb) decides to challenge it in court.

    • NY Post Craps On NYC’s Plan To Offer Free Wi-Fi — Because The Homeless Might Watch Porn

      As you might have heard, New York City recently launched one of the biggest free Wi-Fi initiatives ever conceived. Under the program, some 7,500 Wi-Fi kiosks will provide gigabit Wi-Fi, free phone calls to anywhere in the country (via Vonage), as well as access to a device recharging station, 311, 911, 411 and city services (via an integrated Android tablet). The city is installing ten a day — most at old payphone locations — and hopes to have 500 of the kiosks in place by July. It’s a pretty impressive effort, and by most measures providing fast, free connectivity to the city’s five boroughs has been something to celebrate.

    • How An Engineer’s Little Mistake Nearly Broke The Entire Internet

      A recent internet outage has affected many services like WhatsApp, Facebook, Slack, Reddit, and CloudFlare. After this massive outage was reported across many countries, TeliaSonera sent a note to other network operators and informed them about the mishap.

    • Cable Industry: Our Shitty TV Apps Are Just As Good As Real Cable Box Competition, Right?

      The cable industry is aggressively fighting the FCC’s attempt to bring competition to the cable box market. So far that’s been via a two-pronged approach of buying a torrent of incredibly misleading editorials by people pretending to be objective observers (including Jesse Jackson), and throwing money at politicians who oppose the plan, but pretty clearly have no goddamned idea what they’re actually talking about.

      Under the FCC’s plan (pdf), cable providers would be required to provide their existing programming to third-party hardware vendors, creating competition and hopefully a flood of better, cheaper hardware without the need for expensive, and annoying CableCARDs. But with the average user paying $231 annually in set top box rental fees, the cable industry is pulling out all the stops to protect $21 billion in annual, captive revenues.

  • Intellectual Monopolies

Supreme Court on Cuozzo v Lee Another Major Loss for Software Patents in the United States

Posted in America, Patents at 2:30 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Cuozzo v Lee
Image credit: SCOTUSblog

Summary: Much-anticipated decision on the Cuozzo v Lee case (at the highest possible level) serves to defend the appeal boards which are eliminating software patents by the thousands

THE previous post spoke about Alice v CLS and its impact on software patenting in the US. Lots of encouraging news regarding software patents could be found as of late, not just in the US but also in India. Battistelli’s EPO and the UPC are the only setbacks right now.

Yesterday night we found lots of articles about the Cuozzo v Lee decision [PDF] (at SCOTUS level). As of midnight, all the following covered the decision (the decision on the gun ban received a lot more coverage):

Here is the corresponding SCOTUSblog page. As expected, IAM’s propagandists still refer to PTAB — which effectively invalidates a lot of software patents — as a “death squad”, even right there in the headline. Well, IAM is a death squad of science and technology (they promote patent trolls and software patents). To quote their biased piece: “In what will widely be considered as a blow to patent owners [sic], the Supreme Court of the US (SCOTUS) this morning declined to overhaul two key tenets of the post-issuance review proceedings, leaving the broadest reasonable claim interpretation intact and ruling that review decisions were not appealable. The Court’s decision in Cuozzo v Lee had been much anticipated by US patent owners [sic], many of whom have seen their patents challenged and claims invalidated in inter partes reviews (IPR) over the last four years.”

All those inter partes reviews which we mentioned here before were great news to software developers, who simply (based on many polls) do not want software patents. Here is what Patently-O wrote about it:

The Supreme Court has upheld the AIA provision barring challenges to the Patent Office’s decision to institute inter partes review. 35 U. S. C. §314(d). In addition, Justice Breyer’s majority opinion approved of the Patent Office’s approach of applying the broadest reasonable construction (BRI) standard to interpret patent claims – finding it a “reasonable exercise of the rulemaking authority that Congress delegated to the Patent Office.”

The Court was unanimous as to the BRI standard however, Justices Alito and Sotomayor dissented from the no-appeal ruling – they would have interpreted the statute as limiting interlocutory appeals but still allowing review of the decision to institute within the context of an appellate review of the PTO’s final decision on the merits.

There’s hope that the USPTO will improve quality control and maybe even become better than the EPO, where quality has declined rapidly under Battistelli. As a side note, WatchTroll talks about the openwashing efforts of the USPTO (mentioned here earlier this month), namely the open APIs.

We would like to commend the US Supreme Court and even the USPTO for doing the right thing by tightening patent scope. This can, in due course, sandbox a lot of patent trolls. █

As Alice Turns Two, Bilski Blog Says 36,000 (Software) Patent Applications Have Been Rejected Thanks to It

Posted in America, Patents at 1:55 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

CLSOne single decision that has changed everything

Summary: A look back at the legacy of Alice v CLS Bank and how it contributed to the demise of software patents in the United States, the birthplace of software patents

THE DAY of Alice I still remember very well. I was in Scotland on holiday at the time and it seemed like the beginning of something amazing, having spent over a decade fighting against software patents.

The EFF has just come out with an announcement titled “Happy Birthday Alice: Two Years Busting Bad Software Patents” (yes, they actually said software patents, for a change).

“This week marks the second anniversary of the Supreme Court’s landmark decision in Alice v. CLS Bank,” said the EFF. “In Alice, the court ruled that an abstract idea does not become eligible for a patent simply by being implemented on a generic computer. When the case was decided, we wrote that it would be a few years until we knew its true impact. Two years in, we can say that while Alice has not solved all problems with software patents, it has given productive companies a valuable tool for fighting back against patent trolls. And while it has been bad for the trolls, there’s little reason to think the Alice decision harmed real software companies.”

That last sentence is important in light of the quote that we shall give later (from those who profit from software patents without creating anything).

“Two years in, we can say that while Alice has not solved all problems with software patents, it has given productive companies a valuable tool for fighting back against patent trolls.”
      –EFFThis decision has had truly profound effects and it has become the nightmare of patent lawyers who rely so heavily on abstract software ideas becoming patents (often just old ideas transformed into code). Robert R. Sachs, who isn’t particularly happy about what Alice has done, says that “well over 36,000 applications have been rejected based on Alice” in yesterday’s analysis. He provides a lot of data and charts, as his blog so often does (very informative blog by the way, with original research).

As expected from Mr. Sachs, he acknowledges this is good news but then pretends it somehow discourages investment (maybe in patent lawyers). It’s a somewhat questionable part (without evidence to back it), as one might expect from patent maximalists. The final paragraph states: “It is true that Alice has been successfully used to combat patent troll litigation based on poor quality patents—and that society benefits when these patents are invalidated. But the price of such benefits cannot be measured because we cannot know at what costs these outcomes came: we will never know what inventions did not get funded and developed because of Alice. That is why it is necessary for the courts and the USPTO to tread carefully.”

Actually, a lot of companies are destroyed by software patents (e.g. patent trolls that use them) before they even have the opportunity to attract investors. We have given examples of that over the years.

“It is true that Alice has been successfully used to combat patent troll litigation based on poor quality patents—and that society benefits when these patents are invalidated.”
      –Robert R. SachsDennis Crouch and what seems like a patent lawyer, Michael S. Kwun, inevitably make fun of Alice [1, 2], which helped eliminate a lot of software patents. Also mind the a paid IAM ‘article’ that now speaks about FRAND, a Trojan horse for software patents even when/where they are not legal. The piece says: “Paragraph 63 of the Huawei decision states that the SEP user must express its willingness to conclude a licensing agreement on FRAND terms.”

FRAND does not mean free, the “F” stands for fair and is typically incompatible with Free software, where the “SE” in SEP means standard/s-essential, meaning that there is no way around some kind of patent tax/payment. Thankfully, after Alice, a lot of so-called FRAND ploys can be rendered irrelevant and obsolete, especially once challenged in a court of law. We already wrote many articles about FRAND in Europe and how Microsoft uses it to push for software patents in Europe and thus exclude GNU/Linux. █

EPO Self-Censorship by IP Kat or Just Censorship of Opinions That IP Kat Does Not Share/Accept (Updated)

Posted in Europe, Patents at 1:16 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

The impact of the EPO’s ‘lunatic/irrational/unpredictable dictator’ strategy (or its notorious wrath plus SLAPP) likely

EPO hiding evidence

Summary: Free speech when it’s needed the most (EPO scandals) needs to be respected; or why IP Kat shoots itself in the foot and helps the EPO’s management by ‘sanitising’ comments

THE EPO’s management may seem scary. It has already banned IP Kat before. We spent a lot of time defending that site by writing about the ban and alerting journalists about it, creating backlash that might have played a role in reversal of the ban (we don’t know for sure, we can only hypothesise). The more people know about the EPO, the more likely justice and lawfulness are to be reached/restored.

We were rather reluctant to publish this post as we’re not (and never were) wishing to nitpick on the site which helps EPO employees. Yes, we have our occasional criticisms. For instance, it is hosted on a platform (E-mail and blog) where Google spying is a lot more likely than in other sites and yet most comments and a lot of material go there (because anyone can comment there anonymously).

Yesterday I left a comment at IP Kat and it vanished. This happens to other people too, but they don’t have a blog in which to write about it. Some tell me about this. I honestly don’t know what goes on in IP Kat‘s mind/s and what happens behind the scenes, but maybe someone is afraid to publish anything that might anger the EPO’s management after that notorious, short-lived ban. I am tempted to think that IP Kat was left with cold feet after that ban, but they had done this even beforehand, as people told me about that. If IP Kat is challenging or limiting the free speech of people wishing to comment, then it serves the EPO’s agenda to a lesser degree, by limiting the visibility of particular opinions or information. I already spoke to IP Kat about it several months ago (amicably, not in a confrontational fashion) and clearly not much has changed. I spoke about it before, urging them not to censor comments, but it is still happening.

I generally do not comment on blog posts because of impersonators (as of 7 years ago), but yesterday I decided I should make the exception because I was bothered to see an unfair comment about SUEPO’s head. I’ve been an activist for free speech and transparency — for quite a few years now as a matter of fact — and I believe in truth through rebuttal rather than outright removal/censorship. I left a comment in an effort to correct the record.

To IP Kat‘s credit, it did publish my first (of two) comment. This started with an anonymous comment that said, collectively: “We don’t really care about what happened to Mrs Hardon here” (where the word “we” seems to allude to staff or readers in general). To quote:

We don’t really care about what happened to Mrs Hardon here or what reason there was for nobbling the board, as Merpel says.

This is about obstruction of justice. This is about threatening a high court. These are pretty serious offenses anywhere.

The Office can’t afford to leave these offenses unanswered.

To nobble: “to cause or force (someone) to do something that you want by offering money, making threats, etc”. Try to do that to a court in your own country and see what happens.

One person quickly responded to the “We don’t really care about what happened to Mrs Hardon here” part:

Actually, we do – because if the reason she was dismissed is that she contacted the accused member of the BoA, and at the end the President is unable to show that he did anything wrong, that the accuses against her should fall too and she should be reinstated.

Another reason why we care is that the strategy to get rid of them seems to be the same.

We care about Else, actually we really do.

Then, having read that while cycling at the gym, I could not help myself but comment for the first time. I wrote: “The actions taken against Staff Reps, including some in The Hague right now (to further cement atmosphere of terror top-down), began with Hardon, so of course that matters. It is offensive to suggest otherwise.”

This comment did appear, but not my second comment, which spoke about the ‘quality’ of the so-called ‘evidence’. It was a polite comment and there is pretty much no justification for deleting it. I don’t have a local copy of that comment because I typed it on a cycling machine running Android, which basically means a public terminal with no detachable media.

I have been waiting to get the comment approved for more than half a day now, but it never showed up. In fact, later on another comment showed up (approved) but it was not mine. It said:

The potential “charge sheet” seems to be expanding – gradually but inexorably.

* deploying covert surveillance measures of questionable legality

* attempting to “nobble” a judicial body by means of alleged “threats”

* attempting to interfere with the course of justice by obstructing the hearing of witnesses

Anyone for an investigation ?

Perhaps if someone competent to carry it out can be found.

Watch this space but don’t hold your breath …

I asked Merpel for a copy of my comment (which they refuse to approve apparently), but have not heard back yet. My guess is, they later might claim that they have lost it or suddenly found it, in order to save face (that’s a common routine).

What is the bottom line? IP Kat censors comments. As a free speech advocate and enthusiast, I simply cannot support it. Over 35,000 comments have been posted in Techrights over the years (including harsh insults and threats against me) and I never deleted any of them, as a matter of principle. Quality control is not an excuse. Just remember that self censorship by fear is exactly what Team Battistelli wants; to do the job for him is undesirable. █

Update: It seems as though my comment was indeed deleted (it definitely made it through, see comments below). Strangely enough, I may need to wait before finding out who did this and why. Here is the correspondence about this:

Dear Roy

Thank you for your email.

If your comment was correctly posted, then it has been deleted because one of the IPKat moderators considered that it did not comply with our moderation policy:

http://ipkitten.blogspot.co.uk/p/want-to-complain.html

The IPKat comments moderation policy has been in place for many years, and unchanged in substance since long before Merpel started writing about the events at the EPO.

Blogger does not store such comments so I regret that we are unable to email the content to you.

Kind regards

With respect, I’m at a loss for words. That is very regrettable. We discussed this matter only a few months back. I thought I would get some assurances that people’s free expression would not be impeded based on (in my opinion) what was often arbitrary if not agenda-motivated. People are rightly passionate about the subject and they need a forum in which they can be heard. The subject of legal liability for comments on one’s article/s is still sort of ‘in the air’ in the US and I believe in the UK as well. So I doubt it’s about legal safety; maybe it’s fear of a ban (the EPO recently banned IP Kat for a day) or spoiling of one’s business/professional ties with the EPO (some who write for IP Kat do have such ties).

As I recall it, it was argued that not deletion but moderation without publication was at stake. Now I learn that unwanted comments are basically just being permanently deleted, without as much as an E-mail trail/record (like notification of a new comment with its contents). It’s like I just wrote my comment to myself.

Trying to reconstruct the comment from memory, as it was not particularly long, it went something like this (but shorter):

It is also worth mentioning that the evidence presented about the judge might not tell the whole story. The EPO’s management already got caught lying about the disciplinary committee (e.g. its recommendations regarding dismissal and other punishments for staff representatives), so the alleged access to E-mail by means of screenshots isn’t to be taken at face value. It is possible that these were acquired by means of parallel construction (look at the method [1]), whereby initial pointer/intelligence is obtained though other means (e.g. spy agencies or Google) and it then enables the management to set up surveillance like cameras or keyloggers at the ‘right place’, in order to help capture something and never mention where the initial pointer came from as it may have been illegally-obtained. This is common in the FBI and US DoJ, and it is the subject of very heated debate in the United States to this date. I should probably mention it’s widely documented that CRG, which works with the IU, employs/contracts former Statsi staff (from Desa in Germany) and CRG itself is close to the British government.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parallel_construction

It is sad that pointing out such a thing is unsayable. I would like to know who deleted my comment and why. If this was not you, then it’s possible that someone with very scarce knowledge of internal EPO affairs just took the initiative to purge comments, which I think is not responsible. How often does this happen to other people who have no facilities to complain (and must remain anonymous for their own protection)? I am an ardent proponent of free speech and any policy which deems the above unsuitable for publication speaks rather negatively about the platform or the site, in my humble opinion. Moreover, in this case, people’s justice and careers are at stake. To eliminate such views can, in some loose kind of way, be seen an obstructing justice.

With great respect and admiration for your good reporting, I would like to see my feedback taken seriously and for the importance of free speech to be honoured, no matter what risks this may entail. The EPO is an aggressive organisation (at the top) and being too soft makes us vulnerable to its despicable methods. ‘Sanitising’ what may be viewed as ‘strong’ views (I don’t believe the above is even strong) helps it maintain lawlessness at the EPO.

Kind regards,

Roy

Caricature: Bygmalion Patent Office

Posted in Europe, Humour, Patents at 12:30 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

When money runs like water, even towards dubious causes

EPO accounting

Summary: The latest cartoon regarding Battistelli’s European Patent Office

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