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01.24.16

Links 24/1/2016: Linux 4.5 RC1, Debian 8.3 Released

Posted in News Roundup at 8:52 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNOME bluefish

Contents

GNU/Linux

Free Software/Open Source

  • Nginx Plus R8 Improves HTTP2, Adds OAuth2

    Nginx Inc is out this week with a new release of its flagship product platform, Nginx Plus R8. Among the highlights of the new web server platform are improved HTTP2 capabilities, OAuth authentication and HTML5 video caching features.

  • Events

    • POSSCON Cancelled Until 2017

      POSSCON has been cancelled. The surprise announcement was made Thursday by way of an email from IT-oLogy, the nonprofit organization which hosts the event. The conference, which focuses on the enterprise and is targeted at IT professionals who develop or use open source software, was scheduled to be held in Columbia, S.C. on April 12-13.

    • SCALE 14X Saturday in Pictures

      Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls — that covers most of you: From a press standpoint, to say that SCALE 14X was busy would be a clear understatement. While the event has pretty much ratcheted itself up to the next level, staying atop the show in my capacity as the publicity chair is somewhat daunting.

      So rather than tell you what happened today, I’m just going to show you. You’ll thank me for it later, trust me.

    • SCALE 14X Gets Rolling for the Weekend

      One of the fears — one of the many in having an established conference at a brand spanking new venue — is this: Suppose they gave an outstanding Friday keynote, and nobody came? All those sleepless nights worrying about it were essentially for naught, since Cory Doctorow’s keynote at SCALE 14X Friday was a standing room only success.

  • Web Browsers

    • Brave Browser Promises to Defend Users’ Privacy

    • Chrome

    • Mozilla

      • The final act for Mozilla’s Persona

        Mozilla has announced that it will close down its Persona.org identity service in November 2016. The browser maker stopped developing the Persona software in 2014, citing low adoption, but has maintained Persona.org as a public service. With the announcement that the service will be discontinued, the question arose as to whether or not the software could survive as an independent, community-driven project. Questions also arose as to why Persona failed to take off, and whether Mozilla should have managed the project differently.

  • SaaS/Big Data

  • Databases

  • Oracle/Java/LibreOffice

    • Why I love hacking at LibreOffice

      The LibreOffice codebase is, to be frank, messy. This isn’t a criticism of previous developers – it’s still an amazing product and an amazing feat of programming given the number of platforms it runs on. The StarView guys, and later OpenOffice.org development team, did a great job. For instance, I was reading up on the font mapping code and I often saw Herbert Duerr’s name, and I’ve got nothing but respect for the work that he did and his dedication to the project.

    • Way Down In The Libreoffice Menus

      With the release of LibreOffice 4.4 last year, we began making incremental updates to the main menus, with the major overhaul happening in the upcoming 5.1 release. The work is guided by LibreOffice’s new Human Interface Guideline (HIG), which has given us the core framework, however some questions have arisen challenging the reasoning of our work. So this post is a summary of what we changed, primarily focused on why we’ve done it – and a little outlook of what is planned for the future.

    • Update on Libreoffice and GNOME integration

      It’s been a long time I have talked about the project that I started with GSoC 2015 some time back. We reached at pretty much exciting results by the end of the summer where we could see the integration working pretty well with LibreOffice. We finished and merged all the major work on the Libreoffice side alongwith just-made-it-work integration with gnome-documents. Things were still in the development stage for gnome-documents, and we needed good amount of effort to get it merged upstream.

  • Pseudo-/Semi-Open Source (Openwashing)

    • EMC, Pivotal Launch New Program For Open-Source Development

      With an eye on the changing IT landscape, EMC and Pivotal launched a new program in Cambridge, Mass., focused on the development of open-source software and applications for the cloud.

      In Japanese, “dojo” means “the place of the way,” and EMC and Pivotal have named the center the Cloud Foundry dojo. Cloud Foundry is a Platform-as-a-Service offering centered around cloud-native application development.

    • Facebook open-sources Transform, a tool that cuts 360-degree video file size by 25%

      At its Video @Scale conference at company headquarters today, Facebook is announcing that it’s open-sourcing Transform, a piece of software it uses to stream users’ 360-degree videos in an efficient way.

  • BSD

    • Basis Of The Lumina Desktop Environment by Ken Moore

      The Lumina Desktop Environment is a new, BSD-licensed, graphical system environment which is designed primarily for BSD and UNIX-based operating systems. This focus on BSD systems results in a number of distinct differences in from the current collection of Linux-focused desktop environments, only one of which is independence from all the Linux-based system management frameworks.

    • Skylake x86 Target Finally Added To LLVM

      For whatever reason it didn’t come for many months until after Skylake CPUs shipped, but LLVM Git/SVN now has Skylake and its features added to the x86 target list.

      Elena Demikhovsky of Intel landed this weekend the Skylake x86 target in LLVM that exposes all of the various CPU instruction set extensions supported by these latest-generation processors. There is also the Skylake server processor class for those with AVX-512 support.

    • DragonFlyBSD Intel Graphics Driver Caught Up To Linux 4.1

      The DragonFlyBSD Intel DRM graphics driver sure is getting close to catching up against the upstream Intel Linux graphics driver with the mainline kernel.

    • The Imaginary Linux Interview from Hell Part 1 [Ed: garbled mess]

  • FSF/FSFE/GNU/SFLC

  • Public Services/Government

    • Denmark evaluates eHealth solutions

      Denmark’s Digital Welfare Strategy 2013 – 2020 is managed by the Danish government, Local Government Denmark (LGDK) and Danish Regions. The aim is to increase the uptake of eHealth solutions, and increase the use of technology to improve welfare.

    • Spain expands its electronic Judicial network
    • Latvia’s authorities meet open technologists

      The smart city activities of Riga and the intelligent transport systems devised by Latvia’s state road department are two of the many topics in next week’s “Open Technologies and Smart Solutions” conference. The meeting on 28 January is organised by Latvia’s Open Technology Association (LATA).

  • Openness/Sharing

    • Open Space Agency Releases First Set of Files for the Open Source, 3D Printed Ultrascope Explorer Plus

      If there’s one field you wouldn’t expect to utilize crowdsourcing, it would be space exploration. However, that’s pretty much what the Open Space Agency (OSA) does. Founded by entrepreneur James Parr, OSA has created a network of amateur citizen scientists to supplement the work of the professional space agencies – or even create their own space programs – right from their backyards. At the heart of the collective is the Ultrascope, a robotic telescope, or automated robotic observatory, controlled by a smartphone.

    • Open Access/Content

      • Open source textbooks should be the future

        Like many businesses, there are economies of scale in publishing. A book that only sells 1000 copies a year will necessarily be expensive. But how many people are going to take a class in introductory calculus this year? What about psychology or health? They have to number in the tens of thousands, if not higher. There are also some fields where knowledge or convention changes so rapidly that books must be constantly updated. But the state of the art in introductory calculus hasn’t changed a whole lot since Isaac Newton. There’s no defensible reason that most books, especially ones for introductory classes, should be so expensive. It seems to me, that purchasing textbooks is a classic principal-agent problem. Professors select their classes’ book and students are essentially obliged to purchase them. Value for money is usually not a central concern, and this lets publishers set essentially whatever prices they so desire.

  • Programming

    • An open letter to GitHub, the new Brave browser, and more news

      Many developers working on open source projects choose to put their code on GitHub. By doing so, they use—and depend on—many of this platform’s features, including support. According to The Register, more than 1,100 developers recently sent an open letter to GitHub about the lack of support. In response, GitLab, another code repository unrelated to GitHub, wrote a letter to developers about how they strive to help large and small open source projects use GitLab.

Leftovers

  • More Indians Died Taking Selfies Than Anywhere Else In The World

    Until now, at least, 27 “selfie-related” deaths have been reported around the world last year, out of which around half of the deaths occurred in India.

  • Science

    • History of Computer: From First Generation Of Computer To Third Generation

      Story of the history of computer from a mechanical device to smartphones in modern days computing — how the history of computer saw the replacement of different mechanical parts with electrical ones and then eventually with electronic ICs and Microprocessors — everything in detail.

    • New prime number discovery breaks record at 22 million digits

      Prime numbers, which can only be divisible by themselves, are presumably infinite. However, the higher you count, the fewer and farther between prime numbers are.

      The previous highest known prime number held the record for nearly three years. On January 25, 2013, 2 to the power of 57,885,161 minus 1, a figure 17,425,170 digits long, was announced by Great Internet Mersenne Prime Search.

  • Hardware

  • Health/Nutrition

    • Flint hospital reports finding Legionnaires’ bacteria in water

      A hospital in Flint, Michigan, reported Friday that low levels of Legionnaires’ disease bacteria were discovered in its water system.

      The discovery came after the city switched its water supply and the medical staff noticed an increase in people coming in for treatment who were diagnosed with Legionnaires,’ McLaren Hospital said.

      Legionnaires’ disease is a respiratory bacterial infection usually spread through mist that comes from a water source.

    • Michigan’s top environmental officer has pledged to work with the US Environmental Protection Agency to ensure the safety of Flint’s drinking water, but is challenging the legality and scope of some federal demands
    • Anger in Michigan Over Appointing Emergency Managers

      In the spring of 2013, Detroit was groaning under the weight of its troubles. It had accumulated billions in debt, was riddled with crime and had seen much of its affluent tax base disappear. A former mayor, Kwame M. Kilpatrick, was convicted of racketeering and fraud.

      Gov. Rick Snyder, a Republican, swept in with a rescue plan: the appointment of an emergency manager, Kevyn D. Orr, who was charged with saving a city in fiscal despair. Many Detroiters were furious that Mr. Orr, then a high-profile bankruptcy lawyer from Chevy Chase, Md., had been given a role with extraordinary power, usurping control from local elected officials.

      That anger has been revived in Michigan this week. Public outrage over the tainted water in Flint and the decrepit schools in Detroit has led many people to question whether the state has overreached in imposing too many emergency managers in largely black jurisdictions.

    • The Contempt That Poisoned Flint’s Water

      Even before the drinking water in Flint, Michigan, was found to be tainted with lead—before water from some areas tested at more than twice the level considered to be toxic waste, and public-health officials said that every last child in the city should be treated as if the child had been poisoned—the governor’s office knew that the water was discolored, tasted bad, smelled strange, and was rife with “organic matter.” They knew, as one memo sent to Governor Rick Snyder in February, 2015, noted, that “residents have attended meetings with jugs of brownish water.” Officials figured that a reason it looked that way was the presence of rust. And they thought that was just fine. They wished, in fact, that the residents would realize how good they had it, when it came to the water’s substance, and stop complaining about its style. Various safe-water laws, the February memo said, “ensure that water is safe to drink. The act does not regulate aesthetic values of water.” The “aesthetics” (the word comes up several times in e-mails about Flint, which the governor released Tuesday night under pressure) were bad because “it’s the Flint River”; “the system is old”; “Flint is old”—the water, in a word, fit their picture of the city, in which about forty per cent of its hundred thousand people lived below the poverty line (and more than half are black). Until April, 2014, Flint had been part of Detroit’s water system, which had Lake Huron as its source. It was scheduled to be connected to a new pipeline in 2016 or 2017, which would save money; Flint is in such desperate financial straits that it was under the oversight of an Emergency Manager. When that manager felt he couldn’t negotiate a low enough price for Detroit water in the interim, the city was left with the option of drinking from the river that ran by it, and past its active and derelict factories, and had been last regularly used decades before. The city would treat the water itself. All the city had to do was pass a few tests; as long as it did, it didn’t matter if the residents were, in effect, drinking dirt. But then, almost immediately, the water began to fail the tests. In August, 2014, and again that September, the water was found to have unacceptably high levels of fecal coliform bacteria, and specifically E. coli. Certain neighborhoods were instructed to boil their water, while the city added chlorine to the supply to disinfect it. It took a lot of chlorine—and that may be where Flint’s troubles really began. (NBC has a timeline of the crisis.) The city’s water managers, unaccountably, seem not to have added any anti-corrosion agents to the water. Nor did they check for corrosion issues in a way they ought to have for a city Flint’s size. (In a remarkable memo a year later, Brad Wurfel, the spokesman of the state’s Department of Environmental Quality, said that the staff had “made a mistake,” and followed the wrong protocol.) By October, 2014, General Motors had announced that it would no longer use the water, because it was corroding its equipment. It was also—and this should have been entirely predictable—eating into the lead pipes that delivered the water to people’s homes, causing them to crumble into the water. Flint is old, and its water system took decades to build. It took only months of cheap, corrosive water to mangle and perhaps permanently destroy it.

    • GCHQ-developed Phone Security Contains Backdoor
    • How can Indonesia extinguish its forest fires for good?

      In recent months, Indonesia has again come under the international spotlight for a problem that has dogged the country for more than two decades – haze resulting from uncontrolled and sometimes uncontrollable land fires.

      The last two major El Niño seasons – in 1997 and 2015 – elevated haze into a regional issue. Politicians struggled to find a balance between soothing domestic outrage and risking foreign relations fallout with Indonesia.

  • Security

  • Defence/Police/Secrecy/Aggression

    • Canada shootings: Four killed in Saskatchewan

      Four people have been killed and several injured in shootings in the western Canadian province of Saskatchewan, police say.

    • If you’re so tough, “go fight ISIS”: Bill Maher blasts Bundy siege’s “wackadoodle militiamen”

      The armed right-wing extremists who’ve taken over a federal building at a wildlife refuge in Oregon just keep digging themselves into an even deeper hole with their past unlawful indiscretions coming home to roost. It seems the government’s idea to wait them out has turned them into an even bigger joke than they already are. So, of course, Bill Maher took them to task on Friday’s “Real Time: New Rules.”

      “They keep on promising to ‘occupy that building until… well, we’re not really sure,’” Maher mocked the disorganized cult of stupidity. “And they’re not sure, something about ‘redneck lives matter.’”

  • Finance

    • Hillary Clinton Laughs When Asked if She Will Release Transcripts of Her Goldman Sachs Speeches

      After Hillary Clinton spoke at a town hall in Manchester, New Hampshire, on Friday, I asked her if she would release the transcripts of her paid speeches to Goldman Sachs. She laughed and turned away.

      Clinton has recently been on the defensive about the speaking fees she and her husband have collected. Those fees total over $125 million since 2001.

      Her rival Democratic presidential candidate, Bernie Sanders, has raised concerns in particular over the $675,000 she made from Goldman Sachs, an investment bank that has regularly used its influence with government officials to win favorable policies.

    • How bitcoin tech could spark a revolution in government services

      The bitcoin digital currency is underpinned by a distributed ledger based on block chain technology: in this case the distributed bitcoin ledger ensures that the bitcoins are authentic. But the basic block chain approach can also be modified to incorporate rules, smart contracts, and digital signatures, which could make it a handy tool for government services.

    • Here is how TTIP threatens small businesses in the UK

      As an entrepreneur, I know how difficult it can be to set up and run a successful business. To do this against a backdrop of the biggest companies in the world having an unfair advantage is a sure-fire way to threaten our vibrant business sector.

      This is just one of the many reasons why the EU-US trade deal TTIP is a major threat to small and medium-sized business in the UK and Europe. And that’s why I’ve joined with other British business owners to launch the initiative, Business Against TTIP.

  • Censorship

    • The art of self-censorship

      There is a passage in Milan Kundera’s novel, The Joke, in which a young man sends a card to his girlfriend, and adds a funny comment about the communist regime of Czechoslovakia. The authorities intercept the letter, search for the sender and put him behind the bar. The author uses this fictitious incident to denote how the state with its all seriousness cannot take a joke.

  • Privacy

    • New tools for teaching and learning Email Self-Defense

      For starters, we’ve added a page to help you teach your friends and community what you’ve learned. We’ve also made a number of improvements in the guide itself, including clarifying many technical points and updating it to reflect changes in the software. We’ve expanded the troubleshooting sections by adding links to external resources, so that you can get alternative explanations of the steps, if you find that helpful. There are also new, advanced sections so that skilled users, as well as beginners, can learn something new.

    • What is Privacy?

      Privacy is a basic human emotion like love, aspiration, empathy, and understanding. It’s what we feel when we lock the restroom door, it’s what we feel when we lay back on the couch with a good book, it’s what we feel when we close our eyes on the warm beach and just have a little moment completely to ourselves.

    • Should Intelligence Whistleblowers Be Protected?

      Employees seeking to report wrongdoing are safeguarded across all federal agencies—but the process for doing so in the classified intelligence community can be dangerous.

    • John McAfee: “Obama Administration Doesn’t Know The Meaning Of Privacy”

      The maker of McAfee antivirus and privacy advocate John McAfee is again in the headlines. In his latest op-ed, he stresses upon the need of encryption, calling it a necessity. Bashing the governments who demand restrictions on encryption measures, he says that Obama administration lacks the real understanding of privacy.

    • The NSA Can Spy On You With Or Without Encryption

      The leaders controlling the US surveillance apparatus can’t agree on encryption. FBI Director Comey has hysterically characterised it as a safe haven for evil-doers. A high-ranking Department of Justice official insisted that encryption could cause a child to die. Meanwhile, the National Security Agency’s leaders are extremely chill about encryption — which is terrifying.

      “Encryption is foundational to the future,” NSA Director Adm. Mike Rogers said in a speech today. “So spending time arguing about ‘hey, encryption is bad and we ought to do away with it’ … that’s a waste of time to me,” he continued.

      That sounds nice and reasonable, right? Rogers isn’t going on a rogue stand for privacy, though. He’s maintaining a status quo. NSA Directors haven’t really given a shit about encryption for a while. And while it’s less annoying than Comey’s fear-mongering, the NSA’s relaxed attitude is worth treating with suspicion.

    • No, NSA Has Not Changed Stance on Encryption

      If you tuned into a talk by Michael Rogers, director of the National Security Agency, at the Atlantic Council in Washington, D.C., this week, you might think the NSA had begun to change its tune about encryption—the technology favored by Apple and its Silicon Valley brethren to scramble users’ data and communications (much to criminal investigators’ chagrin), making them unintelligible to spies and hackers alike.

    • Interactive Advertising Bureau Bars Adblock Plus From Conference, When It Should Be Listening To Them

      Ad blocking and the software that powers it seems to be in the news lately, and for all the wrong reasons. Recently, several prominent sites have attacked ad blockers in several different ways, ranging from lawsuits on the extreme end down to simply withholding content. These attempts are all misguided in the same way, however, in that they attack the software that readers find useful rather than attacking the core problem that makes users turn to ad blockers in the first place: incredibly crappy and occasionally downright dangerous advertising inventory.

      One would think that websites and online advertisers would have much to learn from the providers of ad blockers. It seems there is little appetite for education amongst them, however, as we’ve recently learned that the Interactive Advertising Bureau has flat out barred Adblock Plus from its annual conference.

    • NSA Takes Pro-Encryption Stance: Can It Spy On Your Encrypted Data?

      The National Security Agency (NSA) is easing its stance on encrypted data. The agency’s director Mike Rogers shared his thoughts on the ongoing debate surrounding encryption and revealed that the NSA is now in favor of encrypted data.

    • GCHQ to stage a cyber careers event for women in Birmingham [Ed: GCHQ femmewashing]

  • Civil Rights

    • Senate Intelligence Committee Members Ask White House For Official Apology From CIA For Hacking Senate Computers

      The White House and CIA have yet to comment on the letter and there’s nothing in the history of the incident that suggests either will move forward on this. Obama’s on short time and the CIA already cleared itself of all wrongdoing with an in-house “investigation” and further showed its disdain for independent oversight by throwing its Inspector General and his report on the spying efforts under the bus.

      Jason Leopold and Vice obtained hundreds of documents through FOIA requests that appeared to show the opposite of what the CIA’s internal investigation claimed. But it was the CIA that had the last word, proclaiming itself innocent and simultaneously accusing Senate staffers of improperly accessing restricted documents.

      But the most damning document — at least in the context of a demand for an official apology from the CIA — was the apology the agency unofficially disavowed when it cleared itself of hacking allegations.

  • Internet/Net Neutrality

    • TRAI Open House on Net Neutrality

      By some miracle, I was in Delhi, and was able to attend the open house. The telcos made a huge pitch for differential pricing at the TRAI Open House on Net Neutrality, but civil society and the Save The Internet coalition and others argued that the Internet cannot be regulated like telecom networks because users on the Internet are both content creators and consumers.

    • The FCC Should Ensure Digital Rights for Prisoners and Their Families

      But from the perspective of inmates and their friends and family, these new technologies often do not result in stronger lines of communication at all. Some prison officials use the technology to justify restricting in-person visitation or traditional mail. Many communications services are offered under unfair terms and with artificially inflated fees that are only possible because the services operate monopolies at each prison or jail. In addition, users of these systems face potential privacy violations, as illustrated by the recent Securus data breach of more than 70-million prisoner phone calls.

    • Facebook and India: Introducing a digital caste system

      All societies share rich commons, the cultural and material resources shared by all, and owned equally by either everyone or no one. The air we can freely breathe, the sun that shines on us all. We once shared land too, but the development of small landholding enclosures created private property.

      Now there’s a looming enclosure of the digital commons, with Facebook threatening to capture the future of India’s internet. Its ‘Free Basics’ service threatens to limit free access to the digital sphere.

  • Intellectual Monopolies

    • Trademarks

      • The Academy Bullied CNN Into Including Trademark Icon For ‘Oscars’ On Its Crawl For Some Reason

        Usually when we talk about the Oscars behaving badly about intellectual property, it has to do with either its combat against film piracy or its rather stunning tradition of facilitating it. What’s clear in most of those stories, though, is that when the Motion Picture Academy decides to sink its collective teeth into something, it is bulldog-ish in its unwillingness to let it go. It seems that this is the case on matters of trademark, as well. Unimaginably petty trademark matters.

    • Copyrights

      • Creative Kids Turn MIT Website Into a ‘Piracy’ Haven

        In recent weeks the music industry has started to target the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) website over tens of thousands of copyright infringements. The deviant behavior doesn’t come from typical pirates though, but from children using the Scratch project to share ‘their’ creative expressions.

      • Fair Use Economics: How Fair Use Makes Innovation Possible and Profitable

        Just over 30 years ago, the Supreme Court issued its landmark ruling in Sony v. Universal City Studios (usually referred to as the Sony/Betamax case), clearing the way for a technology company to sells its products (Betamaxes, and by extension, VCRs) even though they could potentially be used for infringing purposes. After all, the court reasoned, customers also deployed their VCRs to engage in non-infringing fair uses, such as recording soap operas to watch after work. If a product was capable of “substantial noninfringing uses,” the fact that it could also be used for unlawful purposes shouldn’t be enough to force it off the market (and/or require its maker to pay millions in damages).

      • “Notice-and-Stay-Down” Is Really “Filter-Everything”

        There’s a debate happening right now over copyright bots, programs that social media websites use to scan users’ uploads for potential copyright infringement. A few powerful lobbyists want copyright law to require platforms that host third-party content to employ copyright bots, and require them to be stricter about what they take down. Big content companies call this nebulous proposal “notice-and-stay-down,” but it would really keep all users down, not just alleged infringers. In the process, it could give major content platforms like YouTube and Facebook an unfair advantage over competitors and startups (as if they needed any more advantages). “Notice-and-stay-down” is really “filter-everything.”

      • Digital Freedom Depends on the Right to Tinker

        One of the most crucial issues in the fight for digital freedom is the question of who will control the hardware that you have in your home, in your pocket, or in your own body.

        Have you ever been frustrated when a beloved feature was taken away in an update? Or felt helpless to prevent the apps on your phone from oversharing your personal data with advertisers? Or had to pay through the nose for proprietary cartridges of ink or 3D printing material? Or found that your independent repair shop wasn’t allowed to fix your car or appliance? If so, then you’ve experienced a small—but accumulating—frustration of losing of control over your stuff.

      • We’ll Probably Never Free Mickey, But That’s Beside the Point

        Mickey Mouse is synonymous with copyright term extension, and with good reason. Every time the first Mickey cartoons creep towards the public domain, Disney’s powerful lobbyists spring into action, lobbying Congress for a retrospective term-extension on copyright, which means that works that have already been created are awarded longer copyright terms. In the USA, copyright law is supposed to serve an incentive to make new works, and there’s no sensible way that getting a longer copyright on something you’ve already made can provide an incentive to do anything except lobby for more copyright, and sue people who want to make something new out of your creation.

      • Singer Sues Google For Not Asking Her Permission To Use A Licensed Song In Its Cell Phone Commercial

        Darlene Love, the voice on the Phil Spector-produced hit “He’s A Rebel,” is suing Google and its ad producer, 72 & Sunny, for violating her publicity rights by using a song she recorded in one of its ads without her permission.

        The lawsuit seems to revolve around California’s much-maligned “right of publicity” law, which allows plaintiffs to sue entities for using pretty much anything about them, rather than just for bog standard copyright infringement.

Patent Lawyers and Their Sites/Media Still a Barrier to End of Software Patents and Patent Wars

Posted in Patents at 12:19 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

The profit motive twists the news or the nature of public debates

The profit motive

Summary: Like the Military Industrial Complex, lawyers’ establishments work hard to guard the system which they are constantly milking, profiting from feuds and perceived risks (patent armament)

TECHRIGHTS is accomplishing a long-term goal with the foreseeable end of many software patents in the US. A SCOTUS ruling on Alice became truly a nightmare to a lot of patent lawyers and some of these self-serving patent maximalists bicker about future SCOTUS cases, much like Bilski at one time. We have come to rely a great deal on the Supreme Court, whose judgments are often cited (sometimes both Alice and In Re Bilski) to help convince judges to invalidate patents and dismiss patent lawsuits.

This one Web site of patent lawyers has published China’s “Annual Report on Intellectual Property Cases” (Issued by the Supreme People’s Court on April 21 2015) and stated: “In 2014, the Supreme People’s Court adhered to “administration of justice for the people and impartial justice” as the main themes of its work, actively implemented the state’s intellectual property strategy, fully leveraged the guiding role of judicial protection of intellectual property, intensified the reform of the intellectual property judicial regime, continuously enhanced judicial capabilities and judicial credibility and continuously expanded the international influence of the judicial protection of intellectual property, thereby making positive contributions to the development of an innovation-oriented country and a China ruled by law.”

Now that a lot of the producing industry has already been moved to China, one is led to wondering if China is seen as a fertile ground for Western patent lawyers as well. The US patent system sure isn’t showing them much love anymore, especially if they deal with software patents (which are at the core of a large number of patent cases these days, based on publicly-accessible figures).

See this Entrepreneur article titled “Get a Software Patent to Protect Yourself, But Be Prepared for a Frustrating Process” (misleading headline).

“For a software startup,” says the author, “a patent can be the intellectual property providing the key competitive advantage, or it can be an expensive non-defensible bureaucratic nightmare — or both. I still generally advise software startups to file a patent as a barrier to entry from competitors and to increase their valuation by investors, but every entrepreneur needs to understand the tradeoffs.”

Well, we explained repeatedly why patents don’t and cannot help startups, especially in the area of software. They cannot sue (back) trolls and they cannot sue giants because every piece of software is almost guaranteed to infringe lots of different patents; those with a stockpile of software patents always win. The author says: “The free and growing open source software community, which covers most mobile and web apps, oppose software patents as impeding or prohibiting the distribution of free software. By definition, patents limit the commercialization rate and range for a new innovation.”

“We have come to rely a great deal on the Supreme Court, whose judgments are often cited (sometimes both Alice and In Re Bilski) to help convince judges to invalidate patents and dismiss patent lawsuits.”The title of that part says “Patents are counter to open source initiatives and free software.” This is why we got into this type of activism in the first place, way back in 2006.

Rob Tiller (Red Hat) recently spoke about “hacking the patent system” — an article that got him plenty of criticism from FFII figures because rather than combat software patents he tries to ‘hack’ the system. Software patents cannot coexist with Free software, but Riller “caught up with Daniel Nazer of the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) to pose a few questions relating to software patents. Daniel is a staff attorney at EFF, where he occupies the Mark Cuban Chair to Eliminate Stupid Patents and focuses on patent reform.”

It’s a dialogue between two lawyers, one of whom is funded by a funder of a patent troll, Vringo, and another by an applicant of software patents, Red Hat.

Remember that patent lawyers make a money from disputes. For a person like Tiller, patents are money, so he doesn’t necessarily want software patents to go away. It’s what makes Red Hat pay him a salary. We generally trust programmers (or examiners) a lot more than we can ever trust lawyers. it’s worth noting that Tiller enjoys (as a platform of publication) a Red Hat ‘news’ site that’s not really news (it’s often Red Hat marketing, book tours, and other self-serving promotion).

“The US patent system sure isn’t showing them much love anymore, especially if they deal with software patents…”There are many people out there, especially patent lawyers and their rich clients (like Microsoft), who work hard to expand the scope of patents. They’re maximalists. They also have their own media, which they call/deem “magazines”, “news”, etc.

Over at IAM ‘magazine’, which receives money from the EPO, patent lawyers and their cheerleaders say that India needs more patents, probably software patents ; it’s like Raytheon saying that we need more wars. This relates to a lot of different reports (we saw dozens of them) about Modi trying to encourage patenting, even when it’s clearly misguided.

Two articles [1, 2] from Dennis Crouch, another proponent of more patents (a maximalist), add fuel to the patent bonfire. “Boiled down,” one says, “the court affirmed the grant of the firm’s Rule 12(b)(6) motion to dismiss a complaint that in broad terms alleged that the Finnegan firm had a conflict because it represented the plaintiff and another client in obtaining patents claiming screwless eyeglass hinge inventions. There are two broad issues: when is prosecution of patents for one client adverse to another, and when are two patent applications so close that prosecuting them creates a material limitation on the lawyer’s ability to represent either client.”

“…we explained repeatedly why patents don’t and cannot help startups, especially in the area of software.”Another says that “the Federal Circuit has rejected Carl Cooper’s challenge to constitutional propriety of the inter partes review (IPR) system as implemented by the USPTO. The identical issues had already been decided in MCM v. HP (Fed. Cir. 2015). In that case, the Federal Circuit held that the IPR system does not violate Article III of the U.S. Constitution nor does it violate the Seventh Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. As I wrote in December, the MCM decision “essentially forecloses Carl Cooper’s parallel proceedings.””

For some details about CAFC’s biases see the previous post about Alice and software patents in the US. We previously wrote about corruption in CAFC and we generally consider this court to be in the patent lawyers’ pocket.

Earlier on, back in December, a case against Mercedes got mentioned here. It involved software patents. Australian patent attorney Justin Blows (Australia is too soft on software patents, said patent lawyers from Australia this month) wrote about this case (“Vehicle Intelligence v Mercedes Benz, a 101/ Alice case”) and noted: “Claims of US patent 7,393,392 in the name of Vehicle Intelligence and Safety LLC were found not to be patent eligible subject matter under 35 USC 101 because the claims cover only abstract ideas coupled with routine data-gathering steps and conventional computer activity.”

“Remember that patent lawyers make a money from disputes.”This was another case where Alice beat software patents. “Software is patentable subject matter generally,” Blows added in relation to another case, “however if the purpose of the software invention is abstract then there must be a further inventive concept that appropriately limits the claims to prevent prohibition of a vast amount of future inventive activity.”

Blows also cited this one case in favour of software patents, noting: “To be patentable, a computer related invention must be necessarily rooted in computer technology in order to overcome a problem specifically arising in computer technology”

Well, the USPTO is said to have changed its guidelines at least once since the Alice case, but unlike the courts, it is driven by greed and grants far too many patents (for about 92% of applications).

“There are many people out there, especially patent lawyers and their rich clients (like Microsoft), who work hard to expand the scope of patents.”‘Revolving doors’ are a common issue at the USPTO (people from IBM or Google run it) and now it’s ‘ex’ Oracle staff that will be trusted to run the USPTO in Colorado. As WIPR put it the other day, “Kocialski previously worked at Oracle as a senior patent counsel and has experience in post-grant procedures and patent investigations.”

There’s a serious issue when a patent system is run by political people, as the EPO serves to show. It’s arguably even worse when people from large corporations are left to run it. Here is IAM’s take on presidential role in the patent system (no such role should exist). █

Several New Examples of Software Patents Being Crushed by Alice

Posted in America, Law, Patents at 10:54 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Even the United Stated (US) Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (CAFC), the original creator of software patents, is required to obey the law

Book

Summary: Additional evidence of the consistent demise of software patents in the US, which had gradually become more lenient on the subject/domain and after the SCOTUS ruled against software patents any court which follows caselaw is now becoming strict, even reluctantly so

THE PAST fortnight brought us several new examples where software patents got invalidated — once brought before a court — thanks to the Alice case. This will be the subject of some imminent posts of ours. One example, as covered by Patent Hawk the other day, says: “First Choice Loan Services sued Mortgage Grader for infringing its financial transaction patents. In light of the Supreme Court’s Alice decision, the district court found the patent claims directed to unpatentable abstract ideas. The CAFC affirmed (2012-1042). “Computational methods which can be performed entirely in the human mind are the types of methods that embody the ‘basic tools of scientific and technological work’ that are free to all men and reserved exclusively to none.””

There is another report about it, composed by Andrew Chung and published by Reuters. It stated: “The owner of two patents on technology used for selecting mortgages online has learned the hard way just how much of a sea change the U.S. Supreme Court’s Alice v. CLS Bank decision was after a U.S. appeals court upheld the patents’ cancellation on Wednesday.

“A three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit said a California federal judge did not abuse his discretion in allowing, and then granting, a late-filed Alice-based motion to invalidate Mortgage Grader Inc’s patent claims.”

“A lot of campaigners against software patents are now seeing what 5 years ago they considered impossible.”A similar report (behind paywall) was composed by/for lawyers and asked: “Remember when some experts said the 2014 Supreme Court ruling wasn’t likely to be a game changer?” (the title of this report is “Federal Circuit [CAFC] Strikes Two Software Patents Under ‘Alice’“)

So who was right, the patent lawyers or Techrights? To his credit, Gene Quinn too predicted it would become a game changer.

CAFC is probably the most software patents-friendly court, perhaps in the whole world. Here is an article about a recent decision of CAFC, courtesy of patent maximalists. Patent lawyers still try to understand why software patents are collapsing even in the US and they study cases such as this one where “Claims of US patents 6,398,646 and 6,656,045 in the name of Planet Bingo, LLC were found not to be patent eligible subject matter under 35 USC 101 because the claims are directed to the abstract idea of managing a game of bingo, which is merely implemented on a computer executing purely conventional functions.”

Time permitting, we shall strive to cover as many cases like this as we can. There is an unambiguous trend in the US and it involves the demise of software patents, thanks to SCOTUS. A lot of campaigners against software patents are now seeing what 5 years ago they considered impossible. █

Software Patents and Patent Taxes: How 100 Grams Worth of Components Can Cost as Much as $1000

Posted in Apple, Patents, Samsung at 10:26 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Nearly challenging the price of gold now

Phone and USPTO
Phones now a pocket-sized patent thicket

Summary: A roundup of recent news about patents that affect phones in particular, notably patents on software rather than hardware

THE SUBJECT which is software patents hasn’t been covered here recently. It’s due to other important issues. “How to get around software patents” is an article published nearly a week ago. To quote part of it: “Isn’t is possible to work around software patents and use [...] In some cases it is really possible. The Ogg/Vorbis developers have done patent research and hope their format won’t vulnerate patents in the United States.”

“The patent attacks on Chinese companies have led some of them to a pursuit of patents akin to stockpiling.”Well, Apple’s Steve Jobs attacked Ogg, as we wrote here several times in past years (well before Jobs’ death). Don’t forget that, when it comes to patents, Apple is not only a foe of Linux (and by extension Android) but of FOSS as a whole. There’s a long tradition to it, as we showed here over the years.

Earlier this month and later last year we wrote about Xiaomi, a rival of Apple, craving or lusting for patents (perhaps as many as 10,000). Two recent articles from IAM [1, 2] said more about this area, noting that “Xiaomi’s latest gambit in its quest to find sales growth outside of its home market of China was a short-lived one. The company launched its first phones in South Korea last Monday, 4th January, through KT Corporation, the nation’s second largest mobile carrier. Just two days later, the handsets were abruptly pulled from the market, based on what KT described as “legal matters related to sales”. There are several possibilities for what has happened, but given the company’s history of IP troubles, some in the media have wondered whether a patent dispute is behind the setback. If that does prove to be the case, it would raise some serious questions about Xiaomi’s IP strategy and its ability to gauge its own freedom to operate.”

The patent attacks on Chinese companies have led some of them to a pursuit of patents akin to stockpiling. Over a week ago we learned about Huawei and Ericsson signing a patent agreement [1, 2] and it is worth noting that Ericsson uses patent trolls as fronts. “As the battle for patents rages on,” said one report, “and tech giants are at each other’s throats on court, arguing who has the right to use what technology, two companies have extended their agreement to use each other’s patents without much hassle.

“Imagine higher prices on everything (the lawyers’ tax), including mobile phones whose prices are artificially high.”“Those two companies are Ericsson and Huawei and they have, according to a recent press release, extended their global patent licence agreement that includes patents regarding wireless communication technology.”

This new report about Ericsson’s troll, Unwired Planet (formerly Openwave Systems), shows that Ericsson has become a big liability to Android companies. Unwired Planet has become a leading example of patent trolls serving even European companies, or a proxy war with SEPs. This is what UPC would lead to more of (given growing momentum it’s easy to be pessimistic, especially now that UK-IPO and British patent lawyers make decisions behind closed doors), making Europe more accessible to patent trolls from the US as well. To quote lawyers’ media: “The UK government has prepared legislation to give effect to EU legislation on the unitary patent and to the Agreement on the Unified Patent Court (UPC), which backs the creation of a new UPC for resolving disputes over new unitary patents.”

Imagine higher prices on everything (the lawyers’ tax), including mobile phones whose prices are artificially high. That’s where we are today.

Earlier this month, Florian Müller chose to focus again on Apple’s patent war with Android [1, 2]. “Today I received a really interesting Lex Machina press release,” he wrote. “Lex Machina, a LexisNexis company, operates the Legal Analytics platform and claims that companies such as Microsoft, Google, Nike and eBay as well as various top-notch law firms are among its clients. Its new “Patent Trial and Appeal Board 2015 Report” provides lots of insight about last year’s trials before the United States Patent and Trademark Office’s (USPTO) Patent Trial and Appeal Board, i.e., the USPTO’s in-house court system.” This study, Müller says, shows that Apple and Samsung now use so-called ‘patent death squads’.

“We have written so much about the so-called slide-to-unlock patent, which is effectively a software patent.”In other news [1, 2], “Samsung is appealing its Apple infringement case to the Supreme Court because a very old law is a bad fit with very modern technology” (with the CCIA’s support).

The case, which we have grown quite tired of after half a decade, is still the subject of much media coverage (the latest development is that Apple is suing Samsung for embargoes to be belatedly enforced and technology giants take Samsung’s side [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7]) and legal sites too.

“Devices that cost just several dollars to make (on the basis of material) end up being sold for almost a thousand dollars in some cases.”As Müller put it earlier this month: “The ’721 slide-to-unlock patent, whose European sibling has already been held invalid by 15 judges, is irrelevant not only because it will likely be held invalid but also because it covers only certain graphical variants of the slide-to-unlock mechanism, but not the slide-to-unlock functionality as a whole.”

We have written so much about the so-called slide-to-unlock patent, which is effectively a software patent. We don’t wish to spend too much time debating it again, but we are gratified to learn that Apple too receives a reminder of the harms of software patents. “Apple has been targeted in a patent infringement complaint centring on its voice recognition technology Siri,” said WIPR the other day.

The bottom line — if there is one — might be that patents are very destructive in the so-called ‘smart’ phone space (smartphone). Devices that cost just several dollars to make (on the basis of material) end up being sold for almost a thousand dollars in some cases. Who benefits from this? █

Süddeutsche Zeitung After FTI Consulting Deal: EPO Ghostwriter or Journalism?

Posted in Europe, Patents at 9:28 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

The character assassinations in Süddeutsche Zeitung began just a few weeks after the FTI deal (FTI is already known to be paying publishers such as IAM)

FTI and Süddeutsche Zeitung

Summary: Mainstream media started defaming EPO whistleblowers just weeks after the EPO’s management secretly passed nearly a million dollars for a one-year contract with the AstroTurf-centric FTI Consulting and it still shows

“More actions,” we’ve learned, are still on their way, including a strike (if all goes as planned). EPO staff is rightly furious or at least deeply concerned. The dismissals backfire in a major way, as very much foreseen all along. “In Munich,” we’ve learned, “the next demonstration is planned to coincide with a meeting of the Board of the Administrative Council (the so-called “Board 28”) on 17 February.”

Delegates can be contacted ahead of this meeting. Concerned readers are allowed to contact them and express concern about the terrible situation at the EPO.

“In The Hague,” we’ve learned, “the next demonstration will takes place on Thursday 28 January around lunchtime.”

National representations will be targeted. “The demonstration starts at 12:00 in front of the French Embassy to finish in front of the German Embassy,” we have learned.

A prior expression of anger from these delegations makes them both a convenient target, not to mention the special role that the French and the Germans play in the current scandals (different aspects to the relevance of each).

One might expect, given the increasingly high severity of this whole situation, for the media to take part or at least pay attention, but when publications such as Süddeutsche Zeitung write about it they get the facts wrong and repeat the lies of EPO management. The protests are hardly even mentioned, even when there are thousands in attendance (employees of the party which the demonstration is against).

It’s not unusual for the EPO to pay the media. The EPO already pays IAM 'magazine', for example. Why not others too? There may be others, but we don’t (yet) have the ‘smoking gun’.

Several months ago we saw Süddeutsche Zeitung playing up the narrative of violence [1, 2, 3, 4] not from EPO management but from people whom the management abuses. One reader who works for the EPO told us that “the situation at the EPO is a disaster.

“And there is almost NO press coverage anymore, for example in Germany.

“These journalist at Sueddeutsche Zeitung, Katja Riedel — do you have further information about her?

“When you compare former articles, these were formerly written by Christopher Schrader, then later by Christopher Schrader and Katja Riedel, and now, since a while, by Katja Riedel alone.

“From what she wrote I have doubts, whether she is writing “independently” (I do not trust her anymore).

“And, where is a coverage in “DER SPIEGEL”, “DIE ZEIT” and “THE INTERCEPT”?

“Where is WOLFGANG KALECK??? (Human rights lawyer, based in Berlin) He should be contacted now.

These are legitimate points and we addressed these before. We also explained how the EPO's PR team manipulates the media, based on sources in the media. It’s rather disgusting. Our reader wrongly assumed that we have contacts in the media and asked: “Please can you arrange, that these publishers begin to report about the BIG [scandal], Mr Sun-King Battistelli is doing with the EPO, the STAFF, the UNION LEADERS and patent law as such?”

Well, all we can do here is report about these issues and hope that others make use of that (as some people do, even politicians).

“(Some) EPO STAFF on the streets,” our readers ranted, “but where is the press coverage about this? The EPO STAFF are cowards, sorry, but we must see that they really have no rights anymore. You know, I know, but the mass is not understanding (and Battistelli has the “luck” of other current issues, refugees, ISIS, VW #Dieselgate, Oil price and economic crisis etc.)”

Well, some time in the past we were warned about the loyalties of Süddeutsche Zeitung. We still have some interesting information on Riedel, for instance, among other people who call themselves journalists. Shall we publish a rebuttal to them? Well, in the past we did, but it involves a lot of work and helps give visibility to their propaganda, too.

“You didn’t mention the worst of Katja Riedel’s articles about the European Patent Office,” one reader wrote to us. “I assume that you know about his article and decided not to mention it. Just in case that you’ve not read the article, I send you a machine translation of the article (actually a mix of machine translation and quick manual translation).”

We are enclosing it below despite the fact that it’s a nasty personal attack. We are trying to show what kind of rubbish Süddeutsche Zeitung is willing to publish as though it’s the EPO’s attack dog or a right-hand courier.

“The article is about the DG3 member,” we got told, “who was suspended and it’s one of the articles which appeared in the press on Oct 17th, 2015, during the events that you reported in http://techrights.org/2015/10/19/benoit-battistelli-smears/.

“The article written by Katja Riedel repeats the statements of the internal investigation report (which was not made available to the staff, but to journalists – I don’t know whether in its entirety or in well-chosen and well-prepared excerpts, “ready for a quick and easy publication”).

“The article reports about the findings of the investigation unit (and their conclusions) in such a way that I would guess most readers who do not know about the situation at the EPO would assume that the allegations must be true. Furthermore, at the end of the article, the demands for a rule of law at the EPO are ridiculed by emphasizing matters of course, for example that those who are sick get deductions (which by itself does not sound so different from the rules which apply in many European countries) and by emphasizing the “extremely high average salaries”. Comments such as “any employee can initiate an investigation against any other employee” convey the impression that the investigations against the head of the union were requested by ordinary staff members (which is not true, as they were initiated by the upper management).

“As the article seems to be defamatory itself (and severely violates the basic rights of the DG3 member concerned, serving as a kind of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Character_assassination), I would NOT recommend spreading it further by providing a link to it or by publishing an English translation. So it’s rather background information about Katja Riedel articles about the EPO.”

Some time has passed and we decided that, due to the nature of the latest poor article from Katja Riedel, it would be worthwhile to support the above criticism by showing the raw smear. Assume the following is more like a smear ghostwritten by EPO management:

October 17, 2015, 21:56 clock
European Patent Office: The made-up scandal

By Katja Riedel

The corpus delicti is unimpressive, just five centimeters long. But the contents of the gray USB sticks with the inscription “Work” has explosive power. [The contents] could merge threads in a story in which there are many truths. One story that has put the European Patent Office in a serious crisis three years ago, in a seemingly irreconcilable conflict between the management, the Frenchman Benoît Battistelli, and parts of the workforce of approximately 7,000 employees in Munich, The Hague, Vienna and Berlin.

Some speak of a war of extermination. A battle that takes place not only behind the glass facade of the Munich headquarters, but in public. On the streets, through which again and again thousands of people march with banners. In many blogs of the patent scene. In political circles in Berlin and Brussels. In newspapers.

Who wants to destroy whom? And why? These are questions to which “USB stick Alpha” can at least provide clues. The owner of this stick, an Irish patent judge, is not allowed to enter the EPA premises any more since 3rd of December last year. President Battistelli has ordered him to stay away from the premises, although he does not have disciplinary power on the judge – the independence of the judiciary is a valuable commodity.

The accused is said to have worked with more than 20 code names

[After the interdiction to enter the EPO premises] there was a revolt of the international patent scene, a debate about the lack of separation of powers. However, the Administrative Council retrospectively approved the decision. Why? This could be due to a hitherto unknown content of the confidential investigation report on the case C-62, which the Süddeutsche Zeitung could now see. Accordingly, the judge is said to have written thousands of emails, blog entries and threatening letters since early 2013, using more than 20 fake names. He is even said to have launched a petition to the European Parliament. These letters were sent to journalists of almost all major German media, and the author appeared upset when their content was not picked up, states the [investigation] report. In the e-mail addresses he is said to have used the name of freedom fighters such as Andreas Hofer or Robin Hood.

According to the investigation report, more than 3.000 such documents were found on the USB stick that the investigators confiscated when they apprehended him on a public computer in a waiting room of the EPO and led him away. Even encryption software was said to have been on the USB stick.

Previously, two computers had been identified as those from which defamatory letters were ceaselessly sent. Those computers had been equipped for several days with monitoring software. The Office was harshly criticised for this because other users have access to these computers as well. Even the legal committee of the Bundestag [German parliament] dealt with the data protection at the European Patent Office. However, for the investigators their approach was successful: The software issued an alarm when one of the relevant e-mail addresses was used – and security guards intervened immediately, took away the person whom they since consider to be the author of all these letters.

Radical right-wing propaganda material in the office

They confiscated the stick. The judge complained against [the confiscation], he reportedly said that it was private property. In his office, which the investigators ransacked afterwards, they found, according to the investigation report, the unbelievable: two batons – and Nazi propaganda material. CDs with national socialist songs were found, a Nazi propaganda film, Forbidden emblems along with the lettering “I Fight”. In the letters, which attacked in great numbers the integrity of the Croatian EPO Vice President Zejlko Topić, the investigators also saw formulations in which they recognized a racist undertone against the Croat Topić. Dozens of the incriminating letters claimed that [Topic] was allegedly corrupt. Other letters, for example addressed to the German EPA Vice Raimund Lutz, contained massive threats. Under the sender “Internal Oddity Department” and a Croatian Email address, [Raimund Lutz] was threatened with unpleasant consequences, should he continue to express himself in favour of the management. This would be the first and final warning letter.

Since a year, all members of the patent world have been concerned by the case. 38 states have spun off questions of intellectual property into a state within a state, with its own laws. On Thursday, the Administrative Council, the government of that State, has decided to dismiss the owner of the USB flash drive, a member of the so-called Enlarged Board of Appeal, the Judicial Branch. However, the Administrative Council can only enforce this decision when the chamber (of which the man is a member) has issued a corresponding recommendation. So far, the [DG3] chamber has refused to comment on the case. There has never been a case like that in 40 years of European patent history. So far, the judge was suspended on full pay, now his salary was reduced by 50%.

[He claims to have used the] batons in his office for back exercises

The accused, who refused to testify before the investigators, denied any guilt: He was not author of the documents; he had collected them for private use only. For the same reason he used the public computer [to surf in the Internet] during the breaks. In addition, the stick would be legally unusable because it was seized in an illegal manner, argued his lawyer Senay Okyay. She sees “numerous serious violations of the law” – also against the confidentiality; because the legal proceedings against the judge have not been brought to a close yet. [Allegedly] he used the batons in his office for back exercises. According to the lawyer, the CDs, books and movies were historical material which her client had collected for private reasons and ordered from an online store.

The Administrative Council and the investigators have a completely different opinion. They are convinced that the man has coordinated a campaign against the Office, acting as a central mastermind. The investigators are convinced that this campaign did not only target Battistelli and vice president Topić, but the reputation of the Office – to discredit both the office and the management as unsustainable. And to prevent that the Office faces the biggest change in its history: the transition to the single European patent and a new jurisdiction with the Court in Paris, including field offices, also in Munich. The Enlarged Board would be replaced as soon as all States have ratified the agreement. The man and his colleagues would lose their positions.

The process [of introducing the unitary patent] has been ongoing for three years, 28 of 38 states have already agreed, Germany not yet. Almost simultaneously, the defamations began, a few weeks after the unitary patent and the unitary patent court were agreed upon. From the point of view of the investigators, this motive seems to be probable because shortly before his unmasking, the judge is said to have leaked confidential information to a patent lawyer who is critical about the reforms, including the minutes of a meeting of the Board of Appeal.

Between the informant and the patent attorney, a lively correspondence is said to have taken place. Corresponding news were published on the website [of the patent attorney]. A single man, therefore, who attacked the head of the EPO and who almost unhinged the EPO? This reading is expected to be particularly welcomed by President Battistelli. However, the judge (independently of how one judges his case) is by no means the only one who strongly criticizes Battistelli and his way of dealing with his abundance of power.

Patent examiners were afraid the EPA could become a mere money-making machine

The Frenchman, who got the task to trim the Office on efficiency, complied with that order eagerly; he got tasked to get rid of some sinecures, which include extremely high average salaries – and he has done so, in record speed. Internationally this acquired renown [for Mr Battistelli] – but internally he is accused of having made mistakes. He always wiped away critical voices with a stroke of the pen. He has introduced a new career system which is based more on speed and less on thoroughness and depth. Those who benefited most from it are close confidants, with flash careers, as critics point out.

For some long-serving patent examiners this is an affront, they consider the reforms as interferences with their fundamental rights. Who is sick, get deductions. And must stay at home the whole day because the EPA reserves itself the right to [sickness] controls. Employees tell they were afraid and would feel pressure. And that they fear for the quality of their work. They believe the EPA could become a mere money-making machine. Germany alone is said to have recently obtained EUR 140 million from patent fees.

A private investigation company should shed light onto it

This critical movement is led by Suepo, a union that has not been recognized so far. Only this spring, the Administrative Council ordered a social dialogue. Suepo is to be recognized, after more than 30 years. And all the staff representatives should sit at a table [to meet] with the management. But the dialogue has failed. Amongst others, because now there is even an internal investigation against the head of the union, which could cost her her job. According to the statutes, any employee can initiate an investigation against any other employee. Meanwhile, the head of the union boss has written to the head of the Administrative Council, Jesper Kongstad, and defended herself / fought back. In the letter, she denies any allegations. She complains to have been continuously threatened: “I was the target of many hostile, highly intimidating attacks by the administration under this president.” The Office refused to comment on the current process.
This investigation is not even lead by the internal department; it is said that this internal department is overworked. The Control Risks Group was hired, a private investigation company. This company, as it writes itself, is highly specialized in „helping organisations manage political, integrity and security risks in complex and hostile environments”.

=== Other parts of the article (boxes and image subscriptions): ===

[Image]

From the viewpoint [of this photo] the European Patent Office seems peaceful. However, for years a fierce battle has been raging between the management and parts of the workforce
· A judge of the European Patent Office is said to have staged a protest against his boss using more than 20 code names.
· The Süddeutsche Zeitung has seen the investigation report.

[Image]

Surveillance scandal: European Patent Office supervised employees with keyloggers
In its Munich headquarters, the European Patent Office spied on its computers to throw light on a defamation campaign. But the computers were also used by external persons.

European Patent Office: uprising against the Sun King

Employees of the European Patent Office in Munich demonstrate against their boss Benoît Battistelli: He is said to subdue his people and it is said that he could even prevent strikes. Maybe he thus even violates European human rights.

140 millions

The European Patent Office is an international organization. The right of the host countries or the EU does not apply here, it has its own legal basis: The European Patent Convention, which was adopted in 1973. Nowadays, 38 states are members – led by the President of the Office. The supreme body is the Administrative Council, the president is subordinate [to the Administrative Council]. The goal is now to make the Office more profitable and thus more competitive against international competitors.

Patents bring money: Germany alone is said to have received EUR 140 million. Despite high expenditures of the Office.

Having previously received information about what really happened, we know the above is rubbish and one day we may choose to provide a point-by-point debunking. The EPO’s thugs keep alleging “campaign of defamation” (or something along those lines), but the accused judge should himself consider suing EPO management for a campaign of defamation, for reasons we outlined before.

The moral of the story? Don’t trust Süddeutsche Zeitung, especially not Katja Riedel. █

Dismissal of EPO Staff Representatives Does Not Eliminate Them as EPO Staff Sticks Together, Shares the Burden, the Pain

Posted in Europe, Patents at 5:09 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Hornets’ nest phenomenon clearly not understood by EPO management

Hornets' nest

Summary: Despite dismissals and rather severe punishments (which were over-zealously applied by Battistelli in spite of advice from the disciplinary committees), the staff unions at the EPO continue to show signs of strength and take further actions (some even more effective than before, e.g. strikes)

THE thing which EPO management does not seem to ‘get’, just as it’s still failing to understand the Streisand Effect, is that the harder it crushes the unions, the more ‘aggressive’ or combative (in a reactionary fashion) union members will become and the worse things will get for EPO management. They’re poking a hornets’ nest.

After repeated attacks on the unions, culminating in dismissals, some staff decided to go on strike. The common/shared pain, moreover, may help support those who were dismissed. The overstressed staff views representatives as martyrs or as people who cannot be left to perish, helping the EPO management make an example of them (to scare others).

Financial support is now being offered to dismissed union leaders. To quote correspondence that we saw, “answering the most urgent matter, several initiatives have started here and there. However, in the light of the complex local situations in Holland and Germany, different models are being investigated. It can be assumed that staff will be informed as soon as something concrete is suggested. Here is what SUEPO Munich writes on the subject: “Of the five (!) staff representatives who have thus far been unduly sanctioned by Mr Battistelli, Ion Brumme is the hardest hit. Ion will need help. We are working on this. We are studying how best to arrange this from a legal and taxation on point of view.”

There are also indications that severe punishment did not prevent Weaver from being involved in union activities. “On a more personal note,” says the correspondence, “after months of absence, today, Malika Weaver was in the Office and again active in the CSC. While the marks of her ordeal were visible, it was nonetheless good to see her again. We can only sincerely hope that, one day, Ion Brumme and Els Hardon can also be seen again on the EPO premises. In the mean me it looks like all are doing their utmost to make it happen eventually.”

Brumme was not supposed to be sacked, but Battistelli vainly ignored the disciplinary committees. Sun King listens to nobody; Battistelli runs an autocracy masquerading as something else. This in itself is a good cause for a strike. Based on this new comment, “I cannot see where the examiners are DOING something as sign of protest. Obviously, demonstrating in public is not as effective as expected, the people “outside” EPO are not sensitive when workers earning 10k are not happy. If the AC can only be influenced by results, well, logically, it only remains one thing: producing less. I wonder when they will realize this. Of course, this would mean that they should say “bye-bye” to their bonuses…”

Months ago we complained about EPO examination done in a rush (i.e. a sloppy job) in order to meet some superficial targets. Well, as this comment puts it, “anyone is being pressurised to produce at least 10% more than average. Otherwise you’re threatened with …. I foresee a breakdown.

“Besides putting down work, all other industrial actions are considered to violate your contract and WILL lead to disciplinary procedures. “go slow” (producing less than average) is considered s.th. warranting dismissal now. “rechecking applicable procedures”, “going by the book” and other quality actions where you take the time and recheck whether you missed s.th. according to the guidelines are not allowed industrial actions. together with the scrapped training budget, we examiners are given no chance to read what the changed regulations are. Except in our private time. Yeah, facing dismissal because you want to do it right the first time is not a sign of trust.”

One comment says: “Again this year approx. 50 warning letters for under-performance will be issued or a voucher for a stiff session of institutional harassment …thereby securing some clientele for EB’s HR Conflict Resolution Department!”

Producing less is the road to dismissal in a performance-driven organisation,” says another comment. “Early Serenity from Search is such a success that many directorates start working on search files of priority group 4 and tackle the examination backlog by grant/refusal procedures not evolving from the tedious case law of the boards, but from on-demand just-in-time efficiency requirements. Those will be implemented preferably by five-year contractor examinators that can then be disposed of in a more flexible and legally solid manner, thereby also reducing the CO2-emmissions drastically. All these improvements are coming at no extra cost to the user! Check your parachutes, gentleman. We’ll soon reach our jumping altitude. And the light went green…”

It’s becoming easier to see by now why many workers see the need for reform, and why they’re willing to go to protests or even go on strike. A newer comment which we found this morning says:

The problem is that the experience you gain as an EPO examiner is of limited use outside the EPO. Once you have been there a decade or so, you’re effectively stuck there for life. You don’t discover this until you actually start applying for jobs. Then you quickly realise that you will have to take a a real-terms pay cut of 50% or so if you really want to leave. I’ve been there, so I know what I’m talking about.

This is why I think that Battistelli is so cruel and vindictive. The man basically has you guys by the short and curlies, and he knows it. In the absence of any effective restraint from the Administrative Council, he can squeeze your pips as hard as he likes, and you will still dance obediently to his tune.

A few years ago, I would still have recommended the job of EPO examiner as a responsible and intellectually fulfilling job, albeit with the caveat that it’s difficult to make the transition back to the real world. These days, I would urge any prospective candidate to think very carefully indeed before selling their soul to such an organisation.

One person then asks: “What about everyone calling in sick? In these circumstances I think most doctors would support that having to work under such unbearable pressure and threats is sickening and causing massive burn outs. It will be interesting to see how the situation develops if BB declares the sick people not sick, against the doctors’ advises. Which he may, according to the new rules, unbelievably.”

If the EPO is led to understanding that crushing unions backfires this badly, maybe it will give up trying. █

Eventos de Consultantes Promovido para la Corte Unitaria de Patentes por la OEP/FTI, Estará Repleto de Mega-Corporaciones de los Estados Unidos

Posted in Europe, Patents at 2:45 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

English/Original

Publicado in America, Europe, Patents at 7:39 am por el Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Las Multinacionales Corporativas Apropiandose de Europa a través de la UPC

A civil war
Una guerra civil en Europa entre los multimillonarios europes (que ayudan a sus amigos al otro lado del charco contra el resto de Europa

Sumario: La OEP se esta aliando con abogados de patentes y largas corporaciones de los Estados Unidos (o internacionales) para hacer la Corte Unitaria de Patentes una realidad, irrespectivamente de su impacton negativo en los ciudadanos de Europa.

La OEP es escándalosa por muchas razones, una de las cuales es su LEALTAD A CORPORACIONES MULTINACIONALES a costa de Europa. Iam ´magazine´ que organiza eventos a favor del la UPC (millones deben estar corriendo bajo la mesa), dijo temprano esta mañana que su evento esta orgulloso de una ¨calidad mundial de sus expositores, con altos representantes de la OEP, Google, Microsoft, IBM, Nokia y Ericsson, así como un número de top abogados de práctica privada de Europa, abogados e intermediarios, todos van a tomar parte.¨

“Y hay una empresa en los EE.UU., FTI Consulting, ayudando a financiar este (a petición de la OEP) mediante el pago de un publicista.”¨Así que es tenemos aquí muchas compañías de los Estados Unidos, abogados de patentes, y gerentes de la OEP. Hooray! ̉¿Si? Y hay una empresa en los EE.UU., FTI Consulting, ayudando a financiar este (a petición de la OEP) mediante el pago de un publicista. Nada malo aquí. No por supuesto! Cierren sus ojos y pretendan que todo lo que Battistelli dice acerca de la UPC es verdad. Pinocho Battistellin NUNCA MENTIRA!

‘Amerikat’ (Annsley Merelle Ward), una fanática de la UPC (por buen tiempo), ahora habla acerca de la UPC como si fuera algo inevitable realidad (NO LO ES). Dugie Standeford de IP Watch habl acerca de la UPC como ¨prioridad en 2016,¨ pero ¿de quién? ¿de os abogados de patentes juntamente con los chacales de Battistelli? ¨Trabajo en la patente unitaria continúa, ¨escribió, ¨ y hay foco creciente en el problema de las patentes versus los derechos de los críadores de plantas.¨

Escribimos acerca de patentes en plantas muchas veces antes, algunas en relación con Europa. █

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