Editors • About the Site • Comes vs. Microsoft • Using This Web Site • Site Archives • Credibility Index • OOXML • OpenDocument • Patents • Novell • News Digest • Site News • RSS

08.06.15

Links 6/8/2015: DebConf15, LibreOffice 5

Posted in News Roundup at 11:31 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNOME bluefish

Contents

GNU/Linux

Free Software/Open Source

Leftovers

  • Security

    • Tuesday’s security advisories
    • Security updates for Wednesday
    • bad robot

      The best part of running your own server is definitely reviewing the logs.

    • MVEL as an attack vector

      Java-based expression languages provide significant flexibility when using middleware products such as Business Rules Management System (BRMS). This flexibility comes at a price as there are significant security concerns in their use. In this article MVEL is used in JBoss BRMS to demonstrate some of the problems. Other products might be exposed to the same risk.

  • Defence/Police/Secrecy/Aggression

    • The Brookings Institute Plan to Liquidate Syria

      Here’s your US foreign policy puzzler for the day: When is regime change not regime change?

      When the regime stays in power but loses its ability to rule. This is the current objective of US policy in Syria, to undermine Syrian President Bashar al Assad’s ability to govern the country without physically removing him from office. The idea is simple: Deploy US-backed “jihadi” proxies to capture-and-hold vast sections of the country thereby making it impossible for the central government to control the state. This is how the Obama administration plans to deal with Assad, by making him irrelevant. The strategy is explained in great detail in a piece by Michael E. O’Hanlon at the Brookings Institute titled “Deconstructing Syria: A new strategy for America’s most hopeless war”.

    • Imperialist powers prepare another military intervention in Libya

      A joint US-European mission to Libya involving soldiers from six countries is being hatched under the pretext of combating Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) and with the aim of establishing a pliant pro-Western government and “stabilising” the country.

    • Jeremy Corbyn: Tony Blair could face war crimes trial over ‘illegal Iraq invasion’

      Tony Blair could be made to stand trial for war crimes, according to the current Labour leadership contender Jeremy Corbyn.

      The veteran left winger said the former prime minister was reaching the point when he was going to have to deal with the consequences of his actions with the coming Chilcot inquiry report.

      “I think it was an illegal war,” he said in an interview with BBC2′s Newsnight adding that former UN secretary general had confirmed that. “Therefore he (Blair) has to explain that,” Corbyn said.

    • MH370: Reunion debris is from missing plane

      Part of the aircraft wing found on Reunion Island is from the missing MH370 plane, Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak has confirmed.

      Mr Najib said international experts examining the debris in France had “conclusively confirmed” it was from the aircraft.

      The Malaysia Airlines plane carrying 239 people veered off course from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing in March 2014.

  • Transparency Reporting

  • Environment/Energy/Wildlife

    • Bombshell Study Reveals Methane Emissions Hugely Underestimated

      In a paper published at Energy & Science Engineering, expert and gas industry consultant Touché Howard argues that a much-heralded 2013 study by the University of Texas relied on a faulty measurement instrument, the Bacharach Hi-Flow Sampler (BHFS), causing its findings to low-ball actual emission rates “by factors of three to five.”

  • Finance

    • How much will the London Tube strike cost the economy?

      The unions did not make themselves popular with business leaders in the capital when they announced 24-hour action starting on Wednesday from 6.30pm. The move follows a previous 24-hour stoppage in July.

    • 4 Reasons it’s Kicking Off on the London Underground

      The four unions organising on London Underground – RMT, TSSA, ASLEF, and Unite – have balloted their members for strikes. ASLEF’s ballot has been returned with a 98% majority in favour of strikes on an 81% turnout, and the union has scheduled a 24 hour strike over 8/9 July. The three other unions have their ballots due back on 30 June, and are almost certain to coordinate with ASLEF’s date if they receive majorities in favour of strike action. Coordinated action by all four Tube unions is almost unprecedented.

    • Tube strike: how to get underground whinging off Facebook, Twitter and rest of social media

      You can’t do anything about the strikes, but you can banish the complaints from your social networks.

      With some tweaks to your settings and a couple of browser extensions, you can easily get rid of the most annoying posts.

    • #TubeStrike: Why I’ll be striking over compulsory all-night shifts

      I’m a ticket officer and station assistant on London Underground, and I’ll be taking 24 hour strike action this evening alongside members of my union, TSSA, and unions representing other tube staff, ASLEF, RMT and Unite. We’re in dispute over the move to all-night running at weekends, starting in September.

      That’s not because we oppose all night trains at weekends. They’re a great idea, and will give London a real boost. What we oppose is the way this is being rushed in to meet political aims, without thought for tube workers’ family lives, and without the negotiation that could help find a fairer way.

      I currently work 35 to 40 hours a week, doing shifts of 7 1/2 hours. Currently they start as early as 5am, and finish as late as 1am. The changes London Underground Ltd wants won’t mean me working more hours, but they will alter my shift patterns, making me work more unsocial hours to cover the new all-night shifts, some of which would be 12 hours long.

    • Against the Tube strike? Then try spending 15 years as a train driver like I have

      Since 2001 my hours have become less social, my breaks shorter, and my weekends are about to become almost non-existent

    • Tube strike: Six misconceptions about the Underground workers’ action debunked

      As London gears up to weather another Tube strike, misconceptions about the strikers – and their industrial action – are gaining pace.

      A spokesperson for Unite, one of the four unions taking part in the strike across London, explained why their members were striking and what the action really meant.

    • How Closely Connected are the Most Powerful Corporations in America?

      Conspiracy theorists allege that the world’s most rich and powerful people have secret meetings at places like Bilderberg or Bohemian Grove, or that one can find rooms on Wall Street or in DC where world-changing deals go down amidst a cloud of cigar smoke.

      While there is still debate as to the true extent of the above claims, even the most skeptical of us can agree that the most powerful executives between Wall Street and the biggest corporations in America are intimately connected. Government officials are also in that web, but that’s a project for another day.

      The above visualization looks at the directors of 30 of America’s largest publicly traded corporations on the Dow Jones Industrial Average. Of this group, there are a grand total of three companies that do not share board members with other companies in the index.

  • Privacy

    • Want To Know Why DHS Is Opposing CISA? Because It’s All A Surveillance Turf War

      This has led to some surprise among people who don’t follow this that closely, that “even Homeland Security” doesn’t like the bill. But that’s really ignoring history and what this fight has always been about. Going back many, many years we’ve been highlighting that the truth behind all of these “cybersecurity” bills is that it’s little more than a bureaucratic turf war over who gets to control the purse strings for the massive, multi-billion dollar budget that will be lavished on government contractors for “cybersecurity solutions.” That the bill might also boost surveillance capabilities is little more than a nice side benefit.

      The key players in this turf war? The NSA and Homeland Security (with the Justice Department occasionally waving its hand frantically in the corner shouting “don’t forget us!”). From the beginning, one of the key questions people have asked is “who gets the data?” Obviously, “none of the above” is probably the best answer, but of the remaining options, Homeland Security tends to be the least worst option out of a list of three really bad options. And, so far, the White House has repeatedly pushed to put DHS in charge, giving it more power over the budget. However, CISA does not put DHS in charge.

    • Coalition Announces New ‘Do Not Track’ Standard for Web Browsing

      The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), privacy company Disconnect and a coalition of Internet companies have announced a stronger “Do Not Track” (DNT) setting for Web browsing—a new policy standard that, coupled with privacy software, will better protect users from sites that try to secretly follow and record their Internet activity, and incentivize advertisers and data collection companies to respect a user’s choice not to be tracked online.

    • Spyware demo shows how spooks hack mobile phones

      Intelligence agencies’ secretive techniques for spying on mobile phones are seldom made public.

      But a UK security firm has shown the BBC how one tool, sold around the world to spooks, actually works.

      It allows spies to take secret pictures with a phone’s camera and record conversations with the microphone, without the phone owner knowing.

      Hacking Team’s software was recently stolen from the company by hackers and published on the web.

      Almost any data on a phone, tablet or PC can be accessed by the tool and it is fascinating how much it can do.

    • Comment: Genetic privacy, as explained by mystery poopers

      According to Nature, this was the first GINA case to go to trial since the law was enacted in 2008. Atlas tried to argue that the law didn’t apply in this case, because it wasn’t seeking medical information about its employees, just trying to find out who was pooping by the produce. Leaving aside that the mere fact someone is deliberately defecating outside a bathroom may signal some mental health issues, GINA says that it is “an unlawful employment practice for an employer to request, require, or purchase genetic information with respect to an employee.” (“Genetic information,” according to the statute, includes “genetic tests,” not necessarily limited just to ones that reveal medical information.)

    • Germany’s top prosecutor fired over treason probe

      A treason investigation against two German journalists claimed its first casualty Tuesday — the country’s top prosecutor who ordered the probe.

      Justice Minister Heiko Maas announced he was seeking the dismissal of Harald Range hours after the chief federal prosecutor accused the government of interfering in his investigation.

      Maas said he made the decision in consultation with Chancellor Angela Merkel’s office, indicating that the sacking was approved at the highest level.

  • Civil Rights

  • Internet/Net Neutrality

    • “The Dream Of Internet Freedom Is Dying”

      So says Jennifer Granick, Director of Civil Liberties at the Stanford Center for Internet and Society, who gave the keynote address at the (somewhat infamous) Black Hat security conference today. Once, techno-utopians could say things like “The Internet treats censorship as damag e and routes around it” with a straight face. Today, though, the ongoing centralization of the Internet in the name of security and convenience “increasingly facilitates surveillance, censorship, and control,” to quote Granick again.

  • Intellectual Monopolies

    • TPP Leaks Shows US Stands Firm That Companies Should Be Free To Abuse Patents & Copyrights

      Last week, as you might have heard, negotiators on the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP) agreement gathered in Maui to try to finalize the agreement. Many believed that negotiators would more or less finish things up in that meeting. Earlier reports had suggested that everyone was “weeks away” from finishing, and many had said that the only thing holding back a final agreement was fast track authority (officially “trade promotion authority”) from the US government to make sure that the USTR could negotiate an agreement without further interference from Congress. And, as you’ll recall, Congress voted in favor of fast track after a long fight.

    • Copyrights

      • Copyright Troll Asks Court to Ban the Term ‘Copyright Troll’

        Adult movie studio Malibu Media has asked the Indiana federal court to ban negative terms during an upcoming trial against an alleged BitTorrent pirate. According to the copyright troll, descriptions such as “copyright troll,” “pornographer” and “porn purveyor” could influence the jury.

      • RIAA Asks BitTorrent Inc. to Block Infringing Content

        The RIAA has asked uTorrent creator BitTorrent Inc. to come up with ways to stop infringement of its members’ copyrighted content. In a letter sent to BitTorrent Inc’s CEO, the RIAA’s Executive Vice President of Anti-Piracy points to BitTorrent’s DHT system and asks the San Francisco-based company to live up to its claim of not endorsing piracy.

Political Battles Over Patent ‘Reform’ in the United States and Tax on Nonexistent Things

Posted in Africa, America, Asia, Patents at 4:51 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

“People naively say to me, ‘If your program is innovative, then won’t you get the patent?’” —Richard Stallman

Writing
Software development is NOT writing English sentences

Summary: Dealing with some of the hard (but soft, or invisible) issues in the US, where patents on abstract things are commonly misused for trolling/blackmail and abstract ideas have state tax associated with them

THE political landscape in the United States makes it increasingly unlikely that the patent system will be reformed in anyone’s favour, only in corporations’ favour (and corporations are not people). It is abundantly clear that the current proposals/bills on the table are unfit for purpose if the goal is really fixing the patent system. We already wrote over a dozen articles about this and today we present some of the latest finds.

“Patents threaten access to vital medicine” says a headline from South Africa, part of BRICS. It looks like South Africa is starting to view things like India does (I is India and S is South Africa in BRICS). Populist nations realise that many patents are unjust or even evil because monopoly is not more important than lives. South Africa and India both disallow patents on software, too.

“Populist nations realise that many patents are unjust or even evil because monopoly is not more important than lives.”What about the US? Well, as we showed three days ago (“GOP Media Deception, Healthwashing Patents”), the healthwashing tactics are being used to curtail and eliminate any potential of a reform. It’s the “PEOPLE ARE GOING TO DIE” sort of blackmail (if patent reform is passed).

GOP media (i.e. corporations) has played a big role in lobbying against patent reform, but oddly enough, someone called Mytheos Holt, writing in a GOP-leaning site, tackles what’s titled “The Three Dumbest “Conservative” Objections to Patent Reform”. To quote the key argument: “You have to give the enemies of patent reform credit: They do love to hide behind the idea that they’re defending the free market. To hear them tell it, in fact, they’re the only thing standing between America and a lawless jungle where Google and Apple can step on inventors with impunity and then laugh in their faces as the courts’ hands are tied.”

Here is a useful and long list of reform supporters: “Patent reform enjoys a long tradition of intellectual support from a wide range of right-leaning think tanks and advocacy groups. Conservative and libertarian groups that have advocated for patent reform in one form or another include Americans for Tax Reform, the Heartland Institute, the Cato Institute, the Heritage Foundation, the Competitive Enterprise Institute, the MercatusCenter, Americans for Prosperity, Frontiers of Freedom, the Independent Institute, the Manhattan Institute, the Mises Institute, Institute for Liberty, Hispanic Leadership Fund, the Institute for Policy Innovation, the Latino Coalition, Independent Women’s Forum, Lincoln Labs,the American Enterprise Institute, the Center for Individual Freedom, American Commitment, Taxpayers Protection Alliance, the Discovery Institute, Generation Opportunity, Citizen Outreach and others.”

With so much support from so many groups, how come there is still no change? See Think Progress with its new article “Why Patent Trolling Is So Hard To Fix”. As Think Progress puts it: “Software developers could have a hard time getting their next big idea patented thanks to new rules the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) issued, making some inventions, particularly innovative software and medical devices, unpatentable. ”

Think Progress makes it sound like a bad thing. We wrote about this an hour ago and it is definitely good news. It’s why so-called ‘reform’ might not matter after all. It’s already happening owing to the SCOTUS (Alice and § 101).

“It’s a fantasy, and just like all fantasies, sooner or later it will get shattered by reality.”Meanwhile, as revealed by Accounting Today, lobbyists’ media [1, 2], and Wall Street media [1, 2, 3, 4], the US want to introduce a ‘lower’ tax on invisible things, as if that makes any sense at all. The US is taxing immaterial things, ‘stuff’ like mere thoughts. A much later article from lawyers’ media framed this as “Tax Breaks”, stating that “proposed legislation would enable a company to deduct 71 percent of income derived from qualifying IP or 71 percent of their taxable income, if less.”

This helps prove how crazy a system we’re dealing with here, where mere ideas (misleadingly names “property”, the P in “IP” or “IPR”) are treated as taxable and the corporate media now celebrates tax “discounts” on ideas. The Alice case, which tackles a lot of these abstract patents, justifies the common reference to the case: “Alice in Wonderland”. It’s a fantasy, and just like all fantasies, sooner or later it will get shattered by reality. No country in the world deserves such a rubbish patent system. █

The Rise of Patents as Just a Marketing Tool

Posted in Marketing, Patents at 4:15 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

“There was even an unofficial competition to see who could get the goofiest patent through the system. My entry wasn’t nearly the goofiest.” –James Gosling, father of Java (context)

Summary: Examples where patenting of simple ideas can be viewed as clever PR ploys rather than actual inventions

THE patent hype is largely manufactured. It’s the outcome of brainwashing, to which patent lawyers (the opportunistic parasites) contribute a great deal. In reality, as we have shown before, terms like “patented” or “patent-pending” merely serve to give the impression of inventiveness and advancement. It’s marketing, geared towards respect from rival companies (counterparts or potential partners) and maybe customers too, especially if they are gullible.

The use of patents for marketing was demonstrated (again) by Steph the other day. “What you are seeing here is a measuring cup with a handle,” she wrote. “How, on any planet anywhere, is that patentable? You can’t throw a dead cat without hitting something similar-looking. I mean, honestly.” Steph previously showed how this is done by so-called ‘beauty’ (cosmetics) giants. They’re not alone when it comes to such charades as in the field of software (and gadgets too) this is done sparingly. Earlier this week IP Kat debunked what it called “the myth of the lone inventor.” Corporate image and senseless PR is what many patents are really about. Acquiring patents by applying for them is not hard (almost everything gets accepted at the end), it’s just expensive.

Let’s look at some recent examples where patents are used for little more than marketing. A week ago The Register wrote that “at the time of writing, 13 EVO:RAIl jobs are open at the company and patents for the software powering the appliances recently emerged.”

What will these patents be used for? Looking at the details and context of the article, they won’t be able to defend themselves from giants in their field, so these patents cannot be used defensively (nor offensively). VMware/EMC would eat them alive because of disproportionate portfolio size.

Here is another example. It’s a press release describing MacroPoint as “creators of patented freight tracking software designed to give 3rd party visibility into load status” (as if being “patented” makes it better).

We recently wrote about Fitbit and patents [1 2 3]. One potential competitor from Korea is hoarding patents rather than focus on development. To quote a puff piece about this company:

He adds 54 patents in haptic technology to Dot’s existing five, providing a strong head start over potential competitors for the company, founded only one year ago.

What exactly can this small company do with those patents? These products are designed to help spy on people even in their sleep and the patents above serve this agenda in no way whatsoever. It’s another example of (mis)use of patents for marketing, perhaps in an effort to find venture capital.

Last but not least, consider imperialism and the turf wars long fought between superpowers. Nuclear submarines (powered by a nuclear process in the US before nuclear missiles were loaded on board by the Soviets), space missions, etc. have long been used for political propaganda, giving the impression of military might and superiority. Idealogical wars (communism, capitalism and so on) have long been fought on grounds like patents, inventions, “firsts” (e.g. reaching space, landing on the moon), not just games of Chess. It’s now rather similar in the industry because many companies try to prove their supposed ‘superiority’ by hoarding patents and bragging about the number of patents they hold under their name/belt.

Here is a Pentagon-leaning site coming up with the headline “Navy’s reign in patent rankings continues”. Well, the Army wants monopoly and power; using patents in this case is just marketing. It’s not as though the Navy is going to take some foreign nation to court (which sovereignty anyway?) over patent infringement. To quote the military propaganda: “The value of military technology research can be looked at in a variety of ways, with protecting lives on the battlefield likely the most commonly cited goal. Another, easily quantified metric, though, might be the number of patents generated by the military’s research labs.”

No, that is just marketing. Calling it “research labs” is in itself propaganda, relying on two nonsensical words that are associating war and militarism with science. The army does not like science, it likes power and domination. It is Free software-hostile (except for the practical purposes), back doors-friendly, and it now leans towards yet more proprietary software, based on this news which claims: “Being able to select a commercial-off-the-shelf software package and customize it as little as possible for a project this massive is the reason that DoD has given all along for not opting to use the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs’ proprietary and open source VistA EHR.”

“Accenture is f*ed up,” explained iophk to us (he had served in the Army). “This will be another mess with enormous overruns like with the stock exchange. $9 billion, that’s what, 45,000 man-years at $200k salaries?”

Well, considering the love of patents (for marketing purposes), why not love for proprietary (secret) software too? Protectionism is what it’s all about. █

Software Patents Gradually Getting Crushed, Even in the United States

Posted in America, Asia, Law, Microsoft, Patents at 3:34 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

SCOTUS changed everything

SCOTUS

Summary: A comprehensive look at the past week’s news, including new cases that serve to weaken software patents in their country of origin

THE very existence of software patents is troubling. Not everyone can understand that because not everyone is a software developer. If the notion of a global patent system ever becomes a reality, then we must ensure that this system does not have any software patents. Therein lies the importance of the fight in the United States, by far the most influential country in international politics.

A couple of days ago some Microsoft-friendly media (paid by Microsoft for a lot of advertising) published the post titled “Copyright is enough for software”. It is not a bad post and it helps echo the feelings of many software developers. To quote the opening part: “Now I will fully admit that software patents are getting more restrictive, and the patent office, working with members of the community, has offered up a few ideas to make software patents less offensive and broad. This is a good thing, as in the past we’ve had some truly horrendous software patents issued for utterly mundane things that every developer uses every day.”

As we are about to show later in this post, the US patent office is indeed narrowing down scope in some areas (such as software) and courts support such a move, which they quite likely motivated in the first place.

Patent lawyers are, quite understandably, nervous. They try to lure people into conducting patent searches and fall into the wasteful trap which is software patenting. See this new article from the technical press, suitably titled “Patents: Exercises in Futility and Incomprehensibility?”

They are a waste of time and they achieve nothing but collective fear, which slows down development. “Learning anything from patent documents has to be one of the world’s least productive endeavors,” explains the author. “But there are a few techniques by which you can squeeze out what useful information may be hidden there.”

Better yet, never look at any patents at all. It only increases liability in case of infringement. This isn’t an act of civil disobedience but a matter of setting priorities correctly. Software developers should write code, not read patents. Imagine patents on recipes and cooking, leading chefs to endless reading of patents (instead of cooking), whereupon some forms of cuisine will be deemed too risky to do, making food more expensive and stale. Who benefits? Certainly neither chefs nor the public. Such a system would result in cooking ‘conglomerates’ and hoarding by their facilitators like lawyers.

International Trends

In BRICS nations there is resistance to software patents, although based on this new article, China is allowing patents on software in some cases. China has been trying to artificially elevate the number of its patents for quite some time, even by lowering the threshold/bar of what’s patentable. It is, in part, a PR exercise. It’s part of the national agenda, seeking to rid this growing economy and great nation of the “knockoff” reputation.

Not many Western companies bother patenting their work in China (unlike, say, Korea and Japan, where companies also love to patent their stuff in Europe and the in US). Not many people or companies in China get sued over patents, at least not based on what we can see. Western companies very rarely get sued in China (over patents or anything else for that matter); there are only few cases that are seldom covered (on very rare occasions), usually involving some big brand like Apple because such stories ‘sell’ better.

Quoting the above: “The first [patent] is from the Chinese State Intellectual Property Office (No. 200880126543.0) entitled “Method, System and Computed Program for Identification and Sharing of Digital Images with Face Signatures”, while the second patent is from the Canadian Intellectual Property Office under the same title (No. CA 2711143).”

It is interesting that Chinese patents are sought by companies for the same ideas that are patented in Canada. Depending on which application was made first, we may be able to deduce or at least guess the intention. Not too long ago Apple was sued over patent infringement in China, where Apple is clearly losing to Android players like Xiaomi (now exceeding Apple in terms of sales). Before China was fighting back against patent aggressors like Microsoft Chinese companies like ZTE surrendered to Microsoft without a fight. It helped demonstrate the role of software patents in China. Microsoft can try to ban imports from China until or unless products are castrated (features removed), money gets paid to Microsoft, or Android is dumped in favour of Windows (or a Microsoft-centric version of Android, with a lot of Microsoft malware preinstalled). Overall, China has nothing to gain from software patents. It merely suffers from these. Thankfully, China isn’t falling for all these horrible ‘trade’ deals (misleadingly marketed to the public as “against China”), where increase in patents and their scope/range of applicability is paramount.

According to a new article from IAM, China’s ZTE is now fighting a battle with a US-based troll. It’s the Microsoft-backed Android/Google-hostile Vringo. Patent Buddy called this “ZTE’s Plan to Disparage Vringo and Change US Patent Law (to make it anti-patent)” (so again, US patent law is relevant here).

Over in India, another BRICS nation that does not in principle allow software patents, Google has just received a software patent. “Google has secured an Indian patent,” said the Financial Express, “for an invention regarding a method and system for transferring annotations associated with video files. ”

There seems to be some kind of confusion when Western companies come to BRICS nations and attempt to patent software. Are patent examiners aware at all of the fact that software is ineligible for a patent where they are? Perhaps we need to focus more on the source of this influence, which fools examiners into granting patents on software, gradually taking these global, even against the law.

USPTO Guidance ‘Reform’

The US patent office, the USPTO, is trying to keep up with the courts. It plays catchup with the law, keeping abreast of big judgments more than a year later (because the USPTO, like the court system, is far too slow). Here are the concerns of Barnes & Thornburg’s Intellectual Property Law Department (i.e. patent lawyers), among others. It’s about Alice and software patents (§ 101). This is again input from patent lawyers (Finnegan, Henderson, Farabow, Garrett & Dunner LLP), also echoed here. What we basically see here is a lot of responses from patent lawyers to changes that are happening at the USPTO, based on new guidelines for patent examiners. Snow Christensen & Martineau (more lawyers) chose the title “New examination guidelines from the USPTO on subject matter eligibility: what it means for the patentability of your inventions” (the most desperate headline came from the most shameless promoters of software patents).

For the uninitiated, software patents are gradually dying in the US, for the courts repeatedly rule against them, invalidating a lot of patents in the process (even by extension, through precedence). The USPTO is just trying to keep abreast here and refrain from granting more patents that would later get invalidated because 1) it damages the credibility/reputation of the USPTO (granting patents in error) and 2) it lowers, in due course, the incentive to file/apply for patents at the USPTO, for they may not be honoured by the court system, deeming them a massive waste of time and money.

Courts Continue to Crush Software Patents

As another week goes by, another case serves to show that software patents are not potent enough for winning a case, not even in the US. Invaliding patents on invisible things (like algorithms) is the big trend these days and here again is a reminder of that in lawyers’ media. “It is very important to provide adequate disclosure when using “means-plus-function” claims in a U.S. patent,” says the author, “particularly in the field of software.”

According to this same publication, more software patents are about to get invalidated. To quote the opening paragraph: “On July 9, a judge in the district of Oregon granted two motions for summary judgment finding that the claims of United States Patent Nos. 7,346,766 and 6,728,877 fail to state an inventive concept sufficient to satisfy the Supreme Court’s test for patentability of an abstract idea under Section 101, and are therefore invalid. The patents-in-suit involve technology related to the migration of user configuration settings from a source computing system to a target computing system. In granting defendant’s motions for summary judgment, the court followed the Supreme Court’s guidance in the landmark Alice Corp. Pty. Ltd. v. CLS Bank, Int’l, 134 S. Ct. 2347 (2014) decision.”

No wonder patent lawyers worry. Alice has been doing this time after time. “The Supreme Court has made changes to patent law and how it’s interpreted, he says, which makes the interpretation of patent laws more uncertain, particularly where software is involved,” corporate media wrote the other day.

Here is another new article about this. “To be granted a patent for software,” it says, “the patent application had to overcome objections based on a 2014 US Supreme Court case holding that the mere computer implementation of a business method is unpatentable. The US patent examiner has judged Arria’s “Method and Apparatus for Configurable Microplanning” to be an innovation that contributes to the field of computer science. The innovations underlying this and Arria’s two other US patents enhance the quality and authority of the plain English narratives being written by the Arria NLG Software Engine without human intervention.”

We gradually get to the point where most software patents are worth $0 and no new ones (or very few ones) actually get granted. In this trend broadens in the US, then software patents will be universally (globally) dead. It’s only a matter of time.

Lobbying Persists

The USPTO has been changed and perturbed over hundreds of years, with scope expanding to millions of patents on mere ideas (not physical, no mechanics), but some people live in the past and pretend that no correction is required. Martin Goetz, who has been making a career out of speaking in favour of software patents, is now enjoying support from patent lawyers who give him their platform. The man who started software patents (Martin Goetz got the first one) wants us to stop saying “software patents” as if trying to just dodge the debate by changing words will make these patentable again. CII? Computer-implemented inventions? That term never caught on. Just like “NPE” for trolls, or formerly patent sharks.

Patent lawyers are having an ‘ACTA moment’ right now, realising that what they tried so hard to defend has got a very bad name, so they try to rename. This basically means they lost.

It is going to be interesting to see how the rest of the world responds to the post-Alice status quo in the US. Software patents are in the process of rapid demise, but it may take half a decade for this plague to be totally eradicated. These systems are very slow to adapt to change. █

RSS 64x64RSS Feed: subscribe to the RSS feed for regular updates

Home iconSite Wiki: You can improve this site by helping the extension of the site's content

Home iconSite Home: Background about the site and some key features in the front page

Chat iconIRC Channels: Come and chat with us in real time

New to This Site? Here Are Some Introductory Resources

No

Mono

ODF

Samba logo






We support

End software patents

GPLv3

GNU project

BLAG

EFF bloggers

Comcast is Blocktastic? SavetheInternet.com



Recent Posts