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12.14.16

EPO is “Googlebombing” Croatia With Puff Pieces Rather Than Discussion/Coverage of Vice-President’s Dark Side

Posted in Europe, Patents at 6:50 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Googlebombing
Reference: Google bomb

Summary: Battistelli’s lobbying in Croatia last week may pay off this week, but we ought to remember the real story behind the EPO in Croatia

NOW that EPO staff is outdoors (protesting against the employer) it is a good time to remind readers of Battistelli’s alleged practice of vote-buying. Whether or not Battistelli is intentionally buying votes is beside the point of the net effect. Quite a few nations, especially tiny nations with almost no patents, are terrified by the financial effect of withdrawing support for Battistelli at the Administrative Council’s meeting (which starts today). One of those nations received an incentive just shortly before another such meeting and yesterday, promoted in the morning over at Twitter (24 hours before the meeting commences), Benoît Battistelli and his thug (Željko Topić) finally posted their photo op from Croatia (warning: epo.org link), confirming what we wrote yesterday about Croatian media’s 'coverup' for Topić (it was a surprise visit of for UPC puff pieces).

“Whether or not Battistelli is intentionally buying votes is beside the point of the net effect.”We don’t suppose Croatia will oppose Battistelli’s proposals today and tomorrow. See the photo with the caption that says “Željko Topić, EPO Vice-President Directorate-General Administration, EPO President Battistelli, Director General of Croatian State Intellectual Property Office Ljiljana Kuterovac and Croatian Deputy Minister of Science and Education Krešo Zadro” (recall what we previously wrote about Kuterovac [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6]).

When people in Croatia look up information about the EPO or when Europeans look up information about Croatia/SIPO we suppose they’re more likely to come across all these puff pieces from the past week, with not a single word in them about the criminal charges against Željko Topić. That’s the art of Googlebombing and when the EPO wastes over a million Euros per year on a peripheral PR agency this whole exercise is likely deliberate. So expect Croatia not to oppose Battistelli’s proposals this week, expect Kuterovac to continue to protect a crook, expect Croatian people to be further bamboozled regarding the UPC (maybe even ratify), and expect the public to know little or nothing about the Vice-President of the EPO and the serious charges against him (which can land him in jail for very a long time).

“Can we also expect Spain, with people like Patricia García-Escudero Márquez in the mix, to be a Battistelli “yes man” this week?”Concerning this week’s meeting in Munich, expect Battistelli to attempt to marginalise the appeal boards even further, to lie yet more about erosion of patent quality (a face-saving announcement was made just days ago), and to further crush the unions. In relation to the Spanish ‘chinchilla’ (or ‘mole’) of Battistelli in the Boards of Appeal Committee (BoAC), as covered here before, see this piece republished on Tuesday (a day before the meeting) just to say: “On March 16, 2016, the Spanish Patent and Trademark Office (OEPM) and the European Patent Office (EPO) signed a new work plan for the cooperation with Ibero America during 2016-2017.”

Can we also expect Spain, with people like Patricia García-Escudero Márquez in the mix, to be a Battistelli “yes man” this week? Judging by previous meetings, it’s very much possible. Battistelli visited Madrid only weeks ago (Spain is strategic to him because of the UPC, which Spain still rightly opposes).

In order for the EPO not to become synonymous with institutional corruption the Administrative Council must take firm and immediate action. █

EPO Protest Begins and ILO Staff Union Expresses Support for EPO Staff

Posted in Europe, Patents at 6:11 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Flag of ILO

Summary: Another letter in support of staff of the EPO, this time from the International Labour Organisation

THE FOLLOWING letter, published in support of EPO staff, came from the ILO Staff Union. As a reminder, ILO recently confirmed gross injustice inside the EPO.

Message of support received from the ILO Staff Union

Ladies and gentlemen,

The Staff Union of the ilo wishes to assure you of its support in the fight that you lead for the maintenance of your union functions in decent conditions. Freedom and independence of trade unions are necessary for the accomplishment of a social peace in any society.

Freedom of trade unions and collective bargaining are part of the founding principles of the ilo. This is why we cannot remain indifferent to your situation and you post our solidarity.

Syndicalement

For the committee of the union of the ilo

Yvan Poulin
Treasurer
ILO Staff Union

In today’s protest please take photos (if many people do, then it will be incredibly hard for moles/observers to pinpoint sources) and leak some to us. We’ll remove metadata, faces, etc. prior to publication. It’s definitely possible/accomplishable – even this week! — for the Administrative Council to at least signal the beginning of a ‘swamp-draining’ campaign, which strives to restore law, order and reputation at the EPO, not by union-busting but Battistelli-busting. █

Links 14/12/2016: CrossOver 16, GNOME 3.23.3, and KDevelop 4.7.4 released

Posted in News Roundup at 5:30 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNOME bluefish

Contents

GNU/Linux

  • Voice of the Masses: What are you most looking forward to in 2017?

    So 2016 is almost over, and we’ll soon be recording our last podcast of the year. We could use this time to reflect on the last 12 months, but isn’t it far more exciting to think about the future? The answer is yes.

    On that basis, we want to hear from you: what Linuxy or FOSSy thing are you most looking forward to in 2017? Perhaps it’s a new release of your favourite distro, or an update to a killer app that you depend on. (Gimp 2.10, anyone?) Maybe you hope to see Linux grab 3% of the desktop market share, or something else entirely. Simply input your musings into the comment box below and we’ll read out the best in our podcast, fuelled by Glühwein and plenty of Christmas cheer.

  • Server

    • CoreOS Linux Rebranded as Container Linux, as Kubernetes Goes Self-Service

      CoreOS is coming full circle, bringing established capabilities to its Tectonic platform, which provides a commercially supported distribution of the open-source Kubernetes container management system.

    • How Getting Your Project in the CNCF Just Got Easier

      Managing and making sense of these new, cloud-native architectures is something that the Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF) aims to help make easier for developers worldwide. On today’s episode of The New Stack Makers podcast, we talk with CNCF Executive Director Dan Kohn and CNCF Chief Operating Officer Chris Aniszczyk about the direction of the CNCF and cloud-native computing as a whole. The interview took place at KubeCon/CloudNativeCon, which took place last month in Seattle.

    • Open Source Helps Drive Cloud Adoption Says 2016 Future of Cloud Survey

      Scalability, agility, cost, and innovation are the main factors driving cloud adoption, according to the 6th annual Future of Cloud Computing study released today by North Bridge Venture Partners and Wikibon analysts. And, this year, mobile and open source are twice as likely to be cited as a drivers for cloud computing as they were in 2015.

    • New survey reveals a surge in cloud-first adoption strategies

      Infrastructure-as-a-service is close behind, with 58 percent of respondents using it for at least some computing task and 53 percent for storage. Platform-as-a-service has the lowest adoption rate (45 percent) but is expected to grow the fastest, with planned usage increasing by 19 percent over the next two years on top of 33 percent growth in just the past year.

    • Of automation and autonomy: Open-source tool automates cloud deployment (with layovers)

      The more processes developers and engineers can automate, techies say, the faster and more advanced their applications will become. However, certain processes are not yet ripe to have human brains taken completely out of the equation. Deploying code to the cloud is one of those tasks that benefit from a mix of automation and human oversight — does this open-source tool strike the perfect balance?

      Dianne Marsh, director of engineering tools at Netflix Inc., spoke about the open-source cloud tool she helped create, called Spinnaker, a Continuous Delivery platform. Her efforts on the technology were recognized at CloudNOW, the 5th Annual “Top 10 Women in Cloud” Innovation Awards. CloudNOW is a non-profit consortium of leading women in cloud computing and converging technologies.

    • Guide to the Open Cloud: The State of IaaS and PaaS

      The Linux Foundation recently announced the release of its 2016 report “Guide to the Open Cloud: Current Trends and Open Source Projects.” This third annual report provides a comprehensive look at the state of open cloud computing. You can download the report now, and one of the first things to notice is that it aggregates and analyzes research, illustrating how trends in containers, microservices, and more shape cloud computing. In fact, from IaaS to virtualization to DevOps configuration management, it provides descriptions and links to categorized projects central to today’s open cloud environment.

    • Monitoring Those Hard-to-Reach Places: Linux, Java, Oracle and MySQL

      Today’s IT environments are increasingly heterogeneous, with Linux, Java, Oracle and MySQL considered nearly as common as traditional Windows environments. In many cases, these platforms have been integrated into an organization’s Windows-based IT department by way of an acquisition of a company that leverages one of those platforms. In other cases, the applications may have been part of the IT department for years, but managed by a separate department or singular administrator.

      Still, whether it’s a perception of required specialization, frustration over these platforms’ many version permutations or just general uncertainty and doubt, Linux, Java, Oracle and MySQL create mass monitoring confusion and are routinely considered “hard to reach” for even a seasoned IT professional. This problem goes both ways (when monitoring Windows is actually the unnatural element) but for the most part, IT shops are primarily Windows-based and consistently struggle to monitor these more niche platforms.

    • AWS Sets Cloud Networking Example For IT Organizations

      Industry standard servers have played a big role in reducing the cost of networking across the enterprise. But there is a fair amount of nuance that needs to be appreciated to understand how to achieve that goal. One of the best examples is the way Amazon Web Services offloads network services from industry standard servers.

      AWS has the largest amount of x86 server infrastructure on the planet. But even with all that infrastructure, AWS spent several million dollars developing its own network infrastructure to offload networking functions from those servers. At the recent AWS re:invent 2016 conference, James Hamilton, vice president and distinguished engineer for AWS, described how AWS is employing custom 25G routers and 10G network interface controller (NIC) cards based on commodity processors to scale networking services in the cloud.

  • Kernel Space

  • Applications

  • Desktop Environments/WMs

    • K Desktop Environment/KDE SC/Qt

      • Linux 4.9, Mint Plasma 5.8, Year in Games

        Clement Lefebvre blogged Sunday of Plasma 5.8 LTS coming to Linux Mint. He said thanks to the Kubuntu team Mint users can upgrade through the Kubuntu repositories or wait for Mint 18.1. He said 18.1 could be delayed if necessary if 5.8.4 isn’t ready by earlier estimates. For those wanting to help test, Lefebvre posted the instructions. He further stated that if not for the Kubuntu team, there’d probably be no KDE version for Mint. The Kubuntu team is also looking for testers using that distro as well.

      • KDE Plasma 5.8

        Second, because Kubuntu is an essential part of what we provide with Mint KDE. I know some of you mistakenly think we could base on top of Neon, or simply package KDE ourselves but realistically, we cannot. Our KDE community is small, packaging KDE represents a huge commitment and because Plasma 5 is still reaching maturity it’s a continuous process which cannot get frozen for an entire 2 years. At the same time, we have high expectations, stability is important to us and if we do something it has to work. With this in mind, if it wasn’t for Kubuntu and their Backport PPA, I don’t think there would be a KDE edition in Linux Mint.

      • Kubuntu and Linux Mint doing Plasma 5.8 testing
      • KDevelop 4.7.4 released

        Hello!

        I have the pleasure to announce the new stable release of KDevelop 4.7.4. This is a bug fix release increasing the stability of our (older) KDE4 based branch.

        The most important fix and the main reason for this release is making the KDE4 branch compatible with behavior changes in code generated by GCC6 which lead to crashes in KDevelop (https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=360707).

      • KDevelop 4.7.4 Open-Source IDE Improves GCC 6 Support, Fixes Long-Standing Bugs

        Today, December 13, 2016, the development team behind the open-source and cross-platform KDevelop IDE (Integrated Development Environment) software announced a new maintenance update for the older stable KDevelop 4.7 series.

    • GNOME Desktop/GTK

      • Improving notifications in GNOME

        Like a lot of people, I was really happy with the big notification redesign that landed in 3.16. However, I’ve been itching to return to notifications for a little while, in order to improve what we have there. Prompted by some conversations we had during the Core Apps Hackfest last month, I finally got around to spending a bit of time on this.

      • GNOME 3.23.3 released

        GNOME 3.23.3, the second development release in the GNOME 3.24 cycle,
        is now available. Major changes include gnome-settings-daemon 3.23.2,
        which splits plugins out into separate helper daemons instead of
        running all of the code in process, and gjs 1.47.3, which now depends
        on SpiderMonkey 31 instead of SpiderMonkey 24 and is an important first
        step towards upgrading to a secure and supported JavaScript engine. We
        now have new parallel-installable *mm packages based on the new
        libsigcplusplus 3.0 API/ABI, which also paves the way to use GTK+ 4
        from C++, although GTK+ 4 and the new gtkmm are not yet included in
        this release due to problems with a dependency. We have temporarily
        downgraded NetworkManager to the latest stable release due to a build
        issue. gnome-shell is upgraded to version 3.23.2.

      • GNOME 3.23.3 Released
      • GNOME 3.23.3 Desktop Environment Released, Paves the Way for Using GTK+ 4

        We’ve just been informed by GNOME Project’s Michael Catanzaro about the general availability of the third development release in the GNOME 3.24 desktop environment cycle.

      • GNOME Music 3.24 App to Use Grilo for Storing Metadata, Get Major Revamp

        The GNOME development team have released the third snapshot of the upcoming GNOME 3.24 desktop environment, due for release next year on March 22, and includes a new unstable build of GNOME Music, versioned 3.23.3.

        At the very end of last week, long-time GNOME developer Georges Basile Stavracas Neto wrote an interesting blog post about the future of the GNOME Music app, a music player distributed as part of the GNOME Stack, from where it results that the open-source software project needs a total revamp.

      • Overview of the VP9 video codec

        When I first looked into video codecs (back when VP8 was released), I imagined them being these insanely complex beasts that required multiple PhDs to understand. But as I quickly learned, video codecs are quite simple in concept. Now that VP9 is gaining support from major industry players (see supporting statements in December 2016 from Netflix and Viacom), I figured it’d be useful to explain how VP9 works.

      • A Nice Overview Of The VP9 Codec By A GNOME Developer

        For those interested in learning more low-level details about Google’s open-source, royalty-free VP9 video codec, GNOME developer Ronald Bultje has provided a nice overview.

        If you are looking for some nighttime technical reading, Bultje’s lengthy blog post covers the impact of VP9, its approach to video coding, and its algorithms for offering better performance over older video codecs.

      • GNOME’s Epiphany 3.23.3 Web Browser Disables HTTPS Everywhere By Default

        Epiphany 3.23.3 was tagged on Monday as the newest development release of this web-browser update being aligned for GNOME 3.24.

        Epiphany 3.23.3 has disabled its experimental HTTPS Everywhere support by default and it’s also disabled by default the experimental Firefox Sync support. While disabled by default, the Firefox Sync support was improved in this release with better error handling. There were also improvements for its HTTPS Everywhere support, but still not good enough for keeping it on by default yet.

      • Latest Epiphany Snapshot Disables Firefox Sync and HTTPS Everywhere by Default

        As part of the third development release of the GNOME 3.24 desktop environment, versioned 3.23.3, the team responsible for the open-source Epiphany web browser just released a new unstable build.

        Yes, we’re talking about Epiphany 3.23.3, which seems to be a major milestone implementing lots of bug fixes and general improvements. First off, it appears that this build disables the experimental Firefox Sync and HTTPS Everywhere functionalities by default, but they’ll most certainly make a comeback before the final release hits the streets.

  • Distributions

    • New Releases

      • Linux Kernel 4.9 Now Live for Linux Lite 3.2 Users, Here’s How to Install It Now

        Linux Lite developer Jerry Bezencon informs Softpedia today about the availability of the recently released Linux 4.9 kernel for users of the Linux Lite 3.2 operating system.

        We know that you’re currently enjoying your brand-new Linux Lite 3.2 installation with all of its awesome new features and improvements, but if you’ve ever dreamed of having the latest Linux kernel packages installed for some reason, you can now install Linux kernel 4.9, but only if you’re running the 64-bit edition of the OS.

      • Rockstor Announcing 3.8.16
      • Proxmox VE 4.4 released

        We’re excited to announce the release of Proxmox VE 4.4! The new version of our virtualization software contains great improvements, especially increasing usability, reliability and scalability.

    • Arch Family

    • OpenSUSE/SUSE

    • Red Hat Family

      • How an open leader achieves work/life balance

        Becoming an open leader means becoming attuned to the intricate ways that complex and ever-moving systems structure our daily lives. As I’ve argued, open leaders are masters of balancing multiple parts of those systems strategically—not only as part of various projects at work, but also in other aspects of their lives.

      • Popular CentOS Linux server gets a major refresh

        CentOS doesn’t get many headlines. But it’s still the server Linux of choice for many hosting companies, data centers, and businesses with in-house Linux experts. That’s because CentOS, which is controlled by Red Hat, is a Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) clone. As such, it reaps the benefits of RHEL’s business Linux development efforts without RHEL’s costs.

      • Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7.1 Receives Security Certification
      • Enterprise Linux 7.1 meets NIST crypto standards
      • Red Hat Completes FIPS 140-2 Certifications for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7

        -Red Hat, Inc. (NYSE: RHT), the world’s leading provider of open source solutions, today announced that Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7.1 has received nine Federal Information Processing Standard (FIPS) 140-2 security certifications from the U.S. federal government’s National Institute of Standards and Practices (NIST). These certifications, achieved in 2016, emphasize Red Hat’s focus on delivering a more secure foundation for mission-critical systems, building upon Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7.1’s recent achievement of a Common Criteria security certification at Evaluation Assurance Level (EAL) 4+ as the first certified operating system to offer Linux Container Framework Support.

      • KeyBank Goes Cloud-Native, Builds a DevOps Practice and Chooses Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform

      • Finance

      • Fedora

        • Review: Fedora 25 – The Trail Blazer that is Blazing Fast

          Not long after being released to the wild, I decided it was time to retire old faithful Ubuntu GNOME in favour of Fedora 25 on my main laptop (an Optimus equipped machine). The Ubuntu install had served me very well indeed, but with Fedora’s latest offering featuring the latest stable version of GNOME and Wayland now being used by default, it was a rabbit hole I decided to delve into…

          In reality, the whole process is not quite so dramatic. When replacing one Linux distro for another, as long as you do all the usual sane backups and the distro you are replacing your old one with does all things you need it to, it’s not such a big deal. After all, it’s essentially one Linux for another Linux and most of your usual apps and tools will be available in one way or another.

          Still, replacing a perfectly stable install of Ubuntu GNOME that had served me well for a good two years (even surviving a few Ubuntu version upgrades in the process) for both work and play probably seems a bit risky for a fresh new version of Fedora. And let’s be honest, when it comes to new releases of Fedora, you never know quite what you are going to get. But in a way, that is part of the fun of it. Perhaps, I also had an itch for adventure.

          So, how did Fedora 25 fare and how is it still faring, in my everyday use? Read on…

        • More Fedora 26 Change Proposals: Ruby, Golang 1.8, Go PIE, ZF3

          While the changes need to be cleared by the Fedora Engineering and Steering Committee (FESCo), the latest proposals look like they’re relatively safe to assume they’ll be accepted for this next major Fedora Linux release due out in 2017. The latest feature talk includes:

          - Golang 1.8. The Go Language v1.8 release is due out in February so should be safe to land for Fedora 26 in providing the latest Go support.

        • Fedora Docker Layered Image Build Service Now Available

          It is with great pleasure that the Fedora Project Announces the availability of the Fedora Docker Layered Image Build Service to the Fedora Contributor Community!

          With this announcement we open the availability of the Docker Layered Image Build Service for the Docker Layered Images. The Fedora Cloud WG has been the primary maintainers of this project on GitHub. But now the service is available in dist-git as official components of Fedora. From there we will extend an invitation to all Fedora Contributors to maintain Docker Layered Image Containers for official release by the Fedora Project. Currently this effort is to enable the Fedora Cloud/Atomic Working Group goals of targeting Fedora Atomic Host as a primary deliverable to power the future of Cloud. This is also to enable the Fedora Modularity work be delivered as Containers in the future as Fedora becomes fundamentally more modular in nature.

        • F25 Release Event Samos – Event Report

          I started with an introduction to the distribution and to the project as a whole. I explained the plethora of options being offered to our end users (Fedora Spins, Fedora Labs, Alternate Architectures). I passed the torch to Zacharias, who briefly spoke about Fedora.next before giving an in-depth look at the latest features. We then discussed about contribution opportunities.

        • Fedora-Based OLPC (One Laptop per Child) Linux OS 13.2.8 Is Out with Sugar 0.110

          OLPC (One Laptop per Child) OS developer James Cameron announced the availability of a new stable update for the Fedora-based GNU/Linux operating system used by default on those low-cost, connected OLPC laptops designed for children.

          OLPC OS 13.2.8 is now the latest version of the distribution, and while it’s shipping with the newest Sugar 0.110 interface as default desktop environment, it appears to be based on a very old Fedora release, namely Fedora Linux 18, which was launched almost four years ago, on January 15, 2013.

        • Fedora 23 to be discontinued

          If you are a user of Fedora and particularly Fedora 23, then you should consider upgrading to newer version before December 20th, 2016. Fedora 23 will be officially discontinued and there won’t be an further support after that. According to sources after December 20th, neither there will be any updates in repositories nor any new package will enter the repositories. Fedora 23 won’t receive any security fix or bug fix.

    • Debian Family

      • Derivatives

        • SalentOS 1.0 – Minimal Debian

          The distribution is available in 32-bit and 64-bit builds for the x86 processor architecture. The download for the 64-bit build is 1GB in size. Booting from the downloaded ISO brings up a graphical desktop environment, running on the Openbox window manager. When the system first starts up, a window appears and asks us to select our preferred language from a list of two-letter language codes. The default language is English (gb).

          Once our language has been selected, we are free to explore the Openbox-powered interface. A panel at the top of the display holds the distribution’s application menu, a handful of quick-launch buttons, a task switcher and the system tray. The background rotates between wallpapers, with most of the background images displaying landscape scenes. When we decide we want to install the distribution we can launch the system installer from a quick-launch button on the panel at the top of the screen.

        • Canonical/Ubuntu

          • Longtime Ubuntu Developer Martin Pitt Leaving Canonical, Joining Red Hat
          • Another Veteran Ubuntu Member Is Leaving Canonical

            Well, this is a bit strange and hopefully just developers looking to recharge and find new endeavors for 2017 as opposed to any exodus, but just hours after writing about Martin Pitt leaving Canonical to join Red Hat, another longtime Ubuntu developer is leaving the company too.

            Martin Pitt had been at Canonical for 12.5 years while the other developer leaving was there for 11 years: Daniel Holbach. Daniel had been with Canonical since 2005 and served as a developer on the desktop team, founded Ubuntu’s community teams, and then in the past few years had been working in community management and related community/relations areas.

          • Flavours and Variants

            • “Ultra Minimal” Ubuntu Budgie Is Coming, Uses “220MB Or Less Of RAM”

              The Ubuntu Budgie developers are working on an Ultra Minimal version of their Linux distribution that’ll consume less than 220MB RAM. This version is expected to ship without any standard applications or a RAM-intensive desktop environment. To tell you more about this upcoming release, we’ve contacted the developers for more information.

  • Devices/Embedded

Free Software/Open Source

  • Nextcloud 11 Launches with Two-Factor Authentication, Performance Improvements
  • Nextcloud 11 sets new standard for security and scalability

    We’re proud to release a huge milestone: Nextcloud 11, delivering a wide range of security and scalability improvements with a number of important features on top. This release provides you the most secure solution for keeping your data under control we’ve delivered yet.

  • Nextcloud adds security and scalability to its private cloud offering

    The latest version of Nextcloud adds business security and scalability improvements to its small business cloud.

  • KDE and Nextcloud Developers Discuss Integration of Nextcloud in KDE Plasma

    On December 13, 2016, Nextcloud’s Jos Poortvliet reveals that the company behind the popular self-hosting cloud server forked from ownCloud is currently in discussions with the developers of the KDE Plasma desktop to deeply integrate Nextcloud.

    It appears that back in July 2016, Nextcloud founder Frank Karlitschek and community manager Jos Poortvliet, along with long-time KDE developers Kai-Uwe Bergmann and Martin Gräßlin gathered together in Stuttgart to discuss the steps they need to take for a deeper integration of Nextcloud in KDE Plasma.

  • How 30,000 people helped pick the new Bash logo

    I agree, and a problem I see in the open source community centers on collaborating on artwork, logos in particular. I don’t think it’s a platform limitation (GitHub, etc.), I think it’s a lack of art directors. By definition an art director is someone who is responsible for the visual style and images created for a project. An art director creates the overall design and directs others who are part of the project to develop artwork or layouts.

    To have any success as an art director in open source I’ve found the following characteristics are needed: an eye for design, open mindedness, and patience. To help illustrate this point, I’ll present two projects where I have made art direction contributions. One was a failed attempt, the other was a success.

  • Students and professors work across the aisle during Election Night Hackathon

    At the peak of the event, nearly 140 students, faculty, staff, and local citizens filled the MAGIC Center and overflow work spaces. Dan Schneiderman, the event’s coordinator and the FOSS@MAGIC Research Associate and Community Liaison, led the event on a high note with a brief kick-off ceremony. Hackers were provided with a list of resources for building applications related to civic hacking. Shortly after the start, attendees began to discuss project ideas to work on throughout the night. Professors and alumni provided mentorship, advice, and help for students planning projects.

  • Open source and the software supply chain

    Grasping the nuances of hardware supply chains and their management is straightforward—you essentially are tracking moving boxes. Managing something as esoteric as resources for building software with a variety of contributions made by the open source community is more amorphic.

    When thinking about open source platforms and supply chains, I thought of the supply chain as a single process, taking existing open source components and producing a single result, namely a product. Since then, I’ve begun to realize that supply chain management defines much of the open source ecosystems today. That is, those who know how to manage and influence the supply chain have a competitive advantage over those who don’t do it as well, or even grasp what it is.

  • Events

    • Top open source conference picks for 2017

      Many of you reading this will be fans of open source who would love to get out and meet open source leaders, companies, and users at conferences. With most of us having to prioritize conferences either due to budgetary or family reasons (or both), knowing which events we should prioritize can be difficult.

  • Web Browsers

    • Mozilla

      • Firefox 50.1.0 Lands in Ubuntu’s Repos, Multiple Security Vulnerabilities Fixed

        Today, December 13, 2016, Canonical published a new USN (Ubuntu Security Notice) advisory to inform users of the popular Ubuntu Linux operating system about the availability of Mozilla Firefox 50.1.0 in the software repositories.

        Mozilla released the Firefox 50.1.0 web browser a couple of days ago, and it looks like they patched a total of 13 security vulnerabilities, which could have been used by an attacker to crash the application or run programs as your login if the users were to open a malicious website.

  • SaaS/Back End

    • Major Hadoop Survey Finds Complexity Challenges, Predicts Move to Simplicity

      How much traction are Hadoop and other Big Data tools getting in enterprises? That depends on which studies you put credence in. Onet report from Snowflake Computing, a cloud data warehousing company, found that nearly two thirds of the respondents said that they believe Hadoop will not have any impact on their legacy data environments.

      However, Syncsort, focused on Big Iron to Big Data solutions, has announced the results from its third annual Hadoop survey, showing that as users gain more experience with Hadoop, they are building on their early success and expanding the size and scope of Hadoop projects.

      You can download the Hadoop survey results for 2017 now.

      According to the survey, the number one role of Hadoop continues to be increasing data warehouse capacity and reducing costs (cited by 62% of respondents) but the number of organizations using it for better, faster analytics is on the rise (49.4% of respondents, up from 45.5% last year). As the ways in which they are using Hadoop and the benefits they expect to achieve are evolving, there are several key trends to watch in 2017.

  • Oracle/Java/LibreOffice

    • Some GTK3/Wayland/OpenGL Improvements For LibreOffice

      Some LibreOffice commits today caught our attention as exciting for those using Wayland and also interested in GTK3/OpenGL.

      First up, LibreOffice has switched from using GLEW to Epoxy. GLEW, of course being the OpenGL Extension Wrangler Library. Epoxy, meanwhile, being the newer library for handling OpenGL function pointer management with GLX/WGL/EGL support, OpenGL ES 1/2/3, and OpenGL 4.4 core/compatibility support.

  • Education

    • Dedicated FOSS Computer Lab at IIT Bombay

      While colleges and universities in the United States try to figure out whether their campus needs a FOSS computer lab, no such hesitation occurs in smart higher education institutions overseas. In this short video, hear from Professor Shyama Iyer about the FOSS tools taught at Indian Institute of Technology Bombay (IIT Bombay).

  • Openness/Sharing/Collaboration

    • Geography & open source

      The best way to understand Boundless it to compare it to Red Hat. Red Hat provides support and training for an open source operating system called Linux. In a similar vein, Boundless provides assistance with geographic information provided by the open source community. Some people compare it to having an “insurance policy” when you dive into the world of open source.

    • Most Member States support OGP Paris Declaration

      Most of the EU Member States support the Open Government Partnership Paris Declaration agreed on last week at the OGP Summit in Paris, France. In signing the declaration, countries say they will pursue further open government reforms, emphasising citizen participation. The conference brought together representatives of 80 governments and hundreds of civil society organisation from around the world.

  • Standards/Consortia

    • The Khronos Group Announces New Standards Collaboration for VR Integration

      It’s no secret that at this early point in the lifecycle of VR that there are many different platforms, solutions and paths to choose from when it comes to content and standards for motion and control. Due to the range of APIs created for game engines and different VR solutions, such as Steam VR, Oculus, OSVR, Daydream etc., it can be difficult for developers to create one-application-fits-all software. As a result, their software typically ends up specializing for a particular VR solution over others. This can arguably limit industry growth at the expense of differentiation.

Leftovers

  • Hardware

    • AMD Reveals More Zen CPU Details, Officially Known As Ryzen, No Linux Details Yet

      AMD’s Zen New Horizon event is going on right now. For those missing out on the livestream, here are my live details so far on Zen, or now officially known as Ryzen.

      Here are my highlights, check back for updates.

      - They have “met or exceeded” their goals at AMD for Zen. Beating performance goals of 40%+ instruction per clock improvement.

    • AMD ‘Ryzen’ is the official name of the Zen processors, more details released today

      They announced that Ryzen ‘Summit Ridge’ will be on their AM4 platform, which will support DDR4 memory, USB 3.1 v2, NVMe storage and PCIe v3. It will have 8 cores, 16 threads with a base clock of at least 3.4 GHz+ (they may tweak that higher at release). It will boost higher, but they haven’t said how high. This is wrapped up in a neat 95W TDP package, so that’s not bad at all for what it does.

  • Health/Nutrition

    • Supreme Court declines to hear biologic drug patent fight

      The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday declined to hear a case over whether companies that make copycat versions of biologic drugs must wait six months after winning federal approval before bringing them to the market.

      The justices opted not to take up Apotex Inc’s appeal of a July federal appeals court ruling that could delay the Canadian generic drug maker’s launch of so-called biosimilar versions of California-based Amgen Inc’s Neulasta, used to fight infection in cancer patients.

      Approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration in 2002, Neulasta is one of Amgen’s top-selling products, accounting for $4.7 billion of its nearly $21 billion in sales last year.

      Biologic drugs like Neulasta are made using living cells. Unlike traditional drugs, biologic drugs cannot be copied exactly to make generic versions. A 2010 federal law, the Biologics Price Competition and Innovation Act, allows companies to seek approval to sell near-copies called biosimilars.

    • Ohio Gov. John Kasich Signs 20-Week Abortion Ban

      Ohio Gov. John Kasich (R) signed a 20-week abortion ban into law on Tuesday, making the state the 18th to do so.

      At the same time, the governor vetoed a bill that would have banned abortions after six weeks of pregnancy― before many women even realize they’re pregnant. Nicknamed the “heartbeat bill,” it would have threatened doctors with up to a year in jail if they performed an abortion after detection of a fetal heartbeat. The law would have been the most extreme anti-abortion restriction in the country.

      Ohio’s Republican-controlled House and Senate passed both the six-week ban and the 20-week ban last week. Kasich, who strongly opposes abortion rights despite his reputation as a moderate, was expected to sign the 20-week ban.

    • UAEM Targets Accessible Medicines, R&D Financing, Publicly Funded Research

      Last month’s annual Access to Medicines (A2M) Week, 14 to 20 November, saw a creative collection of activities and events organized by students across UAEM’s network in Europe and North America, as well as in Brazil and India. Events included a photo competition, campaign videos, film screenings, interdisciplinary panel discussions, webinars, pub quizzes and a “Run against Resistance”. Public performances, presentations and flash mobs with students in white coats made powerful statements on university campuses and communities during the week according to UAEM.

    • Pesticides stop bees buzzing and releasing pollen, says study

      The world’s most widely used insecticides harm the ability of bees to vibrate flowers and shake out the pollen to fertilise crops, according to preliminary results from a new study.

      Some flowers, such as those of crops like tomatoes and potatoes, must be shaken to release pollen and bumblebees are particularly good at creating the buzz needed to do this. But the research shows that bumblebees exposed to realistic levels of a neonicotinoid pesticide fail to learn how to create the greatest buzz and collect less pollen as a result.

      The research is consistent with previous work that has shown neonicotinoid pesticides reduce learning and memory in bees. A moratorium on the use of three neonicotinoids on flowering crops was put in place in Europe in 2013 and will be reviewed next year.

  • Security

  • Defence/Aggression

    • Putin’s Great Patriotic Pseudoscience

      Now the Kremlin is investing in academic kooks and conspiracies.

    • Lockheed Martin Loses Nearly $4 Billion In Market Value After Trump Tweets F-35 Program Cost Is ‘Out Of Control’

      Shares of Lockheed Martin fell Monday, wiping out nearly $4 billion of the company’s market value, as President-elect Donald Trump tweeted that making F-35 fighter planes is too costly and that he will cut “billions” in costs for military purchases.

      Trump didn’t mention any specific company in his tweet, but Bethesda, Maryland-based Lockheed makes the F-35 one-seat fighter aircraft and is a major U.S. defense contractor.

      “The F-35 program and cost is out of control. Billions of dollars can and will be saved on military (and other) purchases after January 20th,” Trump tweeted.

    • Navy’s newest destroyer was held up by seawater leaking into machinery

      After two unscheduled stops for repairs, the USS Zumwalt (DDG-1000), the US Navy’s new stealthy all-electric-powered destroyer, arrived at its new home port in San Diego on December 8. The ship also brought along new details about the source of its engineering woes. Zumwalt’s propulsion issues, which caused the ship to have engineering failures off Norfolk, Virginia, and while transiting the Panama Canal, were caused by seawater getting into the ship’s lubrication system for its huge electric motors.

      US Naval Institute News’ Sam LeGrone reports that the root cause of the engine failures was seawater contamination in the lube oil for the bearings of Zumwalt’s Advanced Induction Motors. Rather than being driven by dedicated gas turbine engines, the Zumwalt’s motors are powered by electricity from the gas turbine generators that also power the rest of the ship. The power plant is the first of its kind in a Navy ship, and it could generate enough power to allow Zumwalt to be later refitted with directed energy weapons or electromagnetic railguns.

    • Fresh details, charges emerge in Pizzagate DC shooter’s case

      The story began when DC’s Metropolitan Police Department arrested 28-year-old Edgar Maddison Welch on allegations of assault with a dangerous weapon. The feds took over the case on Tuesday and have charged Welch with Interstate Transportation of a Firearm with Intent to Commit an Offense, which carries a maximum 5-year term. Welch appeared in federal court in Washington, DC, on Tuesday and asked for a lawyer. He remains jailed until at least Friday, when a detention hearing is scheduled.

  • Environment/Energy/Wildlife/Nature

    • The Greater New York City Region Must Plan for “Permanent Flooding”

      The Greater New York City region has done good work in the years since Superstorm Sandy to consider storm-related flooding, but a new report by the Regional Plan Association found that the more pernicious threat of sea-level rise needs more attention.

      The report breaks sea-level rise into “what-if” scenarios for 1-, 3- and 6-foot sea-level rise increments in the tri-state region. It finds that many of the major resilience policies, plans and projects under development fall short of addressing the long-term, existential threat of permanent flooding from sea-level rise.

      It’s “long past the point where sea-level rise can be ignored in the hope that future technology will provide an easy solution,” said the association, an independent urban research and advocacy organization for New York, New Jersey and Connecticut.

    • EU easing of fishing quotas raises fears over dwindling stocks

      British fishing fleets will be allowed to catch greater quantities of cod, haddock and sole next year, after Europe’s ministers approved a new fishing quota that will cheer fish and chip shops but has alarmed scientists concerned over dwindling stocks.

      The European Union’s fisheries council reached an agreement in the early hours of Wednesday morning, in what may be one of the last such quota divisions in which the UK takes part if supporters of a hard Brexit have their way.

      Scientists warned that the EU catch limits for 2017 were above their recommendations, in contravention of the reforms to the common fisheries policy that are supposed to ensure levels of catch are sustainable by 2020. Nearly two-thirds of European fish stocks are overfished and 85% are below healthy levels.

  • Finance

    • Socialism for the Rich, Capitalism for the Poor: An Interview With Noam Chomsky

      The United States is rapidly declining on numerous fronts — collapsing infrastructure, a huge gap between haves and have-nots, stagnant wages, high infant mortality rates, the highest incarceration rate in the world — and it continues to be the only country in the advanced world without a universal health care system. Thus, questions about the nature of the US’s economy and its dysfunctional political system are more critical than ever, including questions about the status of the so-called American Dream, which has long served as an inspiration point for Americans and prospective immigrants alike. Indeed, in a recent documentary, Noam Chomsky, long considered one of America’s voices of conscience and one of the world’s leading public intellectuals, spoke of the end of the American Dream. In this exclusive interview for Truthout, Chomsky discusses some of the problems facing the United States today, and whether the American Dream is “dead” — if it ever existed in the first place.

    • Amazon Warehouse Workers Have Resorted To Sleeping In Tents

      Amazon factory workers in Britain are sleeping in tents close to one of the company’s largest UK warehouses because they can’t afford the commute to work, Scottish newspaper The Courier has reported.

      Amazon maintains one of its giant packaging warehouses, known as fulfilment centers, near the town of Dunfermline in Scotland. Over the weekend, The Courier said it had seen at least three tents in woodland close to the Dunfermline warehouse, and spoke to one Amazon worker who was staying in a tent.

      According to the newspaper, the worker, who wished to remain anonymous, said that they couldn’t afford to pay to travel to work and back from their home in Perth—around a 60 mile round trip. While Amazon pays its Scottish staff above the minimum wage in Britain, workers can be pushed to work up to 60 hours a week. The company provides a bus transport for workers, but this can cost up to £10 a day, more than an Amazon worker’s initial hourly pay of £7.35 ($9.30).

  • AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

    • Trumpism Poses the Most Dire Threat to Academic Freedom in Recent Memory

      Thanks to the principle of academic freedom, professors have unusual space in American society to challenge the powerful without fear of retribution. For this reason the right has always resented professors, and for decades it has targeted them as subversives. The election of Donald Trump and the rise to power of the extremist ideologues surrounding him, like Steve Bannon and Rudolph Giuliani, make this a frightening moment for those academics who see fighting for a more just world as part of their job.

      In 2012, I found myself the target of a hate campaign after saying a few intemperate things about the National Rifle Association and American gun culture in the aftermath of the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting. I was upset not only because of the horrors of the event itself—a shocking one for many Americans—but because in 1998 my high-school Spanish teacher in Springfield, Oregon, had been murdered by her son before shooting up his own high school. How many people had to die before anything was changed? Noting on Twitter that I would like to hold NRA leadership accountable for its promotion of high-powered firearms, I said that I wanted to see “Wayne LaPierre’s head on a stick.” This was obviously a metaphor, but thanks to a right-wing website called Campus Reform, which “monitors” leftists on college campuses, demagogues such as Michelle Malkin started a campaign to have me fired. Hundreds of phone calls and e-mails poured into the university. Luckily, I work on a unionized campus and nothing came of the campaign.

    • Electoral College voters under intense pressure

      The 538 delegates to the Electoral College will gather at governors’ offices and statehouses across the country Monday to make President-elect Donald Trump’s victory over Democrat Hillary Clinton official.

      The results aren’t expected to deviate much from Election Day, when Trump won 306 electoral votes to Clinton’s 232.

      Despite media coverage, social media chatter and announcements from a handful of electors who have made their protest votes public, it’s unlikely that electors will defect in significant numbers.

      Even so, scattered groups of liberals are using every means at their disposal — lawsuits, petitions, and public and private pressure — to try to convince 37 GOP electors to peel away from Trump to deprive him of the 270 votes needed for victory.

    • Twitter will not be at Trump’s tech summit

      Jack Dorsey, Twitter’s CEO and cofounder, initially told Re/code he was not invited to Trump’s tech summit in New York. Dorsey then said he was unsure about being invited. According to a source, Twitter was indeed left off the list.

      Nu Wexler, a spokesman for Twitter, said the company had nothing to share beyond Dorsey’s comments.

      The snub stands out, considering the role Twitter played in Trump’s campaign and in his presidential transition efforts so far.

    • ICC Named UN Observer – Big Business Gets A Seat At The UN Table

      The ICC has significant activities related to intellectual property enforcement, research, and digital economy. It hosts BASCAP, the Business Action to Stop Counterfeiting and Piracy.

    • Intelligence Officer Who Personally Met the Democratic Email Leaker Confirms Leaker Is with AMERICAN Intelligence Service … Not Russia

      In other words, Murray – a close friend of Julian Assange – says he knows for a fact that there were no hacks at all … instead, an American insider leaked the information to Wikileaks.

    • Oliver Stone: DNC Hack Was ‘Inside Job,’ Not Russia

      During an interview with CNN’s Christiane Amanpour on Tuesday, director Oliver Stone accused the Democratic National Committee of hacking itself. Asked by the host what he makes of the reports that Russian hackers breached the DNC’s email server and fed information to WikiLeaks in an attempt to influence the U.S. presidential election, Stone called that idea a “great fiction.” The director, currently promoting his biopic of Edward Snowden, said the intelligence experts he has spoken with indicated that the DNC hack was “probably an inside job.” He went on to specify that he believed the hack was perpetrated by Democrats within the committee. The revelations from the hack led directly to the resignation of DNC chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz and other high-level officials.

    • Exclusive: Top U.S. spy agency has not embraced CIA assessment on Russia hacking – sources

      The overseers of the U.S. intelligence community have not embraced a CIA assessment that Russian cyber attacks were aimed at helping Republican President-elect Donald Trump win the 2016 election, three American officials said on Monday.

      While the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) does not dispute the CIA’s analysis of Russian hacking operations, it has not endorsed their assessment because of a lack of conclusive evidence that Moscow intended to boost Trump over Democratic opponent Hillary Clinton, said the officials, who declined to be named.

      The position of the ODNI, which oversees the 17 agency-strong U.S. intelligence community, could give Trump fresh ammunition to dispute the CIA assessment, which he rejected as “ridiculous” in weekend remarks, and press his assertion that no evidence implicates Russia in the cyber attacks.

    • Turnaround in public opinion on latest Wikileaks

      The release of John Podesta’s emails has proven embarrassing for the Hillary Clinton campaign, particularly the revelation of the contents of her secret speeches to banks and her aides’ strategizing over her own e-mail scandal, among other issues. Thanks to ongoing controversies surrounding Donald Trump, Clinton has largely managed to avoid having to engage with the issue, but reports from intelligence agencies suggest that the leaks may have a broader, geopolitical relevance: Russian intelligence services are suspected of being behind the hacking of Podesta’s email account.

      YouGov’s latest research shows that public attitudes towards Wikileaks is very different in 2016 compared to 2010. According to Pew Research Center, in 2010 60% of Americans who are aware of the emails thought that the release of State Department cables harmed the public interest, but in 2016 only 28% believe that the release of John Podesta’s emails harms the public interest. The shift is most pronounced among Republicans, 75% of whom say that the cable releases were harmful, while only 12% say that the email leak is harmful.

    • Pragmatism is a winner for Romanian Left

      Romania is one of the few countries in Europe where the Left still wins elections. But the key to the Social Democrats’ (PSD) success is their lack of leftist ideology — or rather, their willingness to promise voters in the EU’s second-poorest country to give them what they want.

      With 95 percent of the votes counted on Monday, the PSD got slightly more than 45 percent of the votes in the parliamentary elections on Sunday. That is expected to give the party 251 seats out of the total of 464 of the Romanian parliament.

      The National Liberals (PNL) came in second, obtaining around 20 percent of the votes. These results put it on course to get 98 seats in the parliament.

    • Don’t Certify Electors and Electoral College Vote Without Full Recount

      The American people deserve to know that the outcome of this election is actually valid.

      We are tired of hearing the pundits say that the election is over and there is nothing we can do when there are significant questions raised by the recounts that have been going on in Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania, as well issues raised in a recent lawsuit seeking a recount in Florida.

      Hillary Clinton has garnered almost 3 million more popular votes than Donald Trump. The polls and exit polls in Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania showed Clinton was the winner. The recount efforts by the Stein campaign have revealed that many votes remained uncounted at the time those three states were called for Trump. These efforts have also raised many concerns about the validity of the outcome even before the CIA reported the intent of the Russians to influence the results of the election. Under these circumstances it is absolutely imperative that there be a full recount and investigation into potential hacking in these states, before the electors are certified and the votes of the Electoral College counted.

      While states generally have been granted the right to set the rules of the election and terms of re-counts, what has happened to the efforts in the three states is alarming. In each state there have been substantial outcome determinative questions raised by the initial investigations but there have been many objections raised and appeals filed. The Stein efforts are not technically over but they may have hit a roadblock.

    • Michigan to Audit ‘Significant’ Mismatches in Detroit Vote

      Michigan’s elections bureau ordered an investigation Monday into substantial ballot discrepancies in a small portion of Detroit’s voting precincts, after the discovery of a polling place where 300 people voted but only 50 ballots were properly sealed in a container.

      Since learning of the issue last week during Michigan’s presidential recount, state officials have learned of similar “significant mismatch” problems at roughly 20 of Detroit’s 490 precincts, said Fred Woodhams, a spokesman for Republican Secretary of State Ruth Johnson. He said there is no reason to think votes were not counted and the differences would not have affected Republican Donald Trump’s narrow victory over Democrat Hillary Clinton in the state.

      Clinton won 95 percent of Detroit’s vote.

      Detroit elections officials told the state that in the one precinct, the 250 missing ballots were left in the tabulator bin, “but we want to verify this,” Woodhams said. It was not immediately clear what caused the inconsistencies in other precincts.

    • Stein Ends Recount Bid, but Says It Revealed Flaws in Voting System

      Jill Stein, the Green Party presidential candidate, on Tuesday closed her long-shot bid to recount the votes in three battleground states, saying that the effort encountered bureaucratic hurdles and revealed deep shortcomings in the elections system.

      “We do not have a voting system we can trust, and the recount was essentially stopped in its tracks,” Ms. Stein said in a conference call with reporters.

      Since finishing a distant fourth in the Nov. 8 election, Ms. Stein has played a prominent role as she pushed for recounts while saying, without proof, that the vote may have been hacked. Her lawyers doggedly pursued recounts in three states — Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania — where Donald J. Trump led Hillary Clinton by a combined margin of roughly 75,000 votes.

    • Greg Palast: By Rejecting Recount, Is Michigan Covering Up 75,000 Ballots Never Counted?

      Investigative reporter Greg Palast has just returned from Michigan, where he went to probe the state’s closely contested election. Trump won Michigan by fewer than 11,000 votes out of nearly 4.8 million votes cast. Green Party presidential contender Dr. Jill Stein attempted to force Michigan to hold a recount, but a federal judge ordered Michigan’s Board of Elections to stop the state’s electoral recount. One big question remains: Why did 75,335 ballots go uncounted?

    • Jill Stein announces plans for leftover recount money

      Included in that $7.4 million estimate is just under $4.5 million for state filing fees, $1.6 million for legal fees, $212,500 for staff salaries, $364,000 for consultants and $353,618 for administrative expenses.

      Stein’s campaign is planning to reach out to each of its 161,000 donors and ask them to vote on which “non-partisan election reform and voting rights organizations” will receive the leftover money. The campaign did not immediately release a list of possible organizations, but said it will do so “in the coming weeks” when it begins surveying donors.

  • Censorship/Free Speech

  • Privacy/Surveillance

    • Uber creepy: Ex-staffer reveals drivers spied on exes, politicians and, er, Beyoncé

      TWENTY FIRST CENTURY TAXI FIRM Uber is again under inspection for doing what people would rather it did not do, with an ex-worker having claimed that the company’s systems have been routinely used to infringe on customers’ privacy.

      In fact, says the Guardian, people including Beyoncé were victim to the bad rules around customer information data management, that also lead to people keeping an eye on old lovers and political peoples using a system called “God View”.

      The Guardian links to another report, this one on the Centre for Investigative Reporting’s (CIR) Reveal project website. It has access to documents from a court case in October when this was all coming to a head thanks to a chap with a great name who blew the whistle.

    • As Trump Presidency Looms, Digital Activists Brace for a Fight for the Internet

      Donations have doubled since the election as supporters turn to the EFF to defend the Internet during a Trump presidency. Even though the President-elect has yet to make formal policy pronouncements, his comments about surveillance and apparent hostility to the tech sector are causing many in Silicon Valley to fear the worst.

      [...]

      Those old battles include ones over the role of clandestine programs that permitted mass collection of Americans’ phone and Internet records. While the Justice Department halted some of those programs after NSA-contractor Edward Snowden exposed them, Cohn points out that Trump’s attorney general and CIA director nominees have said they would reinstate them. She also notes the CIA nominee, Rep. Mike Pompeo, has proposed to expand the collection of “social data,” which is often held by companies like Facebook and Instagram.

    • UNESCO Report Backs Right To Encryption In ‘Golden Age Of Surveillance’

      The United Nations Economic, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) has released a report on encryption, taking the perspective of human rights.

      “What ultimately matters, from a human rights perspective, is that cryptographic methods empower individuals in their enjoyment of privacy and freedom of expression, as they allow for the protection of human-facing properties of information, communication and computing. These properties include the confidentiality, privacy, authenticity, availability, integrity and anonymity of information and communication,” the report said in its recommendations.

      Among issues addressed in the report is protection of metadata, by which a person’s behaviour on the internet is trackable, and ensuring strong encryption without backdoors in a “golden age of surveillance” brought about by the internet.

  • Civil Rights/Policing

    • How the Obama administration laid the groundwork for Trump’s coming crackdown on the press

      In the summer of 2009, less than a year after President Obama took office, one of the first orders of business for the newly empaneled Senate Judiciary Committee was passing a long-stalled federal ‘media shield’ bill, which would finally provide a uniform level of protection to reporters who get subpoenaed to testify against their sources in court.

      The bill, which had previously been scuttled by Republican Congress, now had strong support in a Democratic Congress, and seemingly, a newly-elected Democratic president, who had co-sponsored an almost identical bill when he was a senator.

      But just as it looked like the bill would sail through Congress and make its way to the president’s desk, it was stopped in its tracks. President Obama suddenly reversed course from his previous position and announced he would oppose the bill if the Senate didn’t carve out a giant national security exception that would make the important protections within it all but meaningless.

    • Sharia-compliant bank opens in Scotland

      Al Rayan Bank has opened an office in Glasgow making it the first wholly Sharia-compliant retail bank in Scotland.

      Scottish customers will now have access to a large range of Islamic retail banking products, which include Sharia-compliant home and property finance products for the Scottish market.

      Al Rayan’s Glasgow branch was opened by Sultan Choudhury, chief executive officer of Al Rayan, and Keith Leach, chief commercial officer.

    • Trial of Jakarta governor Ahok begins as hundreds of Islamic hardliners protest

      The much anticipated blasphemy trial of Jakarta’s Christian governor Basuki Tjahaja Purnama has opened amid tight security and mobs of Islamic hardliners chanting for his arrest.

      Hundreds of protestors, some dressed in white Muslim garb, gathered outside the court in the Indonesian capital for the first day of the trial, demanding the governor be jailed for allegedly insulting Islam.

    • ‘Rebel’ Saudi Arabia woman who posted photo without head scarf is arrested

      Saudi police have arrested a young woman who tweeted a picture of herself outdoors without the body-length robes and head scarf that women in the kingdom are required to wear.

      A woman identified as Malak al-Shehri posted a picture of herself on Twitter in a jacket and multi-colored dress last month after announcing that she would leave her house without her abaya, a long loose-fitting robe, and headscarf.

      The tweet caused a backlash with many calling for Shehri – whose first name means angel, which was also her moniker online – to be executed with the hashtag “We demand the arrest of the rebel Angel Shehri.”

    • Free Raif Badawi

      Saudi Arabia should free Raif Badawi; we urge readers to support a message calling for his release

    • Europeans overestimate Muslim population: poll

      People in France, Italy, Belgium, Poland and Germany vastly overestimate both the number of Muslims living in their countries now and how many will be living in them in 2020, according to an Ipsos MORI study released Wednesday.

      The French believe Muslims make up 31 percent of the population, while in reality they account for 7.5 percent. Survey respondents said Islam would be the religion of 40 percent of the country in 2020, far in excess of the 8.3 percent demographers estimate.

    • 73-year-old man with dementia fatally shot by Bakersfield police

      An unarmed 73-year-old man whose family said was in the initial stages of dementia was shot and killed early Monday by a Bakersfield police officer, authorities said.

      Police responded about 12:30 a.m. to a report of a man brandishing a handgun in the 7900 block of Silver Birch Avenue, a neighborhood in the southwest corner of the city, Bakersfield police Sgt. Gary Carruesco said.

      [...]

      Police said the call was prompted by a report of a man with a firearm, but investigators canvassed the area after the shooting and did not recover a gun, Carruesco said. Police searched the family’s home and cars and did not recover a firearm, Rogelio Serna said.

    • Unarmed 73-year-old man with dementia shot dead by US police

      A 73-year-old Latino man suffering from the early stages of dementia has been shot dead by a US police officer.

      Francisco Serna was unarmed and standing in a neighbour’s driveway when police in Bakersfield, California received reports of a man brandishing a gun.

      Sergeant Gary Carruesco told KBAK-TV and the Los Angeles Times that police arrived at about 12.30 am and when a witness pointed to Mr Serna, an officer fired several rounds and killed him.

      The Kern County coroner said Francisco Serna was declared dead at the scene in Bakersfield at about 1.15am local time on Monday.

      Bakersfield Police Department said the officer who shot Mr Serna had been placed on administrative leave while the incident was being investigated.

  • Internet Policy/Net Neutrality

    • Saying Goodbye to Net Neutrality Under Trump

      News organizations that like to have obituaries written and ready to go to bed well before a death actually occurs might want to go ahead and assign someone the task of writing an obit for Net Neutrality. Without a doubt, one thing that’s sure to happen when Trump begins his weekly commute to the Oval Office is an end to the legal principle that Internet service providers should treat all Internet traffic equally.

      Commissioner Ajit Pait, the man most likely to be appointed Trump’s head of the FCC, at least on an interim basis, pretty much put that icing on the cake last week. Speaking before a luncheon celebrating the tenth anniversary of the Free State Foundation, a “bipartisan think tank” that advocates “free market, limited government, and rule of law,” Pait said, “On the day that the Title II Order was adopted, I said that ‘I don’t know whether this plan will be vacated by a court, reversed by Congress, or overturned by a future Commission. But I do believe that its days are numbered.’ Today, I am more confident than ever that this prediction will come true.”

      ISPs, of course, don’t like Net Neutrality any more than big business likes any regulation — other than those that benefit them. They claim it places a burden on them and that they need the ability to prioritize traffic so that “important” traffic can be put in the fast lane while not so important traffic is relegated to the slow lane. Net Neutrality, they say, would cost them money on the equipment needed to give all traffic equal footing.

  • Intellectual Monopolies

    • Copyrights

      • Music Industry Groups In Harmony In Calling For Support From Trump

        A wide array of music industry groups, from Christian to classical, rhythm & blues to movie soundtracks, and everything in between sent a letter to United States President-Elect Donald Trump urging him to take their intellectual property rights into consideration when he meets with technology industry leaders on 14 December.

      • Academic publishing houses lose appeal against Delhi University & photocopy shop

        Academic publishing houses, OUP and CUP have suffered yet another defeat in their litigation against Delhi University and a photocopy shop when a Division Bench of the Delhi High Court ruled against them in an appeal on December 9, 2016.

        The crux of the lawsuit was whether the practice of photocopying copyrighted material and compiling them in course-packs was copyright infringement under Indian law. Given that universities and students have been photocopying copyrighted material for several years without any restrictions, the lawsuit had provoked an angry backlash from students and academics – both of whom then organised themselves into an association and intervened in the case.

12.13.16

EPO Staff: Mr. Battistelli is Causing Immeasurable Damage to the Office; He is Now Untenable

Posted in Europe, Patents at 10:10 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Summary: A letter of appeal for delegations (of the Administrative Council) to fire Battistelli this week, and to generally put an end to his terrible regime, then undo all the damage caused by him and his friends

THE following letter is currently being disseminated ahead of tomorrow’s meeting and tomorrow’s staff protest. We decided to publish it because it does a good job at explaining how severe the problem has become.

Open letter – by email to the Heads of Delegation

Copies to: Competent Ministries of the Member States

13 December 2016

EPO-FLIER team
epoflier@runbox.com

Request to the Delegations of the Administrative Council to take firm action

Dear Heads and Members of the Delegations to the Administrative Council of the European Patent Organisation, dear Chairman,

Most EPO staff welcomed the constructive interventions of numerous delegations during the last Administrative Council (AC) meeting1 and their expressed will to apply the Council’s March resolution2. Staff also recognises the attempts of some high ranking national politicians of major contracting states3,4 to convince the President to accept the AC’s resolution. But the crisis caused by the current Administration has not been resolved:

The dismissal of Laurent Prunier, which violates the resolution, was commented by IAM as follows: “The impression given by recent events is not one of firm, balanced management, but of management by intimidation. That is no way to run a patent office.”5

ILO judgment 3785 confirmed that EPO staff is currently left without a functioning first instance for fair legal redress6,7,8 and, due to several dismissals of and continued attacks on Staff Committee members, without any meaningful staff representation. Staff members under pressure from the HR department or their line manager are left without help. The situation can (again) become untenable for individual staff members (including suicide risk9). We are told that other elected staff representatives (i.e. SUEPO officials) are soon to be sanctioned and possibly fired.

The President’s proposal CA/106/16 to revise Article 36(2)(a) Serv Regs in reaction to ILO judgment 3785 shows once more Mr Battistelli’s disrespect for the law and the rights of citizens working for the EPO: “Battistelli’s response to the ILO’s damning decision is to simply change the EPO’s rules to formally give him the power to do exactly what he was being criticized over.”10 It is clear, however, that the judgment gives guidance on the principles of an internal appeals committee. Any solution that Mr Battistelli proposes must be true to those principles, and notably, include the nomination of members by the Staff Committee, without which, according to the ILO-AT, “it is not an appeals committee.”

Moving now to DG311, the President’s interference with the Boards of Appeal has been commented as follows:

“I am afraid (and very sorry) to say that even among the EPO’s top officials, the principle of the Rule of Law does not seem to be respected very much. Where are you, Administrative Council?”12

The president’s disrespect for the rights of others extends to the rights and legitimate expectations of the users of the patent system. As we pointed out earlier, management by intimidation leads to negative effects on the legal validity of granted European patents.13 While, according to the recent PWC study, 80 % of the personnel want to contribute to a successful mission of the EPO, which is to foster innovation, competitiveness and economic growth all over Europe by providing high quality services based on the European Patent Convention, are only 25 % of the opinion that the strategic objectives of the Office support this mission.1 Many of our colleagues share the concerns expressed by the CSC during the last Council meeting: “We want to know where we are going, and whether the EPO is still an employer worth working for.”1

Concerned observers have started realising that it is futile to hope that Mr Battistelli might change his attitude.14 Several national MPs4,15,16,17, senators18,19 and MEPs20 have (repeatedly) reminded (their) governments of their duty of care. Some of them take the view that Mr Battistelli needs to go before the situation can improve.4,14,17 A debate in the Dutch parliament is preparation.15 We urge the Delegations to accept their responsibility for the current situation and to take firm action so that the Office can return to being a place where motivated staff contribute to the success of Europe.

We therefore reiterate the request of our June 2016 open letter13: It is time for the Members of the AC to act: Mr Battistelli is causing immeasurable damage to the Office; he is now untenable.

Trust in the European patent system has been seriously eroded. Before trust can be rebuilt, the architect of the crisis in which the office finds itself needs to be removed, or alternatively, to be suspended until the end of his term.

“Il n’est plus raisonnable d’attendre.”15

With our best regards,

The EPO-FLIER team

a group of concerned staff of the EPO who wish to remain anonymous due to the prevailing harsh social climate and absence of rule of law at the European Patent Office

1 Central Staff Committee (CSC) report about the 149 th meeting of the AC (sc16207cp)

http://techrights.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/Minutes-of-October-2016-AC.pdf

2 http://www.epo.org/about-us/organisation/communiques.html#a23
3 https://www.nrc.nl/nieuws/2016/03/16/president-europees-octrooibureau-stapt-boos-op-bij-staatssecretaris-van-dam-a1408569
4 Secretary of state Christophe Sirugue’s response to Philip Cordéry’s question: “Nous continuons bien évidemment à faire pression, avec d’autres, pour que soient entendues les causes que je crois justes des salariés que vous avez évoqués. Je dois reconnaître que nous manquons d’alliés dans ce dossier, mais soyez sûrs de notre détermination à faire respecter les droits des salariés !”

http://philipcordery.fr/2016/11/question-gouvernement-situation-sociale-a-loffice-europeen-brevets/

5 EPO users and staff need the Administrative Council to get a grip on current events

http://www.iam-media.com/Blog/Detail.aspx?g=85178c62-24df-403f-990d-f3f5f5c4ce51

6 http://www.ilo.org/dyn/triblex/triblexmain.detail?p_judgment_no=3785
7 http://www.ip-watch.org/2016/12/01/ilo-decisions-said-confirm-epo-staff-lack-fair-legal-system/
8 http://www.worldipreview.com/news/un-agency-sets-aside-two-epo-decisions-criticises-administrative-council-12687
9 http://www.politico.eu/article/labor-relations-turn-toxic-in-the-european-patent-office/
10 http://www.theregister.co.uk/2016/12/08/battistelli_to_fix_epo_by_getting_more_power/
11 Proposal CA/82/16, concerning the removal of DG3 to Haar, is likely to create problems rather than solving any: https://ipkitten.blogspot.nl/2016/11/time-for-haar-cut-please-do-not.html
12 The Rule of Law (Rechtsstaat) is Endangered and Needs to be Defended!

http://kluwerpatentblog.com/2016/11/07/rule-law-rechtsstaat-endangered-needs-defended/

13 https://regmedia.co.uk/2016/06/22/epo-open-letter.pdf
14 https://ipkitten.blogspot.fr/2016/11/firings-will-continue-until-morale.html
15 Jean-Yves LECONTE, Situation à l’Office Européen des Brevets : il n’est plus raisonnable d’attendre
http://www.jyleconte.fr/ (Archives, October 2016)
16 http://kluwerpatentblog.com/2016/11/19/debate-in-dutch-parliament-about-deteriorating-social-climate-at-european-patent-office/
17 https://susann-biedefeld.de/meldungen/mdl-susann-biedefeld-kritisiert-verhalten-des-europaeischen-patentamts-gegenueber-arbeitnehmerinnnen-und-arbeitnehmern-aufs-schaerfste/
18 http://claudinelepage.eu/?p=16041 (Archives, November 2016, February 2016), English translations:
https://suepo.org/public/ex16124cpe.pdf, https://www.suepo.org/documents/42509/53610.pdf
19 http://www.richardyung.fr/francais-de-l-etranger/questions-au-gouvernement-francais-etranger-cote-circonscription/4149-degradation-du-climat-social-au-sein-de-loffice-europeen-des-brevets.html
20 http://www.europarl.europa.eu/sides/getDoc.do?pubRef=-//EP//TEXT+WQ+E-2016-007090+0+DOC+XML+V0//EN

We are happy to receive any more information like the above. █

Media Blackout in Croatian Mainstream Media About Criminal Charges Against EPO’s Croatian Vice-President and EPO President’s Notoriety

Posted in Europe, Patents at 9:33 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Summary: Croatian media gives Battistelli some puff pieces and UPC advertisements without mentioning anything at all about Željko Topić or the dire situation at the EPO

THE EPO has a lot of skeletons in its wardrobe (or closet) in Croatia, but nobody inside the EPO is brave enough to bring up the subject, having witnessed what happens to those who do. We have been writing about this since 2014.

“He is definitely promoting the UPC based on the headline and based on what we were told by Croatians over the weekend.”Earlier this week and over the weekend we wrote about the surprise visit of Battistelli who suddenly showed up in Croatia — a move that the EPO neither advertised nor even mentioned. Even DZIV didn’t mention it.

Well, quite belatedly, as sources told us we should expect (inevitably!), DZIV had this event mentioned and an EPO insider informed us of “Battistelli lobbying (again) this time in Croatia: I hope that Croatia would accept a single EU patent” (“Battistelli: Nadam se da će i Hrvatska prihvatiti jedinstveni EU patent“).

He is definitely promoting the UPC based on the headline and based on what we were told by Croatians over the weekend. We got some translations that helped confirm this.

Regarding this almost-secretive Battistelli trip to Zagreb, one reader decided to send us some photos from HINA. It looks like they had this prepared for a while (paying over a million Euros to FTI Consulting, which sometimes pays journalists/publishers, can probably help). Here are the pictures; they had a photoshoot, not just the traditional photo op.

Battistelli in HINA

Battistelli in HINA

Battistelli in HINA

Battistelli in HINA

Battistelli in HINA

Battistelli in HINA

Battistelli in HINA

In that second picture, albeit blurred, it looks like it might be Battistelli’s bulldog in the background, but it’s hard to be sure.

Battistelli looks so happy… like he’s about to explode or go on fire that even his daughter can’t put out. He could certainly used some smiling lessons.

Anyway, nitpicking aside for now.

Here is some more information and translations that have been made available to us.

“In that second picture, albeit blurred, it looks like it might be Battistelli’s bulldog in the background, but it’s hard to be sure.”It seems that during his trip to Zagreb Battistelli gave an interview to HINA which is the national government-owned news agency of Croatia. A press release is available on the HINA Web site, but the full text is only accessible to registered users.

Croatian: https://www.hina.hr/vijest/9375579
English: https://www.hina.hr/vijest/9375585

However, an English article based on the HINA press release can be found on the Web site of European Balkan Latest News (eblnews.com). “Battistelli calls on Croatia to join European Unitary Patent project” is the title and it reveals the real/covert/side motivation for Battistelli’s visit. To quote: “Croatia and Spain are the only two EU member states that have not yet joined the European Unitary Patent project, Benoit Battistelli, president of the European Patent Office (EPO), told Hina Friday. Battistelli, who was in Zagreb on Friday to attend the ceremony marking the 25th anniversary of the State Institute for Intellectual Property, said that that although it has a relatively low number of patent registrations, Croatia had met condition for the development of a quality patent system. The first step was made when Croatia joined the EPO in 2008, he added. The European Patent Organisation is a public international organisation created in 1977 by its contracting states to grant patents in Europe under the European Patent Convention of 1973. The European Patent Organisation has its seat at Munich, Germany, and has administrative and financial autonomy.”

This is citing HINA, which perhaps didn’t realise the track record of the person whom it gave a platform. In the meantime, another article about the SIPO event was published by the news portal Objektivno.hr: “Državni zavod za intelekutalno vlasništvo obilježava 25. godina postojanja”

An English translation can be found below. It was provided to us for publication:

News

The State Intellectual Property Office celebrates 25 years of existence

The challenges of modern society such as globalization, computerization and development of high technology increase the importance of intellectual property protection, said Ljiljana Kuterovac, director of the State Intellectual Property Office on Friday at the ceremony to mark the 25th anniversary of this institute.

As she explained, during these 25 years the Office has passed through long path of development in close co-operation with international and European institutions which provide the financial and technical assistance to developing countries. “The development of the Office coincided with the development and dynamics at a European and international level,” she said.

Deputy Minister of Science and Education Kreso Zadro, stressed the importance of intellectual property for economic development and competitiveness as well as the need for inter-agency cooperation for the development and protection of intellectual property.

He pointed out that the University of Zagreb launched a postgraduate interdisciplinary specialist study called simply “intellectual property” and enrolled 26 students during the first year.

The audience was also addressed by colleagues from European and international organizations including Benoit Battistelli, President of the European Patent Office.

The SIPO then awarded prizes – in the category of seminar and final papers at undergraduate and graduate levels special recognition was earned by Relja Rajković and Luka Kušpilić for the work “Copyright protection fictional characters or: when the superhero and need protection”.

The winner in the category of professional and scientific papers was Romana Matanovac Vučković for the work “The implementation of Directive 2014726/EU on collective management and multi-territorial licensing of music rights in regulating the system of tariffs in Central and Eastern Europe”.

In the beginning the SIPO was called the National Institute of Industrial Property and the State Patent Office, and from 7 November 1996, when field of ​​protection of copyright and related rights came under its jurisdiction, it assumed its present name.

From the emergences of the modern system of intellectual property protection in the late 19th century up to the present day, a legal and institutional framework for the protection of intellectual property has been continuously present in the territory of today’s Republic of Croatia.

Upon entry to the European Union, Croatia became part of the common system of uniform law for trademark and industrial property rights for the entire territory of the European Union, and since 2008 it has been a full member of the European Patent Convention and the European Patent Organisation.

As a member in the vast majority of international agreements and intellectual property protection system under the auspices of the World Intellectual Property Organization, the Croatian national system is fully integrated into the global system of protection.

As of 2 December 2016, there were 133,480 industrial property rights in the register for the territory of the Republic of Croatia, of which 121,929 were trademarks, 6728 patents and 4,813 registered industrial design and of which 88 percent are also registered for foreign rights.

The article by Objektivno.hr reveals that during the 25th anniversary event the SIPO awarded a prize to Romana Matanovac Vučković, who was closely associated with Željko Topić and his previous “protector”, the former Croatian President Ivo Josipovic. But what is really interesting here is that neither the HINA press releases nor any of the published articles mention Topić’s presence in Zagreb alongside Battistelli! A source of ours insists “he can be seen in the background and out of focus in of one of the photos published on the HINA Web site.” (see the photo second from the top). We actually spotted the same thing independently. We have seen enough photos of Topić to suspect that it’s him with glasses on.

Our source says “it’s pretty clear that Topić was with Battistelli in Zagreb, but for some reason the Croatian media has decided not to mention it.”

“These projects are Battistelli’s main source of “carrots” for keeping the smaller member states on his side.”If that’s true, then what probably causes greater concern here is that nothing about Topić’s legal status was covered. Omission of convenience? Conditions imposed before interview? Hard to tell….

We remind readers that the last time Battistelli was scheduled to go to Zagreb with Topić in July 2015 he cancelled his trip at short notice and sent along Francois-Régis Hannart instead. Hannart is a member of Battistelli’s “inner circle” of former INPI employees. He used to be the Director of IT systems at the INPI and he is now the EPO’s Principal Director of European and International Co-operation. This means that he is responsible for overseeing the “cooperation projects” between the EPO and national IPOs. These projects are Battistelli’s main source of "carrots" for keeping the smaller member states on his side. █

The EPO Keeps Bullying Examiners and Even Judges, EPO’s Mouthpiece PwC Now Bullies Researchers

Posted in Europe, Patents at 8:39 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Battistelli loves to carry out his abuses through London, where Team Battistelli now has an extensive operation more sophisticated than the Mafia’s

Mafia expert
Reference: An article published earlier this week

Summary: The culture of bullying inside the EPO has expanded even to the UK with lobbying, threats, lies, and surveillance by peripheral agents such as PwC, FTI Consulting, Fieldfisher, Wellkom and Control Risks

TRUTH is treason at today’s EPO. That’s especially alarming because the EPO is supposed to be an institution of science occupied by scientists and serving scientists, to whom truth is paramount, not just justice.

Earlier this year, just in time for the previous Administrative Council’s meeting, Team Battistelli had PwC paid generously in order to disseminate a lot of lies. We wrote about these in the following posts:

Considering the business that PwC is in, an attack on truth itself is a serious violation of trust if not violation of law. It would be interesting to see if some PwC executives even get arrested for their sheer dishonesty. A few months ago some of the offending IP addresses hammering on our servers (a growing problem this year [1, 2, 3]) actually came from PwC's network and today we see this report titled “PwC sends ‘cease and desist’ letters to researchers who found critical flaw,” which is rather ironic after what PwC did to our servers. To quote:

A security research firm has released details of a “critical” flaw in a security tool, despite being threatened with legal threats.

Munich-based ESNC published a security advisory last week detailing how a remotely exploitable bug in a security tool, developed by auditing and tax giant PwC, could allow an attacker to gain unauthorized access to an affected SAP system.

So PwC turns out to be managed by bullies, just like the EPO, which also sent us numerous legal threats. Whatever they have in common, it probably ought to include megalomania and lack of ethics. As we noted here before, the legal firm that the EPO asked to send threatening letters is also deeply involved in the UPC, where lying has become so routine that it’s just sickening. Sociopaths apparently attract other sociopaths and let’s not forget the EPO’s PR agency, which lies on behalf of fracking companies and also the EPO’s spying agency, which is connected to the Stasi (through Desa) and helped make the false allegations against a BoA judge.

What a gang of thugs!

The Boards of Appeal at the EPO are probably the most crucial part of this whole institution. The EBoA, for example, rules on these key issues and other issues pertaining to patent scope (quality of service). EBoA can actually safely criticise the Office. That’s the original ideas anyway. Guess what Battistelli has done to EBoA… it’s barely even functioning and staff is terrified, despite enjoying independence from Battistelli (at least in principle).

A few days ago people wondered aloud about the fate of the above judge and one person said that Battistelli “being head of an organistion, whose sole role it is to apply law” does the very opposite. To quote:

The way I interpret the EPC, the AC must renew the contract of the BoA member, just to make a decision.
It would be unlawful to not renew while suspended, or they’d still need to pay all his withheld remuneration, as there was no decision of disciplinary measures. And taking a decision of disciplinary measures while not an employee seems even weirder.

But then, what kind of “Rule of Law” does the head of administration uphold, while being head of an organistion, whose sole role it is to apply law?

“For a BoA member to be renewed,” another person said. “he has to be proposed to the AC. By the president. BB will simply not propose the suspended member to the AC for renewal, as he has done (or rather not done) with quite a number of newly appointed or to-be-prolonged members before. So the AC will not be in a position to decide anything.”

In response to this one person wrote:

Not true. Under Article 11(3) EPC (first sentence) appointment of Board members requires a proposal from the President. Reappointment (Art. 11 EPC, second sentence) is the prerogative of the Council which is only required to “consult” with the President.

The President has no veto over reappointment of Board members although he could conceivably attempt to manipulate the Council to block a reappointment.

Article 11(3) EPC:
The members, including the Chairmen, of the Boards of Appeal and of the Enlarged Board of Appeal shall be appointed by the Administrative Council on a proposal from the President of the European Patent Office. They may be re-appointed by the Administrative Council after the President of the European Patent Office has been consulted.

“It would only be fair,” one person responded, “if the BoA is reinstated, that he/she is allowed to additionally serve the 2 years during which he/she was suspended before his/her 5 years term is considered to expire.”

We covered this aspect of the punishment before. The salary in the mean time has already been cut (halved a couple of months ago) and “the responsibility to propose that the BoA member be reappointed,” said another person, “is now to be delegated from BB to the new President of the Boards of Appeal. Whether that will make a difference I don’t know.”

Well, don’t forget Battistelli’s chinchilla in the Boards of Appeal Committee (BoAC) and the role played in selecting the President of the Boards of Appeal. Remember the connections between Patricia García-Escudero Márquez and Battistelli, as we covered these before. There may be more connections; we just haven’t gotten around to exposing these.

Look what a mess the EPO has become. And people daring to say so publicly (even bloggers outside of continental Europe) are being threatened by the long arm of Battistelli and his despicable goons, backed by liars for hire such as PwC, FTI Consulting, Fieldfisher, Wellkom and Control Risks in the UK.

“Surprise , surprise,” a person wrote in another comment today, “change of HR tactics , SR’s [Staff Representatives] getting suddenly salary increases and promotions. Will the sacrificed SR’s be forgotten soon or…”

Staff Representatives are not necessarily SUEPO representatives, many of whom have been threatened, fired, demoted, etc. while the yellow union, FFPE-EPO, has been artificially propped up by Team Battistelli, even in the PwC event (for pretense of staff involvement/endorsement).

The EPO is a sick, sick institution, but sick leave is not allowed under Battistelli. █

Staff Union of the European Central Bank Blasts Benoît Battistelli

Posted in Europe, Finance, Patents at 7:44 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Turning a blind eye, still

Battistelli eyes shut

Summary: Yet another large institution can be listed as appalled by the management of Battistelli, who repels talent and turns the EPO into Europe’s source of shame

THE EPO has already driven away many of its talented staff (examiners and judges) and is currently seeking to recruit interns because the EPO is no longer an attractive employer. More institutions across Europe, recently CERN for example, blast the EPO for this utter failure. Abuse against staff led to all this and Battistelli’s horrific leadership made it the official policy.

Joining the growing number of bodies that besiege Battistelli now we have staff of the European Central Bank (ECB). In SUEPO’s words: “IPSO is a staff union, founded by staff of the European Central Bank (ECB) to represent the professional interests of persons working for the ECB and other international institutions and agencies in Germany.”

The “ECB Union,” told us one reader about IPSO, “issues a support message to SUEPO and EPO staff [...] In Frankfurt ECB Union – IPSO – issues a support message to SUEPO and EPO staff [...] IPSO expresses support for colleagues at the European Patent Office Office, with Heardquarter in Munich…”

Here is the original that says:

IPSO expresses support for colleagues at the European Patent Office Office, with Heardquarter in Munich

Like many international organisations, the European Patent Office (EPO) has been given full autonomy to determine the legislative framework applicable to its staff. This creates a situation of high concentration of power, leading to risks of abuses.

Since the arrival of Mr. Battistelli at the helm of the organisation, the level of tensions within the EPO has met unprecedented levels. The matter has been widely reported in the media (SZ, FAZ, die Welt, Le Monde, Médiapart, Libération, De Volkskrant, NRC, El Mundo etc, see also a reportage broadcast by BR on 21 March 2016).

A good overview of the toxic atmosphere has been published by Politico in August 2015.
Unfortunately, since then the situation has deteriorated further. IPSO is deeply saddened to learn that Mr Battistelli dismissed two union officials and elected staff representatives based in Munich, In January 2016. A third one was dismissed on 4th November, in The Hague without a fair trial. Two more union officials and staff representatives are currently being targeted.
To try and de-escalate, the Administrative Council of the EPO adopted resolution CA/26/16 in March 2016, requesting Mr Battistelli to revise the applicable rules to ensure that justice be done and seen to be done. The Council required that, in the meantime, no further investigations or disciplinary proceedings be carried out against staff representatives and union officials. We are informed that Mr Battistelli unfortunatley ignored the resolution, thereby reinforcing the impression that the President of the EPO can act with full impunity.

As representatives of the trade union of ECB Staff, we would like to express our solidarity and support to our colleagues dismissed by Mr. Batistelli. We are not willing to accept the situation as it stands, and are currently considering further action to support our dismissed colleagues with the objective to reinstate them in their function at the EPO.

How much more of a PR disaster can the already-embattled Battistelli endure? He brought this upon himself and he keeps making things worse. It’s going to take down the European economy with it (if this persists). █

Another New Book, This Time From Dr Luke McDonagh, Chronicles the Demise of the Unified Patent Court (UPC) Agreement

Posted in Europe, Patents at 7:20 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

The media too realises that there’s a (pitch)fork in it…

Brexit and UPC

Summary: Brexit and UPC are inherently incompatible and people in the legal profession know that nothing is going to change that, definitely not some words on a Web page (from Lucy Neville-Rolfe)

THE President of the EPO believes that for the sake of the UPC he can do pretty much whatever he wants (carte blanche) any time it pleases him. In a later article we are going to show what he did last week in Croatia. At the end of last month, after Battistelli had lobbied Lucy, a bizarre (impossible) nod was given to the UPC, leaving patent professionals confused and befuddled. It only increases uncertainty both for them and for their clients. A new WIPR survey, just published with the results, says that its “Readers don’t like UK decision on UPC Agreement”. Bear in mind this is a London-based publication whose readers are mostly law firms in that area. To quote:

WIPR readers have not welcomed the UK’s recent decision to ratify the Unified Patent Court (UPC) Agreement.

On November 28, WIPR reported that UK Minister of State for Intellectual Property Baroness Neville-Rolfe announced that the UK will implement the unitary patent and UPC.

She said: “As the prime minister has said, for as long as we are members of the EU, the UK will continue to play a full and active role.”

Neville-Rolfe added that the new system will “provide an option for businesses that need to protect their inventions across Europe”.

However, she warned that the decision to proceed with ratification “should not be seen as pre-empting the UK’s objectives or position in the forthcoming negotiations with the EU”.

Answering our latest survey, on whether readers welcomed the decision, 63% did not, while 37% felt positive about the news.

When asked whether the UPC would be ratified, on various occasions including a UPC-centric event in the UK, most participants if not all of them said “no”. We wrote about this at the time. One must remember that this is in fact the echo chamber admitting it. The UPC won’t happen here. It’s common sense. Morgan Lewis & Bockius LLP was acting as though it’s actually likely to happen and said this on December 7th in a site for law firms. To quote:

Brexit will not affect granted, pending, or to-be-filed patent applications in the United Kingdom, whether they are filed directly in the United Kingdom or filed through the EPO and validated in the United Kingdom. Because the EPO is an international organization established by a multilateral treaty—the European Patent Convention—the EPO will still be able (notwithstanding the United Kingdom’s exit from the European Union) to obtain a patent in the United Kingdom through current procedures at the UK Intellectual Property Office by way of the EPO, directly or through the Patent Cooperation Treaty. In effect, the United Kingdom may have a status similar to that of Switzerland, Norway, and Turkey (which are not members of the European Union but are members of the European Patent Convention; validation of granted EPO patents in the United Kingdom would remain available to patent applicants).

Well, actually entertaining the possibility is most likely a waste of time. Nothing it going to change, especially now that the EPO is in a crisis and not many people will pursue this system, opting instead for national patent offices (NPOs). The UPC will fail because it’s still/already dying, no matter all that lying from Battistelli and other chronic liars like Margot Fröhlinger. As IP Kat put it yesterday (not Bristows taking over the platform): “The Unified Patent Court (UPC) has been grabbing the headlines in recent weeks and it is easy to forget that the last six or so years have brought many major reforms to IP litigation in England and Wales.”

Well, those latter issues, including those brought up in the article (corruption), are much more important. As for the UPC, see this 7-parts series below along with followups:

The UPC isn’t coming to the UK and probably not to Europe (or EPO member states), either. The campaign of deception from Unitary Patent cronies, notably Team UPC, took a massive blow when the UK voted to leave the EU, separating London from that envisioned system they have been drooling over for about a decade.

Dr. Luke McDonagh, one of the critics of the latest move from Lucy (quoted a lot in the 7-parts series above), has said: “Law of #patents headline news in Law Society Gazette due to #Brexit…” (we have added the picture to the top)

McDonagh is a realist, unlike Team UPC, and separately he wrote that he has this new book on the subject. “Download free the first chapter of my new book on European #patent law & the #UPC #Brexit consequences,” he wrote. There is also a book on the subject from Dr. Ingve Björn Stjerna. █

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