06.23.16
Fake Patents on Software From Fake Australian ‘Inventor’ of Bitcoin and the Globally-Contagious Nature of EPO Patent Scope
Laws can ‘hop’ from one continent to another
Summary: News from Australia regarding software patents that should not be granted and how patent lawyers from Australia rely on European patent law (EPO and UK-IPO) for guidance on patent scope
THE following remarkable article by Mike Masnick (of TechDirt) is titled “Fake Satoshi Nakamoto Trying To Patent All Sorts Of Bitcoin Related Ideas” and it speaks of one of many charlatans who claim to have invented Bitcoin. Masnick has already written a great deal about other fake inventors, notably regarding E-mail. “Earlier this week,” Masnick wrote, “I got knocked out by some pretty serious food poisoning. The few times I would try to do some work or pop in on Twitter, all I was seeing was people mocking the London Review of Books’ somewhat insane 35,000-word-long profile of Craig Wright, the guy who earlier this year claimed to be the real Satoshi Nakamoto. While he even convinced Gavin Andresen (the guy who really turned Nakamoto’s original work into actual Bitcoin), many others quickly pointed out that Wright’s “proof” appeared to be a giant scam. Why write a 35,000-word profile on a guy who isn’t Satoshi Nakamoto? I don’t know, but thankfully the food poisoning and the few snarky tweets I saw saved me from digging into the entire thing and wasting an afternoon. Fusion posted a much shorter summary of the piece, in case you’re wondering.”
Watch how corporate media repeats these lies about this Australian poser who claims to have invented Bitcoin and now wants a monopoly on it. To quote Reuters: “Craig Wright, the Australian who claimed to be the inventor of bitcoin, is attempting to build a large patent portfolio around the digital currency and technology underpinning it, according to associates of his and documents reviewed by Reuters.
“Watch how corporate media repeats these lies about this Australian poser who claims to have invented Bitcoin and now wants a monopoly on it.”“Since February, Wright has filed more than 50 patent applications in Britain through Antigua-registered EITC Holdings Ltd, which a source close to the company confirmed was connected to Wright, government records show.”
Well, these are basically software patents (like those which USPTO is still happy to accept, unlike courts) and they are assigned not to an original inventor but somewhat of a scammer, who ‘stole’ attribution. What has the world sunk to?
Sadly, Australia’s fascination with software patents is becoming a real problem and in the face of a Commission's report against software patents in Australia parasitic firms like Shelston IP and AJ Park started somewhat of a lobbying campaign. Yet another lawyers’ firm, Phillips Ormonde Fitzpatrick, has just published “Full Court looks into Best Method requirements” where it says “attacks against patents for lack of best method have been relatively rare.”
“Sadly, Australia’s fascination with software patents is becoming a real problem and in the face of a Commission’s report against software patents in Australia parasitic firms like Shelston IP and AJ Park started somewhat of a lobbying campaign.”Well, it’s patents that attack. They are still using misleading language where those who pursue sane patent policy (or patent quality) are “attacking”. Lawyers’ reversal of the narrative is rather typical. The article from Malcolm Bell says: “The trial Judge had held that Servier had failed to describe the best method known to it in performing the invention where it described only the general method of salification rather than any specific method. Such specific methods include the 1986 or 1991 methods which would have provided the reader with information as to a method that met the characteristics of the claimed invention. The Full Court held that Servier had not shown that the trial Judge was wrong.”
That last part frames the situation as one where the judge is right or wrong, almost as though the Full Court is an ultimate arbiter that can just discredit ‘unwanted’ decisions. Phillips Ormonde Fitzpatrick published this marketing piece and also — on the very same day in fact — published “Software patents in Australia: where to from here?”
“They are still using misleading language where those who pursue sane patent policy (or patent quality) are “attacking”.”So the mask comes off. They’re among the lobbyists for software patents, probably alongside Shelston IP and AJ Park. In principle, software patents are out of scope; moreover “[i]n May 2016,” to quote the above, “The High Court of Australia dismissed an application for special leave to appeal the RPL Central decision of the Full Court of the Federal Court of Australia. The Full Federal Court found that RPL Central’s invention was not patentable as it was simply a scheme or idea implemented on a generic computer, using standard software and hardware.”
So both the Full Court of the Federal Court of Australia decided that software patents are invalid. Who would the lawyers thus lean on? The USPTO, where Alice crushes software patents on a daily or weekly basis? No, the EPO. Under the section “Moving closer to Europe” it says: “The Full Court looked to the UK Aerotel decision in determining that a claimed invention must make a ‘technical contribution’. Recently received Examination Reports appear to indicate that the Australian Patent Office is applying a European style ‘technical contribution’ approach to patentability, albeit in a less structured manner than is the case before the UK Patent Office or the EPO.”
“So both the Full Court of the Federal Court of Australia decided that software patents are invalid.”Surely this helps remind us of the dangers posed by Battistelli's race to the bottom when it comes to patent quality. Software patents are being granted in Europe under pressure (if not collusion) from companies like Microsoft and this can have a knock-on effect far away from Europe, maybe even in New Zealand and in India where loopholes for software patenting are eerily similar to those which exist in Europe (Brimelow’s bad legacy). █
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