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01.23.16

La Fundación Linux se ha Convertido en Un Títere Favoreciendo Corporaciones, Gran Influencia ($$) de Microsoft

Posted in Debian, GNU/Linux, Kernel, Microsoft at 8:45 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

English/Original

Publicado en Debian, GNU/Linux, Kernel, Microsoft at 7:54 am por el Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Linux Foundation funding

Sumario: Palabras de advertencia acerca de la dirección tomada por la Fundación Linux, donde el impacto de Micro$oft ha crecido considerablemente y el rol de la comunidad ha dismínuido o completamente decimado.

Hoy es un día especial. Es día del Pinguino, pero poniendo aparte Linux y su mascota, no hay mucho que celebrar por que la Fundación Linux se esta pudriendo. La Fundación de Software Libre FSF es para la Fundación Linux lo que astronomía (ciencia) es para la astrología (negocio basado en seudo ciencia) y habiendo tratado de BORRAR GNU FROM LA HISTORIA* (fenomeno común), la Fundacion Linux ahora borra e ignora el rol que individuos han asumido en el desarollo del sistema. Intentamos o por lo menos guíamos a pensar que la kernel, Linux, está silenciosamente ´conquistada´ por un consorcio de corporaciones, muchos de los cuales tienen LEALTADES MIXTAS (no sólo a Linux).

“Intentamos o por lo menos guíamos a pensar que la kernel, Linux, está silenciosamente ´conquistada´ por un consorcio de corporaciones, muchos de los cuales tienen LEALTADES MIXTAS (no sólo a Linux).”Cubrimiento de la OEP nos ha impedido de cubrir acerca la Fundación de Linux como solíamos hacer, incluyendo PAGOS DE MICROSOFT, SERVICIOS PARA MICROSOFT, y abandono de las obligaciones del GPL por que éstos fueron trás los ejecutivos de Microsoft que manejan VMWare.

Matthwe Garred sugirió un punto importante y preguntó: ¨¿La Fundación Linux abandonó cualquier semblanza de comunidad representativa porque tiene MIEDO DE LAS OBLIGACIONES DEL GPL (Licencia Pública General)?¨

Ya hay cubrimiento proveniente de la denuncia originaria [1], que ha sido mencionada en muchos lugares hasta ahora, e.g [2, 3]. Hemos recibido la evidencia de arriba que sirve a reforzare esas denuncias que la Fundación Linux sigue navegando a cualquier lugar donde este el dinero (compañías que tratan de controlar o dominar Linux). La Fundación Linux NO representa Linux users (OSDL difícilmente pretendió hacerlo) pero muchas compañías de hardware que quieren influenciar el/los proceso[s] desarrollador. La Fundación Linux abandonó las obligaciones de la GPL por el caso de VMware. Esto es un buen ejemplo de E.E.E. El último disfraz de open de Microsoft, por instancia, le ayudó a obtener control/dominio a costo de V8, en el mismo modo que un pie dentro de la Fundación Linux (con la ayuda de Novell) dejo a Microsoft injectar código violatorio a la GPL dentro de la kernel (Linux), promoviendo el PROPRIETARIO Hyper-V a costa de FOSS hypervisors.

“Hemos recibido la evidencia de arriba que sirve a reforzare esas denuncias que la Fundación Linux sigue navegando a cualquier lugar donde es te el dinero (compañías que tratan de controlar o dominar Linux).”NO HAY ¨Nuevo¨ Microsoft. ¨Microsoft no añadió apoyo al OpenDocumente Format para iOS y Mac OS X,¨ por instancia. Microsoft sólo quiere PROMOVER SU CANDADO PROPIETARIO. Eso es lo que Microsoft hace dentro de Android, dentro de Linux, incluso dentro de Debian estos días. Hay por lo menos un empleado de Microsoft infiltrado dentro de Debian,¨ iphk nos advirtió, citándo esta página de Microsoft. ¨José Miguel Parrella,¨ dice es un ¨desarrollador de Debian y miembro del equipo de estrategía (recuerden E.E.E) ´abierta´de Microsoft.¨ -¿Cómo puedes combinarse lo LIBRE con lo PROPIETARIO, ESCLAVIZADOR´?- Recuerden que la Fundación Linux está llena de ¨antiguos¨ empleados de Microsoft), incluso en posiciones de gerencia. Debian en luz de algún acuerdo con Microsfot (no tuvimos tiempo de cubrir) debe estar al cuidado ya que esta sucediendo un E.E.E. La Fundación Linux también esta en riesgo de convertirse obsoleta (a nuestros usuarios boycoteemos sus certficaciones), (perdida de apoyo público) porque públicamente ¨APOYA LAS CORPORACIONES NO A LA COMUNIDAD,¨ para citar el títular de hoy de Susan Linton, fundadora de Tux Machines. Para convertir a la Fundación Linux un fuerte jugador a favor de copyleft (e.g. GPL obligaciones) ayuden a elegir a la FSF- y SFLC Karn Sandler. Ella está postulando a la Fundación Linux Board de Directores.

Related/contextual items from the news:

  1. Linux Foundation quietly drops community representation

    The Linux Foundation is an industry organisation dedicated to “promoting, protecting and standardising Linux and open source software”[1]. The majority of its board is chosen by the member companies – 10 by platinum members (platinum membership costs $500,000 a year), 3 by gold members (gold membership costs $100,000 a year) and 1 by silver members (silver membership costs between $5,000 and $20,000 a year, depending on company size). Up until recently individual members ($99 a year) could also elect two board members, allowing for community perspectives to be represented at the board level.

  2. Garrett: Linux Foundation Says Let Them Eat Cake

    Matthew Garrett, kernel contributor and social activist, today posted of his discovery of a little change at the Linux Foundation. The foundation left regular users and individual developers behind for large corporate sponsors years ago, but today Garrett said they made it official. One little clause was removed from the by-laws, but it removes so much more from the foundation.

  3. Linux Foundation shows it backs corporates, not community

    The Linux Foundation has given its clearest indication yet that it caters to corporates rather than the community, by making it impossible for community representatives to be elected to its board.

____
* In a very recent Linux Foundation video, GNU is only mentioned as a joke (“they make me say it”).

Links 23/1/2016: New Kali Linux, Google Teams with Red Hat

Posted in News Roundup at 12:38 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNOME bluefish

Contents

GNU/Linux

Free Software/Open Source

  • Opinion: Open source for all mankind

    Thankfully there’s a better way. Whether in reference to technology or a political ideology, open source is about self-determination. It’s about individuals developing products and projects, taking responsibility and being open to criticism and change. It fosters a healthy, meritocratic ecosystem of shared, mutually improving ideas. Crucially, the open-source attitude manifests a level of respect and equality between developer and user, government and citizen.

  • Verizon Joins ONOS Open-Source SDN Project

    Verizon is the latest major service provider to join the ONOS open-source network virtualization initiative, joining other carriers like AT&T, NTT Communications, China Unicom and SK Telecom in the effort.

    Verizon officials said Jan. 21 that they joined the ONOS (Open Network Operating System) in hopes of accelerating the development of open-source software-defined networking (SDN) and network-functions virtualization (NFV) offerings that their company and other carriers can use.

  • How getting started in open source can help your career

    When contributing to open source projects and communities, one of the many benefits is that you can improve your tech skills. In this article, hear from three contributors on how their open source helped them get a job or improved their career.

  • Verizon Joins the ONOS Project Partnership
  • Verizon Looks to ONOS for Faster Transformation
  • NFV/SDN Reality Check: ONOS project updates open source SDN progress – Episode 44
  • Verizon Becomes Newest Telecom to Join ONOS Open Source SDN Project
  • Verizon Joins ONOS SDN Partnership
  • ONOS Delivers Astounding Adoption and Momentum among its Community of Service Providers and Innovators
  • Verizon joins ONOS project partnership
  • Verizon hooks up with ONOS project, joining AT&T, SK Telecom
  • Verizon signs up for ONOS Project
  • Verizon joins AT&T, others at ONOS project in boost to open source SDN
  • Verizon Joins ONOS
  • Telecom Providers Worldwide Are Flocking to NFV Plus OpenStack

    As this year began, we spotted a lot of action from telecom players and the open source community surrounding Network Function Virtualization (NFV) technology. Red Hat and NEC Corporation said that they formed a partnership to develop NFV features in he OpenStack cloud computing platform, with the goal of delivering carrier-grade solutions based on Red Hat’s OpenStack build.

    Telecom companies have traditionally had a lot of proprietary tools in the middle and at the basis of their technology stacks. NFV is an effort to combat that, and to help the parallel trends of virtualization and cloud computing stay as open as possible. Now, The OpenStack Foundation has released a comprehensive report on the adoption and business cases driving NFV deployment among the world’s leading telecom providers. Titled “OpenStack Foundation Report: Accelerating NFV Delivery with OpenStack,” the report paints a bright future for NFV with close ties to the OpenStack cloud platform.

  • Google Open Sources Dataflow Analytics Code through Apache Incubator

    Google is open-sourcing more code by contributing Cloud Dataflow to the Apache Software Foundation. The move, a first for Google, opens new cloud-based data analytics options and integration opportunities for big data companies.

    Cloud Dataflow is a platform for processing large amounts of data in the cloud. It features an open source, Java-based SDK, which makes it easy to integrate with other cloud-centric analytics and Big Data tools.

  • ONOS project updates open source SDN progress on 1-year anniversary
  • Plerd: A Dropbox-friendly Markdown blog platform

    Jason McIntosh had a problem: He’d gotten out of the habit of writing long-form blog posts. A decade before, he’d been a regular on LiveJournal, but that platform is getting a little long in the tooth, and he wanted something that was more in line with his current writing habits. As a fan of Markdown, he wanted something where he could just drop Markdown files in a spot, and the blog would be built from those.

  • Events

    • 11 steps to running an online community meeting

      Open organizations explicitly invite participation from external communities, because these organizations know their products and programs are world class only if they include a variety of perspectives at all phases of development. Liaising with and assisting those communities is critical. And community calls are my favorite method for interacting with stakeholders both inside and outside an organization. In this article, I’ll share best practices for community calls and talk a little about how they can spur growth.

    • SCALE 14X Thursday: New Morning in Pasadena

      A SCALE staple is PostgreSQL Days, which have taken place for years at the Southern California event. This year it’s a two-day, two-track event of sessions designed for a general audience of web developers, sysadmins, DBAs and open source users. As usual, talks will have significant technical content. For those of you keeping score at home, PostgreSQL is a powerful, open source object-relational database system, with more than 30 years of active development and a proven architecture that has earned it a strong reputation for reliability, data integrity, and correctness.

      The cherry atop the SCALE 14X sundae on Thursday, as you might expect, comes in the evening when FOSS raconteur Bryan Lunduke brings his humorous “Linux Sucks” presentation, this time accompanied by a live broadcast and a book, to SCALE. Give him an hour, he says, and he’ll prove it.

    • IoT Summit: An Opportunity to Learn What Open Source Can Offer IoT

      The Eclipse IoT community has grown significantly over the last 1-2 years. There are now 20+ Eclipse IoT projects building open source technology for IoT solutions. We are well on our way to providing the key building blocks developers need to build IoT solutions.

    • Drupal Higher-Ed Summit

      We are pleased to announce that we are bringing the First Drupal Higher-Ed Summit to Mumbai this 18th Feb 2016. The event focuses on the Drupal and Open Source in Education.

    • Meet Guix at FOSDEM!

      One week to FOSDEM! This year, there will be no less than six Guix-related talks. This and the fact that we are addressing different communities is exciting.

    • SCaLE 14x, day 1: Shuttleworth delivers the grand vision for Ubuntu

      Southern California Linux Expo (SCaLE) 14x in kicked off yesterday, January 21. The highlight of the was a keynote by Canonical founder Mark Shuttleworth at UbuCon Summit, a co-hosted event at SCaLE 14x.

      Some technical issues with the projector at the beginning of Shuttleworth’s presentation led him to quip that Ubuntu is “moving so fast that we have warped the colors on the screen.”

    • SCALE 14X: Making the Mark and Getting Ready for Doctorow

      One of the drawbacks of having to work a show like SCALE is that I don’t get to go to enough sessions while I’m here. As the traffic cop at the intersection of old and new media, it’s my job to marshal the publicity team’s forces into taking the information happening at the show and then processing it for the wider public consumption.

  • Web Browsers

    • Mozilla

      • Firefox OS

        Firefox OS has demonstrated that it’s a very flexible platform. It has the potential to run on a wide range of devices, such as TVs and IoT gadgets. As long as Mozilla can find some persuasive use cases for manufacturers, it has a good chance of making an impact in these emerging fields.

      • Announcing Rust 1.6

        Hello 2016! We’re happy to announce the first Rust release of the year, 1.6. Rust is a systems programming language focused on safety, speed, and concurrency.

        As always, you can install Rust 1.6 from the appropriate page on our website, and check out the detailed release notes for 1.6 on GitHub. About 1100 patches were landed in this release.

      • Rust Lang 1.6 Stabilizes Libraries

        The Mozilla-backed crew working on the Rust programming language announced the release today of Rust v1.6 as their first new version of 2016.

      • Former Mozilla CEO reveals Brave, a browser that speeds up the Web by blocking all ads

        Brendan Eich, co-founder of Mozilla and for an 11-day stint, its CEO, yesterday announced a new browser called “Brave,” that blocks outside online ads and ad tracking.

        Brave, which was at version 0.7—denoting its under-construction and fit-for-developers-and-other-strong-hearts-only status—is for Windows and OS X on the desktop, iOS and Android on mobile. The browser does not have a final code launch date or one for a public preview. Users may sign up for notification when betas become available.

        In a post to the browser’s website, Eich, Brave’s CEO and president, touted the new browser’s model, which rests on blocking ads and all other tracking techniques used by websites to pinpoint their visitors and show them online advertisements.

      • WebGL Can Be Moved Off The Main Thread With Latest Firefox

        With Firefox 44 and newer it will be possible to move the WebGL rendering work off the main processing thread.

        With Firefox 44 when setting the gfx.offscreencanvas.enabled option, it’s possible to move the WebGL rendering work off the main thread and to allow for the alternative thread(s) to change what is displayed to the user. “This API is the first that allows a thread other than the main thread to change what is displayed to the user. This allows rendering to progress no matter what is going on in the main thread…Developers will now be able to render to the screen without blocking on the main thread, thanks to the new OffscreenCanvas API. There’s still more work to do with getting requestAnimationFrame on Workers. I was able to port existing WebGL code to run in a worker in a few minutes. For comparison, see animation.html vs. animation-worker.html and worker.js.”

  • SaaS/Big Data

    • Why open source is the ‘new normal’ for big data

      As a provider of integration technologies for that platform, Talend has placed a significant bet of its own on Hadoop, Spark, and open source in general, so Tuchen’s enthusiasm isn’t exactly surprising. Talend offers products focused on big data, cloud and application integration, among others, and all are based on open-source software.

      Still, Talend’s bet seems to be paying off. The company will celebrate its 10th anniversary this year, and it claims big-name customers like GE, Citi, Lufthansa, Orange and Virgin Mobile. It’s also in the middle of a major expansion. At the end of 2015, it was selling its products in five countries; by end of this year, it will be selling in 15, Tuchen said. Making that happen will mean hiring about 200 new people, he said, bringing the company’s total head count to about 750.

  • Databases

  • Pseudo-/Semi-Open Source (Openwashing)

    • And So It Begins! Microsoft Asks Node.js to Allow ChakraCore (Edge) Alongside Google’s V8 Engine

      Microsoft has submitted an official “pull request” (term used on GitHub for merging two pieces of code) to the Node.js project, through which it’s asking the project’s maintainers to enable support for ChakraCore, the JavaScript engine packed inside Microsoft’s Edge browser.

    • EMC reinvigorated: Automation, open-source and versatile integration

      As the calendar rolls on into 2016, the buzz around the Dell-EMC merger has slightly diminished, but EMC’s activity behind the media relations has in no way cut its workload. With its presence in dozens of countries continuing to grow and a wide array of IT development opening up new avenues for it each day, the merger seems to have EMC’s activity reinvigorated.

    • Bloomberg releases API and online tools to boost open source FIGI [Ed: no source code AFAICT]

      Bloomberg is adding new features to increase the accessibility of its FIGI open source financial instrument identification system. The new online tools are intended to make it easier for instrument issuers to request identifiers and for exchanges, data providers, custodians and others to map other third-party identifiers to FIGI.

  • FSF/FSFE/GNU/SFLC

  • Licensing

    • No single license to success

      OSI (Open Source Initiative) has tracked many licenses and approved some as well, maintaining a list of the nine most widely used and popular. Each license has its unique requirements and benefits from the reciprocity of GPL (GNU General Public License) to the permissive MIT. Each has its strong proponents and opponents. Some feel that without GPL’s compulsion human greed will end open source as we know it. Others feel that freedom is the key to success and such compulsion hinders creative use.

      The reality is that the strength of open source is in its diversity, including a diversity of licenses. No single license has been nor will be the pivotal point to open source success. License diversity is very evident from the data gathered by the Black Duck Knowledgebase. A quick view of the top 20 licenses used in open source projects today shows an even spread.

  • Openness/Sharing

    • The Idealist: Aaron Swartz And The Rise Of Free Culture On The Internet

      Two weeks ago, our book of choice was a collection of Aaron Swartz’s writings. And this week, it’s a new book by Justin Peters not only about Swartz, but also about the rise of free culture online, putting Swartz’s ideas and actions into context, called The Idealist: Aaron Swartz and the Rise of Free Culture on the Internet. I have to admit that I had no idea this book had even come out until I heard a wonderful interview with Peters over on On the Media (and, for what it’s worth, in a separate podcast, OTM’s Brooke Gladstone said that the interview was so good that they struggled to figure out how to edit it down — so I wonder if they’ll release an even longer version as a “podcast extra.”)

Leftovers

  • How this blogger became one of the most influential voices in tech policy

    In May 2003, the legal website The Smoking Gun posted a short item titled “Barbra Sues Over Aerial Photos.” Kenneth Adelman, an environmentalist who takes aerial photographs of California’s coastline for the benefit of scientists and researchers, had inadvertently captured an image of singer and actress Barbra Streisand’s home. The lawsuit, filed in Los Angeles Superior Court, alleged that by posting the image to his website, Adelman had provided a “road map into her residence” and “clearly [identified] those routes that could be used to enter her property.” On page 9 of the lawsuit it states that “there is no telling how many people have downloaded the photograph of [Streisand’s] property and residence on their computer.”

    In the coming weeks it would emerge that, up until the lawsuit was filed, the image of Streisand’s house had only been accessed six times, two of which were by her lawyers. And because of the engendered press from the lawsuit, it was then visited more than 420,000 times in just the first month after it was filed. Not only did Streisand later lose the lawsuit, but it had produced the very result her lawyers had set out to avoid: drawing attention to her property.

  • Call Of Duty Again Sued Over Another Historical Figure… Who Is A Good Guy In The Game

    You may recall that Activision’s Call of Duty games have already been the subject of a lawsuit by a historical figure. Previously, notorious figure Manuel Noriega brought a publicity rights case against the game company in the United States, claiming that the game depicted him without his permission. Pretty much everyone agreed that Activision was on solid First Amendment grounds in depicting a historical figure, including Rudy Giuliani, who galloped in to represent Activision and quickly got the case summarily dismissed.

  • Happy Bier-thday: German beer purity law celebrates 500yrs

    Raise a stein to Germany’s famous beer purity law known as “das Reinheitsgebot” as it celebrates its 500th birthday this year.

    What started out as an order in the duchy of Munich became Bavaria’s law of the land on April 23, 1516, after reunification.

    In 1871 Bavaria insisted on national acceptance before unification with Germany, ending the market for beer from Northern Germany which contained spices and cherries.

  • How new money has ruined Sesame Street

    Over on Showtime, a new show called Billions just got going in which Damian Lewis plays hedge-fund manager Bobby “Axe” Axelrod, with Paul Giamatti as the US attorney eyeing Axelrod for insider trading. The obvious characterisation would have been to make Axelrod a villain, the embodiment of the world’s intolerance for financiers. Instead, he is a sympathetic version of an Alan Sugar type, a kid from the wrong side of the tracks made good. Perhaps his psychopathy will emerge, but for now the show has pulled off a very tough feat and made one root for the billionaire.

  • How I ended up paying $150 for a single 60GB download from Amazon Glacier

    In late 2012, I decided that it was time for my last remaining music CDs to go. Between MacBook Airs and the just-introduced MacBook Pro with Retina Display, ours had suddenly become a CD-player-free household.

  • Science

    • BLOG: Embracing foreign investment in homegrown high-tech may help Japan build an IP value creation culture

      We learned yesterday that Taiwan’s Foxconn (otherwise known as Hon Hai) has offered to pay as much as $5.3 billion to take over Japan’s struggling Sharp, potentially trumping a possible rescue package being put together by public-private technology-focused investment fund Innovation Network Corporation of Japan (INCJ). This is the latest in a series of actual and rumoured attempts made by Foxconn to gain a foothold in the ailing Japanese company – underlining just how valuable Sharp’s IP assets and other intangibles are considered to be, not just to for the wellbeing of Japanese industry, but for foreign players too.

  • Health/Nutrition

  • Security

  • Defence/Police/Secrecy/Aggression

    • They Tell Us Nothing But Lies — Paul Craig Roberts

      Litvinenko’s brother and father say that they “are sure that the Russian authorities are not involved. It’s all a set-up to put pressure on the Russian government.” Maksim Litvinenko dismisses the British report as a smear on Putin.

    • Petraeus: ‘It’s Time to Unleash America’s Airpower in Afghanistan’

      To begin, Petraeus’ statement that airpower in 2001 “ousted the Taliban,” a statement made without apparent irony, would be hilarious if it was not utterly tragic. Petraeus seems to have missed a few meetings, at which he would have learned that since those victories in 2001 the Taliban has been doing just fine, thanks. The U.S. has remained inside the Afghan quagmire for more than 14 more years, and currently has no end game planned for the war. Air power, with or without “a motivated and competent ground force” (as if such a thing can ever exist in Afghanistan, we’ve been training and equipping there for 14 years), never is enough. There are examples to draw from going back into WWI.

    • Afghanistan Bans Toy Guns to Curb Culture of Violence

      This one’s so funny that it must be some kind of U.S.-led initiative; I can’t believe the Afghans have this kind of a sense of humor.

      But whatever the origin, Afghanistan banned the sale of imitation Kalashnikovs and other toy guns after they caused injuries to more than 100 people during the last Eid celebrations. Children toting toy guns that fire rubber or plastic pellets are a common sight in the country during Eid al-Fitr, with sales surging every year amid festivities marking the end of Ramadan.

  • Environment/Energy/Wildlife

    • CMD Submits Evidence of ExxonMobil Funding ALEC’s Climate Change Denial to California Attorney General

      The Center for Media and Democracy, a national watchdog group exposing corporate influence on democracy, has submitted evidence to California Attorney General Kamala Harris showing how ExxonMobil has promoted climate change denial through the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC). CMD believes this information is relevant to her office’s investigation into whether ExxonMobil deceived its shareholders and the public about the impact that burning fossil fuels has on climate change.

      “ExxonMobil has bankrolled ALEC for decades and has a seat on ALEC’s corporate board, as ALEC has plied legislators with disinformation and denial about climate change and pushed legislation and resolutions to block crucial federal and state efforts to address the climate crisis,” said Lisa Graves, Executive Director of the Center for Media and Democracy and former Deputy Assistant Attorney General in the Office of Legal Policy at the U.S. Department of Justice under both Attorneys General John Ashcroft and Janet Reno.

    • Haze crisis cost Indonesia almost 2% of GDP, World Bank says

      A
      Forest fires in Indonesia last year cost the country at least $16 billion in economic losses, equivalent to 1.9 percent of its gross domestic product, according to the World Bank.

    • Indonesia’s Fires Blamed For Potent Greenhouse Gases

      Indonesian fires that are expected to flare up again in the coming months may affect temperatures far away from the nation’s watery borders.

      Carbon dioxide and methane from the fires is already known to be accelerating global warming, and new research is linking high levels of another potent greenhouse gas with forest and peat fires in Indonesia and elsewhere.

    • Land-clearing fires cost Indonesia lives and $16 billion last year—and they’re starting again

      This week Indonesian president Joko Widodo warned that forest fires are once again starting to appear in the country, and called upon citizens to avoid a repeat of last year’s haze crisis, described by some as a “crime against humanity.” During that months-long disaster, large areas of Southeast Asia were smothered in toxic smoke, forcing school closures, flight cancellations, and respiratory problems (even deaths in some cases). The haze was caused by fires sparked to cheaply clear land for agricultural uses, especially palm oil.

  • Finance

    • Canada may “scrub” CETA rule allowing corporations to sue governments but we’ll keep it in the TPP?

      Remind us why this is supposed to be a good idea?

      The Government of Canada appears to be tiptoeing away from a controversial provision in a new trade deal with the European Union at the same time as they’re plowing ahead with the Trans-Pacific Partnership, which includes a similarly controversial provision.

      According to CBC News, Canada and the EU are quietly discussing how to “scrub” a clause from CETA (the “Comprehensive Economic Trade Agreement” between Canada and the EU) that would allow multinational corporations to sue governments for passing laws that get in the way of their business interests.

    • Dangerous Regulatory Duet

      How transatlantic regulatory cooperation under TTIP will allow bureaucrats and big business to attack the public interest

    • Graft allegations hit ally of Japan PM

      A Japanese minister who was the country’s top negotiator for a huge trans-Pacific trade deal was accused of corruption on Thursday, piling pressure on Prime Minister Shinzo Abe ahead of parliamentary elections this year.

      Weekly magazine Shukan Bunshun claimed that Economy and Fiscal Policy Minister Akira Amari, who also serves as Japan’s chief negotiator for the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), and his staff accepted a 12 million yen ($102,000) “bribe” from a construction firm.

      The allegations against a key ally of the prime minister come ahead of upper house elections in July and as the government looks to ratify the TPP, a massive multi-nation deal of which Japan has been a key player.

    • 10 textbook firms rewarded 4,000 officials

      Ten textbook publishing companies showed a total of about 4,000 teachers and other officials textbooks under screening, and gave cash or book vouchers — or both — to each of them after fiscal 2009, with the cash worth ¥3,000 to ¥50,000, according to a survey by the education ministry, details of which were announced Friday.

    • Google to pay UK £130m in back taxes
    • Google agrees £130m UK tax deal with HMRC

      Google has agreed to pay £130m in back taxes after an “open audit” of its accounts by the UK tax authorities.

      The company had been accused of “not paying its fair share” of tax, and criticised for complex tax structures.

      Senior figures at the technology company have said that they want to draw a line under the issue.

    • Poverty may alter the wiring of kids’ brains

      Growing up poor is known to leave lasting impressions, from squashing IQ potential to increasing risks of depression. Now, as part of an effort to connect the dots between those outcomes and identify the developmental differences behind them, researchers have found that poverty actually seems to change the way the brain wires up.

      Compared to kids in higher socioeconomic brackets, impoverished little ones were more likely to have altered functional connections between parts of the brain. Specifically, the changes affected the connections from areas involved in memory and stress responses to those linked to emotional control. The finding, appearing in The American Journal of Psychiatry, suggests that poor kids may have trouble regulating their own emotional responses, which may help explain poverty’s well-established link to depression and other negative mood disorders.

  • PR/AstroTurf/Lobbying

    • US experts gird Finnish officials for information war

      Behind closed doors, about 100 Finnish state officials have this week been undergoing training in American-style management of public information. The most concrete advice they’ve received from US lecturers? Avoid repeating false claims.

  • Censorship

  • Privacy

  • Civil Rights

    • Leaked Savile report: Paedophile ‘could be lurking undiscovered in the BBC’

      A PAEDOPHILE could still be lurking undiscovered at the BBC according to a leaked report which also claims the whistle blowing culture at the BBC is now “worse” than in sick Jimmy Savile’s time.

    • Another Lawmaker Is Trying To Create A Photography-Free Zone For Police Officers

      A former cop is trying to legislate some First Amendment-violating protection for his blue-clad brothers. Everyone’s carrying a camera these days and Arizona Senator John Kavanaugh wants them to be as far away as possible from police officers performing their public duties. Ken White (aka Popehat) summarizes the proposed legislation for FaultLines.

    • Body Cam Footage Leads To Federal Indictment Of Abusive Las Vegas Cop

      Body cameras are working as intended. Of course, this is a very limited sampling and the fact that anything happened at all to the abusive cop was reliant on him being either too stupid or too arrogant to shut his body-worn camera off.

    • How The UK’s Counter-Terrorism And Security Act Has Made Law Enforcement Into The Literal Grammar Police

      We’ve already talked a couple of times about the intersection with the UK’s disastrous Counter-Terrorism and Security Act and its intersection with the country’s educational system. As part of its effort to weed out terrorists, the UK tasked teachers with keeping a watchful eye on their students to try to identify those that would be radicalized in the future, a concept that sounds like something out of Airstrip One rather than England. Shortly thereafter it was discovered that a software package that teachers had been given to help with this was exploitable in the typically laughable ways. But the tech isn’t the only shortfall here. As one would expect when you take a group of people whose profession has in absolutely no way prepared them to act as counter-terrorism psychologists and ask them to be just that, it turns out that the human intelligence portion of this insane equation is off by several integers as well.

    • After FBI briefly ran Tor-hidden child-porn site, investigations went global

      In 2015, the FBI seized a Tor-hidden child-porn website known as Playpen and allowed it to run for 13 days so that the FBI could deploy malware in order to identify and prosecute the website’s users. That malware, known in FBI-speak as a “network investigative technique,” was authorized by a federal court in Virginia in February 2015.

      In a new revelation, Vice Motherboard has now determined that this operation had much wider berth. The FBI’s Playpen operation was effectively transformed into a global one, reaching Turkey, Colombia, and Greece, among others.

    • FBI “took over world’s biggest child porn website”

      The FBI took over the world biggest child pornography website in a sting operation intended to catch viewers of sexual images of children sometimes “barely old enough for kindergarten”, it has been revealed.

    • FBI ran website sharing thousands of child porn images

      For nearly two weeks last year, the FBI operated what it described as one of the Internet’s largest child pornography websites, allowing users to download thousands of illicit images and videos from a government site in the Washington suburbs.

      The operation — whose details remain largely secret — was at least the third time in recent years that FBI agents took control of a child pornography site but left it online in an attempt to catch users who officials said would otherwise remain hidden behind an encrypted and anonymous computer network. In each case, the FBI infected the sites with software that punctured that security, allowing agents to identify hundreds of users.

    • FBI May Have Hacked Innocent TorMail Users

      Back in 2013, the FBI seized TorMail, one of the most popular dark web email services, and shortly after started to rifle through the server’s contents.

      At the time, researchers suspected the agency had also deployed a network investigative technique (NIT)—the FBI’s term for a hacking tool—to infect users of the site. Now, confirmation of that hacking campaign has come about buried in a Washington Post report on the FBI’s recent NIT usage.

      Even more questions have now been raised, however. In particular, it’s unclear whether the hacking was carried out on a much larger scale than the FBI is letting on, possibly sweeping up innocent users of the privacy-focused email service.

    • Administration Says Child Porn Provides A ‘Model’ For Hunting Terrorists Online

      The administration is trying to draft tech companies into the War on Terror. Encryption — despite being given an unofficial “hands-off” by President Obama — is still being debated, with FBI Director James Comey and a few law enforcement officials leading the charge up the hill they apparently want to die on.

      One of the aspects discussed was how to deter online communications involving terrorists. Trying to deputize tech companies is a non-starter, considering the potential for collateral damage. But that’s not stopping the administration from trying to do exactly that, and it’s willing to deploy the most terrible participant in its parade of horrors.

    • Australia’s day for secrets, flags and cowards

      On 26 January, one of the saddest days in human history will be celebrated in Australia. It will be “a day for families”, say the newspapers owned by Rupert Murdoch. Flags will be dispensed at street corners and displayed on funny hats. People will say incessantly how proud they are.

      For many, there is relief and gratitude. In my lifetime, non-indigenous Australia has changed from an Anglo-Irish society to one of the most ethnically diverse on earth. Those we used to call “New Australians” often choose 26 January, “Australia Day”, to be sworn in as citizens. The ceremonies can be touching. Watch the faces from the Middle East and understand why they clench their new flag.

    • UK Police Deny Misspelling Led To Investigation, Say It Was Other Schoolwork Instead

      We had just relayed a story via the BBC about an elementary school kid in the UK earning a visit to his home from the authorities after writing in an English assignment that he lived in a “terrorist house”, when he reportedly was trying to say he lived in a “terraced house.” The crux of this story was that the UK’s Anti-Terrorism law, which requires that school teachers act as surveillance agents for the state in an attempt to weed out future-radicalized will-be-terrorists is a policy built for unintended chaos, given that teachers are neither trained nor properly equipped to fulfill this role. The resulting visit to the boy’s home by the authorities from a misspelled word was billed as an example of this overreach by government.

    • Royal pair’s ‘scandalous’ Saudi Arabia plans slammed

      But controversy surrounding Saudi Arabia’s human rights record and recent political developments in the country, which applies a strict interpretation of Islamic law, has caused a number of participants to reconsider their involvement, according to the TV2 report.

      Spokesperson Nikolaj Villumsen of the left-wing Enhedslisten party was harshly critical of the proposed official visit.

      “I think it is completely scandalous, if it’s true that the royal family and industry representatives are on their way to Saudi Arabia,” Villumsen told TV2.

      “[Saudi Arabia] is a brutal dictatorship where supporters of democracy are whipped, dissidents are beheaded and princes throw millions at Isis and other extremists. This is not a country that should be receiving official visits from Denmark,” he continued.

  • Internet/Net Neutrality

    • Platform Loyalty

      The concept of “Neutrality of the platforms”, or “Loyalty of the platforms”, emerged among editors and web hosts that suffer or question the commanding position of major players of the Web, particularly in the USA and in other English speaking countries.

      These notions of “loyalty” and “neutrality” of the platforms may have been used to divert MPs from the debate on Net Neutrality.

      Platform loyalty should be envisaged in an environment where questions of the user’s control of its digital terminals (computer, tablet, mobile phone, other connected objects such as the ones referred to when talking about the “quantified self”, etc.), monopoly positions of some companies, problematics of tax system and revenue sharing are more and more intricate.

    • BT should be forced to sell Openreach service, report says

      BT should be forced to sell the country’s leading broadband provider because of poor performance, a report backed by 121 cross-party MPs has said.

      The report, commissioned by ex-Tory chairman Grant Shapps, said BT’s Openreach service had only partially extended superfast broadband despite £1.7bn of government money.

      It should be sold off to increase competition, the report added. BT should be forced to sell the country’s leading broadband provider because of poor performance, a report backed by 121 cross-party MPs has said.

      The report, commissioned by ex-Tory chairman Grant Shapps, said BT’s Openreach service had only partially extended superfast broadband despite £1.7bn of government money.

      It should be sold off to increase competition, the report added.

  • Intellectual Monopolies

    • Pirate Party politics

      Each Pirate Party, whether in the UK or Sweden, operates independently rather than as one organisation and has seen varying degrees of success. Iceland’s Pirate Party is now the largest political party in the country, with high hopes for the 2017 general election. In the UK the Pirate Party is looking to increase its supporters and active members over the next year as well as contesting a number of seats in the May 2016 local elections.

    • WIPO Conference on IP and Development Provisional Programme Is Out
    • Copyrights

      • They put a Pirate Party MEP in charge of EU copyright reform: you won’t believe awesomesauce that followed

        Julia Reda, the sharp-as-a-tack Member of the European Parliament for the German Pirate Party, has just tendered her draft report on copyright reform in the EU. It is full of amazingly sensible suggestions.

        Among them: harmonizing EU exceptions to copyright (what would be called “fair use” in the USA), so that things that are permitted in one EU state are permitted in the others. This is very important because as it stands, a work that is legal in one EU country can be a copyright infringement next door, meaning that by crossing a border, you commit an offense, and meaning that artists who make transformative uses in one EU member state can be held liable for punishing fines next door.

        Another good ‘un: shortening the term of copyright to the term set out in the Berne Convention (life of the creator plus 50 years), ending the trend of extending EU copyright every time the Beatles and Elvis near the public domain.

      • EFF Warns Against Broad “Stay Down” Anti-Piracy Filters

        Copyright holders want websites to implement strict filters to guarantee that content stays down after a DMCA notice is received. The EFF warns against these demands, arguing that they will lead to a “filter everything” approach. According to the EFF this will result in more abuse and mistakes from often automated takedown bots.

      • UK Gov Opens Consultation on Netflix-Style Geo-Blocking

        The UK government has launched a public consultation on the EU’s proposals to ban Netflix-style geo-blocking. The government says it wants its citizens to be able to access legally purchased content wherever they travel in the European Union and is now seeking input from copyright owners, ISPs and consumers.

      • Piracy Can Boost Digital Music Sales, Research Shows

        A new academic paper published by the Economics Department of Queen’s University examines the link between BitTorrent downloads and music album sales. The study shows that depending on the circumstances, piracy can hurt sales or give it a boost through free promotion.

Union-Busting Strategies Backfire: After Additional EPO Protests/Actions (Over 2,000 in Attendance With More to Come) a STRIKE is Being Planned

Posted in Europe, Patents at 6:10 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

The latest EPO protest photographed

EPO protest in 2016
This picture was taken in the Erhardtstraße in Munich, in front of the EPO seat

Summary: The unrest at the EPO escalates as after many public protests/demonstrations even strikes are in the making

YESTERDAY evening we gave some details about the latest EPO protests and more that have yet to take place. The anger is justified and the actions have been rather effective for numerous reasons we covered here before.

Based on the latest status report, which we have seen thanks to some readers, there is a strike petition is managed by an independent lawyer. It’s probably going to happen considering the success of recent petitions.

Call for strike in accordance with Circular 347 “Lawfulness at the EPO”

The undersigned, noting:

  • the dismissal of two elected staff representatives on 15 January 2016 and the severe downgrading of a third
  • their lack of confidence that the procedure conducted against these colleagues complied with sound European legal principles based on Human Rights
  • the sustained deterioration of the legal framework under which EPO staff work since the current President took office

request:

  • the immediate suspension of the disciplinary measures against the three staff representatives
  • a truly independent review of the cases against the staff representatives by a body that enjoys the full trust of both the management and the staff of the EPO
  • the revocation of all recent changes to the Service Regulations and their implementing texts concerning the legal framework, including:
    • Social Democracy
    • Strike regulations
    • Internal Appeals Reform
    • Health and sick-leave regulations
    • Investigation guidelines
    • Reform on invalidity
  • the initiation of open and fair negotiations between management and staff representatives, led by an internationally recognised mediator/conciliator

For the above reasons, the undersigned call for the organisation of a ballot among all staff at the EPO on the question of a single day of office-wide strike during the month of March 2016.

In addition to that, we have become aware of another action/protest. It took place a day before the Munich protest (pictured above). We’ve learned from sources about actions at The Hague for example. “The announced GA that took place Tuesday 19.01,” we’ve learned, “was [went] very well a ended and the with all seats filled (ca. 700-800 persons).”

“Munich,” in addition to that, “joined by colleagues from Vienna,” had “the announced Demonstration on the 20.01 in front of the Bayerische Staatskanzlei” and it “was as usual peaceful and very well a ended with 1300 participants according to the police.

“A petition was handed over to the German authorities, repeating the claims that had earlier been approved by staff in a General Assembly on 17.11.2015, now calling on the Bavarian government to use its influence to find solutions to the present situation.”

There was also action in Berlin as “despite the freezing weather, the second “Mahnwache” in this new year was well a ended,” we’ve learned.

Based on the above, despite the sacking of representatives, the actions are only intensifying, demonstrating yet again that EPO managers fail to understand the Streisand Effect. Their union-busting efforts backfire in a very major way and may culminate in strikes (cessation of work) in a couple of months from now. It gets even worse for EPO managers, for reasons we shall mention later (in a separate post).

“Power is not a means, it is an end. One does not establish a dictatorship in order to safeguard a revolution; one makes the revolution in order to establish the dictatorship.”

George Orwell

Additional Information About EPO Management and Its Abuses, as Told by Anonymous Comments

Posted in Site News at 5:29 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

What people say behind the mask of anonymity

A masked person

Summary: A series of anonymous comments from the IP Kat blog say various things about the EPO management which ought to be recorded permanently, just in case of further censorship attempts

THE LEVEL of unrest at the EPO has increased following the dismissal of staff representatives. The comments in IP Kat are quite telling. Anonymous commenters flock there to express anger.

One person wrote the following comment the other day:

Interesting theory I heard from an HR services company.

They often encounter CEOs that push for contract prolongation, and directly afterwards start doing more and more questionable things, and make themselves totally unwanted by staff, until the board of contractors fire him. The golden handshake simply is larger that way…

They often see it with CEOs well beyond retirement age. Those do not make themselves unemployable by others, as they actually want to retire, but also want a big golden handshake.

A real problem exists for those who (silently) supported the CEO, as those get burned by his tactic and become unemloyable for other companies, but won’t get such a nice golden handshake.

But the EPO is a political body, this tactic seems to be more difficult to achieve, if that even is the case.

Here is an apt response to the HR aspect (we have a lot more coming some other day regarding EPO HR):

¨Further, the service regulations can be changed at will, as the EPO personal recently found out: career cuts, suppression of invalidity insurance, etc… When you enter the EPO, you sign a contract which you have to respect under penalty of being fired and have your pension cuts… and the EPO can change its end of the deal whenever they want. This kind of contract have a legal name, but nobody realized what they were really offered when they entered the EPO. Now they realize but they can’t get out.¨.

When this is true the advertisement asking for new examiners and other staff of the EPO should mention this. Also the SUEPO has an information task. Everything possible should be used to change these rules. Such contracts are against all existing national rules and laws.This is something for the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR; French: Cour européenne des droits de l’homme) is a supranational or international court established by the European Convention on Human Rights. It hears applications alleging that a contracting state has breached one or more of the human rights provisions concerning civil and political rights set out in the Convention and its protocols. The contracting states, in particular The Netherlands and Germany are tolerating the terrible situation in the EPO.

There is also discussion about the legal status of the EPO, for instance:

Dear Mr Kilroy, the European Patent Office does not adhere to the European Convention on Human Rights. Your request is therefore irreceivable.

Sorry to be blunt, but you are not the first person to suggest to go to this or that court, etc… Much have been tried, and the EPO always won in the last instance on the simple ground of immunity. How long will it take before people start to realize that there is no legal recourse whatsoever against the EPO?

The problem is with the system. There is NO legal recourse.

This is valid for all parties: staff, European patent attorneys and applicants. It is just that it has only be used against staff at present.

Regarding immunities:

The President does indeed seem to believe that the EPO is totally immune from national law, but this is not what the EPC says. Art 8 EPC: [the EPOrg and EPO employees] “shall enjoy…the privileges and immunities necessary for the performance of their duties”. Those “duties” surely mean the granting of patents and nothing more.

Similarly Article 3(1) of the protocol on privileges and immunities states: “Within the scope of its official activities the Organisation shall have immunity from jurisdiction and execution”, and Article 3(4) “The official activities of the Organisation shall, for the purposes of this Protocol, be such as are strictly necessary for its administrative and technical operation, as set out in the Convention.”

So: only official activities are immune, official activities being things strictly necessary for performing the EPC. This is not a blanket immunity, despite what the president might say!

What would happen, for example, if a crime such as assault or theft was committed in the EPO premises in Munich? Clearly this is not immune according to the above definitions, and the Munich police would be involved.

However presumably the EPO management/lawyers, if challenged, would argue that breaching human rights is “strictly necessary” for the operation of the EPO – say because various staff activities were somehow impeding the grant of patents.

But note the double-standard here when the president alleged that the suspended board member possessed in the EPO building an item that could be classed as a weapon “under German law”. So clearly national law can be applied when it meets management’s needs.

(German weapons law, by the way, includes in its definition of a weapon portable objects which, due to their properties, method of operation or how they work, are able to remove or reduce humans` ability to attack or defend, *even if not intended for that purpose*. So with the “defendant” gagged and unable to respond, an innocent piece of exercise equipment becomes a “weapon” – when the EPO decides for once that German law is relevant, after all…)

More on the same:

Kilroy (18:00) raises an interesting point, and one that has been bugging me ever since these allegations started leaking out of the EPO.

If we are to believe Team Battistelli, the suspended DG3 member and assorted staff members have been engaged in all manner of “deplorable” activities: slander, defamation, intimidation, threats of violence, hacking, hoarding of fascist propaganda, stockpiling of weapons, and so on and so forth to ever more fanciful extremes.

Perhaps some or all of these are offences under, say, German or Dutch law. But the EPO repeatedly asserts total immunity from any jurisdiction. So according to what law do these activities – even if they *have* taken place, which is far from being proven to any degree, let alone beyond reasonable doubt – constitute an offence within the walls of the EPO? German law does not apply in Munich HQ, nor Dutch law in the Hague branch, or so we are asked to believe. That being the case, how have the accused employees committed any offence?

Presumably the ServRegs are the source of “law”. Now, I can believe that these might foresee the need to deal with everyday workplace disciplinary matters such as bullying and harassment. But did the authors really have the foresight to include, say, storage of propaganda, or weapons? I find this hard to believe.

Can any insiders shed any light here?

“FormerExaminer” writes:

The immunity from the ECHR applies to the EPO, and all cases I have heard of have attempted to bring the EPO to court.
However, the member states are not immune from the ECHR, and they could be brought to court for signing an agreement (the EPC) which is incompatible with the European Convention on Human Rights.

And then this:

The member states, in particular the Netherlands and Germany, are not immune from the ECHR. They could be brought to court for signing an agreement (the EPC) which is incompatible with the European Convention on Human Rights. There are a lot of such incompatibilities as follows inter alia from the Judgment of the Dutch Court of Appeal

(26/02/2015) The Office has progressively and severely eroded a number of fundamental union and human rights. The countries are aware of these incompatibilities and wrongnesses and tolerates them and accept the catastrophic situation within the EPO.

More on the lawlessness:

A reason more for very soon a diplomatic conference to change this for Europe, the small industries/applicants and the examiners wrong and dangerous EPC. The absence of applicable law and the absence of a competent tribunal should be changed soon.The european states are “constitutional states” in which the exercise of governmental power is constrained by the law. It is the opposite of a state based on the arbitrary use of power.

Now regarding the role of the Administrative Council (AC):

It becomes clearer, why the AC members sit on their hands. The more they protest, the more vindictive BB gets, venting his ever-growing pleen against those employees that incur his displeasure.

If you sat on the AC, with one vote in 38, what would you do?

One person responded with: “err, grow a pair?

“The AC: spineless, careerist, self-interested. To misquote a misquoute: All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.”

Here is a more polite response to that:

If you sat on the AC, with one vote in 38, what would you do?

The Rule of Law, respect of Human Rights are not a matter of “votes” (“… and the results are … 18 for and 20 against – the proposal to abide to the Rule of Law and Human Rights at the European Patent Office is therefore rejected by this Administrative Council. Thank you ladies and gentlemen. We will now pass to the next important topic on the agenda … oh yes, the colour of the moquette in new building at the Hague …”).

It’s not a matter of “what would you do?”.

It’s a matter of “what you should do”.

Now a similar scenario involving WIPO (we covered this before) is brought up:

The member states are more immune from the ECHR than you think. Violations in international organizations are not that uncommon. Just staying in patent world: what happened to the staff representative fired at WIPO last year?

I should also insist that the legal vacuum does not only concern examiners. To take a known example: after the criticism raised during the Inventor of the Year event, Battistelli decided to lower the priority for French searches in retribution against the speech of Ms. Lemaire (the EPO searches for the French patent office since the times of the IIB). The examiners had no choice, because they will get bad marks if they don’t process the files in the order the computer presents them, a change introduced last year.

Basically, French searches were delayed about 2 months in comparison to PCT searches for US applicants. One can easily figure out that this may put French applicants at a disadvantage, given that these early searches are used to take a decision to pursue or not the file during the priority year.

Do you think French applicants have a way to complain about that revengeful decision? No, they don’t. There is simply no applicable law and no competent tribunal.

Other patent offices are being mentioned too:

Of course there are some revolutionary souls amongst us who wonder why the EPO is search French national applications (or for that matter Belgian and Italian applications) and PCT applications filed at the USPTO when it has such an enormous backlog of European applications awaiting search and examination.

An examiner-turned-lawyer wrote:

…and before someone objects that human examination is needed: Battistelli is French and France had a registration system for patents. France tradition is that examination is not necessary.

Well, of course substantive examination is not actually necessary. The French and Swiss manage very well without it, thank you very much. It’s the applicant’s responsibility to make sure that his claimed invention is new and inventive. Nothing wrong with that, as long as everyone understands what’s expected of them. And you need a decent patent attorney, of course.

If you’re going to have examination, though, you had better make sure that it’s damn good. The worst situation of all is where you have a search and examination process which is held up as being top quality, and is therefore trusted by applicants, opponents, national courts, the UPC…, but is actually pretty shoddy. This leads to all kinds of trouble and expense, but sadly this kind of trouble and expense occurs far beyond the reach of the EPO’s quality monitoring.

I’ll say it again: poor examination favours large corporations at the expense of the little guy. Better not to examine at all if you can’t examine with really excellent quality.

On the matter of loyalty:

It is all in the service regulations actually. These specify that the staff should be “loyal” to the organization. There is some reason in that: somebody criticizing patents in the open would not be acceptable as a patent examiner, for example.

The slight change here is that the EPO changed “loyal to the organization” to “loyal to the president and his friends”.

Techrights is then cited as follows:

EPO Vice-President Loses Defamation Lawsuit — AGAIN!

Sinking deeper and deeper in the mud the EPO is.

Disgraceful all this is.

More about VP4:

All a bit surreal but must raise some questions somewhere. Surely…

The BoA member was accused of spreading defamatory stories about VP4. I can’t remember the full details but the issue seemed to include the allegations about cars which have been at the heart of the case in Croatia which has been settled. And not in VP4′s favour it seems. Maybe there’s another level of appeal to come?

But, in any case, the courts seem to consider that the Croatian lady’s statements were not defamatory. So presumably the BoA member could not be making defamatory statements either?? And the sacked Union chairwoman (even if she did give him help – denied by her I think) could not be assisting in any defamatory act?

A tangled mess. The EBoA may have been right in their analysis and maybe the AC was misled about the certainties? However it plays, nobody comes out of it well but, unfortunately, the only ones who suffer were actually ones who seem to be innocent.

It does raise, again, the question of what laws do apply within the EPO. The vague accusations of defamatory statement making do not specify under what set of laws. Clearly, Croatian law does not consider them defamatory. Does the EPO pick and choose these extra-territorial definitions or does the president make it up as he goes along?

This is an interesting little bit, which might actually have some factual basis:

new cunning action in sight by EPO top management : introduce 5 years’ contract for examiners by the June administrative council…

As a reply to that consider:

(Ref: 5 years contracts.)

That would be consistent with the EPO management pushing automation of search and examination at present. The EPO will need a lot less examiners in 5 years.

…and before someone objects that human examination is needed: Battistelli is French and France had a registration system for patents. France tradition is that examination is not necessary.

One person has just added: “Regarding immunity and the rule of law within the EPO buildings, does EU health and safety law apply? If even arguably not, then how can we, as EU employers, send our staff there e.g. to Oral Proceedings, surely we are then in breach of our duty of care to our employees?

“PS UK should not ratify UPC and EU should not subcontract anything to EPO until these issues are clear.”

Regarding the part which asked, “…does EU health and safety law apply?” one person wrote: “Luckily it’s not required, because the President can rule on such matters.”

Another responded with: “While the answer to this question is unclear, it was noticed that, when stricter smoking regulations were introduced in Germany (designated smoking areas usw.) the EPO quickly adopted a similar policy.”

One person then responded with: “Well, the truth is that all EPO buildings are no smoking zones. The president however had the smoke detectors in his presidential suite on the 10th floor of the Isar building and those in a small room next to the auditorium, which he uses in interruptions of the AC meetings, disconnected. So much for his respect of the law, regulations and – worse – of his staff´s security.”

Another person replied with: “yet the smoke alarms are disabled in certain offices to ensure proper functioning of the office, and at least one person has been relieved of their position because of complaints when someone smoked on their working place…..

“Regarding national law applicable or not: I find it problematic to fire someone because of alleged violations against German law, when no court has decided that the used formulation in the SUEPO financial support clauses are illegal. There have been legal opinions presented by the union that these clauses are legal. The office claims they have a legal opinion of an independent attorney stating otherwise, but they refuse to present it to anyone. This is s.th. a German judge has to decide on, as it relates to German law. But German law is not applicable to the EPO, therefore such a judge’s decission is not necessary.”

The above comments contain new information which we cannot necessarily verify. We find it important to document these for future reference, in case IP Kat suffers the same kinds of SLAPP attacks that we were subjected to.

EPO Implicitly Acknowledges Declining Patent Quality by Agreeing to Finally Dump Some Monsanto GMO Patents

Posted in Europe, Patents at 4:46 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Patent maximalism: when one wrongly assumes that the more patents, the better

A potted plant

Summary: An outline of news about Monsanto’s EPO patent on melons and some other examples of overzealous patent maximalism

IT IS gradually becoming quite a busy month for EPO actions, even after a reasonably slow start (calm before the dismissals storm). There is a growing backlog of articles about the EPO right now, only some of which relate to the dismissal of staff representatives (we shall cover these later). Among the complaints raised by staff representatives is the declining quality of patents at the EPO.

“The maximalists (patent lawyers and their Web sites in this case) are obviously salivating over UPC.”According to this Web site of patent maximalists, “Litigation map helps EU strategy preperation” [sic]. “An online interactive tool which compares the patent litigation regimes across Europe has been launched by law firm Taylor Wessing,” it says. It seems like an ideal tool for patent trolls, especially under UPC regime, if it ever becomes a reality at all. The maximalists (patent lawyers and their Web sites in this case) are obviously salivating over UPC.

According to other news, after the EPO foolishly granted patents to Monsanto (foreign company pursuing patents on life), there is a revocation. As Agra-net put it: “The European Patent Office (EPO) has revoked a patent held by Monsanto on cucurbit yellow stunting disorder virus (CYSDV)-resistant melons for “technical reasons”.”

Fruitnet wrote: “Pressure from coalition of NGOs results in decision to rescind seed breeder’s claim to fruit’s potential resistance” (clearly a case of patent maximalism).

IP Watch wrote: “The European Patent Office on 20 January revoked a patent held by Monsanto on virus-resistant melons for technical reasons, much to the glee of opponents of patents on conventional plants.”

“It’s quite revealing and it reminds us who really benefits from such patents. It’s not at all about people in the particular area, e.g. programmers.”We already spent a lot of time (and space) writing about Monsanto about half a decade ago. As Richard Stallman put it around that time (in relation to patents on life, which led to protests in German): “The European Patent Office [...] working for the people who want to crush everyone’s lives with monopolies” (like Monsanto). Stallman also went on to talking about software patents, which European patent lawyers such as Bastian Best keep promoting [1, 2]. He is reposting or posting new links to old articles of his in Twitter these days. It’s quite revealing and it reminds us who really benefits from such patents. It’s not at all about people in the particular area, e.g. programmers. Watch this new press release from Bellerophon Therapeutics [2, 1]. More monopolies, more innovation? It may mean higher profit for the patent office (in the short term) and more money for patent lawyers.

Don’t rely on patent lawyers to explain the value of patents. To them, the more, the merrier. The patent boosters from IAM, for instance, are now saying that the “Latest filing statistics show the growing value being attached to Chinese patents by foreign entities” (it’s called a bubble, especially given the low quality of Chinese patents).

EPO President Battistelli and Vice-President Topić Are Having Political Problems

Posted in Europe, Patents at 3:51 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Summary: Some political news from France and from Croatia, where Benoît Battistelli and Željko Topić (respectively) come from

THE European Patent Office is under political fire from many directions these days. Some examples that are not publicly known (yet) may be shown here later this month or next month.

According to this new comment: “In a reaction of President Battistelli dated 20 November 2015 (http://www.pyleborgn.eu/2015/11/crise-a-loeb-reponse-du-president-battistelli/ ) on the letter of Pierre-Yves Le Borgn` député des Français de l`étranger dated 18 November 2015 send to Mr. Emmanuel Macron, Ministre de l`Economie et de l`Ìndustrie I read the following:

Battistell: ¨Tout d’abord, il est totalement faux d’affirmer que des « interrogatoires d’une rare violence » auraient été menés. Cela est d’autant plus facile à prouver que ces interviews sont enregistrées. Par ailleurs, il n’est pas acceptable de jeter ainsi le discrédit sur l’unité d’enquête de l’Office, composée de mères et de pères de familles dévoués a une tâche souvent bien difficile mais indispensable dans la lutte contre la fraude, le harcèlement et autres délits qui peuvent déstabiliser notre organisation.¨

In English ¨First of all, it is completely false to affirm that of them ” cross-examinations of a rare violence” would have been led. It is of as much easier to prove than these interviews are recorded. Otherwise, it is not acceptable to throw the discredit thus on the unit of investigation of the office, composed of mothers and fathers of devoted families having a task often very difficult but indispensable in struggle against the fraud, the harassment and other offenses that can destabilize our organization.¨

The commenter added this personal opinion: “Your behavior is disgusting Battistelli. You speak about fathers and mothers in the Investigation Unit. The disciplinary committee did not recommend dismissal for Ion Brumme because he has five children – one is just a baby – and a loan to pay on his house, but YOU Battistelli dismissed him. Shame shame shame. Battistelli writes further that these interviews of the Investigation Unit are recorded. Why was it not allowed to Mrs Els Hardon to make recordings? I am sure you have many things to hide. Of course you will never make public your, perhaps manipulated, recordings. The trial of Mrs Hardon of her disciplinary procedure is missing even elementary fundamental principles of the law.It also seems that Mr R. Lutz feels home in this dictatorial system.”

Not only Battistelli is having political problems.

Željko Topić, Battistelli’s right-hand man, is having his defamation case discontinued after it repeatedly collapsed (and caused great financial damage to the accused) while a new Croatian Government has just been announced.

“It looks like Mr. Topić’s old friend (the former minister Dragan Primorac),” one source told us, “did not make it into the new Croatian government.” (source: “Prime Minister-Designate Orešković Presents New Croatian Government”)

“He had originally been tipped as the most likely candidate for the Foreign Affairs Ministry,” we have been told, “but it could be that the whiff of scandal (relating to Topić) counted against him.”

“In case further prosecution is sought,” we replied, one can “guess there will be fewer strings left to pull from up above.”

We previously showed how Topić was, by the face of it, trying to select politically-connected lawyers for his case. “I am very curious about the other criminal charges allegedly or reportedly pressed against Topić,” I added. The mysteries surrounding Topić in Croatia can help explain union-busting, which seems to be the 'department' of Topić and Raimund Lutz these days. Recall what Topić did in Croatia when people expressed disagreement.

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