01.02.17
Posted in Site News at 2:57 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
How appt [sic]…
Summary: The utter lack of participation, involvement or even intervention by German authorities serve to confirm that the government of Germany is very much complicit in the EPO’s abuses, by refusing to do anything to stop them
January 3rd (tomorrow) marks 365 days since the letter below (due to leap year) and we are hardly surprised that Heiko Maas, a rather controversial German Justice Minister (for various reasons well beyond and outside the realm of patents), is as useless as a brick. He seems to be perfectly fine with serious abuses happening in Germany, perhaps because his political party has some higher agenda or something at stake here.
We previously wrote about serious if not severe dysfunctions in the the EPO’s justice system (so-called 'disciplinary procedures'), which are akin to the Stasi (or “gestapo” as a Dutch politician called it, as it’s also akin to a "reign of terror" in his own words).
The following is text from Minister of State Prof. Dr. Winfried Bausback, who was mentioned before as he had been in touch with other politicians whom Dr. Elizabeth Hardon decided to approach. In the following letter, Heiko 'don't see, don't speak, don't listen' Maas is mentioned as well (emphasis below). The letter is dated January 4th, but the discussion with Maas predates Christmas by exactly one week. To quote:
Bavarian State Minister of Justice – 80097 Munich
Dr. Elizabeth Hardon
An der Hauptfeuerwache 4
80331 Munich
Your Ref., your communication of
su15109ml – 0.4.2 of 7.12.2015
Please quote in reply
Our Ref., our communication of
D5 – 3620 E – I – 13807/2015
Date
4 January 2016
Demonstration by the Staff Union of the European Patent Office (SUEPO) on 10 December 2015 before the Palace of Justice
Dear Dr. Hardon,
Many thanks for your letter in reference, in which you provided further details with regard to the background to the SUEPO demonstration on 10 December in front of the Munich Palace of Justice. I can readily empathise with the burden being placed on you and your colleagues by the situation at
the European Patent Office which you describe. I must however ask for your understanding inasmuch as I am unable to voice an opinion in these matters, given that the Bavarian State Ministry and the Free State of Bavaria have no jurisdiction in this instance. As you are aware, the European Patent
Office (EPO) is an international organization with its own constitutional legal framework. Germany is only one of 38 contracting states, and is represented in the administrative bodies of the EPO solely by the Federal Republic.
On 8 October 2015 the Federal Government stated, in a reply to the written question submitted by a Bundestag deputy (BT-Drs 18/6301 (new), p. 23 f.), that it viewed a good working atmosphere at the European Patent Office as a very important concern. In order to improve the situation, in particular,
the climate with regard to discussion and negotiation, the Federal Ministry of Justice and Consumer Protection (BMJV) is said to have instigated a revival of the social dialogue in the Administrative Council of the EPO, and the Ministry appears to be actively concerned in improving the situation.
In the context of a discussion with the Federal Minister of Justice and Consumer Protection, Mr. Heiko Maas, on 18 December 2015, I expressly raised the issues concerned. The Federal Minister of Justice has given his assurance that he will also be engaging with the issues which you are currently raising.
Best regards
Prof. Dr. Winfried Bausback, MdL
Where is Maas? He has done absolutely nothing (zilch, nada) about the EPO scandals, which damages not just Germany’s reputation on matter such as justice within Germany but in the whole of Europe (as the vast majority of EPO employees are not German). A retired German judge has already compared this kind of attitude towards the EPO to that of the US government in relation to Guantánamo Bay.
For completeness, the letter in German (original) is shown below. █
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12.31.16
Posted in Site News at 9:33 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Summary: A look back and a quick look at the road ahead, as 2016 comes to an end
TECHRIGHTS turned 10 earlier this year (only to experience DDOS attack on the day, so planned celebrations got delayed). It also reached a milestone of 20,000 blog posts back in February.
“Nokia, being a European company, represents the growing threat of patent trolls in Europe — a threat which the UPC threatened to make ever more real and concrete.”Aside from that, in 2016 we got the EPO‘s management on the defensive. They are losing the battle (Brexit pretty much axed the UPC’s prospects, too) and in 2017 we hope to get the EPO (the one people respected) back on track.
Joe Mullin, a good journalist who has been writing a lot about patent trolls for nearly a decade, has just listed “most dramatic patent and copyright cases of 2016″, ending the list with the news that came in just before Christmas. He writes that “Nokia has backed out of the smartphone business, but is still licensing its patents, so the two companies are back at war. Nokia has sued Apple over patents in 11 different countries. Meanwhile, Apple has filed an antitrust lawsuit against Nokia, accusing the Finnish firm of working together with “patent-assertion entities”—a.k.a. patent trolls—to “maximize the royalties that can be extracted from product companies.””
“Combative attitude against us, including routine DDOS attacks, certainly toughened us and we are prepared to do whatever it takes to get truth out.”Nokia, being a European company, represents the growing threat of patent trolls in Europe — a threat which the UPC threatened to make ever more real and concrete.
In 2017 we intend to continue to write about the EPO, highlight the woes associated with patent trolls, combat software patents, and highlight patent attacks on Free/Open Source software. 2017 will be a continuation of this past year. We intend to leak more and to escalate the tone where necessary. Combative attitude against us, including routine DDOS attacks, certainly toughened us and we are prepared to do whatever it takes to get truth out. █
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11.17.16
Posted in Site News at 3:48 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Summary: Status report on the site’s issues today
Some readers have noticed and have reported to us site access issues (downtime or other difficulties). I personally have spent all day today (since 7AM and more so after 1PM) combating a bizarre kind of DDOS attack, which always came from the same network, owned by Lockheed Martin Corporation. I can say so with certainty. I spent many hours trying to tackle and properly investigate this.
I do not know what motivates this and whether some machines at the Lockheed Martin network (Fairfield, Connecticut, United States) got compromised, but all I know is that for one reason or another someone wants to drive the servers out of memory and knock the site offline. These attacks have been pretty persistent over the past 8 hours. █
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11.08.16
Posted in Site News at 12:39 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Summary: Quick remarks on today’s (or yesterday’s) milestone, which happens only once in a decade
Some geeks’ media has already noticed that, as we pointed out several days ago, this site turns 10. I wasn’t planning much for it, but my wife surprised me with some stuff she bought yesterday and hid somewhere in the house. She then took some photos that she wanted me to publish.
We have a lot of EPO coverage on the way, so stay tuned. We’re quite badly backlogged as a matter of fact, we have piles of stuff we are eager to publish and will only eventually — somehow — get around to publishing. The anniversary was technically yesterday, but the site had technical issues due to rogue traffic (or DDOS), forcing me to stay indoors to manually stave it off. █
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11.04.16
Posted in Site News at 5:49 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Summary: Tenth anniversary for Techrights when this weekend ends; plus, some statistics…
STARTING with focus on Novell and its patent deal with Microsoft, the site was registered and born 10 years ago (not exactly today but a few days from now).
Perfect record of never exposing or causing problems for our sources (of which there were plenty) is something we take pride in. We value and protect our sources. We intent to maintain this perfect record.
“Perfect record of never exposing or causing problems for our sources (of which there were plenty) is something we take pride in.”Never publishing anything fake is another achievement of ours. We do verify the credibility of sources and authenticity of material we receive. We also anonymise everything and strip metadata all the time. We thankfully have the technical skills and we don’t rely on a third party or Big Company for hosting (these can leak/spill out IP addresses to unwanted hands). We never retain logs older than 4 weeks. They get deleted for good.
In that sense, we have done better than Wikileaks (another kind of site) where sources like Elmer and Manning got caught but nothing fake was published in 10 years. Their site is only about a month older than Techrights.
Techrights officially turns 10 on the 7th of this month and is actively or passively pursuing new leaks which can be sent anonymously.
We don’t plan anything big for the anniversary; we’ll probably just do a small wine celebration in the house (wife and I).
“We never retain logs older than 4 weeks.”Regarding statistics, there are nearly 30,000 pages in the site now, aside from attachments, multimedia and various documents. The site is about 40 GB in ‘weight’ and is powered by several servers with 8 cores each. We recently had to make expensive upgrades in order to better cope with attacks.
We are not actively asking for donations (which are possible) because we wish to maintain 100% financial independence. This means that I run this site at my own expense, for no profit, only loss (because it’s the ethical and moral thing to do). I separately work full time in order to earn money and pay the site’s bills. This has always been the case. █
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10.21.16
Posted in Site News at 11:29 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Summary: A technical note about why Techrights has not been publishing many articles recently
WE HAVE A LOT to publish (drowning in material). We have a lot to publish specifically about the EPO, but I am home-bound due to the site being overloaded with crap traffic (some things cannot be automated and must be done manually in order to keep the site available). A series we are trying to publish (see part one and its addendum) is well overdue, but as I stated a couple of nights ago, it is difficult to even keep the site online (since just over a week ago when the Kongstad series had hit the Danish press). The site is having severe issues whenever I go to sleep and I have had to cancel many things, making a lot of personal sacrifices for this. I slept only 2 hours 2 nights ago.
We are, sooner or later, going to publish all that we intended to publish. All this mess only makes me ever more eager to get it out of the way (or put it out in the open).
Some people ask us about the issues. One message we received a few hours ago said: “I notice that there are a lot of 503 messages with Varnish at Techrights lately. I suppose that is because of a DDoS of the backend server or just of key daemons (esp MySQL). The DDoS is usually an indication that you are on the right track and that the recent posts are effective and timely.”
As of today, for example, “European Patent Office” (e.g. 145.64.134.245) is hammering Techrights (IPs are being banned by our defenses, but it’s not enough). As we stated here before, we are not sure if it’s their filtering equipment that does this (we explained the technical reasons it might be so). We’re managing to keep Techrights afloat only by banning lots of IP addresses and it’s usually not enough. My wife and I monitor the server and intervene almost 24/7. I canceled the gym today.
Among the IP addresses banned today for excessive access (requests) we also have 155.201.34.7, which belongs to:
NetRange: 155.201.0.0 – 155.201.255.255
CIDR: 155.201.0.0/16
NetName: PRWATERHOUSE
NetHandle: NET-155-201-0-0-1
Parent: NET155 (NET-155-0-0-0-0)
NetType: Direct Assignment
OriginAS:
Organization: PriceWaterhouseCoopers, LLP (PRICEW-16)
RegDate: 1991-11-22
Updated: 2012-02-24
Ref: https://whois.arin.net/rest/net/NET-155-201-0-0-1
“PriceWaterhouseCoopers” is Battistelli’s liars for hire (the so-called ‘social’ ‘study’). They are still hammering the site today, for the second day in a row in fact. Whether it’s abuse or abusive traffic (or excessive requests that may be related to this article which tarnishes their image) we leave others to decide on. “PricewaterhouseCoopers” was automatically banned from the site for traffic abuse, but the addresses keep changing and our system automatically bans them.
We have had yet another IP address auto-banned for traffic floods that render the site unaccessible. Here is the report (notice the number of attempts, in a short period of time):
The IP 155.201.34.7 has just been banned by Fail2Ban after
216 attempts against VARNISH.
&showARIN=false&showNonArinTopLevelNet=false&ext=netref2
#
NetRange: 155.201.0.0 – 155.201.255.255
CIDR: 155.201.0.0/16
NetName: PRWATERHOUSE
NetHandle: NET-155-201-0-0-1
Parent: NET155 (NET-155-0-0-0-0)
NetType: Direct Assignment
OriginAS:
Organization: PriceWaterhouseCoopers, LLP (PRICEW-16)
RegDate: 1991-11-22
Updated: 2012-02-24
Ref: https://whois.arin.net/rest/net/NET-155-201-0-0-1
Also:
The IP 164.143.240.34 has just been banned by Fail2Ban after
183 attempts against VARNISH.
person: DCS Gov
address: PricewaterhouseCoopers UK
address: 161 Marsh Wall
address: Docklands
address: London
address: E14 9SQ
address: United Kingdom
phone: +44 207 583 5000
fax-no: +44 207 212 2921
nic-hdl: DCS17-RIPE
mnt-by: AS1849-MNT
created: 2005-09-09T14:46:07Z
last-modified: 2005-09-09T14:46:07Z
source: RIPE # Filtere
I have to go to work now, but when I finish I intend to work hard (well into the weekend), with the goal is releasing many EPO articles (if the state of the site/server permits). Stay tuned and be sympathetic not to Battistelli and his goons but to those trying hard — at a great personal cost (and pro bono) — to expose them. █
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10.19.16
Posted in Site News at 9:37 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Availability problems have not been self-induced but due to nefarious/suspicious activity
Summary: Protections for the Web site have been improved and capacity increased in order to avoid or at least prepare for another week of abusive/spam traffic
WHILE it’s hard to pin-point the culprit, amid several new leaks from the EPO and an important series we have come under a lot of stress and pressure. The server, at times, was unable to cope. Bursts of dodgy traffic even crashed our cache server several times, resulting in disruption not just to Techrights but several other very large sites. It makes our site a liability to the host, which lost some large customers as a result of that. The back end is usually able to cope with many hits (millions per day), so in order to cause all this damage one must be pretty clever (or malicious). We have grown accustomed to server issues, especially at times when major releases of information were in the front page. Several companies out there offer DDOS attacks as a service.
“If I have to stay up until 7AM (same as last week), so be it.”We’ve just completed a series of significant upgrades of our infrastructure (several large servers) in order to better cope with abusive traffic, like the traffic experienced since approximately one week ago. We shall now proceed to publication of another major new series, which took a lot of researching to prepare and will certainly ruffle some feathers at the EPO.
I am paying out of my own pocket for these expensive upgrades. Ideology makes it worth the money and we are not asking for donations as these would only damage the image of the site. The past week’s ordeals (sleepless nights due to server issues, a lot of tinkering and dozens of hours lost to maintenance, not to mention many hours of downtime) only made us ever more eager to expose the abuses at the EPO. We won’t be silenced, no matter the cost. If I have to stay up until 7AM (same as last week), so be it. █
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10.04.16
Posted in Site News at 5:22 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
The CAFC‘s Haldane Robert Mayer has issued a detailed and abundantly clear ruling, but patent law firms are still ignoring it
Summary: The historic decision from Haldane Robert Mayer (above) is slowly starting to gain some traction in the media, but proponents of software patents pretend not to see it and hope that prospective clients (software patent applicants) won’t notice what’s happening
SOMETHING very big happened at the end of last week, but it is not being properly covered (if at all) by the patent microcosm. Today, IAM ‘magazine’ is pushing for software patents (cherry-picking cases to focus on the ones that are pro-software patents) behind a paywall [1, 2] — all this in spite of the fact that most of them are dead (more of them, more than ever before).
We didn’t expect IAM to stand out though. It was probably the first to cover the McRO outcome (pro-software patents), but regarding the above there’s radio silence. WIPR, by contrast, finally wrote about it under the headline “Software patents are deadweight loss to economy, says Federal Circuit” and it didn’t mince words:
Software patents impose a “deadweight loss on the nation’s economy”, according to the US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit.
This was the concurring opinion of Circuit Judge Haldane Mayer in the case of Intellectual Ventures v Symantec and Trend Micro, decided on September 30. He concurred with Circuit Judge Timothy Dyk.
Mayer added that software patents erect “often insurmountable barriers to innovation” and force “companies to expend exorbitant sums defending against meritless infringement suits”.
The ruling found that three patents asserted by licensing company Intellectual Ventures (IV) against anti-virus software business Symantec and IT security company Trend Micro were invalid.
US patent numbers 6,460,050; 6,073,142 and 5,987,610, which all cover anti-virus software, were held not to cover patent-eligible subject matter.
It is good that someone in MIP (Managing IP) covered it as well, albeit MIP called it “controversial” as if to antagonise software patents is something questionable. To quote:
In a controversial concurring opinion in a Federal Circuit decision finding claims of three Intellectual Ventures patents invalid, Judge Haldane Mayer argues: “It is well past time to return software to its historical dwelling place in the domain of copyright.”
This is what software developers have been arguing all along. There is nothing “controversial” about it. What likely “controversial” is a site like IAM openly promoting software patents and its editor in chief arguing with me online, insisting that being against software patents is the same as (or moral equivalent of) wanting layoffs. Whose layoffs? Definitely not software developers’. This is just a politician’s trick, trying to equate some policy with “creating” or “destroying” jobs (appeal to “families”).
How long before Watchtroll personally attacks this CAFC Judge (as usual)? And maybe Patent Docs also? Both have a tendency to go ad hominem when they dislike the outcome. Here is the patent microcosm shooting the messenger. It didn’t take long. This one dismisses the judge as “one senior judge with no business experience nor extensive technology background-baying at the moon” (there’s more here).
Some of the worst ad hominem attacks we have come across discredit the US Supreme Court, which, according to this new article from Patently-O, virtually if not practically refuses to refute (technically overturn) Alice:
Not Eligible: Supreme Court Denies All Pending Subject Matter Eligibility Petitions
The Supreme Court has greatly simplified the patent docket by denying certiorari in 10+ cases. Gone are GEA Process (IPR termination decision), Amphastar (scope of 271.e safe harbor) , Commil (appellate disregard of factual evidence), MacDermid (obvious combination), Jericho (Abstract Idea) , Trading Technologies (mandamus challenging CBM initiation), Tobinick (interference), Neev (arbitrator autonomy), Genetic Tech (eligibility), Essociate (eligibility), Dreissen, and Pactiv (ex parte reexamination procedure). Notably, all of the eligibility petitions have been denied.
“Meanwhile,” the above adds, “on October 11, the court will hear oral arguments in Samsung v. Apple.”
Yes, that’s about design patents, which are related to software patents but not quite the same. Here is patent the maximalism site MIP catching up with the latest of Apple litigation, saying that a “jury in the Eastern District of Texas has awarded VirnetX $302.4 million in a verdict against Apple for infringing four patents. This is the third time a federal jury has found Apple liable for infringing VirnetX’s patented technology.”
The VirnetX case was covered here thrice in the past week alone and it is still being covered quite a lot by media large and small all around the world (because it’s about “Apple”, which typically attracts/baits readers). Here is AOL’s coverage of it. This involves a court in Texas, i.e. the cesspool of all patent courts. They actually boast/gloat about their bias. It’s their marketing strategy.
Speaking of design patents and Apple, Vera Ranieri from the EFF published “Stupid Design Patent of the Month” (later crossposted in TechDirt) in which she wrote:
On October 11, 2016, the U.S. Supreme Court is scheduled to hear oral arguments in the long-running Apple-Samsung litigation. The issue is whether Apple, by virtue of having its designed patents infringed by Samsung, is entitled to all of Samsung’s profits made from the infringing phones (regardless of how much that design contributed to the value of the phone).
This case—in which EFF submitted an amicus brief arguing the award of Samsung’s total profit is improper—is important for many reasons. But one reason stands out: it is trivially easy to get a design patent on trivial designs and, unless the Supreme Court changes the law, that can lead to anything-but-trivial awards in court.
This month’s stupid patent, a design patent, shows just how broken the current system of design patents is. Design patents, unlike the utility patents we usually feature, consist only of a single claim followed by pictures. It is generally the pictures that inform the public as to what is claimed. Importantly, in a design patent only the features drawn in solid lines are claimed. Anything in dotted lines is generally not part of the claim.
If SCOTUS rules against Apple and in favour of Android/Linux/Samsung, this may spell the end of design patents too. Wait and watch how patent lawyers would squirm and deny everything if this was to occur. Is it not funny (or suspicious) that not a single patent law firm is ‘seeing’ (after several days) the decision where CAFC slams software patents? A lot of patent lawyers are liars, and in light of the latest silence they are more so. They refuse to inform people about decisions where software patents are trashed. It’s just not good for their business.
“Well done, Haldane Robert Mayer, for saying what a lot of us software developers have been arguing for well over a decade. Patents are not needed for software, which is a copyright domain (like prose).”Today we found the new article “Federal Circuit Finds Claims Implemented on General Purpose Cellphone Not Patentable”, but the patent microcosm is still stuck in the past, persistently pushing an old case like McRO [1, 2, 3] as if we’re in the middle of September. This so-called ‘analysis’ too got reposted (mentioned here before), provocatively asking (in the headline), “Is the Pendulum Finally Swinging Back to Center?”
No, it’s swinging in the side that’s software patents being verboten and thus worthless. Just don’t ask IAM or the patent microcosm as they’ll pretend not to know about it. Surely they saw the decision, but they probably just don’t know what to say in order to somehow save face, spin it etc. If all they can do is attack the judge (i.e. shoot the messenger), then they’d be better off keeping quiet.
Well done, Haldane Robert Mayer, for saying what a lot of us software developers have been arguing for well over a decade. Patents are not needed for software, which is a copyright domain (like prose). █
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