06.27.08

It Must Be Official: The USPTO is (Brain) Dead

Posted in America, IBM, Microsoft, Patents at 3:51 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Will you have a look at this?

Selling Stuff On The Internet? Why, That Infringes On A Patent!

Erich Spangenberg was mentioned here earlier this week for having to pay $4 million for shuffling some patents around to shell companies and suing a company he had already agreed not to sue over those patents. Of course, that’s not slowing him down apparently. Not only has he asked for a new trial on that ruling, he’s continuing to file new patent lawsuits — with the latest one apparently being for a patent on selling stuff on the internet.

There is another ugly one with a bounty on its head. [via Digital Majority]

A company called Seer Systems has a patent on a system for joining different musical data types together in a file, distributing them over the internet, and then playing that file.

We are especially interested in prior art (before 1997) relating to downloading and playing parts of ‘musical work files’ in real time. One such example might be a system for streaming media files by taking the file one piece at a time and downloading the necessary sound files and musical data for that part before playing it and moving on to another section.

This is absolutely ridiculous. And no, there’s no oversimplification in the descriptions above. These happen to be the more notorious junk ‘ideas’ that shouldn’t have had any accompanying patents granted in the first place.

Since weak companies which get targeted are unwilling to challenge these ludicrous patents in court (it’s too expensive for some to bear), they simply settle. It means that the trolls get their way.

Over at IAM Magazine, it is now being shown that even IBM — a company with quite an extensive patent portfolio — may not be too comfortable with the state of the USPTO, either. [via Digital Majority]

He told me that IBM was opposed to the current regime in the US and preferred the European model under which business method patents are almost completely unavailable. Yes, the owner of the world’s largest portfolio of business method patents, largely amassed since the State Street Bank decision of 1998, believes that they are bad and unnecessary.

The most unfortunate thing is that stakeholders are attempting to expand broken laws onto other continents and countries. Microsoft is definitely a big part of this problem. █

Share in other sites/networks: These icons link to social bookmarking sites where readers can share and discover new web pages.
  • Reddit
  • email

This post is also available in Gemini over at:

gemini://gemini.techrights.org/2008/06/27/uspto-braindead-examples/

If you liked this post, consider subscribing to the RSS feed or join us now at the IRC channels.

Pages that cross-reference this one

What Else is New

  1. European Media Does Not Care About Europe's Second-Largest Institution Crushing Basic Laws and Fundamental Rights

    New video about the latest publication from SUEPO (the EPO’s staff union); it was published yesterday, seeing that the “Mafia” (what EPO staff actually calls the management!) hasn’t done anything to comply with a wide-ranging set of court rulings from ILO-AT; why has the media said nothing about this and what does that say about today’s media? The material is all in the public domain, in widely understood languages, and SUEPO spoke about it more than 3 weeks ago.

  2. Links 30/7/2021: Distro Comparisons and Tootle Introduced

    Links for the day

  3. [Meme] Enforcing ILO-AT Rulings...

    We’re still waiting for a statement — any statement (direct or indirect) — from EPO management, seeing that almost a month has passed

  4. 'Open Source' as a Failed Initiative

    A closer look at the dire state of the Open Source Initiative, or OSI, which no longer protects Open Source (let alone software freedom) but instead helps openwashing, Microsoft entrapment, and a coup against the FSF

  5. [Meme] Rowan and António Sittin' on a Tree...

    How much longer can Team Campinos keep issuing tons of noisy and self-congratulatory puff pieces to (perhaps) distract from the elephant in the 10th floor of the Isar building (EPO HQ)? Staff won't wait for eternity.

  6. IRC Proceedings: Thursday, July 29, 2021

    IRC logs for Thursday, July 29, 2021

  7. Half the People in This Letter Are IBM Employees

    IBM seems to be continuing its war on the FSF because IBM wants to own everything (CentOS being ‘canned’ was just part of the plan)

  8. The OSI Song

    The sad demise of OSI, which has become little but a front group of proprietary software companies in pursuit of openwashing services (and outsourcing to proprietary disservices looking to eradicate copyleft)

  9. [Meme] OSI is Doing Just Fine

    So what if OSI is run by someone who raised money from Microsoft (to sell Microsoft a keynote slot in a copyleft event — the thing that Microsoft attacks through GitHub!) while funnelling the OSI's funds to a serial GPL violator?

  10. The OSI's Defunct Elections (Privacy Breach), Conflict of Interest (Nicholson), and Other Lingering Problems

    The above, together with an email from the OSI below, serves to show they’re re-running a bad election and — yet worse! — there appears to be a conflict of interest implicating the OSI’s sole member of staff!

  11. Links 30/7/2021: Audacity 3.0.3 and KD Chart 2.8.0

    Links for the day

  12. Links 29/7/2021: siduction 2021.2 and Xubuntu 21.10 Dev Update

    Links for the day

  13. GitHub is Racism

    Microsoft has the world's most racist code hosting repository; it wasn't like this when Microsoft took over as the racist policies were added to impress Donald Trump, who would later rig a procurement/tendering process to bail out Microsoft (10 billion dollars from the Pentagon, i.e. taxpayers)

  14. [Meme] António Lost His Power Over Patent Examiners

    Team Campinos at the EPO must be rather stressed at the moment; the people who do all the work can go on strike any time (or all the time, until/unless demands are met)

  15. European Patent Office is Going on Strike (or Strikes)

    The staff of the EPO is ready to strike like never before (dissatisfaction and outrage over 8 years of gross injustice, namely Battistelli's breach of fundamental rights, including the right to strike)

  16. Crying “Wolf!” About Systemd is Only Beneficial to IBM and Systemd Developers/Pushers

    Microsoft controls Systemd only to the extent that Systemd is controlled by GitHub, which is in turn controlled by Microsoft; But Systemd has long been on that proprietary platform (its developers don’t truly value software freedom) and this has long been a problem, even before Microsoft hijacked it for coercive power

  17. Links 29/7/2021: Mesa 21.2 RC3, FSF Responds to Microsoft's 'Hey Hi' Attack on Copyleft

    Links for the day

  18. IRC Proceedings: Wednesday, July 28, 2021

    IRC logs for Wednesday, July 28, 2021

  19. [Meme] No Crime Goes Unrewarded at the EPO

    It is more or less undeniable that from a legal and functional perspective the EPO is already defunct and is still perishing under a couple of Mafiosos whose sole interest is cover-up and grifting/plunder (of what’s left of the Office after almost 40 years of goodwill/reputation); the recent G 1/21 fiasco was just icing on the cake and the EU’s insistence on a patently unconstitutional UPC (more legal powers for chronic EPC violators) actually weakens unity in Europe (by discrediting the Union)

  20. [Meme] There's Always a Way (When Financial Results Are Not So Good...)

    Too many US ‘tech’ companies still lie to their investors. They choose financial engineering instead of real engineering.

  21. Links 28/7/2021: OPNsense 21.7 and MX Linux 21 Beta

    Links for the day

  22. The One Reason I Cannot Get 'Google News' (or Google) Completely Out of My Life

    Google has got almost a monopoly on (nearly) real-time news syndication; this is why, for our Daily Links at least, we still rely on Google News to a certain extent

  23. [Meme] When Sociopaths or Psychopaths Run Europe's Second-Largest Institution

    The EPO has a very profound issue because it is run (and ruined) by insecure thugs with inferiority complex, so they form cliques of friends of theirs instead of actually qualified people, in effect creating personality cults that laugh at the law and disregard any obligations to the institutions/staff they were entrusted to manage

  24. Links 28/7/2021: GCC 11.2 Released

    Links for the day

  25. Microsoft 'Loves' Linux So Much That It's Spreading FUD About It All Over the Media for 3 Days in a Row (So Far)

    The stubborn cult at Microsoft likes telling us all — especially officials and decision-makers — a bunch lies like, “we invest [some amount of money] in security” and “security is our goal”, but in reality the money is sunk into hiring (‘buying’) firms with “security” in their name, bribing publishers for mindless PR/platitudes that cast critics of Microsoft insecurity/ies as “fanatics”, “bashers”, “jealous”, “irrational” et cetera; finally, actual money goes into collaborations with the NSA on back doors, i.e. the exact opposite of security. The video above is a follow-up or sequel for something we meme-ified two days ago; we’ve since then included more examples (with editorial comments added to the links) in our News Roundups/Daily Links; Western media follows the same script we saw in Indian Web sites on Sunday and the objective is to paint Linux as “equally insecure” if not less secure than Windows. As already noted on Sunday, in a much longer video, the ‘Linux’ malware (it has nothing to do with Linux itself!) needs user intervention, neglect, or even sabotage to even get on the compromised systems in the first place. One can guess what situation or which incidents Microsoft is ever so eager to distract/deflect from…

  26. [Meme] EPO Asked to Comply With the Law and Correct Behaviour

    EPO staff wants reparations for monumental abuses, but the “Mafia” of Benoît Battistelli and António Campinos will never allow that to happen (we saw the same regarding the unlawful composition of internal courts)

  27. The Unfunny Joke That Microsoft Cares for 'Developer Rights'

    Microsoft propaganda urging software developers to find comfort in a prison of Microsoft (proprietary software monopoly) is a symptom of dying media, or thinly-veiled PR looking for a buck

  28. IRC Proceedings: Tuesday, July 27, 2021

    IRC logs for Tuesday, July 27, 2021

  29. Links 28/7/2021: PulseAudio 15.0 Released, World’s Slowest Raytracer

    Links for the day

  30. Links 27/7/2021: New Godot Engine Beta and a Call for Funding of GIMP

    Links for the day

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

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

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

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

Recent Posts