Bonum Certa Men Certa

Patents Roundup: Microsoft, Free Software Innovations and Impending Changes to Patent Law

"If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of giants," Sir Isaac Newton (1642-1727)

Newton's Cradle
Newton's Cradle



Microsoft continues to upset with its infatuation of everything "invention" or "innovation". While Gates and Myhrvold patent everything under the sun (for vanity and profit), other Microsoft employees claim credit for things that have prior art and plenty of foundations upon which to build.

Microsoft boss Don Mattrick still believes he was the very first person to invent controllable 3D human avatars.

"I'm claiming to have invented avatars! I did 4D Sports Boxing! Do you know what 4D Boxing was? Hey, you should be writing this! That was me," Mattrick told Official Xbox Magazine.


By the way, Google is no angel, either.

Google Patents Searching Through Multiple Categories At Once



[...]

What's unclear to me is how anyone "skilled in the art" could consider this a non-obvious solution. This is (and was) the sort of evolutionary improvement that pretty much anyone in the space would have known was coming to search engines.


It wasn't long ago that we wrote about Halliburton and its pursuit for a patent on patent trolling. The Register has a more detailed report on the subject.

Halliburton - the Texas-based company famous for pocketing billions from the war in Iraq - hopes to patent the art of patent trolling.


Innovation in Free Software



Eric Raymond, who has been eerily quiet over the past year, wrote in the OSI blog about open source software and innovation.

There's an argument commonly heard these days that open-source software is all very well for infrastructure or commodity software where the requirements are well-established, but that it can't really innovate. I laugh when I hear this, because I remember when the common wisdom was exactly the opposite -- that we hackers were great for exploratory, cutting-edge stuff but couldn't deliver reliable product.

How quickly people forget. We built the World Wide Web, fer cripessakes! The original browser and the original webservers were built by a hacker at CERN, not in some closed-door corporate shop. Before that, years before we got Linux and our own T-shirts, people who would later identify their own behavior correctly as open-source hacking built the Internet.


It's important to remember that Free software predates proprietary software. It's not a new phenomenon but it's the way things used to before people like Bill Gates stood up and said: "They are the ones who give hobbyists a bad name, and should be kicked out of any club meeting they show up at."

The Patent System Ain't Working



Michael Tiemann

Michael Tiemann of the OSI, citing this writeup, summarises and shares some takeaway points.

Venkatesh Hariharan recently wrote an article titled The practical problem with software patents, a subject near and dear to my heart. He draws on the same research that I have cited in the past, the book "Patent Failure: How Judges, Bureaucrats, and Lawyers Put Innovators at Risk," by Boston University professors, James Bessen & Michael J. Meurer, but I confess that he shows both greater insights and certainly a better sense of humor than I do when I write abou[t] the subject.


Groklaw has meanwhile released the third part of an article about re Bilski.

In my view, the short answer is that Bilski isn't the last or best word, and that in time there will be further refinements. That may be too small a word, actually, but I read Bilski as leaving it to the Supreme Court to do anything new, useful and practical about software patents, if I might coin the phrase, while the US Appeals Court for the Federal Circuit stands on a very old dime in the meanwhile, while attempting to basically make it harder to patent mathematical "fundamental principles." The court doesn't want anyone to patent 1 + 1 = 2, in other words, because the whole world needs to be able to do that. But if you use 1 + 1 = 2 in a process that is patentable because it's tied to a particular machine and/or is transformative, that's fine with them. That's if I understand what the court wrote. Considering that patent lawyers and professors are still struggling with it, I'm guessing I don't yet fully.


Here is some more interesting commentary on the subject on Bilski.

It’s not just the ease of writing programs that guarantees we’ll involved external agents more and more in our lives. It’s also the development of cheap sensors that will become ubiquitous and that will provide raw data for agents to work on. And of course, the availability of Internet access everywhere, all the time, which allows agents to communicate with both the sources of data and the people who want the agents’ output.


Additional new resources (re Bilski and beyond):
A brief explanation of what the free culture movement is and the various factors that led to its fighting to preserve the commons, including corporations and special interests trying to restrict the commons to protect their interests, the development of the open source community, technological developments, such as the Internet and digital copying of media, the developmentof web 2.0 and its philosophies, current state of copyright law and youth culture.


We previously wrote about Rambus in [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13]. It is a perfect example of patent ambush, which got the wrath of the European Commission (the US government seems to have remained indifferent). The impact is massive and the company is now making a move to embargo another company (Nvidia), potentially driving it out of the market (because, to be a tad sarcastic, that's what innovation is all about).

It seems that the negotiations between Rambus and Nvidia over the licence fees for Rambus patents haven't been going too well. Rambus has now filed a complaint against Nvidia at the US International Trade Commission (USITC), asking the USITC to order an import ban for products with Nvidia parts containing memory controllers for SDRAM memory components like DDR, DDR2, DDR3, LPDDR, GDDR, GDDR2 and GDDR3. This probably includes most of Nvidia's graphics chips, mainboard chipsets and notebook chipsets, including those incorporated in the latest Apple notebooks as well as products by Asus, BFG, Biostar, Diablotek, EVGA, Gigabyte, HP, MSI, Palit, Pine and Sparkle, who were all explicitly listed by Rambus.


Europe



Over in Europe, there is a glimmer of hope for the EPO, whose action can save the UK-IPO as well. Glyn Moody wrote about this yesterday.

The UK's Patent Office – which now goes by the awful name of UK Intellectual Property Office, which means it's really the UK Intellectual Monopolies Office – is a curious beast. On the one hand, as its name suggests, it's tied into one of the biggest confidence tricks around, dressing up conceptual mutton as intellectual lamb. On the other, there are odd outbreaks of sanity that suggest someone in there understands some of the deeper issues concerning software patents.

[...]

It's not coincidence that Microsoft still maintains that GNU/Linux infringes on some 200 of its sacred software patents – and yet is strangely coy about naming them, since it doesn't want its bluff called.


Spurred by the EU's response (or lack thereof), here is another little status report about the ACTA, which we mentioned a lot recently [1, 2, 3, 4].

One of the most disgusting displays of an industry crafting laws to benefit their industry in backrooms is the secret negotiations over the ACTA treaty. This is the international agreement on copyright that's basically been written by entertainment industry insiders, and will effectively force governments around the world to change copyright laws in favor of the entertainment industry. Yet, the actual negotiations are being held in secret. When confronted about it, various government negotiators have basically said it has to be secret because that's the way things are done.


Don't forget to tell people about ACTA [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11]. It's about the so-called "copyrights cartel" seeing it as its privilege to take the law into its own hands, backed by corruptible diplomats who harbour secrecy and discourage discussion with the public. These 'elites' want more control and more money. They want to suppress or forbid peer production in an increasingly-digital era. This threatens not only culture, but also the Internet and Free software. The ACTA encompasses many areas.

Comments

Recent Techrights' Posts

More Microsoft-Red Hat Cross-Pollination as the Company Loses a Managing Director
some people move from Microsoft to Red Hat and some do the opposite
Cloudflare Gives Us All Another Reason to Boycott Cloudflare
If Cloudflare wants to use its vast surveillance network (which is what it does as a CDN) to foist paywalls and maybe something worse (like DRM on top), then Cloudflare should be more widely rejected as a company
The Free Software Foundation (FSF) Has Un-cancelled the Best People, Just in Time for the Big 4-0
Mr. Oliva should have been there all along (since 2019)
Most "Modern" Technology Makes You Slower and Dumber
Because proprietary software makes you worse off
"What Comes After Free Software?" Wrongly Insinuates We've Reached the Goal (Prison is Not the Goal)
The oil tycoons use similar tactics against environmentalists, giving them fake "wins"
Making More Work Space
I learned the hard way that less is more in circumstances where more means distraction
MAHA is a Lie, Public Officials Never Valued Citizens' Health (They Still Value Private Businesses, Their Sponsors)
Reject demagogues
 
Science is Under Attack
Oligarchy prefers a dumbed-down population
Someone Expiring Certificates on the Day of the 9/11 Attacks is Not Someone I Would Want Controlling My PC (or Deciding What's Authorised for Booting)
"social justice warriors"
The Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA) Has Reportedly Failed People With Wrong Advice
At the moment the SRA has a PR blunder
The Man Suing Brett Wilson LLP and Gervase de Wilde (5RB)
Now he's probably using the (almost) 200,000 pounds he's supposed to receive to sue Brett Wilson LLP and former colleagues/partners
Slopwatch: A World Wide Web That's Rotting for Companies That Won't Even Exist in a Few Years
some of the junk Google News is promoting
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Tuesday, September 23, 2025
IRC logs for Tuesday, September 23, 2025
Links 24/09/2025: Qt Creator 18 Beta, Microsoft Cannot Bail Out "ChatGPT" Anymore, China and US Intensify Censorship
Links for the day
Gemini Links 24/09/2025: Gemlogs and Politics
Links for the day
Links 23/09/2025: Japan Limits Uses of Skinnerboxes ('Smartphones') With Toxic "Apps", Fentanylware (TikTok) Tapped by "MAGAts"
Links for the day
Brett Wilson LLP Has Just Been Sued (by Their Own Clients!)
Vladimir and Alla Yanpolsky sued Brett Wilson LLP in BL-2025-001167 at the end of last week
The Complaint About Brett Wilson LLP - Part II - UK SLAPPs for Americans, SLAPPs for Profit
Brett Wilson LLP has a track record of this kind
Mayday: Optus emergency calling crisis
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
Links 23/09/2025: Massive Data Breach, Slop Versus Productivity, and Vista 11 Update Breaks Things Again
Links for the day
Code of Censorship
Extortion is peace
Free Software Foundation (FSF) Has a New Press Kit for the Weekend After Next Weekend (40th Anniversary)
miles better than social [sic] media [sic] quips, moderated by narcissists and oil tycoons.
Microsoft Had Two Waves of Mass Layoffs This Month (That We Know of) and It'll Get Worse for Microsoft Soon
Will the axe fall again by month's end?
Gemini Links 23/09/2025: Happy Equinox, Photronic Arts, and Perception Cognition
Links for the day
Lessons We've Learned After 17 Years of American Hosting
GAFAM is "all-in" with the "Trump agenda"
Back to Normal Now, We Plan to Do More In-Depth Series (or Multi-part Stories)
Articles (or series thereof) that contain philosophy are important to us
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Monday, September 22, 2025
IRC logs for Monday, September 22, 2025
Microsoft Media is Panicking Amid Mass Layoffs Every Month, H-1B Fees, and "Seattle’s Tech Scene in Trouble"
In "late stage Microsoft", copyleft becomes proprietary
The Next Wave of IBM/Red Hat Layoffs Being Discussed Already
Red Hat is sort of disappearing the way Tivoli did
New Techrights Turns 2
Today starts the third year of the SSG-based Techrights
What Scares Them the Most is Independent News Sites That They Cannot Control and Censor
Wikileaks was a good example of this
If You Don't Control Your Online Platform, Then Someone Else is Controlling You
be (or become) independent
Oracle Started This Year With Slop. Then It Stopped.
Passing fads are like this
Distros That Run on PCs Made 20 Years Ago and Don't Use Systemd
Betas for now
The Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA) Has a Policy on Racism and Sexism
In then future we'll show the misogyny and racial slurs
The Complaint About Brett Wilson LLP - Part I - Abusing British Women on Behalf of American Men Who Abuse American Women
Transparency is important to us, so we've decided to make this series
Slopwatch: Google News and the Evident Slopfarm Infestation
This is what people get about Linux when they query Google for Linux
Links 22/09/2025: Murdochs Might Join Fentanylware (TikTok) 'Investors' (Masters), United Kingdom Recognises Palestinian Statehood
Links for the day
Gemini Links 22/09/2025: Esperanto Music History and Apps For Android
Links for the day
Links 22/09/2025: More American 'Censorship' (Retaliation for Journalism), Cheeto "Might Be Losing His Race Against Time"
Links for the day
The Blob Slop
Give me more words, give me some text
The 50-Pound Note Experiment and the "War on Cash"
Britain is actually seeing a rebound in cash payments, and it's not a temporary phenomenon
Slopwatch: Blaming the Victims for Microsoft's Failures and Plagiarising Phoronix
That's what Google has been reduced to: slop and slopfarms
Links 22/09/2025: Breaches, Windows TCO, and Arrests
Links for the day
Gemini Links 22/09/2025: Rabbit Hole and DeGoogling Fairphone
Links for the day
Links 22/09/2025: Russian War Planes Invade NATO Airspace While Dihydroxyacetone Man Escalates Attack on Free Speech Because of Critics
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Sunday, September 21, 2025
IRC logs for Sunday, September 21, 2025