Voices Being Hijacked by Patent Lawyers and Proprietary Software Companies

Dr. Roy Schestowitz

2013-01-16 21:35:58 UTC
Modified: 2013-01-16 21:35:58 UTC

Stand with microphone

Summary: A timely reminder of the threat of losing one's voice to one's biggest enemy

Patent parasites, or patent lawyers like Manny W. Schecter, will continue to promote a lot of patents no matter what scholarly work shows. Evidence does not matter to lawyers; to them, "evidence" only counts if it helps their case, i.e. it they can make money from it. They have been stacking many online debates and panels (offline) recently, so they are essentially hijacking the voice of people who actually produce stuff.

"As a patent attorney..."

That is how how Schecter starts his argument as if being a patent lawyer makes him an inventor. Just let lawyers explain to us how science should work and why we should keep lawyers as our middlemen, right? Here is a new group called Application Developers Alliance. Hopefully it will represent developers when it speaks on software patents. To quote the FOSS-hostile SD Times [1, 2, 3, 4, 5] (a misnomer):

It said it plans to host a separate series this year on software patents, as well as additional conferences, summits, workshops, meetups, hackathons and webinars.

Who is funding the group and what policies will it adopt? A new group which calls itself Open Source Software Institute (OSSI) seems to be a front for proprietary software companies (trying to pass themselves off as "open source"), just like other think tanks which are dominated by proprietary software companies and call themselves "open source". Black Duck, proprietary software seller and booster, GPL basher, software patents proponent etc. (created by a Microsoft marketing senior) is openwashing itself again. Need we say a word about Adobe trying to openwash Flash by using Apache as a shell for Flex?

Let's acknowledge that we have got a problem when our voice and identity are lost in the mist. I received a message from the OSI's President about it. I gave him examples yesterday. Unlike "Open Source", there is no central authority to manage views on software patents. We need to be loud, we need to expose those who try to speak 'on our behalf'. ⬆

Recent Techrights' Posts

Slopwatch: The March of Slopfarms, From UbuntuPIT to Linux Journal and to Various Fake Sites Still Promoted by Google News: It's so worrying to see what the Web has become
Links 29/10/2025: CISA, Ukraine, and Amazon Problems: Links for the day
[Teaser] The EPO's Spokesperson, a Cocaine User, Fancies Young Women: How's that for "optics" in the EU and Europe's second-largest institution?
How Will António Campinos Respond to the EPO's 'Cocainegate'?: That's the same thing we saw and still see when the press deals with enablers and partners of Jeffrey Epstein
Join Us Now and Share the News - Part IV: There Cannot be Free Software Without Free Press and Free Information: One day, one can hope, more people will recognise that for Software Freedom we need free press and free thinkers
Join Us Now and Share the News - Part III: Principled Stance Is Never Cheap: Protecting the truth and insisting that the general public is made aware of things that really happened isn't cheap
Join Us Now and Share the News - Part II: Because Scarcity of Accurate Information Breeds Collective Ignorance: we too will strive to share information that's aggressively suppressed
Gemini Links 28/10/2025: More New Arrivals at Geminispace, xkcd on "Document Forgery": Links for the day
Join Us Now and Share the News - Part I: Defence of the Truth: This year we make a very strong, firm statement for truth, even if that means explaining our work to the top media judge in the country
Links 28/10/2025: Meta and Fentanylware (CheeTok) Age-Restricted Down Under, "Britain Needs China’s Money": Links for the day
Links 28/10/2025: Mass Layoffs at Amazon and Charter to Cut 1,200 Jobs: Links for the day
The Cocaine Patent Office - Part II: The Person Who Planted Paid-for Fake News for the European Patent Office (EPO) is a Cocaine User, Friend of António Campinos, Now on Record as Having Been Arrested: Background: High-level manager at the European Patent Office caught in public with cocaine, arrested
Over at Tux Machines...: GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Monday, October 27, 2025: IRC logs for Monday, October 27, 2025
Google News Drowning in Slop (and Slopfarms That Hijack About Half the Results): Google News seems to be drowning in this stuff
Gemini Links 28/10/2025: "How to Maximize Your Positive Impact" and ASCII Art and Artist Attribution: Links for the day
PETA and Activism: Being staff or volunteer in PETA isn't easy
Big Blue, Huge Debt: debt will soar again
Links 27/10/2025: Mass Surveillance Sold as "AI", People Reluctant to Lose Physical Media: Links for the day
Parties and Milestones Again: we've begun putting up about 40 balloons
Techrights' 19th Anniversary: Bronze: Time to go back to preparing for this anniversary
Our Latest European Patent Office (EPO) Series Will Last Several Weeks, Will Ask the EPO Management and the European Union (EU) Very Difficult Questions: If nobody loses a job (or jobs) over this, then the EU basically became no better than Colombia or Nicaragua
Slopwatch: LinuxSecurity, UbuntuPIT, Brian Fagioli, and Google News: We focus on stories that are fake or LLM slop that disguises itself as "news" about Linux
Links 27/10/2025: Wikipedia Vandalism, Bruce Perens Opens up on Childhood: Links for the day
This Site Could Not be Done by LLMs Even If It Wanted to (Because It's Not a Parrot of What Other Sites Say): LLMs have no knowledge or deep understanding
Microsoft is Disloyal Towards Its Most Loyal Employees: Against its most faithful enablers
19 Years, No Censorship: No factual information is ever going to be removed, more so if it is in the public interest
We Are Not a Conventional Site, That's Why They Hate (or Love) Us: Throughout the week this week we'll be focusing on the EPO
Following the Line of Cocaine All the Way to the Top: Even a million denials and spin-doctoring won't distract from the core issue
The Cocaine Patent Office - Part I: António Campinos Brought Corruption and Nepotism to the EPO, Then Came the Cocaine: High-level manager at the European Patent Office (EPO) caught in public with cocaine, the Office has some answering to do
Purchasing/Possessing Computers Isn't the Same as Controlling Computers: Let's strive to put computers back under the control of their users, no matter who purchased these (usually the users)
Gemini Links 27/10/2025: Alhena 5.4.3 and Fixing Bash: Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...: GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Sunday, October 26, 2025: IRC logs for Sunday, October 26, 2025
Thankfully We've Made Copies of More Interesting Data From statCounter: If statCounter (the Web site or the 'webapp') vanished overnight, we'd still have something left of it
More Silent Layoffs at IBM/Red Hat: when the media counts such layoffs or presents tallies the numbers are very incomplete