Bonum Certa Men Certa

No Genuine Debates About Real Patent Reform, Just Covert Patent Expansion

Stuck in status quo

Jar on fence



Summary: The USPTO shows no real signs of changing; news still focused on the wrong questions; US-style patent system expands to other countries

THE USPTO has had a rigged debate going on to save face and Obama showed disinterest in new types of attitudes, so ignore his empty promises which the media continues to cover. Here is what the US president says:



Obama says patent reform needs to go farther



President Barack Obama, in an unusual foray into patent law, on Thursday said U.S. patent reform needs to go farther to address the trend of companies that do not manufacture any products aggressively suing other companies for patent infringement.


Notice how the 'pro-reform' people are for "limiting" patents, not eliminating them. So "if we have software patents, they should be limited to the actual algorithm disclosed by patentee," says this one person. It is similar to copyright then, patents are an overkill.

The debate has been rigged for a while now because lawyers easily outnumber developers in them.

Here is what one site said about the roundtable:

There are speakers on both sides of the software patent divide. Notable pro-reform speakers include Mark Lemley (Stanford), Colleen Chien (Santa Clara), Julie Samuels (EFF), Jon Potter (Application Developers Alliance) and Edward Goodmann (Hattery Labs).


Note that the lawyers at the USPTO call it "Software Partnership" and the introduction is rigged by design. It says:

The United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) is forming a partnership with the software community to enhance the quality of software-related patents (Software Partnership). The Software Partnership will be an opportunity to bring stakeholders together through a series of roundtable discussions to share ideas, feedback, experiences, and insights on software-related patents.


The USPTO matters to everyone due to globalisation and its practices are spreading to New Zealand more quickly than one may realise. Here is some news from this island:

A long-running court action touching on copyright law’s provisions on “reverse engineering” of computer software has resulted in a victory for Fisher & Paykel Finance, the company accused of copyright and trade-secrets breach. The software provider, Californian company Karum, has, however appealed Justice Rodney Hansen’s decision.


The EU too is affected (same trend as such) and Simon Phipps, the British president of the OSI, continues to worry about the unitary patent when he writes:

Our leaders would have us believe the Unitary Patent is good for small business. But there seems to be a fatal flaw.


Phipps does a good job busting the myths, saying that a "small British company could find itself subject to court cases it can't understand in countries it can't afford to defend itself. Any patent holder in any one of the 27 EU countries can go to a local court and get a judgment in any one of the 23 official languages. Once Cable signs this agreement, the UK government agrees a judgment like this is enforceable against any UK business."

Trolls must love this.

Recent Techrights' Posts

SoylentNews Grows Up, Registers as a Business, Site Traffic Reportedly Grows
More people realise that social control media may in fact be a passing fad
 
Garden Season Starts Today
Outdoor time, officially...
More Information About Public Talks That Richard Stallman Gave This Week in Europe
Two talks in Switzerland
Engadget is Still a Spamfarm, It's Just an Amazon Catalogue (SPAM/SEO), a Sea of Junk Disguised as "Articles" With Few 'Fillers' (Real Articles) in Between
Engadget writes for bots now, not for humans
Richard Stallman's Talks in Switzerland This Week
We need to put an end to 'cancer culture'; it's trying to kill people and it is even swatting people
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Thursday, March 28, 2024
IRC logs for Thursday, March 28, 2024
[Meme] EPO's New Ways of Working (NWoW), a.k.a. You Don't Even Get a Desk at Work and Cannot be Near Known Colleagues
Seems more like union-busting (divide and rule)
Hiding Microsoft's Culpability in Security Breaches and Other Major Blunders (in the United Kingdom, This May Mean You Can't Get Food)
Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) is vast
Giving back to the community
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
Links 28/03/2024: Sega, Nintendo, and Bell Layoffs
Links for the day
Open letter to the ACM regarding Codes of Conduct impersonating the Code of Ethics
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
With 9 Mentions of Azure In Its Latest Blog Post, Canonical is Again Promoting Microsoft and Intel Vendor Lock-in, Surveillance, Back Doors, Considerable Power Waste, and Defects That Cannot be Fixed
Microsoft did not even have to buy Canonical (for Canonical to act like it happened)
Links 28/03/2024: GAFAM Replacing Full-Time Workers With Interns Now
Links for the day
Consent & Debian's illegitimate constitution
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
The Time Our Server Host Died in a Car Accident
If Debian has internal problems, then they need to be illuminated and then tackled, at the very least in order to ensure we do not end up with "Deadian"
China's New 'IT' Rules Are a Massive Headache for Microsoft
On the issue of China we're neutral except when it comes to human rights issues
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Wednesday, March 27, 2024
IRC logs for Wednesday, March 27, 2024
WeMakeFedora.org: harassment decision, victory for volunteers and Fedora Foundations
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
Links 27/03/2024: Terrorism Grows in Africa, Unemployment in Finland Rose Sharply in a Year, Chinese Aggression Escalates
Links for the day
Links 27/03/2024: Ericsson and Tencent Layoffs
Links for the day
Amid Online Reports of XBox Sales Collapsing, Mass Layoffs in More Teams, and Windows Making Things Worse (Admission of Losses, Rumours About XBox Canceled as a Hardware Unit)...
Windows has loads of issues, also as a gaming platform
Links 27/03/2024: BBC Resorts to CG Cruft, Akamai Blocking Blunders in Piracy Shield
Links for the day
Android Approaches 90% of the Operating Systems Market in Chad (Windows Down From 99.5% 15 Years Ago to Just 2.5% Right Now)
Windows is down to about 2% on the Web-connected client side as measured by statCounter
Sainsbury's: Let Them Eat Yoghurts (and Microsoft Downtimes When They Need Proper Food)
a social control media 'scandal' this week
IRC Proceedings: Tuesday, March 26, 2024
IRC logs for Tuesday, March 26, 2024
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
Windows/Client at Microsoft Falling Sharply (Well Over 10% Decline Every Quarter), So For His Next Trick the Ponzi in Chief Merges Units, Spices Everything Up With "AI"
Hiding the steep decline of Windows/Client at Microsoft?
Free technology in housing and construction
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
We Need Open Standards With Free Software Implementations, Not "Interoperability" Alone
Sadly we're confronting misguided managers and a bunch of clowns trying to herd us all - sometimes without consent - into "clown computing"
Microsoft's Collapse in the Web Server Space Continued This Month
Microsoft is the "2%", just like Windows in some countries