Bonum Certa Men Certa

Patent Lawyers and Their Firms, Still Desperate to Protect the Status Quo, Manipulate the Media

"It may well be that between press and officials there is an inherent built in conflict of interest." -- General C. Westmoreland in Defence and the Media in Time of Limited War, Routledge, 13 September 2013, p. 64.

Summary: Patent lawyers are besieged by gradual tightening of patent scope and recklessly fight back (e.g. by saturating the media) to secure their revenue sources, derived from (and at the expense of) actual scientists and true market producers

THE USPTO's assignment/assessment guidelines (examination instructions for the process by which to rank patent applications for novelty), as well as court rulings, citing SCOTUS regarding Alice, have both diminished and almost eliminated the perceived value of software patents. This reduces the number of patents obtained and number of patents that are brought before a judge in a courtroom, especially where these patents pertain to software. Patent lawyers are 'politely' furious and they try to dominate the media with their 'damage control', which means misleading statements, misdirection, cherry-picking (bias/lies by omission), and so forth. We gave a lot of examples before. It's getting rather crass.



"Either Quinn has poor reading comprehension skills or he simply does not want to understand (because he is essentially paid not to understand)."The other day we saw Colleen Chien calling for an "open" patent system. "One year ago," wrote Chien about Tesla's openwashing (like Panasonic's), "Elon Musk announced that Tesla would dismantle barriers to the use of its technology by “open sourcing” its patents and making them available for all acting in good faith to use. Because patents are usually used to close, not open, doors to competitors, the move created confusion and criticism."

There is criticism indeed, but from who? Here is the patents maximalist Gene Quinn (loud proponent of software patents) slamming Chien's analysis, lumping it together with what he calls "a lot of disingenuous articles about the U.S. patent system" and calling it "misleading".

"The premise of the article," he says, "is that it is time to open the patent system. Specifically what that means, and to what end that would be useful, is unclear and frankly unexplained."

Either Quinn has poor reading comprehension skills or he simply does not want to understand (because he is essentially paid not to understand). What Chien suggests is a sort of retreat to the the original raison d'être of patents -- where publication (e.g. attribution) rather than litigation is the core goal. Quinn, a supporter of all sorts of crazy patents and even parasitical elements like trolls, surely won't like that. Another post from Quinn's site (but not composed by Quinn himself) dares to acknowledge what he very much feared right after Alice had been ruled at SCOTUS one year ago:

...Alice issued a year ago which opened the door to invalidating software patents on the basis that they simply implement “abstract ideas”...


Yes, that's great news. Sadly, however, the media hardly covers that. The corporate/financial media keeps glorifying patents as though they're national trophies whose raw count is proportional to innovation and so-called 'articles' from Fox Rothschild LLP, Baker Botts LLP, Bradley Arant Boult Cummings LLP, and spokespeople for conservative lobbyists/think tanks like Cato and Heritage try hard to crush real patent reforms. They want to preserve the status quo. The grossest headline came from Bradley Arant Boult Cummings LLP (all of these LLPs are patent lawyers in case that's not obvious), which says "Innovators Beware! Patent Reform Creates The New "Anti-Patent" Troll" (not calling "trolls" those who antagonise patent trolls but rather referring to those who extort companies using invalidation of patents, i.e. not really trolls at all!). Here is the core of the nonsense, which essentially redefines patent trolls: "Unlike other species of patent troll, the Wall Street troll seeks to destroy the target company. Many companies, especially small drug companies, could potentially lose 100 percent of their value if they lose the patents for their core technologies. This creates a situation that is very lucrative for the Wall Street troll, because if the company’s stock loses all of its value the troll makes a windfall." Well, any company whose entire value depends on a patent probably does not deserve to be in business. Patents as a tool of artificial price hikes don't serve society, especially where medicine is concerned. This is where patents become tools of artificial scarcity. It is unethical and we wrote many articles to explain why. There are still valid business models that don't depend on patents, in the same way that software which is free to distribute still brings income (Red Hat, for instance, has billions in revenue each year).

"Patents and patent lawyers are needed for innovation to the same degree that billionaires are "job creators" who create a "trickle-down effect" (they typically just loot and hoard)."The media these days is absolutely stuffed with patent lawyers, appearing everywhere the subject is discussed, parroting -- completely unchallenged -- claims about "innovation", "inventors" and scaring us about China (the same excuse/straw man used by TPP proponents). Patents and patent lawyers are needed for innovation to the same degree that billionaires are "job creators" who create a "trickle-down effect" (they typically just loot and hoard).

Recent Techrights' Posts

Advocacy of Software Freedom Changed, LUGs Became Less Relevant
The way we see it, support groups like LUGs sort of outlived their usefulness when it became easier to install GNU/Linux
For the Second Time in a Few Weeks Microsoft Lunduke Makes False Accusations Against Senior Red Hat Staff to Incite a Despicable 'Troll Army'
Nothing that Microsoft Lunduke claims or says can be trusted
Compromised by NVIDIA Proprietary Library
Meanwhile in Boston there are "[r]oundtable talk with FSF volunteers (both in-person and online)"
How Software Patents Were Viewed or Their General Status Changed Over Time
A rough summary
 
Watch the FSF Party Live (via Livestream)
It's in WebM format, which is widely supported by now
When Microsoft "Integrates" Something With "AI" It Means It's Losing Money and Is Generally Hopeless
how did Bing fare after 36 months of LLM slop being hyped up as "replacement" for search?
Most Certificates Don't Improve Security, They Mostly Increase Downtime (for No Good Reason)
The 'Gemini sites' (capsules) are a growing force
The statCounter Site Has Data Integrity Problems
Maybe we'll get back to statCounter when its data becomes more "stable" again
10 Ways to Combat Software Patents
software patents are loathed also by proprietary software developers
"Just a Little Bit of Meat..."
Free software "absolutism" is not a radical stance, more so if the only "radical" belief the user possesses is that he or she must be in control of his or her software, and by extension his or her computer
Red Hat is Ignoring the Free Software Community, It's a "Fortune 1000" Vendor
Red Hat's blog also participates a lot in promoting of Wall Street's latest pump-and-dump "AI" scheme
Free Software Foundation Party Has Begun
We shall be focusing a lot on software patents today
Former Head of the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) Lina Khan Knows Whatever Microsoft Touches Will Die
Just like Skype (as recently as months ago) [...] When Microsoft grabs things, or when it buys things, it almost never ends well
Slopwatch: Fake Articles About LibreOffice in Austria and Wine 10.16
very short
Links 04/10/2025: "attempted Coup" Noted in Facebook, Russia Kills Journalists via Drones
Links for the day
Gemini Links 04/10/2025: Anesthesia and Baudpunk
Links for the day
Links 04/10/2025: "Privacy Harm Is Harm", Criticism Outlawed in US
Links for the day
Garmin Uses Linux for Some of the Garmin Products, Now It's Sued by Strava Using Software Patents
Software patents should never have been granted in the first place
Richard Stallman Will Give a Talk in Sweden in 6 Days
Dr. Stallman, despite his battle with cancer is still alive and mentally sharp
FSF Turns 40
We'll be focusing on patent-related topics this weekend
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Friday, October 03, 2025
IRC logs for Friday, October 03, 2025
Gemini Links 04/10/2025: Distro Hopping and "Part Time"
Links for the day
We Are Turning 19 in One Month, FSF Turns 40 in 3 Hours (CET)
For our anniversary next month we still have no concrete plans
Patent Docs (or PatentDocs) Learned the Wrong Lessons From the Death of TypePad
Had they gone ahead with an SSG, they'd become a lot more future-proof
USPTO Patent Bubble Already Imploding, After Decades of Artificial Inflation, Entire Offices Close for Good
we can deduce that financial pressures (lack of "demand" for monopolies) play a role
TikTok is Not Harmless (Being CheeTok in the US Will Advance Orange Agenda)
Social control media isn't "fun and games"; it's a digital weapon that lets hostile groups or nations infiltrate others, then turn them against themselves
Andy Farnell and Helen Plews Explain What "Modern" Tech Does to Old People
Imposing terrible tech "religion" on people is not helping them
Tomorrow the Free Software Foundation (FSF) Turns 40 and Its Web Site is Still Slow Due to DDoS by LLM Slop Bots
For an advocacy group, uptime is important (for its message to remain accessible)
Slopwatch: Google News as a Firehose of LLM Slop About "Linux"
Google News is really bad
Datamation, Where I Used to Publish Articles, Appears to Have Been Sold to TechnologyAdvice Only to Become a Slopfarm
I'd prefer to not associate with that site anymore
Links 03/10/2025: "NPR’s Economics Lessons Come With Neoliberal Spin" and Canada Post at Risk
Links for the day
Gemini Links 03/10/2025: Panic Attacks and Food Adulteration
Links for the day
Links 03/10/2025: Lawyers Caught Using LLM Slop Explain Why They Did It, LibreSSL 4.1.1 and 4.0.1 Released
Links for the day
FSF Board Grew 50% Since Last Year, Has New President, Turns 40 in Two Days
It's a good move for the FSF and - by extension - for software freedom
Links 03/10/2025: Conflicts, Death of TypePad, and TikTok/CheeTok Gives a Boost to Far Right Groups in Europe
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Thursday, October 02, 2025
IRC logs for Thursday, October 02, 2025
Slopwatch: Linux Journal, Google News, and LinuxSecurity
They carry on polluting the Web with fake articles
Gemini Links 02/10/2025: Kubernetes With FreeBSD and robots.txt
Links for the day
Links 02/10/2025: 'Open' 'AI' Resorting to Gimmicks and Fake Funding, Europe’s ‘Drone Wall’ Discussed
Links for the day
Links 02/10/2025: Brave Passes 100M Users Milestone, Kodak Selling Its Own Film Again
Links for the day
Michael “Monty” Widenius: It Started in 1983 With Richard Stallman (RMS)
The other co-founder of MySQL is a bit notorious for confronting RMS rather viciously
su lisa && rm -rf /home/ibm/power
Novell was ruined by another person from IBM, Ronald Hovsepian
A Record Demand at Microsoft: Demand to Cancel
What we're witnessing is a very ungraceful destruction of XBox
Microsoft is Losing Europe
Hence all the "support" and "discount" offers that are limited to Europe
The Free Software Foundation Starts Fund-raising for 40th Anniversary
New pop-up 2-3 days ahead of the 40th anniversary event
Systemd Breaks Networking in Debian and Microsoft Staff Rushes to Make Face-Saving Excuses in LWN
Microsoft's bluca is already there in the comments, his Microsoft money pays for LWN to let him leave comments early
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Wednesday, October 01, 2025
IRC logs for Wednesday, October 01, 2025
What the End of XBox Will Look Like: a Fiery Crash
XBox is the next Skype. It won't last much longer. Expect many more layoffs.
Richard Stallman is Going to Finland to Give a Talk Next Thursday
A day later he speaks in Sweden
Gemini Links 02/10/2025: SMTP Pipelining and End of ROOPHLOCH 2025
Links for the day