Bonum Certa Men Certa

Misattributed Inventions Cemented Using Patents and Frivolous Litigation

The winning hand



Summary: What happens when notorious charlatans falsely claim to have invented things and then sue large companies or, contrariwise, large companies claim credit for the work of public sector research, ultimately patenting that work

A few days ago the press made it known that Shiva Ayyadurai, who falsely claims to have invented E-mail (right after the real inventor of E-mail died), continues to SLAPP people who say the truth. I should know because he threatened me too (threatening legal letters) and he's one of those people who would conflate trademarks with patents to rewrite history.

"Sadly, a long time ago the patent system departed from this original purpose (short-term monopoly in exchange for publication rather than secrecy)..."We are not against patents; we believe that they help manage attributions w.r.t. contributions to science and they help document useful ideas (the good patents anyway, not the many bogus ones). Sadly, a long time ago the patent system departed from this original purpose (short-term monopoly in exchange for publication rather than secrecy) and now we have another charlatan -- a worse one than Ayyadurai -- suing all sorts of people and firms (even more than Ayyadurai does). Raniere (a charlatan and troll) we last wrote about just a few months ago and Joe Mullin, who joined the EFF earlier this year, wrote about the patent of Raniere, calling it "Stupid Patent of the Month" [1, 2]. TechDirt, which is the main target of Ayyadurai's SLAPP campaign, published a copy of the EFF's article:

In April, Mexican federal police arrested Keith Raniere, taking him from the $10,000-per-week villa where he was staying and extraditing him to New York. According to the NY Daily News, Raniere, leader of self-help group NXIVM (pronounced “nexium”), is now being held without bail while he awaits trial on sex-trafficking charges. Through NXIVM, he preached “empowerment,” but critics say the group was a cult, and engaged in extreme behavior, including branding some women with an iron.

This was not the first controversial program Raniere was involved in. In 1992, Raniere ran a multilevel marketing program called “Consumer Buyline,” which was described as an “illegal pyramid,” by the Arkansas Attorney General’s office. More recently, he has collected more than two dozen patents from the U.S. Patent Office, and has more applications pending—including this one, which is for a method of determining “whether a Luciferian can be rehabilitated.”


So Raniere is basically a fraud, his patent is a joke, and even though he's suing a company we strongly dislike we hope that he loses badly and goes bankrupt (eventually). These people are just very major parasites and the only way to stop their bad behaviour is cause them to go bankrupt or go to a mental asylum.

"So Raniere is basically a fraud, his patent is a joke, and even though he's suing a company we strongly dislike we hope that he loses badly and goes bankrupt (eventually)."Asymmetric numeral system (ANS) is an example of a large company doing the opposite thing, namely claiming credit for the work of low-profile researchers. This was revisited recently [1, 2] in light of Google's persistence and insistence. As Google is the "devil" in Watchtroll (for various misguided reasons) they too caught up with this story. This is what they wrote:

Last June, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office published U.S. Patent Application No. 20170164007, titled Mixed Boolean-Token ANS Coefficient Coding. Originally filed by Google with the USPTO in December 2016, the patent application claims a method for decoding an encoded bitstream using a computing device, the bitstream including frames having blocks of pixels, which involves the use of an entropy decoder state machine including a Boolean asymmetric numeral system (ANS) decoder and a symbol ANS decoder. The claimed invention is intended to improve the transmission of digital video streams with the use of the entropy decoder to reduce the amount of data involved in the transmission of digital streams.


This time we agree with Watchtroll (that what Google does it absolutely not OK and should be widely condemned); it's not often that we agree with Watchtroll. Usually it's just a load of nonsense, spin and yesterday Watchtroll was trying to sells services.

Techrights has a long tradition calling out charlatans and liars. All they ever do is threaten their critics because the risk of being publicly exposed as frauds is high and rather costly.

Recent Techrights' Posts

New XBox Leaks Probably Serve to Confirm XBox's Collapse (Many More Layoffs)
It's very much consistent with what many other sites have reported lately
 
Noteworthy Claim That IBM is Firing a Lot of Lawyers This Week (RAs in the Legal Department)
A lot of what they do is patent 'trolling' or lawyering up against their own staff (e.g. HR disputes)
Links 10/10/2025: US Judge Bars Attacks by ICE On Journalists and Protesters; “We Took The Freedom of Speech Away” Says the President
Links for the day
Slopwatch: Serial Sloppers, Google News Gifting Slopfarms, and Fake News/Plagiarism About "Linux"
Google itself is a slop pusher these days
Qualcomm, the New Owner of Arduino, Blasted for Its Software Patents Tax on 'Smartphones'
A lot of Qualcomm's patents are on software. We wrote about this in prior years.
XBox Layoffs Rumours, Downtime, and Criticism From XBox Co-Founder
"everyone is ditching the xbox."
Links 10/10/2025: Honoring The Legacy Of Robert Murray-Smith, Many Articles on the Hey Hi (AI) Bubble
Links for the day
Gemini Links 09/10/2025: October Gothic and Reading Middle Earth Role Playing; C and Ada
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Thursday, October 09, 2025
IRC logs for Thursday, October 09, 2025
Links 09/10/2025: Farewell to Jane Goodall, California Bans Algorithmic Price-Fixing
Links for the day
Gemini Links 09/10/2025: Lost Wages and a Saga Of Continuing To Use Palm PDAs
Links for the day
Richard Stallman's Talk in Helsinki is Done. Tomorrow Göteborg.
There are scarce details in Finnish about Dr. Stallman's talk
The Slop Song
The train wreck marches on
LLM Slop/Advanced Plagiarism Flooding the Zone With Capital That Does Not Exist
Many publishers out there still participate in this bubble instead of calling it what it is
Links 09/10/2025: Sacked Microsoft Workers Make "Sackbird", IBM Taps CockroachDB for PostgreSQL
Links for the day
"Happy Hacking Day" Richard Stallman Talk This Afternoon (From 14:00 to 16:00) at Haaga-Helia University in Pasila
Richard Stallman in Helsinki, Finland
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Wednesday, October 08, 2025
IRC logs for Wednesday, October 08, 2025
Links 09/10/2025: Impact of Microsoft Layoffs, More Data Breaches
Links for the day
Gemini Links 09/10/2025: Autumn Blues and C IRC Bot
Links for the day
Slopwatch Appreciated by Real Authors of GNU/Linux Articles
We do try to keep on top of those things
Upgraded R.R.R.R.R.R. Today
The Web of 2025 is full of garbage, not limited to slopfarms
Freedom From Proprietary Prisons
Forking always an option
IBM's Watson Died in 1956, Now Watson Dies Again
IBM is becoming just a reseller of GAFAM and other stuff
Slopwatch: LinuxSecurity, UbuntuPIT, and Google News
We've also just noticed more slop from UbuntuPIT
Microsoft Says That Constant Mass Layoffs Are Success, the Media Isn't Buying This Microsoft Narrative Anymore
If people in the media feel an obligation to repeat whatever lies Microsoft tells, what point will there be to the media?
Links 08/10/2025: "Mali Puts Free Speech on Trial" And Apple Enforces Dictatorship
Links for the day
Links 08/10/2025: ‘Death to Spotify’ and Law to Ban Loud Commercials on Streaming (Dis)Services
Links for the day
Links 08/10/2025: Real Innovation and Nina.chat is Dead
Links for the day
Links 08/10/2025: Y2K38 Bug is a Vulnerability, Chat Control in Europe a Threat
Links for the day
Microsoft Windows is No Longer an Operating System, It's Surveillance Project
Why is this even legal to preload on PCs outside the US?
How and Why Once-Legitimate Sites Turn Into Slopfarms
Many sites will go offline and many social control networks will shut down once they realise or even openly admit they spend money and time gardening a bunch of bots and slop
UbuntuPIT Became a Slopfarm and Gnoppix Tarnishes Its Own Brand With Slop
It fits all the characteristics of mildly-edited (if at all) slop
Slopwatch: Linux Journal and Other Slopfarms
GAFAM needs to go the way of the dodo
Gemini Links 08/10/2025: "Seek Seek Revolution" and Gradient Backgrounds
Links for the day
Qualcomm Arduino Takes Aim at Raspberry Pi
Qualcomm is a Microsoft partner
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Tuesday, October 07, 2025
IRC logs for Tuesday, October 07, 2025
Stagnation of the Economy and What Free Software Can (or Could) Do For It
If your economic model is based on a pyramid of lies, it won't last very long
Social Control Media is Sinking
it would rightly seem like the era of centralised "social" sites (they're not social, they're about controlling the users) is ending, not overnight but gradually