Bonum Certa Men Certa

In the Age of Trumpism EFF Needs to Repeatedly Remind Director Iancu That He is Not a Judge and He Cannot Ignore the Courts

Trump and Iancu



Summary: The nonchalance and carelessness seen in Iancu's decision to just cherry-pick decisions/outcomes (basically ignoring caselaw) concerns technologists, who rightly view him as a 'mole' of the litigation 'industry' (which he came from)

AS WE have noted many times before, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office's (USPTO) Director Iancu cannot do anything to change courts' decisions unless he attacks judges the way Battistelli did at the European Patent Office (EPO) -- something that he began doing in subtle ways some months back. His agenda was all along very clear to see (no surprise here; Iancu is worse than Ajit Pai and it's not hard to see why he got this job at the USPTO), but the EFF's alarmist headlines did not help. We have confidence that 35 U.S.C. €§ 101 will be upheld by SCOTUS, the Federal Circuit, and the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB), whose inter partes reviews (IPRs) were also upheld as constitutional (as per the US Constitution) less than a year ago. The EPO, by contrast, no longer respects its 'constitution', the EPC. It was in fact promoting software patents in Europe as recently as half a day ago, pretending these patents are "for SMEs" and "medical". This is why EPO abuses have taken priority for coverage here.



"We weren’t always supportive of the EFF’s approach; in fact, we often condemned it as weak and poorly thought out (from a strategic perspective)."The EFF's Alex Moss has just published this blog post to say that the US "Patent Office should instruct its examiners to apply [Alice] as well—not to effectively rewrite its own wishes into the Supreme Court’s decision."

Here's more:

Last month, we asked EFF supporters to help save Alice v. CLS Bank, the 2014 Supreme Court decision that has helped stem the tide of stupid software patents and abusive patent litigation. The Patent Office received hundreds of comments from you, telling it to do the right thing and apply Alice, not narrow it. Thank you.

Last week, EFF submitted its own comments [PDF] to the Patent Office. In our comments, we explain that Patent Office’s new guidance on patent-eligibility will make it harder—if not impossible—for examiners to apply Supreme Court law correctly. If examiners cannot apply Alice to abstract patent applications, more invalid patents will issue. That’s not only bad for innovation, it also violates fundamental principles of divided government. The Supreme Court interprets laws that Congress passes, not executive branch agencies like the Patent Office.

The Patent Office’s new guidance aims to undermine Alice in two ways. First, the Guidance narrows ineligible abstract ideas to only three possibilities: mental processes, mathematical formula, and methods of organizing human activity. No Supreme Court or Federal Circuit has ever said only three categories of abstract ideas exist. In fact, the Supreme Court in Alice went out of its way to explain that it was not going to “labor to delimit the precise contours of the ‘abstract ideas’ category in this case.”

That omission is not incidental. Instead, of defining a precise “abstract idea” category, the Court endorsed an approach that should be familiar to lawyers: figuring out whether the claims in a given case are abstract, by using past cases. That's how the Court determined that the Alice patent—which covered the idea of using a third-party intermediary—was abstract. It was similar to other abstract patents, like one on the idea of hedging risk. Following Alice, courts have repeatedly recognized abstract ideas by comparing them to other abstract ideas. That is the method the Supreme Court has approved, and the Patent Office should instruct its examiners to apply it as well—not to effectively rewrite its own wishes into the Supreme Court’s decision.


Nazer, a colleague of Moss, recently moved to Mozilla and last week or the week before that he published an article at the same site that Mullin, now an EFF employee, used to write for. As we noted yesterday, patent extremists want us to believe that everyone who opposes software patents is just "EFF". We weren't always supportive of the EFF's approach; in fact, we often condemned it as weak and poorly thought out (from a strategic perspective). In recent years, however, the EFF openly condemned and focused on software patents, not just trolls. EFF people have also, in general, been supportive of Techrights. There's a lot in common, except Google money.

Recent Techrights' Posts

Two Risks to Companies: The Microsoft Culture and the Microsoft Tools
Novell was killed by a form of "social engineering" by Microsoft
It's Hard to Trust People Who Worked - Not Only Those Who Still Work - at Microsoft
Bryan Lunduke is just what people would call an "arsehole of a person"
Links 06/07/2025: Climate Change and "The Right to Criticise"
Links for the day
The Mainstream Media Took 4 Days to Realise Microsoft Shut Down Its Operations in Pakistan and Fired Everybody
We estimate that Microsoft has had about 29,000 layoffs since January
“Twibel” Actions Against Comedians (and Why It's a Truly Low Blow)
they try to make up in quantities for a lack of merit or quality
 
[Video] "Copyleft Isn't a Bug."
"Copyleft isn’t a bug. It’s a feature. GNU GPL forced the world to treat code like a public good."
Being in Social Control Media Means Exposing Oneself to Heckling
Richard Stallman does not (either himself or directly) post to any social control media
Links 06/07/2025: Airlines Perils, Scams, and Breaches
Links for the day
For the Second Time, Bryan Lunduke From Microsoft is Siccing Racist Trolls and Vandals at Me
You're only reinforcing the point we made yesterday
Links 06/07/2025: End to End Encryption at Risk, Reuters Twitter ("X") Account Withheld in India
Links for the day
Gemini Links 06/07/2025: Tinylog and Certification Rotation
Links for the day
PCLinuxOS Sites Coming Back, Gradually
let's just be patient
Social Control Media, Even If Based on Free Software, Still Has Many Problems
a distraction from what actually mattered and still matters
IBM is Not Your Master
IBM makes friends with people who exclude the majority of the population: women
Help Fund the Free Software Foundation (FSF)
If you have some dollars to spare, go support the FSF
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Saturday, July 05, 2025
IRC logs for Saturday, July 05, 2025
A Short History of Attacks on Techrights (and Boycott Novell Before That)
good opportunity to tell again the story of several (not all) attempts to silence us
Leadership in Free Software
Don't let IBM lead. It's a terrible flag bearer.
Linux Foundation Apparently Flirting With Slop (Marketing by LLM-Generated SPAM)
The Web is in a really bad state!
COVID-19 Sped Up Site Improvements in Techrights
A few months later we created our very own IRC network
Gemini Links 05/07/2025: Negative Questions and 'Touching Grass' (Going Outside)
Links for the day
Links 05/07/2025: Dalai Lama Succession as 90th Birthday Approaches, 40 deg C in China
Links for the day
Links 05/07/2025: Hungary and US Defecting to Russia, "Google's Hotseat Hypocrisy"
Links for the day
Gemini Links 05/07/2025: 4th of July 2025 and "Zig Roadmap 2026"
Links for the day
How to Combat the Exploitation and Abuse by Microsoft GitHub
Not to mention corruption and crimes against women
Bryan Lunduke is Actually Sending His Audience to Attack People
"[Lunduke] is actually sending his audience to attack people."
Even The Right Wing is Rejecting Bryan Lunduke
no wonder he became so irrelevant and marginal
Microsoft's MSN Helps Microsoft Spread Lies About the Layoffs' Scale (Well Over 25,000 People Laid Off This Year)
There seem to be monopolies on lies and on truth
The Death of X Has Been Greatly Exaggerated (by Compromised Media)
X.Org Server is alive and well
Rewriting Things in Rust
How far would you go?
In 2025 Everything is "AI". Remember Blockchains?
Talk about what companies and things (services, products, software) actually do, not the labels they use
Julian Assange Has Been Free for a Year
Julian Assange and I disagreed on some things
Monopolies and Scalping
Monopolies gravitate towards price hikes
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Friday, July 04, 2025
IRC logs for Friday, July 04, 2025
Microsoft's August Layoffs Wave: "August is Confirmed for Additional Performance Based Cuts"
"August is confirmed for additional performance based cuts from the recent connects along with additional organizational cuts."
What Microsoft Reputation Laundering (With a Weaponised Law Degree) Looks Like in a Foreign Continent
You would expect this in uncivilised and primitive countries
Slopwatch: LLMs 'Write' Fake or Distorted 'News' About "Linux"
LLM slop disguised as news
Links 04/07/2025: Google Replaces the Web With Slop, "AI Might Kill Us All"
Links for the day
Gemini Links 04/07/2025: Mindfulness and F1
Links for the day
Weeks After Microsoft Bankruptcy in Russia the Company Shuts Down in Pakistan, Too
Last month Windows' share in Pakistan fell to an all-time low
Rob Musial's June 2025 Additions of Malware in Proprietary Software
Via the GNU Web site this week
Links 04/07/2025: Microsoft's H-1B Visa Applications Show Another Crisis Unfolding, Many More Deep Cuts and Shutdowns Revealed, Complete Microsoft Exits
Links for the day
Gemini Links 04/07/2025: A Day To Remember and "Stop Killing Games"
Links for the day
Crime and Corruption at Microsoft GitHub Cannot be Covered Up by SLAPPs in Another Continent
We'll write about this for a long time to come
Slop Videos Are Disappointing Garbage, Nothing New, Just Brute Force up on Display or a Pedestal of Slop
Slop videos aren't a new thing
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Thursday, July 03, 2025
IRC logs for Thursday, July 03, 2025
The War on Local Storage (People Hosting Their Files Locally and Privately)
There's nothing wrong with controlling one's computing
What Digital Independence Means
Independence in the digital realms means abandoning platforms like GitHub, not just rejecting proprietary software
NVidia is a Bubble
they temporarily see fortunes and wrongly assume perpetuity thereof
Fedora Does Not Care About Diversity and Inclusion, It's About Optics (Corporate Image)
any notion of inclusion is superficial and misleading
Don't Buy the Excuses for Microsoft's Mass Layoffs
Back in the 90s, Microsoft bought a lot of companies to get and stay ahead