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Links 24/8/2021: Escuelas Linux 7.1 and Clonezilla Live 2.7.3



  • GNU/Linux

    • Audiocasts/Shows

      • WOW! Borderlands 3 with AMD FSR on Linux - Invidious

        I've gone down the AMD FSR rabbit hole, and I am a happy Linux gamer! Before I kick off the FSR deep dive and guide, here's a look at how it makes a meaningful difference on 2 different PCs!

      • Enterprise Linux Security – Episode 02: Attack Vectors - Invidious

        Regardless of your role in your company, understanding the various types of attack vectors is extremely important. In this episode of Enterprise Linux Security, Jay and Joao discuss the most common attack vectors that are used today, which will set the foundation for future episodes.

      • Debian 11 Quick overview #Shorts - Invidious

        The Debian Project is an association of individuals who have made common cause to create a free operating system. This operating system is called Debian. Debian systems currently use the Linux kernel. Linux is a completely free piece of software started by Linus Torvalds and supported by thousands of programmers worldwide. Of course, the thing that people want is application software: programs to help them get what they want to do done, from editing documents to running a business to playing games to writing more software. Debian comes with over 50,000 packages (precompiled software that is bundled up in a nice format for easy installation on your machine) - all of it free. It's a bit like a tower. At the base is the kernel. On top of that are all the basic tools. Next is all the software that you run on the computer. At the top of the tower is Debian -- carefully organizing and fitting everything so it all works together.

    • Kernel Space

      • Linux turns 30 [Ed: GNU/Linux is nearly 38; at least this article mentions the GPL, GNU and Stallman]

        Something happened back in 1991 that dramatically changed the future of computing. Linus Torvalds, a Finnish-American software engineer, released the Linux kernel and the second version of the GNU General Public License (GPLv2). A good portion of the technology we use today would not be what it is had this not happened.

        It all started on August 25th of that year when Torvalds announced in a usenet post that he was working on a free OS and that it would be ready within a few months. He also said it "won't be big and professional like gnu," but that wasn't exactly how things turned out!

    • Applications

      • Psst – New Native Spotify App for Linux, Built in Rust & GTK

        For those don’t like Electron apps, ‘Psst’ is a new GTK client for the Spotify music service.

        Since the official Spotify app for Linux is a web app running via Chromium engine, native Linux apps may be preferred. And ‘Psst’ is a free open-source app written in Rust programming language with GTK framework for user interface. Besides Linux, it also works on Windows and macOS.

    • Instructionals/Technical

      • How To Install Parallels Plesk Panel on CentOS & RHEL 8 - Unixcop

        Plesk Panel is a commercial web hosting and server data center automation software. In this article, you will learn how to install Plesk Obsidian on CentOS / RHEL 8.

        It’s a centralized Control Panel.

        You can build and manage multiple sites from a single dashboard. You can also run updates, monitor performance and onboard new prospects all from the same place.

      • How to set up and use the Fragments BitTorrent Client on Linux

        Are you looking for an easy-to-use, beautiful BitTorrent client for the Gnome desktop? Check out Fragments! It’s a simple, useful GTK3-based torrent client for Gnome. Here’s how to set it up on your system.

        Notice: AddictiveTips in no way condones the download of illegal content with the Fragment torrent client. Only use this program to download legal files, such as Linux distribution or other open-source software apps.

      • How to Instantly Log Out of Ubuntu From a Terminal - OMG! Ubuntu!

        There are a several ways to log out of an Ubuntu desktop session you’re using, but most are so obvious you don’t need a guide that points them out to you!

        But what you may not know is how to logout of Ubuntu from a terminal (or log out of GNOME on any Linux distro that uses it).

        I didn’t until around a minute ago.

      • How to install and use Backports in Debian 11 Bullseye - Linux Shout

        The applications installed in the stable version of Debian don’t get new version updates immediately to maintain the high stability of the system. However, that is not the case with the security updates maintained by the Debian security team. So, what to do to get the new features for installed software because it is not possible for us to compile each software manually to achieve its latest version. This is exactly where the backports come into play.

      • Deploy this powerful open-source invoicing system to your data center - TechRepublic

        Recently, I realized I was having to work too hard to invoice all of my various clients. I'd been using the same old spreadsheets for years, but it was getting a bit too cumbersome to deal with. I could have turned to a commercial platform for this, but given open-source was my jam, I figured it would be even better to find a solid solution for my on-premise virtual data center. Turns out, there's a rock-solid tool, called Invoice Plane, that's just the ticket.

        Invoice Plane includes the necessary features for you to manage invoices, such as easy invoicing, customer management, payment tracking and quotations. It might not have all of the bells and whistles associated with larger, commercial tools, but of the open-source options I've found, this is (by far) the best.

      • OpenGL Error After Upgrade on Ubuntu, Game on Steam Won't Run! - Fosslicious

        This happened when I finished upgrading Ubuntu 20.04. On the list of updates, there is an update of Mesa to the version provided in the Ubuntu repositories. However, after the upgrade, All games running on Wine and Proton can't open properly. When opening game with Wine via terminal, there is information: X Error of failed request: GLXBadFBConfig. So, the problem is that all games can't run on Wine and Proton.

        I tried searching the forums and saw some Ubuntu users' posts with the same problem. However, none of them could solve this problem on my computer. This makes me frustrated and regrets why I have to upgrade Mesa, if the package will error on my laptop.

      • Connecting a Wireless Adapter To Kali Linux Virtual Machine

        In “Network hacking,” most people get confused when talking about Network adapters and Network cards.

        Most don’t know what they are, why we need them, and how to select the best adapter since we have so many brands and models available in the market.

        A wireless adapter is a device that you connect to your computer via the USB port, and it allows you to connect to WiFi networks and communicate with other devices on the network.

    • Desktop Environments/WMs

      • K Desktop Environment/KDE SC/Qt

        • Ezike Ebuka: Week 10 11 kdesoc

          As the end of google summer of code draws near most of the time is used to write test, fix bugs and possibly add new printers.

          For classes that works with OS paths, i had to make the path consisistent between operating systems see the commit below.

      • GNOME Desktop/GTK

        • HighContrast Variants For Adwaita-Qt

          In the past we used to have a completely different project to cover HighContrast variants of GTK Adwaita theme. This was all implemented as Highcontrast-qt, a project nobody has touched for 6 years. You can imagine how it looks like these days when you compare it to what we have now. I think even GTK variant of HighContrast was a completely separate theme back then, while today days it’s just Adwaita with a different set of colors.

          Since GTK made the new HighContrast theme with just few modifications to the original Adwaita theme, I decided to use same approach and have Adwaita-qt to provide all four variants as well (Adwaita, Adwaita-dark, HighContrast and HighContrastInverse). While this looks like a simple thing to do, as you just need to add additional color palette, it was a pain to do it in Adwaita-qt. The reason is that Adwaita-qt is full of hardcoded color definitions, where all of them were randomly taken from GTK Adwaita stylesheets. Everytime something changed in GTK Adwaita, we would have to manually pick the change and replace the changed color value on our side. This was not really sustainable, especially when I wanted to have four different variants.

        • No place like GNOME: 41 is in beta, features frozen for forthcoming release

          he next release of the GNOME desktop, version 41, is now in beta and its features and API are frozen.

          GNOME 40 was released in March and, despite the huge leap in version number, was not intended to radically different from the 3.x line in the same way as GNOME 2 and 3 were. "Radical technological and design changes are too disruptive for maintainers, users, and developers," said Emmanuele Bassi from the GNOME Team.

          He expressed the view that 4.0 would be perceived as more different than 40, which was intended to express merely that this was roughly the 40th release of GNOME (actually the 41st according to Bassi).

          Version 40 did, nevertheless, introduce quite a few changes to app-launching and navigation, as well as for the core apps. There is also an associated update of GTK (GNOME Toolkit) to version 4.x and the combination justified some caution before moving, such as from Canonical developer Sebastien Bacher who declared in January that "there are quite some moving parts in GNOME 40," considering both the new shell design and GTK4, concluding that Ubuntu would stick to GTK3 and GNOME 3.38 for version 21.04.

    • Distributions

      • Educational Distro Escuelas Linux 7.1 Comes with Linux Kernel 5.11, Updated Apps

        Escuelas Linux 7.1 comes only one and a half months after the major Escuelas Linux 7.0 release and introduces a newer kernel, Linux 5.11, from the upcoming Ubuntu 20.04.3 LTS (Focal Fossa) point release. Of course, Escuelas Linux 7.1 is still derived from Bodhi Linux 6.0 and uses the latest Moksha (version 0.3.3-13) graphical desktop environment.

        Updated educational apps in Escuelas Linux 7.1 include Blender 2.93.3 3D modeling software, eXe Learning 2.6 software for creating educational interactive web content, GeoGebra 5.0.650 interactive geometry, algebra, statistics and calculus application, Inkscape 1.1.1 vector graphics editor, LiveCode 9.6.3 and Scratch Desktop 3.25 IDEs, LibreOffice 7.2 office suite, and Veyon 4.5.6 computer monitoring and classroom management tool.

      • New Releases

        • Clonezilla Live 2.7.3 Disk Cloning/Imaging Tool Released with Various Improvements

          Coming almost three months after Clonezilla Live 2.7.2, the Clonezilla Live 2.7.3 release is here with an up-to-date package base that was synced with the Debian Sid (Unstable) software repository as of August 17th, 2021, an a newer kernel based on Linux 5.10.46 LTS.

          Clonezilla Live 2.7.3 is not a major release, but it includes some important improvements to make your disk cloning/imaging experience better. For example, it introduces a mechanism in the ocs-clean-disk-part-fs (formerly ocs-clean-part-fs) tool to clean the RAID metadata in disk, a new program to expand LVM (Logical Volume Manager) called ocs-expand-lvm, as well as support for mounting BitLocker (Windows 10) devices as image repositories.

      • Screenshots/Screencasts

      • SUSE/OpenSUSE

        • Wayland Display Server on openSUSE Tumbleweed in 2021

          I became aware of the Wayland Display Server project in 2012 when I was playing with using DisplayLink on openSUSE. I was told that when Wayland is released, it would fix my woes. Nine years later, it was time to give Wayland an honest go with openSUSE again. The impetus behind it was curiosity since it is in the news a lot and I have heard so many good things about it.

          Making the switch on openSUSE running KDE Plasma was as easy as selecting a drop down on the login screen and using the “Wayland” session instead of the X11 session. For the most part, the experience looked the same to my non-picky eyes. Though, I can say, there was something subtly smoother about the interface. Making sure I wasn’t crazy, I went back and forth between X11 and Wayland and sure enough, there is a kind of smoothness to Wayland.

        • SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 15 SP2 is Now EAL 4+ Level Certified for IBM Z, Arm, and x86-64

          SUSE has announced that its flagship Linux distribution has earned Common Criteria EAL 4+ certification. SUSE Linux Enterprise Server (SLES) 15 SP2 is now EAL 4+ level certified for IBM Z, Arm, and x86-64 architectures, signifying compliance with the demanding security requirements for mission-critical infrastructure. SUSE's Common Criteria EAL 4+ software supply chain certification includes secure production, delivery of updates, and protection of critical digital assets.

        • ‘When You Come to a Fork in the Road, TAKE IT!’

          For close to 30 years, SUSE has excelled at helping businesses choose an Open path. From the industry’s most adaptable Enterprise Linux to a leading Container Management solution providing full management of all Kubernetes distributions, SUSE enables customers to choose the right combination of technology and solutions to ensure their business success.

          To provide our customers with choice, SUSE has led enablement of and works across all major processor instruction set architectures (ISAs). As such, SUSE Linux Enterprise Server is available across x86_64, arm64, POWER and z/Architecture today with our container management solutions expanding its availability (currently on x86_64 and arm64) to include IBM ISAs as well. (See associated blog post by my colleague Michael Friesenegger for more details on Rancher on IBM System Z and LinuxONE).

      • Debian Family

        • Top 12 Things To Do After Installing Debian 11 (Bullseye)

          Good news for Debian users as Debian 11 was released a few days back. Code name “Bullseye”, Debian 11 comes packed with lots of goodies and exciting new updates. Debian is one of the best Linux distros available, but you need to spend some time to customize Debian according to your requirement.

          If you haven’t installed Debian 11 yet, please take a look at our “How to Install Debian 11 Step by Step” in your system. In this article, we’ll look at the top 12 things to do after installing Debian 11 (Bullseye).

        • The mystery of Bullseye wi-fi device not ready

          What about other Bullseye-based pups? Puppy Forum member 'josejp2424' has created DevuanPup, built with the Chimaera release of devuan -- which is the same as Debian Bullseye, just without systemd.

        • DebConf21 Kicks Off Online For Annual Debian Conference - Phoronix

          DebConf21 officially got underway this morning with being a second year of this annual Debian conference being held exclusively online due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic.

          DebConf21 has an action-packed week of talks around Debian Linux and related open-source projects. This time around the event is happening just days after the release of Debian 11.

      • Canonical/Ubuntu Family

        • Early Ubuntu 21.10 Performance Is Looking Good - Especially For Radeon Graphics

          While there is still two months to go until the Ubuntu 21.10 "Impish Indri" release, since the feature freeze has now begun I've started some early testing of this next Ubuntu release. So far things are looking good as a nice upgrade over Ubuntu 21.04 and prior. Here is the first round of Ubuntu 21.04 vs. 21.10 development tests using an AMD Ryzen 9 5950X with Radeon RX 5700 XT graphics.

        • Atresmedia modernises Spain’s most popular streaming platform with Canonical Charmed Kubernetes | Ubuntu

          The streaming service for the leading communication group in Spain leaves behind outdated applications and adopts a microservices architecture enabled by Canonical.

          SPAIN, August 24, 2021— Canonical, the publisher of Ubuntu, announces that Atresmedia, the leading company in the Over-The-Top (OTT) services market in Spain, selected its Charmed Kubernetes to build a new microservice-based architecture for the communication group’s streaming platform, ATRESplayer.

          Despite the strong presence of competitors from all over the world, ATRESplayer is the most popular streaming platform in Spain, with more than 8.6 million registered, offering quality content such as La Casa de Papel (Money Heist), #LUIMELIA, Veneno and many more.

          Having a monolithic architecture in environments that couldn’t be upgraded easily, became a significant drawback for ATRESplayer. The architecture prevented Atresmedia’s content management solution from operating effectively and only offered limited scalability, making it difficult for the streaming platform to cope with peaks in demand during live broadcasts that generate high traffic.

    • Devices/Embedded

    • Free, Libre, and Open Source Software

      • Haiku activity report - Summer 2021

        Hi there, let’s do another activity report! You may have noticed that there were a lot of news since the previous one, but here’s a recap in case you missed it: a new beta release, the celebration of the 20th birthday of the Haiku project, the end of Google Summer of Code (final evaluations are being filled in as I write this), and also news from the promotion team which was re-launched a few months ago and is working on various things (read their own report for more details).

        What’s nice for me is that this was all already covered by various articles, which means I can focus on what I know best, and take a look at what’s happening in the git repository with the code.

        This report covers hrev55224-55342.

      • Haiku OS Gets TRIM Working For SSDs, Continues Bringing Up RISC-V Support - Phoronix

        The Haiku open-source operating system project that continues advancing as the virtual successor to BeOS has been enjoying a successful summer.

        Along with Haiku R1 Beta 3 having been released at the end of July, there has been a lot of other activity this summer. The Haiku project just published their 2021 summer recap with some of the highlights including:

      • Web Browsers

        • Mozilla

          • Henri Sivonen: The Text Encoding Submenu Is Gone

            Firefox 91 was released two weeks ago. This is the first release that does not have a Text Encoding submenu. Instead, the submenu has been replaced with a single menu item called to Repair Text Encoding. It performs the action that was previously performed by the item Automatic in the Text Encoding submenu: It runs chardetng with UTF-8 as a permitted outcome and ignoring the top-level domain.

            The Repair Text Encoding menu item is in the View menu, which is hidden by default on Windows and Linux. The action is also available as an optional toolbar button (invoke the context menu on empty space in the toolbar and choose Customize Toolbar…). On Windows and Linux, you can invoke the menu item from the keyboard by pressing the v key while holding the alt key and then pressing the c key. (The keys may vary with the localization.)

          • Mozilla Performance Blog: Performance Sheriff Newsletter (July 2021)

            In July there were 105 alerts generated, resulting in 20 regression bugs being filed on average 6.6 days after the regressing change landed.

            Welcome to the July 2021 edition of the performance sheriffing newsletter. Here you’ll find the usual summary of our sheriffing efficiency metrics, followed by some details on how we’re growing the test engineering team. If you’re interested (and if you have access) you can view the full dashboard.

          • Here’s what I learned from reading dozens of essays about the internet

            This past graduation season, Mozilla’s Pocket teamed up with Her Campus for The Future Connection, a writing contest for college students to reflect on what it’s like to come of age in a “hyper-online and always-connected world.” While this isn’t a new concept for them — this generation, including our essay contest winner, Ester Omole, were born into a digital society — the postponement and outright cancelation of in-person graduations and prom-nights because of COVID-19, made the last truly “offline” rites of passage to adulthood into virtual events.

      • SaaS/Back End/Databases

        • PostgreSQL: New pg_msvc_generator tool available

          I'm pleased to announce the release of pg_msvc_generator, version 1.0.0 beta.

          pg_msvc_generator is a new tool created to help extension authors to provide Windows versions of their extensions. It's written in Perl and is open source with a PostgreSQL license.

          You can refer to the project's README for a complete description, or the bug tracker if you experience any problem.

      • Productivity Software/LibreOffice/Calligra

        • Hypra joins the Advisory Board of The Document Foundation

          Hypra is a French social-impact company with a specific competence in hardware and free software accessibility. Its mission is to make IT accessible to everyone – especially seniors, people with disabilities and first-time users – through a universal design approach. By relying mainly on free software, Hypra is giving back users full control over their personal data, and making them part of a global project for a “digital common good”.

          Hypra was founded in 2015 by Corentin Voiseux and Jean-Philippe Mengual, and is based in Paris. The company provides hardware solutions for seniors and people with disabilities, supported with training and technical assistance, and enterprise solutions to facilitate the integration of people with disabilities into the business world.

      • Programming/Development

        • Rewriting My Website In Org Mode - Invidious

          In the last few days, I spent some time rewriting my website. I wanted to move over to a completely Emacs/Org-based website where I write everything in Org mode and then use Org Publish to convert everything to HTML. This is fantastic since I write everything in Org. All of my past show notes that I wrote in Org can now be easily added to my website.

        • Perl/Raku

          • gfldex: Dynamic declaration

            Shortly after my last blog post, Stashes raised a question. Coincidence? Conspiracy? You decide! Anyway, the EVAL caught my eye, because with it we can dynamically create compile time constructs such as a package.

        • Shell/Bash/Zsh/Ksh

          • zbarimg and blurry QR codes

            This is a tinkering post about zbarimg (from the zbar suite of barcode tools) and its ability to read QR code images. Because there are so many possible ways to produce an image of a QR code, I decided to start with a readable image and progressively degrade it, to see what happened.

  • Leftovers

    • Integrity/Availability

      • Proprietary

        • Security

          • FluBot Android malware now targets UK banks

            FluBot has built up a community of compromised Android phones in the UK since April and in the past 24 hours has commenced monetising them by sending overlays for British Banks.

            FluBot first appeared in 2020, targeting mainly Spanish banks, but recently it has spread its reach, with Australian, German and Polish banks all affected within the last few weeks. UK banks are now firmly in its sights, with HSBC and Santander the first to be affected, and Lloyds and Halifax following shortly after.

          • Security updates for Tuesday

            Security updates have been issued by Debian (ledgersmb, tnef, and tor), Fedora (nodejs-underscore and tor), openSUSE (aws-cli, python-boto3, python-botocore,, fetchmail, firefox, and isync), SUSE (aws-cli, python-boto3, python-botocore, python-service_identity, python-trustme, python-urllib3 and python-PyYAML), and Ubuntu (linux-aws-5.8, linux-azure-5.8, linux-gcp-5.8, linux-oracle-5.8).

          • Red Hat Announces Second FIPS 140-2 Validation for RHEL 8 - Database Trends and Applications

            Red Hat has announced the renewal of the Federal Information Processing Standard 140-2 (FIPS 140-2) security validation for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8.2. As the second FIPS certification for the Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8 platform, the company says this validation indicates Red Hat’s leadership and commitment to providing a more secure backbone for the innovation of open hybrid cloud.

          • ISTIO-SECURITY-2021-008

            Envoy, and subsequently Istio, is vulnerable to six newly discovered vulnerabilities (note that Envoy’s CVE-2021-32779 is merged with Istio’s CVE-2021-39156)...

          • Istio / Announcing Istio 1.9.8

            This release fixes the security vulnerabilities described in our August 24th post, ISTIO-SECURITY-2021-008 as well as a few minor bug fixes to improve robustness. This release note describes what’s different between Istio 1.9.7 and 1.9.8.

          • Istio / Announcing Istio 1.11.1

            This release fixes the security vulnerabilities described in our August 24th post, ISTIO-SECURITY-2021-008. This release note describes what’s different between Istio 1.11.0 and 1.11.1.

          • Istio / Announcing Istio 1.10.4

            This release fixes the security vulnerabilities described in our August 24th post, ISTIO-SECURITY-2021-008 as well as a few minor bug fixes to improve robustness. This release note describes what’s different between Istio 1.10.3 and 1.10.4.

          • Hackers Could Increase Medication Doses Through Infusion Pump Flaws
          • Samsung can remotely disable their TVs worldwide using TV Block
          • Samsung: We will remotely brick smart TVs looted from our warehouse
    • Defence/Aggression

      • The Father, The Son, and The Mencius Moldbug

        Norman Yarvin’s Yarchive.net has instructions to help you make, design or/and detonate dry ice bombs, ammonium nitrate, H-6 (aluminized explosives), fertilizer bombs, thermite, TNT, and nitroglycerine, just to name a few. These “insightful” posts that Norman has taken the time to save forever were not written by anonymous anarchists, either. Rather, these posts were written by experts such as Arno Hahma, who now works for German missile company Dhiel BGT Defence; Gerald “Jerry” Hurst, the chemist, explosive expert, defence contractor, and inventor of a binary explosive device known as the Kinepak; and Timothy Melton, who is now a Deputy at Oklahoma County Sheriff’s Office as well as member of the bomb squad and part of the Technology Services Unit.

        The experts on Usenet discussed in detail about how to make explosives and how to detonate them under such subject headings as: “Homemade Bomb Recipe for Prisoners”, “Booby Traps”, and “Napalm Recipe (Use Extreme Caution)”. After Usenet boomed in the 1980s, it was no longer just a select few professionals with access to this information. On 26 December 2000, a man named Michael McDermott shot and killed 7 co-workers at a tech company called Edgewater based in Wakefield, Massachusetts. McDermott claimed that God had agreed to give him a soul if he travelled through time and killed Hitler and his top men to stop the Holocaust from happening. His computers, which were seized after the Wakefield Massacre, showed McDermott had purchased a clinical textbook on malingering and searched the Internet for materials on “how to fake mental illness.” McDermott was also a regular on the more alternative Usenet newsgroups, posting under the name “Mucko”. Mucko posted 23 times to alt.engr.explosives, 5 times to alt.tasteless.jokes, and 3 times to alt.humor. It was also noted on Gwern.net that “he says nothing interesting”. Even though McDermott didn’t really add anything of note to the online discussions on Usenet, the Usenet newsgroups like alt.engr.explosives saw experts in explosives give tactical training and advice to anyone who had internet access.

        Directly after the Wakefield Massacre took place, George Herbert, the author of the Pipe Bomb posts archived on Yarchive.net, discussed the press coverage of the shooting and the fact that Michael “Mucko” McDermott had been a regular visitor to their alt.engr.explosives Usenet newsgroup. He stated that “It has always been a struggle in this group for the professionals and serious safe amateurs present to carry on discussions without providing useful information to the dangerous uneducated amateur pyros and those with malign intent. Those readers have always been literally and figuratively looking over our shoulders as we participate here. Every time I post, I think ‘Is what I am posting here going to lead some kid to blow himself up, or someone to blow someone else up on purpose?’”

        Regarding McDermott’s posts, George Herbert goes on to say: “My reading of those posts indicates that McDermott came to Usenet with fairly extensive prior knowledge of at least some aspects of explosives (chemical compounds used in professional and military explosives, some of their detailed characteristics).” George Herbert would finish his piece by saying, “I think that, in retrospect, I see no evidence that McDermott showed signs of being dangerous or violent, anything at the time as other than just another newsgroup user. Usenet doesn’t always offer a good window into people’s souls.” Where Usenet may not be a good window into people’s souls, personal Usenet Archives such as Yarchive.net can be a good window into people’s interests.

    • Monopolies

      • Patents

        • Carve outs and Causation: Moving Away From Hypothetical Hatch-Waxman Infringement

          The Hatch-Waxman Act allows the FDA to permit a generic version of a branded product, which is partially patent protected, to come to market if the generic manufacturer “carves out” the patent-protected indication from its label. The scope of protection from a finding of induced infringement afforded to generic manufacturers by this “skinny label” provision has, however, engendered significant debate. In two recent decisions, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit and the Delaware District Court have addressed this very important issue. Both decisions are particularly noteworthy as they do not involve the more typical Hatch-Waxman case, which requires an analysis of a hypothetical post-FDA approval world wherein the generic product can be marketed. Instead, the generic products at issue in these cases were FDA approved and being sold, and that has triggered a discussion regarding causation and opened the doors to novel claims of infringement.

        • A Nose of Wax and Splitting Hairs

          CommScope and Dali are competing in the wireless communications infrastructure market. Both of the parties are making distributed antenna systems that allow for seamless wireless communications within a wide area. CommScope has 30,000 employees and is a Goliath. Although Dali’s CEO Albert Lee has no sling+pebble, he does have a potential secret weapon. Lee is a former patent attorney. The two companies have been battling in court and before the PTAB for the past several years.

          In 2019, CommScope sued Dali for patent infringement (asserting five different patents); Dali counterclaimed asserting two of its own patents. A jury agreed, and found that both sides were infringing. N.D.Tex. Chief Judge Lynn denied the cross-JMOL motions and entered judgment. Dali gets $9 million and CommScope gets $6 million and a permanent injunction against sales of particular distributed antenna systems. On appeal, the Federal Circuit has reversed in-part – finding no infringement of Dali’s ‘521 patent.

          [...]

          Here, the court bolstered its non-infringement conclusion by looking at the patentee’s arguments regarding anticipation.

        • Analysis of the Decision (23.06.2021) of the German Federal Constitutional Court regarding UPC Agreement [Ed: Team UPC basically... Kather Augenstein Rechtsanwälte PartGmbB]
        • Ericsson settles patent dispute with TCL
        • SolarEdge and Hogan Lovells destroy another of SMA Solar’s patents [Ed: Latest of many fake patents from the corrupt EPO; patent quality waning]

          The patent dispute between SolarEdge and SMA Solar Technology concerns inverter technology for solar energy systems – a growing market worldwide. In mid-August, the Federal Patent Court struck down SMA Solar’s European patent EP 2228895 B1.

          The judges have not yet provided detailed reasoning for the ruling (case ID: 6 Ni 14/19). According to the oral hearing, a lack of inventive step could have been the decisive factor.

          The Federal Patent Court judges had already revoked SMA Solar Technology’s EP 1610452 B1 last October. SMA Solar Technology appealed against this decision. That patent protects inverters with cooling units for cooling electronic components (case ID: 6 Ni 15/19). EP 2228895 B1 in the current case protects an inverter with an isolation point.

          Inverters ensure that the direct current produced by photovoltaic systems is converted into alternating current. This step is necessary for when the electricity is fed into the power grid or used in the home.

        • Software Patents

          • Sky avoid voice recognition patent infringement with invalidity ruling
          • $5,000 Awarded for SaveItSafe prior art

            Unified is pleased to announce PATROLL crowdsourcing contest winner, Erica Ghironi, who received a cash prize of $5,000 for her prior art submission for U.S. Patent 8,929,552. The patent owner is SaveItSafe, LLC, an NPE. The '552 patent relates to securement of electronic information and cryptographic keys. SaveItSafe asserted the '552 patent against Oracle and Ultra Electronics Holdings in the Western District of Texas. However, the prior owner, No Magic, Inc., previously asserted the patent against Futurex, Atos IT Solutions and Services, SafeNet, Townsend Security, and Thales e-Security in 2015 through 2017. Litigation history can be found here.

      • Copyrights

        • Book Review: Art and Copyright [Ed: We need artists, not lawyers, to wrote about copyrights]

          This book review of Art and Copyright by Simon Stokes (Partner at Blake Morgan) is kindly provided to you by Alexander Herman, Assistant Director, at the Institute of Art and Law and co-directs the Art, Business and Law LLM developed with the Centre for Commercial Law Studies at Queen Mary University of London. He teaches regularly on copyright. On 30 September, his new book Restitution: The Return of Cultural Artefacts will be published by Lund Humphries. Here is what Alexander has to say:

          It was a delight to learn last year that Simon Stokes, copyright solicitor at Blake Morgan in London, was working on a third edition of his eminently useful Art and Copyright. The book was released this year by Hart Publishing, an imprint of Bloomsbury, and one does not need to progress deep into the book to appreciate the wisdom behind the revision.

          [...]

          The new edition of Stokes’s classic work makes a welcome addition to any library. It brings into play all the developments of the past decade, overlaid neatly onto the bedrock of the two earlier editions. It is easily accessible for anyone working in the art sector without a legal background, whose work nevertheless requires an understanding of the essential elements of IP. This would include museum registrars, curators, archivists, contemporary art gallery managers, art agents, art dealers and artwork photographers. Yet there is enough legal depth to satisfy the lawyer as well. And let us not forget the artists – with new art forms and digital reproduction now so prevalent, there is no better time for creators to familiarise themselves with the rights they hold in works, as well as any limitations on those rights. This book will help them through.



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