11.21.21
Posted in News Roundup at 6:04 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Contents
-
-
Welcome to this week’s Linux Weekly Roundup. We had another peaceful week in the world of Linux releases with Slackware 15.0-rc2, CentOS 8.5.2111, and Rocky Linux 8.5 as the main ones.
-
Kernel Space
-
Linux kernel 5.14 was released almost three months ago, on August 30th, 2021, in celebration of Linux’s 30th anniversary, and it introduced quite some interesting features, starting with better protection against those pesky Spectre vulnerabilities and continuing with much-enhanced support for AMD GPUs.
Today, November 21st, renowned Linux kernel developer Greg Kroah-Hartman announced the release of Linux kernel 5.14.21 as the twenty-first maintenance update and also the last in the series. Yes, that’s right, Linux 5.14 is now marked as EOL (End of Life) on the kernel.org website and it will no longer be supported.
-
-
Going on for more than a half-decade now has been the effort around Linux Random Number Generator as a new /dev/random implementation for Linux. After more than five years, LRNG continues to work towards being mainlined and today marks the 43rd revision to these patches.
LRNG continues baking as a “production ready” implementation of /dev/random that follows different design changes from the existing kernel implementation. It is though a drop-in replacement with the same API/ABI.
-
Nothing especially noteworthy stands out for the last week, it all
felt pretty normal for a rc2 week.
The commit stats look normal, and the diffstat looks fairly regular
too. There's perhaps relatively less driver diffs than usual, partly
explained by the tools subdirectory diff being larger than usual (a
quarter of the whole thing), mostly just due to added kvm tests. The
rest is arch updates, filesystems, networking, documentation etc...
So fixes a bit all over the place, with nothing that really stands
out. Details below in the shortlog.
Linus
-
Linus Torvalds just issued the second release candidate of Linux 5.16 following the closure of the merge window last Sunday.
Overall, Linux 5.16-rc2 is rather uneventful. No big scary pull requests arrived this week nor anything else to worrisome… There is the situation of the cluster-aware scheduling hurting Alder Lake but that is being worked on and looks like it will be disabled or so in time for the Linux 5.16 stable release around the start of the new year.
-
Applications
-
Want to log your thoughts and memories without leaving the command line?
Well, you can do so using jrnl. As its vowel-less moniker ably conveys, it is journaling app, albeit one with a big difference: it’s designed to be used from a terminal, not a web browser or graphical interface
A reader recently mailed in to tell me about — thanks Peter; tips and prods like this are always appreciated! — and while I know journaling isn’t the most thrilling topic (I don’t keep a journal myself) I still wanted to wrote about it.
-
Ghostwriter, free and open-source markdown text editor, released version 2.1.0 with some new features. Here’s what’s new and how to install in Ubuntu.
Ghostwriter is a cross-platform, aesthetic and distraction-free Markdown editor works on Linux, Windows, and MacOS. It comes with live HTML preview, dark and light mode, focus mode, hemingway mode, autosave, MathJax, and built-in Cheat Sheet in the sidebar (toggle via F1) in case you forgot some Markdown syntax.
-
Instructionals/Technical
-
In this video, we are looking at how to install Blender on Elementary OS 6.0.
-
Today we are looking at how to install MetaTrader 4 with the EagleFX Broker on a Chromebook. Please follow the video/audio guide as a tutorial where we explain the process step by step and use the commands below.
-
Gnome is a desktop environment for graphical user interfaces of Unix systems. Here we learn the steps to install Gnome Vanilla on Ubuntu 20.04 LTS Focal Fossa Linux.
Gnome comprises program packages for the user interface or GUI itself and for data processing that is often used and controlled directly from windows. The Gnome developers aim to create an open-source interface that is easy to use for as many users as possible.
-
With current generation consoles still being hard to come by, even a year after launch, game streaming services have become quite popular. For a few dollars per month we can stream a curated library of games to our laptops, desktops and mobile devices.
-
In this tutorial, we will show you how to install Teampass Password Manager on Ubuntu 20.04 LTS. For those of you who didn’t know, TeamPass is an open-source password manager that helps you to store and manage all your passwords from the central location. It is a collaborative password manager that allows you to share all stored passwords with team members. TeamPass uses MySQL/MariaDB to store passwords and provides a powerful tool for customizing passwords access Teampass is highly customizable and provides a lot of options to customize it to your needs. It uses Defuse PHP Encryption library to secure your data and your users.
This article assumes you have at least basic knowledge of Linux, know how to use the shell, and most importantly, you host your site on your own VPS. The installation is quite simple and assumes you are running in the root account, if not you may need to add ‘sudo‘ to the commands to get root privileges. I will show you through the step-by-step installation of Teampass Password Manager on Ubuntu 20.04 (Focal Fossa). You can follow the same instructions for Ubuntu 18.04, 16.04, and any other Debian-based distribution like Linux Mint.
-
There is much more to copying and renaming files on Linux rather than cp and mv. Try out some commands and strategies to save your time.
For this purpose, users have been using cp and mv for decades. These were some of the few commands we learned and use every day, similarly, there are other techniques, handy variations, and other commands used for this purpose that provide unique options.
-
After recovering from my latest email crash (previously, previously), I had to figure out which tool I should be using. I had many options but I figured I would start with a popular one (mbsync).
But I also evaluated OfflineIMAP which was resurrected from the Python 2 apocalypse, and because I had used it before, for a long time.
-
My syncmaildir (SMD) setup failed me one too many times (previously, previously). In an attempt to migrate to an alternative mail synchronization tool, I looked into using my IMAP server again, and found out my mail spool was in a pretty bad shape. I’m comparing mbsync and offlineimap in the next post but this post talks about how I recovered the mail spool so that tools like those could correctly synchronise the mail spool again.
-
-
I decided it was time for a new “my desktop” post. It’s actually been one year since my latest post, simply because my desktop doesn’t see that many changes these days. Which I assume is a good thing? Anyway. I think there’s been just enough changes the past year to make it worth making a new post now.
-
Sometimes I get weird comments on my channel about features that I never even knew existed and this is one of those times
-
Wine or Emulation
-
You can also expect to have Risc-V supported by Box64 in the future… Needless to say, it won’t be too long (give it a few years) until the ARM revolution comes to Linux PCs as well, bringing gaming along with it.
-
Games
-
OpenTTD is a reimplementation of the Microprose game “Transport Tycoon Deluxe” with lots of new features and enhancements. The first Transport Tycoon (TT) game was released in 1994, with the release of Transport Tycoon Deluxe (TTD) following the next year.
You play the role of president of a start-up transport company in 1950, building railway, road, air and maritime transportation systems for commodities and people. The goal of the game is to outsmart your competition and become the game’s highest-ranking transport company by the year 2050.
There are many tools available to build transport routes, including ability to fully modify the landscape. Each town has a Local Authority which tries to prevent the player from excessive terraforming.
-
Desktop Environments/WMs
-
K Desktop Environment/KDE SC/Qt
-
Craft seems like the no-brainer for a KDE project to use, considering it’s in-house and supports all of KDE’s frameworks and has packaging capabilities. Unfortunately, what sounds good on paper does not translate to what’s good in execution.
When I first checked it out, the current version being shipped had incorrect code that would have failed to compile had it been a compiled language instead of Python. Heck, even running a typechecker for Python would have revealed the fact that the code was trying to call a function that didn’t exist. Yet, this managed to get shipped. Not a good first impression.
After manually patching in the function into existence on my system, I ran into another hurdle: Craft’s env script is broken; mangling PATH to an extent where entries like /usr/bin and /bin and other things got just truncated into oblivion, resulting in a shell where you couldn’t do much of anything.
After manually patching PATH to be not mangled, I ran into another and the final hurdle before I gave up: Craft tried to use half bundled libraries and tools and half system libraries and tools, resulting in dynamic linker errors from system tools not finding symbols they needed from bundled libraries.
When I brought these issues up in the Craft chat, the answers basically amounted to a lack of care and “go use Ubuntu.” Not acceptable for Tok considering most of the people interested in building Tok like this don’t use Ubuntu, and honestly doesn’t make you have much faith in a system for porting utilities to other platforms if said system doesn’t even work across the distributions of one platform.
-
-
New Releases
-
A significant update to the fourth Q4OS stable series codenamed ‘Gemini’ has been released. This upgrade includes set of security and bug fixes, receives the most recent Debian Bullseye 11.1. as well as Trinity desktop environment R14.0.11 stable versions. Trinity desktop maintenance release of the R14 series is intended to bring bug fixes, while preserving overall stability. You can find the complete Trinity desktop release notes and new features list at the Trinity desktop environment website.
We are currently pushing all the changes mentioned above into the Q4OS repositories, automatic update process will take care about to update computers for current users.
-
EasyOS
-
EasyOS has a GUI for /usr/bin/sct (set color temperature), ‘brightness-control-1.2.2.pet’.
-
…I mentioned that it has fans all over the place — there is also one on the side-panel, not shown in photo.
The guy who sold it to me had configured it as a gaming machine, and it had a Radeon Bart XT PowerColor HD6870 card, with 1GB RAM, two DVI-I sockets and one hdmi socket.
Soon after acquiring the PC, I took the card out and only used the on-board Intel video. Moved house a few times over the years, and that card got lost. Until now, found it in my car, under a seat. So, it is now back in the PC, and it works fine.
-
Debian Family
-
Z3 is a theorem prover developed at Microsoft research and available as a dynamically linked C++ library in Debian-based distributions. While the library is a whopping 16 MB, and the solver is a tad slow, it’s permissive licensing, and number of tactics offered give it a huge potential for use in solving dependencies in a wide variety of applications.
Z3 does not need normalized formulas, but offers higher level abstractions like atmost and atleast and implies, that we will make use of together with boolean variables to translate the dependency problem to a form Z3 understands.
In this post, we’ll see how we can apply Z3 to the dependency resolution in APT. We’ll only discuss the basics here, a future post will explore optimization criteria and recommends.
-
-
Open Hardware/Modding
-
Our big Raspberry Pi OS update last week has a significant, albeit temporary, impact on people who use cameras in their Raspberry Pi projects. Head to the lead story in this issue to find out everything you need to know to keep your projects working and decide whether to upgrade to Raspberry Pi OS Bullseye yet.
-
Mobile Systems/Mobile Applications
-
-
You might have been wondering what happened to diaspora*. Well, although we’ve been a bit quiet, we haven’t gone away! In fact, some big things have been happening in the background that we’re really excited about, and now it’s come to the time for us to tell you about them.
[...]
One of the key features of a decentralized social network has to be the ability to move your account data from one node (we call them ‘pods’) to another. This has proved to be one of the most difficult things to accomplish properly, and consequently it has taken a long time! The back-end code to do all the hard work was completed by Senya in a mammoth effort, and what remains is to create a ‘front-end’ interface so that it’s easy for anyone to access the feature via the account settings page. This is currently being worked on by new member Thorsten Claus with support from core team members Flaburgan and Benjamin Neff. It is currently being reviewed and tested, and once this has been done we’ll be able to merge it.
-
FSF
-
-
For the past few years, many have become used to having virtual meetings in their homes. Spaces like kitchen tables, couches, spare bedrooms, and hammocks in the yard have all become “offices”. As you can imagine, many of these spaces aren’t well known for their acoustic qualities. [Zac] built a sound diffusion art piece out of scrap pieces of wood to help his office sound better when recording.
Reverb is caused by sound bouncing off hard, flat surfaces like drywall. These reflections are picked up by the microphone and lead to a noticeable drop in perceived sound quality. There are generally two ways to kill reverb in a space: diffusion and absorption. Diffusion is the technique that [Zac] is going for, with thousands of faces at different angles and locations, it breaks up the harsh reflections into millions of tiny reflections. Absorption is usually accomplished with foam and other typically soft substances.
[Zac] happened to have a large pile of offcuts and extra material from past projects of various wood species, making it easy to make a visually interesting piece. He used a table saw to rip them to a consistent width and a drum sander reduced them all to the same depth. Next, the long sticks were cut with a miter saw into 5 different lengths, leaving him with thousands of little pieces of wood. The hard part began when he had to glue several thousand pieces to a plywood backer board with CA glue. Sanding, finishing with poly, and a french cleat made the three pieces ready to hang on the wall.
-
Science
-
[Cangar]’s excitement is palpable in his release of a working brain-computer interface (BCI) mod for Skyrim VR, in which the magic system in the game is modified so that spell effectiveness is significantly boosted when the player is in a focused mental state. [Cangar] isn’t just messing around, either. He’s a neuroscientist whose research focuses on assessing mental states during task performance. Luckily for us, he’s also an enthusiastic VR gamer, and this project of his has several interesting aspects that he’s happy to show off in a couple of videos.
-
Hardware
-
When [Pete Juliano] sat down to design a sideband transceiver for the 20 Meter (14 MHz) ham radio band, he eschewed the popular circuits that make up so many designs. He forged ahead, building a novel design that he calls Pete’s Simple Seven SSB Transceiver, or PSSST for short.
What makes the PSSST so simple is not only its construction, but the low component count. The same circuit using four 2N2222A’s is used on both transmit and receive. On transmit, an extra three components step in to amplify the microphone input and build output power, which is 2.5-4 Watts, depending on the final output transistor used. The best part is that all of the transistors can be had for under $10 USD! [Pete] shows where radio components such as the RF mixers and the crystal filter can be purchased, saving a new constructor a lot of headaches. The VFO and IF frequencies are both provided by the venerable si5351a with an Arduino at the helm.
-
Inside are a pair of PMW3360 optical sensors on PCBs mounted with a view into the billiard ball sockets, and for which the brains come courtesy of an RP2040 microcontroller. There are five PCBs in all, each having a set of purpose-built stand-offs to hold it. The result appears to be about as good a trackball as you’d hope to buy, except of course that you can’t. All the files to make your own are in the GitHub repository though, so all is not lost.
-
BEAM robotics, which stands for Biology, Electronics, Aesthetics, and Mechanics, is an ethos that focuses on building robots with simple analog circuits. [NanoRobotGeek] built a great example of the form, creating a light-tracking robot that uses no batteries and no microcontrollers.
-
Integrity/Availability
-
Proprietary
-
-
Security
-
Privacy/Surveillance
-
It has already recruited former U.S. Army intelligence analyst and whistleblower Chelsea Manning, who leaked thousands of classified documents using the privacy software Tor.
[...]
The three-year-old Switzerland-based company uses mixnet, where node operators are rewarded with tokens to mix internet traffic and make it harder for adversaries to get information at the highest level, including nation-state level mass surveillance like NSA.
Nym also offers privacy credential services to allow users to only allow access to part of their activity when required without revealing their identity.
Currently operating in test mode, Nym has about 5,000 nodes and 30 validators, with plans to go live at full capacity by the end of this year.
Just last week, the team released a desktop wallet for node operators to pledge their tokens to join the Nym network. In return, they earn more tokens based on their amount and quality of work in mixing the internet traffic. It ensures the quality of services while incentivizing miners for work well done.
-
PSA: Turn off email tracking — here’s how [Ed: This is not E-mail; this is Web page crap disguised as E-mail and a misuse of the protocol]
Email tracking is the process of tracking sent emails and monitoring the recipient’s activity with them. Often used via your inbox or browser extensions, the tracking software adds a small .GIF or .PNG file in the form of a 1×1 pixel into an email or HTML code of a website. This “spy pixel,” as messaging service Hey puts it, can be found in the header, footer or body of an email. They are impossible to see with the naked eye, meaning anyone can use email tracking without you even batting an eyelid.
-
Environment
-
Sources say brands can imply green credentials in their marks and that IP owners could consider hiring scientific experts to verify product claims before launch
-
Finance
-
On Black Friday, a group of unions and grassroots organizations, known as the Make Amazon Pay Coalition, will stage coordinated protests and strikes in at least 20 countries to demand Amazon pay workers a living wage, respect their right to join unions, pay its fair share of taxes, and commit to meaningful environmental sustainability.
Planned actions include: a massive Amazon delivery driver strike in Italy; a work stoppage across Amazon warehouses in France; demonstrations at the construction site of new Amazon regional offices in South Africa; garment worker protests across Bangladesh and Cambodia.
In the United States, the Athena Coalition will be holding digital and in-person #MakeAmazonPay actions targeting Whole Foods and Amazon, a town hall about the future of worker organizing in California, and a worker panel in Illinois on supply chain disruptions.
-
Censorship/Free Speech
-
The European Union’s antitrust chief said the bloc’s upcoming digital rules are being designed to protect freedom of speech on platforms like Facebook while targeting harmful online content.
-
Monopolies
-
Patents
-
The Restoring the America Invents Act will hurt patent owners and ensure that challengers who want PTAB will review will get just that
-
DABUS Team Seeks Permission For Further Appeal [Ed: Trolling courts to pursue ridiculous agenda; what next, patents for animals as "inventors"?]
As previously reported, the UK Court of Appeal rejected an attempt to name a computer system (DABUS) as an inventor on a UK patent application. As suggested in that report, and unsurprisingly given the widespread attempts by the DABUS team to gain acceptance of computer inventors (and indeed the hype that they have sought to generate around these cases), we understand that the applicants have now applied to the Supreme Court for permission to appeal that decision. Whilst the applicants may be encouraged by the “split” in the Court of Appeal decision, an appeal to the Supreme Court would represent a third level of appeal in this case, which is generally only granted in exceptional circumstances.
-
Raising the Bar Has Not Reduced the Patent Acceptance Rate in Australia [Ed: Australia just talks about improving patent quality but isn’t quite getting there; the incentive patent offices have it to grant loads of junk because of fee collection
Data on patent acceptances into 2021 confirms that the Intellectual Property Laws Amendment (Raising the Bar) Act 2012 (‘RtB Act’), which came into effect on 15 April 2013, has had a minimal impact on the rate of patent application acceptance in Australia – and to the extent that an effect is present, it does not run in the direction that might be expected! Here, I define ‘rate of acceptance’ as the proportion of examined applications that go on to be accepted for grant. Between 2009 and 2013, the rate at which applications subject to the former (i.e. pre-RtB) provisions were accepted rose from 69% to 72%. In comparison, the acceptance rate of post-RtB applications has stabilised at around 75% in each year between 2017 and 2021.
Some people may have anticipated that, in raising the standard of inventive step and introducing stricter requirements for enablement and support of claims, the RtB reforms would result in fewer applications being accepted. I was not one of those people, and I expect that neither were most other patent attorneys. Those of us who work on behalf of patent applicants are well-aware that, firstly, most of those applicants are seeking patent protection in other jurisdictions that have high standards of patentability, and are not wasting time and money on equivalent Australian applications for inventions that do not meet those standards. And, secondly, encountering a higher bar to acceptance does not necessarily mean abandoning the application altogether; often it may simply mean settling for a more limited scope of protection.
-
Litigation launched by Ericsson on Monday in the Eastern District of Texas, challenging Apple’s 2019 FRAND manifesto, comes just two months after a major Fifth Circuit appeals court ruling went the Swedish company’s way
-
It is no secret that the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) often leverages its discretionary denial powers to deny inter parties review (IPR) petitions. The PTAB has discretionarily denied IPR petitions, for example, due to parallel district court scheduled trials, district court findings of indefiniteness, and overbroad challenges. Typically, in these cases, the Patent Owner rebuts some of the Petitioner’s evidence of invalidity. But what happens when the Patent Owner decides not to rebut Petitioner’s evidence at all? In reviewing IPR institution decisions, the PTAB often substitutes its own technical analysis to refute Petitioner’s evidence. Yet, when it comes to final decisions—post-institution—the Federal Circuit has found that absent Patent Owner rebuttal evidence, Petitioner’s evidence is substantial evidence sufficient for prevailing on the merits. This begs the question—why is Petitioner’s unrebutted evidence insufficient to prove a reasonable likelihood of prevailing on the merits for an institution decision?
-
Judge Meade: why skeleton brevity can help ease complexity [Ed: What "DABUS debate"? An obnoxious troll using up university budget to rick-roll patent offices and courts around the world to insist computer programs -- like pets or even worse -- are inventors? Why does the patent extremists' media want to give it so much attention? They discredit the system.]
The England and Wales High Court judge discusses why time is of the essence in patent trials, his ‘radical’ Apple v Optis ruling, and the DABUS debate
-
U.S. Trade Representative Responds to Letters from Senators Regarding TRIPS Waiver [Ed; Thankfully, more people have come to realise that when it comes to COVID-19 the patents kill and the patent extremists are a threat to the lives of millions of humans. They're starting to organise and demand action.]
Last week, United States Trade Representative Katherine C. Tai responded to a series of letters sent by a group of Senators regarding a proposal by India and South Africa to waive certain provisions of the World Trade Organization (WTO) Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS Agreement) in relation to prevention, containment, or treatment of COVID-19. The most recent letter to Ambassador Tai was sent on October 7, 2021 by Sen. Thom Tillis (R-NC), the Ranking Member of the Subcommittee on Intellectual Property of the Senate Committee of the Judiciary. Sen. Tillis’ letter included as Annexes three prior letters sent to Ambassador Tai: a May 19, 2021 letter sent by a group of sixteen Senators, a July 14, 2021 letter sent by Sen. Tillis and Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AR), and an April 16, 2021 letter sent by Sen. Tillis (all three letters were also addressed to the Secretary of the Department of Commerce, Gina M. Raimondo).
-
This decision, handed down on 29 October 2021, illustrates how a consideration of the principles previously laid down by the Court of Appeal may in some, albeit unusual, circumstances, result in the UK Patents Court declining to follow the default position and grant a stay of UK infringement proceeding pending a validity decision from the European Patent Office.
In this case, the court considered an application by Mylan UK Healthcare Limited (“Mylan”) for a stay of infringement proceedings brought by Neurim Pharmaceuticals (1991) Limited (“Neurim”) in the UK Patents Court for infringement of its patent EP(UK) 3,103,443 (the “Patent”) relating to a “Method for treating primary insomnia”. The stay was sought pending the outcome of opposition proceedings brought by Mylan at the European Patent Office (“EPO”). The trial of the infringement action was scheduled for December 2021.
-
The Patent Trial and Appeal Board properly ruled against a patent owner after he voluntarily relinquished the claims of a rollover prevention invention, the Federal Circuit said.
Arsus LLC abandoned its U.S. Patent No. 10,259,494 after the Patent Trial and Appeal Board instituted review requested by Unified Patents LLC. The board construed the statutory disclaimer as a request for adverse judgment.
Arsus appealed, telling the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit at argument Nov. 2 that the board’s ruling is “like firing into a dead body.” The judges pushed back on this argument at the hearing, and affirmed …
-
Antibodies may be defined in a patent claim by their amino acid sequence or by the sequence of the target (epitope) to which the antibody binds. Historically, epitope claims were relatively common in the field of antibody patents, as they represented a way of broadly protecting any antibody that bound the same epitope. As the field of therapeutic monoclonal antibodies has grown, epitope claims have become progressively more difficult to obtain. Patent offices around the world now commonly insist that a claimed antibody is defined by its structural characteristics and not just by its function. The recent US case law in Amgen v Sanofi particularly has been hailed as signalling the death of the epitope claim. In Europe, by contrast, the case law on epitope claims is patchy. Nonetheless, recent first instance decisions indicate that the EPO remains comfortable with the broad claim format of epitope claims.
-
In this decision, the Board refused a request from the opponent to appoint the entire costs of the opposition proceedings to the patentee on the basis of Art. 104(1) EPC because of the inequitable conduct of the patentee when filing the application, making the filing of the opposition necessary.
-
October 2021 has seen the most significant ever changes in how the Irish Courts will deal with IP and technology disputes. These welcome changes aim to ensure that such disputes are dealt with as efficiently, expeditiously and as cost effectively as possible. These changes herald a new era for the resolution of IP and technology disputes in this jurisdiction.
-
Pharma Patents In The Pandemic [Ed: During pandemic people do not need patents but need care; the law firms don't care about people, they only care about money]
In 2020, the number of international patent applications filed via WIPO continued to grow amid the COVID-19 pandemic, and within the field of technology, medical technology took 3rd place with 6.6%. Many of us experienced a rush to claim antiviral usage of inventions that prior to 2020 might not have had that as their foremost aspect.
There is currently in particular a noticeable renewed interest in vaccine and antibody-related patents, as well as in second medical treatment patents for use in the COVID-19 spectrum.
-
COVID Vaccine Diplomacy and Patent Law Doctrine [Ed: Patent extremists in the pockets of patent trolls, IBM, Microsoft etc. want to kill millions of people for the sake of keeping prices of vaccines artificially high (Bill Gates is investor and infiltrator)]
-
The European Parliament Own Initiative Report on an intellectual property action plan is an important step to support the EU’s recovery and resilience following the pandemic and on equitable access to medicine.
-
Moderna–National Institutes of Health spat over inventorship opens new front in COVID-19 vaccine patent battle [Ed: Michael Rosen, the lead patent extremist at AEI, is realising that the public is losing faith in the patent system because of COVID-19, which is exploited by greedy monopolists who make a milling and kill people to raise profits (keeping the prices high)]
In recent weeks, a new front has opened in the long-running war over COVID-19 vaccine patents: a fight between Moderna and the National Institutes of Health (NIH) over who exactly deserves credit for inventing the Moderna vaccine.
-
In its report of November 11, the Parliamentary Committee on Research, Innovation and Digitisation of the Republic of Austria has unanimously decided to recommend the ratification of the PAP to the plenary (see attached report).
-
Shaping The Future Of Italy’s Intellectual Property System [Ed: Litigation company Dennemeyer Group intentionally mixing a whole bag of different law to come up with the misleading term "Intellectual Property" and throwing some UPC propaganda into the mix]
On June 23, 2021, Italy’s Ministry for Economic Development adopted the “Lines of strategic intervention on industrial property for the years 2021-2023.” The initiative is part of the broader implementation of the National Recovery and Resilience Plan (PNRR) in response to the COVID-19 pandemic.
A prior public consultation conducted by Italy’s Patent and Trademark Office (PTO) allowed the strategic intervention plan to accommodate stakeholders’ inputs, including law firms, universities, not-for-profit associations, companies and other interested parties.
-
Indian patent filings grow despite pandemic [Ed: So what? It says nothing about the quality or merit of those patent applications; anybody can apply...]
-
How to turn your ideas into patents [Ed: Nature should know better than to publish patent propaganda that perpetuates old myths; just patents’ propaganda from WIPO]
Researchers and intellectual-property specialists offer their tips for deciding which discoveries are worth patenting, and how to do the homework needed for success.
-
Barring the unforeseeable, I intend not to comment again on app store matters after this post until the Ninth Circuit has ruled on (and most likely will have granted) Apple’s motion for a stay of Epic’s injunction. But a follow-up to the previous post, which I just linked to, is warranted by Google’s official announcement of how the search giant and mobile operating system market leader intends to “comply with the [new South Korean in-app payments] law” (quotation marks are not enough to put this into perspective).
That’s because the issue is precisely the same one. The South Korean law theoretically requires Apple and Google to do what Epic Games has so far failed to win in court (except in the eyes of a journalist who may never stop reiterating clearly erroneous legal interpretations) and the odds tend to be against Epic’s appeal). Yet the bill proves pointless, useless, worthless in practice. But I strongly suspect that this is not how the South Korean legislature wants to be seen, so this is presumably not the end of the story.
The tax and review tyranny of the two leading mobile app stores (Apple’s iOS App Store and Google’s Android equivalent named Google Play) is under attack on multiple fronts in different ways. There is litigation, which has so far not helped in any meaningful way other than exposing certain issues; there are antitrust investigations, the mere specter of which already played a key role in getting Apple and Google to change some of their terms; and there are legislative initiatives, with South Korea theoretically having been ahead of the rest of the world but now risking to be nothing more than Apple and Google’s laughing stock.
-
Counsel from Toyota, Honeywell and four other companies say technology specialisations are often crucial during patent prosecution
-
Company says trade secrets form its most important intellectual property, and is working with suppliers to implement best practices for their management
-
IP insiders in Washington DC believe that President Joe Biden could soon nominate Kathi Vidal, managing partner of Winston & Strawn’s Silicon Valley office, to be the next USPTO director
-
Leahy’s departure will leave Congress with less direction on IP matters, but could also speed up PTAB reform and hand more influence to pro-patent people
-
Software Patents
-
This decision relates to a European patent application that concerns improving the speed and accuracy of speech recognition when one or more expected responses are likely. Speech recognition per se is typically recognized as being technical. However, the Board decided that the contribution of the distinguishing feature, to set a proper confidence factor threshold of the generated hypothesis based on the expected response, was based on the selection of certain mathematical operations, and thus not technical. Here are the practical takeaways from the decision T 1898/17 (Speech recognition/Vocollect) of October 5, 2021 of Technical Board of Appeal 3.4.01:
-
This decision relates to a European patent application for a system and method that enables users without any skills specific to 3D software to edit 3D content. Here are the practical takeaways from the decision T 2448/16 () of 25.6.2021 of Technical Board of Appeal 3.4.03:
-
Driven and enabled by the extraordinary growth of data globally, this surge in the AI industry has also spurred a flood of AI-related patenting. It is difficult to overstate the speed at which AI-based inventions have become part of the computing world and part of the patent landscape. Figure 1 shows the number of issued US patents per year that include AI-related terms in their description. In the early 2000s, around 1,000 US patents were issued each year that included the terms ‘back propagation’, ‘computer vision’, ‘object recognition’, ‘natural language processing’, ‘artificial intelligence’, ‘machine learning’ (ML) or ‘deep learning’. Beginning in about 2009, however, those numbers show nearly exponential growth. Similarly, a 2020 study by the EPO found that filings in the “core technologies underlying artificial intelligence” increased, on average, by 54.6% each year since 2010 (Patents and the Fourth Industrial Revolution, the EPO). Evidently, protecting AI inventions has become more popular with every year.
-
Trademarks
-
Shape Marks & Technical Necessity [Ed: Lexology may be dying. It now experiments with upselling and paywalls (which lowers incentive to go to that site and makes a lot of stuff invisible, not discoverable). Sites typically try this as the last step before dying.]
Products of distinctive shapes may be granted protection under the purview of Trademark Law. The shape of the Coca-Cola bottle…
-
Germany is home to some of the world’s most valuable brands, and also serves as an important foreign market for brand owners from numerous countries.
-
Katfriend Gabriele Girardello (Pavia Ansaldo) reports on a recent decision of the Italian Supreme Court concerning damage calculation in cases of trade mark infringement.
[...]
The trade mark owner carries out its business through direct channels (e-commerce and single-brand shops) and its activity is characterized by the use of a rather well-known brand: “CAMICISSIMA” (literally meaning a superlative of ‘shirt’ in Italian, which could be translated as “supershirt”, therefore having arguably been the object of a secondary meaning phenomenon). This said, the trade mark of concern in this case was not CAMICISSIMA, but another trade mark instead, i.e. “MODO” (which literally can be translated into English as ‘mean’ or ‘way’… and in Latin as mŏdus), that the plaintiff has owned for over 20 years, although using it to a limited extent, so to at least avoid revocation due to non-use.
The infringement of the MODO trade mark by the competitor was literal, as the infringer had been using the same sign to identify its shirts. In such a context the court of first instance (obviously) declared that an infringement had occurred and, in the absence of significant elements to calculate the damages, held that they could be awarded by applying the ‘reasonable royalty’ criterion, as requested by the trade mark owner. In particular, the court set the royalty rate at a minimum of 2.5% (compared to a possible maximum of 10.5%) of the turnover of the infringer. That was done in consideration of the limited diffusion of the trade mark in question, as also inferred from the evidence offered by the plaintiff.
The infringer appealed against, only with reference to the award of damages. The court of appeal reversed the first instance decision, stating that even if the reasonable royalty criterion is a suitable way to assess damages, it cannot be used as an ‘automatic’ consequence of infringement.
-
The German Federal Court of Justice recently published a decision (Case No. I ZB 16/20) clarifying that trademark owners bear the burden of proof for public recognition of a trademark within the affected trade circles in cancellation proceedings as well as in trademark application proceedings. It is the owner of a trademark who is best placed to prove that a sign has become established in the affected trade circles as a result of its use, so in cancellation proceedings they are also required to prove those circumstances from which the continued existence of the trademark results.
-
Lawyers at TPCO, Caesars Entertainment and Arterra Wines highlighted the trademark challenges of highly regulated sectors at an INTA virtual event
-
Copyrights
-
Law must make way for new tech soon: AI copyright co-author [Ed: More "Hey Hi" BS from clueless and inexperienced writers who just parrot what they are told by sponsors (conflict of interest)]
In an interview, Ankit Sahni says legal recognition of emerging tech is important for incentivising innovation and meeting new-age commercial needs
Permalink
Send this to a friend
Posted in GNU/Linux, Kernel, Microsoft at 1:27 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Summary: Many people aren’t aware that aside from the seemingly forced ‘apology’ Linus Torvalds was compelled to see therapists as if he was mentally ill; this is how the Linux Foundation treats the person who holds the trademark (“Linux”) it’s called after
Permalink
Send this to a friend
Posted in Standard at 12:52 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Video download link | md5sum 8ff6894b9cf0b7e3069992f984a06edc
Summary: It took a while to get from 1,700 to 1,800; today, for the first time, Lupa ‘sees’ over 1,800 Gemini space capsules, which means that 5 new ones per day until the end of this year will entail a total of 2,000 before 2022
CURRENTLY, the Lupa stats, which are visualised by Balázs Botond, suggest we’ve just crossed an important milestone. Gemini Protocol (or specification) is being finalised, we have new search engines that continue to grow, and here in Techrights we serve an average of 16,000 pages per day (so far this month).
“The real number of capsules is way above 1,800 but many cannot be reached or found for one reason or another.”So Gemini space is certainly growing; it’s growing fast. In terms of momentum, it’s quite telling when a founder makes a sudden return and participates very actively in the mailing list (over a dozen messages this past month) while committing changes — a time-consuming technical task which requires carefully studying input from users/developers.
Next year should be rather exciting, seeing the inertia (made more evident by the latest graph, updated earlier today). The real number of capsules is way above 1,800 but many cannot be reached or found for one reason or another. █
Permalink
Send this to a friend
Posted in News Roundup at 10:16 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Contents
-
-
Audiocasts/Shows
-
We Take a look at the Upcoming MakuluLinux Shift Beta 2 which is Due soon, Changes, Fixes and new Features… Enjoy the Video
-
On this episode of This Week in Linux, OBS Vs Streamlabs, APT 2.3.12 Released (“LTT Patch”), Steam for Linux Client Updated, Lakka 3.6 Released, Mesa 21.3 3D Library Released, Ubuntu Touch OTA-20 Released, Canonical’s New Approach to Documentation, KDE Plasma Getting Overview in 5.24, Google GNews & Drama. All that and much more on Your Weekly Source for Linux GNews!
-
The RCS revision control system and Ruby.
-
Kernel Space
-
Back in September we were first to report on Intel developing “Software Defined Silicon” support for being able to activate extra licensed hardware features not otherwise exposed. Intel hasn’t talked about the controversial feature in terms of product plans but this weekend they posted a new revision of this Intel “SDSi” Linux driver.
Intel Software Defined Silicon “SDSi” is about being able to securely activate additional features of the processor’s silicon that won’t otherwise by exposed out-of-the-box. This is likely with Intel Xeon processors in mind where Intel could offer additional features as an up-charge for those wanting to opt-in to extra features like say theoretically AVX-512 or AMX but without that license the feature wouldn’t be exposed even with being baked into the processor. A decade ago Intel tried a similar concept with the “Intel Upgrade Service” that if paying for an activation code could allow additional cache to be exposed, higher clock frequencies, and/or Hyper Threading for select processors.
-
-
A set of more than two dozen patches by Google engineer Sean Christopherson overhauls KVM’s x86/x86_64 TDP MMU zapping and flushing code.
The focus of the work is to help reduce the number of TLB flushes while the code is cleaned up in the process too.
-
Applications
-
7-Zip is a open source file archiver with a high compression ratio. The program supports 7z, XZ, BZIP2, GZIP, TAR, ZIP, WIM, ARJ, CAB, CHM, CPIO, CramFS, DEB, DMG, FAT, HFS, ISO, LZH, LZMA, MBR, MSI, NSIS, NTFS, RAR, RPM, SquashFS, UDF, VHD, WIM, XAR, Z. Most of the source code is under the GNU LGPL license. The unRAR code is under a mixed license: GNU LGPL + unRAR restrictions. Check license information here: 7-Zip license.
-
Instructionals/Technical
-
Redis is an in-memory data structure store, used as a distributed, in-memory key–value database, cache and message broker, with optional durability. Redis supports different kinds of abstract data structures, such as strings, lists, maps, sets, sorted sets, HyperLogLogs, bitmaps, streams, and spatial indices.
In this tutorial we are going to learn how to install Redis 6 on Debian 11.
-
If you are using minimal server Ubuntu 22.04 Jammy JellyFish or Ubuntu 20.04 LTS Focal Fosaa, then you can install GNOME desktop environment using command line terminal.
GNOME is the popular Linux desktop environment published under the GNU – GPL, and LGPL. It is simple, user-friendly, and accessible. The desktop and applications are translated into a variety of languages. The programs are based on the GTK + graphics library.
With Ubuntu 22.04, GNOME 3 is set as the default desktop environment in standard GUI Dekstop, however, if you have installed minimal CLI version or any other Ubuntu flavor but now want to get default/minimal/vanilla user interface without reinstalling existing Ubuntu Linux again then here is a tutorial.
-
There are many applications you can use for writing articles, notes, writing slides, making web pages, etc. you can use LaTex, HTML, XML, AsciiDoc, etc., for these purposes. Each of them has its own pros and cons. Among all of these, AsciiDoc is quite different from all others and has its own unique features. For Linux users, AsciiDoc is also available. AsciiDoc in Linux needs some special attention to learn, and to fulfill that is the goal of this post.
AsciiDoc is lightweight and way handier than other writing applications. You can put your concentration on a single point, i.e., writing content with it. It won’t distract your concentration with redundant features. To learn about AsciiDoc in great detail, stick to this post till the end. Happy learning!
-
-
Python is one of the most popular high-level languages, focusing on high-level and object-oriented applications from simple scrips to complex machine learning algorithms. Python is famous for its simple, easy-to-learn syntax, emphasizes readability, and reduces program maintenance costs and more straightforward conversion to newer releases. Python supports modules and packages. One of the many is the popular PIP package manager.
-
In this tutorial, I will show you how to upgrade your Linux kernel to the latest version.
But first, what is Linux Kernel? Linux Kernel is a free and open-source, monolithic, modular, multitasking Unix-like operating system. It is the main component of a Linux operating system and is the core interface between the computer’s hardware and its processes. It makes communication possible between computer hardware and processes running on it and it manages resources effectively.
-
BleachBit is a free and open-source disk space cleaning software and Bleachbit is a good alternative to CCleaner and supports Multi-platform (ie) Linux and Windows.
With BleachBit you can free cache, delete cookies, clear browser history, delete logs, and discard the junk, It includes advanced features like shredding files to prevent recovery. wiping free disk space to hide traces of files deleted by other applications and makes firefox faster.
This tutorial will be helpful for beginners to install BleachBit 4.2.2 in Ubuntu 20.04, Ubuntu 20.10, Debian 10, Rocky Linux 8, CentOS 7, Fedora 37, and Linux Mint 20.1
-
RPM Fusion is a repository of add-on packages for Rocky Linux and EL+EPEL that a group of community volunteers maintains. RPM Fusion is not a standalone repository but an extension of Rocky Linux’s default packages that could not be included due to Rocky Linux being bound by the same legal restrictions as Red Hat.
The RPM Fusion repository comes in two flavors, Free and Non-Free. The free repository contains a free version of the software that is open source and non-free, which have mostly almost all free software but are closed source and mainly proprietary.
In the following tutorial, you will learn how to install RPM Fusion on your Rocky Linux 8 operating system.
-
Desktop Environments/WMs
-
K Desktop Environment/KDE SC/Qt
-
We give you a preview of the new KDE Plasma Overview Effect. Here’s how it looks, and our opinion around it.
-
ZombieTrackerGPS is a KDE native PIM application satisfying the same purpose as Garmin’s BaseCamp software, which unfortunately does not run on Linux. It’s a professional quality application with goal to fill a hole in the open source ecosystem and provide an alternative to mainstream software business models which monetize your data.
It’s important to note that privacy of your data is a central design goal in ZTGPS Linux fitness tracker. All program data resides on your local disk.
The software is written for the KDE desktop, but will work on other desktops if the KDE and Qt libraries are available. ZTGPS features local data storage, advanced sorting and query capabilities to let you see and manage your data, and a highly customizable interface to put you in control.
-
GNOME Desktop/GTK
-
A new Flatseal release is out [...] Starting with the visuals, @BrainBlasted replaced the custom widgets, used in the applications list, for proper libhandy’s widgets. Plus, he fixed a small styling detail to make applications icons look sharper!
-
-
Reviews
-
I personally won’t use Pop!_OS because I detest GNOME, but I have to admit, it’s a really attractive OS, with some good features under the hood, a minimalist approach in the sense of bloat, and being based of Ubuntu you can expect plenty of easy to find support. If all of this sounds good, I strongly recommend you check out this distribution, you may love it!
-
IBM/Red Hat/Fedora
-
Hi All,
The Gluster Community is very pleased to announce release-10, the latest
one in the Gluster stable.
This is a major release that includes a range of code improvements and
stability fixes along with a few features as noted below. A selection of
the key features and changes are documented in this [1] page.
-
Gluster 10 was released this past week as the open-source scalable/distributed network file-system led by Red Hat.
The leading change with this release is a “major performance improvement” in the area of 20% faster for small files along with large files testing in a controlled lab environment. More details on this Gluster 10 performance work and some of the numbers via this ticket.
-
Community Issues
-
The Free Software Fellowship recently published evidence of the Albanian gangmaster and Mozilla Tech Speaker recruiting and/or grooming teenage girls in a hackerspace.
In 2019, when Dr Richard Stallman commented privately on the Epstein affair at MIT, his words were twisted beyond recognition and used as an excuse for a lynch mob to bully him into resigning.
Yet what we see in Albania is far worse. It is not merely discussion about underage girls: if you hang around there long enough, it is very likely you will meet some of these women.
These situations are inevitable in developing countries. Nonetheless, we have made the discovery that Elio Qoshi is now been employed by Mark Shuttleworth at Canonical Ltd (Ubuntu).
-
Justin Flory, a UNICEF employee affiliated with Red Hat, has recently commenced living in Tirana, Albania, as noted on his blog.
He originally stated the location on his blog and it is captured by Archive.org, the Way Back Machine from July up to October 2021.
On 11 October 2021, the UN’s International Day of the Girl Child, Fellowship published evidence of underage girls in the Tirana hackerspace. Flory has removed references to Tirana and Albania from the page, it is missing from the live version of his page today.
UNICEF, underage girls, Albania
In this photo, we can see Justin Flory lying down. On the left is Elio Qoshi, the subject of outrage about grooming an underage girlfriend for Outreachy. Immediately behind Flory’s head, we see a woman who was shortlisted for the Red Hat women in open source award.
-
-
Open Hardware/Modding
-
Earlier this month, I received a Sonoff ZBBridge Zigbee gateway, a motion sensor, and a Sonoff T2 wireless switch in order to set up everything to work as a motion activated light using Zigbee and WiFi through the eWelink Android app and cloud service. You can check out the first post to have a closer look at the hardware and accessories.
We’ve now had time to configure everything and will report the results of the project in this post. The idea is basically to detect motion with the Zigbee sensor, which then transmits the info through the gateway, and the T2 switch is controlled by the eWelink cloud.
Last time around, I thought I had a switch with a neutral wire at home, but I did not check in detail enough, and I’ve been unable to use it.
-
The T700 project is a drop-in replacement motherboard for the TP T60 and T61 series of laptops. This consists of an aftermarket motherboard not produced by L that fits in the chassis with little to no modifications necessary.
The goal is to recreate the TP experience as much as possible, while incorporating the latest CPUs and technology. As the motherboard is not from L, it will require quite a bit of hands-on from the user to get the best experience out of the machine. It will be as stable as any other computer motherboard but will not have original TP software support and features.
-
-
The holiday season is upon us once again, and this year I decided to celebrate in an open source way. Like a particular famous holiday busybody, I have a long list (and I do intend to check it twice) of holiday tasks: create a greeting card (with addressed envelopers) to send to family and friends, make a photo montage or video to a suitably festive song, and decorate my virtual office. There are plenty of open source applications and resources making my job easier. Here’s what I use.
-
Of the many challenges faced by open-source developers, among the most daunting are some that other programmers scarcely ever think about. And that’s because most programmers work in settings where “other people” attend to such matters—people who work in the legal department or human resources, for example. But when there aren’t any people like that to turn to, what then?
-
Public Services/Government
-
Schleswig-Holstein, a state in Germany with a population of around 3 million people, has announced plans to switch completely to open-source software.
-
The north-German state of Schleswig-Holstein plans to switch to open source software…” reports Mike Saunders from LibreOffice.
“By the end of 2026, Microsoft Office is to be replaced by LibreOffice on all 25,000 computers used by civil servants and employees (including teachers), and the Windows operating system is to be replaced by GNU/Linux.”
-
Programming/Development
-
For years LLVM has been working on a massive relicensing of its code-base but that effort is still ongoing as they are still trying to track down some past contributors to collect their sign-offs on the change.
LLVM is seeking help in trying to track down some past individual contributors and organizations so they can proceed with their relicensing of the massive code-base. As a reminder, they are working to move from the University of Illinois / NCSA Open-Source Library (similar to the MIT/X11 and 3-clause BSD) and over to Apache 2.0 license with an LLVM Exception. The “LLVM Exception” to Apache 2.0 is for code compiled by LLVM to not impose the same redistribution conditions and when pairing LLVM code with GPLv2 code the user can opt for the indemnity provision.
-
-
Science
-
[Chase’s] post titled “How to Grow Sodium Chloride Crystals at Home” might as well be called “Everything You Always Wanted to Know about Salt Crystals (but Were Afraid to Ask).” We aren’t sure what the purpose of having transparent NaCl crystals are, but we have to admit, they look awfully cool.
Sodium chloride, of course, is just ordinary table salt. If the post were simply about growing random ugly crystals, we’d probably have passed over it. But these crystals — some of them pretty large — look like artisan pieces of glasswork. [Chase] reports that growing crystals looks easy, but growing attractive crystals can be hard because of temperature, dust, and other factors.
You probably have most of what you need. Table salt that doesn’t include iodine, a post, a spoon, a funnel, filter paper, and some containers. You’ll probably want tweezers, too. The cooling rate seems to be very important. There are pictures of what perfect seed crystals look like and what happens when the crystals form too fast. Quite a difference! Once you find a perfectly square and transparent seed crystal, you can use it to make bigger ones.
-
Education
-
Maryanne Dever, pro vice-chancellor of education and digital at the Australian National University, said many institutions were still calculating teaching workload in terms of actual contact hours with students, something that failed to capture the total effort needed, especially in terms of digital content.
Professor Dever was speaking during a session on the future of online learning at THE’s Teaching Excellence Summit, which also heard from Diana Laurillard, professor of learning with digital technologies at the UCL Institute of Education.
-
Hardware
-
MediaTek has unveiled a new flagship SoC for the next generation of premium big-screen devices. The Pentonic 2000 can support resolutions of up to 8K and refresh rates of 120Hz. It can also allow OEMs to pack specs such as AV1 support, Dolby Vision and Dolby Atmos into their upcoming top-end TVs.
-
Pentonic 2000 is the first commercial 8K TV chip with Versatile Video Coding (VVC) H.266 media support, which offers improved compression efficiency – something that is essential for today’s streaming era. Pentonic 2000 supports Dolby’s latest imaging and audio technologies to provide the ultimate cinematic experiences in Dolby Vision and Dolby Atmos. Additionally, the chip supports AV1 for streaming services and all global TV broadcast standards including the latest ATSC 3.0.
-
These days, pedometers are integrated into just about every smartwatch on the market, and some of the dumber ones too. Tracking step counts has become a global pastime, and at times, a competitive one. However, any such competition can easily be gamed, as demonstrated by [Luc Volders].
Generally, all it takes to fool a basic pedometer is a gentle rhythmic jiggling motion of some sort. Cheaper devices will even register steps with little more than vague shaking.
-
Health/Nutrition/Agriculture
-
Integrity/Availability
-
Proprietary
-
But intentional or not, standard or not, the problem with star scores is there’s no way to tell whether they’re legitimate. We don’t know if someone pressed a five-star button because they loved the app, or thought they were rating the podcast itself, or just wanted to close the prompt as quickly as possible. We don’t know if Apple is prompting everyone, or just its most dedicated fans, or some other algorithmic subset that just happened to give it an advantage. Some bad actors reportedly even buy star scores for their egregious App Store scams, and it’s impossible for most App Store shoppers to tell. We’ve even seen an iOS app that refuses to open unless you give it a good score.
-
The package gives $100 million to CISA for cybersecurity risk mitigation issues, $100 million for cybersecurity workforce and training, $50 million for moving to a secure cloud architecture, and a further $50 million to research and develop strategies to secure industrial control systems.
The bill also designates $35 million for CISA to provide funding to the Multi-State Information Sharing and Analysis Center (MS-ISAC), $15 million for an effort to train teachers on cybersecurity, and $50 million for CISA’s CyberSentry program, which monitors the networks of critical infrastructure groups for threats.
-
Despite the efforts put by Google to block malware-laced Android apps entering the Play Store, bad actors are still managing to slip through the security screening to prey on naive users. Tatyana Shishkova, Android Malware expert at Kaspersky has detected more than a dozen malicious Android apps with Joker trojan on Play Store. She has been sharing the links of the apps on Twitter and most of them have been taken down from Play Store.
Joker malware-based apps are notorious for spying on victims. Once installed on the phone, they are capable of tracking apps such as the default Messages app on the phone. They can read text messages and steal contact lists, personal photos, financial details, or trade secrets and send them to hackers in remote locations. All that while, victims never know what is happening on their devices.
-
Defence/Aggression
-
Kimberly Guilfoyle, a top fundraiser for former President Donald Trump and the girlfriend of his son Donald Trump Jr., boasted to a GOP operative that she had raised $3 million for the rally that helped fuel the Jan. 6 Capitol riot.
-
On Wednesday, October 20, I joined “Vrede Scheppen,” “Create Peace,” about 25 peace activists from the Netherlands, Germany and Austria at the airbase at Volkel, Netherlands, making a plea for an end to nuclear weapons. This base is home to two Dutch F16 fighter wings and the United States Air Force 703rd Munitions Support Squadron. In violation of international and Dutch law and part of a “sharing agreement,” the U.S. Air Force maintains 15-20 B61 nuclear bombs there and in violation of the same laws, the Dutch military stands ready for the order to deliver those bombs.
-
The small but steadily growing U.S. footprint—now nearly twice as big as last year—could represent increased concern in the White House and the Pentagon over the island’s fate. While most military officials don’t believe China has made the decision to invade just yet, as Beijing builds up its amphibious forces and hypersonic missiles to potentially soften up Taiwan’s defenses, the temperature has continued to rise, especially after Chinese President Xi Jinping’s virtual coronation in a major party plenum this month. Chinese officials are increasingly outspoken about restoring what they see as a renegade province—by any measure.
-
“(The Belarusians) were bringing more migrants to the place where there was a forced attempt to cross,” Michalska said. “At the beginning there were 100 people, but then the Belarusian side brought more people in trucks. Then there were 500 people.”
When the migrants tried to cross the border, Belarusian troops blinded Polish guards with lasers, she told a news conference. Some migrants had thrown logs and four guards sustained minor injuries.
-
EU officials have accused Belarusian leader Aleksandr Lukashenko of “instrumentalizing” migration in retaliation for sanctions imposed on his regime following a violent domestic crackdown on protesters, media workers, and dissidents that began last summer following flawed presidential elections and continues to this day. Videos purportedly showing Belarusian security officials pushing migrants across the border and cutting border fences have been cited as evidence of state involvement—as have reports of state-owned tourist operators enticing migrants to Minsk and testimonies of security officials transporting them to border areas. Lukashenko has denied this but also said he would not take action to prevent migrants from entering the European Union.
-
Moreover, Article 24(2) of the Polish-Belarusian Agreement imposes an obligation on the parties to cooperate in the fight against “illegal immigration.” Though not defined, the notion of “illegal immigration” surely includes situations where persons who are not nationals of the other party or ordinarily resident in its territory are crossing the border in ways that does not comply with the conditions imposed for lawful entry. Thus, by facilitating and supporting an activity it has agreed to repress, that is the unlawful crossing of its border with Poland, Belarus is violating the Polish-Belarusian Agreement.
-
Environment
-
Sams is Cayuse and Walla Walla and a member of the Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reservation, with ties to the Yankton Sioux and Cocopah Peoples. He served in the Navy as an intelligence specialist before working in natural resource and conservation management.
-
Increasing the development and diffusion of climate change mitigation technologies on a global scale is critical to reaching net-zero emissions. We have analysed over a quarter of a million high-value inventions in all major climate change mitigation technologies patented from 1995 to 2017 by inventors located in 170 countries. Our analysis shows an annual growth rate of 10% from 1995 to 2012 in these high-value inventions. Yet, from 2013 to 2017, the growth rate of these inventions fell by around 6% annually, likely driven by declining fossil fuel prices, low carbon prices and increasing technological maturity for some technologies, such as solar photovoltaics. Invention has remained highly concentrated geographically over the past decade, with inventors in Germany, Japan and the United States accounting for more than half of global inventions, and the top ten countries for almost 90%. Except for inventors in China, most middle-income economies have not caught up and remain less specialized in low-carbon technologies than high-income economies.
-
With President Joe Biden reportedly nearing a decision on his pick to head the Federal Reserve, progressive lawmakers and advocacy groups are ramping up their criticism of the central bank’s current chair over his refusal to treat the climate crisis as a systemic threat.
“The Fed’s pandemic bailouts under Jerome Powell kept the fossil fuel industry afloat.”
-
Energy
-
The COP26 world climate summit in Glasgow concluded last weekend with no agreement to cut greenhouse gas emissions at the level scientists pleaded for when they declared a Code Red for the planet. HMM’s Sina Basila Hickey produced this segment from the Nov. 6 Global Day of Action for Climate Justice March in Albany with Howie Hawkins, , co-founder of the US Green Party and the party’s 2020 presidential nominee, discussing an ecosocialist ‘Green New Deal’. image by Jon Flanders
-
The EU’s mobility strategy calls for making all scheduled travel of 500km (310 miles) or less carbon-neutral by 2030. The most obvious way to do that is with electric passenger trains. Even accounting for use of fossil fuels in power generation, trains average about one-fifth the greenhouse-gas emissions per passenger-kilometre of aeroplanes and less than half that of buses, says the European Environment Agency.
-
Schneider was arrested just beyond the Luxembourgish border in France in April this year. The arrest was made by order of the US American FBI, which investigated a case of cryptocurrency fraud around “OneCoin”, and in which Schneider was allegedly involved.
-
Major western energy companies have a vested interest in continued energy cooperation with Russia, as well as the current German government, and the UK government. As long as Russia continues to possess the extent of control that it already has over the world’s natural energy resources, protests will fall on deaf ears.
-
Belarus has announced unscheduled maintenance of the “Friendship” pipeline transporting oil from Russia via Belarus to a number of EU countries, RT news agency reported. According to Belarus, the repair will take approximately three days.
-
Mt. Gox is a Tokyo-based [cryptocurrency] exchange, founded in 2010, and currently the world’s biggest cryptocurrency platform in 2014. Back then it was handling more than 70 percent of all Bitcoin transactions across the globe, until it was hacked. More than 850 thousand BTC were stolen by hackers, of which around 750 thousand or 80 per cent of Bitcoins belonged to customers. It was eventually closed in 2014, although some of the holdings were found later. Any payout is expected to be a fraction of the original amounts held by creditors, after taking in account the lost coins.
-
Finance
-
Fifty years ago the authors of the groundbreaking book The Limits to Growth showed that, in any of a series of computer-generated scenarios, world economic growth would end sometime during the 21st century. Using simple math and logic, they pointed out that growth in any material input or output cannot continue indefinitely within a finite system.
-
-
The headline chosen for Harvard economist Jason Furman’s November 15 commentary in the Wall Street Journal was both apt and sad. It was apt, because it repurposed then-President Gerald Ford’s “Whip Inflation Now” slogan from 1974, and sad because Furman’s advice comes straight from that era—and because his prescriptions could reprise the economic and political disasters of those years.
-
AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics
-
-
Wisconsin Republicans, at the urging of Sen. Ron Johnson, are pushing to unilaterally seize control over federal elections in the battleground state, an effort that observers warned is part of the GOP’s multi-pronged assault on democracy in the wake of former President Donald Trump’s defeat last year.
The New York Times reported Friday that the state Republican Party is taking “direct aim” at the bipartisan Wisconsin Elections Commission (WEC), an agency that the GOP established six years ago. According to the Times, “The onslaught picked up late last month after a long-awaited report on the 2020 results that was ordered by Republican state legislators found no evidence of fraud but made dozens of suggestions for the election commission and the GOP-led Legislature, fueling Republican demands for more control of elections.”
-
Sen. Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona is refusing to budge from her vow to uphold the archaic legislative filibuster as congressional Democrats and the White House attempt to chart a path forward for their faltering voting rights agenda amid the GOP’s nationwide—and intensifying—assault on the franchise.
In recent months, Senate Republicans have used the 60-vote filibuster rule to block debate on a sweeping pro-democracy bill known as the For the People Act; Sen. Joe Manchin’s (D-W.Va.) compromise measure, the Freedom to Vote Act; and the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act, which would restore parts of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 that were gutted by the Supreme Court.
-
The Czech Pirate party has approved the coalition agreement signed more than a week ago between the SPOLU coalition (Civic Democrats, Christian Democrats and TOP09) that came first in the October general elections and the coalition of Pirates and STAN (Mayors and Independents).
In their internal online vote on creating a new government, a total of 82.1% of all voting Pirate members were in favour of the Pirate´s participation in a new centre-right government. For the agreement to be approved, the left liberal Pirate party needed at least 60% of all votes. All other coalition parties approved the coalition agreement last week.
-
In the European Union, where lawmakers are debating two vast pieces of tech legislation, “some proposals say algorithms should prioritise authoritative sources of information, and others say they should prioritise diverse sources”, Keller noted.
-
In many ways, we’re still living with the consequences of Iran-Contra. There has been a similar lack of accountability for the grave abuses of subsequent administrations, including the torture of detainees during George W. Bush’s “war on terror” and President Donald Trump’s obstruction of justice in the federal probe into Russia’s election interference. Presidential overreach on foreign policy is the norm in U.S. politics, on both sides of the aisle, and meddling in other countries is simply taken for granted by much of the public.
So what set this chain of events in motion? We take a look back at the history.
-
Facebook is offering to pay musicians and other creators “$10,000 to $50,000 per session on its five-month-old live audio product, plus a fee for guests of $10,000 or more”, the report mentioned.
The social network wants creators to host four to six sessions at least 30 minutes in length.
Live Audio Rooms was launched in the US in June.
-
Germany may at first have been naive in some areas of cooperation with China, but should not sever all connections in reaction to growing tensions, Chancellor Angela Merkel has told Reuters.
Merkel’s strategy of engagement has seen China become Germany’s top trading partner during her 16 years in office, and has shaped Europe’s stance on Asia’s rising superpower, even amid concerns about unfair competition and industrial espionage.
“Maybe initially we were rather too naive in our approach to some cooperation partnerships,” Merkel said in an interview. “These days we look more closely, and rightly so.”
-
Misinformation/Disinformation
-
The social network has been under intense scrutiny in recent years for how its algorithms promote content.
Now, it says it is testing controls to “adjust people’s ranking preferences” and customise the feed.
-
Censorship/Free Speech
-
-
Where is Peng Shuai? The Chinese tennis star has gone missing after publicly accusing China’s former vice premier Zhang Gaoli of sexual assault earlier this month. The three-time Olympian and onetime top-ranked tennis star in doubles has not been seen since.
-
The White House urged China to “provide independent, verifiable proof” of Ms Peng’s whereabouts and safety.
The 35-year-old doubles Grand Slam winner accused China’s ex-vice-premier of sexual assault two weeks ago.
-
The disappearance of one of China’s top tennis players has brought the sport into a geopolitical firestorm. Peng Shuai, formerly the world No. 1 in doubles, hasn’t been seen in public since she accused a senior Chinese Communist Party official of sexual assault nearly three weeks ago. In recent days, the international tennis community—including the Women’s Tennis Association (WTA), the sport’s main organizing body—has rallied to her cause, along with seemingly almost every other pro tennis player.
-
Civil Rights/Policing
-
In late July, as he introduced a groundbreaking proposal for a 32-hour work week to Congress, Rep. Mark Takano (D‑Calif.) declared Americans should have “more time to live their lives, and not just work.” With workers returning to the job as certain Covid-19 restrictions were lifted, Takano noted many people will want to work fewer hours instead of going back to “normal.”
-
-
Monopolies
-
Exhaustion In The UK: IP Law Under Review [Ed: This article uses propaganda terms and lies like “intellectual property rights.” [sic]]
The UK Government is considering the shape of the country’s future regime for the ‘exhaustion’ of intellectual property rights.
Why do I need to know this? Because the regime settled upon will govern rules on parallel imports of genuine goods into the UK – what genuine goods can be imported into the UK and from where. If your business is involved in or interested in the movement into the UK of goods protected by a trademark or a patent, then you need to understand the law on ‘exhaustion’ of intellectual property in the UK.
What do I need to know? You need to know what the law in the UK is now, and how it may change before too long. So we explain below.
-
Apple’s concerns are all about the practical aspects of collecting its commission–there’s no reason to believe Apple would not want to get paid even on payments made after users click on external links presented by an iOS app.
Anybody dreaming of a “30 percent less” option in connection with external links is barking up the wrong tree. The app tax will be imposed one way or the other. Collection may be more cumbersome, but Apple’s position is that it’s entitled to its commission and that’s what even the Epic Games v. Apple judgment says.
The consolation prize that is the Epic Games v. Apple injunction is not a promising avenue. Developers need a breakthrough, but it will have to happen on other fronts–such as in the legislative arena. It’s truly impressive that Epic Games CEO Tim Sweeney and the executive director of the Coalition for App Fairness (which Epic co-founded) were able to discuss mobile app store issues at a Korean event (“The Global Conference for Mobile Application Ecosystem Fairness”) with high-ranking politicians from Korea, Europe (French Secretary of State for Digital Affairs Cédric O, who happens to be half-Korean), and the United States (Republican Senator Marsha Blackburn sent a video message). Here’s an English-language report by a Korean newspaper on that event.
-
Google sent a letter to the Department of Justice Friday requesting that the department examine whether newly confirmed antitrust division head Jonathan Kanter, who has been a vocal critic of the search giant, should be recused from federal antitrust investigations into Google. In his new role, Kanter will lead the department’s lawsuit against Google alleging it has a monopoly in the search and advertising markets.
Kanter has represented a number of companies in motions against Google, which the search giant argues should disqualify him. Most notably, Kanter represented Microsoft in a motion arguing against Google’s acquisition of DoubleClick, which was eventually approved by regulators and was closed in 2008.
-
Patents
-
Dallas Invents: 122 Patents Granted for Week of Nov. 2 [Ed: Propaganda site of patent extremists continues to conflate patents, many of which abstract and invalid, with "invents" or "innovates"]
-
Patent case: Liftra Aps, EPO [Ed: The EPO quit caring about the EPC a long time ago; it’s just a rogue institution stealing money and gambling it away while the German government, which is complicit, turns a blind eye]
1. The established approach of applying the due-care criterion to the question of removal of the cause of non-compliance under Rule 136 EPC leads to an additional admissibility requirement, by expanding the scope of the substantive due-care criterion, which has no basis in the EPC.
-
In the European dispute over Eli Lilly’s chemotherapy drug pemetrexed, the original drug manufacturer made headlines in January of this year in the proceedings against Zentiva in Paris. Not only did the first instance court cause a stir when it awarded provisional damages, but the amount of €4 million euros was also unprecedentedly high. The Court of Appeal has now overturned this ruling. The court pointed out that potential damages should be dealt with in the proceedings on the merits. Furthermore, the second-instance court criticised Eli Lilly’s economic arguments for being insufficiently comprehensive.
-
For only the second time in more than a year, I went to the Landgericht München I (Munich I Regional Court) today. The case itself–Solas OLED v. Samsung Electronics (case no. 44 O 9702/21)–lacks everything that a patent infringement action needs in order to be taken seriously. If it raises any interesting question at all, it’s whether Google is supporting Samsung against a case that targets the Android operating system. I’ll get to that later. I’d have attended that hearing even if the case had been outside of my industry focus. All I wanted to see the court’s third patent litigation division’s premiere session. Icing on the cake: I got to see a new courtroom, too.
[...]
In the middle, you see Presiding Judge Dr. Georg Werner. To his right (from the beholder’s angle), his deputy, Judge Dr. Anne-Kristin Fricke (who brings not only patent but also significant competition law expertise to the table and is the rapporteur on today’s case). To his left, Judge Dr. Franziska Greiner-Wittner.
Don’t infer from the medieval-looking banner behind the judges that this courtroom (Lenbachplatz building, room 101) is old-fashioned. It used to be a library, but has recently been transfomed into a courtroom–and with a view to videoconferencing capabilities, it presumably has better technical equipment than any other courtroom in Munich.
-
UNITARY PATENT – Simultaneous Protection in DE [Ed: This is fake news; there is no “occasion of the expected start of the UPC next year” and they know it; they keep lying, as they’ve done for nearly a decade. Why would people wish to pay patent lawyers who lie to them?
Patents cost a lot of money and those lawyers pocket most of that money; they actively misinform client and spread myths to perpetuate a bubble, which will burst one day (like software patents in the US).]
National German law introduces simultaneous protection by a UP or a classic EP patent on the one hand and a national DE Patent on the other hand
On the occasion of the expected start of the UPC next year, German national law introduces the possibility of simultaneous protection by two patents valid in Germany. Thereby it will be possible to enforce and maintain in Germany a national DE patent next to (ie simultaneously with) a classic EP patent validated in Germany or a UP patent.
-
UKIPO CEO Tim Moss speaks to Managing IP about moving past Brexit, and champions the relevance of IP in government policy
-
UKIPO CEO Tim Moss spoke with Managing IP this week about his experience managing Brexit.
“We had this small task on December 31 last year of creating two million rights overnight,” says Moss.
“The fact that it went so smoothly, even to the point that it happened in the background and people almost didn’t notice it, it’s testament to the fantastic work the team has done.
“It’s defined the organisation, and probably been the biggest single issue in my time at the office.”
-
Senator Patrick Leahy (D-VT) has announced that he won’t be seeking re-election to the Senate for a ninth term. First elected in 1974, Senator Leahy has spent nearly 50 years in the Senate, focused on a wide variety of issues. Intellectual property is one of those issues, and it’s an issue where he’s been a leader in the Senate, addressing issues in patent, copyright, and trademark law, and even creating the semiconductor mask protection system. (He also helped out with a couple Batman movies in between.)
But perhaps most importantly, Senator Leahy sponsored the most significant reform of the patent system in the past 50 years—the bill bearing his name, the Leahy-Smith America Invents Act. The AIA created the post-grant review system, including inter partes review, updated litigation rules to limit the ability of non-practicing entities to engage in abusive litigation, changed the U.S. to a first-inventor-to-file system, and updated the law of prior art to reflect an increasingly global innovation environment.
[...]
The PTAB implemented discretionary denials, among other changes that made it harder to access IPR and made IPR a more expensive and complex procedure. And, unsurprisingly, the AIA’s benefits began to reverse—mostly to the benefit of NPEs.
-
Moderna and U.S. at Odds Over Vaccine Patent Rights [Ed: No, patents are not rights, they are a monopoly, and in this case piggybacking work paid for by the taxpayers in order to rip off the public and actively harm public health]
Moderna and the National Institutes of Health are in a bitter dispute over who deserves credit for inventing the central component of the company’s powerful coronavirus vaccine, a conflict that has broad implications for the vaccine’s long-term distribution and billions of dollars in future profits.
The vaccine grew out of a four-year collaboration between Moderna and the N.I.H., the government’s biomedical research agency — a partnership that was widely hailed when the shot was found to be highly effective. A year ago this month, the government called it the “N.I.H.-Moderna Covid-19 vaccine.”
-
Mandamus Monday [Ed: Party over for the whacko from Waco; patent courts aren't corporations and subverting the law in the interest of profit is in itself a violation of the law]
Four new mandamus orders from the Federal Circuit stemming from Judge Alan Albright’s court in Waco Texas.
-
Hymmen, a global digital printing systems provider specialized in flooring, is extending its ongoing patent infringement litigation against Barberán with the addition of a third patent, EP 3 415 316 (DE), relating to aspects of digital embossing.
The company also said it is appealing an earlier, first instance decision, by Düsseldorf Regional Court rendered on the pending infringement case (case number 4b O 26/20) relating to its patent EP 3 109 056.
Hymmen is of the “strong opinion that all three of its patents are being infringed by Barberán” and will appeal the court’s first instance decision by the Court to dismiss the infringement claims on its patent EP 3109056 (DE), a company statement said.
-
On 9 July 2021, the Court of Milan issued a preliminary injunction (PI) prohibiting a generic company from selling everolimus for use in combination with an aromatase inhibitor in the treatment of hormone receptor positive breast tumours. The PI was issued on the basis of EP 3351246, which is one of the patents held by Novartis protecting the second and further medical uses of everolimus, a medicine initially approved for use in organ transplantation, and later found to be useful in the oncology setting for the treatment of solid tumors. The PI decision of first instance was later upheld in the appeal decision issued on 4 October 2021, shortly before the first instance hearing of the oppositions filed against the patent took place in the EPO.
The Court of Milan’s evaluation of the patent’s validity when deciding to grant and maintain the PI is in line with the views already expressed by the EPO’s Opposition Division in its preliminary opinion. And subsequently, at the end of the oral proceedings that took place over three days from 19-21 October 2021, the Opposition Division maintained the patent as granted by rejecting all grounds of invalidity raised by the nine opponents, including added subject matter, novelty, inventive step and sufficiency of disclosure (appeals pending). Similar arguments about validity of the patent have also been rejected in other national proceedings: once by the Dutch judge in the framework of preliminary injunction appeal proceedings (whereas proceedings in the merits are presently pending), and twice by the German court in Düsseldorf in the framework of first instance infringement proceedings on the merits (where appeals are pending).
Both the first instance and appeal decisions of the Court of Milan are noteworthy in many ways.
-
French ophthalmology company Nicox SA announced Wednesday that it was granted patent for blepharitis product candidate NCX 4251 in Europe.
The European Patent Office or EPO has issued patent EP 3,769,753, expiring in 2040 and covering the company’s product candidate in development for blepharitis, NCX 4251.
-
Following the order issued on 16 July 2021, the Enlarged Board of Appeal (EBA) has now published its full written Decision in G 1/21. The procedural objections raised throughout the earlier part of the proceedings have been covered in a previous article, and so this article focuses on the opinion of the EBA on the status of oral proceedings by videoconference in the context of the European Patent Convention (EPC).
Although the EBA considered it necessary to restrict the referred question to proceedings before the Boards of Appeal, as opposed to departments of first instance, the Decision issued provides general guidance with respect to the circumstances under which oral proceedings by videoconference may be imposed on parties without their consent. The EBA acknowledged that in-person proceedings should be the ‘gold standard’ default, with videoconferencing able to provide a suitable alternative in some cases. The EBA also commented that the parties’ preferences (with good reason) should be given due consideration by a Board when deciding on the format of oral proceedings. Thus it seems that we can expect a return to the ‘old normal’, at least for Board of Appeal proceedings, following the current pandemic.
-
Apple is developing several technologies apart from smartphones, such as a VR headset as well as a car and now a new patent has revealed that the iPhone maker may be working on a drone.
The patents were first filed in May 2020 in Singapore, but made their way to the US in February and April and were awarded to Apple on November 11, reports Patently Apple.
The US Patent And Trademark Office has published two patent applications from Apple that relate to drones or unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs).
The first application seems to cover the application and method of interaction between the UAV and a controller. It covers gadgets, systems, and methods for pairing the drone with a wireless remote controller.
-
The Federal Circuit continued its stringent (if misguided) application of the scope of subject matter eligibility by invalidating claims asserted in CardioNet, LLC v. InfoBionic, Inc.
[...]
The Federal Circuit vacated the District Court’s non-infringement judgment and remanded for entry of judgment that the ’715 patent claims were invalid on subject matter eligibility grounds, in an opinion by Judge Lourie, joined by Judges Dyk and O’Malley. The Court applied the Supreme Court’s Mayo/Alice test (as it has grown under the Federal Circuit; see Alice Corp. v. CLS Bank Int’l, 573 U.S. 208, 217 (2014), and Mayo Collaborative Servs. v. Prometheus Labs., Inc., 566 U.S. 66, 70–73 (2012)) in reaching its invalidity conclusion. The opinion sets forth the District Court’s reasoning that, while in Step 1 of the Mayo/Alice test claim 20 is “directed to” an abstract idea (“filtering raw cardiogram data to optimize its output”), under Step 2 the claim recites “an inventive concept sufficient to transform the abstract idea into patent-eligible subject matter.” The basis for this conclusion is that the claim is “tied to a machine” and thus satisfies the “machine or transformation” test under Bilski v. Kappos. The Court agrees with regard to Step 1 reciting an abstract idea, which the Court characterizes as “the abstract idea of filtering patient heartbeat signals to increase accuracy.” This, “at bottom” according to the Court “requires only basic mathematical calculations, such as ‘de-compos[ing] a T wave into its constituent frequencies and multipl[ying] them by a filter frequency response.’” In this analysis the Court goes beyond what is claimed (an apparatus) and focuses on how the apparatus achieves its aims (thus avoiding the question of whether this is how the mathematical formula is applied (which was sufficient under Diamond v. Diehr to render a method claim patent-eligible), reminiscent of the Court’s troubling type of reasoning in American Axle & Mfg. v. Neapco Holdings LLC. The opinion, applying precedent across disciplines denigrates the inventiveness of the improvement in the art by cherry-picking Justice Thomas’s statement in Ass’n for Molecular Pathology v. Myriad Genetics, Inc., 569 U.S. 576, 591 (2013), that “such calculations, even if ‘[g]roundbreaking,’ are still directed to an abstract idea.”
-
Chipmaker inks its first global patent licence deal just weeks after starting large-scale production of 3D NAND flash memory
-
After lengthy discussions and the active participation of stakeholders, the Hungarian Parliament on 9 November 2021, passed new legislation amending the Hungarian Patent Act (Act 33 of 1995 on the Protection of Inventions by Patent) that is changing the Hungarian patent litigation landscape as we know it.
The amendment touches on three main topics, such as (i) the Bolar-exemption, (ii) softening of the bifurcating system, and (iii) new provisions on preliminary injunctions. The expectation behind the amendment are faster court proceedings and increased clarity when it comes to compensation for damage suffered as a result of unjustified preliminary injunctions.
-
Party leader says Japan is out of step with other advanced economies in lacking a mechanism for stopping publication of patents related to national security
-
Acer Therapeutics Inc. and its collaboration partner, Relief Therapeutics Holding SA, said the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office has issued a new U.S. patent to Acer for certain claims related to ACER-001 sodium phenylbutyrate.
Acer said the patent covers pharmaceutical composition claims related to ACER-001′s taste-masked, multi-particulate dosage formulation for oral administration. The newly issued patent has an expiration date in 2036.
-
From family get togethers to work meetings, videoconferencing has become ubiquitous over the past eighteen months. While it has allowed us all to keep in touch during challenging times, after almost two years, many feel that videoconferences are no substitute for in-person meetings. The question of whether videoconference hearings are equivalent to in-person hearings was recently addressed by the Enlarged Board of Appeal of the European Patent Office (EPO). On October 28, 2021, the EPO issued a decision indicating that in some circumstances, oral proceedings by videoconference are an acceptable substitute that can be required without party consent. This decision may impact Canadian applicants in several ways, including through increased opportunity to directly participate in EPO examination, opposition, and appeal oral proceedings.
The Referral
On June 3, 2020, the parties to an opposition appeal over European patent No. 1609239 were summoned to oral proceedings before a Technical Board of Appeal. The respondent requested postponement due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The oral proceedings were then rescheduled for February 8, 2021. Again, the respondent, supported by the appellant, asked for postponement, indicating that the case was not suitable for videoconference. When the Technical Board maintained the summons, the appellant then requested that the question of whether oral proceedings under Article 116 of the European Patent Convention (EPC) can be replaced by a videoconference without the consent of the parties be referred to the Enlarged Board of Appeal.
-
Blockchain a boon for IP enforcement in China, say sources [Ed: The author does not understand "Blockchain"; just got caught up in the hype, decided top parrot what some sponsors (litigation firms) said... the term "IP" is also meaningless and fictional mumbo-jumbo, designed to confuse outsiders]
A push from the government and judiciary, not to mention blockchain’s inherent authentication capability, is helping China find innovative IP-legal solutions
-
Software Patents
-
PatentNext Summary: Sufficiency of disclosure for Artificial Intelligence (AI) inventions in the U.S. can be supported by expert testimony opining on the knowledge that one of ordinary skill in the art would have held based on the disclosure for the patent specification.
In an earlier article, we compared the sufficiency of disclosure for Artificial Intelligence (AI) patents in the U.S. and the European Patent Office (EPO). See A Tale of Two Jurisdictions: Sufficiency of Disclosure for Artificial Intelligence (AI) Patents in the U.S. and the EPO.
-
Artificial Intelligence, Innovation and Inventorship – Can AI be an Inventor? [Ed: They mean computer program, not "Hey Hi", but we're living in a generation of buzzwords, misnomers, and liars/lawyers looking to sell sinister agenda for profit]
Rapid advances in artificial intelligence (“AI”) are unlocking enhanced capabilities for machine learning, data interpretation and innovation, whilst also increasingly becoming useful in our everyday lives. AI now plays a key role in drug discovery, the advertisements we see recommended to us online, route suggestions for online mapping platforms, and auto-generated digital content. Recently, this has raised questions for traditional thinking around intellectual property law, with particular implications for patent ownership and invention. The question is – could AI be capable of being considered an inventor?
-
On November 12, 2021, SynKloud Technologies filed a motion to dismiss its Federal Circuit appeal. Unified had won on all issues at the PTAB in IPR2019-01655, resulting in all claims of SynKloud’s U.S. Patent 9,098,526 being found unpatentable. SynKloud Technologies is a subsidiary of Ideahub, Inc. The ‘526 patent, directed to providing remote storage for wireless devices, had been asserted against Hewlett-Packard and Blu Products.
-
Opinion: A small ray of light for DABUS [Ed: There is no such thing as "AI inventorship,", but the patent maximalists relay misleading narratives for "monopolies granted to bots or algorithms" (which is beyond insane)]
The Court of Appeal’s ruling in the DABUS case provided a small ray of light for AI inventorship, but the wider conversation is also beginning to shift
-
On November 15, 2021, Eighth Street Solutions filed a supplemental reply cancelling all claims of U.S. Patent 7,664,924, after the USPTO (on Oct. 5, 2021), issued a final office action rejecting all claims of the ‘924 patent. Eighth Street Solutions, LLC is an Endpoint IP entity. The ’924 patent is related to securing a computer system by selectively controlling write access to a data storage medium. The ’924 patent had been asserted against Sophos, Trend Micro, McAfee and Avast.
-
On November 9, 2021, Unified Patents filed an ex parte reexamination against U.S. Patent 9,578,040, owned and asserted by Orbit Licensing, an IP Edge entity. The ’040 patent is generally directed to packet communications, including determining whether a service request is authorized or not. The ’040 patent has been asserted 10 times, including against the SPF protocol (an open standard of the IETF) of several companies such as EidosMedia, Red Hat, OnApp, Akamai, Tencent, Limelight Networks, Wowza Media, CodePen, Velocix, and The MathWorks.
-
Trademarks
-
Belarus has recently applied for “Lidski kvass” and “Lidskoe pivo/Lidskae piva” to be registered as PGIs in the EU. Kvass is a traditional fermented beverage, known since the Kievan Rus’, which is popular in many Central and Eastern European countries. “Pivo” and “piva” are Russian and Belarusian words for beer, while “Lidksi” stands for a district in northwest Belarus.
The EU systems foresees two options for a non-EU country seeking to register its geographical indications (GIs) in the EU: through a bilateral agreement (such as the one recently signed with China); or through a direct application.
Direct applications are filed by producers of non-EU GIs to the European Commission, either directly or through their national authorities. This procedure was first introduced through Council Regulation (EC) No 510/2006, after a WTO Panel found that the EU’s previous system limited the rights of non-EU applicants. Cambodia’s Kampot Pepper (PGI “Poivre de Kampot”) became the first foreign GI to be registered directly with the EU, though its registration was managed through an EU technical assistance project.
-
Kat friend Jan Jacobi reports on a recent case where only the intrepid dare tread—-trade mark exhaustion and market partitioning.
[...]
Trademark proprietors are warned that the Van Doren Lifestyle judgement is not always on their side: they might be called upon to show with specificity, including by means of a sufficient paper trail, that exhaustion has not occurred.
This warning extends to the licensees and distributors that are part of an exclusive distribution system. Beware of the situation where you are called upon to refute a claim of exhaustion only to find out that the proprietor lacks (or may be unwilling to provide) the necessary evidence.
-
Copyrights
-
The Motion Picture Association has obtained permission to block dozens more pirate streaming and torrent domains in the UK. In parallel, the Alliance for Creativity and Entertainment, of which the MPA is a key player, has quietly seized several domains that appear to have been connected to pirate IPTV operations.
Permalink
Send this to a friend
Posted in IRC Logs at 2:26 am by Needs Sunlight
Also available via the Gemini protocol at:
Over HTTP:
Enter the IRC channels now
IPFS Mirrors
| CID |
Description |
Object type |
QmTbTvJNwmMkbmWVW5HZg1LQKhEpFNy2zG79sg75efej3G |
IRC log for #boycottnovell
(full IRC log as HTML) |
 |
QmXkhuTEZV6d55rZBqZAVckj999WgPNZ346TV4HoZcpKZY |
IRC log for #boycottnovell
(full IRC log as plain/ASCII text) |
 |
QmbhC1cG6GbU2JBA3bDf2EXLQYv62B5WdfE4Y2iacgPvHs |
IRC log for #boycottnovell-social
(full IRC log as HTML) |
|
QmY4G9vdY84fNFyxfkCyvcpmjxhBHzjC8eYDqn6h52TREF |
IRC log for #boycottnovell-social
(full IRC log as plain/ASCII text) |
|
Qmax8Po5T11uxoKY36iibU579dpPT4AS8SoXeEsGGyu9kz |
IRC log for #techbytes
(full IRC log as HTML) |
|
QmX9MYFu74jBhzNVMeNK6CimfbM5Hn4ArC2EnYQy28vbNi |
IRC log for #techbytes
(full IRC log as plain/ASCII text) |
|
QmWviZGRmwXena4svvtevDb8ZswKxEFqA3Hyb9togaxrS3 |
IRC log for #techrights
(full IRC log as HTML) |
|
QmcqHf9iu85CYxhpcdm22GH2ueGPSrMuLeKL2uEa1kG5e8 |
IRC log for #techrights
(full IRC log as plain/ASCII text) |
|
Bulletin for Yesterday
Local copy | CID (IPFS): QmeDHFuwxMuWGXnXY8ELJ4X5fk6wWvRiyFNXRQ9noLwTQw
Permalink
Send this to a friend
Content is available under CC-BY-SA