Bonum Certa Men Certa

China's Patent Grants Up 40% While the West Bickers Over Patents, GUIs, Abstract Ideas

Chopsticks



Summary: The West loses its advantage to the East by increasing grounds for litigation without much cross-continent/country leverage

A little while ago we wrote about the impact of excessive patenting, especially when it comes to the rising power of China (post available in Spanish). China is not going to sit back and let itself be abused by the West. In fact, based on this report, "China Patent Grants up 40%, Filings Up 25% in 2010":



Not long after the announcement came out that the USPTO granted a record number of patents in 2010, China's SIPO officially announced today that the number of patents granted in China in 2010 was 40 percent higher than in 2009, receiving over 1.2 million patent applications and approving 814,825 requests among them last year. The application number was over 25 percent more than that in 2009.


Over in the US, a "Patent Troll Takes Twitter To Court For Creating Virtual Community of Celebs" and China may be laughing at this self-nuking act that only shuts down innovation rather than promote any. It can lead companies to expansion in China where it's safer for a corporation (less litigation, less regulation).

You read that right - someone is apparently suing Twitter because it lets celebs interact online. The popular micro-blogging service partly owes its popularity to celebrities like P Diddy, Ellen Degeneres, 50 Cent, Ashton Kutcher and Demi Moore who command millions of Twitter followers. It's exactly this aspect of the service that's now under fire from little-known VS Technologies, LLC that doesn't even have a website. This company apparently holds rights to a 2002 patent entitled "Method and system for creating an interactive virtual community of famous people" and they're seeking an unspecified amount of damages to be paid that "cannot be less than would constitute a reasonable royalty for the use of the patented technology, together with interest and costs as fixed by this Court," as they've put it.


In Europe too we have been seeing some discouraging news recently (Court of Justice ruling on Czech GUIs) and Falk Metzler, a lawyer, writes about it in his blog. What he says in the first part is a bit of an introduction:

Even though up to now this blog predominantly reported on patent issues and IP politics, it is nevertheless intended to cover other types of software-related intellectual property as well.

I thus feel that I have to mention at least briefly the recent decision of the European Court of Justice in case C-393/09 (BSA vs. Ministry of Culture of the CR), which is dealing with copyright protection of graphical user interfaces (GUI).


How are people supposed to code these days? In the past, all one had to do was ensure that his/her code was written by oneself. These days, people are expected to read and understand hundreds of thousands of patents and now be familiar with loads of GUI designs/layouts that are 'protected' by copyright? Metzler shows the KDE4 desktop in his blog posts. Is he trying imply something? What type of future does the West offer to developers if restrictions that they are not interested in are put in place to impede them? I write this as a concerned developer myself. Programming jobs are being eliminated in order to give way to lawyers and monopolies they sometimes represent.

Recent Techrights' Posts

Professor Eben Moglen on How Social Control Media Metabolises Humans and Constrains Freedom of Thought
Nothing of value would be lost if all these data-harvesting giants (profiling people) vanished overnight
Debian Left Twitter (MElon "X"), We Think the Free Software Foundation (FSF) Should Do the Same
What would the FSF really lose if it stopped posting there?
 
Links 07/02/2025: Amazon’s Stock Collapses and US Government Being Dismantled (Still)
Links for the day
Gemini Links 07/02/2025: Mid-level Details and Simple Code
Links for the day
Links 07/02/2025: US 'Demolition Crew', e-ID Loopholes, and Sanctions
Links for the day
Social Control Media is Narcissism
Nowadays there's a lot more literature and even press coverage explaining the harms of Social Control Media
statCounter Sees GNU/Linux Share Doubling in China Over the Past Year
It'll be interesting to see what data in the coming months shows
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Thursday, February 06, 2025
IRC logs for Thursday, February 06, 2025
Richard Stallman (RMS) Confirms Next Week's Talk in Europe
He gave at least 2 talks in Europe last month
Nationalism As A Service (NaaS) by Microsoft Azure, Gutting the US Government for Profit
Will Microsoft be receiving bailouts as a reward for all this?
Rumours of IBM Layoffs Apparently Confirmed Yesterday, IBM Canada Consulting Impacted (as Rumoured)
when IBM has layoffs we must also read it as Red Hat layoffs
Tons of Anti-Linux 'Articles' Published by Bots (LLMs), Maybe Microsoft's
Upon closer inspection, all this FUD turned out to be LLM garbage
Gemini Links 06/02/2025: Voicemail Sucks and Night of Lights
Links for the day
Ubuntu Desktop Director of Engineering Has Only One Blog Post. It Promotes Microsoft Windows.
Remember that even 15 years ago (more or less, maybe 16 years ago) Canonical appointed a a 'former' Microsoft manager (Spencer) to lead Ubuntu on the desktop
Links 06/02/2025: YouTube Takedowns Out of Control, 'DOGE' Breaking Laws
Links for the day
IBM Red Hat on "era of cloud computing", pushing "hey hi" (AI) hype in Microsoft Azure
LLM slop might actually be more benign than Microsoft promotion
Corruption and Rule-Breaking Prevail at the European Patent Office (EPO), Europe's Second-Largest Institution
The law does not really exist at the EPO; it can be perceived as merely a "recommendation"
statCounter: More Countries Where Windows is Around 1% "Market Share" (People Have Moved to Android/Linux)
in some nations Windows is already 1% or less
404 Media Says "Workers at NASA Told to Drop Everything to Scrub Mentions of Indigenous People, Women from Its Websites" But There's Also Accessibility in the Firing Line
In the case of abandoning accessibility, everyone stands to be hurt and proprietary software can be brought in to replace standards
When BetaNews Writes Real Articles About "Linux" They Promote Windows
The Web is in a bad state. We need to at least try to correct this.
Gemini Links 06/02/2025: Cynicism and "Real Magic on the C64"
Links for the day
Links 06/02/2025: New Sanctions, Layoffs, and Executive Orders
Links for the day
Distros and Desktop Environments, Devices
GNU/Linux focused
New Rumours of IBM Layoffs in 2025, IBM Consulting Still Struggles, Based on Management
"Hey hi" (AI) has been a common excuse for business failure
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Wednesday, February 05, 2025
IRC logs for Wednesday, February 05, 2025
Links 05/02/2025: Kessler Syndrome and News Online
Links for the day
statCounter: Monaco Now 7% GNU/Linux ("Proper")
GNU/Linux, not counting Chromebooks, is on the rise
Many Parts of Google Lose Money
It's quite apparent that many parts of Google - even some that rely on ad revenue or push ads - aren't profiting
European Internet Forum (EIF) is Dominated by American Corporations and Microsoft Lobbyists, Staff Take the Lead
Should the officials over here or the European Parliament pay attention to these people?
Links 05/02/2025: Connection without Connectivity and Unionised Grocery Workers
Links for the day
Just Because People on Top of the Microsoft Pyramid Made a Lot of Money Doesn't Mean Microsoft is Wealthy
The bigger they are the harder they fall
Gemini Links 05/02/2025: Learning, Madman Ruling a Mad Country, Back in Geminispace
Links for the day
statCounter Shows "WIntel" Chasing a Dying Market
Microsoft acts as if it's running out of money
Free Software Foundation, Inc. (FSF) Still Raising Money, Richard Stallman Contributes
total exceeding $430k
A Lot of Stuff About "Linux" in Google News is LLM Slop, Fake 'Articles'
It seems to be getting worse
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Tuesday, February 04, 2025
IRC logs for Tuesday, February 04, 2025