Voices Being Hijacked by Patent Lawyers and Proprietary Software Companies

Dr. Roy Schestowitz

2013-01-16 21:35:58 UTC
Modified: 2013-01-16 21:35:58 UTC

Stand with microphone

Summary: A timely reminder of the threat of losing one's voice to one's biggest enemy

Patent parasites, or patent lawyers like Manny W. Schecter, will continue to promote a lot of patents no matter what scholarly work shows. Evidence does not matter to lawyers; to them, "evidence" only counts if it helps their case, i.e. it they can make money from it. They have been stacking many online debates and panels (offline) recently, so they are essentially hijacking the voice of people who actually produce stuff.

"As a patent attorney..."

That is how how Schecter starts his argument as if being a patent lawyer makes him an inventor. Just let lawyers explain to us how science should work and why we should keep lawyers as our middlemen, right? Here is a new group called Application Developers Alliance. Hopefully it will represent developers when it speaks on software patents. To quote the FOSS-hostile SD Times [1, 2, 3, 4, 5] (a misnomer):

It said it plans to host a separate series this year on software patents, as well as additional conferences, summits, workshops, meetups, hackathons and webinars.

Who is funding the group and what policies will it adopt? A new group which calls itself Open Source Software Institute (OSSI) seems to be a front for proprietary software companies (trying to pass themselves off as "open source"), just like other think tanks which are dominated by proprietary software companies and call themselves "open source". Black Duck, proprietary software seller and booster, GPL basher, software patents proponent etc. (created by a Microsoft marketing senior) is openwashing itself again. Need we say a word about Adobe trying to openwash Flash by using Apache as a shell for Flex?

Let's acknowledge that we have got a problem when our voice and identity are lost in the mist. I received a message from the OSI's President about it. I gave him examples yesterday. Unlike "Open Source", there is no central authority to manage views on software patents. We need to be loud, we need to expose those who try to speak 'on our behalf'. ⬆

Recent Techrights' Posts

People Used to Talk: If pets can live a measurably happy life without gadgets and "apps", why can't humans?
Rust is Starting to Seem More Like Microsoft-hosted "Digital Maoism", Not a Legitimate Effort to Improve Security: Maybe this is very innocent, but they seem to have taken a solid, stable program from a high-profile Frenchman and looked for ways to marry it with GitHub, i.e. Microsoft/NSA
Gemini Links 08/05/2025: Practical Gemini Use Case, Shutdown of the Blanket Fort Webring: Links for the day
Links 08/05/2025: "Slop Presidency", US Government Defunds Public Broadcasting: Links for the day
Lasse Fister, Organiser of Libre Graphics Meeting, Points Out the Code of Conduct is Likely Violated by the Same People Who Promote Codes of Conduct (and Then Bully Him Into Cancelling a Keynote): I am starting to see Lasse Fister as another victim
LLM Slop Attacks Not Only Sites of Free Software Projects But Also Bug Reporting Systems (Time-wasting, in Effect "DDoS"): Microsoft, the leading purveyor and promoter of slop, is a cancer
The Richard Stallman (RMS) "European Tour" Carries on In Spite of the Nuremberg Incident: Some people spoke about how they saw yesterday's talk
Over at Tux Machines...: GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Wednesday, May 07, 2025: IRC logs for Wednesday, May 07, 2025
The CoC Means the Founder of GNU/Linux Cannot Talk and a 72-Year-Old Man With Cancer is Somehow a "Safety" Risk?: Those who don't like RMS are not forced to attend his talks
Gemini Links 07/05/2025: A Shopping Spree and Digital Gardening: Links for the day
Links 07/05/2025: Pegasus Guilty and a Path Towards EU Without Russian Energy: Links for the day
Outsourcing GNU/Linux to Microsoft GitHub Promoted by Microsoft LLM Slop and Army Officers: Something doesn't seem right
Weaponisation of For-Profit Dockets - Part III: No More Media Lawsuits From Brett Wilson LLP This Year, One Can Only Guess Why: People leak a lot of material to Techrights because they know, based on the track record, that the sources will be protected and whatever gets published will stay online, in full, no matter how stubborn an effort (even lawsuits and blackmail) will be sent its way
Gemini Links 07/05/2025: Adopting GrapheneOS, Further Enshittification of Flickr: Links for the day
Links 07/05/2025: CISA Gutted, Debt-Saddled (Likely Insolvent) 'Open' 'AI' (Proprietary Slop) Faking Its Financial State Again: Links for the day
Finland, Lithuania, and Latvia Fortify Their Digital Border With GNU/Linux: This month's data from statCounter is particularly interesting near the Baltic Sea
The European Patent Office (EPO) Has a Very Profound Corruption Issue, Far More Urgent an Issue Than Pronouns: a rather long document
Richard Stallman Gives Public Talk at Technical University of Liberec, Czech Republic: "For programs that you could run, and for network services that could do your own computing, under what circumstances is it reasonable to trust them?"
Today We Turn 18.5: The eighteenth "and a half" anniversary
Over at Tux Machines...: GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Tuesday, May 06, 2025: IRC logs for Tuesday, May 06, 2025
Microsoft Finally Admits That XBox is ****: In this case, "enshittification" is an understatement
Another Wave of Microsoft Layoffs Comes Shortly. Microsoft Propaganda Sites and Slopforms Powered by Microsoft LLMs Already Spew Out Face-Saving Nonsense.: Based on last month's leak, some very extensive layoffs are now imminent [...] Perhaps we can expect a lot of noise, some of it spewed out by bots, to distract from or belittle the impending mass layoffs
Ubuntu Becomes Microsoft GitHub, Based on Decision Made by British Army Officer: You're hopeless, Canonical
Slopwatch: Microsoft Slop, Anti-Linux Slop, and IBM Marketing Itself as a Slop Company: Microsoft-controlled LLM spewing out garbage about "Linux"
Links 06/05/2025: Microsoft's Assassination of Skype After Years of Failure, Slop Hallucinations Are Getting Worse: Links for the day
Links 06/05/2025: Changing Places and StarGrid for PalmOS: Links for the day
Windows and Microsoft Causing Serious Data Breaches, Media Rushes to Blame That on "Linux" Somehow: While selling us some rusty old propaganda about how moving to Microsoft GitHub (Rust) will improve security
Making Site Archives More Easily Accessible (Approaching 50,000 Blog Posts): Efforts to censor us have always backfired badly
Weaponisation of For-Profit Dockets - Part II: Hiding Behind Lawyers and Barristers Who Lack Standards so as to Engage in Classic Corporate Extortion: They're trying to scare people and they misuse their licence to operate
Links 06/05/2025: LLMs/Chatbots Attract More Scrutiny (Getting Worse Over Time), PwC Has Many Layoffs: Links for the day
Thanks for listening. How can this Morse feed be further improved?: Right now any and all feedback on the audio would be helpful
statCounter: Bing's Market Share Lower Right Now Than It Was When LLM Hype Began (With "Bing Chat"): If anybody gains at Google's expense in search, it is BRICS' alternatives such as Yandex
Gemini Links 06/05/2025: Failure and Proxmox Cluster: Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...: GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Monday, May 05, 2025: IRC logs for Monday, May 05, 2025