Bonum Certa Men Certa

Software Patents Are Being Defeated to the Detriment of Large Multinationals, Their Patent Lawyers, and Patent Trolls Who Piggyback Them

SFLC India

Summary: Updates on the patent situation in India and in the United States, with special emphasis on software patents, or vague patents on abstract concepts which are, in effect, reducible to logic/mathematics

INDIA'S 'branch' of SFLC was recently given credit here for helping to crush software patents, which multinational software giants like IBM or Microsoft (monopolists in particular areas) are actively lobbying for. SFLC.in managed to halt or at least slow down some very incredible forces. According to this new article from them (accompanied by the #NoSoftwarePatents hashtag): "On 14th December 2015, the Controller General of Patents, Designs and Trademarks, Mr. Om Prakash Gupta, ordered that the recently released 2015 “Guidelines for Examination of Computer Related Inventions (CRIs)” shall be kept in abeyance till discussions with stakeholders are completed and contentious issues with respect to the 2015 Guidelines are resolved (order available here). SFLC.in highly appreciates the efforts made by the Indian Patent Office in considering the feedback given by civil society organisations and the Indian software product industry. . This is a very welcome, albeit first, step taken by the Government towards ensuring that the Indian software industry continues to enjoy the freedom to innovate and is not shackled by irregular patents granted in the area of software."



"SFLC.in managed to halt or at least slow down some very incredible forces."We wish to congratulate SFLC.in for its excellent work. Well done!

In the United States, 'home' of software patents, things are rapidly changing right now, as both software patents and patent trolls get somewhat of a smackdown, even without involvement by Congress*.

Chuck Soder, the technology reporter at Crain's Cleveland Business, has just published this new article that says: "Judges across the country are striking down software patents in the name of a U.S. Supreme Court decision that is changing how some tech companies protect their ideas."

"In the United States, 'home' of software patents, things are rapidly changing right now, as both software patents and patent trolls get somewhat of a smackdown, even without involvement by Congress."Soder adds that "[j]udges are invalidating patents [...] and that’s “kind of scary,” according to Christopher Comiskey, a patent attorney at Thompson Hine, which is representing MacroPoint."

Well, of course it's scary to patent lawyers. They make money from patent wars and stockpiling.

"Though he [Comiskey] wouldn’t comment on that case," Soder writes, "he noted that judges are making decisions on patent validity without citing outside evidence and expert testimony. That’s “disturbing,” given how much time and money companies put into getting those patents, Comiskey said."

"Well, of course it’s scary to patent lawyers. They make money from patent wars and stockpiling."Well, Comiskey is basically in the same category as patent parasites, much like trolls. Comiskey does not create anything, he is just trying to make living from litigation and sometimes by tricking examiners or judges (because many of these patents are not really patent-eligible as per the examiners' guidelines)

Empirically speaking, software patents lead to patent trolling, which is an activity mostly centered around Texas [1, 2, 3, 4]. "In a first," writes an expert in the area of patent trolls, "East Texas judge hits patent troll with attorneys’ fees" (referring to eDekka LLC, which we covered here before, e.g. in this recent or that older post). He says that "The most litigious "patent troll" of 2014 has been effectively shut down, and will have to pay attorneys' fees to several defendants.

"Empirically speaking, software patents lead to patent trolling, which is an activity mostly centered around Texas.""US District Judge Rodney Gilstrap, who hears more patent cases that any other federal judge, issued an order (PDF) on Thursday saying that the behavior of eDekka LLC qualified as "exceptional," and that the company should pay the legal fees of various companies it sued.

"Gilstrap's courtroom is, arguably, the most surprising spot in the nation from which a patent troll slap-down might originate. The judge has been criticized by the Electronic Frontier Foundation for making life unnecessarily difficult for patent defendants. He's also invalidated relatively few patents under Supreme Court precedent set in last year's Alice Corp. case, even as other federal judges have been tossing out software patents at a steady clip."

The legacy of Alice stands out again. Is Benoît Battistelli's EPO taking note? Any note "as such"? ________ * Talks about patent reform are nowhere in sight anymore, definitely not in those must-pass bills -- those which CISA gets lumped into at the 90th minute; see our daily links for more details about that scandalous act by Congress (Friday's news).

Recent Techrights' Posts

Techrights Does Not Compete With LLM Slop, It Exposes the Bastards, Plagiarists and Scammers Who Do That
People like Scam Altman, still facing a lawsuit from his own sister for sexual abuse against her
Slopwatch: Planet Ubuntu Became LLM Slop and Some People Fail to See the Immorality of Plagiarism
it lessens the incentive for people to publish real articles
Microsoft Layoffs Again in Bay Area
Microsoft relies on people's false belief that being "in LinkedIn" will get you a job; well, seems like even working inside LinkedIn really sucks and you lose the job
 
The "AI" (Slop) Bubble Already Popped, But It's Not an Overnight Collapse
where Microsoft put its money
No More Steven Astorino at IBM, Chatter About Weekly/Nonstop Layoffs at IBM
What happened? Good luck guessing.
Looking at Corruption in Europe, Going Beyond the EPO
Expect a new series to kick off very soon
Slopwatch: Security SPAM and LLM Slop for SEO and FUD Purposes, Perpetually Tarnishing the Perception of Linux and (Open)SSH Security
A lot of this Fear, Uncertainty, Doubt (FUD) comes from Microsoft and its LLMs
Links 30/05/2025: Google's LLM Slop Pushers Are Killing Journalism and Shira Perlmutter Fails to Stop Bribed Regime From Legalising Plagiarism (in "AI" Clothing)
Links for the day
Links 30/05/2025: Offline Arts and "Threshold of Patience"
Links for the day
Signing Off Serious Lies With a Statement of Truth is No Joking Matter
It's not hard to see what's happening here
Links 30/05/2025: LLM Slop Already Ingests and Vomits Its Own Garbage, Facebook Exec Admits Copyrights a Concern Too
Links for the day
Mass Layoffs at Microsoft Result in More Whistleblowers From Microsoft
Microsoft's predatory pricing is further
EPO Poll: 68% Dissatisfied With Quality of Slop (Wrongly Framed as "AI") for Patent Classification
Slop does not work, it's just falsely advertised with extra hype (funded by slop pushers that sponsor the major media)
Big Crowds Gather to Learn About Software Freedom From the Man Who Started GNU/Linux in 1983
"It was a great success"
Gemini Links 30/05/2025: Fighting Against the Bad News, and Slop is Dehumanisation Disguised as "Intelligence"
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Thursday, May 29, 2025
IRC logs for Thursday, May 29, 2025
Links 29/05/2025: Chinese Cracking Against EU Institutions (Prague), More Assaults on Media and Its Funding Sources
Links for the day
EPO Workers Caution That the Officials Are Still Illegally Trying to Replace Staff With Slop (to Lower Quality and Validity of European Patents)
Nobody in Europe voted for any of this
Links 29/05/2025: US Health Deficit and Malware Disguised as Slop Generator
Links for the day
Links 29/05/2025: Turtle Roadkill, Modern 'Tech' as a Sting
Links for the day
Thanks for All the Fish, Linux Format
people who once wrote for it (or for other magazines) comment on the importance of this news
People's Understanding of the History of GNU/Linux is Changing
RMS is not a radical, he's just clever enough to see and foresee what's going on
Microsofters Were Scheming to Take Over This Entire Web Site (in Their Own Words!)
Money gets spent censoring/deplatforming people who speak about real issues; no money gets spent actually tackling those underlying issues
Bicycles for the Minds and the Story Harrison Bergeron
"The goal of having people in charge of the tools they use and that the tools should amplify ability" has long been abandoned
Links 29/05/2025: YouTube Problem and Giant Privacy Hole in Microsoft OneDrive
Links for the day
[Video] Cory Doctorow Explains DMCA: DRM in the Browser (or Webapp) Will "Make It a Felony to Protect Your Privacy While You Use It."
Pycon US Keynote Speaker Cory Doctorow
United States Courts With Sworn Testimonies Are on Our Side, We'll Present the Same Here
Chronicling what happened is a moral imperative
Serial Sloppers Ruin and Lessen the Incentive to Cover "Linux"
The Serial Sloppers (SSs) ought to be named and shamed, but almost nobody does this
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Wednesday, May 28, 2025
IRC logs for Wednesday, May 28, 2025
Links 28/05/2025: 'Emulation Layers' (Measurements and Linguistics), Libraries, and Discomfort
Links for the day
Links 28/05/2025: More Arrests for Bitcoin-Connected Torture and Prosecutions for Dieselgate-Linked Executives
Links for the day
Even Microsoft (MSN) Covers Richard Stallman's Public Talk in Milan 2 Days Ago
He spoke in Spanish earlier this month (Alicante)
Gemini Links 28/05/2025: Techo-authoritarianism With Slop Plagiarism and "No Online June" (Going Offline)
Links for the day
Links 28/05/2025: GitHub MCP Exploited and MathWorks Discovers Huge Windows TCO
Links for the day
Very High Attendance Level at Richard Stallman's Talk Shows People Can Relate to His Message
Smear campaigns have their limits
Gemini Links 28/05/2025: Celsius-Fahrenheit, Endless Scrolling/Infinite Scrolling, and Trapping LLM Slop Bots
Links for the day
Prison gate backdrop to baptism by Fr Sean O'Connell, St Paul's, Coburg
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
More Photos From This Week's Milan Talk by Richard Stallman
The posts are in Italian, not English
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Tuesday, May 27, 2025
IRC logs for Tuesday, May 27, 2025