Bonum Certa Men Certa

Continued Erosion of Software Patents in the US and With It a Demise in Abusive Litigation by Patent Trolls

~90% of technology patent lawsuits are said to involve patent trolls

Summary: Encouraging signs of patent scope tightening/improvement at the US patent system, bolstered by inter partes reviews which crowdsource (or crowdfund) so as to defang serial abusers that rely on dubious software patents

Unified Patents, which showed that patent trolls with their software patents dominate the scene, took unprecedented action several days ago, aided by PTAB's inter partes reviews. This is delightful progress and a move in the right direction.



PTAB, especially post-Alice, is one of the best things to happen to the USPTO in recent history. The combination of these two things 2 years ago presently facilitates the systematic crushing of software patents in the US, whether or not these patents are being asserted in a court of law. Patently-O has this new article titled "Inter Partes Review Statistics" and it says upfront: "This post summarizes data on inter partes review proceedings and appeals from the Patent Office. Although the office publishes a monthly Patent Trial and Appeal Board Statistics packet, the narratives contained within that packet can create confusion as discussed in Michael Sander’s guest post earlier this year. Below are some of the charts that I’ve developed based on the publicly available information to attempt to get a better handle on what’s going on in terms of case flow and outcome."

This is a very detailed post and a helpful one, too. Patently-O is quite a decent source of scholarly information on the state of affairs in the US and nowadays it is quite neutral/impartial on most data.

In various Web sites earlier this week we have begun seeing positive coverage of Unified Patents and its good fight. BoingBoing, for example, said that "Unified Patents raises money from companies that are the target of patent-trolling and then uses it to challenge the most widely used patents in each of its members' sectors: now it's going for the gold.

"Unified is challenging three patents at once: Shipping & Transit's patent on bus-tracking (the basis of 500+ lawsuits, most against cities' transit authorities); Uniloc's patent on DRM; and Sportbrain Holdings' patent on wearable health monitors."

Uniloc is a particularly nasty patent troll, which basically denies being a troll and uses rather dubious software patents to make money out of nothing. Michael Loney, writing for MIP from New York, wrote:

Unified Patents has filed inter partes review (IPR) petitions at the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) to challenge patents asserted by this year’s three most prolific patent litigants. The challenges to Shipping and Transit, Sportbrain Holdings, and Uniloc USA are part of Unified’s efforts to protect its members in technology areas from non-practicing entities (NPEs).

These three NPEs have sued more than 200 companies combined in 2016, accounting for almost 15% of patent cases filed against high-tech companies.

"Unified is the only company that refuses to pay off NPEs, instead disrupting and deterring them by challenging poor-quality patents," Unified said in a blog post.


In a separate new article, Loney looked at recent litigation statistics, whereas at IAM there was only reminiscing of "the busiest month of patent litigation on record" (more to do with a filing cutoff/deadline). As even IAM admits: "Last November saw a huge spike in new patent case filings... 570 of those 847 have been terminated" (and more will probably be terminated soon). "Overall, though," IAM notes, "what the November stats may tell us is that plaintiffs were looking for predictability. No one knew back then (and probably few know fully now) how the new regime was going to work. By getting in by the 30th November plaintiffs were making sure that they would be operating within a regime that they understood."

That was the end of an era. No longer can patent trolls enjoy the same trolls-friendly platform which is tolerant and full of software patents. A new article by Daniel Nazer from the EFF (copied to TechDirt) speaks of one such software patent and explains it as follows:

Another month, another terrible patent being asserted in the Eastern District of Texas. Solocron Education LLC, a company whose entire "education" business is filing lawsuits, owns U.S. Patent No. 6,263,439, titled "Verification system for non-traditional learning operations." What kind of "verification system" does Solocron claim to have invented? Passwords.

The patent describes a mundane process for providing education materials through video cassettes, DVDs, or online. Students are sent course materials, take tests, and, if they pass the tests, are allowed to continue on to the next part of the course. At various times, students confirm their identity by entering their biographical details and passwords.

Solocron did not invent distance education, encryption, or passwords. The patent doesn't describe any new technology, it just applies existing technology in a routine way to education materials. That should not be enough to get a patent. Unfortunately, the Patent Office does not do enough to prevent obvious patents from issuing, which is how we get patents on white-background photography or on filming a Yoga class.


Such patents are no longer likely to withstand the scrutiny of a court other than perhaps in the Eastern District of Texas, which markets itself as trolls-friendly. Another case of software patents in their full ‘glory’ can be seen here, as "AGIS claims all require a “symbol generator” to track mobile phone user location" (sounds like surveillance patents with artistic terminology designed to mislead examiners/judges*) and according to this patent attorney, we can expect more of the same. "According to the S.Ct.," he wrote, "this Alice Bank patent claims abstract subject matter: US5970479" (the title of this patent is "Methods and apparatus relating to the formulation and trading of risk management contracts").

We're at the cusp of change right now because litigation numbers (on the decline) serve to indicate reduced certainty about the potency of software patents in the US, especially at the court which got them all started, the Federal Circuit. ____ * As Professor Dennis Crouch notes: "On appeal, the Federal Circuit affirmed the indefiniteness finding under its strict means-plus-function approach. The appellate panel first held that the “symbol generator” element should properly be interpreted under 35 U.S.C. 112 €¶ 6 as claiming a means for performing a specified function without reciting (in the claims) the supporting structure. Under 112 €¶ 6, means-plus-function claim elements are However, the statute requires that MPF claim elements be tightly construed to cover only “the corresponding structure . . . described in the specification and equivalents thereof.” Further, the Federal Circuit has repeatedly held that MPF claim elements that are not supported by corresponding structure within the specification are indefinite and thus invalid."

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