Bonum Certa Men Certa

The Bizarre World of US Patents and Ongoing Pursuit/Granting of Software Patents in Spite of Section 101

Summary: A survey of recent patents that are either far too trivial, pertain purely to software, promote surveillance, or are pursued purely for vanity (when a court is likely to deem these invalid anyway)

THE US patent office is still granting all sorts of bizarre patents (low quality/certainty levels), sometimes to be facing challenge/refutation/overturning by courts, PTAB, oppositions etc. Patent examination is not a simple task, but the more safeguards exist, the more likely patents are to be upheld and successfully enforced at the end (when plenty of money is invested in litigation/negotiation). A legitimate patent would be granted in the interest of the public on novel ideas that are also not trivial and can be demonstrated physically (e.g. with a prototype). There aren't many such patents, certainly not millions. Some of the most notorious patents were granted on mere concepts or tasks which can be carried out using pen and paper (or in one's mind alone).

"Some of the most notorious patents were granted on mere concepts or tasks which can be carried out using pen and paper (or in one's mind alone)."Over the summer we've taken note of news about patents we wish to comment on, for we believe that these demonstrate a problem with quality control and/or perception of patents in the US.

Symantec



It's no secret that Symantec is still pursuing software patents. This latest example is said to "Protect Torrent Users Against Malware", which means that it's a software patent on security. Generally speaking, Symantec does not have a track record as a patent bully; in fact, it sometimes fights back against patent trolls, notably in Intellectual Ventures LLC v Symantec Corp (fairly recent case, decided by a high court).

"What chance does this patent have when properly scrutinised like in Intellectual Ventures LLC v Symantec Corp?"What isn't clear here, however, is the USPTO's decision to continue granting software patents after Alice. What chance does this patent have when properly scrutinised like in Intellectual Ventures LLC v Symantec Corp? Is such a patent necessary in the first place? Can it be challenged at PTAB with an IPR?

Apple



Apple's patents are often a source of amusement because the company rides a wave of hype, powered both by fans and by paid marketing. Look at this new patent. Can one say "trivial"? Like... ridiculously trivial? Can one not see that this is a software patent (thus invalid/not patent-eligible) that is not novel, either?

"Can one not see that this is a software patent (thus invalid/not patent-eligible) that is not novel, either?"The truth of the matter is, Apple continues pursuing very trivial patents and examiners in the US don't seem to mind. We have heard similar stories from inside the EPO (regarding applications from Apple). Here is another one: see the first article about it [1, 2] (cross-posted) and some followup from the mainstream media. This is not an invention but a trivial software patent (Alice would definitely swat it) that probably merits a yawn. There have been British derivatives of these reports with "999" rather than "911" [1, 2]. It wouldn't even make the news if it didn't involve the brand name "Apple". The patent in a nutshell? "Apple has patented a process that would allow users to secretly call 911 using only their fingerprint.

"In a patent published by the United States Patent and Trademark Office on Tuesday, the tech giant outlined a feature that would allow users to call emergency services “when a conventional method may not be practical.”"

"Do they get a monopoly on this because they were first to file?!"It's just about as trivial as it sounds. Do they get a monopoly on this because they were first to file?!

Microsoft



Speaking of Apple and the likes of them, watch Microsoft trying to grab patents on things it did not even 'invent'. "You will soon be able to track laptops in case of theft, Microsoft patent reveals," according to this report, which rightly then adds that it's something users "already have on... Android smartphones."

"Are they going to use "hands" as the equivalent of "device" to pretend that it doesn't simply boil down to computer vision and is thus pure software?"So can Microsoft now go bullying Android OEMs? Even if it did not invent this? And it boils down to spying? More spying on people using cameras was covered in this article titled "Patents show Apple & Microsoft Racing to bring Hand Gesturing Systems to Computers, Home Appliances & more" (footage going upstream for them to conduct surveillance with).

Are they going to use "hands" as the equivalent of "device" to pretend that it doesn't simply boil down to computer vision and is thus pure software?

Google



Speaking of privacy-hostile patents, "Google Patents Extracting Facts from the Web" (or data-mining).

"This is pure software, or machine learning. It oughtn't merit a patent."I already wrote a proposal and did this 12 years ago (akin to prior art), but it doesn't seem to bother large companies like Google, which simply want to stockpile lots of low-quality patents. "When Google crawls the Web," says the article, "it collects information about content on the pages it finds as well as links on pages. How much does it collect information about facts on the Web?"

This is pure software, or machine learning. It oughtn't merit a patent.

Cisco



Some large corporations are more aggressive than others and Cisco is one of those companies that often get sued by patent trolls. But Cisco is itself rather aggressive too and we previously wrote about how Cisco continued to (mis)use patents for embargoes on Arista products [1, 2, 3, 4]. There was recently a successful suspension of imports. As one report put it:

Cisco Systems has won a significant victory in its legal battle with Arista Networks, since its smaller rival agreed to suspend imports of some of its network switching products. However, it’s unclear how long that suspension will remain in place.

The International Trade Commission (ITC) in May ruled that Arista’s Ethernet switches violated two of six Cisco patents and ordered that the company stop shipping those products into the United States. However, the regulatory board allowed a 60-day “Presidential review period” during which Arista could continue importing the switches.



IAM wrote about a different Cisco case. Being a mouthpiece for patent trolls in the US and elsewhere, IAM was calling for "balance in patent debates in the US" (by balance it meant the opposite of balance, for only balance that IAM understands is the bank balance of Joff Wild and cohorts). Here is what IAM said in relation to a Cisco case:

In the US the patent troll narrative has become one of the dominant forces in how IP owners, lawyers and legislators talk about and view the patent system. It is a narrative that has been extraordinarily successful and while there have been and continue to be abuses of the system by some entities looking to extract nuisance settlements with poor quality or overly broad patents, there is also another side to this debate.


Terms such as "IP owners" (above) are meaningless because "IP" is not a patent but a nebulous, vague concept and patents are assigned/granted, not "owned".

Now that Blockchains are being polluted by patent thickets [1, 2] see what IAM is publishing about such patents. As if innovation does not matter as much as a gold rush for patents.

Patent Hype



It's quite a problem when companies apply for patents merely to use them as some kind of trophy or a badge of honour, even when there's virtually no use to them. Being granted a software patent, for example, is not "innovation" but protectionism by restricting others' right to write algorithms; yet watch this press release from June [1, 2] and this article which claimed "three patents to show for its four decades in existence."

"It's quite a problem when companies apply for patents merely to use them as some kind of trophy or a badge of honour, even when there's virtually no use to them."Well, patents and innovation are not the same thing, so less than one patent per decade is fine. They need to reject the myth of patents as surrogate for value or innovation.

Watch what Lifeline claimed last month [1, 2]. To quote: "The principals of Lifeline and the engineers at NTU filed for and received software patents on the technology."

"Software patents were granted by USPTO examiners, but we are pretty certain that PTAB and/or courts would disagree with the grant, citing Section 101."So they're invalid. Software patents no longer have much (or any) value.

Here is another press release from that time [1, 2], calling someone "the inventor and multiple patents holder of software-defined networks..."

Software again.

How about this one? Software patents were granted by USPTO examiners, but we are pretty certain that PTAB and/or courts would disagree with the grant, citing Section 101.

"If all you have to show is a US patent in a paid press release, then maybe you have nothing else to show (or do)."Here is another press release that's purely about patents [1, 2]. This one has a photo too. How cheesy! We have decided to reproduce it below:

TELoIP patent



If all you have to show is a US patent in a paid press release, then maybe you have nothing else to show (or do). TELoIP actually paid to publish this!

Recent Techrights' Posts

Real Life Should be Offline, Not Online, and It Requires Free Software
Resistance means having the guts to say "no!", even in the face of great societal burden and peer pressure
Security Isn't the Goal of Today's Software and Hardware Products
Any newly-added layer represents more attack surface
Godot 4.2 is Approaching, But After What Happened to Unity All Game Developers Should be Careful
We hope Unity will burn in a massive fire and, as for Godot, we hope it'll get rid of Microsoft
 
Microsoft Deserves a Medal for Being Worst at Security (the Media Deserves a Medal for Cover-up)
There are still corruptible/bribed publishers that quote Microsoft staff like they're security gurus
10 Reasons to Permanently Export or Liberate Your Site From WordPress, Drupal, and Other Bloatware
There are certainly more more advantages, but 10 should suffice for now
About 200,000 Objects in Techrights Web Site
This hopefully helps demonstrate just how colossal the migration actually is
Good Teachers Would Tell Kids to Quit Social Control Media Rather Than Participate in It (Teaching Means Education, Not Misinformation)
Insist that classrooms offer education to children rather than offer children to corporations
Twitter: From Walled Gardens to Paywalls and/or Amplifiers of Fascism
There's moreover a push to promote politicians who are as scummy as Twitter's owner
The World Wide Web is Being Confiscated From Us (Like Syndication Was Withdrawn About a Decade Ago) and We Need to Fight Back
We're worse off when fewer people promote RSS feeds and instead outsource to social control media (censorship, surveillance, manipulation)
Next Up: Restoring IRC Log Pipelines, Bulletins/Full Text RSS, Wiki (Archived, Static), and Pipelines for Daily Links
There are still many tasks left ahead of us, but we've progressed a lot
An Era of Rotting Technology, Migration Crises, and Cliffhanging
We've covered examples from IBM, resembling the Microsoft world
First Iteration of Techrights as 100% Static Pages Web Site
We want to champion another decade or two of positive impact and opinionated analysis
Links 25/09/2023: Patent News and Coding
some remaining links for today
Steam Deck is Mostly Good in the Sense That It Weakens Microsoft's Dominance (Windows)
The Steam Deck is mostly a DRM appliance
SUSE is Just Another Black Cat Working for Proprietary Giants/Monopolies
SUSE's relationship with firms such as these generally means that SUSE works for authority, not for community, and when it comes to cryptography it just follows guidelines from the US government
IBM is Selling Complexity, Not GNU/Linux
It's not about the clients, it's about money
Birthday of Techrights in 6 Weeks (Tux Machines and Techrights Reach Combined Age of 40 in 2025)
We've already begun the migration to static
Linux Foundation: We Came, We Saw, We Plundered
Linux Foundation staff uses neither Linux nor Open Source. They're essentially using, exploiting, piggybacking goodwill gestures (altruism of volunteers) while paying themselves 6-figure salaries.
Linux Too Big to Be Properly Maintained When There's an Incentive to Sell More and More Things (Complexity and Narrow Support Window)
They want your money, not your peace of mind. That's a problem.
Modern Web Means Proprietary Trash
Mozilla is financially beholden to Google and thus we cannot expect any pushback or for Firefox to "reclaims the Web" a second time around
GNU/Linux Has Conquered the World, But Users' Freedom Has Not (Impediments Remain in Hardware)
Installing one's system of choice on a device is very hard, sometimes impossible
Another Copyright Lawsuit Against Microsoft (or its Proxy) for Misuse of Large Works by Chatbot
Some people mocked us for saying this day would come; chatbots are a huge disappointment and they're on very shaky legal ground
Privacy is Not a Crime, Reporting Hidden Facts Is Not a Crime Either
the powerful companies/governments/societies get to know everything about everybody, but if anyone out there discovers or shares dark secrets about those powerful companies/governments/societies, that's a "crime"
United Workforce Always Better for the Workers
In the case of technology, it is possible that a lack of collective action is because of relatively high salaries and less physically-demanding jobs
Purge of Software Freedom and Its Voices
Reprinted with permission from Ryan Farmer
GNOME and GTK Taking Freedom Away From Users
Reprinted with permission from Ryan Farmer
GNOME is Worse Today (in 2023) Than When I Did GTK Development 20+ Years Ago
To me it seems like GNOME is moving backward, not forward, mostly removing features and functionality rather than adding any
HowTos Are Moving to Tux Machines
HowTos (or howtos) are very important in their own right, but they can easily distract from the news and howtos are usually quite timeless or time-insensitive
Proprietary Panda: Don't Be Misled by the Innocent Looks of Ubuntu (and Microsoft Canonical)
Given the number of disgruntled employees who leave Canonical and given Ubuntu's trend of just copying whatever IBM does in Fedora, is there still a good reason to choose Ubuntu?
Debian GNU/Linux is a Fine Operating System, But What if People Die Making It for Somebody's Corporate/Personal Gain?
Will companies that exploited unpaid volunteers ever be held accountable for loss of life, caused by burnout, excessive work, or poverty?
Links 24/09/2023: 5 Days' Worth of News (Catchup)
Links for the day
Leftover Links 24/09/2023: Russia, COVID, and More
Links for the day
Forty Years of GNU and the Free Software Movement
by FSF
Gemini and Web in Tandem
We're already learning, over IRC, that out new site is fully compatible with simple command line- and ncurses-based Web browsers. Failing that, there's Gemini.
Red Hat Pretends to Have "Community Commitment to Open Source" While Scuttling the Fedora Community (Among Others)
RHEL is becoming more proprietary over time and community seems to boil down to unpaid volunteers (at least that's how IBM see the "community")
IBM Neglecting Users of GNU/Linux on Laptops and Desktops
Reprinted with permission from Ryan Farmer
Personal Identification on the 'Modern' Net
Reprinted with permission from Ryan Farmer
Not Your Daily Driver: Don't Build With Rust or Adopt Rust-based Software If You Value Long-Term Reliance
Rust is a whole bunch of hype.
The Future of the Web is Not the Web
The supposedly "modern" stuff ought to occupy some other protocol, maybe "app://"
YouTube Has Just Become Even More Sinister
The way Google has been treating the Web (and Web browsers) sheds a clue about future plans and prospects
Initial Announcement of GNU (for Gnu's Not Unix) on September 27, 1983
History matters
Upgrade and Migration Status
Git is working, IPFS is working, IRC is working, Gemini is working
Yesterday in the 'Sister Site', Tux Machines (10 More Stories)
Scope-wise, many stories fit neatly into both sites, but posting the same twice makes no sense logistically
The New Techrights Will be Much Faster
A prompt response to FUD is important. It's time-sensitive.