Bonum Certa Men Certa

EFF and CCIA Use Docket Navigator and Lex Machina to Identify 'Stupid Patents' (Usually Software Patents That Are Not Valid)

Lex MachinaSummary: In spite of threats and lawsuits from bogus 'inventors' whom they criticise, EFF staff continues the battle against patents that should never have been granted at all

"Judge Finds ‘Stupid Patent’ Web Story is Protected Speech"; that's the headline of a new report (found via Slashdot, which has a summary and comments). For those who forgot, the EFF has been sued or threatened with lawsuits for running series which merely criticise or bash particular patents -- clearly an act of free speech. The judge too saw it that way:



An Australian court can’t make a California-based digital rights watchdog take down a web article that mocks a company’s patent as “stupid,” a federal judge ruled Friday.

San Francisco-based Electronic Frontier Foundation sued Global Equity Management (SA) Pty Ltd., or GEMSA, in April, claiming the Australian firm exploited its home country’s weaker free speech protections to secure an unconstitutional injunction against EFF.

Kurt Opsahl, EFF’s deputy executive director and general counsel, hailed the ruling as a victory for free speech.


This wasn't the first and maybe not the last legal action, either. Imagine a world where one is not allowed to criticise particular patents. Not too long ago (just before the weekend) it was said in "Stupid Patent Data of the Month: the Devil in the Details" that the EFF along with CCIA make use of particular tools that we often mention in relation to patent reform. To quote the EFF:



Bad patents shouldn’t be used to stifle competition. A process to challenge bad patents when they improperly issue is important to keeping consumer costs down and encouraging new innovation. But according to a recent post on a patent blog, post-grant procedures at the Patent Office regularly get it “wrong,” and improperly invalidate patents. We took a deep dive into the data being relied upon by patent lobbyists to show that contrary to their arguments, the data they rely on undermines their arguments and conflicts with the claims they’re making.

The Patent Office has several procedures to determine whether an issued patent was improperly granted to a party that does not meet the legal standard for patentability of an invention. The most significant of these processes is called inter partes review, and is essential to reining in overly broad and bogus patents. The process helps prevent patent trolling by providing a target with a low-cost avenue for defense, so it is harder for trolls to extract a nuisance-value settlement simply because litigating is expensive. The process is, for many reasons, disliked by some patent owners. Congress is taking a new look at this process right now as a result of patent owners’ latest attempts to insulate their patents from review.

An incorrect claim about the inter partes review (IPR) and other procedures like IPR at the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) has been circulating, and was recently repeated in written comments at a congressional hearing by Philip Johnson, former head of intellectual property at Johnson & Johnson. Josh Malone and Steve Brachmann, writing for a patent blog called “IPWatchdog,” are the source of this error. In their article, cited in the comments to Congress, they claim that the PTAB is issuing decisions contrary to district courts at a very high rate.

We took a closer look at the data they use, and found that the rate is disagreement is actually quite small: about 7%, not the 76% claimed by Malone and Brachmann. How did they get it so wrong? To explain, we’ll have to get into the nuts and bolts of how such an analysis can be run.

[...]

EFF, along with CCIA, ran the same Docket Navigator search Malone and Brachmann ran for patents found “not invalid” and “unpatentable or not unpatentable,” generating 273 results, and a search for patents found “unpatentable” and “not invalid,” generating 208 results (our analysis includes a few results that weren’t yet available when Malone and Brachmann ran their search). We looked into each of 208 results that Docket Navigator returned for patents found unpatentable and not invalid. Our analysis shows that the “200” number, and consequently the rate at which the Patent Office is supposedly “wrong” based on a comparison to times a court supposedly got it “right” is well off the mark.

[...]

We’ve used both Docket Navigator and Lex Machina in our analyses on numerous occasions, and even briefs we submit to the court. Both services provide extremely valuable information about the state of patent litigation and policy. But its usefulness is diminished where the data they present are not understood. As always, the devil is in the details.



Lex Machina has done a lot and given an invaluable service to those of us who pursue a saner patent policy. The EFF too, especially in recent years, contributed a lot to patent reform. Its briefs in support of the reformist cause are just some among other actions undertaken by the EFF. It's hardly surprising that blogs of patent maximalists so routinely bash the EFF and various extremists go as far as suing the EFF.

Recent Techrights' Posts

Slopwatch: LinuxSecurity, UbuntuPIT, and Google News
We've also just noticed more slop from UbuntuPIT
 
Links 09/10/2025: Farewell to Jane Goodall, California Bans Algorithmic Price-Fixing
Links for the day
Gemini Links 09/10/2025: Lost Wages and a Saga Of Continuing To Use Palm PDAs
Links for the day
Richard Stallman's Talk in Helsinki is Done. Tomorrow Göteborg.
There are scarce details in Finnish about Dr. Stallman's talk
New XBox Leaks Probably Serve to Confirm XBox's Collapse (Many More Layoffs)
It's very much consistent with what many other sites have reported lately
The Slop Song
The train wreck marches on
LLM Slop/Advanced Plagiarism Flooding the Zone With Capital That Does Not Exist
Many publishers out there still participate in this bubble instead of calling it what it is
Links 09/10/2025: Sacked Microsoft Workers Make "Sackbird", IBM Taps CockroachDB for PostgreSQL
Links for the day
"Happy Hacking Day" Richard Stallman Talk This Afternoon (From 14:00 to 16:00) at Haaga-Helia University in Pasila
Richard Stallman in Helsinki, Finland
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Wednesday, October 08, 2025
IRC logs for Wednesday, October 08, 2025
Links 09/10/2025: Impact of Microsoft Layoffs, More Data Breaches
Links for the day
Gemini Links 09/10/2025: Autumn Blues and C IRC Bot
Links for the day
Slopwatch Appreciated by Real Authors of GNU/Linux Articles
We do try to keep on top of those things
Upgraded R.R.R.R.R.R. Today
The Web of 2025 is full of garbage, not limited to slopfarms
Freedom From Proprietary Prisons
Forking always an option
IBM's Watson Died in 1956, Now Watson Dies Again
IBM is becoming just a reseller of GAFAM and other stuff
Microsoft Says That Constant Mass Layoffs Are Success, the Media Isn't Buying This Microsoft Narrative Anymore
If people in the media feel an obligation to repeat whatever lies Microsoft tells, what point will there be to the media?
Links 08/10/2025: "Mali Puts Free Speech on Trial" And Apple Enforces Dictatorship
Links for the day
Links 08/10/2025: ‘Death to Spotify’ and Law to Ban Loud Commercials on Streaming (Dis)Services
Links for the day
Links 08/10/2025: Real Innovation and Nina.chat is Dead
Links for the day
Links 08/10/2025: Y2K38 Bug is a Vulnerability, Chat Control in Europe a Threat
Links for the day
Microsoft Windows is No Longer an Operating System, It's Surveillance Project
Why is this even legal to preload on PCs outside the US?
How and Why Once-Legitimate Sites Turn Into Slopfarms
Many sites will go offline and many social control networks will shut down once they realise or even openly admit they spend money and time gardening a bunch of bots and slop
UbuntuPIT Became a Slopfarm and Gnoppix Tarnishes Its Own Brand With Slop
It fits all the characteristics of mildly-edited (if at all) slop
Slopwatch: Linux Journal and Other Slopfarms
GAFAM needs to go the way of the dodo
Gemini Links 08/10/2025: "Seek Seek Revolution" and Gradient Backgrounds
Links for the day
Qualcomm Arduino Takes Aim at Raspberry Pi
Qualcomm is a Microsoft partner
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Tuesday, October 07, 2025
IRC logs for Tuesday, October 07, 2025
Stagnation of the Economy and What Free Software Can (or Could) Do For It
If your economic model is based on a pyramid of lies, it won't last very long
Social Control Media is Sinking
it would rightly seem like the era of centralised "social" sites (they're not social, they're about controlling the users) is ending, not overnight but gradually
Participation in Cancel Culture Detrimental to One's Career
A cautionary tale
Passion Wins
we've increased the number of birds we feed to 100+
How Solderpunk and Sean Conner Started Gemini Protocol (and, Collectively, Geminispace) Back in 2019
Based on the "official" history
Arduino is Now a Patent Bully (Qualcomm)
Qualcomm has just bought Arduino
Many Years of Microsoft Cancellations and Faked (Acquired) Revenue "Growth"
XBox is basically the "next Skype"
The Comment TheLayoff.com Has Just Censored for Criticising a Ridiculous Puff Piece of IBM Management
If comments get censored for their "style" rather than their substance, then society will be worse off
The Power of Writing Down Facts
The more we write and publish, the more people will know what happened
Microsoft's Non-Denying Denial About XBox's Death is Already Being Shattered to Pieces
Like Microsoft's 'open' 'hey hi', heralding meaningless non-committing agreements with AMD is little more than vapourware
Slopwatch: UbuntuPIT Joins the Slopfarms Club
Slopfarms gonna slop
Links 07/10/2025: Privacy at Risk, GAFAM Remains Off the Hook
Links for the day
Gemini Links 07/10/2025: Modern Retro Console Idea and Batch vs Bash
Links for the day
Links 07/10/2025: International Criminal Court (ICC) Convicts Ali Kushayb; Moroccan Imprisoned for 'Offensive' Shirt
Links for the day
Links 07/10/2025: EU' Chat Control is Back, US Cracks Down on Democracy
Links for the day
Techrights Pursues Justice and Truth Because, Without Those, Society Descends Into Chaos
most people reject dogma and pseudoscience
Upcoming Talks by Richard Stallman in Helsinki, Göteborg, and Rome
Join with him and share the software
Something Bad is Happening in the Open Source Initiative (OSI)
The latest OSI blog post is from a Microsoft operative and a few weeks ago the Executive Director left
TLS 1.3 Dominates Geminispace (99% of Known Capsules)
it's nowadays safe to assume almost every capsule can handle TLS 1.3
Why soylentnews.org Has Been Having Technical Difficulties Lately
The network has been going up and down quite a lot this past week
A Statement Against Violence
The facts are on our side
They've Run Out of Things to Rebrand or Label as "AI"
The next few years will be interesting because if Microsoft lays off tens of thousands of workers each year, there won't be much left except mountains of debt and dying brands
The Register MS is Still Being Paid to Participate in the "AI" Ponzi Scheme Which Will Crash the Economy
The Register MS is hoping to get lucky by tricking people into a scam
Richard Stallman Confirms His Talk in Göteborg This Coming Friday
"The hosts say that the list will not be given to the state"
Most of the "Linux" Results This Morning in Google News Are LLM Slop From the Same Slopfarm, Plagiarising Phoronix
The main question is, does Google even care at this point?
Gemini Links 07/10/2025: Civil War and "Goodbye Web"
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Monday, October 06, 2025
IRC logs for Monday, October 06, 2025