Bonum Certa Men Certa

2018 Will be an Even Worse Year for Software Patents Because the US Supreme Court Shields Alice

Positive vision for the year ahead (if you develop software)

Eye vision



Summary: The latest picks (reviewed cases) of the Supreme Court of the United States signal another year with little or no hope for the software patents lobby; PTAB too is expected to endure after a record-breaking year, in which it invalidated a lot of software patents that had been erroneously granted

THE first year of Donald Trump (anniversary 4 days from now), surprisingly enough, did not have much impact on the patent world or the patent landscape in the United States*. Congress barely did anything. One thing Trump did was, he appointed a new Justice.



Prof. Timothy Holbrook of Emory Law wrote about the US Supreme Court's decision to look into WesternGeco. From his introduction:

Patent law remains hot at the Supreme Court. The Court on January 14, 2018, agreed to review WesternGeco LLC v. ION Geophysical Corp. WesternGeco joins two other patent cases at the Supreme Court (so far) for its October 2017 term.


We wrote about this very briefly towards the end of the weekend. The good news is, no case regarding software patents or anything remotely like it will be looked at. There won't even be another Mayo. It means that we can expect no imminent changes/alterations in Section 101 and the USPTO, for the time being, has only an interim Director. He is actually the recipient of a lawsuit, Bosch v Matal, on which Kluwer remarked yesterday by saying: "The Board [PTAB] erred, however, in denying the patent owner’s request to substitute 16 amended claims for the original claims. The Board impermissibly assigned the burden of proof on patentability of the proposed amended claims to the patent owner."

This is a CAFC case regarding PTAB. CAFC cases may have some significance, but they hardly set the law at the USPTO. However this ends, it won't have any impact on PTAB. What can have impact is Oil States at the US Supreme Court (oral hearings already started). It looks, based on the proceedings so far, like all/most Justices will side with PTAB, which is widely supported (also in briefs from industry). Watchtroll's daily PTAB bashing carries on unabated (not a day without it, even on Sundays, even yesterday on MLK day). They are propping up patent trolls' agenda like a lobbying group, knowing quite well that Oil States is likely a losing game for them.

PTAB is important because -- with or without a trial -- it can invalidate any US patent at any time (if petitioned to do so). It has been a serial enforcer of the Alice test and this is why PTAB has been so scary to proponents of software patents. We still see some of these patents in the news**, but they pose a far lesser threat as long as Section 101 remains in tact and PTAB has the capacity to deal with thousands of petitions per year. Sometimes one can find another basis for thwarting litigation. In this new case, for instance, there was "future promise to assign patent rights" (“I hereby do assign” versus “I will assign”) and this meant that the whole lawsuit was baseless if not an act of misconduct (asserting or leveraging patents that aren't even one's own). Newman is standing out from the crowd and dissenting as usual. "Judge Newman dissented," it says, "believing that the employment agreement was sufficient to transfer ownership of the invention to Ms. Hsiun’s employer."

The bottom line is, the US Supreme Court (SCOTUS) will look only at WesternGeco and will thus not challenge Alice any time soon. We can therefore expect software patents to erode further and further, more so after TC Heartland (keeping litigation away from district courts that are software patents-friendly). ________ * According to IAM, Trump's regressive tax policy, or tax 'cuts' (to billionaires), will help people who price medicine out of patients' reach. "Analysts at Goldman Sachs predict a $160 billion windfall for the pharmaceuticals industry, with Abbott Laboratories, Johnson & Johnson, Amgen and Merck & Co named among those with most to gain," it said.

** More software patents, which would be deemed invalid under Alice/Section 101, still make it into the news. This one is the "over the Internet" type:

Packets are the carriers of data on the internet; they consist of user data (a payload), and also of control information about where the data should go (a header). A packet identifies its sender and addressee by their IP addresses but (currently) does not include any information about the sender’s or addressee’s physical location (geolocation); while IP addresses may indicate, generally, a geographical location, they are not an exact and perfectly reliable determinant of the location – for reasons that include, among other things, the possibility of spoofing IP addresses.

Recent Techrights' Posts

Destruction and Distortion of Information, Including Facts About Linux (Bonus: This is Destroying the Planet)
All that LLMs have going for them is hype, and moreover media that intentionally misrepresents them and their supposed capabilities
Google Seems to Have Just Killed All Instances of Invidious
YouTube is rapidly becoming just "another Neflix"
 
Italian Media Covers Richard Stallman's English Talk Ahead of Tonight's Public Appearance
article in La Stampa
Microsoft Skype in a Freefall: About 20% Decrease in Site Traffic in 3 Months (Amid Microsoft Phasing Out Credits)
Microsoft axing more services/features may mean that now they scrape the bottom of the barrel and Skype will simply die, discontinuing service (like ICQ) in a matter of years
Gemini Links 12/02/2025: Depression, Gabbro, WikiTok, and More
Links for the day
Links 12/02/2025: Health, Security, and Monopolies
Links for the day
Gemini Protocol is Increasingly Important to the Net
Gemini Protocol will turn 6 this summer
Former EPO Manager Warns That the Illegal 'Court' for "Unitary Patents" Enables “Law Shopping”
Daniel X. Thomas opposed the very existence of the UPC, which any honest person could recognise was both illegal and unconstitutional
Like GAFAM, the EPO is Passing the Financial Pains to Staff
the EPO is operating illegally at this point
Morale at Microsoft Ruined by the Company Labelling Thousands of Workers 'Low Performers', Sacking Them on the Spot and Denying Them Basic Benefits
people laid off as "low performers" go to social control media to bemoan the label
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Tuesday, February 11, 2025
IRC logs for Tuesday, February 11, 2025
Links 11/02/2025: Current state of the Internet and Smallnet Information Services (SIS)
Links for the day
Conservative Estimate: Over 10,000 IBM Workers to Be Laid Off in the Next Two Waves
The morale is low and layoffs are expected soon, with mass layoffs likely happening next month and then again later
Links 11/02/2025: Trade Wars and "Crisis for American Universities"
Links for the day
Parasitic LLM Slop Sites Destroy the Ability to Find "Linux" News in Google News
Remember that Google News laid off lots of its workers
Richard Stallman's English Talk in Italy Less Than 24 Hours Away (Torino) and Then Another Talk in Italy Scheduled (University of Bozen-Bolzano)
He's active and he travels a lot in spite of his medical condition
IBM Layoff Rumours, Large-Scale Implementations Weeks Ahead (in March 2025)
There are some people corroborating
Links 11/02/2025: Nutritional Poverty, Closure of USAID, More Fictional 'Valuations' Around Buzzwords
Links for the day
Perl Programming Leftovers
recently in perl.org
Microsoft in Africa: From 98% to Less Than 10% in Just 16 Years
Microsoft being on less than 1 in 10 Web-connected devices in Africa is a very big deal
Almost as If MElon Reads Techrights
The joke we started appears to be spreading
Microsoft Blasted for Adding Insult to Injury: Workers Laid Off Without Prior Notice, Without Severance Payment and Basic Coverage (Like Health), Then Stigmatised as Bad Performers So They Cannot Find a Job Elsewhere
Such stereotypes end entire careers
Gemini Links 11/02/2025: NeoVim and Deploying Other People's Code
Links for the day
BetaNews is Still Publishing LLM Slop/SPAM About "Linux"
Assuming it is indeed LLM slop, it seems clear BetaNews has no intention of improving or is simply unable/unwilling to improve
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Monday, February 10, 2025
IRC logs for Monday, February 10, 2025
Scheduled Maintenance Tomorrow and on Valentines
If the site (or Gemini capsule) is offline for a bit, the maintenance windows are likely the root cause
If Matthias Kirschner Loves Free Software, He'll Change the Name of the Microsoft-Sponsored Organisation He Governs (in Order to Avoid Confusion)
The FSF-EEE does not really like Software Freedom, it just loves money (including Microsoft's)
Soylent News Lessens the Scope of Discussion Due to Persistent Trolling and Online Abuse
if they make it a lot harder for new people to participate, then they limit the "general appeal" and reach
EPO's Local Occupational Health, Safety and Ergonomics Committee (LOHSEC) in The Hague: Workers Are Getting Sicker, Conditions in Which to Assess Patent Applications Deteriorate
"According to the Office statistics the total number of days of absence has gone up from 12.4 to 13.1 total number of sick days per Full Time Equivalent (FTE) from 2023 to 2024."
The Standard Needs to Improve Its Standards for Fact-Checking, Aaron Swartz Had Nothing to Do With Reddit and He Detested the Company That Created It
The Web is already bad enough as it is
When the Livestream of Richard Stallman is Apparently Bury-Brigaded Offline You Finally Learn to Avoid Google/YouTube for Streaming
Please, people, stop uploading to Google/YouTube
New Paper From the EPO Highlights Large-Scale Discrimination at the Office, Where People Are Rewarded for Granting More and More Illegal Patents
Even the Kremlin is probably more competent than this
Links 10/02/2025: Ban on D.E.I. Language, Listeria Risk/Outbreak
Links for the day
Links 10/02/2025: Announcing "Stringless" and Mental Health Improvement
Links for the day
Links 10/02/2025: Facebook Mass Layoffs, "Meta" Did What Aaron Swartz Had Done But to the Tune of 81.7 Terabytes
Links for the day
Microsoft Tarnishing the Brand of Arch
Of course Arch can do whatever it wants, but being associated with Microsoft is a badge of shame
The Ultimate and Inevitable Fall of OpenAI (Even Brave is 'Bigger' Now)
"When you advertise at the Super Bowl, you’ve reached just about every consumer in America. It’s the last stop. If you’re not profitable yet, you never will be."
Adding Slop to Your Blog Only Makes One Assume All the Text is LLM Slop
Simon Coter from Oracle has turned to slop
Macao is Leaving Microsoft Behind
Windows is falling to new all-time lows
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Sunday, February 09, 2025
IRC logs for Sunday, February 09, 2025
Microsoft's WSL (LSW) Shows That It Can Never Love Linux, Only Windows
that's just how Microsoft rolls
Activism in Times of War and a Coup
'Linux' Foundation works for fascism
What the Silencing of Neatnik Tells Us About Linus Torvalds Inside a Microsoft-Dominated 'Linux' Foundation
Is Linus Torvalds free to express his mind as he wishes about every topic, even just any technical topic?
Windows Down to 11.35% in Senegal, as Measured by statCounter
Another all-time low (Windows was at 99% in 2009)
"Latest Technology News" in BetaNews is LLM Slop Promoting OOXML and Proprietary Software at the Expense of LibreOffice and OpenDocument Format (ODF)
Remember that "open-source" and Open Source aren't the same; the former is fake