Bonum Certa Men Certa

2019 in Techrights: New Datacentre, New Focus



Summary: As Techrights continues to grow we move to a new hosting environment and we'll be covering technology a little more than court cases with legalese and pertinent caselaw

SEEING that patent extremists like Gene Quinn throw in the towel after two decades and seeing that patent blogs are becoming a lot less active, we've come to the conclusion that the biggest problems at the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) are being gradually addressed, notably software patents that the Federal Circuit and Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) inter partes reviews (IPRs) help squash. We've seen several new examples over the past fortnight, but we're not going to cover these. Instead, seeing that António Campinos promotes software patents in Europe under the auspices of tbe European Patent Office (EPO), we're going to shift focus somewhat. The main difference in the coming year will be less coverage about the US patent system. It's viewed as a lower priority because, as we said a few days ago, "we feel like goals have been fulfilled." If elimination of software patents was the goal, SCOTUS and 35 U.S.C. § 101 sealed the deal. Several times earlier this year we pointed out that SCOTUS continually rejects appeals from cases like Alice. It's not interested in reconsideration. Nothing will change.



"IBM has been stockpiling loads of US patents for several decades and even gave some of these to trolls like Finjan."The demise of software patents has expectedly caused the number of patent cases (lawsuits) to collapse and many patent trolls go out of 'business' (it was never a legitimate business in the first place).

David Perry, senior patent lawyer at Red Hat, wrote for CNBC on Boxing Day. Being a lawyer who will soon work for IBM albeit subject to approval in 2-3 weeks' time (IBM is overzealously in favour of software patents), he framed the question as a matter of hirings; this has nothing to do with hirings however. Gross slant from people whose job depends on patent litigation. "Companies lose as much as $80 billion every year to litigation brought by patent aggressors," he explained, perhaps failing to note that his next employer is among those aggressors. To quote:

Tech companies are fighting an $80 billion legal battle to help attract the most talented software engineers [...] So-called "patent trolls" may not be top of mind for the public, but they're certainly on the mind of technology innovators. Nine out of the top ten global internet companies — including Amazon, Facebook, Alibaba and Google — and hundreds of other companies (including mine) have joined forces against them.

These trolls – also known as patent assertion entities — acquire patents for the sole purpose of suing other companies for money. They cost companies $80 billion in lost wealth every year, and are responsible for over 85 percent of U.S. high-tech patent litigation.


What about IBM? Look no further (back) than its patent aggression earlier this year. IBM has been stockpiling loads of US patents for several decades and even gave some of these to trolls like Finjan. Then there's the scam which is misuse of patents for tax purposes. Luxembourg, for instance, is still facilitating tax evasion using patents as loophole/cover (there's a patent trolls infestation there). An article by Oliver R. Hoor and Samantha Schmitz-Merle (ATOZ Tax Advisers) alluded to this some days ago:

Therefore, IP rights covered by the new Luxembourg regime are patents defined broadly and copyrighted software. These IP rights fall within the scope of the new regime to the extent that they are not marketing-related IP assets and were created, developed or enhanced after 31 December 2007 (the former IP regime provided the same limitation in time) as a result of research and development (R&D) activities...


These tax breaks are benefiting, by design, the richest people and corporations. The monopolists who can afford loads of patents (like IBM) profit from this.

In the coming year we intend to focus a little less on the US patent system (notably courts and Office). Instead we'll write more about technology companies like IBM and Red Hat, not to mention mischievous Microsoft. EPO coverage will remain unchanged and it will be our highest priority.

A server migration was completed successfully yesterday, but only for the sister site, Tux Machines. We may soon attempt the same with Techrights although this migration will definitely be more complicated for several reasons (3 CMS components, 3 domains and so on). Fingers crossed. Downtime is likely with or without DNS changes taking hours to propagate.

Recent Techrights' Posts

A Lot of Technological 'Progress' Has Been Nothing But Buzzwords
Free software does not try to excite people people over nothing
Proprietary Software: Here Today, Gone Tomorrow
Proprietary software has an entirely different mindset, revolving around business models rather than science
Web Hostnames Down to Lowest Number in More Than 7 Years!
the number of hostnames is falling rapidly (they hide this by choosing logarithmic scale)
Over at Tux Machines...
2 days' worth
Stop Begging Companies That Don't Value Your Freedom to Stop Pushing You Around
That's not freedom
The forbidden topics
There are forbidden topics in the hacker community
 
Malware in the Ubuntu Snap Store, Thanks to Canonical Bloatware Mindset
Reprinted with permission from Ryan Farmer
Gemini Rising
There are 3523 capsules
Richard Stallman Gave a Talk Yesterday, Will Give Another Talk Today, and Will Give Two More Talks in Germany Later This Week
Those cover at least 2 different topics
Beware the Microsoft Sharks
We won't forgive and forget
IRC Proceedings: Saturday, September 30, 2023
IRC logs for Saturday, September 30, 2023
Don't be Afraid of the Command Line, It Might Even be a Friend
There's a tendency to think that only graphical interfaces were made to simplify usage, and any declarative interface is by design raw, inherently unfit for usage
One Positive Note About GNU/Linux Coverage in 2023 (Less Microsoft)
GNU/Linux users do not want this, with very rare exceptions
Snaps Were Never Good at Security, But the Media Coverage is Just Appalling
The media should focus on culling Windows, not making a huge fuss over minor things wrongly attributed to "Linux"
Better Footage of Richard Stallman's Talk Last Week: “Freedom in computing, forty years after starting to really protect it”
Richard Stallman speaks about the cancer situation early in his speech
Links 30/09/2023: A Government Shutdown and More Blizzard Layoffs
Links for the day
Links 30/09/2023: Bing Almost Offloaded Due to Failure/Losses, Nvidia Raided
Links for the day
Community is the Lifeblood of Freedom in the GNU/Linux World
Removing or undoing the "cancerd" (systemd) is feasible but increasingly difficult
Richard Stallman Says He Will Probably Live Many More Years
"Richard Stallman has cancer. Fortunately it is slow-growing and manageable follicular lymphona, so he will probably live many more years nonetheless. But he now has to be even more careful not to catch Covid-19."
Quitting 'Clown Computing' and GAFAM is Only the Start
The Web and the Net at large became far too centralised
They Say Free Software is Like Communism When They, the Proprietary Software Giants, Constantly Pursue Government Bailouts (Subsidies From Taxpayers)
At the moment Ukraine is at most risk due to its dependence on Microsoft (inside its infrastructure)
Social Control Media Has No Future, It Was Always Doomed to Fail (Also Promoted Based on Lies)
Recent events, including developments at Twitter, meant that they lost a lot of their audience and then, in turn, sponsors/advertisers
They're Been Trying to 'Kill' Richard Stallman for Years (by Mentally Tormenting Him)
Malicious tongue wanted to do him what had been done to Julian Assange
We Temporarily Have Two Gemini Capsules
They're both authentic and secure, but they're not the same
Consumerism is Lying and Revisionism
We need to reject these liars and charlatans
Links 30/09/2023: Open VFS Framework, CrossOver 23.5, Dianne Feinstein Dies
Links for the day
Security Leftovers
GNU/Linux, Microsoft, and more
Microsoft Down on the World Wide Web, Shows Survey
down by a lot in this category
IRC Proceedings: Friday, September 29, 2023
IRC logs for Friday, September 29, 2023
A Society That Fails Journalists Does Not Deserve Journalism
It's probably too later to save Julian Assange as a working publisher (he might never recover from the mental torture), but as a person and a father we can wish and work towards his release
Almost Nothing To Go With Your Morning's Cup Of Coffee
Newspaper? What newspaper?
Techrights Was Right About the Chaff Bots (They Failed to Live up to Their Promise)
Those who have been paying attention to news of substance rather than fashionable "tech trends" probably know that GNU/Linux grew a lot this year
Selling Out to Microsoft Makes You Dead Beef
If all goes as well as we've envisioned, Microsoft will get smaller and smaller
Curation and Preservation Work
The winter is coming soon and this means our anniversary is near
Mobile Phones Aren't Your Friend or a Gateway to Truly Social Life
Newer should not always seem more seductive, as novelty is by default questionable and debatable
Links 29/09/2023: Disinformation and Monopolies
Links for the day
iFixit Requests DMCA Exemption…To Figure Out How To Repair McDonald’s Ice Cream Machines
Reprinted with permission from Ryan Farmer
Jim Zemlin Thinks the World's Largest Software Company Has 200 Staff, Many of Whom Not Technical at All
biggest ego in the world
Microsoft GitHub Exposé — In the Alex Graveley Case, His Lawyer, Rick Cofer, Appears to Have Bribed the DA to Keep Graveley (and Others) Out of Prison
Is this how one gets out of prison? Hire the person who bribes the DA?
Richard Stallman's Public Talk in GNU's 40th Anniversary Ceremony
Out now
Links 29/09/2023: Linux Foundation Boasting, QLite FDW 2.4.0 Released
Links for the day
Red Hat Does Not Understand Community and It's Publicly Promoting Microsoft's Gartner
RedHat.com is basically lioning a firm that has long been attacking GNU/Linux in the private and public sectors at the behest of Microsoft
A 'Code of Conduct' Typically Promoted by Criminal Corporations to Protect Crimes From Scrutiny
We saw this in action last week
Objections to binutils CoC
LXO response to proposed Code of Conduct
Conde Nast (Reddit), Which Endlessly Defamed Richard Stallman and Had Paid Salaries to Microsoft-Connected Pedophiles, Says You Must Be Over 18 to See 'Stallman Was Right'
Does this get in the way of their Bill Gates-sponsored "Bill Gates says" programme/schedule?
Techrights Extends Wishes of Good Health to Richard M. Stallman
Richard Stallman has cancer
endsoftwarepatents.org Still Going, Some Good News From Canada
a blow to software patents in Canada
The Debian Project Leader said the main thing Debian lacked was more contributors
The Debian Project Leader said the main thing Debian lacked was more contributors
IRC Proceedings: Thursday, September 28, 2023
IRC logs for Thursday, September 28, 2023
Links 28/09/2023: Openwashing and Patent Spam as 'News'
Links for the day