If you're looking for a Linux laptop with a focus on privacy and security, you could roll your own. Several GNU/Linux operating systems are available that are more angled towards privacy and keeping you secure online, rather than general computing. One example is PureOS, the operating system from Purism that you will find pre-installed on the Librem 14.
A top-end ultraportable notebook with specs comparable with a MacBook Pro, the Librem 14 is arguably the most security and privacy-conscious laptop around.
But Purism's laptop costs a pretty penny – is it worth the price?
So after a somewhat rocky merge window and second rc, things are now actually looking pretty normal for rc3. Knock wood.
There are fixes all over, and the statistics look fairly regular, with drivers dominating as they should (since they are most of the tree). And outside of drivers, we have a fairly usual mix of changes - architecture fixes, networking, filesystems, and tooling (the latter being mostly kvm selftests).
Shortlog appended, it's not too long and easy to scan through to get a flavor for the details if you happen to care.
Please do give it a whirl,
Linus
Linus Torvalds has now issued the third weekly release candidate of the forthcoming Linux 5.15 kernel.
The third 5.15 kernel prepatch is out for testing. "So after a somewhat rocky merge window and second rc, things are now actually looking pretty normal for rc3. Knock wood".
wall is (an abbreviation of write to all) is a Unix command-line utility that displays the contents of a computer file or standard input to all logged-in users. It is used by root to send out shutting down message to all users just before poweroff.
It displays a message on the terminals of all logged-in users. The messages can_be either typed on the terminal or the contents of a file.
Also usually, system administrators send messages to announce maintenance and ask users to log out and close all open programs.The messages ‘re shown to all logged in users with a terminal open.
When IT and Security professionals talk about port numbers, we’re referring to the TCP and UDP port numbers a service is running on that are waiting to accept connections. But what exactly is a port?
Data Science at the Command Line: Obtain, Scrub, Explore, and Model Data with Unix Power Tools written by Jeroen Janssens is the second edition of the series “Data Science at the Command Line”. This book demonstrates how the flexibility of the command line can help you become a more efficient and productive data scientist. You will learn how to combine small yet powerful command-line tools to quickly obtain, scrub, explore, and model your data. To get you started, author Jeroen Janssens provides a Docker image packed with over 80 tools–useful whether you work with Windows, macOS, or Linux.
In the modern era of technology, typing has become one of the most common activities for a lot of professions. Learning to type faster with accuracy can help you get more things done in the same amount of time.
However, touch typing is not a skill that you can master overnight. It takes regular practice and testing to improve your speed and accuracy gradually. While there are a lot of websites that help you achieve this, all you essentially need on Linux is a terminal. Let's see how.
Today we are looking at how to install OpenToonz on a Chromebook. Please follow the video/audio guide as a tutorial where we explain the process step by step and use the commands below.
If you have any questions, please contact us via a YouTube comment and we would be happy to assist you!
Epic Games has announced the availability of its free Easy Anti-Cheat software on Linux and macOS as part of the Epic Online Services platform meant to facilitate cross-platform play.
Many online titles rely on some kind of anti-cheat system to combat the use of wall hacks, aimbots, and other game-breaking software that gives players advantages over their peers. Refusing to install the anti-cheat software can preclude someone from playing the game at all.
That system works out well on platforms where anti-cheat software is readily available. There haven't been many efforts to introduce those systems on Linux or macOS, however, which is part of the reason why many gamers have to dual-boot Windows to play their favorite titles.
Epic's working to change that. The company made Easy Anti-Cheat free to Windows game developers in June, and now it's making the software freely available to devs working on games for Linux and macOS, too. So it should be easier than ever for all three platforms to coexist.
The Open Mainframe Project kicked off the 2nd annual Open Mainframe Summit today with news of record growth in contributions - with more than 105.31 Million Lines of Code written and over 9,600 commits submitted by Open Mainframe Project communities so far this year. This is 100 percent more code than last year with an increased number of active participants in the 20 project and working groups. These numbers will only increase as Open Mainframe continues to be the cornerstone of governance and innovation for modernizing the mainframe and its path to IoT, Cloud and Edge Computing.
RISC-V International, a global open hardware standards organization, announced the launch of the Open Hardware Diversity Alliance. The global Alliance, created by CHIPS Alliance, OpenPOWER Foundation, RISC-V, and Western Digital, will develop and provide learning and networking programs, mentorship opportunities and inclusive environments across the expansive ecosystem of open hardware. The Alliance will be focused on supporting professional advancement and encouraging equal participation for women and underrepresented individuals in the open hardware community.
The long-awaited ASUS Tinker Board 2S is out. And there's a lot packed into the 85 x 56 mm Raspberry Pi form factor.
At the heart of the Tinker Board 2S is a Rockchip RK3399 chipset that combines two ARM Cortex-A72 cores, four ARM Cortex-A53 cores, and an ARM Mali-T860 MP4 GPU.
The board comes with 2GB or 4GB of LPDDR4 RAM, and 16 GB of eMMC flash.
Chinese tech giant Huawei launched openEuler operating system (OS) on Saturday, another self-developed OS after the HarmonyOS, as it tries to "solve the domestic stranglehold problem of lacking its homegrown OS in basic technology," and build a full-scenario covered ecosystem to prepare for more US bans.
The openEuler OS can be widely deployed in various forms of equipment such as servers, cloud computing and edge computing. Its application scenarios cover Information Technology, Communication Technology and Operational Technology to achieve unifying an operating system with multi-device support, according to the company's introduction.
In the ICT field, Huawei provides products and solutions such as servers, storage, cloud services, edge computing, base stations, routers, industrial control among others, all of which need to be equipped with an OS. Huawei has therefore been building capabilities to achieve a unified OS architecture, and meet the demands of different application scenarios, the firm said on Saturday.
The openEuler program was initially announced back in 2019 as an open source operating system. Today's launch is an updated one.
The decade-long legal battle between two of the world’s largest tech companies has finally come to an end. The result was a victory for the open-source software community.
In case you need a refresher on the Oracle v. Google case, Oracle sued Google in 2010 for copyright infringement on Google’s use of Oracle’s Java API in its Android smartphone operating system. The District Court ruled in favor of Google, but that decision was later reversed on appeal. The case ultimately landed in the U.S. Supreme Court, which ruled six to two in Google’s favor this April.
Plex is a free audio and video streaming platform that was created to let you host and stream your own media collection to just about anywhere on the internet. At its most basic, you install the Plex server software on a computer – available for Windows, MacOS and most flavors of Linux – where you store your media library. Plex indexes it and makes it available online. Though Plex is most well known for helping people organize and stream their video collections – the platform now even offers free on-demand and live movies and TV – my primary use case is for music.
Fire up the Cossie*! We're going back to the '80s with an On Call tale that combines the drama of a fast Ford motor with the eldritch horror of Unix serial port settings.
"Neil," today's Regomised reader, ran a consultancy specialising in Uniplex, an office automation suite compromising the usual suspects: word processing, spreadsheets, email, database and so on. It predated Microsoft's efforts in the integration arena by a good few years.
"It supported printers from the FX-80 upwards," Neil explained, "but by far the most popular was the HP LaserJet series with its 8-bit ECMA-94 charset."
OVH Groupe SAS is edging closer to a potential initial public offering (IPO) expected to value the European hosting and cloud biz at around $4.7bn – months after a fire engulfed part of its data centre real estate.
The privately owned company, which trades as OVH Cloud, today issued a letter and series of documents confirming it is "contemplating" an IPO on Euronext Paris with the intent to "raise up to €400m through the issuance of new shares."
Scientists have launched a unique software that is able to perform highly complex simulations of a variety of biological processes.
California Governor Gavin Newsom on Wednesday signed Assembly Bill 701, establishing new protections for workers at warehouse distribution centers.
The new law requires employers operating large warehouses in the state to disclose worker production quotas. It also prohibits disciplinary action against workers for missing quotas as a result of health- or safety-related breaks.
AB 701, which takes effect on January 1, 2022, was drafted with an eye toward Amazon's warehouse management practices.
"Amazon’s business model relies on enforcing inhumane work speeds that are injuring and churning through workers at a faster rate than we’ve ever seen," said Assemblywoman Lorena Gonzalez (D-San Diego), who proposed the bill, in a statement.
Brittany Giroux Lane gave birth to her daughter, Alexandra, a few days before Christmas in 2018. The baby had dark eyes and longish legs. She had also arrived about 13 weeks early, and weighed just two pounds.
Alexandra initially thrived in the neonatal intensive care unit at Mount Sinai West. Ms. Lane, 35, recalls the nurses describing her daughter as a “rock star” because she grew so quickly. But her condition rapidly worsened after an infection, and Alexandra died early on the morning of Jan. 15 at 25 days old.
A flurry of small medical bills from neonatologists and pediatricians quickly followed. Ms. Lane struggled to get her breast pump covered by insurance because, in the midst of a preterm birth, she hadn’t gone through the health plan's prior approval process.
At a protest against vaccine mandates, a hospital worker told New York’s Livingston County newspaper: “If you want it? Great. If you don’t? Great.” She continued: “Choice is where we stand. If you want it, we’re not against it. That’s your choice.” Those I know who have refused to get vaccinated or wear masks have echoed this same idea. They assure me that they aren’t telling anyone else what to do but that this is a matter of personal choice. They are doing what they think is best for themselves and their families.
“My body, my choice,” the rallying cry of the pro-choice movement, has been adopted by those opposing mask and vaccine mandates. People who are pro-choice have voiced outrage that their phrase is being co-opted, which in turn thrills those on the right who are using it.
Aggrieved MacBook owners in two separate lawsuits claim Apple's latest laptops with its M1 chips have defective screens that break easily and malfunction.
The complaints, both filed on Wednesday in a federal district court in San Jose, California, are each seeking class certification in the hope that the law firms involved will get a judicial blessing to represent the presumed large group of affected customers and, if victorious, to share any settlement.
Each of the filings contends Apple's 2020-2021 MacBook line – consisting of the M1-based MacBook Air and M1-based 13" MacBook Pro – have screens that frequently fail. They say Apple knew about the alleged defect or should have known, based on its own extensive internal testing, reports from technicians, and feedback from customers.
Bork goes back to its roots today, with a screen of purest blue showing its unwanted face outside a US Burger King branch.
At least it makes a change from McDonald's, very much the DNS of Bork when it comes to failures.
In this instance, it looks like it is the exterior signage, normally showing a slideshow of tasty (and frequently greasy) treats, that has succumbed to the curse of Microsoft.
Though IT hiring is showing signs of rebounding in the wake of the still-lingering COVID-19 pandemic, finding qualified candidates with high-demand open source skills continues to be a huge challenge for many enterprises around the world.
That is one of the frustrations repeatedly being heard from hiring managers everywhere, according to the latest 2021 Open Source Jobs Report from The Linux Foundation and learning platform vendor edX.
Apple has warned iPhone and Mac users it's aware of security bugs in its software that are being actively exploited.
First off, the iGiant thanked Google for spotting CVE-2021-30869 in macOS Catalina. It's a nasty flaw, as it's in the XNU kernel at the heart of Apple's operating systems including macOS and iOS.
As Apple's advisory explains, "a malicious application may be able to execute arbitrary code with kernel privileges" by exploiting this security hole. Thus, malware running on a system can use the bug to take total control. The fruit-themed company says the flaw existed thanks to a "type confusion issue" that was sorted out "with improved state handling."
Security researchers have found a flaw in the Microsoft Windows Platform Binary Table (WPBT) that could be exploited in easy attacks to install rootkits on all Windows computers shipped since 2012.
There's a fine line between getting hold of data that may be in the public interest and downright stealing data just because you can. And simply because the data is out there – having been stolen by online intruders and then leaked – does not mean it is right to use it.
A paper published in Nature Machine Intelligence this week is an effort to help guide data scientists and researchers through the ethical dilemmas which present themselves when considering using information obtained from data breaches.
Flagged by researchers Erye Hernandez and Clément Lecigne of Google’s Threat Analysis Group and Ian Beer of Google Project Zero, the vulnerability is a type confusion issue found in XNU, the kernel of Apple’s macOS and iOS operating systems.
“This vulnerability can be used by anyone who can reach vCenter Server over the network to gain access, regardless of the configuration settings of vCenter Server,” the company noted.
The United States Airforce (USAF) has unveiled Project Kaiju, a $150m (€£108m) effort to build "cognitive electronic warfare" systems capable of operating entirely autonomously – to be run under Godzilla's watchful eye.
Named for the entertainment genre, Japanese for "strange beast", Project Kaiju is not - sadly - an effort to breed giant monsters to defend US interests. Rather, it's the name given to a project which seeks to give the USAF better electronic warfare capabilities – including the ability to run autonomously, without human interaction.
"US aircraft are increasingly required to operate in hostile environments heavily defended by integrated air-defence systems (IADS)," Project Kaiju's coordinators explained in the Broad Agency Announcement (BAA) unveiling the project. "The next evolution of advanced IADS is likely to employ radars, surface-to-air (SAM), and air-to-air (AAM) threats that utilise multi-spectrum technology.
Australia, the United States of America, and the United Kingdom have signed a new defence and technology-sharing pact.
Dubbed AUKUS, the headline item of the pact is assistance from the UK and US to help Australia build nuclear-powered submarines that are interoperable with their own fleets (but do not carry nuclear weapons). Australia's Department of Defence Science and Technology argues [PDF] that subs "can shape or change the behaviour of other nations and their decision-making, which no other Australian Defence Force asset or combination of assets can do".
The only credible regional threat Australia faces is China. Australia previously planned to build diesel-electric subs in conjunction with a French manufacturer – a contract that is about to be terminated without putting a boat in the water. Nuclear-powered boats can run submerged for longer and more quietly, and do not have to vent exhaust gases.
AUKUS is therefore further evidence that the US and UK are keen to contain China.
Germans appeared to vote for change on Sunday. With a majority of voting districts reporting, the Social Democratic Party had a slim lead, hovering around 26 percent, more than a percentage point ahead of Christian Democratic Union, which had just over 24 percent of the vote.
With final results not likely to come until early Monday, the race could still tip either way. But as the hours wore on and more results came in, the Social Democrats’ lead looked increasingly likely to hold.
Regardless of the outcome, the winning party will still need to team up with other parties to form a government. And in the complex equation that can be required in Germany to form a government, it is possible that if the winning party fails to get others on board, the party that placed second could wind up leading the country.
As party leaders reacted to the exit polls broadcast on television news channels earlier in the evening, each of the two top candidates claimed his right to build the next government and occupy the chancellery.
Cheers erupted at the Social Democratic Party’s headquarters when the exit polls were announced early Sunday evening. A short while later, supporters clapped and chanted “Olaf! Olaf!” as Olaf Scholz, their candidate, took the stage to address the crowd.
“People checked the box for the S.P.D. because they want there to be a change of government in this country and because they want the next chancellor to be called Olaf Scholz,” he said.
Giant Pay – an umbrella company used by contractors across the UK – has confirmed "suspicious activity" on its platform is behind a days-long ongoing outage that has left folk fretting about whether they'll get paid this month.
In an update on its website today, the firm said: "Upon detection of suspicious activity on our network on 22nd September 2021, we immediately assembled a response team including IT data experts and specialist lawyers, and we are currently working with the highest priority to resolve this issue.
"As part of the investigation and as a measure of caution, we have proactively taken our systems offline and suspended all services temporarily." It also confirmed it had contacted regulatory authorities and assured contractors they would get paid.
There was nothing inevitable about the creation of the United States — the United States, singular, that is, a continental nation-state with a central government, rather than these United States, plural, a collection of small, quarrelsome quasi republics connected by a weak treaty of friendship. In fact, the path to the nation as we know it, with a powerful executive, a representative legislature and an independent judiciary, was highly implausible. For the 13 states at the time of the Revolution — mini-nations that had their own currencies, their own foreign policies, their own navies — the quest for independence was not just freedom from an imperial Britain, but independence from one another. America could have very easily looked like a bigger, more dysfunctional European Union.
Douyin, the Chinese app known as TikTok outside the Middle Kingdom, has imposed limits on usage time for kids.
In a weekend post to Tencent-operated portal qq.com, Douyin's owner ByteDance revealed that it has moved all users who have authenticated with their real names, and are under 14 years of age, into "youth mode".
Such users are now restricted to using the app for forty minutes a day, and not at all between 10pm and 6am. Youth mode users are also fed wholesome, curated content.
The alleged snooping on opposition leaders, journalists, activists, dissidents and even members of the judiciary, using a military-grade Israeli spyware meant to combat terrorism should have led to an undying uproar. As the Editors Guild of India put it, “This is a moment that demands deep introspection and inquiry into the kind of society we are heading towards and how far we may have veered away from the democratic values enshrined in our Constitution.”
However, like the many other atrocious things happening in this country, the Pegasus issue too has been whittled down. The government’s stonewalling meant that the matter went nowhere in Parliament and the opposition parties lacked imagination on how to take it to the masses. It was only a ‘jugalbandi’ between the media and the judiciary that took the issue forward. Responding to a clutch of PILs filed by journalists, the Supreme Court last week decided to set up a committee of technical experts to look into the allegations. However, the two months that it took for the case to reach this stage may have far-reaching repercussions.
Rights groups called on military authorities in Democratic Republic of Congo on Friday to release a journalist arrested on terrorism charges for the possession of a video showing the assassination of two U.N. sanctions monitors in 2017.
Sosthene Kambidi, who works for Congolese news site Actualite.cd and sometimes with international news agencies, was arrested by the army prosecutor at a hotel in Kinshasa on Monday night, he said in a WhatsApp message to a Radio France International (RFI) journalist, which was shared with Reuters.
India's Telecoms Regulatory Authority has revealed that the nation has over 800 million active broadband subscribers.
The Authority's Highlights of Telecom Subscription Data [PDF] for the month ending on July 31st 2021 revealed that the nation started the month with 792.78 million broadband subscribers and ended it with 808.6 million – two per cent growth within a month.
Wireless subscriptions jumped by 14.78 million, with wired subs up by a mere 490,000. Interestingly, fixed wireless services grew 83.53 per cent in the month, jumping from 650,000 subs to over 1.19 million.
Shareholders press these leading Right to Repair opponents to explain themselves as regulatory pressure mounts€
The number of undergraduate majors in computer science at Stanford has nearly quadrupled since 2010, and hackathons are almost as easy to come by as fraternity parties. When Facebook, Microsoft or Google pay over $12,000 for a table at a Stanford career fair, the return on investment is assured. Their famous brand names — not to mention their six-figure starting salaries and amenities-rich work environments — are certain to attract large crowds of talented job candidates.
[...]
Like Gebru, Mieczkowski has observed the adverse effects of algorithms throughout the evolution of Silicon Valley. She referenced public backlash surrounding Twitter’s recently discarded image cropping algorithm, which would crop photos with a white person and multiple Black people in a way that, nine times out of 10, would only show the white person in the image preview, according to Mieczkowski. She added that there were repeated instances in which Twitter would crop women’s chests without user input. After immense criticism, Twitter removed the automatic cropping feature.
But what Mieczkowski called the “most invigorating aspect of change in Silicon Valley, and across the country,” are attempts of labor organizing inside technology companies. She cited the Alphabet Workers Union (AWU) — named for the parent company of Google — as a rare creation in an industry historically resistant to the unionization of its white-collar workforce. She described these labor unions as part of “solidarity-centered” change in the industry, which is “hopefully going to make big waves.”
In an unusual step, the European Commission plans to intervene in the recent merger between Illumina (ILMN) and Grail because regulators were unable to finish reviewing the deal before it was completed, raising concerns that competition in the market for DNA sequencing tests will now be damaged.
The move comes one month after Illumina stunned regulators by announcing it had closed its $8 billion acquisition, even though the EC had opened an investigation only weeks earlier at the prompting of France and five other European Union member states. In the U.S., the Federal Trade Commission had already filed a complaint last March to block the deal.
Any attempt to block Cellnex's takeover of Hutchison UK's tower network could see consumers "significantly worse off" and hamper the progress of Three UK's planned €£3bn investment in 5G.
What's more, the UK competition watchdog's decision to probe the deal was flawed and based on a "simplistic and misleading" assessment rather than a proper understanding of how real-world markets operate.
The intellectual property CEO of one of the world's largest telecoms companies talks about licensing, harvesting collaboration and global outreach
Federal statutes and regulations that currently govern how the US Patent and Trademark Office processes applications – namely 35 U.S.C. €§ 115(a) regarding the inventor’s oath – have not kept pace with technology. The original statute governing inventorship, for example, was enacted in 1952.
Artificial intelligence is notable among the new technologies posing fundamental questions about the viability of the inventor’s oath. Congress could eventually determine that AI-invented inventions should be patentable, and if so, Congress would need to intervene and propose legislation to include AI as an inventor under the patent laws. Globally, we are seeing a variety of approaches to this fundamental question.
Earlier this month, the Eastern District of Virginia issued the first court opinion in this country addressing whether an AI system can be named as an inventor on a patent.[1] In Thaler v. Iancu, the court found that an AI system cannot be named as an inventor on a patent. An inventor, it held, must be a natural person.
A year on since Mr Justice Richard Meade filled a much-needed void in the England and Wales High Court, practitioners assess his impact
If IP is so central to the UK government’s objectives, why do we have yet another IP minister?
From the Green Channel to the Patent Prosecution Highway, there are many mechanisms that enable you to accelerate the progress of a patent application through the search, examination and publication stages at the UK Intellectual Property Office (UKIPO) and European Patent Office (EPO). Here’s our guide to ensuring that your applications proceed as quickly and smoothly as possible.
The Court of Appeal in London has ruled against the physicist Stephen Thaler’s latest bid to list his AI machine Dabus as an inventor on a patent.
In what has become a test case for patent law, Thaler has applied for patents listing Dabus as the inventor in a number of jurisdictions, including the US, Europe and China as well as the UK.
Dabus is a so-called “creativity engine” that uses artificial neural networks to generate and assess new ideas. Thaler argues it’s the sole inventor of, among other things, a food container that improves grip and heat transfer, an area in which he says he has no expertise and so couldn’t have contributed to the patent in a way that would qualify him for inventor’s rights.
The High Court in England and Wales sided with the UK Intellectual Property Office last September in refusing the patent applications, accepting that while Dabus created the inventions, it couldn’t be granted a patent on the grounds that it wasn’t a ‘natural person’.
Now, the Court of Appeal in London has found that only a ‘person’ with legal personality can be an inventor, and that as Thaler accepts that he isn’t the inventor, he isn’t entitled to the patent.
Moroccan trademark Office (Office de la Propriété Industrielle & Commerciale – OMPIC) and the European Patent Office (EPO) have sealed an agreement on the Cooperative Patent Classification (CPC).
The agreement, which was signed lately remotely by EPO Chief António Campinos and Head of OMPI Abdelaziz Babqiqi, opens up a new chapter of cooperation between the two agencies.
In a Judgment handed down on 21 September 2021 ([2021] EWCA Civ 1374), the Court of Appeal has rejected an appeal by Dr. Stephen Thaler claiming that it should have been possible for him to name an Artificial Intelligence (AI) entity as the inventor on his UK patent applications. This judgment perhaps makes more emphatic the need for a change in UK legislation to keep pace with the increasing prevalence of AI, particularly if inventions created by AI entities are to be protectable. However, as there was a dissenting judgment at the Court of Appeal, with Lord Justice Birss coming to a different finding to that of Lord Justice Arnold and Lady Justice Elisabeth Laing, it is likely that permission to appeal to the UK Supreme Court will be sought.
The UK Court of Appeal has rejected an appeal in a case concerning the rejection of patent applications filed at the UK Intellectual Property Office (UKIPO) on the basis that an AI-based machine known as “DABUS” (Device for the Autonomous Bootstrapping of Unified Sentience) was listed as an inventor. This appeal case in the UK follows a number of corresponding cases in a project involving patent applications filed before patent offices around the world by Dr. Stephen Thaler seeking to establish that AI-based machines can make inventions and that the owners of such systems can obtain patents in respect of those inventions – the so-called “DABUS cases”.
On two patent applications filed before the UKIPO, statements of inventorship were filed listing DABUS as the name of the inventor and asserting that Dr. Thaler was entitled to be granted a patent by “ownership of the creativity machine DABUS”. Under UK law, the Patents Act 1977, section 7 stipulates that a patent may be granted to (a) the inventor, (b) any person who is the first owner of the “property in” the invention at the time of the making of the invention. Moreover, under section 13 of the Patents Act, the inventor has the right to be mentioned in the patent, and the applicant must (i) identify the person believed to be the inventor or inventors; and (b) where the applicant is not the inventor, indicate the derivation of his or their right to be granted the patent.
The Court of Appeal has denied Dr Thaler the grant of patents for inventions generated by DABUS, an Artificial Intelligence (AI) machine created and owned by him .
The facts surrounding the case are known to many around the world. This matter is an international test case advanced by Dr Thaler and his collaborators to establish whether owners of AI systems can obtain patents for inventions generated by those systems. The Court of Appeal held by a two to one majority, that the UK Patents Act 1977 provided a complete code, under which a patent cannot be granted where the inventor identified in the patent application is not a person. It was accepted by Dr Thaler that a machine is not a person (as is clearly the case). This means that, if patents are to be granted in respect of inventions made purely by machines (as opposed to using the machine as a tool to find inventions), there must be a change in the law, unless the applicant inaccurately identifies a person as an inventor in the patent applications. The Court did not decide whether the inventor had to be a natural or a legal person.
Senator Patrick Leahy has announced that he plans to introduce legislation intended to prevent future USPTO directors from undermining the inter partes review process at the Patent Trial and Appeal Board.
Speaking at a webinar hosted by the US Manufacturers Association for Development and Enterprise (US MADE) on Wednesday, September 22, Leahy said the new bill would increase transparency for IPRs, prevent politicised meddling and limit the number of “so-called” discretionary denials.
Leahy’s announcement confirms reports made to Managing IP earlier this week that the senator would introduce a new PTAB-related bill.
[...]
Tillis and Leahy announce two bipartisan patent bills
US senators Patrick Leahy and Thom Tillis introduced two intellectual property bills on Tuesday, September 21 – one to ensure that the public could identify the true owners of patents and another to bolster more diverse participation in the patent system.
The first bill, the Pride in Patent Ownership Act, would mandate that patent owners have to disclose their identities to the USPTO when a patent is issued or when ownership of a patent changes.
If passed, the act would also set out that applicants have to disclose whether any government entity – including a foreign one – provided funding for fees paid to the USPTO or to a lawyer or patent agent for prosecution.
The second, the Unleashing American Innovators Act, would require the USPTO’s satellite offices to conduct outreach to increase participation in the patent system from underrepresented groups, including women, people of colour, veterans and individual inventors.
It would also mandate that the USPTO director should establish a new satellite office in the southeast region of the US, and to look into whether the office needed additional satellite offices to increase underrepresented groups’ representation in the patent system.
Under the bill, the director would be compelled to establish a pilot programme to help first-time prospective patent owners assess the viability of potential applications.
The bill would also lower filing fees for small businesses and micro entities.
Leahy also announced his intention this week to introduce a bill that would limit the powers of the USPTO director over the Patent Trial and Appeal Board and “restore” the America Invents Act.
Switzerland leads innovation list as Korea breaks into top five
Switzerland retained top spot in the World Intellectual Property Organization’s annual ranking of countries’ innovation capacity.
Although Patrick Leahy has yet to file his bill proposing reform of the PTAB system at the USPTO, that has not stopped the battle lines being drawn over its merits
In doing this, he did not list himself as the inventor, rather opting to list Dabus while arguing that he should be given the patent "by ownership of the creativity machine," according to the BBC. However, the UK's Intellectual Property Office (IPO) told Thaler that it was necessary to list a real human as an inventor, not a machine. Thus, with this "error," the patent application was considered withdrawn.
Speakers at Audi, Ropes & Gray and the Computer & Communications Industry Association debated the future of SEP licensing as the IoT grows
It is understood that the Slovenian Government ratified the Protocol on the Provisional Application of the Unified Patent Court (UPC) Agreement on 16 September 2021, and that the ratification should be published in the Official Gazette by the end of September 2021. Publication will result in the ratification entering into force.
Speaking at a US MADE webinar, Senator Patrick Leahy said his new bill would bolster transparency and limit discretionary denials
This EPO Board of Appeal decision concerns a patent application for an automatic selection of a marketing script. In the appeal, the Board noted that considerations were all non-technical business concepts. Therefore, although computers were technical, the implementation of the non-technical requirements would have been obvious to the skilled person in the art of telecommunication and computer systems.
Received Notice of Allowance from European Patent Office for Patent Application Covering Diagnosis of Cancer Using Proprietary Artificial Intelligence TBIA Immune Profiling Platform
With the digital art ‘Everydays: The First 5000 Days’ selling for $69 million, Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey’s first-ever tweet auctioning for $2.9 million, and IBM announcing plans to tokenise patents, some people’s interest in non-fungible tokens is at an all-time high.
But NFTs, a term which broadly covers unique digital assets or tokens on a blockchain, have a long way to go before they transform the trade in intellectual property assets, say sources.
Companies are mostly riding on the NFT hype and tangible changes may take time as the market is largely unregulated.
Counsel say that NFTs have huge potential when it comes to transacting and monetising IP and maybe even physical assets, but most people are uninformed and practical challenges currently overshadow the possible benefits.
