Welcome to this week's Linux Roundup. It was a full week of Linux releases with Endless OS 4.0.0 and Deepin 20.3.
We hope that you had a good week and may the be a great one ahead!
GIMP has needed a serious rework for quite a while and it seems like GIMP 3 is finally going to bring us that along with amazing new features like multi-layer selection
Manipulate a ZFS pool from Rescue System, FreeBSD 3rd Quarter Report, Monitoring FreeBSD jails form the host, OpenBSD on RPI4 with Full Disk Encryption, Onwards with OpenBSD, and more
Jeri Ellsworth, self-taught electronics engineer, race driver, and maker and inventor supreme, visits us on KDE's 25th Anniversary, and gives us a glimpse into her latest project: Tilt 5, an augmented reality system for collaborative tabletop gaming.
So rc3 is usually a bit larger than rc2 just because people had some time to start finding things.
So too this time, although it's not like this is a particularly big rc3. Possibly partly due to the past week having been Thanksgiving week here in the US. But the size is well within the normal range, so if that's a factor, it's not been a big one.
The diff for rc3 is mostly drivers, although part of that is just because of the removal of a left-over MIPS Netlogic driver which makes the stats look a bit wonky, and is over a third of the whole diff just in itself.
If you ignore that part, the statistics look a bit more normal, but drivers still dominate (network drivers, sound and gpu are the big ones, but there is noise all over). Other than that there's once again a fair amount of selftest (mostly networking), along with core networking, some arch updates - the bulk of it from a single arm64 uaccess patch, although that's mostly because it's all pretty small - and random other changes.
Full shortlog below.
Please test,
Linus
Linus Torvalds just released Linux 5.16-rc3 with plenty of fixes included. With it being US Thanksgiving week, he's also having fun with this kernel by having adjusted the codename to "Gobble Gobble" in reference to turkeys.
Back during the Linux 5.15 cycle Intel contributed an improvement for tiered memory systems where less used memory pages could be demoted to slower tiers of memory storage. But once demoted that kernel infrastructure didn't have a means of promoting those demoted pages back to the faster memory tiers should they become hot again, though now Facebook/Meta engineers have been working on such functionality.
Prior to the Linux 5.15 kernel, during the memory reclaim process when the system RAM was under memory pressure was to simply toss out cold pages. However, with Linux 5.15 came the ability to shift those cold pages to any slower memory tiers. In particular, modern and forthcoming servers with Optane DC persistent memory or CXL-enabled memory, etc. Therefore the pages are still accessible if needed but not occupying precious system DRAM if they aren't being used and to avoid just flushing them out or swapping to disk.
Net-next has been queuing a number of enticing performance optimizations ahead of the Linux 5.17 merge window kicking off around the start of the new year. Covered already was a big TCP optimization and a big improvement for csum_partial() that is used in the network code for checksum computation. The latest optimization is improving the AF_UNIX code path for those using AF_UNIX sockets for local inter-process communication.
A new patch series was queued up on Friday in net-next for improving the AF_UNIX code. That patch series by Kuniyuki Iwashima of Amazon Japan is ultimately about replacing AF_UNIX sockets' single big lock with per-hash locks. The series replaces the AF_UNIX big lock and also as part of the series has a speed-up to the autobind behavior.
PHP 8.1 released on Thursday as the latest major feature release for this programming language. In this article are some benchmarks of PHP 8.1.0 on an AMD EPYC powered Linux server compared to prior releases going as far back as PHP 5.6.
As previously covered, PHP 8.1 introduces many new language features like PHP "Fibers", enums, read-only class properties, new fsync functions, and much more. PHP 8.1 is another great annual update to this server-side language. But as we've seen over the past number of years since the late PHP 5.x era, the performance has continued improving.
Corel Corporation is a Canadian software company specializing in graphics processing. They are best known for developing CorelDRAW, a vector graphics editor. They are also notable for purchasing and developing AfterShot Pro, PaintShop Pro, Painter, Video Studio, MindManager, and WordPerfect.
Corel has dabbled with Linux over the years. For example they produced Corel Linux, a Debian-based distribution which bundled Corel WordPerfect Office for Linux. While Corel effectively abandoned its Linux business in 2001 they are not completely Linux-phobic. For example, AfterShot Pro has an up to date Linux version albeit its proprietary software.
Corel Corporation is a Canadian software company specializing in graphics processing. They are best known for developing CorelDRAW, a vector graphics editor. They are also notable for purchasing and developing AfterShot Pro, PaintShop Pro, Painter, Video Studio, MindManager, and WordPerfect.
Corel has dabbled with Linux over the years. For example they produced Corel Linux, a Debian-based distribution which bundled Corel WordPerfect Office for Linux. While Corel effectively abandoned its Linux business in 2001 they are not completely Linux-phobic. For example, AfterShot Pro has an up to date Linux version albeit its proprietary software.
This series looks at the best free and open source alternatives to products offered by Corel.
One of the most difficult problems in managing a large network is the complexity of security administration. The deployment of individual security products such as firewalls, intrusion detection systems, network traffic analysis, log file analysis, or antivirus software is never going to provide adequate protection for computers that are connected to the internet. For example, a good network intrusion prevention and detection system (such as Snort) does an exemplary job at detecting attacks within traffic. However, this type of detection does not offer any sort of damage containment. Equally, a firewall offers an outstanding method at defining what type of traffic is allowed in a network, but does not offer any deep protocol analysis.
In this tutorial, we will show you how to install Snap on Ubuntu 20.04 LTS. For those of you who didn’t know, Snap also known as Snappy is an alternative package management tool and program package format developed by Canonical, the company behind Ubuntu Linux. All the snaps are usually stored in a central repository called Snap Store from where snaps can be downloaded and installed using the snap command. Snaps work across a range of Linux distributions, which makes them a distro-agnostic upstream software deployment solution.
This article assumes you have at least basic knowledge of Linux, know how to use the shell, and most importantly, you host your site on your own VPS. The installation is quite simple and assumes you are running in the root account, if not you may need to add ‘sudo‘ to the commands to get root privileges. I will show you the step-by-step installation of the Snap Package Manager on Ubuntu 20.04 (Focal Fossa). You can follow the same instructions for Ubuntu 18.04, 16.04, and any other Debian-based distribution like Linux Mint.
One of the best free alternatives to Microsoft Office is FreeOffice, developed by a German software company- SoftMaker. Recently, they have upgraded their Office suite to version 21. And here we learn the steps to install FreeOffice 2021 version on Ubuntu 20.04 Linux using the command terminal.
This free office suite is a part of the commercial one from the same developers known as SoftMaker Office 21 (also available for Linux), of course, the premium will have more features but that doesn’t mean the free version- FreeOffice 2021 deprives to full fill all daily office documents (MS-Word alternative) related requirements. It offers a Microsoft office ribbon-like interface and three modules- TextMaker 21 to create documents; PlanMaker 21 to create sheets (Excel alternative) and Presentations 21 for making slides like MS-Powerpoint.
In Windows 10, user may right-click on the ‘File Explorer’ icon on panel to access pinned folders (e.g., Desktop, Downloads and Documents) quickly.
Ubuntu has first implemented this feature in Ubuntu 21.10, though it seems to be not working properly due to bug. Ubuntu 20.04 may manually add the context (right-click) menu options so user can right-click on the ‘Files’ icon to choose open favorite folders quickly.
In this tutorial, we will show you how to install Perl on AlmaLinux 8. For those of you who didn’t know, Perl (Practical Extraction and Reporting Language) is a general-purpose programming language originally developed for text manipulation and now used for a wide range of tasks including system administration, web development, network programming, GUI development, and more. The major features of Perl are easy to use, supports object-oriented and procedural programming languages, and has built-in support for processing text. The most impressive feature of Perl is that it supports a large collection of third-party modules.
This article assumes you have at least basic knowledge of Linux, know how to use the shell, and most importantly, you host your site on your own VPS. The installation is quite simple and assumes you are running in the root account, if not you may need to add ‘sudo‘ to the commands to get root privileges. I will show you the step-by-step installation of the Perl programming language on AlmaLinux 8. You can follow the same instructions for Rocky Linux.
Total War: Warhammer is a turn-based real-time tactics video game developed by Creative Assembly and published by Sega. It takes place in the War Hammer 40K universe. Here’s how you can play it on your Linux PC.
Today we are looking at how to install Funkin' Vs. Camellia 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.
Introduction
After ensuring that Fail2ban was being used for all suitable modules on the server I saw the need to have a visual indication of the Fail2ban status in the Web Management to help detect any problems that are occurring.
Patch Released
The latest patch that has just been released now has an extra page for Fail2ban added to the system section of the Web Management. This page gives a visual status indication for each jail that has been configured for Fail2ban on the selected server.
Linux kernel 5.15 is out with many new features, support, and security. The Linux 5.15 kernel release further improves the support for AMD CPUs and GPUs, Intel’s 12th Gen CPUs, and brings new features like NTFS3, KSMBD (CIFS/SMB3), and further Apple M1 support, amongst many other changes and additions.
In the following tutorial, you will learn how to install the latest 5.15 Linux Kernel on Pop!_OS 20.04 LTS.
In the Unix shells ksh, bash, fish and zsh, the disown builtin command is used to remove jobs from the job table Like cd or pwd, it is a shell built-in command, and doesn’t require root privileges, or to mark jobs so that a SIGHUP signal is not sent to them if the parent shell receives it (e.g. if the user logs out).
So, In this tutorial we will cover different ways you can use the disown command in Linux.
One of the most attractive features of the Linux operating system is how easy it is to install or automate the installation of software packages from secure remote repositories.
This guide will walk you through how to install and manage software packages on RPM-based Linux distros such as Fedora and Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) using DNF, the next-generation package manager for RPM-based Linux distros.
PHP 8.1 is a significant update of the PHP language that was “officially” released on November 25, 2021. This is a standard upgrade as we advance from the existing PHP 8.0 release. The new PHP 8.1 brings enums, fibers, never return type, final class constants, intersection types, read-only properties amongst the long list of new features and changes.
In the following tutorial, you will learn how to import the REMI Module and install PHP 8.1 on AlmaLinux 8.
Most Linux users use the default system monitor tool that comes pre-installed with the distribution for checking memory, CPU usage, and CPU temperature. In Linux, many applications run in the system background as a daemon to keep another main tool active or live which consumes a bit more system resources. In Linux, you can use various small tools or terminal commands or use one single command that shows all the running processes by memory and CPU usage. After checking the RAM and CPU load, you can determine which application you want to kill.
So Horizon Zero Dawn had a sale recently on Fanatical, and I thought… OK I’ll grab it! It’s time. I first installed it on my workstation that only has a GTX1060 3GB GPU – not a workhorse but a decent card nonetheless for low-to-medium end gaming. I knew very well that Horizon Zero Dawn is a DX12 game and that Pascal architecture (Nvidia 10xx basically) and earlier versions do not play very well with DX12 games running through vkd3d-proton, the DX12 to Vulkan translation layer.
Still, I could imagine getting somewhere around 30 FPS on low-to-medium settings, and use FSR if necessary to get to better framerates. Nothing prepared me for the performance I was about to experience.
Over the past two weeks, we have been hard at work under the hood of Kalendar. What you can expect from these two weeks’ refactors, additions, and changes is a version of Kalendar that is more stable, faster to use, and easier to use than ever before.
We are excited to have you try Kalendar, and we want your feedback — especially bug reports! These will help us improve Kalendar as much as possible before releasing 1.0.
In this video, we are looking at Endless OS 4.0.0. Enjoy!
Today we are looking at Endless OS 4.0.0. It is based on Debian 11, Linux Kernel 5.11, Gnome 3.38, and uses about 1 to 1.5GB of ram when idling. Enjoy it and it looks great!
Agility has never been more important than it is in today’s disrupted digital world. Leaders in every industry are trying to find a balance between the stability that allows them to plan for the future, while creating highly agile organisations that can quickly respond to new challenges and opportunities.
This agility only comes from the ability to innovate at speed, which is why open source communities are as vital as ever. According to SUSE’s recently commissioned Insight Avenue report, Why Today’s IT Leaders are Choosing Open, 84% now see open source as a way to cost-effectively drive this innovation.
A vote has been proposed in Debian to change the formal procedure in Debian by which General Resolutions (our name for "votes") are proposed. The original proposal is based on a text by Russ Allberry, which changes a number of rules to be less ambiguous and, frankly, less weird.
One thing Russ' proposal does, however, which I am absolutely not in agreement with, is to add a absolutly hard time limit after three weeks. That is, in the proposed procedure, the discussion time will be two weeks initially (unless the Debian Project Leader chooses to reduce it, which they can do by up to one week), and it will be extended if more options are added to the ballot; but after three weeks, no matter where the discussion stands, the discussion period ends and Russ' proposed procedure forces us to go to a vote, unless all proposers of ballot options agree to withdraw their option.
I believe this is a big mistake. I think any procedure we come up with should allow for the possibility that we may end up with a situation where everyone agrees that extending the discussion time a short time is a good idea, without necessarily resetting the whole discussion time to another two weeks (modulo a decision by the DPL).
SQLite 3.37 has just got better with added new features such as CLI enhancements and additional interfaces.
SQLite is is an open source self-contained, lightweight serverless relational database management system. The lite in SQLite means lightweight in terms of setup, database administration, and required resources.
Normally, an RDBMS such as MySQL, PostgreSQL, etc., requires a separate server process to operate, but SQLite does not work this way. It accesses its storage files directly.
SQLite stores its data in a single cross-platform file. As there’s no dedicated server or specialized filesystem, deploying SQLite is as simple as creating a new regular file.
Everything always revolves around shopping – be it for Black Friday, Christmas or Easter. But why not just repair and reuse instead of always buying something new? This is what our series of articles “Repairing and Upcycling” is all about.
With the “Upcycling Android” initiative, the Free Software Foundation Europe (FSFE) wants to encourage Android smartphone users to disconnect from the Google system and switch to free software. On the occasion of the current “European Waste Prevention Week”, the FSFE wants to help avoid electronic waste, save resources and enable cell phones to have a longer life. The Federal Environment Ministry and the Federal Environment Agency support the upcycling project financially.
“Every year manufacturers worldwide produce 1.5 billion cell phones,” said the FSFE on Thursday. Unfortunately, almost as many would probably be “thrown away” after an often short period of use. This is more and more due to planned “software obsolescence”. Consumers are therefore faced with the dilemma of either buying new hardware or living with outdated programs. The environmental impact of this short hardware life could be devastating.
Version 8.1.0 of the PHP language has been released. This release includes a number of new features, including enumerations, read-only properties, fibers, and more.
Mike (mikewalsh) responded with a great link that lists lots of Linux debugger/trace tools. The EasyOS devx SFS already has the 'gdb' CLI utility, and I saw on that link, there are 'ddd' and 'nemiver' GUI frontends for gdb. I went for nemiver and compiled it. The project seems to be almost dead, but then, if it works, perhaps no need for more commits to the git repository. I chose version 0.8.2, not the latest, but it suited me to stay with a gtk+2 based app rather than gtk+3. Two dependencies, 'gtkmm' and 'libgtop', are compiled in OpenEmbedded. I compiled 'libgtksourceviewmm' and 'nemiver' in a running EasyOS and made them into PETs.
Yesterday the discord-bridge-bot refused to perform its 2nd job: EVAL All The Things! The EVALing is done via shell-out and requires a fair bit of RAM (Rakudo is equally slim then Santa). After about 3 weeks the fairly simple bot had grown from about halve a GB to one and a halve – while mostly waiting for the intertubes to deliver small pieces of text. I complained on IRC and was advised to take heap snapshots. Since I didn’t know how to make heaps of snapshots, I had to take timo’s directions towards use Telemetry. As snap(:heap) wasn’t willing to surrender the filename of the snapshot (I want to compress the file, it is going to get big over time) I had a look at the source. I also requested a change to Rakudo so I don’t have to hunt down the filename, which was fulfilled by lizmat 22 minutes later. Since you may not have a very recent Rakudo, the following snipped might be useful.
As the Smithsonian Institution celebrates its 175th birthday this year, the sprawling museum-and-zoo complex counts just over 155 million items in its 20 museums and off-site storage facilities. Across more than 11 million square feet of exhibition and storage space—most of it located in Washington, D.C., suburban Maryland, and New York City—those artifacts range from slingshots to space shuttles, ants to elephants.
It’s no surprise that only about one percent of the collection is on display at any given time. But that raises a question: What are we missing? As I discover when three Smithsonian museums kindly allow me to peek inside their back rooms, the answer is: lots of things that will absolutely blow your mind.
In the maze of storage rooms at the National Museum of American History, for instance, it seems every cabinet I look into holds an iconic cultural touchstone. Behind one door lies Ray Bolger's Scarecrow costume from The Wizard of Oz. A nearby drawer holds, side by side, Jerry Seinfeld’s puffy shirt and Mister Rogers’ red sweater. A small box contains the original stopwatch from the television news program 60 Minutes.
We all get a bit lonely from time to time and talking to other humans can be a challenge. With social robots still finding their way these days, [Markus] decided to find a DIY solution he could make cheaply, resulting in the “Conversation Face.”
The build is actually pretty simple, really. You have three different OLED displays, two for the eyes and one for the mouth, that have different graphic images programmed onto them depending on the expression being displayed. There’s also a small electret microphone that senses when you are speaking to the face. Finally, a simple face cutout covers the electronics and solidifies the aesthetic.
Walls can’t hold [Elijah Cirioli]. The would-be superhero has been busy scaling the sides of buildings using his self-contained vacuum climbers. (Video embedded after the break.)
After being inspired by the winning project of an Air Force design challenge, our plain-clothed crusader got to work on a pair of prototype vacuum climbers. The wooden prototypes were an unexpected success, so work soon began on the models featured in the video after the break. The main improvements in this second version included using €¼ inch acrylic instead of plywood, as well as an improved gasket for a better seal against the imperfect exterior of many building walls.
The European Union is discussing this week how to update its digital Covid-19 certificates and its approach to travel within and outside the bloc as member nations take varying steps to counter the latest wave of the pandemic.
We have previously written at length about the continuing regulatory bottlenecks caused by the low numbers of notified bodies for the EU's Medical Device Regulation (MDR) and In Vitro Diagnostic Medical Devices Regulation (IVDR).
A new set of slides from the European Commission sheds some light on where all the notified bodies have gone.
The good news is that we do have 24 notified bodies for MDR. However, 29 applications for designation under MDR remain in progress. Of these, two notified bodies will be designated imminently (which should bring us to 26 by Christmas 2022). However, ten applicants haven't even received preliminary assessment reports, especially when considering the relative speed and ease of this initial stage.
Santosh Singh's earliest memory is of tilling soil on his family's farm. Now, the 70-year-old farmer's eyes gleam with pride as he recalls watching his grandson do the same.
But Singh hasn't been home to Punjab for one year since he joined farmers at one of three protest sites in the Indian capital to campaign against new farming laws they claimed would leave them open to exploitation.
The Community Foundation of the Adirondack Foothills delivered 2,600 free Thanksgiving meals to individuals and families in need on Thursday as part of the third Annual Festival of Hope event, about 606 fewer meals than in 2020, although the total cost was about $1,000 more.
Embedded devices with limited memory and storage resources are likely to leverage a tool such as BusyBox, which is marketed as the Swiss Army Knife of embedded Linux. BusyBox is a software suite of Unix utilities, known as applets, that are packaged as a single executable file.
Within BusyBox you can find a full-fledged shell, a DHCP client/server, and small utilities such as cp, ls, grep, and others. You’re also likely to find many OT and IoT devices running BusyBox, including popular programmable logic controllers (PLCs), human-machine interfaces (HMIs), and remote terminal units (RTUs)—many of which now run on Linux.
As part of our commitment to improving open-source software security, Claroty’s Team82 and JFrog collaborated on a vulnerability research project examining BusyBox. Using static and dynamic techniques, Claroty’s Team82 and JFrog discovered 14 vulnerabilities affecting the latest version of BusyBox.
In most cases, the expected impact of these issues is denial of service (DoS). However, in rarer cases, these issues can also lead to information leaks and possibly remote code execution.
As Americans digest the guilty verdicts in the case of the three men charged with murdering Ahmaud Arbery, we can look to the powerful video evidence and the stellar work of prosecutor Linda Dunikoski and her team in managing that evidence as significant factors in an outcome 180 degrees different from the verdict in George Zimmerman's killing of Trayvon Martin.
Prosecutors in the trial of three White men convicted in Ahmaud Arbery's killing were not concerned about the racial makeup of the jury, attorneys told CNN Wednesday.
Linda Dunikoski, Cobb County senior assistant district attorney, told CNN's Jim Acosta that after jurors were selected, her team "realized that we had very, very smart, very intelligent, honest jurors who were going to do their job which is to seek the truth."
"We felt that putting up our case, it doesn't matter whether they were Black or White, that putting up our case that this jury would hear the truth, they would see the evidence and that they would do the right thing and come back with the correct verdict which we felt they did today," Dunikoski said.
The courts have attacked their right to picket, and the company has engaged in a campaign of misinformation. But 1,000 union miners in Alabama are still on strike after eight months, fighting for decent compensation and humane work schedules.
The Local Superintendents Advisory Council (LSAC) approved a draft regulation during its meeting on Nov. 23 on the use of corporal punishment in schools.
The draft regulation will go before the Kentucky Board of Education (KBE) at its meeting on Dec. 1 for approval.
A Kentucky state statute from 1982 permits the use of corporal punishment by teachers for classroom discipline, while a 2019 state statute requires the Kentucky Department of Education (KDE) to provide resources related to trauma-informed discipline and requires school districts to adopt trauma-informed discipline policies. Corporal punishment is not a trauma-informed discipline resolution.
DFINITY’s Internet Computer provides a kind of serverless compute platform, where the services are WebAssemmbly programs called “canisters”. These services run without stopping (or at least that’s what it feels like from the service’s perspective; this is called “orthogonal persistence”), and process one message after another. Messages not only come from the outside (“ingress” calls), but are also exchanged between canisters.
On top of these uni-directional messages, the system provides the concept of “inter-canister calls”, which associates a respondse message with the outgoing message, and guarantees that a response will come. This RPC-like interface allows canister developers to program in the popular async/await model, where these inter-canister calls look almost like normal function calls, and the subsequent code is suspended until the response comes back.
Investors are ignoring significant regulatory developments for Apple while distracted by Apple Car speculation.
“What is the methodology behind your research?”. This is the question young IP researchers hear most during their first years in the academia. Conference after conference, one comes to realise that a robust research methodology may often be more important than any conclusions such research might yield. Yet, resources on how to design such methodology are scarce. This is why this Kat was pleased to see the “Handbook of Intellectual Property Research” (ed. by I. Calboli and M. Montagnani, OUP, 912 pp.), published recently in open access, with (all?) the right answers. The book consists of four parts, 52 chapters, and covers research methods in a variety of areas of law: privacy law, criminal law, popular culture research, or psychology, to name a few. In this post, this Kat will review the first two Parts, on intersections of IP with other areas of law and with the humanities. A follow-up review will cover the other two Parts of the book.
[...]
George Nicholas and Catherine Bell follow in Chapter 20, with research concerns and considerations on IP and archaeology. IP issues become relevant at several stages of archaeological studies. Some of the many research venues, suggested by the authors, are 3D scanning or printing of artefacts, and the protection of information uncovered by archaeologists as traditional knowledge (TK). The views on the issue are complemented by Chapter 21, where Fiona Macmillan looks into interdisciplinary approaches to research on IP and cultural heritage.
Chapters 22, 23 and 24 then address the research framework for IP and languages. In Chapter 22, Alan Durant and Jennifer Davis explain how linguistics may be applied in IP research: for instance, in judicial interpretation of certain legal terms, or in examining the distinctiveness of certain verbal signs. Law and literature in IP methodologies is the topic of Chapter 23, authored by Zahr K. Said. Said addresses how literature (such as Shakespeare’s Merchant of Venice) may be used in research, but also in the teaching of IP law. David Tan discusses, in Chapter 24, semiotic analysis in IP research. Semiotics being the study of signs, it can become a useful methodology for studying acquired distinctiveness of trade marks.
On November 16, Apple filed with the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit a motion to stay the Epic Games v. Apple injunction, whih came down in September based on a finding of a violation of California Unfair Competition Law (UCL). Epic had ten days to respond, plus one extra day because the deadline would otherwise have been on Thanksgiving Day.
I continue to believe that the Ninth Circuit is more likely than not to grant Apple's motion. While I don't agree with all of Apple's arguments, and don't disagree with all of Epic's either, there simply are overwhelming reasons to order a stay. It's the most logical and reasonable thing to do. Should the appeals court deny Apple's motion, Apple asks for an additional administrative stay (30 more days) so it can seek Supreme Court review.
As has been widely noted, online trade grew significantly in 2020. Confined to their homes, consumers relied on the internet for buying food, household products, medical supplies, children's toys and games, and electronic goods. In response to the increased demand, online marketplaces expanded their range of suppliers. Meanwhile, trying not to lose their traditional customers, offline businesses rapidly moved into the online space.
The lead committee in the European Parliament writing new tech rules passed measures Tuesday that could impact major U.S. and European tech companies.
Objectively, preliminary injunction decisions play a key role for the IP right holder particularly for patent holders to be dealt by Intellectual and Industrial Property Rights (IP courts) in an urgent matter due to the super technicality nature of such cases, commercial reasons, time pressure, etc.
The preliminary injunction, which appears as a way out in cases where the definitive protection is not sufficient and a temporary legal protection is needed, can be requested before an action is filed as per Article 390 of the Code of Civil Procedure (CCP), or it can be requested after the action is filed.
Nextcloud has asked the European Commission to stop Microsoft from pre-installing OneDrive and Teams on Windows to give competitive services a fair chance to appeal to PC users.
"Microsoft is integrating 365 deeper and deeper in their service and software portfolio, including Windows," Nextcloud says on a web page dedicated to its antitrust complaint against Microsoft. "OneDrive is pushed wherever users deal with file storage and Teams is a default part of Windows 11. This makes it nearly impossible to compete with their SaaS services."
Nextcloud CEO Frank Karlitschek said in a statement:
This is quite similar to what Microsoft did when it killed competition in the browser market, stopping nearly all browser innovation for over a decade. Copy an innovators' product, bundle it with your own dominant product and kill their business, then stop innovating. This kind of behavior is bad for the consumer, for the market and, of course, for local businesses in the EU. Together with the other members of the coalition, we are asking the antitrust authorities in Europe to enforce a level playing field, giving customers a free choice and to give competition a fair chance.
In an exclusive interview, Huawei IP vice president Alan Fan tells Managing IP how the company’s IP strategy is adapting to US sanctions
The G7 Heads of IP Office Conversation was held via video conference on November 19, 2021, bringing together leading officials from IP Offices in G7 member states (G7 IP Offices). During the Conversation, the participants shared their recognition of initiatives on IP intersections with public health; IP and future technologies including Artificial Intelligence (AI); best practices in IP enforcement; and increased cooperation between G7 IP Offices and other entities including WIPO. They also indicated that they would aim to establish a balanced and international IP environment wherein the benefits from innovation and creativity can be maximized, and said that they would support the global economic recovery after the pandemic. Consequently, the G7 IP Offices successfully adopted their Joint Statement for the first time.
The Unified Patent Court has moved one step closer to becoming operational after clearing the first stage of an Austrian parliament vote on Friday, November 19.
When Austria formally ratifies the so-called ‘PAP Protocol’, it will trigger the beginning of the Provisional Application Period (PAP).
The PAP will be the beginning of the final stage of preparations before the court becomes operational. During this period, a bespoke IT system will be implemented judges will be hired.
Last Friday, November 19, Austria’s National Council approved the legislation allowing Austria to ratify the protocol.
The bill is now in the hands of the Federal Council, the parliament’s upper house. Once approved by, it requires the signatures of the President and Chancellor before being published in the Federal Gazette.
Austria will then be able to deposit its instrument of ratification, triggering the beginning of the PAP.
The UPC Preparatory Committee has said it will need at least eight months from the start of the PAP to complete the necessary work before the UPC can become operational.
Its initial target of mid-2022 now seems out of reach, with formal Austrian ratification not expected until next month.
Managing IP exclusively reported in September that Slovenia had ratified the protocol, leaving just one more country to ratify.
The recent decision of the English High Court in Bayer v Teva [2021] EWHC 2690 (Pat) is another example in which the UK courts have found a pharmaceutical invention to be the obvious outcome of routine drug development. In the Supreme Court decision Actavis v ICOS the court found a drug dose selection obvious in view of what was considered to be the obvious route that the skilled person would take through the drug development decision tree. The High Court in Bayer v Teva followed a similar reasoning to find the clinical formulation of Bayer's cancer drug, sorafenib, obvious in view of the preliminary phase I clinical trial results for the drug.
In Bayer v Teva, the patent in question EP (UK) 2305255 was directed to the salt form of sorafenib and its use in the treatment of cancer. The particular claim in contention related to sorafenib tosylate salt. Sorafenib tosylate (NEXAVAR) is approved in the US and EU for the treatment of various types of cancer. The SPCs for the basic patent covering sorafenib expired earlier this year. Teva brought revocation proceedings against Bayer's sorafenib formulation patent (which had an expiry date of Dec 2022) across Europe, including the UK and Germany.
Campaigners for the waiver and in-house pharma counsel both agree that the EU is likely to block the proposal at the WTO next week
As a patent owner or a company driving innovation, you more than likely spend a bit of time researching or filling patents to protect ideas. Once granted, the value of a patent lies in the ability to generate a return for your work in contributing to the innovation cycle. Typically, these assets can be monetized by enforcing your rights through patent litigation, or by licensing or selling your patents to others. Other IP owners find themselves on the other side of the coin and feel there is no need for monetization – only the need for defensive IP protection (where return-on-invest is generated by securing their own products and services).
Engagement with protocols and the 4IR are among key priorities for ARIPO director general, Bemanya Twebaze, as he approaches one year in the job
In a recent post on O-RAN I discussed European concerns over the contemplated standard for the modularization of mobile network infrastructure being driven by geopolitical objectives (America first, Chinese bogeyman) rather than technical merits. The situation appears to be a lot worse than that. Today one of the world's most well-respected and independent IT security authorities, the German Bundesamt für Sicherheit in der Informationstechnik (BSI; official English title: Federal Office for Information Security) released an 86-page study (PDF; in German) that must give some people not only food for thought but possibly even pause.
The government agency's risk assessment--to be precise, the BSI commissioned and funded the study, and did not influence the researchers' independent work--focused on the following objectives: confidentiality (of data), integrity, accountability, availability, and privacy. The study took three different stakeholer angles: that of a user of a 5G network, that of an operator of a 5G network, and that of the state (i.e., the public interest). In light of the lack of specificity of the current version of the O-RAN specs, the risk assessment relates to a "worst-case perspective" in which none of the optional security measures have been implemented and a "best-case perspective" based on the assumption of all optional security measures actually having been put in place.
The renowned security experts took into consideration that the leverage of potential attackers varies greatly. Therefore, they evaluated how much damage could be done by a totally external attacker, a 5G user, an "insider", a cloud operator, and a RAN operator.
This Tuesday, the Mannheim Regional Court gave short shrift to Deutsche Telekom v. IPCom, an "antitrust case" in which the mobile network operator is seeking roughly $300 million in restitution (recovery of past royalty payments plus interest). The court's public hearing list described the cause of action in case no. 2 O 130/20 as "anticompetitive discrimination involving standard-essential patents in connection with patent license agreement dated June 7, 2013." Some other claim(s) had already been voluntarily dismissed by the plaintiff ahead of trial. The remainder was stayed at the end of the trial, but on a basis that allows either party anytime to ask the court to resume the proceedings, which would result in a swift ruling that could have only one outcome: a formal dismissal of the case as clearly meritless. As part of its hold-out strategy, Deutsche Telekom even stipulated to that kind of revocable stay, while IPCom would have preferred a decision. Typically, defendants are happy to just put a case against them on hold, but I'll get to the parties' motives later (here's a shortcut to that part of the post)--and they have a lot do with an IPCom v. Sprint case pending before Judge Rodney Gilstrap in the Eastern District of Texas and slated to go to trial next spring.
If I wanted to go into detail on everything that is deficient about Deutsche Telekom's Mannheim complaint, I'd have to write an even longer post, every single paragraph of which would have to start with "Let that sink in" or "Lo and behold," which would get a bit repetitive. Let's focus on the forest rather than get lost in a multitude of trees--and please take any references to Deutsche Telekom's outlandish theories and allegations as if "Let that sink in" had been put in front of a parenthetical expression in a mathematical formula.
What Deutsche Telekom has been trying to do would--if it worked, which it never will--make it practically impossible for parties to enter into reliably stable settlement agreements that put standard-essential patent (SEP) cases to rest. The licensee could always come back later and relitigate settled issues. And even if--as here--a clause specifically and incontrovertibly ruled that behavior out, the licensee would argue--as Clifford Chance "of counsel" Dr. Joachim Schuetze ("Schütze" in German) did on Deutsche Telekom's behalf--that parties cannot dispose of antitrust law no matter what they put into an agreement.
The opposition procedure for European patents, enables third parties, within nine months of the publication of the mention of the grant of the patent, to oppose that patent at the European Patent Office (EPO). This opposition procedure for European patents is particularly useful when the patent in question is hindering our commercial interests and we have adequate reasons to revoke its registration. One of the most effective ways of obtaining the revocation is to prove “prior public use”. We look at what this consists of below.
Irish-based pharma firms are pleading with the Government to approve a new EU patent court before it is too late.
While other European capitals are laying the legal ground for their local court divisions, firms say Ireland risks being left behind and losing out on new investment and jobs.
On 29 October 2021, the UK Intellectual Property Office issued an open consultation to examine certain aspects of copyright and patent law in the context of AI. The consultation follows in light of views expressed in response to its Call for Views on AI and IP.
Following on from the success of our previous Bristows Life Sciences Summit on gene editing, we hosted a thought-provoking discussion on the moral, ethical, commercial and regulatory challenges posed by artificial intelligence in healthcare.
Chaired by eminent journalist and broadcaster Joan Bakewell, and conducted by a panel of leading experts, the debate covered some of the most pressing issues related to the use of AI in the medical field:
A patent right is the only property which can be trespassed upon without the owner’s knowledge, in every part of the country, by an innumerable number of trespassers at the same time. The owner can neither watch it, nor protect it by physical force, nor by the aid of the police or of the criminal law. He thus necessarily requires more efficient civil remedies than those do the protection of whose property does not depend upon civil remedies alone.
On October 1st, Senior Party ToolGen Inc. filed its Motion to Exclude certain evidence presented by Junior Party the Broad Institute, Harvard University, and MIT (collectively, "Broad") in Interference No. 106,126. Broad filed its Opposition to ToolGen's motion on October 8th, and ToolGen filed its Reply on October 15th.
ToolGen's bases for excluding evidence including Broad's purported "best proofs" on priority were that they have not been authenticated and are thus inadmissible under FRE 901. Specifically, ToolGen raised these objections against Broad Exhibits 2526, 2530, 2533, 2535, 2536, 2563, 2565, 2566, 2581, 2582, and 2599. Some of these objections involve the date of the exhibit (e.g., Exh. 2526) which is dated after the relevant time period concerning conception and reduction to practice of the claimed invention (i.e., CRISPR achieved in eukaryotic cells). Others relate to lack of "dates, labels, or other identifying marks" (e.g., Exh. 2530, which purports to be "an image of an electrophoresis gel that Broad alleges shows a dual-molecule RNA configuration that was 'used to target, cleave, and edit an endogenous "NTF3" genomic target in eukaryotic cells in October–November 2011'"). ToolGen raised objections on similar grounds against Exhs. 2535, 2536, and 2563, which ToolGen asserted "are unannotated images completely devoid of identifying features" that "could be generic images from anywhere; none contain labels, captions, or descriptions that would allow a person of ordinary skill in the art ('POSA') to understand the alleged experiment, let alone assess whether the exhibit is what Broad claims it to be" (which are "successful single and dual-molecule systems"). Finally, ToolGen asserted that none of these exhibits were authenticated by Broad's expert witness, Dr. Seeger who "[did] not profess to have any knowledge of the aforementioned exhibits."
In its turn, on September 17th, Senior Party ToolGen Inc. filed its Motion to Exclude certain evidence presented by Junior Party the University of California/Berkeley, the University of Vienna, and Emmanuelle Charpentier (collectively, "CVC") in Interference No. 106,127. CVC filed its Opposition to ToolGen's motion on October 8th, and ToolGen filed its Reply on October 15th.
In an exclusive guest post, representatives from the Patent Office of Latvia reveal the agency’s recent developments of its digital tools and services for trademark users – and those planned for the future.
On 30 July 2021, the Federal Court of Australia ruled that a machine – that is, a mathematical equation that analysed and processed data – can be an inventor under Australian patent laws. A world-first decision, Thaler v Commissioner of Patents [2021] FCA 879 represents a sea change in how courts assess the requirements of a “patent inventor”, opening up the real possibility that other artificial intelligence (AI) systems may enjoy similar designations.
Below, an overview of the Thaler decision is provided, as well as an assessment of its implications if upheld on appeal. A comparison of this decision to other decisions on the issue around the world is then provided with a final word on the issues that are in play and things for the AI industry to consider.
Patent Prosecution Highway or PPH is a set of initiatives promulgated by participating patent offices around the world to accelerate patent prosecution in countries of the participating patent offices. PPH allows the participating patent offices to share information and to benefit from work performed by other participating patent offices, and thereby reducing examination workload and improving quality of patents.
Under PPH, prosecution of a patent application previously filed with a participating patent office can be fast-tracked in another participating patent office if the patent application meets certain requirements. This article provides a brief overview of benefits of filing patent applications under PPH and requirements by which the patent applications must satisfy in order to participate in PPH.
The Delhi High Court judge says counsel must stop seeking adjournments so that judges can speed up justice delivery, while ADR is the future
On 18 November, the EPO’s European Patent Academy together with the Licensing Executive Society International (LESI) held their fourth High-growth technology business forum. The forum aims to bring leading experts together to share their knowledge and provide practical insights for innovation stakeholders such as technology start-ups, scale-ups and small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). This event was specially designed for business decision-makers who aim to grow and sell their high-tech businesses.
The Austrian parliament has adopted the provisional protocol for UPC, with no votes against the motion. It is an important step for the application phase of the UPC to start. However, the next step is the second chamber of the Austrian parliament, the Bundesrat, also voting on the protocol.
Now that the launch of the Unified Patent Court is looking increasingly likely again, what do its future users think of the new court?
In September 2021, JUVE Patent asked the heads of patent departments in selected technology companies across the world, as well as lawyers and patent attorneys at major law firms with patent expertise, for their opinion. Almost 1,300 stakeholders took part in the survey.
Patent attorneys Egbert Engel (46) and Joachim Happold (42) join DTS in January 2022. Both were previously partners at Hoeger Stellrecht in Stuttgart, where they also began their training. Engel and Happold are physicists and were previously active for client DLR.
As in many other countries, in Russia at the preparation stage of a patent infringement lawsuit the patent owner seeks the opinion of a sufficiently skilled technical specialist regarding use of the patented invention by the assumed infringer. Such technical specialist, which is usually a patent attorney in the beginning of a long story of infringement litigation, is expected to establish, based on available evidence, whether each and every feature of an independent claim of the patent is present in a product or process marketed or otherwise commercially used by such assumed infringer. The opinion confirming the use of the invention normally accompanies the court claim as evidence of the fact of use of the plaintiff's invention by the defendant.
This is my Soho Forum debate held Nov. 15, 2021, in Manhattan, against professor Richard Epstein, moderated by Gene Epstein. I defended the resolution “all patent and copyright law should be abolished” and Professor Epstein opposed it. Oxford debate rules applied which meant that whoever changed the most minds won. My side went from about 20 to 29 percentage points, gaining about 9; Richard went from about 44 to 55%, gaining about 11, so he won by 1.7 percentage points.
In light of the ongoing coronavirus pandemic, travel restrictions and preventive health measures limiting the parties' possibilities to attend oral proceedings on its premises, the EPO has decided to further extend its pilot project for conducting oral proceedings in opposition by videoconference (VICO) until 31 May 2022. Where there are serious reasons against holding the oral proceedings in opposition by VICO, oral proceedings will be postponed until after that date.
The EPO is committed to improving the tools used for conducting oral proceedings by VICO. It will continue to raise awareness and provide additional training to parties so that VICO tools become as close an approximation as possible to direct human interaction.
The European Patent Office has announced an extension to its pilot project, whereby it will conduct opposition proceedings via video, until May 2022. The EPO cites its reasoning as “travel restrictions and preventive health measures limiting the parties’ possibilities to attend oral proceedings on its premises” due to the ongoing impact of the pandemic.
During an online ceremony on 23 November, EPO President António Campinos was joined by Ms Ana Margarida Bandeira, President of the Council of INPI Portugal, and Mr Cláudio Vilar Furtado, President of the Council of INPI Brazil, to launch an international patent training event addressing the needs of the Community of Portuguese Language Countries. The three-day event covered a broad range of patent-related topics and was attended by more than 130 participants from Angola, Cape Verde, Guinea Bissau, Equatorial Guinea, Mozambique and São Tomé and Príncipe. It drew on synergies with the African Regional Intellectual Property Organization (ARIPO) and Organisation Africaine de la Propriété Intellectuelle (OAPI), of which some of the participants' countries are also members.
The second study resulting from this partnership titled “Quantum technologies and space” has been published on 2 November 2021. This new study addresses space applications of quantum technologies. The first study of this series, exploiting patent filing statistics in the domain of Cosmonautics, was published in July 2021.
The Patent Insight Report “Quantum technologies and space” notes that exploitation of Quantum technologies in the space environment is a very specific use case of the technology but one that is being increasingly explored, as evidenced by several recent satellite missions.
On September 30th, 2021, the Danish High Court (Eastern Division) rendered its decision in a long running patent infringement case. One important element of the case was the question of acquiescence, in particular, whether the patent proprietor is required to act on a possible patent infringement (and commence legal proceedings) when opposition proceedings are pending. Both the Danish Administration of Justice Act (article 345) and the Danish Pa-tent Act (article 53a) specify that the court may suspend a case, if there are other ongoing cases (such as opposition proceedings), which may impact the outcome of the case. The Danish courts have interpreted the provisions such that Danish (main) patent infringements action, as a general rule, will be suspended if opposition proceedings are pending. Thus, a patent proprietor is not able to enforce a patent by way of main proceedings in Danish courts as long as opposition proceedings are pending.
In this particular case before the Danish High Court, the patent proprietor, Sangenic, a company that manufactures diaper pails with fitting diaper cassettes, was granted a European patent, which was published in Denmark in January 2009, which then became the primary point of contention in the dispute between the parties. The defendant (alleged patent infringer), Lamico, filed an opposition against the patent on the grounds of lack of novelty and inventive step. Lengthy proceedings followed first at the EPO Opposition Division and later at the Board of Appeal. The final decision in the opposition was rendered in December 2018, where the patent was upheld.
The Federal Circuit yesterday heard oral arguments in IPR appeals initiated by Moderna Therapeutics. The outcome could either prevent or tee up a battle over the company’s covid-19 vaccine revenues.
On 5 November 2021, the Brazilian Patent and Trademark Office (INPI) reported the end of Phase II of the Patent Prosecution Highway (PPH) programme, which has now reached its limit of 600 applications. As a result, the INPI will not accept new PPH requests for the remainder of 2021. This is good news because it demonstrates the consistent success of Brazil’s involvement in PPH programmes.
Further evidence of this can be found in changes to the application period of Phase II (implemented on 29 December 2020 by Ordinance 404/2020). Phase I of the PPH Programme was already considered a triumph as it had reached its limit of 400 applications in December 2020. At that time, the INPI decided to anticipate the implementation of Phase II, which was originally expected to begin in December 2022, by moving up the launch to 1 January 2021. It was then designed to run until 31 December 2024.
In a notice published in the Federal Register earlier today (86 Fed. Reg. 66192), the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office announced that it was delaying the effective date for assessment of the fee for filing patent applications that are not in the DOCX format. The new fee, which was announced by the Office on August 3, 2020, was set to take effect on January 1, 2022, but will now become effective on January 1, 2023. The fee is set forth in 37 C.F.R. ۤ 1.16(u), which requires an additional charge of $400 for large entities, $200 for small entities, and $100 for micro entities, for any application filed under 35 U.S.C. ۤ 111 for an original patent (except for design, plant, or provisional applications), where the specification, claims, and/or abstract does not conform to the USPTO requirements for submission in DOCX format.
IPR challenges are limited only to obviousness and anticipation arguments, and so a patent cannot be directly challenged via IPR for lack of enablement or written description. However, Section 112(a) issues do arise in situations where the challenged patent purports to claim priority back to a prior filing. The priority claim fails if the earlier filing fails to support the challenged claims, and this permits assertion of intervening prior art.
[...]
Slip Op. Although the ranges were not supported, the court did find sufficient evidence to affirm the PTAB’s determination that the individual point of “about 48.2 wt %” was supported by the original specification: “given that claim 8 does not recite a range, but only a specific amount, which can be derived by selection and addition of the amounts of selected, but identified, components, we accept that there is substantial evidence to support the Board’s decision concerning claim 8.” Without that priority, the claims were clearly invalidated by prior art published between 2009 and 2015.
Zynerba Pharmaceuticals Inc (NASDAQ:ZYNE) Inc reported that it has further expanded its intellectual property (IP) portfolio covering its Zygel CBD skin gel, with the award of an EU patent.
On November 18, 2021, Unified Patents filed a Japanese opposition against JP6875333, owned by Dolby International AB. JP’333 has been designated essential to the HEVC Advance pool and SISVEL’s AV1 pool. It is also related to patents that have been designated in those pools.
In its weekly roundup, IAM (Intellectual Asset Management magazine) noted that "[p]atent suit numbers are falling in Dusseldorf and Mannheim but are on the rise in Munich as the city’s courts develop a strong pro-plaintiff reputation." I'd like to comment on that, also because I reported on the premiere session of the Munich I Regional Court's third patent litigation division (the 44th Civil Chamber under Presiding Judge Dr. Georg Werner) last week. If you wish to skip directly to the part on software patent-eligibility in light of Solas OLED v. Samsung, please click here.
Munich is definitely an attractive venue for patent holders, and that is so for a variety of reasons not least including the one noted by IAM. The Munich court still does throw out or stay cases that don't meet a certain standard, and that's why the first case the 44th Civil Chamber heard appears, for now, unlikely to be the first in which it will grant an injunction. I'll get to the fundamental weakness of the patent-in-suit in that Solas OLED v. Samsung case again in a moment--the headline of this post relates to it.
If we assumed for discussion purposes that better-than-average chances of winning favorable rulings are a major factor in this, then Munich would simply be beating Dusseldorf at its own game. For many years--actually, a couple of decades--it was no other court than the one in Dusseldorf that consistently and shamelessly set a low bar, only to attract as many patent cases as possible to a city that is anything but a major center of technological innovation, as opposed to the Munich area with BMW, Siemens, Linde, and so many others. Comparing Munich to Dusseldorf is like Silicon Valley vs. Chicago at best, Pittsburgh at worst.
By the time I got involved with patent policy (2004, the European legislative process on computer-implemented inventions aka software patents), Dusseldorf already had a reputation for disadvantaging defendants in different ways. I know this from discussions with patent litigators and patent attorneys in the mid-2000s, and I know there was at least one German media report at the time that discussed the issue.
[...]
It's really astounding that whoever examined that patent application at the German Patent & Trademark Office failed to see that there was no such thing as a technical effect. It's about a coding style and mere probabilities of whether programmers will do a better job one way or the other. It's not about a specific process implemented in software and yielding per se technical benefits.
If the mere proposal to break up a complex software development problem into smaller building blocks because they're easier to digest for the human mind and save the effort of reinventing the wheel was patent-eligible without specific execution-time benefits, we'd see a deluge of additional patent infringement cases against the entire technology industry.
On November 8, 2021, Unified Patents added two separate PATROLL contests with an opportunity to collect up to $4,000 in cash for prior art on at least claim 1 of two patents, U.S. Patent 7,827,581 and U.S. Patent 9,344,183, owned by inventor-backed NPE, Be-Labs, Inc. Each patent relates to a wireless multimedia center (WMC) for reception from one or more signal sources and for distribution of segments of signals from signal sources through the wireless multimedia center to a plurality of end units, in which the signals include video signals and broadband data. Both patents have been and are currently being asserted in over 70 district court litigations against companies such as Verizon, Samsung, Technicolor, Cox Communications, Cisco, Fujitsu, Netgear, and others.
On November 22, 2021, the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) instituted trial on all challenged claims of U.S. Patent 7,933,431, owned by Gesture Technology Partners, LLC. The ‘431 patent is generally related to using human motion as an input device for computers and mobile devices and has been asserted against Huawei, Samsung, Apple, Lenovo, and LG.
On November 22, 2021, Unified Patents filed an ex parte reexamination against U.S. Patent 6,832,249 owned and asserted by CommWorks Solutions, LLC, an NPE and subsidiary of IP Investments Group LLC. The '249 patent is generally directed to multi-layered internet communication systems that allow for control over quality of service and priority of information delivery. It is being asserted against Comcast and RCN Telecom and is at issue in a declaratory judgment action brought by Altice USA. It was also previously asserted against Skybeam, Mediacom, AMG Technology Investment Group, Consolidated Communications Holdings, and Cable One, Inc.
On November 18, 2021, Unified filed a petition for inter partes review (IPR) against U.S. Patent 9,678,774, which is owned and has been asserted by Invincible IP LLC, an IP Edge entity. The '774 patent relates to allowing or denying migration of virtual machines based on the geographic location of the target host. It has been asserted against Citrix Systems, Nutanix, Alibaba Cloud US, DigitalOcean, and NetApp in the District of Delaware.
In a unanimous decision – Commissioner of Patents v Aristocrat Technologies Australia Pty Ltd [2021] FCAFC 202 – a Full Bench of three judges (Middleton, Perram and Nicholas JJ) of the Federal Court of Australia (‘Full Court’) has reversed last year’s ruling by Justice Burley that claims directed to a so-called ‘feature game’ implemented on an electronic gaming machine (EGM) constituted a patent-eligible ‘manner of manufacture’ under Australia law. (A ‘feature game’ is a secondary, or bonus, game triggered by the occurrence of a defined event in the ‘base’ game of spinning reels.) As I explained at the time, Justice Burley applied a two step test, asking firstly whether ‘the claimed invention is for a mere scheme or business method of the type that is not the proper subject matter of a grant of letters patent’ and then – if this question is answered in the affirmative – ‘whether the computer-implemented method is one where invention lay in the computerisation of the method’ as opposed to ‘merely plugging an unpatentable scheme into a computer’. He found the claims to be patentable at the first step, because they were directed to ‘a mechanism of a particular construction’, i.e. a gaming machine.
[...]
There are positive and negative aspects to this decision. On the plus side, the approach taken by the majority brings some clarity to the approach to be taken in construing and assessing claims to computer-implemented inventions, which often comprise a physical apparatus defined in terms of (possibly conventional) hardware, configured via software for particular functionality. On the down side, however, the majority also relied upon the existence of ‘an advance in computer technology’ to confer patent-eligibility upon a computer-implemented invention, without providing clear guidance on what, exactly, is covered by this terminology. The decision also perpetuates an uncertainty that exists around the exact role to be played by prior art information in applying the ‘manner of manufacture’ test to assess patent-eligibility.
Counsel at Coty, Starbucks and Otterbox explain how always taking down products with certain characteristics can help them and their vendors catch fakes
Readers may have followed the IPKat reports on the UK DCMS Select Committee Streaming Inquiry [here], which took place in October 2020. After reviewing more than 300 pieces of evidence, the Select Committee published its recommendations in July 2021. The Government response, published in September 2021, acknowledged a concern that the UK regulatory framework has not kept pace with the changes brought about by streaming.
At the same time, one of the DCMS Select Committee members, Kevin Brennan MP, sponsored a Private Members’ Bill, which proposes to introduce legislation giving effect to some of the recommendations made by the Committee, namely equitable remuneration for streaming, contract adjustment, right of revocation and transparency.
Renny Hwang, director of litigation at Google, tells Managing IP about the greatest challenges in Google v Oracle and what he wants from outside counsel
This is the first academic monograph that solely considers the relationship between UK copyright law and historical and contemporary theatre. It focuses on authorship of the copyright in stage plays as dramatic works, texts that can be performed from a script (rather than musical theatre, dance, or performers rights). The book addresses questions of whom is the author and first owner of a dramatic work? Who receives the credit and the licensing rights? In what circumstances can a director or actor be granted joint-authorship with the writer? What happens when a copyright infringement claim is made against the playwright? And who poses moral rights in the work?
The monograph is presented in six chapters. Chapter one, ‘Introduction to Copyright and Authorship on Stage’, sets out the rationale and theoretical approach of the research, highlighting that dramatic works are allographic, meaning that they attain their ideal expression in performance, whereas the printed text is, by contrast, often seen as secondary or not as authoritative as the performed text in action. McDonagh takes his primary inspiration for the theories of authorship and the work from Roland Barthes and Michel Foucault, to outline the multi-faceted, and even poly-vocal, nature of theatrical authorship. This chapter also describes the methodology for the qualitative empirical research that involved 20 interviews conducted during 2011-13 with participants from the theatre community including actors, playwrights, directors, and producers.
The claimants in this case claimed to have suffered US$1.2bn in lost profits from the defendant’s accepted failure to file an appeal in time against a patent revocation. In an interesting judgment dated 29 October, Mr Justice Adam Johnson held that the claimants failed to establish that a duty of care was owed to those entities who suffered the most substantial losses and failed to prove that their lost chance of securing some benefit from the patent, had an appeal been filed, was “real and substantial”. As such, the Judge held the claimants were only entitled to “nominal damages” because of the accepted breach of duty.
This article provides a summary of the case and the decision which highlights the importance of ensuring that ‘all the boxes are ticked’ in relation to causation when pursuing a loss of chance claim.
On this note, Japan – along with Europe and South Korea – seems to be driving the current trend of rising patent filing activity. BASF, a German-based company, and Korea’s LG Chemical currently lead in patent activity outside of Japan. The European Patent Office’s recent report on plastic recycling and bioplastics similarly suggests that patent activity is focused in Europe, as well as the US.
Academics and publishers demand lawmakers take a balanced approach when amending the fair use provision of India’s Copyright Act
Basic due diligence is a must before launching a Christmas campaign, but publicity can sometimes be a factor in these disputes
