Once upon a time, I was doing on-site support for a hardware install at a hotel a few years ago. The remote tech’s remote desktop software didn’t want to play with my Linux laptop, so he couldn’t get into the switch he needed to configure, to make the install work. I asked if it had an SSH port he could use, were he were in the room with me. Of course it did, but that didn’t do him much good. I ran a reverse SSH tunnel out to my public server, and pointed it at the switch on the local side. I convinced him to SSH to my server on the given port, and he was magically connected to his switch. He was literally in awe of that trick, and demanded to know how it could be done. SSH is magical, but tunneling traffic over SSH is straight-up wizardry. [Shawn Powers] agrees, and decided to help the rest of us understand the process.
There are two basic ways to launch a tunnel, the first being a local tunnel, that listens on the local machine, and forwards it to the remote machine. On the other hand, a remote tunnel will listen on the remote machine, and deliver the traffic to the local machine. The real fun begins when you have multiple SSH sessions, and connect one tunnel to another, to route something just where you need it. For extra credit, check out the hidden SSH command line, by pressing Enter, then tilde and the C key, each one at a time. Also for extra credit, check out the rest of [Shawn]’s Linux content, to learn some extra Linux goodness.
I hope that you are doing well? Mainly Ubuntu 22.04 LTS has been released this week. I plan to make several tutorials about it in the future.
We installed the AlmaLinux workstation and would love to share with you all what we found out. Previously this was known as “Lenix” and is a continuation of a world-class OS for servers, CentOS which was made by CloudLinux Inc and promised to be free always and have compatibility with RHEL and CentOS. Our AlmaLinux vs Ubuntu guide goes over 15 differences so you can make an informed decision to choose one!
This week, Linux Out Loud chats about what applications we use to make our Linux machine sing a beautiful digital song.
Welcome to episode 10 of Linux Out Loud. We fired up our mics, connected those headphones as we searched the community for themes to expound upon. We kept the banter friendly, the conversation somewhat on topic, and had fun doing it.
Welcome to episode 09 of Linux Out Loud. We fired up our mics, connected those headphones as we searched the community for themes to expound upon. We kept the banter friendly, the conversation somewhat on topic, and had fun doing it.
First up in the news, Raspberry Pi OS has a 64-bit version, Nvidia has a release, System76 releases their scheduler, the This Week in Gnome blog, Slackware and Peppermint OS have new releases and Debian uses Arch.
In security, PolicyKit vulnerability lies dormant for a decade, GNU coreutils are being rewritten in Rust, Ubuntu improves low memory handling andSurfshark VPN jumps the shark.
Then in our Wanderings, Moss strikes a chord, Norbert further bodges his system, Bill gets more air time, Leo goes on an XL MX adventure, Joe runs for board and Nishant is distro hopping.
This week’s episode of Destination Linux, we’re celebrating 5 year anniversary of TWIL by discussing some hand picked hot news topics this quarter in Linux or open-source. If you’ve been wanting to know what TWIL would be like with all 3 hosts…this is your week. Then we’re going to talk about an opportunity to build your career in Linux and Open Source. Plus we’ve also got our famous tips, tricks and software picks. All of this and so much more this week on Destination Linux. So whether you’re brand new to Linux and open source or a guru of sudo. This is the podcast for you.
Fairly slow and calm week - which makes me just suspect that the other shoe will drop at some point.
But maybe things are just going really well this release. It's bound to happen _occasionally_, after all.
It's not only a fairly small set of commits, the diffstat is pretty small and flat too. The biggest single patch is literally killing off a zombie file that had already been deleted - well, renamed, really - once, but it didn't know to stay dead, and was resurrected by a merge mistake.
The changes are sprinkled all over, they just aren't all that big: arch updates (sound being the bulk of it, but "bulk" really is fairly misleading), some driver updates, a couple of filesystem fixes, memory management, networking, and some tooling (mainly a couple of selftests).
Scroll through the shortlog below for an overview of the changes.
Linus
In this guide I detail how to install Mozilla Firefox as a .deb package on Ubuntu 22.04 LTS and not as a Snap app.
Ubuntu’s latest version includes Firefox as a Snap app by default. This Snap package is the only version of Firefox included ‘out of the box’. If you run apt install firefox on Ubuntu 22.04 it won’t install a .deb version as before, but instead fetch a transitional package that installs the Firefox Snap.
Which isn’t ideal if you don’t want to use the Firefox Snap package.
Do you want to create a dual boot with Windows 11 and Ubuntu 22.04 Jammy JellyFish? Then here is the tutorial to install Ubuntu 22.04 alongside Windows 11.
Linux, like other advanced operating systems, supports communication over the network. In Linux all settings are stored in accessible files. In this way, certain files can be edited, and necessary settings can be made easily. You can easily manage the commands used for network and DNS settings from the command screen.
In this article you will find information about the most used basic network commands in Linux and how to edit DNS settings.
Do you have Windows 10 installed but would like to switch to Linux in the long term? Then this tutorial will help you to install Ubuntu 22.04 Linux alongside Windows 10 in dual boot environment.
netstat stands for network statistics is a network analytics tools for Unix like system. It allows administrators to get a complete overview of the system network statistics including network connections, network interface stats, masquerade connections, open ports, and so on.
In this video, we are looking at how to install Moshi Moshi Rewritten on Debian 11.
Today we are looking at how to install CLion 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.
Oracle VM VirtualBox is an open-source, cross-platform virtualization software that let you run multiple guest operating systems on your present operating system (called guest OS).
VirtualBox is an easy-to-use software, you need to do a few steps to get a running guest operating system.
This article will show how to install VirtualBox on Debian. There are two methods to install VirtualBox on Debian.
Text processing is of great importance for a computer user, as the computer can perform tedious tasks that a human can’t even think of trying.
Using text processing tools enables the user to search for a specific pattern match, replace matches with other text of the user’s choice, invoke an action upon the presence of a certain condition, or even do more complex tasks.
This article explains the differences between the most three well-known text processing tools in Linux awk, sed and grep.
Ordered from the most rich and complex tool (awk), to the simplest (grep), but before delving into the body of the article, we have to know a little about regex.
Sway & i3 are great window managers but it's also a manual tiler and after coming back from AwesomeWM is really hard to get into but luckily there's a solution a simple script called autotiling
In this tutorial, you will learn how to configure Site-to-Site IPSec VPN on pfSense and Libreswan. IPSec (Internet Protocol Security) is a secured network protocol commonly used on VPNs to create a secured and encrypted communication tunnel between the communicating endpoints through data packet authentication and encryption.
Both pfSense and Libreswan can be configured to establish a site to site IPSec VPN tunnel to enable remote systems to communicate securely. They can be integrated with other commercial tools like Cisco ASA/Fortinet devices to setup secured IPSec VPN tunnel between communicating sites.
For an easy way to upgrade Ubuntu 20.04 to Ubuntu 22.04, follow through this guide. Well, Ubuntu 22.04, code-named Jammy Jellyfish is now available for testing with official version being likely to be released on April 2020, based on the Ubuntu release cycles trend.
In this tutorial, you will learn how to install and configure Libreswan VPN client on Ubuntu/Debian Systems. We are using Ubuntu 20.04 and Debian 11 systems as our Libreswan IPSec roadwarrior VPN clients. Road warriors are traveling users with mobile clients with a dynamically assigned IP address, such as laptops. These are authenticated using certificates.
Welcome to our today’s guide on how to setup IPSec VPN server with Libreswan on Rocky Linux. Libreswan is a free implementation of IKE/IPsec for Linux. IPsec is the Internet Protocol Security which uses strong cryptography to provide both authentication and encryption services and allow you to build secure tunnels through untrusted networks. Everything passing through the untrusted network is encrypted by the ipsec gateway machine and decrypted by the gateway at the other end of the tunnel. The resulting tunnel is a virtual private network or VPN.
IKE manages the authentication between two communicating end points. It also enables endpoints to negotiate on algorithms to use to setup an IPsec tunnel.
In this tutorial, you will learn how to setup IPSec Site-to-Site VPN Tunnel on pfSense. Internet Protocol Security (IPsec) is a secure network protocol suite that authenticates and encrypts the packets of data to provide secure encrypted communication between two computers over an Internet Protocol network. It is commonly used in virtual private networks (VPNs).
It is recommended to have a static IP address on a linux system as it will be persistent across the reboot. In Ubuntu 22.04 LTS desktop, networking is controlled and managed by Network Manager.
In this guide, we will learn how to configure static ip address in Ubuntu 22.04 LTS (Jammy Jellyfish).
As Ubuntu users, we may want to know if we are the only ones using our network, especially the WLAN, or if there are other unwanted users exploiting our network bandwidth. This capability is also useful when we want to be sure that no hacker is accessing our system by connecting to our network.
This tutorial will explain how you can create USB bootable installer to install Ubuntu operating system version 22.04 and later to computers. This works for all computer users who use Windows, MacOS and GNU/Linux. We offer various options here so you can pick one you like the most between using Rufus, Etcher and Ubuntu Startup Disk Creator programs. We hope this helps you a lot. Happy computing!
Ubuntu 22.04 has better support for the low latency PipeWire multimedia framework. Here’s how to setup it for PulseAudio, ALSA, JACK and Bluetooth output.
Kubeadm is a tool built to provide best-practice “fast paths” for creating Kubernetes clusters. It performs the actions necessary to get a minimum viable, secure cluster up and running in a user friendly way. Kubeadm’s scope is limited to the local node filesystem and the Kubernetes API, and it is intended to be a composable building block of higher level tools.
Learn the steps to make a bootable USB drive of Ubuntu 22.04 LTS Jammy JellyFish on Windows 10 or 11 using a popular free tool called Rufus.
Days are gone when we require bootable CD/DVD for installing operating systems, now users have moved to USB. Hence, there are few free software to easily create a bootable USB drive using the ISO or IMG file of an OS. This will let us install any popular OS on a PC or laptop. However, those who do not want to install OS on a PC can go for Virtual machines without creating a bootable USB drive.
Apart from the small size benefit, the USB drive can also rewrite multiple times or use for creating multiple bootable operating systems.
Red Hat's announcement of a "change in focus" of CentOS might have sent some users scrambling for alternatives, but some have decided to stick with CentOS as it transitions to CentOS Stream. If you're one of them, you should find the installation process familiar.
Here's how you can install CentOS Stream on your PC or laptop.
Released into early access on April 21 (on Steam and GOG), Terraformers is a game about growing and developing a network of cities on Mars, with the eventual goal of (what else) terraforming it.
Gameplay takes place over a number of turns (each representing one Martian year), and involves both the surface of Mars and a zoomed-in look at the individual cities you place, which have spots to place up to fifteen buildings. Areas on the planet are represented by a web of connected nodes, which you explore throughout the game. This allows you to find resources, either one-time boosts, or sources that can be mined to provide a continuous production. Each turn, you get to pick from a number of projects which you can spend your acquired resources on. These projects can be buildings, which can be built either in cities or on the Martian surface depending on the building, or space projects which require trade routes to provide the necessary resources but can provide some powerful rewards in turn. Trade routes can also be used to trade with Earth, allowing you to export some resource you might have too much of at the moment for something you critically need.
Here's a quick tip for you on the Steam Deck: how to find out where all that drive space is going with a sweet program called Filelight. This will work great on Linux desktops too, since it's just a KDE application.
Available as a Flatpak package, you can easily install it from Flathub. On the Steam Deck (or a Linux desktop running Plasma), you can load up the Discover store and look for Filelight. You can also use Flatseal to allow access to other parts of your system, like an SD Card.
The NuTyX team is happy to announce the new version of NuTyX 22.04.6 and cards 2.5.0.
New toolchain gcc 11.3.0, glibc 2.35 and binutils 2.38.
The xorg-server graphics server version 21.1.3, the Mesa 3D library in 22.0.2, Gtk4 4.6.2 and Qt 6.3.0.
The python interpreters are en 3.10.4 et 2.7.18.
The XFCE desktop environment is updated to version 4.16.0.
The MATE desktop environment is a 1.26.0 version .
The GNOME desktop environment is also updated to version 42.0
The KDE desktop environment is available in Plasma 5.24.4, Framework 5.93.0 and applications in 22.04.0.
Available browsers are: Firefox 99.0.1, Chromium 100.0.4896.127, Epiphany 42.2, etc
Many desktop applications have been updated as well like Telegram-desktop 3.7.1, Thunderbird 91.8.1, Scribus 1.5.8, Libreoffice 7.3.2.2, Gimp 2.10.30, etc.
Core NuTyX ships with Long Term Support (LTS) kernels: 4.9.311, 4.14.276, 4.19.239, 5.4.190 et 5.10.112 and 5.15.35 and the latest stable version 5.17.4 .
Crow Translate is a simple and lightweight translator written in C++ / Qt that allows you to translate and speak text using Google, Yandex, Bing, LibreTranslate and Lingva translate API.
We tested the Linux Mint upgrade tool (mintupgrade GUI) with an actual upgrade. Here's what we found.
For Formula 1 passionate like me, having a way to get the data that TV shows with drivers comparison would be fantastic in order to create my personal comparison between cars and driver’s performances. the Python FastF1 library with my Raspberry PI makes this possible with a very few intuitive command lines
In this tutorial, I’m going to show you how to install and use FastF1 with Rasberry PI computer boards.
Fast-F1 gives you access to F1 lap timing, car telemetry and position, tyre data, weather data, the event schedule and session results. It uses Pandas, Numpy and Matplotlib, making it easy to create customized, interactive charts and enabling accurate data analysis and visualization.
Ubuntu is reviving an in-person event at which developers and distro enthusiasts can get together to plan, hack on, and find ways to help improve the project.
The new “Ubuntu Summit” will be held this autumn in an as-yet unannounced location.
Canonical is heavily investing in its community outreach of late, with a swathe of new hires and a “reboot” of its online engagement initiatives.
Now things are stepping up a gear.
The new Ubuntu Summit sounds like it will channel the vibe of the original Ubuntu Developer Summit, the twice-yearly fixture that was, to be totally frickin’ partisan, was totally frickin’ awesome. This time there’s a broader remit, i.e. a get-together that’s not just for developers (hence being billed as the ‘Ubuntu Summit’).
We are pleased to announce the release of the client side library libgnunetchat 0.1.0. This library brings an abstraction layer using the client API from different GNUnet services to provide the functionality of a typical messenger application. The goal is to make developing such applications easier and independent of the GUI toolkit. So people can develop different interfaces being compatible with eachother despite visual differences, a few missing features or differences in overall design. The library relies on multiple services from GNUnet to implement its features. More information about that can be found here .
On behalf of the Rakudo development team, I’m very happy to announce the April 2022 release of Rakudo #155. Rakudo is an implementation of the Raku language.
I’ve been toying around with Rust during Easter. It has been a while since I last had a go at it for UEFI binaries. Turns out that the uefi-rs crate has gotten tons of love in terms of usability, stability and built-in protocol interfaces.
Now, no_std is useful for a myriad of use cases like embedded platforms, it can even work in environments with no memory allocation. You can find an example UEFI app here, it is nothing fancy, crawls the directory tree of the main EFI System Partition.
For the purpose of my pet project I wanted to add a Boot Loader Spec parser to my project that I could also link in a library with std:: as well as no_std. This introduces the requirement that your no_std environment needs to be hooked up with an allocator, at which point you can consume the alloc crate.
Otherwise you can only use the data types in libcore (as well as crates that only depend on libcore), which is a small subset of std stuff. uefi-rs sets this up for you but this documentation might come handy.
Bharat Financial Inclusion Limited (BFIL), a subsidiary of IndusInd Bank recently admitted to disbursing 84,000 loans without getting customers' consent recorded owing to a ‘technical glitch’. Though the bank took corrective steps upon the receipt of the complaints, there is very little regulatory oversight and acknowledgement of these instances in general.
[...]
India has gone through rapid digital transformation in the past decade, led by technological advancements in financial services. Digital penetration in India has been facilitated by mobiles, digital identity and internet connectivity. The JanDhan-Aadhaar-Mobile (JAM) trinity is often said to be a key enabler for financial inclusion, giving millions of Indians access to banking services. While these advancements might seemingly lower the cost for market players (payments banks, small finance banks, microfinance institutions, fintech companies etc.) in delivery of financial services, particularly digital credit, the consumer harms arising out of digitised financial services get overshadowed/ underreported, unless they are too large to miss.
One such instance was reported in February, wherein a private company named Dhani Loans and Services Limited, the lending arm of the Indiabulls Group, disbursed loans to several people who availed it using someone else’s name and PAN details, without their knowledge or consent. The impact of such ghost scams is not only limited to loss of personal data and mental harassment, but also has financial ramifications such as drops in credit scores. Such instances raise questions about digital lending practices, in particular the consent design mechanisms.
There must be some link between Usenet and social media. Even in the Wikipedia article on [Social media], the Usenet is mentioned in the "Early computing" paragraph. There aren't direct connections between them, but for common sense, they must have something in common. Social media for sure could be one of the causes of a decrease in Usenet popularity.
Wikipedia's definition of social media noted key concepts like: so-called "web 2.0" applications; with user-generated content; with users profiles; with ability to create social networks. For "web 2.0" applications: tagging; dynamic content; mass participation (from "people who tended to be hackers and computer hobbyists to a wider variety of users").
[...]
So we could fall in love with "web 2.0" abilities from the technical side, and that could lead to left more complex opinions in the flavor of ad-hoc flying thoughts. It could be at the beginning also motivated by the technical side of "web 2.0" applications, where short content fits better their limited functionality. After some time we are stuck with that stopgap, because - if something works then why overpay?
However, not all is lost. I was surprised by [Statistics about a group] on the aioe.org news server. There are still many active groups! There is also [Big-8 Management Board] which start working. The `comp.infosystems.gemini` group was created, and the `comp.software.shareware.announce` was removed. Now the Usenet needs active users only.
There is this popular CSS framework that I wanna complain about (not attack or contact them, of course, just kvetch about it here) but I simultaneously feel like I don’t wanna, because they don’t break any web standards and there are no accessibility issues (unlike SPA frameworks). It’s a little bandwidth-wasteful but I don’t really care, that’s fine.
The framework I have in mind is only bad (just a really bad and self-foot-shootingly way to make web) for the devs that use it, and if they can stomach it, it doesn’t hurt anyone else. I mean, if you use it you are fucking up royal and there are probably a lot of things wrong with your entire pipeline and it’s a sign that something has gone seriously wrong with how we teach web and make tools for web, but, those things only hurt yourself.
So I would only be tearing down someone else’s work (the creators of this particular framework) from my own armchair, which I feel is only legit when there’s a standards and/or accessibility and/or political issue. My instincts are so often to tear down bad things when it’s so much better to build up good things.
Internet shutdowns are becoming the government's routine response to communal clashes and violence. State governments and union territories have been issuing internet suspension orders in derogation of the letter and spirit of the Anuradha Bhasin directions and the applicable law.
Suspension of the internet, even temporarily, adversely impacts the fundamental rights of the people of India. Therefore, an internet suspension order must follow due process of law. IFF will write to Chief Secretaries and the Home departments of all the States and Union Territories demanding compliance with the Supreme Court directions and the law applicable to internet suspensions.
The two companies are changing the playing field for counterfeiters by announcing the world’s first free, real-time counterfeit marketplace report & deterrence solution.
Marketplace counterfeiting continues to increase exponentially as analysts estimate 25% of all marketplace listings are fake. Unauthorized products hurt legitimate sales and can create life threatening safety issues. Some estimate fake products damage the world economy by over $1 trillion dollars. Even with these significant dangers, legitimate Brands struggle to understand the size of their problem and once they do, they continue to spend significant time and money to stop counterfeiters which often changes nothing in the end. However, now there is a better option at a zero-cost for Brands that truly changes the game.
Unified is pleased to announce PATROLL crowdsourcing contest winner, Preeti Dua, who was awarded a cash prize of $2,000 for her prior art submission for U.S. Patent 9,245,295. The '295 patent generally relates to a call-to-action lockout on a mobile device coupled to a data network. The invention has been developed primarily for controlling responses while experiencing media content on mobile electronic devices.
By now there are at least five Avanci licensors (out of 49) asserting 4G standard-essential patents against Ford Motor Company. In addition to actions brought by Sisvel (Delaware and Munich), IP Bridge (Munich), Longhorn IP subsidiary L2 (Delaware), and Sol IP (E.D. Texas), I've found out from the Munich I Regional Court today that a patent licensing firm named MiiCS is suing Ford there (case no. 7 O 14689/21; Presiding Judge: Dr. Matthias Zigann). A MiiCS v. Ford trial had been scheduled for April 7, but has been pushed back to February 2, 2023, which I attribute to the fact that the patent-in-suit (EP2667676 on a "base station device, mobile station device, and uplink synchronization requesting method") has come under significant invalidation pressure as a result of OPPO's defense against Sharp, which previously owned the patent and obtained and enforced an injunction against Daimler over it. OPPO and Sharp have since settled, but other defendants may still benefit from the headway OPPO made. The postponement presumably has to do with a parallel validity proceeding that's taking time.
I must say that I'm increasingly skeptical of how Ford seeks to defend itself against those patent infringement lawsuits. Not only does its Qualcomm-related patent exhaustion defense fail a plausibility test, but I've also learned from a couple of SEP holders that Ford has tried to pressure certain automotive suppliers among Avanci's licensors to use their influence to get the aforementioned five (if not more) complainants to withdraw their lawsuits. Bullying of that kind is not the behavior of a willing licensee--and appears unlikely to solve the problem.
While another standard-essential patent (SEP) dispute is just escalating from 5 to 21 patents-in-suit (Sol IP v. Ford Motor Company, see my previous post), three SEP infringement actions brought by IPCom in the Eastern District of Texas settled out earlier this month. The defendants were AT&T, Verizon, and Deutsche Telekom-owned Sprint. Their network infrastructure suppliers (Nokia in Sprint's case) were also involved.
Case management matters. While procedures may be a dry subject, they do have serious business implications. I've learned about developments in Munich that will not only save court resources but also make standard-essential patent (SEP) holders money.
The world's leading forum for patentees seeking injunctions--the Munich I Regional Court--has for more than a decade prided itself on its "Münchner Verfahren" ("Munich Procedure"), which would be called "Patent Local Rules" in U.S. federal district court (here's an example from the Northern District of California). Those rules are characterized by two hearings (the second one of which is a trial typically followed by a decision), page limits, and other rules that enable an efficient and correct adjudication of patent infringement actions.
Two years ago, the court also promulgated--just before a Nokia v. Daimler hearing, and after many months of deliberations and discussions with stakeholders (many of you had the chance to hear from Presiding Judge Dr. Matthias Zigann at conferences, even at an ETSI meeting)--its Standard-Essential Patent Local Rules on top of said Patent Local Rules. The court's emphasis on a licensee's genuine willingness to take a license was--by extension--affirmed that same year by the Federal Court of Justice in Sisvel v. Haier I. Later that year, Sisvel v. Haier II, while having the same case-specific outcome (in favor of plaintiff Sisvel), provided further clarification and, as part of that effort, promoted a certain degree of symmetry.
When the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB or “Board”) first decided the IPR that led to the Fintiv rule, it justified its decision on the basis of “balanc[ing] considerations such as system efficiency, fairness, and patent quality.” But that rationale doesn’t hold up to the facts.
Previously, I explained how data suggests that the PTAB’s use of Fintiv denials is leaving in force patents that the PTAB thinks are likely to be proven invalid. But beyond that major failing, the evidence shows that the original rationales don’t hold up. Unified Patents studied 918 institution decisions issued in 2021; of those, around 45% (420) included some discussion of Fintiv.
On April 4, 2022, the USPTO issued a final rejection of all challenged claims at issue of U.S. Patent 9,390,435, owned by Aeritas LLC, an NPE. This rejection comes less than a year after Unified filed the request for ex parte reexamination in May 2021. The ‘435 patent relates to receiving notifications related to products or services of interest, at a mobile device based on the location of the mobile device and notification criteria, and then receiving additional information about the products or services or a purchase confirmation, at the mobile device in response to an input. The patent has been asserted in 21 litigations, including current assertions against Finnair Oyi and WestJet Airlines.
Under the Community Design Regulation (EC 6/2002), an owner of a Community design right has several options when bringing an infringement case. It can, inter alia, bring an infringement claim in the courts of the Member State where the defendant is domiciled or, as Article 82(5) of the Regulation provides, the Member State where the infringement took place (or is threatening to take place).
With regard to applicable law, the Regulation can become quite a puzzle. As a primary rule, article 88(1) stipulates that the Community design courts shall apply the provisions of the Regulation on the matters covered thereby. The usual main claims, such as a prohibition order to stop the infringement, are covered by the Regulation. Other supplementary claims, such as handing over information on the chain of trade, are not specifically covered by the Regulation. Accordingly, article 88(2) provides that to these claims, the Community design courts should apply their national law including their private international law.
However, if supplementary claims have the nature of ‘sanctions’, article 89(1)(d) of the Regulation states that a claimant can seek ‘other sanctions’ as provided for by the law of the Member State where the infringement took place (or is threatening to take place).
The Board upheld a refusal to register the proposed mark EVERYBODY VS RACISM for tote bags and various clothing items, and for the services of "promoting public interest and awareness of the need for racial reconciliation and encouraging people to know their neighbor and then affect change in their own sphere of influence," finding that the phrase fails to function as a mark under Sections 1, 2, 3, and 45 of the Trademark Act. The Board ruled that the proposed mark "would be perceived by consumers as a widely used social and political message and therefore merely informational in nature, as opposed to a source indicator of Applicant's goods and services." In re GO & Associates, LLC, Serial No. 88944728 (April 20, 2022) [not precedential] (Opinion by Judge Cheryl S. Goodman).
[...]
Applicant's use of the "TM" symbol adjacent the phrase was of no significance, and as to it policing and search engine optimization efforts, the Board noted that "[a]nalytic results as to the popularity of a particular search term is not proof of consumer perception that EVERYBODY VS RACISM functions as a trademark or service mark," and policing efforts "have little bearing upon the analysis of the understanding by the public of the term sought to be registered."
Finally, applicant asserted that the failure-to-function ground for refusal must be “strictly construed” and should no longer be a complete bar to registration, just as the Office no longer refuses scandalous and immoral marks. The Board responded that "[t]o the extent Applicant is making a constitutional argument, we have no authority to consider it."
