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03.23.16

Links 23/3/2016: Red Hat’s Record Results

Posted in News Roundup at 7:20 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNOME bluefish

Contents

GNU/Linux

Free Software/Open Source

  • Why community managers must wade (not dive) into communities

    If you are part of an organization looking to get into the community-support game, you would do well to tread carefully and deliberately. Communities, particularly at the start of your involvement in them, can be delicate and fragile things. Stomping in there with big words and big plans and big brand engagement will cause a lot of damage to the community and its ecosystem, often of the irreparable sort.

  • How our high school replaced IRC with Mattermost

    The Mattermost project was named because the developers wanted to emphasize the importance of communication. And the design provokes a conceptual shift in classroom communications. Unlike email, Mattermost is a convenient virtual meeting room and a central dashboard for our district technology operations. When everyone connects in a transparent conversation stream, collaboration naturally happens in the open. I was incredibly fond of our internal IRC system, but I really love the Mattermost platform. It costs nothing more than a little server space and occasional software update attention. But even better, it serves as the communication hub for our Student Technology Help Desk, and helps our students collaborate during times when they are not together in the same physical space during a given class block.

  • A channel guide to Open Source success

    Much has changed within the storage channel over the past few years. New technologies, especially cloud-computing, have created innovative business models that have transformed not only what channel businesses sell, but the way they sell them too. As a result, many resellers have evolved into service providers in a process that is now fairly well understood.

    However, there is another, lesser-known evolution that is equally important: not only is the channel changing, but so too are customers. This new type of customer is comfortable with cloud technologies and with the increasingly related area of open source operating systems, which they are looking to use in new ways. If channel organisations are to capitalise on these customers then they need to understand how they can add value through open source.

  • Open source software altering telecom operator, vendor space

    The increased focus and adoption of open source software is bolstering telecom operator plans, forcing vendors to rethink strategy

  • Events

    • Event planning tips from the Django Girls Budapest team

      Szilvi Kádár, Daniella Kőrössy, and I are the organizers of Django Girls Budapest, a free workshop that teaches women how to code. We held our first Django Girls workshop in December 2014, and we’re currently planning our fourth event. We’d like to share some bits and pieces of event organizing advice, and we hope you’ll find some useful ideas for your next event.

    • LibrePlanet day two in a nutshell

      We are just forty-eight hours after LibrePlanet 2016 successfully concluded. The second day carried the energy and excitement from Saturday, and attendance remained strong in all sessions.

    • Uganda to host the 7th African Conference on Free and Open Source Software and Digital Commons

      The Government of Uganda through National Information Technology Authority (NITA-U) will host the 7th African Conference on Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) and Digital Commons (IDLELO 7) in August 2016. The conference aims to support uptake of Open Source in Uganda and the region.

      The Ministry of ICT has recently developed a Free Open Source Software (FOSS) Policy to provide guidance on deployment of Open Source Software and the use of Open Standards as a means of accelerating Innovation and local content development.

  • Web Browsers

    • Chrome

      • Google will kill its Chrome app launcher for Windows, Mac, and Linux in July

        Google today announced plans to kill off the Chrome app launcher for Windows, Mac, and Linux in July. The tool, which lets users launch Chrome apps even if the browser is not running, will continue to live on in Chrome OS.

        As you might suspect, the Chrome app launcher was originally ported from Chrome OS. Google first started experimenting with bringing the app launcher to its desktop browser in May 2013. The Chrome app launcher debuted on Windows in July 2013, followed by OS X in December 2013, and finally Linux in July 2014.

  • SaaS/Big Data

    • GoDaddy Offers Amazon-like Cloud Services, Based on OpenStack

      Small business domain host GoDaddy is famous for its racy commercials and its long history of servicing domains, but now it is entering the cloud business and placing its bets on OpenStack. The company has expanded its hosting services to offer Cloud Servers and Bitnami-powered Cloud Applications. The new offerings are designed to help the individual developers, tech entrepreneurs and IT professionals to quickly build, test and scale cloud solutions.

  • Oracle/Java/LibreOffice

  • CMS

  • Pseudo-/Semi-Open Source (Openwashing)

  • BSD

    • FreeNAS 9.10 Open-Source Storage Operating System Adds USB 3.0 & Skylake Support

      Jordan Hubbard from the FreeNAS project, an open-source initiative to create a powerful, free, secure, and reliable NAS (Network-attached storage) operating system based on BSD technologies, announced the release of FreeNAS 9.10.

      FreeNAS 9.10 is the tenth maintenance release in the current stable 9.x series of the project, thus bringing the latest security patches from upstream, support for new devices, as well as several under-the-hood updates. As expected, FreeNAS 9.10 has been rebased on the latest FreeBSD 10.3 RC3 (Release Candidate) release.

  • FSF/FSFE/GNU/SFLC

  • Public Services/Government

    • Polish eGovernment strategy advocates open source

      Poland’s new eGovernment strategy recommends that publicly financed software should use an open architecture, and consider publication under an open source licence. The eGovernment strategy twice emphasises the use of open source, for a new system of public registers and for a eInvoicing system that interoperates with a national document management system.

    • EC and EP use open source for software development

      The European Commission and the European Parliament generally use open source tools and methods for software development, concludes the EU-FOSSA project, following a review of 15 ongoing projects. The institutions’ project management tools make room for agile, collaborative development cycles.

  • Programming

    • Swift programming language update introduces Linux support

      Almost two years after its launch and four months since it was open sourced, Swift 2.2 has been released by Apple. The update is a major one because it now runs on Linux. Officially, Swift runs on Ubuntu 14.04 and Ubuntu 15.10 but it won’t be long until it unofficially arrives on other distros such as Arch and Manjaro via the Arch User Repository (or AUR).

Leftovers

  • Science

    • UK Government Forbids Publicly-Funded Scientists And Academics From Giving Advice It Disagrees With

      That might sound reasonable, especially the last part about not being able to lobby for more funding. It is aimed mainly at organizations that receive government grants, but many academics believe that it is so loosely worded that it will also apply to them, and will prevent them from pushing for new regulations in any circumstances. Even if that is not the UK government’s intention, the mere existence of the policy is bound to have a chilling effect on the academics, since few will want to run the risk of having their grants taken away by inadvertently breaking the new rules.

  • Apple

  • Security

  • Defence/Police/Secrecy/Aggression

    • WATCH: President Obama in Cuba: “I Have Come to Bury the Last Remnant of the Cold War”

      On the final day of his historic trip to Cuba, President Obama addressed the Cuban people. “The United States and Cuba are like two brothers that’ve been estranged for many years,” Obama said. “We both live in a new world, colonized by Europeans. Cuba was in part built by slaves who were brought from Africa … Like the United States, Cuba can trace her heritage to both slaves and slave owners.”

  • Transparency Reporting

  • Environment/Energy/Wildlife

    • Donald Trump bewilderingly denies that climate change poses a serious risk

      Republican presidential candidates haven’t exactly set a high bar for their understanding of climate science during the 2016 race so far. However, front-runner Donald Trump wins the prize for the most confounding denial of global warming expressed by a major party’s presidential candidate to date.

  • Finance

  • Censorship

  • Privacy

    • Silk Road 2.0 Right-Hand Man Pleads Guilty

      The second iteration of the Silk Road drug marketplace was shuttered in November 2014, almost exactly a year after it opened. Now, 17 months later, the right hand man of that website has accepted a plea agreement in a district court in the Western District of Washington.

      Brian Farrell has formally admitted to being “DoctorClu,” a staff member of Silk Road 2.0 who provided customer and technical support, approved vendors, and promoted other employees, according to a court document filed earlier this month.

    • Tor Project says it can quickly catch spying code

      The Tor Project is fortifying its software so that it can quickly detect if its network is tampered with for surveillance purposes, a top developer for the volunteer project wrote on Monday.

      There are worries that Tor could either be technically subverted or subject to court orders, which could force the project to turn over critical information that would undermine its security, similar to the standoff between Apple and the U.S. Department of Justice.

      Tor developers are now designing the system in such a way that many people can verify if code has been changed and “eliminate single points of failure,” wrote Mike Perry, lead developer of the Tor Browser, on Monday.

    • Apple v. FBI: What Just Happened?
    • Icloak Stik

      Anyone who values anonymity can benefit.

    • Tor Project Hardens Privacy Features, Points to Apple vs. the FBI

      There continue to be many people around the globe who want to be able to use the web and messaging systems anonymously, despite the fact that some people want to end Internet anonymity altogether. Typically, the anonymous crowd turns to common tools that can keep their tracks private, and one of the most common tools of all is Tor, an open source tool used all around the world.

      Even as Apple continues to make headlines as it squares off with the FBI over privacy issues, Mike Perry, lead developer of the Tor Browser, wrote in a blog post that Tor developers are hardening the Tor system in such a way that people can verify if code has been changed and “eliminate single points of failure.” “Even if a government or a criminal obtains our cryptographic keys, our distributed network and its users would be able to detect this fact and report it to us as a security issue,” Perry wrote.

    • Idaho mom who sued Obama over illegal surveillance loses at appellate court

      The Idaho mother who sued President Barack Obama over alleged unconstitutional telephone metadata collection has lost again in court. Anna Smith had her initial case dismissed in 2014, and this week her appeal met a similar fate.

      On Tuesday, the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled against Smith, finding that her case was now moot in light of the new changes to the now-expired Section 215 of the Patriot Act.

    • Ninth Circuit Tosses Challenge to NSA Spying

      Anna Smith, a nurse and mother of two, sued President Barack Obama and other high-ranking government officials in June 2013, upon the exposure of a program that collected metadata from every American’s phone records.

    • NSA is not ‘intentionally looking’ for Americans, says agency’s privacy officer [Ed: Rebecca Richards is a liar. NSA hired her to lie to media. Job title: “privacy and civil liberties and privacy”]
    • Before We Even Know The Details, Politicians Rush To Blame Encryption For Brussels Attacks

      You may remember that, right after the Paris attacks late last year, politicians rushed in to demonize encryption as the culprit, and to demand backdooring encryption before the blood was even dry. Of course, it later turned out that there was no evidence that they used encryption at all, but rather it appears that they communicated by unencrypted means. Just yesterday, we noted that the press was still insisting encryption was used, and using the lack of any evidence as evidence for the fact they must have used encryption (hint: that’s not how encryption works…).

    • Appeals court: NSA surveillance case partly moot
    • Appeals court partly dismisses NSA surveillance case as moot

      A three-judge federal appeals panel has partly dismissed an Idaho woman’s lawsuit over the National Security Agency’s bulk collection of phone records as moot.

      Nurse Anna J. Smith sued the government in 2013, arguing that the agency’s collection of call records violates the Fourth Amendment’s prohibition on unreasonable searches and seizures.

    • British Spy Agency GCHQ Moves Fast to Prevent Mass Energy Hack Attack

      The UK intelligence agency GCHQ has stepped in to prevent a massive hack attack on Britain’s energy networks after discovering so-called “smart meters” – designed to replace 53 million gas and electricity meters can be easily hacked.

    • GCHQ steps into protect smart meters against hackers [Ed: still distracting from GCHQ offense]

  • Civil Rights

    • Bernie Sanders Spoke Up for Suffering Palestinians, but Few in Broadcast Media Covered It

      As leading presidential candidates spoke at the Washington gathering of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), promising support and a crackdown on boycotts of Israel, Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders made a dissenting speech in Salt Lake City, where he spoke up for suffering Palestinians. It received little broadcast media attention.

      As Sanders trails Clinton in delegate count, his campaign has effectively been discounted by major media.

    • Clinton Attacks Israeli Boycott Movement in AIPAC Speech
    • My too intimate relations with the TSA: James Bovard

      The Transportation Security Administration finally obeyed a 2011 federal court order March 3 and issued a 157 page Federal Register notice justifying its controversial full-body scanners and other checkpoint procedures. TSA’s notice ignored the fact that the “nudie” scanners are utterly unreliable; TSA failed to detect 95% of weapons and mock bombs that Inspector General testers smuggled past them last year while the agency continues to mislead the public about its heavy-handed treatment of travelers.

      The Federal Register notice is full of soothing pablum about how travelers have no reason to fear the TSA, declaring that “passengers can obtain information before they leave for the airport on what items are prohibited.” But it neglects to mention that TSA can invoke ludicrous pretexts to treat innocent travelers as suspicious terrorist suspects.

      Flying home from Portland, Ore., on Thanksgiving morning, I had a too-close encounter with TSA agents that spurred me to file a Freedom of Information Act request. On March 5, I finally received a bevy of TSA documents and video footage with a grope-by-grope timeline.

  • Internet/Net Neutrality

    • Silicon Valley Rides Obama’s Coattails Into Cuba

      President Barack Obama is in Cuba, and Silicon Valley is tagging along for the ride.

      Executives from several technology companies are traveling with the U.S. president on his goodwill tour or introducing new business initiatives focused on the island—or both. Among the companies joining the Cuba parade this week are Google parent Alphabet Inc., Airbnb Inc., PayPal Holdings Inc., Priceline Group Inc., Stripe Inc., and Xerox Corp.

  • DRM

    • Anti-DRM activists go to W3C meeting to protest Digital Restrictions Management in Web standards

      The protest began outside the W3C office and continued with a march past Google’s Cambridge office, to Microsoft’s office nearby. The companies are both supporters of Encrypted Media Extensions (EME), the proposal to enshrine DRM in Web standards. The protest included free software users and developers, including Richard Stallman and Chris Webber, the maintainer of the GNU MediaGoblin decentralized publishing platform. A small number of protesters split from the group to enter the W3C meeting, then were ejected by police.

      DRM in Web standards would make it cheaper and more politically acceptable to impose restrictions on users, opening the floodgates to a new wave of DRM throughout the Web, with all the vulnerabilities, surveillance and curtailed freedom that DRM entails.

  • Intellectual Monopolies

    • Trademarks

      • Court Dismisses Dumb Trademark Suit Between Dairy And Fishing Tackle Companies

        Part of the fun of covering the sort of silly trademark disputes that we do here at Techdirt is seeing just how far companies, most often large companies, will go in trying to apply protectionist habits where they don’t belong. This typically manifests itself in the key marketplace aspect of trademark law, where the brands in question are to be competing for customers who might become confused for an infringement to have occurred. Too often this aspect of the law appears to go ignored in claims of infringement, or else the concept of competitive marketplaces is stretched to the point of absurdity. As I said, this is often times amusing to us, because we’re strange.

    • Copyrights

      • Man Faces Prison Sentence For Circumventing UK Pirate Site Blockade

        A UK’s Police Intellectual Property Crime Unit has charged a man for operating several proxy sites and services that allowed UK Internet users to bypass local pirate site blockades. In a first of its kind prosecution, the Bakersfield resident is charged with several fraud offenses and one count of converting and/or transferring criminal property.

      • Prenda’s Paul Hansmeier Continues To Win Enemies, Influence Legislators With His ADA Trolling, Hiding Of Assets

        Everyone behind the failed clown school that was Prenda Law deserves what’s happening to Paul Hansmeier. Unfortunately, it appears Hansmeier is taking the most damage from the fallout of Prenda’s disastrous copyright trolling… or at least he’s the one doing most of his suffering in public.

        Of course, it’s his own fault. Rather than get out of the trolling business, Hansmeier doubled down. He swapped porn stars for wheelchairs, pursuing small businesses for Americans with Disabilities Acts violations. Fronting as a public interest, Hansmeier’s “Disabilities Support Alliance” is every bit the serial litigant Prenda was.

03.22.16

Software Patents: Dying, Spreading, or Hardly Surviving?

Posted in America, Europe, Patents at 8:09 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

TTIP, TPP (back door for software patents in Europe), UPC (ditto) and what it all means to software patents in the age of mass invalidations in the US

ESPECIALLY WHEN ONE'S BUSINESS IS PATENT TROLLING

Summary: The arguments over software patents in both sides of the Atlantic ocean, where there is a well-known (if not notorious) one- or two-way flow of laws, usually best suited for billionaires and their companies

SOFTWARE patents are an important topic. There are literally billions of dollars at stake, as the case of Apple against Android/Linux serves to show (usually it's only the lawyers who win irrespective of the outcome). Depending on the law regarding software patents, billions of dollars can be diverted away from developers and fall into the hands of large corporations and their patent lawyers, shareholders, etc. There is therefore a “class war” element to it. As more and more of society goes digital and more aspects or life get digitised, this matter becomes increasingly urgent. Can a non-exact expression of ideas in code (not the same in copyrights) be “owned”? Should it? Is it feasible and enforceable at all?

Europe Has a Battle Between Practicing and Non-Practicing (Lawyers)

“Depending on the law regarding software patents, billions of dollars can be diverted away from developers and fall into the hands of large corporations and their patent lawyers, shareholders, etc.”A new article titled “First Black Woman Ever to Hold a Software Patent” was mentioned by both opponents and proponents of software patents [1, 2] (as expected, the former is a programmer, the latter is a patent lawyer). We very much doubt the claim in this headline is true as there are many black women who work as programmers in the US (at least hundreds if not several thousands) and many companies in the US apply for software patents nowadays. Putting that dubious/questionable claim aside (we doubt they have a complete USPTO database with ethnicity and gender of applicants/grantees in it), one can easily see who’s involved in this battle. The patent lawyer in this case I’m lucky to have a reasonably amicable channel of communications/relations with. He habitually visits the EPO, where even visitors have been subjected to highly intrusive surveillance which almost certainly violates German law. His name is Bastian Best (photo at the top) and he is based in Germany, where the UPC affairs reek a great deal. Mr. Best recently told me about this blog post of his, in which he talks about software patents in Germany (not necessarily in Europe as a whole). To quote Best: “Patent protection in Germany can be obtained either nationally by filing a national German patent application with the German Patent and Trademark Office or by designating Germany in a European patent application and subsequently validating the granted European patent in Germany. This post is restricted to German patent applications that have been filed nationally. The provisions of the EPC and the case law of the EPO concerning software are discussed in other places of this blog.”

Well, it is widely agreed by many that under the provisions of the EPC software patents are simply not allowed, but let’s brush that aside for a moment. Best doesn’t always know best. He is a little biased, like all patent lawyers. It’s hard to betray one’s source of salaries.

US Software Patents Receding Owing to Alice

As longtime readers probably know, a point we repeatedly make here is that the US keeps moving away (or further away) from software patents, so there’s no reason for the EU or Germany (or any other country/commonwealth for that matter) to phase them in. After all, the US is where software patents came from in the first place, having been introduced several decades ago because of of the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (CAFC).

“As more and more of society goes digital and more aspects or life get digitised, this matter becomes increasingly urgent.”Looking at what happens in the US, it’s not looking too good for software patents this week. “Federal Circuit Court of Appeals [CAFC] to Decide The Status of MacroPoint Patent Dispute with Fourkites” says this headline and a patent lawyer says: “This outfit (MacroPoint) thinks its freight tracking software #patents can survive #Alice v. CLS Bank challenge” (we have mentioned MacroPoint’s patent attacks at least twice in the past [1, 2]).

Meanwhile, acknowledges a patent lawyer, “US Pat 7,096,003, S.Ct. Denied Cert; 101/Alice Kill Stands” (so Alice does it again). This is part of a longstanding trend in the US. A patent lawyer, writing at a pro-software patents advocacy site, is trying to dodge the Alice case (and the new rules it led to) in order to patent software anyway. It’s somewhat pathetic to watch. They still refuse to grasp or accept a decision from their highest court. █

Why Bayerischer Rundfunk Videos About the European Patent Office Have Been Removed

Posted in Europe, Patents, Videos at 6:47 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Summary: A short explanation of why Techrights has removed all videos which cover the European Patent Office (EPO)

A copyright infringement letter was sent to me today, claiming that the videos with the subtitles (foreign languages) — videos that help shed light on serious abuses at the EPO — must be removed. I complied within an hour or so, without consulting a copyright professional (such as a lawyer).

These videos are not accessible anywhere else on the Web, these videos are not being used to generate any profit here (we’re a non-profit site), so it remains elusive why they should be forgotten for good.

We already saw that EPO management had strong words about the program and it reacted to these videos quite fiercely more than once (internally, but leaked to us), hinting at action, potentially legal action.

I removed all the videos, which I thought qualified for distribution under Fair Use (for several reasons beyond the aforementioned reasons). This post is an effort to at least clarify what led to this purging action. █

Union Syndicale Federale Slams FFPE-EPO for Helping Abusive EPO Management by Signing a Malicious, Divisive Document

Posted in Europe, Patents at 4:43 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

A so-called ‘union’ which helps union-busting agenda

USF on FFPE-EPO - page 1

USF on FFPE-EPO - page 2

Summary: Union Syndicale Federale (USF) comes out with a rather expressive letter denouncing FFPE-EPO for behaving more like a lapdog of Battistelli, not a representative of EPO staff

SUEPO has just published this letter [PDF], calling it “Position of the USF on the Memorandum of Understanding signed on 2 March 2016 EPO/FFPE” (we mentioned USF before, back when it wrote to Mr. Kongstad).

The letter concerns a topic which we covered here in half a dozen posts earlier this month, namely:

  1. Fallout of the FFPE EPO MoU With Battistelli’s Circle
  2. Further Evidence Suggests and Shows Stronger Evidence That Team Battistelli Uses FFPE-EPO as ‘Yellow Union’ Against SUEPO
  3. In the EPO’s Official Photo Op, “Only One of the Faces is Actually FFPE-EPO”
  4. “FFPE-EPO Was Set up About 9 Years Ago With Management Encouragement”
  5. The EPO’s Media Strategy at Work: Union Feuds and Group Fracturing
  6. Caricature of the Day: Recognising FFPE EPO

“The letter is quite strongly worded given that it comes from supporters of unions.”The Union Syndicale Federale,” wrote SUEPO, “took position in a paper on the Memorandum of Understanding signed on 2 March 2016 between the EPO and the FFPE.” We don’t have it as text yet (we have made a public request), but the images at the top are everything that’s in the PDF. As this one comment put it: “Returning to the original subject of this post, the Union Syndicale Federale (USF) has some harsh (french) words about FFPE signing the MoU with the EPO.”

The letter is quite strongly worded given that it comes from supporters of unions. They don’t deem/consider FFPE-EPO to be a legitimate union. We recently learned (privately) that quite a few FFPE-EPO members left in anger/outrage after the signing of this MoU. Not many were even consulted or involved in the decision-making. █

Design/Software Patents Next on the Supreme Court’s Agenda as Android/Linux Case Escalated to Highest Possible Level

Posted in Apple, Courtroom, Patents, Samsung at 3:44 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Wasting valuable courts’ time on some silly patents that are neither novel nor nontrivial (prior art below)

Gates

Summary: The US Supreme Court (SCOTUS) is going to deal with inane Apple patents that are being used in an effort to make billions of dollars (‘Apple tax’) out of a Linux-based operating system (Android) which competes against Apple’s

TECHRIGHTS has among its primary goals the abolition of software patents and the success of FOSS, which is ascending in Europe these days. This would be beneficial to software developers and probably for the public as a whole. The losers? Probably patent lawyers and their biggest clients, who refer to their patent portfolio as a “war chest”.

“We believe that real change can come from the courts, especially the high ones, which everyone must follow.”We recognise that significant change hardly comes from politicians anymore, as they are nowadays funded (especially in the United States) by the aforementioned “biggest clients”. We believe that real change can come from the courts, especially the high ones, which everyone must follow. Consider the long-awaited SCOTUS appeal regarding an Android case. Can SCOTUS bury so-called ‘design’ patents, which are essentially akin to software patents (usually a GUI with some buttons and unspecified callback functions for behaviour)? After Alice, which changed a lot, we sure hope so.

We have been covering Apple’s attacks on Android/Linux since the very beginning (the Apple vs HTC case). It’s still being dragged on, even several years after the death of Steve Jobs, which says a lot about Apple (they are still an aggressive patenting company). The expected decision on whether it shall be dealt with by SCOTUS was scheduled for Monday, after some people waited in vain on Friday. This has been covered to death in the media by now, so we won’t bore our readers with yet more of the mundane pertinent details (we covered these before anyway, including the laughable patents at hand [1, 2]).

“It’s still being dragged on, even several years after the death of Steve Jobs, which says a lot about Apple (they are still an aggressive patenting company).”To give just a short media survey/roundup, Spicy IP oddly enough chose to focus on another case. It said: “We’ve been given to believe that the Roche vs Cipla appeal came up at the Supreme Court today.”

An article by Joe Mullin, on the other hand, noted: “Are design patents for “carpets and wall-papers and oil-cloths” or smartphones?”

Korean English-speaking media said the obvious, FOSS proponents like SJVN spread the news early on, and maybe hundreds if not thousands of media outlets wrote about this as well. To quote SJVN: “Years in the making, the Supreme Court has agreed to listen to Samsung’s appeal of Apple’s design patent awards. [...] At first it looked like Apple won its design patent wars over Samsung. As time went on, that “victory” started looking more like a defeat as Samsung won its appeals. Now, Apple is in even more trouble. The Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) has elected to hear Samsung’s appeal of the $548-million award lower courts gave Apple.”

“The expected decision on whether it shall be dealt with by SCOTUS was scheduled for Monday, after some people waited in vain on Friday.”To quote Florian Müller, who used to be a FOSS opponent (Microsoft/Horacio Gutierrez paid him for this) but later seemed to have flipped back to pro-FOSS, he wrote: “The Supreme Court of the United States has just published a decision it had already made on Friday (March 18): Samsung’s December 2015 petition for writ of certiorari (request for Supreme Court review) in Apple’s design patents case has been GRANTED with respect to question 2 (damages). As a result, the Apple v. Samsung damages re-retrial scheduled to begin later this month in the Northern District of California is almost certainly going to be postponed indefinitely, as Apple is seeking unapportioned infringer’s profits on all five products still at issue and won’t be entitled to that if Samsung prevails in the top U.S. court.”

“For my take on why design patents were neglected for such a long (and crucial) time,” wrote this person to Müller (whose expertise is this one particular case), linking to the paper about design patents. To quote part of the abstract: “This project, initially published as a two-part series of articles entitled ‘Design and Deviance: Patent as Symbol, Rhetoric as Metric,’ reveals the unrecognized power of gender and sexuality norms in the deep discourse of pivotal American case law on design patents.”

“A re-retrial was scheduled to take place in California in a week,” Müller wrote. “In light of the Supreme Court decision I’m sure Judge Koh will cancel it.”

The reason we quote Müller so extensively about this particular case is that, with respect, he did follow this case for many years. He later added:

  • “Apple’s lawyers filed 10 pages to tell Judge Koh the re-retrial should go ahead despite SCOTUS cert presenting risk of re-re-re-retrial…” (source)
  • “Now, I understand Apple’s lawyers in the sense they want to just dismiss Samsung’s Supreme Court case and say “hey, they ain’t gonna win it”” (source)
  • “But when a case has already had a trial and a retrial, and needs a re-retrial, then the judge won’t take the risk of a re-re-retrial.” (source)
  • “I actually thought it was not a bad thing to have a Korean-American judge in charge to understand cultures, documents etc.” (source)
  • “What I accuse her of is upholding ultraweak patents. Injunctions: granted some, denied some, appeals court was moving target.” (source)

“Watch how some patent lawyers view things. It’s all about money to them (even a crude picture of dollars).”Here is an analysis by a Professor of Law (journalists tend to be clueless about these matters) and Patently-O‘s take from Jason Rantanen and Professor Crouch, who looks for some input through a survey.

Levy from CCIA (lobbying) wrote: “CCIA argued to the Court that this interpretation overreached in an unconstitutional way, and that the correct interpretation could be found by looking at a related statute, the Vessel Hull Design Protection Act.” Rob Lever, a journalist, said that: “The US Supreme Court on Monday opened the door to reducing the hundreds of millions of dollars in damages owed by Samsung to Apple in the blockbuster patent case between the world’s biggest smartphone makers.”

“We look forward to following the case and hopefully we shall see Apple walking away with nothing.”Watch how some patent lawyers view things. It’s all about money to them (even a crude picture of dollars). To quote a part of it: “It is penny-wise and pound-foolish to scrimp on “preparation and prosecution” of patents—which if the invention is any good, will be infringed and attacked—and then to spend hundreds of millions on patent infringement and validity and damages litigation and appeals.”

We look forward to following the case and hopefully we shall see Apple walking away with nothing. As usual, only the lawyers are guaranteed to win. █

The European Parliament Warmed up to Free/Open Source Software and the Media Missed the Story

Posted in Europe, Free/Libre Software, Patents, RAND at 2:48 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Article by a reader of ours, who prefers to remain anonymous

Summary: The European Union Parliament has recommended Free and Open Source Software for several goals

A January 2016 resolution by the European Union Parliament, “European Parliament resolution of 19 January 2016 on Towards a Digital Single Market Act (2015/2147(INI))“, has points relevant to the adoption and promotion of Free and Open Source Software (FOSS). Specifically, points #89, #110, and #125 mention FOSS by name. The first two mention it in the context of security and interoperability, respectively. The third, #125, calls for a general increase in its use. Here they are quoted below with emphasis in yellow added.

89. Considers that software providers should better promote the security advantages of open source software and security-related software upgrades to users; calls on the Commission to explore an EU-wide coordinated vulnerability disclosure programme, including the repair of known software vulnerabilities, as a remedy against the abuse of software vulnerabilities and security and personal data breaches;

…

110. Urges the Commission and the Council to increase the share of free and open source software and its reuse in and between public administrations as a solution to increase interoperability;

…

125. Calls on the Commission and Member States to renew their commitment to the EU 2020 strategy’s research and innovation targets as building blocks of a competitive Digital Single Market, economic growth and job creation, with a comprehensive approach to Open Science, Open innovation, Open data and knowledge transfer; considers that this should include a revised legal framework for text and data mining for scientific research purposes, the increased use of free and open source software, particularly in educational establishments and public administrations, and easier access for SMEs and start-ups to Horizon 2020 funding adapted to the short innovation cycles of the ICT sector; stresses in this respect the importance of all relevant initiatives, from public-private partnerships and innovation clusters to European technology and science parks, notably in less industrialised European regions, and accelerator programmes for start-ups and joint technology platforms, as well as the ability to license standard-essential patents effectively, within the restraints of EU competition law, under FRAND licensing terms, in order to preserve R&D and standardisation incentives and foster innovation;

It is interesting to note that #125 calls for the increased use of Free and Open Source Software to facilitate science, innovation, and knowledge transfer. The mention of “Open data and knowledge transfer” can be interpreted to mean Open Access, related to FOSS but in publishing. In regards to FOSS itself, a stumbling block is the explicit mention of FRAND-licensing for patents as included in standards, as it has traditionally been used as a means to block use of FOSS. But given the context of promoting FOSS elsewhere in the document and, especially in the same paragraph, that would include royalty-free licensing of standards as a pre-requisite for anything to be considered even remotely reasonable.

Another resolution is from this last autumn and is entitled, “Follow-up to the European Parliament resolution of 12 March 2014 on the electronic mass surveillance of EU citizens”

Item #47 states even more specifically that open source must be a mandatory criterion in procurement.

47. Welcomes the steps taken so far to strengthen Parliament’s IT security, as outlined in the action plan on EP ICT Security prepared by DG ITEC; asks for these efforts to be continued and the recommendations made in the resolution fully and swiftly carried out; calls for fresh thinking and, if necessary, legislative change in the field of procurement to enhance the IT security of the EU institutions; calls for the systematic replacement of proprietary software by auditable and verifiable open-source software in all the EU institutions, for the introduction of a mandatory ‘open-source’ selection criterion in all future ICT procurement procedures, and for efficient availability of encryption tools;

Going back even further, to 2001, there is a resolution warning of actions needed to be taken to protect e-mail privacy.

European Parliament resolution on the existence of a global system for the interception of private and commercial communications (ECHELON interception system) (2001/2098(INI))

As the Snowden revelations have shown, these measures have proven to be sound and to work in regards to protecting the content of messages. Indeed, in that resolution, it is most clearly stated that only FOSS can fulfil security requirements at all.

29. Urges the Commission and Member States to devise appropriate measures to promote, develop and manufacture European encryption technology and software and above all to support projects aimed at developing user-friendly open-source encryption software;

30. Calls on the Commission and Member States to promote software projects whose source text is made public (open-source software), as this is the only way of guaranteeing that no backdoors are built into programmes;

31. Calls on the Commission to lay down a standard for the level of security of e-mail software packages, placing those packages whose source code has not been made public in the “least reliable” category;

32. Calls on the European institutions and the public administrations of the Member States systematically to encrypt e-mails, so that ultimately encryption becomes the norm;

33. Calls on the Community institutions and the public administrations of the Member States to provide training for their staff and make their staff familiar with new encryption technologies and techniques by means of the necessary practical training and courses;

In summary, the European Union Parliament has recommended Free and Open Source Software for several goals. These goals are privacy, security, innovation, and interoperability. █

More Vomit-Inducing Publicity Stunts From Benoît Battistelli and the EPO Management

Posted in Deception, Europe, Marketing, Patents at 2:30 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Vomit on people
Original article

Summary: The European Patent Office, which is in a state of crisis, latches onto anything conceivably useful (even terror attacks) in an effort to somehow repair its image

THE EPO is in a state of crisis. The Board explicitly says so and a new staff survey makes this abundantly clear. The EPO’s management now exploits another crisis in order to distract/divert away from its own. To twist the words from the article above, EPO staff ought to vomit on all these Battistellites who suddenly say they are their friends.

Milking Islamic Terrorism

“To twist the words from the article above, EPO staff ought to vomit on all these Battistellites who suddenly say they are their friends.”Based on this month’s BR TV program (which drives the EPO's management up the wall), the EPO’s notorious Stasi-esque unit [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7] leads to deaths, but nevertheless, Benoît Battistelli, like a classic Republican politician — not a professional and charismatic manager — is quick to take advantage of disasters. Battistelli already paints himself as fighting Nazis and criminals, not people who speak truth or work within a staff union (perfectly legitimate and commendable activity).

Benoît Battistelli is exploiting deaths again (warning: this is a link to epo.org, so consider using the Twitter link instead, even as a referrer/middleman). We surely saw that coming. This seems like a Battistelli tradition as he also did this after the terror attacked in Paris. Watch who signs these messages. This is Battistelli’s own mastermind. He blurs the gaps between politics and (what was supposed to be) a public service.

“Battistelli already paints himself as fighting Nazis and criminals, not people who speak truth or work within a staff union (perfectly legitimate and commendable activity).”Fear not Battistelli, ladies and gentleman, he’s there to protect you from terrorists (with his unnecessary luxury which is several bodyguards). Or something like that…

Calling Whistleblowers Nazis

If there is militant/militaristic atmosphere at the EPO, it’s because Battistelli and his clique hire people from the Army, even the Belgian Army. They are then attacking critics of the Battistellites (Željko Topić for instance), calling them “Nazis” and all sorts of other smears. Someone in IP Kat was asking yesterday about the judge whom Battistelli had been illegally/indefinitely suspending (keeping on 'house ban' for well over a year) and then personally attacking (character assassination) for allegedly saying the truth about Željko Topić. To quote: “Has anyone heard of the disciplinary procedure against the suspended DG3 member?

“I’ve not seen any decision of the AdminCouncil how to continue, or to stop the disciplinary procedure.

“If the AdminCouncil wants the President’s decisions to be perceived as fair, how about the disciplinary procedure falling under their authority?”

“Watch this disturbing reversal of victimhood. Compare that to the WIPO scandal (whistleblowers also).”As a little/short recap, the Administrative Council was stupid enough to accept Battistelli’s request to demand from the Board of Appeals that their judge gets dismissed (after all the character assassination against this judge), whereupon the Administrative Council got denied. What a huge embarrassment that was — and what that surely sheds negative light on Mr. Kongstad. Later on the Administrative Council learned its lesson and no longer even made such a request to the Board of Appeals. There was a rift between the Administrative Council and the Battistellites, at long last.

At that stage, we suppose, the Administrative Council (and Kongstad personally) realised that they were just being the Battistellites’ pawns and the judge is likely innocent (recent reports suggest he’s now represented by the same lawyer as SUEPO’s). Maybe it’s Željko Topić, part of Team Battistelli, whom they should be investigating/pressuring, not the judge who allegedly spoke about Topić (allegedly to the Administrative Council too).

Watch this disturbing reversal of victimhood. Compare that to the WIPO scandal (whistleblowers also).

Spreading More Lies

The EPO just can’t help it. Lies, lies, and more lies come out of the EPO’s Twitter account, e.g. this one (among many more), ignoring a lot of criticisms which we wrote about before [1, 2, 3]. Considering the aforementioned crisis, imagine what will happen in a year or two when pending patents will be too scarce to demonstrate any growth at all (no matter how one cooks the books). Will EPO patents be worth much at all at that stage? Quality is said to have significantly stagnated/declined, which isn’t surprising (overstressed examiners would be unable to properly research the input and give constructive output).

Another Wasteful Propaganda Event

Silly, cheesy, wasteful (at the expense of public resources) self-glorification events are nothing new under the Battistelli regime. The EPO is already preparing another misleading event, just like the one it had last year, covered by EPO-sponsored self-censoring "media partners".

“The EPO is already preparing another misleading event, just like the one it had last year, covered by EPO-sponsored self-censoring “media partners”.”We don’t know who will be the inventor of the year, but it’s possible that in 2016 EPO will be the scandal of the year (in Europe or internationally), following the footsteps of past victors such as BP or Volkswagen.

Lithuanian Spin

Several days ago we wrote about the bizarre deal with Lithuania (especially bizarre given the timing). We have found only one puff piece that paid any attention to it. It came from WIPR, but we cannot help wondering if it really came after some prodding/pressure from the EPO’s PR team. There is a lot of PR money in circulation right now. █

Horacio Gutierrez Ha Dejado Microsoft, Pero la Extortion de Patentes Contra Linux Continua, Tambien por sus Satelites

Posted in GNU/Linux, Microsoft, Patents at 11:59 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

English/original

Publicado en GNU/Linux, Microsoft, Patents at 7:30 am por el Dr. Roy Schestowitz

El legado de Ballmer y Gutierrez permanece en el Microsoft de Nadella

Horacio Gutierrez

Foto contribuida por un lector en 2008

Sumario: Reaccioness a la salida de Horacio Gutierrez y un recordatorio que Microsoft ha implementado no cambio de su estrategia mientras continua presionándo a Linux (con patentes de software) no sólo directamente

Como notamos en nuestro previo post, más escritores ahora están de acuerdo con nosotros que la agresión de patentes de Microsoft contra Linux no es aceptable y probablemente sirve como prueba que Microsoft todavía odia a Linux (es un cancer, según la vaca loca Ballmer). Despues de casi una semana se hizo aparente que el arquitecto de la agresión de patentes de Microsoft se alejaba de Redmond. Mike Masnik retweetió Re/codeó y escribió: “Este tipo una vez paso toda una hora en un cuarto de conferencias dándome una lección en cuan *asombrosa* es el licensiamiento de patentes…”

Esa fue la primera vez que notamos un reportaje acerca de ello. Vino de un ayayero de Microsoft (quie era uno de las más entusiástas y ruídosas porristas por la extorsión de patentes incluso allá en sus era de Novell en la CNET). Yes, Ina Fried cubrió y su empleador escribió: “ Spotify sifonea al abogado superior Horacio Gutiérrez quien dejó a Microsoft como consejero general” (son grandes noticias y parece como Re/code puead haber roto la historia).

“En base a los informes que hemos estado leyendo, no sabemos si esto Mafioso de Microsoft ha decidido dejar su trabajo o Microsoft simplemente le dijo que se fuera (estar asociado con extorsión de patentes/CHANTAJE es enormemente perjudicial para la imagen pública de Microsoft).”Como lo mencionamos hace sólo dos dias de antemano (la traducción al Español fue publicada la siguiente tarde) sólo podemos preguntarnos si algunos de nuestros recíentes artículos sirvió para convencerlo de cambiar su trabajo o incluso que Microsoft ha repensado su estrategia de patentes. El mes pasado conseguimos cerca de 30 millones de hits a nivel cache, así que seguramente mucha gente leyo acerca de la agresión de patentes de Microsoft (escribímos muchísimos artículos acerca de ello, yendo a semanas anterióres) y algunos escribieron sus propios artículos (parcialmente inspirados en lo que habiamos publicado).

En base a los informes que hemos estado leyendo, no sabemos si esto Mafioso de Microsoft ha decidido dejar su trabajo o Microsoft simplemente le dijo que se fuera (estar asociado con extorsión de patentes/CHANTAJE es enormemente perjudicial para la imagen pública de Microsoft)

Gavin Clarke (históricamente un apológista de Microsoft) apenas se ha dado cuenta – retasado por días! – que este mafioso dejó Microsoft. Después lo llamó “El Inquisidor de Linux” en el titular (palabras fuertes!) Y dijo:

Fabricantes de aparatos con Linux y Android pueden respirar un poquito más fácil: su IP bête noir ha dejado Microsoft.

El abogado dirigiendo la INQUISICIÓN de propiedad intelectual de Microsoft, Horacio Gutierrez, ha dejado Microsoft después de 18 años. Él saltó al servicio de streaming Spotify.

Gutierrez se unió a Microsoft en 1998 pero dirigió la compañíá innovación y propiedad intelectual LCA grupo entre 2006 y 2014.

Estuvo en cargo del equipo legal de Microsoft en patentes globales, derechos de autor, marcas, licensias, estandares y obediencia regulatoria.

Alguién nos dijo en los comentarios la semana pasada: ¨¿Así que Spotify empezará a enjuiciar por patentes de software ahora que Gutierrez se ha mudado allí? Son malas noticias para Spotify recibir ¨antiguos¨ Microsofteros.¨

“Gutierrez fue un Mafioso, y como algunos en la Mafia él se movía en un traje.”¿Se convertirán básicamente en parásitas entidades no-prácticantes? Ellos están en su mayoría en el área de derechos de autor, no en patentes. De hecho, hace días que firmaron un acuerdo de derechos de autor de alto nivel (más allá del alcance de este artículo).

Para su crédito, IAM fue relativamente rápido para reportar la partida de Gutierrez. Para citar: ¨El presente consejero general de Microsoft y antiguo lider de IP Horacio Gutierrez, quien fue uno de los mayores jugadores en la lucrativa multibillonaria por año campaña de licensing Android, esta dejando su cargo para tomar la correspondiente posición en el servicio musical Spotify. Gutierrez se convirtió en consejero general y vicepresidente de Microsoft despues de una el pasado Noviembre cuando vio a su predecesor Brad Smith promovido a presidente de la compañíá y presidente oficial legal. Antes que ello – en Julio del 2014 – Gutierrez fue nombrado vicepresidente corporativo y comisario consejero general en el equipo legal de Microsoft división de productos y servicios.¨

Gutierrez fue un Mafioso, y como algunos en la Mafia él se movía en un traje.

“Una manera de detener la extorsión de patentes de Microsoft es que sea económicamente menos viable (económicamente insostenible) al convencer a los expertos en tecnología (los que eligen qué comprar para sus empresas) para dejar los contratos de Microsoft, boicoteando efectivamente la empresa al mismo tiempo que hace claro que la causa es su agresión de patentes.”Algunos puedan ser convencidos a creer que Microsoft pronto dejara su agresión de patentes, pero no hay indicación de ello. Más aún, Microsoft todavía ataca a Linux a traves de proxies de patentes, incluyendo sus compadres los trolles de patentes. IAM nos recuerdó a RPX el otro dia, entre otros trolls (IAM no los llama ¨trolls¨, simplemente NPEs y SEPs, quiens son los que financian a IAM). Varias otras divisiones de Microsoft son ambas SEPs y NPEs. La compañia actua un poqito mejor que un troll de patentes, con una más amplia piscina de patentes. Uniloc esta ahora coqueteando con la Microsoft conectada Acacia. Para citar a IAM: “A pesar de los embates que la mayoría de las empresas públicas (IP) las PIPCOs han resistido en los mercados de capitales en los últimos años, la oferta de Uniloc de $189 millones para Acacia, fue anunciado el día de hoy, parece demasiado baja. Hace algunos años Acacia era una empresa multimillonaria con un modelo de licencia que atraía inversores a ella, y que produjo un flujo constante de ingresos “.

Para que Microsoft demuestre que esta preparado a entrar a una pacífica co-existencia con Linux necesitará no sólo detener su agresión de patentes pero también detener sus proxies como Intellectual Ventures de hacer lo mismo. Una manera de detener la extorsión de patentes de Microsoft es que sea económicamente menos viable (económicamente insostenible) al convencer a los expertos en tecnología (los que eligen qué comprar para sus empresas) para dejar los contratos de Microsoft, boicoteando efectivamente la empresa al mismo tiempo que hace claro que la causa es su agresión de patentes. █

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