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12.26.15

Witnessing the Patent Mess That the USPTO Created

Posted in America, Courtroom, Europe, Patents at 8:00 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Where patent trolls with software patents are the stars of the show…

Erich Spangenberg

Summary: A look at some recent court actions in the US, motivated by software patent grants

The power outage at the USPTO aside (“It will be interesting indeed to find out how this quite extraordinary state of affairs plays out after the holiday weekend,” IP Kat wrote), there were some other problems at the USPTO earlier this holiday (or just before it began). It’s something for the EPO to learn from (EPO staff as a whole, not management).

A ‘superstar’ patent troll, Spangenberg (shown above with troll cross-pollination), which we wrote about before [1, 2, 3], is said to have just attacked a company which produces Free software. It happened just shortly prior to an IPO and watch how many other companies were sued. To quote this report: “In the realm of patent assertion, there is one man who stands head and shoulders above the rest: Erich Spangenberg. Of the more than 1,600 companies he has sued for patent infringement in the past decade, the most recent is Atlassian.

“The likes of Spangenberg, wielding software patents, attack thousands of practicing companies.”“Not that you’d know it was Spangenberg doing the suing; the action comes from Spangenberg-controlled Pherah LLC, a company that doesn’t even have a website.”

Also published just days ago was this article titled “Patent Trolls Attacked My Business”. The likes of Spangenberg, wielding software patents, attack thousands of practicing companies.

“My small business was the victim of abusive patent litigation,” said the author of of the latter article, “and I want to share my story to promote awareness of this growing problem. Capstone Photography provides photography services at events across the country, like marathons, triathlons and 5K road races. We have been in business since 2005. Naturally, we have a website where athletes can find and view their photos. It’s not rocket science. The basic premise of our site relies on a simple lookup function that any high school programmer could describe and execute.”

“Some of these patents were granted by the EPO and later invalidated (after Apple had sued Samsung and others).”Not only software companies are affected. Watch how Apple, a branding giant, attacked Samsung (mostly a hardware company) just before Christmas. As Florian Müller put it: “While Apple is usually the net payer when it comes to patents (most recently vis-à-vis Ericsson), it has received $548 million from Samsung this month, though a reimbursement may be demanded later. Samsung might base a future reimbursement claim on its design patent-related appeal to the Supreme Court (if that one suceeds, which would not be a huge surprise) and/or on the fact that the United States Patent and Trademark Office has held the ’915 pinch-to-zoom API-related patent invalid (a decision Apple is appealing to the Federal Circuit) and/or the increasingly likely invalidation of the D’677 iPhone design patent.”

Some of these patents were granted by the EPO and later invalidated (after Apple had sued Samsung and others). What does that tell us about the direction the EPO is heading in? Europe already attracts some patent trolls with software patents. █

Insensitivity at the EPO’s Management – Part III: Death in the Family

Posted in Europe, Patents at 7:39 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

EPO Till Death Do Us Part?

GraveSummary: Revisiting the bizarre attitude of the EPO towards the dead and the denial of basic rights to the dead (or surviving spouses)

Several of our past articles about EPO suicides, which are estimated to have grown tenfold, alluded to pensions and compensation to the spouses, as these crucial funds are said to have been withheld. What we know about it has been mostly based on hearsay or newspapers mentioning rumours, but nonetheless, there may be an element of truth to these rumours.

We were once again reminded of these rumours because of articles which talk about the ‘unwanted’ units being quietly dissolved (redundancies, layoffs), contrary to what seems to be imposed by the EPC. Having read a lot of articles and some legal documents we are starting to better understand what motivated at least some of these suicides. One comment from a couple of days ago said (context being the boards): “The same way the investigations into the suicides were stopped: by not paying the pensions. That is, even though illegal, a mighty good weapon in view of the fact that it takes 14 years to gain your case.”

To quote an older remark, “the widow and her children would be left without money and without social security for 8 years.

“This wife was desperate by the dead of her husband. She couldn´t face additional money problems and she had to cooperate with the EPO.”

Don’t worry about the jobs of EPO management, where there are third world countries' standards for appointing or sacking people. Regarding Battistelli et al one commenter joked: “Jobs for the in-laws, second cousins, and hairdressers of his garde rapprochée” (man of the house).

“one of those EPO examiners” wrote:

If I’d change [job] now, my worries would be to find an employer willing to go confrontational if necessary.

The pensions can be sorted later, in my personal case.

In the case of the withheld allowances you mentioned (widowers, half-orphaned, …) it is a different story, but these would not be hampered by a cooling-off period anyway, as the former EPO employee, for whom this clause would have applied, did not take up a new job…

But in my new job, the national rules would apply, and then the administration of the EPO could only try to enforce the non-consented amendment of my working contract through national courts, which take such rulings only in extreme rare cases.

And in most member states, such non-consented amendments limiting personal freedom are not taken favourably by the courts. In Germany and the Netherlands, every single employee would have to agree to such an amendment if her/his working contract. Agreement of the staff representation would not be sufficient, mere consultation even less.

The EPO’s management has made it exceedingly easy to sack staff (even easier with the passage of some recent rules to help combat unions) and incredibly hard to resign without severe consequences. It’s not only hard to find a job once resigning (because of the so-called cooling-off period) but also increasingly hard to speak out. Some people apparently just choose to kill themselves. But even then they’re denied their basic rights (as do their spouses and/or children). How long can the European Union tolerate what the EPO is doing? █

Monday Talk at Chaos Computer Club (Germany) Makes the Case Against Software Patents

Posted in Europe, Patents at 7:06 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Chaos Computer ClubSummary: A lecture on the 28th of this month at Chaos Computer Club (CCC) to cover software and business method patents

AT its very core (since inception), Techrights is a site against software patents. There is a big patents lobby which extends from the US into Brussels and in recent days we saw that boosters of software patents are now trying to frame computer programs as machines (“as such”) in order to bypass Alice.

Those among our readers (some of whom asked me to present at CCC, which is far away), especially those who live in Germany, might wish to attend this talk on Monday. Iga Bałos, Józef Halbersztadt and Benjamin Henrion (known online as “zoobab”) will present. It is very much relevant to the EPO because, as we have shown here for years, there have been growing efforts to patent software in Europe. Lobbyists of that agenda often were front groups of large US corporations, which really speaks volumes.

In the field of software, not patents drive innovation but a free (liberal) exchange of code (and ideas) drives innovation. The same applies to some other fields and to quote this very recent article: “Does scientific research drive innovation? Not very often, argues Matt Ridley: Technological evolution has a momentum of its own, and it has little to do with the abstractions of the lab” (or paperwork pertaining to algorithms). █

Benoît Battistelli Fails to Get Majority of 38 Member States to Crush the Boards, Which Are Already Being Crushed Anyway (23 Vacant Judge Positions)

Posted in Europe, Patents at 6:23 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Benoît Battistelli is cooking up his own Watergate scandal

Nixon

Summary: A translation of the recent JUVE article, which explains just to what degree Battistelli’s EPO effectively shuts down boards, with or without consent from national delegates

SEVERAL days ago we foresaw someone coming forth with a translation of an article written in German about the EPO/Administrative Council standoff (it’s no longer as amicable as before).

“JUVE is a publication specialising in information on and for corporate law specialists,” told us one reader, offering a JUVE article translation. “The expression “Schöne Bescherung” in the title,” this reader said, is actually a pun which “could also be taken to figuratively mean “A fine mess” instead of “Merry Christmas”.

“A bit of the AC communiqué is cited in the Article in German translation. I translated it back in English, without attempting to see how it read like originally. I didn’t bother looking up the original.”

Here is the translation with bits highlighted:

23.12.2015

Merry Christmas: EPO President loses the support of the Administrative Council for his court reform

The reform which is supposed to provide more independence for the Boards of Appeal of the European Patent Office (EPO) is further delayed. According to several converging reports close to the Munich patent authority, the Administrative Council is pursuing a new reform proposition since last week. The office’s supervisory body would have also refused to approve the original reform plan put forward by Benoît Battistelli. The Administrative Council had been considered until now as the power base of the controversial EPO President.

Benoît Battistelli

“The Administrative Council had been considered until now as the power base of the controversial EPO President.”Battistelli proposed back in March a stricter separation of the Boards of Appeal from the Office. The Boards of Appeal, which is the name by which the authority’s own courts are known, review oppositions against the grant of European patents by the office. The courts are however subordinated to the Office. The reform became necessary as critics became louder regarding the close integration of the Boards in the office’s structure, and the resulting doubts cast on their independence.

Battistelli wants a structural separation between the Boards of Appeal and the Office by making these directly subordinated to the Administrative Council. They are to have their own president, who would take over essential administrative functions and disciplinary powers over the staff. He would also report to a newly created Board of Appeal Committee (BOAC). The president would however retain his influence over the court’s budget.

“The necessary majority of the 38 member states of the European Patent Organisation was not reached, according to circles close to the Boards of Appeal.”Battistelli was apparently unable to find acceptance for his proposal after one year of consultations and a user poll. JUVE learned that a vote took place at the ultimate 2015 meeting of the Administrative Council. The necessary majority of the 38 member states of the European Patent Organisation was not reached, according to circles close to the Boards of Appeal. The EPO did not reply to requests for confirmation made by JUVE. A press release of the Administrative Council published yesterday stated however: “The Council conducted an exchange of opinions on the planned structural reform of the EPO Boards of Appeals. It mandated its Praesidium with the drafting of guidelines, from which the President of the Office will derive concrete proposals. If possible, these will be submitted as a resolution for adoption at the March 2016 meeting.” The Administrative Council thus took away the control over the reform process away from Battistelli’s hands. JUVE learned from reliable sources that resistance in the Administrative Council was particularly strong from the German, Dutch and Swiss delegations.

“JUVE learned from reliable sources that resistance in the Administrative Council was particularly strong from the German, Dutch and Swiss delegations.”According to information available to JUVE, a new reform proposal was made, which aims for an even more independence. JUVE is however not in possession of the exact features of this proposal. Several reform attempts, including some put forward by the the Boards of Appeal themselves, strived in the past for a complete separation of the court using the German Federal Patents Court as a model.

Increasing pressure for the appointment of judges

There are also apparently developments in the question of the reappointment of the Members of the Boards of Appeal, as EPO-judges are officially called. The Administrative Council announced the reappointment of a member of the Enlarged Board of Appeal as well as of several members of Boards of Appeal. They are appointed for five year period. The process had come to a standstill in recent times. There are 23 vacant judge positions in the Boards, including 3 chairmen. The EPO President has the right to propose candidates for the filling of vacant posts. Critics reproached him repeatedly of retarding new appointments in order to trim the Boards of Appeal for more efficiency.

“There are 23 vacant judge positions in the Boards, including 3 chairmen.”According to information available to JUVE, the Administrative Council called on Battistelli to expedite new appointments. The EPO President declared in an interview with the US-magazine “Managing IP” his readiness to address this issue in the beginning of 2016. He added however that he saw now urgent necessity to make new appointments to Judge positions.

The question of the future location of the Boards of Appeal now appears to have become secondary. Berlin, Vienna and a different building in Munich had been discussed up to now. But in any case, a transfer to Vienna is considered by legal experts to be incompatible with the European Patent Convention, which limits seat locations for the EPO to Munich and The Hague. Vienna hosts only an information service of the Office. Berlin is considered as rather unpractical. Battistelli declared to “Managing IP” that it is more important for the Boards of Appeal to be located in premises other that the EPO building than in a different city in order for them to achieve the perception of their independence.

(Christina Schulze, Mathieu Klos)

It doesn’t seem to matter to Battistelli what the Administrative Council says; by failing to fill vacant positions he already does whatever he wants. No wonder one board judge dared to open his mouth and is alleged to have communicated with delegates (that’s his real ‘crime’). No wonder some among the delegates apparently chose to leak to us, seeing how Battistelli bullies delegates too.

Some believe that Battistelli isn’t interested in the boards’ independence; he’s just not interested in the boards at all and some say it’s because of the Unitary Patent. Incidentally, see this recent paper (letter) titled “Unitary Patent and the Pending Spanish Cases (C‑146/13; C-147/13): An Open Letter to the Judges of the European Union”. To quote the abstract (with our emphasis in bold): “This is a letter which is addressed to the judges of the European Union regarding the pending cases of [Spain v. Parliament and Council] that examine the validity of EU Regulation No 1257/2012 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 17 December 2012 implementing enhanced cooperation in the area of the creation of unitary patent protection and that of EU Regulation No 1260/2012 of 17 December 2012 implementing enhanced cooperation in the area of the creation of unitary patent protection with regard to the applicable translation arrangements. It analyses the opinion of Attorney General Bot and, in particular, it focuses on i) the absence of judicial review of the European Patent Office, around which the EU Regulations revolve; ii) the underlying aim for uniform patent law, as envisaged in Article 118 TFEU, on which the EU Regulations rest; iii) the autonomy and uniformity of European Union law, as affected by the European Patent Office and the European Unified Patent Court; iv) the human rights implications involved.”

Is there someone left who can actually overthrow the tyrant, Benoît Battistelli, along with the Battistelli agenda? He clearly believes that he is above the law and it’s not hard to who he is working for. █

Insensitivity at the EPO’s Management – Part II: Patent Office as a Cancer

Posted in Europe, Patents at 5:47 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Cancer letter

Summary: The EPO’s stance on cancer recalled, in light of an altercation from 2013 (patent application no. EP03017743.0, appeal number T0598/12-3.3.02)

THE management of the EPO has resorted to what we consider both unethical and potentially illegal tactics. Union busting has taken such a high priority that every trick out of the book has been harnessed, with help from external (contracted) firms.

During Christmas we were contacted by a person who is able to show us just how jaw-dropping the EPO’s management can be with regards (or disregard) to cancer. As a preparatory item, consider the following letter, which is nearly a couple of years old (emphasis with large fonts is ours):

Brussels, March 12th, 2014

M. Benoît Battistelli
President – European Patent Office
Erhardtstr. 27
80469 Munich
Germany

Dear M. Battistelli,

My name is Francesco De Lorenzo and I am the President of the European Cancer Patient Coalition – ECPC, which represents 345 cancer patient organizations in 47 countries.

ECPC regularly engages with its members, EU institutions and international health and cancer care stakeholders to protect and enhance cancer patients’ rights in Europe, making sure that the voice of European citizens, affected by cancer, is heard.

That is why we are addressing you to express our concerns regarding the recent decision from the European Patent Office (EPO), Patent application no. EP03017743.0, appeal number T0598/12-3.3.02 on whether a clinical trial invalidates the request for a new drug patent.

“That is why we are addressing you to express our concerns regarding the recent decision from the European Patent Office (EPO), Patent application no. EP03017743.0, appeal number T0598/12-3.3.02 on whether a clinical trial invalidates the request for a new drug patent.”We believe that EPO’s position on the matter should take in due consideration the effects it will have on the future treatment of cancer patients and their ability to dispose of new and innovative drugs. We are concerned, in fact, that EPO’s current interpretation of the matter may make clinical trials more difficult to carry out and hence undermine critical innovation in medicine.

Clinical trials are research studies conducted on patients to evaluate the safety and efficacy of medicines intended to improve their health and provide the necessary scientific data and information to develop new medicines. ECPC believes that patent policy should encourage innovation, particularly innovation arising from clinical trials. A clinical trial cannot and should not be construed as a patent defeating disclosure. Should this happen, there will eventually be serious implications for the development of life-saving medicines.

“We are concerned, in fact, that EPO’s current interpretation of the matter may make clinical trials more difficult to carry out and hence undermine critical innovation in medicine.”Patients are not only a fundamental partner in the development of new drugs, but they are also those who will finally benefit from the innovation process. In particular, we strongly believe that it is natural that a patient may discuss his/her participation or clinical experience with their physician and family members. It is clear that patients participating in clinical trials should not be considered as members of the public, but rather key collaborators and important and voluntary participants of the trial. However, given their particular situation and knowledge level, patients cannot be compared either to other clinical trials actors, such as researchers. Hence patients cannot share the same confidentiality responsibility as researchers: this would, in fact, represent an unfair burden over the patients’ shoulders, which does not match patients’ level of biomedical and scientific understanding of clinical trials nor the reason for which they participate in them.

“ECPC believes that patent policy should encourage innovation, particularly innovation arising from clinical trials. A clinical trial cannot and should not be construed as a patent defeating disclosure.”Aside from the pure legal perspective, it is to be expected that EPO decision on the 2013 case mentioned before, if implemented, will lead to reduced transparency and/or delay of implementation of new clinical trials, which are both to the detriment of patients’ interests. Reducing transparency will threaten the access to investigational drugs that clinical trials provide for patients. This access is of critical importance for cancer patients, particularly for those whose only treatment option may be a clinical trial.

Alternatively, delaying clinical trials until patent applications are filed, will add undue delay to the very time consuming process of developing a new medicine that could improve patients’ lives. Such patent policy also excludes any innovation that arises during a clinical trial.

“Aside from the pure legal perspective, it is to be expected that EPO decision on the 2013 case mentioned before, if implemented, will lead to reduced transparency and/or delay of implementation of new clinical trials, which are both to the detriment of patients’ interests.”In conclusion, we strongly believe that the invention or findings related to a clinical trial should not be considered as “made available to the public” only because patients participate actively to the aforementioned trial. The patients’ unique status, in between collaborators and beneficiaries, makes them a key and vulnerable stakeholder, whose necessities are to be protected. Therefore, we would be glad to engage with EPO and all other relevant stakeholders in order to re-discuss the legal status and responsibilities of patients enrolled in clinical trials.

ECPC also believes that research should be encouraged and that public policy should remove barriers to the conduct of clinical trials, while keeping very high security standards and ensuring ethical conduct.

We hope that you will re-examine the decision in question for the benefit of patients. We remain at your disposal to further discuss the issue.

Sincerely,

Prof. F. De Lorenzo

To see how this relates to the series as a whole stay tuned for future parts. It is clear that patent scope has gone awry at the EPO, for the sake of protectionism, greed, and profit. Remember this when the EPO make claims on “productivity” (however misleading these claims can be) and ponder what this really translates into. █

12.25.15

Links 25/12/2015: SolydXK Linux Christmas Release, Wine 1.9

Posted in News Roundup at 5:25 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNOME bluefish

Contents

GNU/Linux

Free Software/Open Source

  • 49 Open Source Office Tools

    The good thing about open source office tools: you can use them to save major cost in office productivity. As you’ll see on the list below, some of these free office tools replace highly expensive commercial software. In some cases, a business could equip itself for thousands of dollars less.

    In many ways, the following list of open source office tools shows just how far open source has progressed in the last several years. And, always, if you have recommendations to add to this list, use the Comments section below. Happy downloading!

  • 5 things you should know about the plan to open source artificial intelligence

    Arguably, the open source movement — the idea that a group of technologists freely contributing their own work and commenting on the work of others, can create a final product that is comparable with anything that a commercial enterprise might create — has been one of the great innovation catalysts of the technology industry.

  • Web Browsers

    • Mozilla

      • Mozilla 2016 Outlook: Promising Despite Funding, Competitive Woes

        For Mozilla, 2015 has been a year of large challenges, with a shift in funding sources and increasing competitive pressures across the desktop and mobile markets. The biggest challenges for Mozilla, however, are likely yet to come in 2016.

      • Exclusive: Mozilla working on a tablet a stickTV, an intelligent keyboard and a router

        We mentioned earlier that Mozilla’s Firefox os isn’t dead. Mozilla has some great plans for firefox os. These internal documents obtained by Hypertext shows the future of Mozilla Firefox preparing detailed OS beyond smartphones and include Panasonic TVs & these documents detail the new plans of Mozilla.

      • Adding Community-Driven Wayland Support to Servo

        It’s been some time since the last Servo article on the OSG blog, but this has no relation to the speed at which the browser engine’s development has been progressing.

        In the last post, the Offscreen Rendering (OSR) integration status was explored, culminating in both some code snippets as well as videos of an embedded browser application. That post can be considered the foundation for the recently-tweeted screenshot of Servo running with Wayland support.

      • The next 12 months will change Firefox’s add-on landscape fundamentally

        A lot is going on at Mozilla, makers of the popular Firefox web browser. In the next 12 months, the organization plans to make fundamental changes to the Firefox web browser which affect core features of the browser including its add-on ecosystem.

      • Divergent News on FirefoxOS

        I said good-bye to my FirefoxOS phone because of Mozilla’s decision to stop the distribution of the devices.

      • Open letter to Mozilla: Bring back Persona

        It was on the news this mroing, Mozilla will stop developing FirefoxOS phones, and the top Hacker News comment really resonated with me. Sure, IoT is the future, and it would be great if we had more nifty stuff there (shameless IoT privacy plug), but these headlines make the bad taste that I’ve had in my mouth ever since Mozilla shuttered Persona stronger, and I can’t stay silent any more.

      • Temporary add-on loading coming to Firefox

        Andy McKay, Engineering Manager at Mozilla, announced yesterday on the official add-ons blog that Mozilla would implement temporary add-on loading in its Firefox web browser.

  • CMS

  • BSD

    • A BSD Wish List for 2016

      First things first: I know that the wide number of variants in the BSD family are primarily aimed at servers. That said, it’s clearly understandable that with the exception of PC-BSD and BSD variants like GhostBSD, desktop/laptop users are not the primary focus in the BSD constellation. I get that, and regardless I am still using it for about 80 percent of my overall computing needs, and still using it on a daily basis on my go-to daily laptop.

    • FreeBSD and Linux servers

      Linux server distributions get compared all the time. And in the end, the discussion typically ends up around CentOS (from RHEL) and Ubuntu (from Debian). Why is this? When Rackspace discusses Linux server options, many more distributions are mentioned: Gentoo, Arch, Fedora, etc. Let’s focus on Gentoo and Arch.

    • The Most Popular BSD Stories Of 2015

      While we primarily focus on Linux operating system news and releases, I do enjoy watching the *BSD space and covering their major events. This year has saw some great updates for DragonFlyBSD, FreeBSD, and friends. Here’s a look at the most popular BSD news on Phoronix for 2015.

    • Problems with Systemd and Why I like BSD Init by Randy Westlund

      For my part, I’m not a fan of systemd but I also don’t think it’s the end of the world. I watched a great interview with Lennart on the Linux Action Showabout why he implemented it, and he had some good reasons. To write a daemon for Linux, you need to maintain a different init script for each distro because they all put things in different places. And sysVinit isn’t the best with dependencies. Developing things for the Linux desktop is not as easy as it could be, due in large part to the fragmentation.

  • FSF/FSFE/GNU/SFLC

    • Intel PKU Instruction Support Lands In GCC

      Just a few days ago I was writing about LLVM working on PKU memory protection keys. It seems now GCC has support for Intel’s PKU instructions.

      PKU Memory Protection Keys are going to be a feature of future Intel CPUs as explained in the aforelinked article and with them come new PDPKRU and WRPKRU instructions. With this commit today to the mainline GNU Compiler Collection, it appears GCC has now support for these new PKU instructions.

    • What are the best plugins to increase productivity on Emacs

      Over a year ago now, I went looking for the best plugins to turn Vim into a full-fledged IDE. Interestingly, a lot of the comments on that post were about how Emacs already has most of these plugins built in, and was already a great IDE. Although I can only agree about Emacs’ incredible versatility, it is still not the ultimate editor when it comes out of the box. Thankfully, its vast plugin library is here to fix that. But among the plethora of options available to you, it is sometimes hard to know where to start. So for now, let me try to assemble a short list of the indispensable plugins to increase your productivity while using Emacs. Although I am heavily geared towards programming related productivity, most of these plugins would be useful to anyone for any usage.

    • The New GNU News Of 2015

  • Public Services/Government

    • Grenoble commits to free software

      Grenoble, France’s 16th largest city, is committed to the use of free software. This type of ICT solutions facilitaties the sharing of knowledge, empowers citizens and institutions and helps to cut costs, the city said in a statement. The city also sees free software as one of the tools to increase citizen participation.

    • Infrabel seeking support for range of open source solutions

      Infrabel, Belgium’s government-owned railway network management company, is requesting services and support for two enterprise Linux systems, Red Hat and Suse. Infrabel also seeks support many other open source solution, including network monitoring tools Logstash, Zabbix and Rsyslog, and Java applicatieserver Jboss (renamed WildFly).

    • Open source engine for Portugal’s online gazette

      Portugal’s online government gazette, Diário da República Eletrónico (DRE), runs on open source components, including enterprise content management system Liferay and Java application server Jboss (renamed WildFly). INCM, the country’s printing office and mint, is looking for IT services for these and other IT solutions. The two-year contract is estimated to be worth EUR 550,000.

    • Grenoble Set FREE

  • Programming

    • How GitHub is building a platform and supporting open source (podcast)

      We caught up with her recently to talk about how GitHub has evolved into a platform (and what it means to be a platform), how the company figures out which new features and products to build, and the role of open source software in stimulating innovation.

    • Perl 6 Is Ready For Release

      Perl 6 was unveiled back in October with plans to officially ship the Perl 6.0 for Christmas. Larry Wall and those involved in Perl 6 development have managed to deliver.

    • What’s new in Ruby 2.3?

      Ruby 2.3.0 will be released this Christmas, and the first preview release was made available a few weeks ago. I’ve been playing around with it and looking at what new features have been introduced.

    • Ruby 2.3 Released With New Language Features

      Ruby 2.3 features a frozen string literal pragma, a safe navigation operator, and more.

Leftovers

  • How to praise IT? Evangelize it

    For a lot of people within IT who’ve been at it for a while, it becomes very easy to continue doing your job and then at the end of a project move on to the next thing. Praise for success and hard work is a way to pause and assess what you’ve accomplished.

  • Science

    • Best of Opensource.com: Science

      This year has been another great one for open science. At Opensource.com we published several great stories about open science projects that are changing the way we research, collaborate, and solve problems.

  • Security

    • Thursday’s security updates
    • MMD-0047-2015 – SSHV: SSH bruter ELF botnet malware w/hidden process kernel module
    • Another “critical” “VPN” “vulnerability” and why Port Fail is bullshit

      The morning of November 26 brought me interesting news: guys from Perfect Privacy disclosed the Port Fail vulnerability, which can lead to an IP address leak for clients of VPN services with a “port forwarding” feature. I was indignant about their use of the word “vulnerability”. It’s not a vulnerability, just a routing feature: Traffic to VPN server always goes via ISP, outside of VPN tunnel. Pretty obvious thing, I thought, which should be known by any network administrator. Besides that, the note is technically correct, so nothing to worry about. But then the headlines came, and shit hit the fan.

    • Cracking Linux with the backspace key?

      The source of these reports is a mildly hype-ridden disclosure of a vulnerability in the GRUB2 bootloader by Hector Marco and Ismael Ripoll. It seems that hitting the backspace character at the GRUB2 username prompt enough times will trigger an integer underflow, allowing a bypass of GRUB2′s authentication stage. According to the authors, this vulnerability, exploitable for denial-of-service, information-disclosure, and code-execution attacks, “results in an incalculable number of affected devices.” It is indeed a serious vulnerability in some settings and it needs to be fixed. Unfortunately, some of the most severely affected systems may also be the hardest to patch. But language like the above leads reporters to write that any Linux system can be broken into using the backspace key, which stretches the truth somewhat.

  • Defence/Police/Secrecy/Aggression

    • Yemen: 1 More Reason to Re-evaluate Toxic US-Saudi Alliance

      After almost a year of civil war, the conflicting forces in Yemen sat down on Dec. 15 in Geneva, Switzerland, to discuss the prospect of finding a political solution to the conflict that has been raging since March 2015. While this is a necessary step towards ending the violence that has killed thousands, crippled infrastructure had led to a critical humanitarian crisis, so the peace talks should include a mechanism for rebuilding this impoverished nation. Saudi Arabia, which is responsible for most of the destruction with its relentless bombings, should be forced to pay for the terrible damage it has wrought. So should the United States.

    • When Terrorism becomes Counter-terrorism: The State Sponsors of Terrorism are “Going After the Terrorists”

      And now in an unusual about turn, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA) has configured a coalition of 34 mainly Muslim countries “to go after the Islamic state”. In a bitter irony, the key protagonists of this counterterrorism initiative endorsed by the “international community” are Saudi Arabia, Pakistan and Turkey, i.e. countries which have relentlessly supported “Islamic terrorism” from the very outset in close liaison with Washington. In the words of Hillary Clinton in her declassified Emails: “donors in Saudi Arabia constitute the most significant source of funding to Sunni terrorist groups worldwide.”

      Counter terrorism by the state sponsors of terrorism? A New Normal? The propaganda campaign appears to have reached an impasse.

  • Environment/Energy/Wildlife

    • It’s time for the private sector to buy in to the COP21

      THE 2015 United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP21) concluded on December 12 with the European Union and 195 countries agreeing on limiting greenhouse gas emissions to a point where the global temperature rise is capped at less than 2° C. The agreement has a strong basis in the principles of shared responsibility and transparency as well as collective oversight in the form of periodic assessments. This has finally brought the world’s governments (including those of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations) together and has steered them in a clear direction for making a positive impact in the arena of climate change. But as vital as this development has been, government action cannot fix the problem alone. The private sector is a key participant in this endeavour: it is bigger, more agile, and more influential than any government, or even group of governments, could ever be.

    • To slow climate change, you have to start here

      The phrase “climate change” often summons images of exhaust-spewing trucks and coal plants blackening the skies.

      [...]

      But even people who’ll never visit the region should fear Indonesia’s flaming jungles. When the forest fires rage hardest, they can spew out more emissions per day than the entire US economy, according to the pro-conservation World Resources Institute.

      The fires briefly turned Indonesia — a largely impoverished, Muslim-majority archipelago — into the world’s worst polluter. During particularly smoky spells in September in October, Indonesia daily churned out more greenhouse gases than even China or the US.

      When Indonesia’s fires are tamed, the country is usually pegged as the sixth-worst offender, behind China, the United States, the European Union countries (which are counted as one bloc), India and Russia.

  • Privacy

    • Marc Andreessen: ‘In 20 years, every physical item will have a chip implanted in it’

      The hype around the Internet of Things has been rising steadily over the past five years. In tech analyst Gartner’s Hype Cycle for Emerging Technologies report in 2015, the IoT is at the peak of “inflated expectations”, particularly for areas like the smart home, which involve controlling your lights, thermostat or TV using your mobile phone.

      But the era of sensors has only just dawned, according to renowned technology investor and internet pioneer Marc Andreessen. In 10 years, he predicts mobile phones themselves could disappear.

    • Australian government tells citizens to turn off two-factor authentication

      The Australian government has repeatedly called for citizens to turn off two-factor authentication (2FA) at its main digital government portal, myGov. The portal’s Twitter account has recently been updated several times with cute pictures encouraging holidaymakers to “turn off your myGov security codes” so that “you can spend more time doing the important things.”

      The portal is the place where Australian citizens can use and manage a number of governmental services, including health insurance, tax payments, and child support. In case of myGov, two-factor authentication is implemented by sending users text messages that contain one-time codes to complement their usual passwords.

    • NSA Helped British Spies Find Security Holes In Juniper Firewalls

      A TOP-SECRET document dated February 2011 reveals that British spy agency GCHQ, with the knowledge and apparent cooperation of the NSA, acquired the capability to covertly exploit security vulnerabilities in 13 different models of firewalls made by Juniper Networks, a leading provider of networking and Internet security gear.

      The six-page document, titled “Assessment of Intelligence Opportunity – Juniper,” raises questions about whether the intelligence agencies were responsible for or culpable in the creation of security holes disclosed by Juniper last week. While it does not establish a certain link between GCHQ, NSA, and the Juniper hacks, it does make clear that, like the unidentified parties behind those hacks, the agencies found ways to penetrate the “NetScreen” line of security products, which help companies create online firewalls and virtual private networks, or VPNs. It further indicates that, also like the hackers, GCHQ’s capabilities clustered around an operating system called “ScreenOS,” which powers only a subset of products sold by Juniper, including the NetScreen line. Juniper’s other products, which include high-volume Internet routers, run a different operating system called JUNOS.

    • User Data Portability and Privacy – Comment on Recent News

      Anyway, I am happy that KDE signed the User Data Manifesto 2.0 a few months ago. Why wait for official legislation when we can do the right thing right now?

    • Resuming GPG

      Quite possibly Moxie Marlinspike is right, but for non-casual communications this can still be useful.

    • State considered harmful – A proposal for a stateless laptop (new paper)

      Two months ago I have published a detailed survey of various security-related problems plaguing the Intel x86 platforms. While the picture painted in the paper was rather depressing, I also promised to release a 2nd paper discussing — what I believe to be — a reasonably simple and practical solution addressing most of the issues discussed in the 1st paper. Today I’m releasing this 2nd paper.

      I think it is the first technical paper I’ve written which is not backed by a working proof-of-concept. Incidentally, it might also be one of the most important ones I have authored or co-authored.

  • Civil Rights

    • Media Reform Committee Considers a Crackdown on Online Media Using Article 44

      A junta appointed media reform committee is considering a new measure to control online media that incites “social unrest.”

      Pol.Maj.Gen Pisit Pao-in, the former commander of the Technology Crime Suppression Division who now oversees the government’s ‘reform’ of online media, said on Dec. 24 that he would ask to use the power of Article 44 to crack down on online media, including content deemed to be affecting national security and/or defaming the monarchy.

      Article 44 of the interim constitution grants junta chairman Prayuth Chan-ocha a power to enact any laws or take action to protect “national interests” and “national security.”

      After the talk between the media reform committee and police today, Pisit said representatives from Google are scheduled to meet the committee for a discussion on Jan. 14 and again on Jan. 21. According to the officer, these meetings will be followed by further meetings with representatives from Facebook and the messaging app, LINE, at as yet unspecified dates.

  • Internet/Net Neutrality

    • Why No to Free Basics by Facebook!

      There are other successful models (this,this,this) for providing free Internet access to people, without giving a competitive advantage to Facebook. Free Basics is the worst of our options.

      Facebook doesn’t pay for Free Basics, telecom operators do. Where do they make money from? From users who pay. By encouraging people to choose Free Basics, Facebook reduces the propensity to bring down data costs for paid Internet access.

  • Intellectual Monopolies

    • Copyrights

      • Pirate Bay co-founder builds device that costs the music industry $10,000,000 a day

        Pirate Bay co-founder Peter Sunde has created a device that he believes is costing the music industry $10 million a day, reports TorrentFreak.

        The ‘Kopimashin’, seen in the video below makes 100 copies of the Gnarls Barkley song ‘Crazy’ and sends them all to /dev/null – a technical term meaning the files are deleted as soon as they are saved.

      • Pirate Bay Founder Builds The Ultimate Piracy Machine

        Pirate Bay co-founder Peter Sunde served his prison sentence last year but still owes the entertainment industries millions in damages. Some might think that he’s learned his lesson, but with a newly built copying machine he’s generating millions of extra ‘damages,’ which might be worth a mention in the Guinness Book of Records.

12.24.15

Insensitivity at the EPO’s Management – Part I: An Introduction

Posted in Europe, Patents at 8:14 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Framing the relentless attack on an effective publisher as a matter of “women’s rights”

Julian Assange

Summary: The first part of a series which looks at classic union-busting (or publication-silencing) strategies; how the EPO’s management exploits perceived (or sexed up) scandals to crush dissent or staff representatives (without it ever looking so)

CHRISTMAS is a lovely time of year that my wife and I enjoy every year, but it is also a hostage scenario (with ransom) for EPO managers. What kind of a sick organisation would take advantage of illnesses, holidays and even cancer as a pretext for some higher agenda? Well, the EPO is rather unique. It’s amazing that it has gotten away with it for this long.

“Our sources aren’t one single person but several anonymous sources who shared material with us and showed us the way they had been mistreated.”In the coming weeks we have two large series left to publish. One deals with private profits alongside the ‘public’ EPO, where the culprits are some of the highest level managers (or former managers). The second deals with the way in which, “with bad intent” as one of our sources put it, the EPO exploits tragedy (e.g. death in the family) to achieve certain objectives. It’s a brutal, merciless kind of behaviour — one that we have come to expect from the most ruthless regimes in Indochina. Our sources aren’t one single person but several anonymous sources who shared material with us and showed us the way they had been mistreated. There is a large degree of overlap in some of these stories, so there is occasionally room for fusion.

We never quite eliminated the ‘backlog’ of EPO articles. It keeps growing as fast as we publish, which has been very often in recent months. Some stories are institutional in nature and some are more personal. Some are high priority (meriting immediate publication), whereas some can wait for a while. Some are harder to write (requiring a lot of additional research) and some are rather trivial. The flow of information we receive may never finish or come to an end any time soon, especially considering the expansion in the number of sources we now have. Trying to organise/foresee the order of publication so as to fit a useful structural narrative has proven quite challenging. We do the best we can given the circumstances and the growing pressure.

“We will soon get around to writing about cancer among other topics that cause controversy within the Office.”At this moment of time the staff unions at the EPO are under severe attacks. Some of them don’t even realise it until it’s too late. SUEPO is at the front of the line because SUEPO is by far the biggest. Anything that helps amplify the message regarding union-busting at the EPO will, in our assessment, help protect the unions (including their representatives), so we encourage people to send us any material they have which may be related to this. It’s not about SUEPO, which we deem somewhat of a scapegoat at the moment (the management is making an example out of it to induce self-censorship and fear). Its strong responses to EPO management are largely reactionary, but EPO-funded media tries to frame SUEPO as combative, hence worthy of the way it has been treated (misinterpretation of the cycle of institutional violence). SUEPO isn’t evil like the EPO’s management wants the public/media (and maybe even gullible examiners) to believe. It’s on the receiving end of a massive PR campaign, as well as prosecutorial abuse (or misconduct). It’s both terrifying and worrisome; one might be discouraged from being/getting involved, mainly for fear of reprisal or personal retribution (even totally innocent people are not safe or immune to accusations). Nobody wants to become a target of the prosecutorial abuse apparatus. What the goons of Battistelli hope for right now is silence and apathy among staff (they’re not getting it right now), which then makes it simpler to dismiss ‘unwanted’ staff. The EPO’s staff currently makes this unworthy of the backlash (at the moment at least); it’s simply a hornet’s nest. But what happens if:

  1. An accused staff representative is demonised to the point of losing public support (see for instance Julian Assange) or
  2. Gets dismissed on the grounds of some totally separate and orthogonal ground (like hypocritical “harassment”, as in the case of Elizabeth Hardon), obscuring the real motivation for dismissal?

Wikileaks is already too ‘scary’ to offer help to; SUEPO is getting there too. That’s not because Wikileaks or SUEPO are thoroughly discredited; it’s because anyone who’s involved is massively attacked. Visibly attacked.

The EPO’s management seems to be doing something rather clever these days. Some details will be given in future parts of this series because there is a lot of information to be shared (too much to be digested in just one day). We will soon get around to writing about cancer among other topics that cause controversy within the Office.

“First of all I want to commend you for the courage to keep this blog,” wrote a patent examiner to us. “Few people are brave enough to oppose authority and regardless of the outcome one should take a stand whenever private or collective rights are abused by the ones in power. Battistelli has hijacked the office and turned the management into a mafia organization where the “capo” is surrounded by sycophants. The atmosphere is unbearable and the main topic of discussion everywhere is the abuse of the system by the president.”

“I would like to send you a letter signed by French director Yann Chabod,” we were told, “a member of the Battistelli inner circle, as a response to a demand by a lady suffering from breast cancer. The inhumanity of the response is unbelievable.”

We are waiting and hoping to be able to publish this letter soon, so anyone with access to it, please consider sending it to us (my PGP key is shown in every page on the right hand side). Part II of this series will most likely be published after Boxing Day. █

Concerns About the Unitary Patent Court (UPC) Among EPO Staff an Outcome of Battistelli’s Attacks on Staff

Posted in Europe, Patents at 7:46 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

What leaders promise before signing is rarely what actually happens afterwards

NAFTA
NAFTA signing; original photograph is in the public domain in the United States

Summary: Amid EPO crisis and an effort to tilt the system in favour of large (and usually foreign) corporations some believe that “the future legal situation concerning patents in Europe is becoming extremely uncertain”

Concerns about UPC lobbying by the EPO don’t contribute much to the reputation of UPC(ourt), or to the Unitary Patent in general. Given the cheating and the lying from EPO management, can anyone actually believe a word that it says about the UPC? As we have been saying all along, benefiting from the UPC are mostly lawyers and large companies which big law firms represent (sometimes European firms representing non-EU companies).

As this one comment put it:

Why should BB and the AC trash DG3 like this? Do not underestimate the political influence (in Davos and Brussels) of the giant international Anglo-American patent litigation law firms, by lobbying to bamboozle Euro pols into supposing that the UPC will be an improvement, and by inducing BB to join their cause.

Fact is, that disputing patent validity at the EPO (for 38 jurisdictions) is cheaper by a factor of from one to a hundred thousand than litigating validity in the USA. For more than 35 years, these law firms have been spitting in frustration, that the work is done not by them but by European patent attorney firms. They want their full wad and, with the advent of the UPC, they’re gonna get it, OK?

Also regarding the UPC, one person writes:

Surely for the UPC to be a success the EPO needs to be granting strong patents. With the possibility of a UPC patent being revoked in all territories agents will need to consider whether to file for a single for a single UPC patent or several national patents. If the quality of a a UPC patent is poor national paten ts may be more appealing. Or is invalidating a UPC patent so expensive the quality doesn’t matter?

The UPC, for reasons which we outlined before, is beneficial to big businesses, and not even European ones. It marginalises those that are smaller and cannot sustain injuctions, large court cases (fees), high damages/royalty claims, etc. The bigger the system, the more beneficial it becomes to large players.

This one comment from what seems like a patent lawyer says:

As usual, the Americans do it better. When they say their patent system enables Little David to triumph over the Giant Goliath, they are correct. It does, every so often. I know. My small client won an injunction and 40+ Million USD damages from a Big Corp infringer of his US patent. His lawyer worked on a contingency fees basis, of course, betting on getting a cut of the 40 mill.

But when the Commission in Brussels sets up a pan-European patent litigation system, there is no way an SME can get anywhere with it. When was the last time an SME in Europe pulled 40 mill in damages?

The Commission’s answer? We know. But we need to set up a system by which an SME can insure against the costs of patent litigation. That will fix the problem.

If you don’t laugh, you would cry, at the level of ignorance and wilful blindness. At the moment, some national jurisdictions (NL, DE, GB) have systems that allow the Little Guy to prevail. That is not going to survive the advent of the UPC though, is it? Big Corp and ist lackeys are delighted. For them, it’s Mission Accomplished. Special thanks to BB and the AC.

George Brock-Nannestad, who recently wrote a long post bemoaning the money motive at the EPO (we've posted here the translation of his post) said the following in a comment which comes in two parts [1, 2]:

It is my impression that the present and in particular the future legal situation concerning patents in Europe is becoming extremely uncertain. In a world where we thought that responsible persons would cooperate to maintain a legal framework that is predictable, we see massive attacks on integrity and a future situation akin to those states that merely registered and did not examine patents and left all patent construction to the courts. All the good words and the work to preserve the balance between those who invented and those who could afford to litigate is now being put in question and deliberately destroyed.

A legal attorney, registered to practice as such in one of the member states of the EPC, is permitted to represent before the EPO without any proof of competence. Those attorneys who do precisely that will nevertheless have studied the EPC, the Guidelines, and the “Case Law of the Boards of Appeal of the European Patent Office” anyway. However it now turns out that these texts are not to be valid anymore. In the future it will be absolutely useless knowledge, because attorneys will begin to represent holders of doubtful patents against possible infringers, and they will need to transfer to litigation and the rules being developed there in order to assist clients. A European Patent Attorney does not have the same possibilities.

The massive reduction in the intellectual effort permitted by production goals in the EPO for examining applications will be felt in the Boards of Appeal as an extra workload in cases of opposition, which will become more frequent as individual companies and patent defiance associations will need to file them to match the onslaught of accepted but inherently defective European applications in their Unified Patent form. The present proposed change of status of the Boards of Appeal is in flagrant contravention of the EPC. But with the proposed changes it will administratively be made very difficult for the BoAs to reject an appeal, because that would be the end of the story. And it is definitely desired for the story to continue, and only an acceptance can ensure the survival of a patent that is useful for the UPC system. Alternatively, the time for opposition will be reduced to 3 months and the fee will be set at such a high and rising level that it may become cheaper just to give up the possibly infringing product line. Observations during examinations will be abolished because they endanger the patentability.

This is not the way to increase competition between the SMEs and big transnational corporations!

This type of development was already visible (or at least envisageable) in Peter Drahos’ book “The Global Governance of Knowledge. Patent Offices and their Clients”, Cambridge University Press 2010. Highly recommended reading for anybody who can afford to take the longer view. In all the discussions on IPKat on the EPO situation I have not seen one post or comment that has taken its inspiration from this perceptive book.

Actually one may see an outline also from a 2008 response to Joff Wild (an apparently unabashed promotor of all undertakings from the EPO administration), by SUEPO (document No. su08163cl), which was recently made instantly available by the Techrights blog. But as the Boards of Appeal have until now been independent, it was not in 2008 possible to envisage that they and their legal framework would be so completely degraded.

The system is beyond help — there is nobody to change the course. It is truly a situation where the foxes are in charge — or should we say we have an Orwellian ‘Animal Farm’? All the suggested admininstrative changes are doable because there is nobody to complain to.

The only way to combat the system would be for a united front to avoid using the UPC at all so that it dies of lack of funding. As we cannot expect conflicts to disappear, this would sadly lead to the general application of arbitration, which is characterised by not creating any jurisprudence others may learn from. However, in a rotten system, what good is jurisprudence anyway? And how do we re-create a good European examination system from the shards left over?

All the best from an observer of massive decline,

George Brock-Nannestad

As one response to the above comments put it:

Some of the more significant member states have told BB to behave. It is only natural that he decided to infuriate those member states even more.

Apparently he is confident, or gambling, that the three-quarters majority that is necessary to remove him will not be reached.

The EPC is on the verge of turning into a failed project.

The German media, according to this comment, finally has some coverage of it. “Here is a well documented article by Juve,” says the comment, “on the loss by the President of the AC´s support for the reforming of the boards of appeal” (pushing the envelope). To quote the summary (in German): “Die Reform, die zu mehr Unabhängigkeit der Beschwerdekammern des Europäischen Patentamtes (EPA) führen soll, verzögert sich weiter. Nach mehreren übereinstimmenden Berichten aus dem Umfeld der Münchner Patentbehörde verfolgt der Verwaltungsrat seit vergangener Woche offensichtlich einen neuen Reformvorschlag. Danach hätte das Aufsichtsgremium des Amtes seine Zustimmung zum ursprünglichen Reformpaket von Benoît Battistelli versagt. Bislang galt der Verwaltungsrat als die Machtbasis des umstrittenen EPA-Präsidenten.”

It would be useful to have a translation of the article into English. █

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