BBC News - Apple loses UK tablet design appeal versus Samsung. And the ruling is also quite creative: Apple must run ads stating that Samsung did not copy. Especially in light of the ongoing other proceedings, the judge said only a prominent action can correct consumer perception. I think this really hurts Apple now.
patentwahnsinn
I usually ignore Techcrunch, but they have this story first (at least I haven't seen it anywhere else):
Now, some company called VS Technologies is suing Twitter, alleging that it infringes on a patent of theirs, entitled “Method and system for creating an interactive virtual community of famous people”. For real? For real.
via Twitter Gets Sued For Letting Famous People Interact Online | TechCrunch.
Time zones: tz database shut down due to lawsuit. This is probably one of the extra-absurd cases of patent extortion. Time zones are hardly copyrighted by this silly company, and the banal compilation of facts that do not belong to you really does not have a level of creativity that needs to be greatly protected. Patent trolls are annoying.
Groklaw - A Brief Explanation of Microsofts Anti-Google Patent FUD ~ by pj. Since the whole patent mess around Android is already somewhat opaque, I think it's good when sites like Groklaw comment on it: "Again, Google is pointing to the main issue, not that Microsoft and its satellite helpers are meanies, but that what they are doing is illegal. They are attacking the open source community, with patents as the weapon and not just as individual companies but as an artificial group designed to 'strangle' Android. And if you look at the mobile litigation going on as we speak, ask yourself: who is suing and who is being sued? Does it look coordinated to you?"
Patent lawsuit: Google convicted in first instance over Linux servers. Just when we thought patent nonsense couldn't get any worse, here's the latest example of how absurd patents on algorithms and data structures are. Especially when such cases are tried before juries, as if patent infringements were something that could be judged by the "public conscience."
IBM breaks OSS patent promise, targets mainframe emulator - was to be expected, but still a nasty story. IBM is IBM - and IBM is only its own friend. Large companies first look at their own wallet, then at others. And Hercules allows some things that so far only low-end mainframes have achieved. That's where the fun and the cuddly course end for IBM.
Christopher Blizzard · HTML5 video and H.264 – what history tells us and why we’re standing with the web - more about the licensing issues with H264
Well, I'm Back: Video, Freedom And Mozilla - why Firefox does not include support for H264. I personally think it would be better to use the technically available codecs of the installed system and leave it up to the user which codecs they want to have. I do understand Mozilla's argumentative position on this matter, but I think it could be rather negative for the spread of Firefox in this case - or in the long run could lead to a fork of Firefox and Firefox+OS codecs. His arguments about "pushes software freedom issues from the browser to the platform" are, in my opinion, nonsense - because he himself writes about the Flash video fallback, which requires a non-free Flash plugin ...
Annals of the Patently Absurd - Microsoft gets a patent on PageUp and PageDown? And someone still claims that software patents have any justification other than amusement and funding for patent lawyers?
The Death of Google's Patents? - "The Patent and Trademark Office has now made clear that its newly developed position on patentable subject matter will invalidate many and perhaps most software patents, including pioneering patent claims to such innovators as Google, Inc." - Only in the Banana Republic do the paid prolethicians still clamor for the introduction of software patents, because we just need them. And how does their argument "we need them, otherwise we look stupid compared to the USA" look now that the US Patent Office itself says: "Software patents are a mess"?
Method and apparatus for creation and maintenance of database structure - a patent. On lists. In a database. From 2005. And now someone explain to me where the great innovation lies, and why we so desperately need software patents. Don't we already have enough trolls under the bridges, do we also need this shit? (and yes, the company that has this great patent is now suing web companies that store lists for users in databases)
Methods for tying knots in ropes - because I thought, just search for "tie your shoelaces". No shoelaces found right away, but a patent for knots. In ropes. So there are also crazy patents outside of software ...
9.com patents HTTP-Redirects - once again a nonsense patent that was granted in the USA. And again, a long legal battle will presumably follow before this nonsense is eliminated. Extremely disgusting, but the audacity with which Jeff Bezos likes to stand out with such absurd patents (his One-Click-Buy patent, for example). Of course, the examination at the patent offices is usually worse than bad for Internet patents. But it also takes someone who is so bold to file such garbage as a patent in the first place.
Patent on mobile entertainment device with phone - or something like that. The employees at the US Patent Office seem to be suffering from an acute lack of brainpower at the moment. There was already proven prior art for this patent, which was taken into account in the last application but is now being ignored. Well, it doesn't affect the poor, I think the lawyers from Apple will be happy to take care of the gentleman and his patent.
Nokia: Ogg formats in the HTML standard? Not with us! - OGG is disparaged as a proprietary format and patent concerns are expressed (although there has not been a single patent attack on OGG formats to date). But at the same time, H.264 and AAC are seen as unproblematic, even though these formats are definitely patent-encumbered and far more proprietary than anything Ogg-related. Stupid position from Nokia.
VoIP-Signatur Patent fĂĽr Fraunhofer - once again nonsense from the patent front. On the one hand, signing a sequence of packets is not really so terribly innovative that it needs a patent. Also, the linking of packets via hashes of the predecessor contents is not really groundbreakingly innovative. Sure, the idea may be nice - but is it realistically worth a patent? Especially in a country where there are supposedly no patents on algorithms? Apart from that: if the signing of communication for legal transactions is so essential - why are individual institutions or companies granted patents that de facto represent a monopolization of security means? Are contract forms and receipt pads also patented, so that you can only buy them from one manufacturer? No? Oh ...
OLPC sued in Nigeria for patent infringement - and the fact that multi-shift keyboards have existed with all kinds of mini systems for decades (sorry, but there were already such things on Casio calculators and HP calculators), and that programming a keyboard driver hardly poses a challenge to anyone and therefore probably does not fall under "protectable," of course, is of no interest. You can only make money from shit if you patent the shit first.
Patent lawsuit against Apple, Microsoft and 21 other companies - yet it is still claimed that patents secure the development interest of companies. Hello? The patent exploiters have, in the rarest of cases, developed anything. They just sit there and look for the most absurd possible interpretation of some nonsense patents.
heise online -Softwarepatent-Gegner beklagen Deal der EU-Kommission mit Microsoft - "The Commission does not understand how Open Source works," Benjamin Henrion, the Brussels representative of the FFII, also shakes his head at the negotiated agreement. The authority has naively accepted the promises of the Redmonders that they will now abide by the rules. Meanwhile, Microsoft has been planning for years to control the Open Source economy through commercial property rights on computer programs. This plan has now advanced considerably. "Kroes has ensured that software patents of the EPA, which the EU rejected in 2005, now strengthen the monopolist's grip for years to come."
Amazon's one-click patent largely invalidated - well, that's almost brilliant.
Microsoft receives patent for notification of changes in privacy policies - yet another trivial patent. And yet again by Microsoft. Okay, that the patent offices allow such things to pass is embarrassing. But that companies even dare to show up at the patent office with such a lump of nonsense ...
What Linspire Agreed To - "It's worse than Novell's, actually. It's worse than Tivo, in my book. I know some say that Tivo doesn't interfere with you modifying, as long as you give up using the modified software on Tivo hardware. To me, that is a penalty not contemplated by GPLv2, because if you buy a Tivo, it's because you wanted to use the software with the Tivo hardware, but with Linspire's agreement, you have to give up pretty much all your GPL freedoms, as far as I can make out, and more. And what do you get in return for giving up everything? True Type fonts, Windows Media 10, DVD playback, patent coverage..."
The History of Software Patents (BitLaw) - in the USA.
'Electric Slide' on slippery DMCA slope - his dance fool sends DMCA takedown notices to video sites that allegedly show "his" dance incorrectly. Among others to an employee of LindenLab (the makers of Second Life), because the dance was shown in a machinima. Totally nuts.
Legal wrangle puts India's generic drugs at risk - Novartis is trying to influence patent legislation in India to prevent the production of generics. This would affect millions of Africans suffering from AIDS, as the costs for the necessary medicines would suddenly skyrocket. Profit before human lives, that is the motto of the pharmaceutical industry.
Microsoft copies BlueJ, admits it, then patents it - rip off ala Microsoft. That's probably what they call development work and why they think only Microsoft is capable of innovating - funny twisted vocabulary at Microsoft ...
United States Patent Application: 0060242178 - tagging, commenting, etc. on media, such as images, videos, etc. Will Yahoo then probably sell patent rights to Google (YouTube)?
Patent on Social Networking - goes to friendster in the USA. Idiotic.
US Patent Office rejects claims in Forgent's JPEG patent - hopefully the rest of their silly patent will be invalidated as well.
Bundesrat considers software patents - and who cares about the Mittelstand and open source software. Certainly not the Prolethicians in DĂĽsseldorf ...
Patent Busting: EFF against patent on online exams - and no end in sight for the ridiculous patents.
Microsoft threatens with patent lawsuits in the USA - a warning signal for Europe - but will the bureaucrats in Brussels understand the warning signal? I have my doubts.
Apple applies for patents on feed viewer and browser - the next storm in the toilet walls. Winerians will gather and bash Apple. And everyone else will scratch their heads about what all the nonsense with the patents is actually about ...
Patent Office Idiocy in the USA
Software patents are indeed a wonderful thing, so none of the proponents of this brainchild will likely have any objections to the patent on every kind of Internet-rich client. If this holds, soon in the USA, Ajax applications will be considered patent infringements, and a small company without real products will then extort firms simply because they have a patent on something they themselves have not developed or even promoted in the slightest.
Signs of Intelligence
JPEG-Patent is being reviewed:
The US Patent and Trademark Office has agreed to review the so-called JPEG patent with the Public Patent Foundation (PUBPAT). This is evident from a statement by the non-profit organization. In November 2005, they had submitted a formal application to review the patent of the company Forgent with the number 4,698,672 from 1987. PUBPAT believes that the technology was not new at the time. Now the patent office has responded that PUBPAT has raised "fundamentally new questions of patentability." The organization estimates the chances to be good that the patent will be declared invalid.
It would be very good if this patent would disappear. Because even if the open-source area has not been directly affected so far - with such patents, it is simply a matter of time before this area is also targeted. And to go through the mess that ran with GIF really doesn't have to be.
Microsoft retains FAT patents
Great, the US Patent Office confirmed Microsoft's patent on the FAT file system:
As part of its review (Re-Examination), the Patent Office initially declared the patents provisionally invalid (Non-Final-Ruling) due to "Prior Art". The decision now made, however, is final and Microsoft receives a so-called "Patent Re-Examination Certificate" from the USPTO for both patents. The Patent Office finally determined that the FAT file system had been a new development and therefore patentable, Microsoft further announced.
We can therefore wait and see when Microsoft will use the patent to take action against open source software that uses or supports FAT file systems.
To Ensure Software Patents Are Not Forgotten
Current case - Google sued for patent infringement:
One of the two patents with the number 5,425,085 relates to a technique for establishing the cheapest call connection, the other with the number 5,519,769 describes a system for updating a database with call charges to select the cheapest connection. The lawsuit was filed as early as October 2005 and has now come to light through the New York Post newspaper.
Take another look at the proposals for software patents and consider whether you want to encounter such patents in Europe - and what it would mean. Because exactly such things were covered by the draft from the Federal Ministry of Economics (then still Wolfgang Clement).
SCO probably sealed soon
Clear signs of dissolution at SCO. Not only are they almost bankrupt:
Without new capital, as shown by the financial figures now presented, the SCO Group would be threatened with bankruptcy.
They are also betting on the dead horse Unix-on-Handhelds:
SCO CEO Darl McBride expressed optimism when presenting the figures. Business would improve again because the focus is on the further development of Unix. McBride's greatest hopes lie in the new technology that SCO has outlined under the name "Me Inc." and which should soon be market-ready. In the conference call on the quarterly figures, McBride described Me Inc. as a Unix-based technology platform for handhelds and digital lifestyle products.
With this strategy, many manufacturers have already left the market - the handheld market itself is massively threatened by smartphones and what remains of the market is dominated by established players who will certainly be very enthusiastic about an SCO desperately looking for a market there. The market is absolutely promising for newcomers, as the various burst dreams of recent times show.
XML under Patent Protection?
Patent nonsense in extra strength: XML under patent protection?. But patents are such a great innovation engine, so it's quite right when a company with a patent that it has never implemented in any form, suddenly makes itself a presence in an area that has been in practical application for many years.
Innovative Power of Software Patents
Because software patents have such high innovative power, Blackberry will probably disappear from the US market, because:
As part of that litigation, NTP, whose only assets are wireless e-mail related patents, had been granted an injunction banning the sale of BlackBerry devices in the United States and forcing Research in Motion to stop providing e-mail services to all American customers except government account holders.
Exactly. A company that has nothing but a few patents (which are also quite banal, as one has almost come to expect with US patents) has obtained a sales ban against another company whose product is physically available for purchase through the courts. Extremely innovative. And certainly something we need in Europe as well.
SCO-Patent-Fallout?
Speculation is rife that a lawsuit by an eFax company against competitors for using Asterisk could be related to SCO and all the nonsense surrounding it:
Now, Groklaw is speculating about the extent to which the move could be a general patent attack on free software. The reason for this is a close connection between the SCO Group and j2. Among the supporters of the software company, which has been in a heated dispute over intellectual property in Linux components, particularly with IBM, for a long time, is the investment firm Krevlin Advisors. It is also a major shareholder in j2.
But even if there's nothing to the rumors, the whole thing will certainly be idiotic and annoying again - and yet another proof that software patents and business method patents are utter nonsense. In any case, Asterisk (essentially a telephone system implemented in software) could soon become another battleground - if only because it may appear as a threat to one or another manufacturer of smaller telephone systems. And the market for telephone systems is, after all, characterized by very strange sales strategies and even stranger contractual situations (not without reason, telephone system maintenance contracts are occasionally declared invalid for violating good morals).
But patents are sooo great ...
... but only when your own central bank becomes the target of a patent infringement lawsuit: European Central Bank sued for patent infringement. Will this perhaps wake people up at the EU Council? Oh, forget it, they won't wake up in this life, then they would have to recognize their own corruption ...
Software Patents - Commentary in the NY Times
The NY Times asks why Bill Gates wants 3,000 new patents and finds a massive siege of the patent office with mountains of software patents, which are often just trivial patents (like the cited patent for adding/removing spaces in documents). The commentator makes a demand in the comment (after considering whether Microsoft should not simply have all the patents it already has revoked):
Perhaps that is going too far. Certainly, we should go through the lot and reinstate the occasional invention embodied in hardware. But patent protection for software? No. Not for Microsoft, nor for anyone else.
And this from the country that has had software patents for a long time and that is repeatedly cited by software patent proponents in the EU as a reason for a necessary worldwide harmonization.
No, software patents are also not popular there and not really useful. Dan Bricklin, known to some as the father of VisiCalc, also thinks so:
Mr. Bricklin, who has started several software companies and defensively acquired a few software patents along the way, says he, too, would cheer the abolition of software patents, which he sees as the bane of small software companies. "The number of patents you can run into with a small product is immense," he said. As for Microsoft's aggressive accumulation in recent years, he asked, "Isn't Microsoft the poster child of success without software patents?"
And why is Microsoft doing this now? The manager responsible gives a reason, as only a business administrator could come up with, it's that stupid:
"We realized we were underpatenting," Mr. Smith explained. The company had seen studies showing that other information technology companies filed about two patents for every $1 million spent on research and development. If Microsoft was spending $6 billion to $7.5 billion annually on its R&D, it would need to file at least 3,000 applications to keep up with the Joneses.
Ok, the idea of patent applications alone being oriented towards numbers from the industry is absurd, but how stupid do you have to be to draw a connection between the number of patents and revenue in the field of research and development?
The NY Times also draws a parallel to the pharmaceutical industry, which - at least according to its own statements - is happy to get a patent for a drug when it invests 20 million in research (which is already critical enough, as can be seen in the fight against AIDS in Africa).
And the fallout is also well summarized in the NY Times:
Last year at a public briefing, Kevin R. Johnson, Microsoft's group vice president for worldwide sales, spoke pointedly of "intellectual property risk" that corporate customers should take into account when comparing software vendors. On the one side, Microsoft has an overflowing war chest and bulging patent portfolio, ready to fight - or cross-license with - any plaintiff who accuses it of patent infringement. On the other are the open-source developers, without war chest, without patents of their own to use as bargaining chips and without the financial means to indemnify their customers.
The question of what Jefferson (the founder of the US patent system) would say about what is now being patented is quite justified. In his sense - which was actually more about protecting real inventive genius from exploitation by corporations - this is definitely not the case.
Stupid Patents the One Hundred and Eleventh
Whenever you think you've seen the most idiotic patent, something even more stupid is guaranteed to come along - Microsoft wants to patent smileys:
The patent application published on Thursday describes a method for encoding self-created emoticon images as strings that can be embedded in text messages.
Patented People
Another solo run by the European Patent Office against all laws:
The European Patent Office (EPO) granted a patent in February 2005 for a method used to select the sex of children born through artificial insemination. The patent holder is the US company XY Inc, USA. This is confirmed by a recent investigation by Greenpeace. According to the patent specification with the number EP 1257 168 B, sperm cells are deep-frozen and separated according to sex chromosomes. The patent covers the technical process and the sperm cells themselves. This places humans on a level with methods used in animal breeding.
It's ridiculous what nonsense the officials at the EPO allow themselves to be drawn into and what idiotic carts they are harnessed to. Thinking doesn't seem to be part of their job description, apparently ...
Software patents temporarily halted
Occasionally, there is some positive news: European Parliament says no to software patents. However:
Now the European Patent Office must be democratized so that software patents are no longer granted in Europe without legal basis. And we must ensure that software patents are not introduced through some other back door, such as the efforts for a common EU patent.
That is the problem - we must be extremely careful that the same thing is not now attempted through other means. I do not believe that the EU Council will simply abandon its ideas, on the contrary, I suspect that it is now evading to other solutions. Therefore, I would have preferred an adopted patent directive with the intended changes rather than the general rejection, because the topic is still open. And ultimately, a directive with clear definitions could have helped prevent pure software patents, for example, to remove patents like the MP3 patent - because after all, there are already quite a number of pure software patents in Europe, and these must be eliminated somehow.
Software patent directive on the verge of failure?
It would indeed be nice if the Software Patent Directive were on the verge of being scrapped:
According to Lehne, four smaller factions in the vote planned for Wednesday on the directive and possible amendments want to completely reject the European Council's proposal, according to an AFP report that can be found, among others, in the Berliner Zeitung.
Unfortunately, I'll only believe it when I see it. Because so far, the impending demise has been proclaimed several times, but the thing has still made it through. Moreover, I wouldn't be surprised if the Council simply sends the same directive back to the front without real changes. Or if the talk of scrapping it is simply an attempt to lull the software patent opponents into a false sense of security and get them to ease up on their efforts.
Therefore: continue to write and speak out against software patents. Write to your own EU representatives. Also write to those you otherwise have nothing to do with - and point out that the Software Patent Directive is selling Europe to the giants of the software industry.
Danish Government Proposes Significant Changes to the Software Patent Directive
The Danish Government advocates for significant changes to the software patent directive:
The goals expressed by Denmark in [the additional remarks to the EU Council proposal], namely to exclude patents on pure software and business methods as well as to ensure interoperability, are now specified by the Dane in the letter.
However, this does not really seem reliable to me - Denmark has aligned itself with the Council line and has only left an additional remark. Whether they will actually stand by their demands or whether this is all just a show for their own parliament remains to be seen. But at least they are making a show of it - unlike our Minister of Justice, who openly opposes the Bundestag resolution.