US Senate Tees Up Bipartisan Bill Aimed at Patent Litigation

 Last year, the US House of Representative cast a strong vote in support of patent reform, specifically for measures intended to clamp down on a flood of patent lawsuits. Corporate defendants, academics and others thought plaintiffs were abusing the court system, filing “nuisance” lawsuits that were likely to trigger quick settlements. But the Senate’s effort to play ball with the House died amid a flurry of finger-pointing. Earlier this year, the House reintroduced its bill — the Innovation Act — and Wednesday afternoon, the Senate offered up a companion to the House bill that seems to have bipartisan support among some influential senators.

Wall Street Journal

US Senate Is Finally Getting Serious About Slaying Patent Trolls

Patent reform is back in the US Senate, and it's going to be tougher for Harry Reid to get in the way this time. Seven members of the Senate Judiciary Committee—including Majority Whip John Cornyn and Chuck Schumer, the No. 3 Democrat—unveiled legislation Wednesday that would overhaul several aspects of the patent-litigation landscape and clamp down on predatory patent-troll behavior. The contents of the measure are the product of months of deliberations that began in January between Cornyn and Schumer, according to congressional aides close to the process.

NationalJournal.com

Patent and Copyright Protection for Software API

the Court’s decision revolved mostly around copyright issues, the court acknowledged the potential relationship with patent laws and indicated that computer software may be covered by both copyright and patent laws. Copyright protection has the potential to be extremely problematic. However, patent protections are equally problematic. In truth, both forms of protection have inherent balancing factors.

JDSupra

Don’t Reward the Patent Troll that Lies in Wait

They "think laches should still be available, and here’s why: patent defendants and copyright defendants are in very different positions when it comes to defending against stale claims. Patent defendants, unlike their copyright counterparts, often defend themselves by showing that the patent owner’s claimed invention was obvious at the time of filing (thus making the patent invalid). But by delaying a lawsuit, a patent owner can make it difficult for the defendant to find what was known back when the application was filed; records get lost through the passage of time."

"Laches should exist in patent law, despite the Supreme Court’s decision in Petrella, because this is a place where patent law and copyright law differ. We hope the Federal Circuit recognizes the important differences between copyright law and patent law, and how patent owners, by delaying, seriously impact the ability of an innocent defendant to invalidate bad patents."

Electronic Frontier Foundation

Microsoft phones face US import ban for patent infringement

Microsoft could be banned from importing a number of its smartphones into the U.S. after it was found guilty of patent infringement.

The software giant used wireless cellular technology owned by InterDigital without permission. U.S. International Trade Commission judge Theodore Essex found Microsoft guilty of infringing two patents owned by InterDigital, which reportedly cover technology that moderates a mobile phone’s power to reduce signal interference.

TechnoBuffalo

Google wants to buy more patents

Google's public policy blog has announced a "Patent Purchase Promotion" that is a simple, easy to use, and fast experimental marketplace for patents.

"Patent owners sell patents for numerous reasons (such as the need to raise money or changes in a company’s business direction). Unfortunately, the usual patent marketplace can sometimes be challenging, especially for smaller participants who sometimes end up working with patent trolls. Then bad things happen, like lawsuits, lots of wasted effort, and generally bad karma. Rarely does this provide any meaningful benefit to the original patent owner.

"So today we’re announcing the Patent Purchase Promotion as an experiment to remove friction from the patent market. From May 8, 2015 through May 22, 2015, we’ll open a streamlined portal for patent holders to tell Google about patents they’re willing to sell at a price they set. As soon as the portal closes, we’ll review all the submissions, and let the submitters know whether we’re interested in buying their patents by June 26, 2015. If we contact you about purchasing your patent, we’ll work through some additional diligence with you and look to close a transaction in short order. We anticipate everyone we transact with getting paid by late August."

Google Public Policy Blog

2015 could be the year US Congress takes action on patent trolls

There's a growing problem with patent trolls, the companies that create no products of their own but earn money threatening other companies with patent lawsuits. The problem has become so widespread that even low-tech companies like restaurants and grocery stores have begun lobbying Congress to do something about it. Now Congress could be on the verge of taking action. On Friday, a Senate aide close to the negotiations told me that a bipartisan group of senators is "very close" to introducing legislation with broad support in the Senate.

Vox

Chinese High Court Returns Zhizhen's patent to SIPO

This has been reported on a number of different media site as Apple winning, but this report makes it seem that it has only been returned to SIPO for re-evaluation. Certainly a plus for Apple but if correct then the fight's not over yet.

"Apple was sued in 2012 over these allegations, which prompted it to file a petition in the State Intellectual Property Office of the People's Republic of China (SIPO). Initially, the case seemed to be in favor of Zhizhen but it was until the last week, when the court asked the SIPO to further probe into the authenticity of the Zhizhen’s patent. "

Technews Today

Rebuttal of John Oliver on patents

A few days back John Oliver's segment on Patents was being reported all across the web. Michael Gulliford of Soryn IP Group, a patent advisory company has written a rebuttal.

"Indeed, if Mr. Oliver wanted to tell the real story of today’s patent world, he would have had plenty of good material. Instead of relying on litigation statistics from 2012, for instance, he could have explained how current patent reform, in making it so much easier and significantly cheaper for defendants to win patent cases, has already caused litigation filings to drop markedly in 2014. After all, no one likes losing money, least of all NPEs.


"At the end of Mr. Oliver’s admittedly humorous diatribe, we learn his real motivation: passage of the Innovation Act (HR 9) — the patent reform bill currently pending in the House that would no doubt benefit Mr. Oliver’s employers.

"But even here, Mr. Oliver strongly misses the mark. It is not trial lawyers who are blocking the Innovation Act, as Mr. Oliver claims. Rather, it is a large swath of the technology community — from universities, to technology companies, to small businesses, to professors, and even venture capitalists — who understand that many innovators are now at a breaking point when it comes to patent rights and that the potential for further unintended consequences via additional reform is just too great."

Full article at IP Watchdog

U.S. Patent Filings Rising Again, After Brief Dip

USA Patent litigation is once again on the rise after what now appears to be an only temporary dip in 2014. There were 1,443 patent filings in the first quarter this year, according to an analysis by Unified Patents, which hand sorts out duplicate filings. Unified is an advocacy organization with the stated goal of deterring frivolous patent litigation.

If present trends continue, there would be an estimated 5772 filings for calendar 2015, a 15% increase over the previous year, when Unified reported there were 5,002 suits.

Patent litigation filings have been up and down in recent years, with a record high of more than 6,000 filings in 2013. In 2014, however, patent litigation declined slightly for a variety of reasons.

Big Law Business

Trend Micro Vindicated in U.S. District Court Ruling on Patent Infringement Claims by Intellectual Ventures

Trend Micro announced Wednesday that Judge Leonard Stark for the U.S. District Court of Delaware invalidated two Intellectual Ventures patents that have been asserted against Trend Micro since 2010. Judge Stark ruled that the patents were too abstract and not patent eligible. Trend Micro applauds the court’s decision which voids the need for a trial in early May.

“At Trend Micro, we recognize how important patent rights are for companies who invest millions of dollars in research and development, in addition to the human capital required to create innovative products in a competitive industry like software security,” said Eva Chen, CEO, Trend Micro. “We respect the judge’s decision that patents should protect new, original thinking and generic or abstract ideas do not become patentable merely because they are embodied in software. This validation is positive for our entire industry.”

Intellectual Ventures sued Trend Micro in 2010, seeking $150 million for its alleged infringement of U.S. Patents 6,460,050 (‘050) and 6,073,142 (‘142), along with two other patents that are no longer being asserted against Trend Micro. The ‘050 patent concerns generation of a digital identifier for email messages through a method of filtering. The ‘142 patent describes an “automated post office” which allows for the analyzing and filtering of vetted emails recognized to be unsafe.

Business Wire

The Basics Of Open Patent Licensing

A new trio of open patent licenses can help encourage innovation, discourage patent trolls and help companies attract top engineering talent. These licenses aren’t just for open-source romantics. They are practical legal tools used by software companies like Google, Twitter and Dropbox. Last month, Eric Adler gathered a panel of experts at General Assembly in NYC to talk about open patent licenses. Here’s what he learned.

TechCrunch

Software to automate patent application process launched by startup

Patent Navigation this week launched TurboPatent, a cloud-based tool that automates the patent application production and prosecution process and is designed to minimize time, expenses, and mistakes for attorneys who prepare patent applications.

The idea is to allow lawyers to focus on drafting robust claims, rather than tasks like formatting or document preparation, for example. The company said it is “doing for the patent attorney what CAD did for the architect.”

“Unlike so many other professions, patent attorneys have not had an automated solution,” CEO James Billmaier said in a statement. “Think about it — no architectural or engineering firm could remain competitive without utilizing CAD tools. We want legal professionals to benefit from automation tools in the same way.”

GeekWire

John Oliver: Innovation Act vs Strong patents act

"It’s great that John Oliver brought the subject of patent trolls, about which IPWatchdog has already produced some considerable coverage, to an audience that topped 1.4 million viewers. But there are a significant number of stakeholders in the ongoing patent debate who are not in favor of the Innovation Act and they’re not, as John Oliver would have you believe, simply lobbyists for trial lawyers. For example, the Innovation Alliance, which is made up of innovator companies, does not support the Innovation Act. Neither do independent inventor groups, independent inventors, innovative startup companies, biotechnology companies or universities. If John Oliver is for helping small business victims of patent trolls while preserving patent rights he should actually be promoting the STRONG Patents Act and not the Innovation Act.

"Much of the small business community that Oliver purports to be speaking for is in favor of the STRONG Patents Act instead of the Innovation Act."

IPWatchdog.com

U.S. judge cancels patents on eve of Trend Micro trial

A U.S. judge has invalidated two patents owned by Intellectual Ventures just weeks before its lawsuit against Japanese security software provider Trend Micro Inc over the same patents was set to go to trial. U.S. District Judge Leonard Stark in Delaware said on Wednesday the two patents were too abstract to deserve legal protection. The ruling likely means Intellectual Ventures' infringement trial with Trend Micro will not proceed.

Reuters

Trolling for an Inventive Method for Patent Enforcement

Much of the discussion of the “patent troll” surrounds how exactly a “patent troll” is defined. Some refer to patent trolls as “non-practicing entities,” and others to “patent assertion entities.” These sound in the media like lazy, menacing, evil, money-grubbing corporate shells waiting for their crossing fee from under the bridge – and surely there are some of those. But that “patent troll” definition can also appear as an independent inventor who doesn’t make, use, or sell his invention. Maybe that inventor’s idea was stolen by another company that now makes, uses, or sells it. Before filing a lawsuit, he may set up a corporate entity to hold the asset to help protect him from personal liability or fund the litigation. Patent litigation is expensive and shouldn’t that right be afforded to everyone? Otherwise wouldn’t the Apples and the Samsungs be the only ones skating in the rocket docket of Marshall, TX? We need to think very carefully about how we define “patent troll” before we try to make it unjustly hard for so-called trolls to litigate.

Much more at Winthrop and Weinstine

Techdirt Podcast Episode 21: How The Patent System Can Be Fixed

Last week, podcast co-host and patent attorney Hersh Reddy helped [Techdirt] navigate the many ways in which the patent system is broken. This week, we turn our attentions to the ways in which it might be fixed, whether by small changes or sweeping reforms.

For music, they've got more of Destroy All Patent Trolls by Jonathan Mann (CC-BY).

Techdirt

Apple wins voice recognition patent case in China

The patent infringement dispute between Apple and Zhizhen goes back to June 2012, when Zhizhen, developer of speech recognition technology Xiao i Robot, filed a case against Apple for infringement of intellectual property rights, claiming that Siri technology violates its patent for "a type of instant messaging chat robot system."

Xiao i Robot, which began in 2003 as a chat bot for MSN, Yahoo Messenger and other chat programs, has expanded to iOS and Android, where it bears a striking resemblence to Siri.

At the same time, Apple applied to the Patent Review Committee under the State Intellectual Property Office to invalidate the Xiao i Robot patent. When the committee supported Xiao i Robot, the US-based tech giant sued the committee and the Shanghai company.

Full Story at The Economic Times

[As I found multiple copies online, I believe this story is syndicated. As this seems to be a major news site I presume I'm crediting a legitimate reprint -- Bruce Clement]

US software copyright registration is game changer

Israeli website Globes English published this claim that US copyright is an alternative to patent registration:

"Every Israeli software company should protect their software with registered US copyrights, says Adv. Mitchell Shelowitz.

"Global software leaders, Including Oracle, Sony, Adobe, Microsoft, SAP, Apple, and Amazon recognize the importance of US software copyrights and have registered thousands. Every Israeli software company should also protect their software with registered US copyrights.

" While Israeli companies are leaders in encryption, network protection, and cyber security, many companies do not realize that their most valuable software assets are dangerously exposed to theft and misuse. Due to a confluence of very recent events, the US legal landscape for software protection has been completely reshuffled - placing US copyrights as the vanguard for software protection."

Globes English

How east Texas became the epicenter for 'patent troll' lawsuits

Of the 4,070 patent lawsuits filed in the USA in 2012, 3,000 of them were of the trolling kind. East Texas seems to be a particular popular spot for these types of cases. Apple alone has been sued 84 times in area patent courts in the last six years, Chron.com reported in March.

A quarter of all patent cases are filed in the East Texas city of Marshall, according to Last Week Tonight. But this is not a community of regular Einsteins.

Patent holders have a higher winning percentage here than in other parts of the country (Most cases are settled out of court since it costs millions of dollars to defend a patent suit). The number of patent infringement cases in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Texas has skyrocketed since 2002.

Full article in Houston Chronicle

Patent trolls are out of control. John Oliver explains why.

This is currently all over the internet. Heres' a couple of references to it.

"If you’re creating a new technology or have a business idea beware. Patent trolls are everywhere.

"HBO’s Last Week Tonight with John Oliver took on the world of companies that fish for other companies to sue for infringing on their patents, or, as Oliver puts it, “legally binding dibs,” in this segment on “patent trolls.”"

Geekwire

 

"A lot of people have credited a John Oliver segment for catalyzing a successful grassroots effort to get the Federal Communications Commission to institute strong network neutrality rules back in February. In yesterday's show, Oliver tried to get the same results with another tech policy issue: patent trolls and the broad software patents they use to shake down the American economy. "

Vox.com

Synopsys Request for Stay of Injunction Denied in Emulator Patent Case

United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit has denied a motion by Synopsys for a stay, pending appeal, of the injunction issued by an Oregon federal district court against Synopsys emulators. The injunction, issued March 12, prohibits Synopsys, Inc. from making, using, selling, offering to sell, licensing or leasing in the United States any emulators or software that incorporate Mentor Graphics' patented emulation technology covered by U.S. Patent No. 6,240,376.

PRNewswire

Open source patent protection extended to popular software

OIN (the Open Invention Network) has announced important changes to its definition of what constitutes “the Linux system."

Licensing community participants were advised yesterday that, as of June 25, the Linux System Definition will include more than 100 new packages and updated versions of nearly 70 existing ones. This refresh brings Docker, Puppet, Nginx, the Ceph storage system, and the full LibreOffice suite under the OIN umbrella, as well as the Debian packaging tool APT, the Java build manager Maven, the reference implementations of the Go and Lua languages, and a number of other development tools and libraries. Coverage for Red Hat’s OpenShift project will also be significantly enhanced.

Simon Phipps, InfoWorld

U.S. patent chief in Detroit: We'll get faster

Michelle Lee, the new director of the U.S. Patent and Trademark Workplace and undersecretary of commerce for intellectual house, stated the agency is aiming to be more responsive to tech organizations that are searching for patents.

USPTO's aim, she stated, is to provide patent decisions within an average of 20 months by 2019. It at present can take years for patent applications to make their way by means of the system, an excruciating delay for businesses that have to have patents to introduce new merchandise and add jobs.
"We do recognize that it is critically critical that providers get their intellectual property rights swiftly so that you can take venture capital funding and enter the markets,"

Statesmannews.com

Drafting US Software Patents Post-Alice

It has been a challenging year for software patent owners following the US Supreme Court’s decision in Alice Corp. v. CLS Bank International.

Since then, a large number of software patents have been invalidated in the US courts. So what should inventors do if they are seeking to file a patent in today’s legal environment?

In this video, Robins Kaplan LLP attorneys Seth Northrop and Sam Walling discuss the current state of affairs and offer some advice.

Source

Tech giants complain about US ITC misuse by trolls

 A consortium of tech giants have written to senior US politicians demanding a reform of the International Trade Commission, one of America's key federal watchdogs.

The business goliaths, represented by the ITC Working Group, claim patent trolls are unfairly using the commission to extract money from their coffers, and hamper innovation. The letter – signed by Google, Intel, Apple, Cisco, and 16 others – takes issue with Section 337 of the Tariff Act of 1930: this piece of law is routinely used by patent trolls.

It sounds rich hearing Intel, Apple, Cisco and others complaining – of all people – about organizations being outrageously litigious with patents. The tech world loves using patents to destroy upstarts or force them into an acquihire deal. Their beef appears to be that patent trolls don't actually make or design anything, as if they are unworthy opponents.

Full article at El Reg

Apple ramps up patent portfolio to take on Samsung

Apple has grown its US patent portfolio by 25 per cent every year for the last three years, new figures have revealed.

According to the US Patent 100, an annual ranking of the world’s biggest US patent portfolios, Apple has seen the biggest percentage increase in portfolio size over a three year period, and now owns 10,942 patents. Samsung, meanwhile, owns over 55,000 US patents – more than any other entity.

Telegraph

Fighting for Patent Reform in Washington, D.C.

The main focus: Defend Innovation, Electronic Freedom Foundation's newest report on the broken US patent system.

This report is more than just EFF’s ideas for patent reform. It’s the result of more than two years of research, interviews, and data collection. They surveyed the concerns of software developers, entrepreneurs, legal professionals, students, and everyday technology users affected by the current patent system. They held town halls at major tech companies in Silicon Valley and interviewed individual programmers, and we launched a petition where users could submit comments and share their feedback on proposals to address these issues. Over 16,500 people spoke up.

All of this research culminated in over thirty pages that highlight just how broken the current patent system is: not only does it create a chilling effect on innovation and new technologies—exactly opposite of its claimed goal—but it is readily abused by bad actors and patent trolls.

Full article at Electronic Frontier Foundation

Apple Patents method to automatically broadcast updates

Deny that its the end of  privacy as much as they like but this is a really scary innovation by Apple who added another new patent to its ever increasing patent portfolio. Granted by the USPTO, the patent describes a software option which would analyze factors such as your time zone, battery percentage, location, phone sound profile and network signal strength to automatically determine your call availability, and then transmit your status to your friends.

Full Article at technewstoday.com

Microsoft Cuts Android Patent Fee To Attract Vendors To Pre-install Android Apps

Microsoft has made an offer to vendors in Taiwan and China to pre-install its application software such as Skype and Office programs like Word, Excel PowerPoint and OneDrive, on their Android devices, in exchange offering discounts on the patent licensing fees. On March 23, Microsoft signed an agreement with almost 11 vendors around the globe for pre-installation of its application softwares and now they have to pay fees for shipment of every Android based devices.

After the patent fees agreement, Microsoft patent licensing fees have grown remarkably, as the demand for Android devices shipments is rising. The discount given to Android products is a step towards increasing the usage of Microsoft application in the mobile devices.

Full Article: Larry Darrell at Bidness Etc

Facebook modifies patent grant

After widespread criticism of the termination language in its patent grant, Facebook has removed the worst excesses.

Late Friday, Facebook announced it's finally giving in to pressure from the open source community and fixed its open source patent grant. While most people felt the intent was good and welcomed the original version of the grant, it was worded in such a way as to give Facebook a significant legal advantage in any open source community where it was the initiator.

Full article Simon Phipps, InfoWorld

Zimbabwe Met Service to Patent Climate Software

Climsoft Climate Software is a data management system which was
designed by experts at the Zimbabwe Meteorological Services Department.

The software brings data from multiple sources together and formats it so that it can easily be accessible not only by the Met Dept but by other end users who include aviation,agriculture and other sectors.


Climsoft is currently being used by 27 countries in Africa, 10 in Asia, eight in the Caribbean and 12 countries in the Pacific.

Zimbabwe is the only developing country in the world that has developed such software for the world and is now moving to patent the software.

Met Dept director Dr Amos Makarau said "This week we were discussing how to patent the software. Our developers have been to ARIPO to start the process of patenting the Climsoft software.

"The idea came about following attempts by some developed countries
to high-jack the software and patent it as if they developed it."

 Full Article at allAfrica.com

USPTO’s examples for patent eligibility examined

"The second installment of a three-part series examining the USPTO's Interim Guidance on Patent Subject Matter Eligibility. The first installment describes the Interim Guidelines' implementation of the Supreme Court's two-part test for determining patent eligibility. Now, we will review examples published by the USPTO of patent-eligible and patent-ineligible claims."

"When the Supreme Court issued its decision in Alice, many believed the decision spelled the end of software patents. However, the examples provide several samples of how software-related patents may be patent-eligible."

Full Article: Ryan M. Corbett, Inside Counsel

Retroactive changes to patent eligibility law

"Understand that there is no such thing as a quick, cheap and easy software patent any more. Perhaps there never should have been, but you really cannot blame patent attorneys for writing software patent applications in ways that explained software as a method.

"Yes, it is now clear that Courts, particularly the Supreme Court, will not allow software method claims. But if we want to be intellectually honest software is best described as a method. Software is not an abstract idea, and it is not some product of nature. Software instructs a machine to operate in a specific way to accomplish a specific task. The fact that judges cannot understand the nature of software doesn’t change the reality that software is best understood by a method."

Full Article by Gene Quinn, IP Watchdog 6 April 2015.

EFF Busts Podcasting Patent, Invalidating Key Claims at US Patent Office

The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) invalidated key claims in the so-called “podcasting patent” today after a petition for review from the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF)—a decision that significantly curtails the ability of a patent troll to threaten podcasters big and small.

“We have a lot to celebrate here,” said EFF Staff Attorney Vera Ranieri. “But unfortunately, our work to protect podcasting is not done. Personal Audio continues to seek patents related to podcasting. We will continue to fight for podcasters, and we hope the Patent Office does not give them any more weapons to shake down small podcasters.”

EFF partnered with attorneys working pro bono and the Cyberlaw Clinic at Harvard's Berkman Center for Internet and Society to craft the petition for review with the USPTO.

Electronic Frontier Foundation

Telecoms Firms Lead WIPO International Patent Filings

"Three telecoms giants from China and the United States led international patent filing activity via WIPO in 2014, a fifth consecutive record-breaking year amid overall growth in the Organization’s global intellectual property services.

"Together, China and the U.S. accounted for 87% of the total growth in filings under WIPO’s Patent Cooperation Treaty (PCT), which saw some 215,000 applications in 2014, a 4.5% increase over the previous year. In a significant development, the U.S. became the biggest filer of international trademark applications under WIPO’s Madrid System."

Full article WIPO

Pubblished on Software Patents 11 April 2015

US patent office rejecting a lot more software patents

"A June US Supreme Court decision on the legality of software patents has been sending shockwaves through their legal system. The case, called Alice v. CLS Bank, has led to a bunch of lower court decisions invalidating software patents. It may also have been responsible for September's sharp decline in patent lawsuits."

Vox

Anti patent troll group thrives

"Remember the Open Invention Network (OIN)? That's the defensive software patent community set up to protect Linux against patent aggressors. Well, it recently passed 1,000 members, growing nearly 70 percent over the last year."

Simon Phipps InfoWorld

US Cracking Down on Software Patents

Press release by Fenwick and West who appear to be IP lawyers in the USA
"The patents unanimously struck down by the Court were for an electronic escrow service for online securities sales. The Supreme Court ruled that an abstract idea like escrow, which has been around for hundreds of years, does not become patent eligible simply by being executed online. Since then, the USPTO has drawn a much tougher line regarding similar patent claims."

They continue talking about how recent changes have made US patent rules more like those of Europe.

Software patents are crumbling in USA

Timothy Lee has written an article on the Vox blog about how US court rulings are now invalidating a whole class of software patents.

"These rulings might seem like common sense, but it's important to remember that every single one of these patents was examined and approved [...] because until recently, this kind of "invention" was considered eligible for patent protection. The patent office has issued hundreds of thousands of software patents over the last two decades, and many of them look like this.

"But now the courts are sending a pretty clear message: you can't take a commonplace human activity, do it with a computer, and call that a patentable invention."

Vox

Magical Drug Wins EFF’s Stupid Patent of the Month

"Good news everyone! The US Patent Office has granted a patent on a cure for cancer. Last December, the Patent Office issued Patent No. 8,609,158 on a “potent drug” that “rebukes cancer, cancer cells, and kills cancer.”

"According to the patent, this drug cures a litany of other maladies. What is this wonderful invention, you ask? It is a combination of “evening primrose oil, rice, sesame seeds, green beans, coffee, meat, cheese, milk, green tea extract, evening primrose seeds, and wine.”

"The patent examiner could and should have rejected it on any number of grounds, including enablement, indefiniteness, and utility."

Simon Phipps Electronic Frontier Foundation

(EFF uses CC by 3.0 us for its blogs)

Software patent debate heats up in Brazil

Although they can't agree what the problems are,both sides of the debate admit that there are big problems with the US system. Now to prove that some people never learn he Brazilian patent office want to make Brazilian patent procedures to be like the US ones.

Article: Angelica Mari ZDNet

The Alice in Wonderland En Banc Decision

After the Federal Circuit issued its en banc decision on May 10, 2013 in CLS Bank v. Alice Corp, the patent owner Alice Corp must be feeling like Alice in Alice in Wonderland, bewildered and frightened by the fantastical situation in which they find themselves.

IPWatchdog.com

AskPatents.com: A Stack Exchange To Prevent Bad Patents

Ask Patents is a new Stack Exchange site launching [20 September 2012] that allows anyone to participate in the patent examination process. It’s a collaborative effort, supported by Stack Exchange, the US Patent and Trademark Office, and the Google Patent Search team. It’s very exciting, because it is opening up a process that has been conducted behind closed doors for over 200 years.

Source: Stack Exchange Blog

The Problem With Software Patents

Elia Freeman writes

"Patents do not lead to innovation. In fact, I would argue that patents cause a dearth of (again, software) innovation. Software is always built in layers. One guy’s idea is used to generate the next set of ideas, of which the next guy builds on. Interested in Twitter? What if SMS had been patented. Or instant messaging. You’d never had seen it. How about Facebook? What if News Corp had patented the timeline for MySpace. There is very little invention in the software space. Almost all has some lineage to something that came before, physical or otherwise."

Source Elia Insider

Open Source Society pleads Patents Bill amendment

There is still an opportunity to defuse a simmering dispute over the future status of software patents, the president of the New Zealand Open Source Society, David Lane, said after meeting with government officials.

 Lane met yesterday with officials from the Business, Innovation and Employment and Foreign and Trade ministries and said he was convinced they had the "best intentions". Commerce Minister Craig Foss disappointed large tracks of the software industry last month when he announced the Government would amend the Patents Bill.

Source Stuff.co.nz

Richard Stallman "The Danger of Software Patents"

Richard Stallman will explain how software patents obstruct software development. Software patents are patents that cover software ideas. They restrict the development of software, so that every design decision brings a risk of getting sued. Patents in other fields restrict factories, but software patents restrict every computer user. Economic research shows that they even retard progress.

Location Paris, France - Ecole Supérieure de Management à Paris - Groupe ESA (ESIAE) - 9 rue Vesale - 75005 Paris, Franc

Source Free Software Foundation

The [New Zealand] Patents Bill

The intent of the bill has been that software not be patentable. This is the case in Europe, and there is a lot of evidence that software patents have been stifling innovation, not fostering it. Actual software code can be copyrighted, but under the proposed law change, software will not longer be patentable. This is welcome by most of the local ICT industry. It stops patent trolls and the like.

However some NZ companies such as Fisher & Paykel Appliances said that software embedded in an appliance should still be patentable. The select committee and the Government agreed to this. The problem has been how to define it.

Source Kiwiblog

Santa Clara Law: 2012 Solutions to the Software Patent Problem

Normally, an academic-oriented conference would debate the merits of software patents. This conference is different. Rather than having another debate, this conference will use a premise--that software patents are a problem--as a springboard for discussing ways to address those problems. In rapid succession, patent experts at the conference will present innovative proposals (ranging from abolishing software patents to company/industry self-help), debate their relative merits, and discuss how they might be implemented.

To extend the discussion, many of the speakers and other interested experts will publish short essays in Wired.com describing their proposed solution and advocating for its adoption. We hope conference attendees and Wired.com readers will embrace the best proposals and catalyze real action towards solving the software patent problem.

Organizers: Santa Clara Law Professors Colleen Chien and Eric Goldman

Source Santa Clara Law

Mobilisation against the return of software patents in Europe

In the next few days, the legal affairs (JURI) Committee of the European Parliament will discuss on the next actions regarding the project for a unitary patent. Behind what looks like a technical text lies a crucial issue: who decides on what is patentable and what is not.

As software patents are coming back in international news with the Apple/Samsung case, we need to ensure that such aberrations cannot happen in Europe. April calls for a general mobilisation to contact all MEPs, so that the European Parliament finally tackles the issue of the software patentability.

Source  April.org

Online petition against software patents in New Zealand

A group of New Zealand software developers lave launched an on-line petition against the proposed change to the patent bill.

The Problem


In 2010, a Select Committee unanimously recommended that software be excluded from patentability. Clause 10A(1) of the Patents Bill will achieve this.



Unfortunately, the Government has decided to add clause 10A(2) at the last minute. While intended to preserve the availability of patents for inventions containing embedded software, this clause actually undermines the intended exclusion of software patents.


The Remedy





In order to preserve the exclusion of software patents, but still preserve patents for inventions containing embedded software, we request the following replacement for clause 10A(2) of the Patents Bill:


Take Action


If you agree with the proposed remedy, and you are a New Zealander-based software developer or a supporter, please add your signature to the list using the form [on their site].

Source: No Software Patents in NZ

"Clueless" Minister stifles software sector - New Zealand Labour Party

Our growing innovative software industry has been dealt a cruel blow which will compromise and stifle its potential, says Clare Curran, Labour’s communications and IT spokesperson.
The National Government’s decision to open the door to the patenting of computer software winds back a simple but vital change to our little known patent law, which has undergone its first review since 1953.

Craig Foss’s decision is a major back-down on the stance taken by the previous Commerce Minister Simon Power to back the unanimous decision of the Commerce Select Committee, following clear advice from officials.

The Patents Bill proposed to exclude computer software from being patentable, because like books, movies or music, it can be protected under copyright law. This was a ground-breaking position which has been generally applauded by the burgeoning New Zealand ICT sector.

The Select Committee accepted that new software inventions are regularly built on existing software, and that software patents were often granted for “trivial or existing techniques.”
The Committee found that using intellectual property in a fair and reasonable manner would promote Kiwi innovation and build advanced industries.

“The last minute amendment by the Government so that software “as such” can’t be patented, but inventions that include software can be, opens the door to widespread patenting of software.  The Minister has caved in to pressure from big corporations which fear competition from smaller players.
“That’s a slap in the face to the local industry, and many innovative Kiwi software firms will now face real challenges to develop new software.

“The Minister should have stuck to his predecessor’s plan to get the Intellectual Property Office to develop guidelines for inventions that involves ‘embedded software’, or software that is built into a physical device.  That would have been a reasonable solution which would have promoted innovation in one of New Zealand’s emerging industries.

“Labour’s policy is to enact and implement the Patent Bill excluding computer software. That will give our software innovators the best chance to succeed,” says Clare Curran.

Source New Zealand Labour Party released under Creative Commons licence CC BY ND NZ

Guess who supports [the NZOSS] fix to the Patents Bill?

"As you probably all know, Fisher & Paykel Appliances (FPA) has been the only prominent NZ company opposing the Patents Bill, on the grounds that it might prevent patents on its appliances containing embedded software. That may be a reasonable concern, although not one that was ever a real risk. But unfortunately, instead of suggesting an express carve-out for embedded software to allay that concern, some patent attorneys have instead used the claimed "threat" to FPA to demand that the entire software patent exclusion be scrapped."

According to an OIA request, all they were really asking for was a specific exclusion for embedded software from the general exclusion

"Clause 15(3A) should be amended to include an express "carve out" to allow patents for "embedded systems", such as programmed controllers for washing machines, dishwashers, refrigerators and other whiteware."

Source NZOSS-Openchat

EU unitary patent and Unified Patent Court - software patents wiki (en.swpat.org)

The European Union patent with unitary effect and the Unified Patent Court are two parts of an EU proposal which takes competence for patent cases away from the national courts and transfers it to a new pro-patent court with no independent appeal system for its rulings. One expected outcome is that software patents may become enforceable throughout the European Union. The stated aim is to unify Europe's patent systems.

The proposal also involves creating a single patent which would be valid in many EU member states, without translation. This proposal took over from the Community Patent since the Lisbon Treaty and is often called the EU patent or the unitary patent.

As of August 2012, Spain and Italy continue to reject the proposals and the EU intends thus to make them binding in only the other 25 member states.

Source Software Patents Wiki

Blame a dysfunctional patent system for Apple vs. Samsung verdict

 Whether you think that Apple is already too big for its britches or that Samsung deserved to get slammed for $1 billion by a Silicon Valley jury last week for infringing on the iPhone design, there's no doubt where the blame for this corporate firefight lies. The guilty party is the U.S. Patent Office.

Actually, that's a bit unfair. The Patent and Trademark Office, as it's formally known, is understaffed and underfunded and not especially up to the task of judging increasingly complex patent applications. But the real problem is in the law, which utterly has failed to keep up with realities of technology and the marketplace.

Source L A Times

New Zealand bans software patents, but with a few loopholes

Whether or not the patent system is actually helpful in its current form, we leave to the legal and technical experts. But here’s a jurisdiction that has taken quite a radical approach: New Zealand. ZDNet reports that the New Zealand government is moving ahead with plans to ban software patents.

[A] memoradum that explains the Patents Bill amendment states the following:

Rather than excluding a computer program from being a patentable invention, new clause 10A clarifies that a computer program is not an invention for the purposes of the Bill (and that this prevents anything from being an invention, only to the extent that a patent or an application relates to a computer program as such).

According to the New Zealand Open Source Society, the use of the phrase “as such” at the end of the memorandum has opened a loophole that can be easily exploited.

Source Android Authority

Meanwhile The Register is reporting

"New Zealand has passed legislation which partially forbids the granting of software patents – but has come under trenchant criticism by the NZ Open Source Society for abandoning local developers."

Source The Register

All other sources I've found, incuding the parliamentary order paper, are reporting that the law hasn't passed yet so it's highly likely that they have misinterpreted the situation.

Source NZ Parliament

SMX quits NZICT in protest over Patents Bill stance

SMX has publically resigned from NZICT this afternoon, following industry group's support of controversial changes to the Patents Bill.

"We feel that NZICT does not represent NZ software companies' interests, as its tier 1 membership, board and funding is derived from large off-shore companies or their local partners. These off-shore software companies have a huge amount invested in the software patent gravy train and in stifling local competition."

Computerworld New Zealand

Govt accused of Patent Bills 'betrayal'

The New Zealand Open Source Society reacted angrily to the [Patents] bill's new wording in a blog post. "With the removal of the explicit software patent exclusion, and the addition of two tiny words, 'as such', Foss has more or less thrown Kiwi software developers under a bus," it said. The minister might believe he had struck a "clever compromise", but the clarification represented "a legal loophole the size of a bus", it said.

Stuff.co.nz

New York Times stands up to patent troll.

The New York Times Co. is girding for a legal battle that many larger organisations have avoided. The Times is leading the defence of a diverse group of companies that use technology they assumed was free: sending text messages with Web links to mobile phones.

The technology was patented by inventor Richard J. Helferich, who filed an outline of how such a system would work with the US Patent and Trademark Office in September 1997. He was granted several patents on the method, giving him the right to sue companies that use it without permission.

NZ Herald

Google says "Patent Wars Not Helpful to Anyone"

At an Aspen conference in Mountain View, Calif., Pablo Chavez, Google’s public policy director, referred to the patent wars, saying that they are not helpful to the marketplace or to innovation. He further said that patent wars are not helpful to the consumers at all.

However, there are many who see this statement as a reaction to the social search giant’s ongoing legal battles with Oracle, which Google won at trial, and Apple, which is still pending. Software patents are getting too controversial in technology circles, where most of the companies are taking its rivals to courts for infringing each other patents.

Source Tech Thirsty

IBM, Microsoft, and the BSA Promote Software Patents in New Zealand Behind the Scenes | Techrights

Multinationals from the US, namely Intel, IBM [...], and of course Microsoft, have been lobbying for software patents in New Zealand. According to news from the site which is dedicated purely to fighting software patents, “[o]n May 7th and June 8th, 2010, Microsoft and IBM met privately with members of New Zealand’s Ministry of Economic Development (MED).

They claim to have convinced the Ministry to abandon plans to exclude software from patentability in the proposed Patents Bill. “There was also a private exchange of emails between the MED and Microsft, IBM, and the Business Software Alliance in the month before and after the meeting, where those three organisations submitted policy documents.”

Source Techrights

Programming A Computer Does Not Make A New Machine

Interesting argument that adding software to a machine (computer) does not create a new machine. It's a Groklaw page so there is significant discussion following.

"Most computer professionals would say the technical explanations given in Noll, Prater, Bernhart and WMS Gaming are incorrect from a computer science perspective. From the point of view of physical machine structure, no new machine is made when a computer is programmed.

"I am aware of the legal theory that a new machine is made because a new machine function is implemented. This is not the same explanation as the one found in the cases cited above but competent lawyers are telling me this explanation is legally correct. From the point of view of computer science, this explanation doesn't work any better than the other one. The technical evidence shows that programming a computer doesn't impart the computer with capabilities it doesn't already have absent the programming. "

Groklaw

Patenting non-tech ideas may get harder

In 2008, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office awarded Ultramercial with Patent No. 7,346,545, describing the process in which a consumer, rather than paying for a product like a video, may “choose to receive such products after viewing and/or interacting with an interposed sponsor’s or advertiser’s message.”

Ultramercial had applied for the patent in 2001. Last week, the Supreme Court set aside an earlier ruling by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit that had allowed Ultramercial’s patent and permitted the firm to pursue a lawsuit against WildTangent. The high court told the federal circuit to reconsider its decision.

Michelle Quinn POLITICO.com

Google Cleared in Oracle Patent Suit

"In a unanimous decision, 10 jurors agreed that Oracle had not proven any of its claims that Google infringed on Java software patents in the Android operating software for smartphones and tablet computers."

From IndustryWeek

Other comments

"I find it refreshing that in this trial, both the Judge and jury proved to be much smarter than the lawyers. Thompson and others on the jury asked pretty good questions, especially considering most had no technical background at all. The judge (the Hon. William Alsup) revealed he was something of a developer himself and scoffed at some of Oracle’s arguments about the mysterious invention known as the “range check”. If you ask me, all software patent trials should be held in California from now on instead of East Texas."

Ed Burnette on ZDNet

Sydney IP Forum Software Patents - IP Australia

Event sponsored by  the Australian Government's IP Australia.

 Do software patents encourage or hinder innovation?

 

IP Australia invites you to attend the IP Forum at Sydney Marriott Hotel on 16 May 2012 to hear Australian Inventor, Ric Richardson speak about his experiences with the patents system. Ric’s epic battle with Microsoft was recently resolved in an out of court settlement with royalties on an estimated turnover of US$19 billion for its XP and Office software.

 

Other speakers include; Ben Sturmfels, principle of Sturm (a free software development agency), and Philip Spann, Deputy Commissioner of Patents at IP Australia.

 

This free forum includes lunch and the opportunity to ask questions, and network with IP professionals, industry representatives and members of IP Australia’s Executive. Journalists are welcome.

IP Australia

Where are the jobs? Ask the patent trolls.

The President is mistaken—at least when it comes to the patent system as it relates to software patents. These patents—and the patent system—aren't creating innovation, they are inhibiting it and, by extension, job creation.

[...]

repeat patent plaintiffs — “those who sue eight or more times on the same patents…are responsible for a sizeable fraction of all patent lawsuits.” Indeed, 106 out of roughly 1 million patents (or .0001 percent) in force were responsible for more than 10 percent of all patent assertions. This isn’t based on the strengths of the patents; many of these are among the weakest and least defensible

Full story at The Washington Post

Software Patent Searching Doesn't Scale

Nathan Myhrvold, the Microsoft veteran who founded the patent-trolling giant Intellectual Ventures, is right that patent infringement is rampant among software firms. But in demanding that this infringement stop, Myhrvold isn't just declaring war on what he regards as Silicon Valley's patent-hostile culture. He's declaring war on the laws of mathematics. The legal research required for all software-producing firms to stop infringing patents would cost more than the entire revenue of the software industry. Even if firms were willing to pay the bill, there simply aren't enough patent lawyers to do the work. Firms infringe software patents because they don't have any other choice. [...] Why is software different from real estate? In a new paper, we argue the fundamental difference is a matter of scalability: how much effort it takes to discover who owns an invention—or a piece of land—as the number of patents or land parcels increases. Property rights in land scale well because parcels exist in relatively well-defined locations on a two-dimensional plane. County officials take advantage of this fact to store records in a predictable order (or, more recently, to build databases searchable by geographical location). Geographical locations serve as an "index" for real property claims, so record-keepers can find any specific file quickly no matter how many files there are.
From Ars Technica

IP: Revenge of the Humans—Defending Business Method Patents

From last August Inside Counsel:

"If you can practice the claimed method without the claimed machine, then the claimed machine is irrelevant and the claimed method isn’t patentable." ... "The next time your company stares down the barrel of a software or business method patent, ask if the claimed method can be performed by a human being without the claimed machine. You might need to be a Kasparov to do it, but that’s still checkmate against the plaintiff"

NASA to auction off software patents

The NASA Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC) has announced plans to auction off a number of its advanced software patents at the fifteenth ICAP Ocean Tomo IP Auction in California. Originally developed for control of satellite systems and other mission specific needs, these patent lots have a number of potential applications in software development, robotics, telecommunications, utilities, smart grids, wireless sensor networks, quantitative finance and cyber security. Patent lots fall into three categories: automated software generation, autonomic computing architectures and autonomic management of environmental monitoring systems FromComputerworld Other reports at PC Advisor and Techworld.

Software patents in Israel

Michael Factor writes in his blog The IP Factor:

"The long awaited guidelines regarding the patentability of software inventions in Israel have finally been published by the Israel Patent Authority.

In brief, it appears that the term ‘industrial application’ as required by section 3 of the Israel Patent Law 1967 may be fulfilled by patents in any field of technology."

Full article at the IP Factor

After the list of allowed inventions are by several examples of what is patentable.

And this is why Apple doesn't want to settle Android patent lawsuits | ZDNet

Deutsche Bank’s Chris Whitmore believes that a settlement would give Apple some $10 in revenue for each Android device sold, equating to some $35 to Apple’s share price. However, if Apple was able to capture 25% of Android future growth through halting distribution and forcing feature removal, that could be worth some $300 per extra handset sold, or a whopping $261 on top of Apple’s already buoyant share price.

Read more at ZDNet

Position of Software Patents in UK

The Law Information Portal of India has published this article on the main patent law in the UK, the Patent Act, 1977, and decisions regarding patentability of software under this law and the European convention on patents. The essay seems to be written as a background briefing for the benefit of non-UK lawyers. Read more

Infographic: The Problem With Patents

The Frugal Dad blog posted this infographic on software patents it discusses some facts of the patent industry and how it’s changed as software, technology, and the internet have developed.

Judge rules on contested evidence in Oracle-Google case

CIO Magazine is reporting that in a preliminary ruling before the Java IP trial, significant evidence both sides attempted to introduce has been ruled eitherr admisable or inadmissible.

Oracle and Google have both won and lost in a number of their efforts to keep evidence out of the upcoming trial in Oracle's lawsuit against Google over the Android mobile OS. At issue is whether Google has infringed on Oracle's intellectual property rights by using Java without properly licensing it.

CIO Magazine

I can only assume the witnesses will be required to swear "I promise to tell the such parts of truth as judge permits and nothing like the truth."

Microsoft patent on PVR Functions in Game Console

It completely eludes me how this isn't prior art. Microsoft's Xbox is a PC and PCs have been able to record digital video in the background for a long long time. Myth TV comes to mind.

A digital video recorder (DVR) application running alongside a television client component allows users to record media content on the gaming console. The DVR application also integrates itself with the console menu. Once integrated, users can record media content while playing games. Alternatively, users can record content when the gaming console is turned off.

Gizmodo UK

Canadian Patent Office Allows Amazon.com’s “one-click” Patent

The issuance of the “one-click” patent may be just what Amazon.com and the [Canadian] Patent office wanted. However, for members of the public who wanted the law related to business method and software patents clarified, it is a missed opportunity to have the Supreme Court weigh in on this critically important issue.

Barry Sookman

If you think software patents are bad enough.

Software patents are not the worst thing imaginable.

You've mentioned "one-click patent" - but it's not software patent, it's UI patent. UI patents are worse then software patents: where software patents are "useful in theory but not in practice" these (as well as business patents) are unconditionally evil.

They give no disclosure gain at all (because by necessity they are disclosed when they are actually used ..

[Read more at LWN.net]

FOSS developer's campaign against software patents moves ahead

Melbourne developer Ben Sturmfels is sure of one thing: his campaign to end them in their entirety will succeed in the long run.

He began with the collection of signatures last year to submit to federal parliament. In February, Sturmfels' petition was accepted by the government's Petitions Committee, in three batches. "Collecting 1000 signatures on paper is a hard task and a huge one in terms of the amount of paper needed," he said with a grin.

He argues that patents are not necessary to encourage innovation in their industry, that the term of a patent (20 years) is too long, and that the cost involved (in avoiding infringing patents, and defending against patent lawsuits) is not viable, particularly for small to medium-sized businesses.

Full Story at iTWire

Apple gets U.S. ban on HTC Android phones sales... for now | ZDNet

Apple gets U.S. ban on HTC Android phones sales... for now | ZDNet: This particular junk patent covers clicking a phone number on a phone list and your smartphone automatically dialing that number!

British Telecom joins patent attack on Google Android

BT joins patent attack on Google Android - Telegraph:

"In a broad complaint, BT claims that Google Maps, Google Music, Google Search, Android Market, location-based advertising and the Google social network all infringe its intellectual property. [...] “BT brings this action to recover the just compensation it is owed and to prevent Google from continuing to benefit from BT's inventions without authorization,” the court papers say."

That patents comment, The Gameshelf

Andrew Plotkin's "The Gameshelf" blog has a posting about the difference between having an idea and having a fully expressed idea as well as a number of other musings.

"The basis of our patent system is ensuring that innovators get paid." I came back with "That's the goal, not the basis", which was probably overcondensed. I was trying to point out that goals are not results. If the existing system isn't doing its job, the system is broken. In theory, you can't patent a naked idea; you have to put it in some kind of physical form. In practice, the boundaries between "idea" and "invention" have gotten very fuzzy; the physical form of software (or process, or a procedure) is irrelevant. Okay, that makes my quote fuzzy as well. The question, as several tweeters have pointed out, is obviousness -- or, the difference between the easy part and the hard part.

Full posting

US heavies NZ on software patents

Paul Matthews wrote this opinion piece for The National Business Review:

A pending international trade treaty could override a recent New Zealand law change that excluded software from patent protection. All the political parties supported the controversial change.

But the Trans Pacific Partnership Agreement (TPPA) could see the US pro-patent view override our local law makers.

Full Article

Essay about Software Patents

Long essay by Daniel Tunkelang

A Practical Rant about Software Patents: "As things stand today, software patents act as an innovation tax rather than as a catalyst for innovation. It may be possible to resolve the problems of software patents through aggressive reform, but it would be better to abolish software patents than to maintain the status quo." Read More...

He's very clear that he's opposed to software patents in their current form, and presents an overview on what is going on with software patenting today from his basic view point on how software patents are damaging innovation in software development.

The Threat Of Parallel Filing

Thoughtful article from Simon Phipps of Computerworld on how corporations hiring programmers get them to watch their innovation for ideas that could potentially be patented. "In the corporations where I have worked, programmers have been incented along with other engineers to constantly watch their work for ideas that could be encapsulated in a patent. This 'parallel filing' - developers doing work and filing patents on their innovations at the same time - results in the creation of a ring-fence around each activity in which the engineers participate." Full Article

Software Patent “Rant” Misses The Point

"Another day, another uniformed rant about the evils of “software patents.” The author quickly demonstrates a complete misunderstanding of the nature of NPE patent litigation[...] Examining this sentence by sentence, it’s easy to demonstrate what’s wrong here"

Patrick Anderson, the author of this blog takes a paragraph by a software patent opponent and deconstructs it sentence by sentence rebutting each point as he goes.

Full Article

Obama plans to reduce US patent issue delays

Silicon Valley Sleuth Reports that Obama plans a fundamental rethinking of software patents and a substantial speeding up of the US patent issuing process which currently takes a minimum of three years.

They say "The US government has announced plans to cut the amount of time it takes to get patents cleared by the US Patent and Trademark Office.[...] The new plan is to set up a fast-track system that will aim to get important patents issued within 12 months. A review process will also be set up to examine problems with existing patents without companies needing to resort to legal action." Full Article

US Justice Department investigates Web video group

Stephen Shankland at CNET News has reported that the US DOJ is investigating whether the actions of patent licensing group MPEG LA are stifling the Google VP8 video encoding technology. The problem seems to be that MPEG LA is actively seeking businesses with patents related to V8 to see if it can assemble a patent pool like the H264 pool. The complaint is that by publicly doing this, they are scaring businesses away from adopting V8 for fear that they may be faced with excessive royalty charges in the future and using this fear to unfairly force people to licence H.264.

There's a lot of background on the MPEG patents history and some interesting quotes from people who have previously attempted to break the H.264 licensing model

On2 (2002):

"'MPEG-4 is trying to monopolize the substantially software-based interactive video compression industry, plain and simple,' ... 'It is a move by a few very large companies to dominate a market and fix prices. Recent pricing policies by MPEG LA for MPEG-4, and the customer reaction to them are ample evidence of this.'"

Nero (2010):

"'Absolute power has corrupted MPEG LA absolutely,' said Nero, which makes CD- and DVD-burning software, in its complaint. 'Once MPEG LA obtained monopoly power in the relevant technology markets, it used that power to willfully maintain or extend its monopolies for years beyond their natural expiration...and administer its licenses in an unfair, unreasonable, and discriminatory manner that stifles competition and innovation, and harms consumers.'"

Article...

Christchurch Earthquake Community Response

Completely off-topic for this blog, but I'm a New Zealander and am trying to publicise this as widely as I can. A dedicated volunteer team of Internet people, programmers, web masters, and other computer savvy helpers have built the Christchurch Earthquake Community Response site to coordinate help efforts. If you need help or can offer help, please go there.

Glyn Moody Submission to UK Independent Review

In his Open Enterprise blog Glyn Moody has provided a late draft of his submission to the UK Independent Review of "IP" and Growth. Hecovers both software patents and digital copyright in his submission. The following is purely related to his points on Software patents. His submission includes:

"There are two central problems with software patents. First, software is essentially a series of algorithms - sets of computer operations; algorithms are purely mathematical techniques; which means that software patents are patents on mathematics - that is, pure knowledge. Attempts to frame software patents are being “applications” of this knowledge “in the real world” have failed dismally to draw any convincing dividing line between knowledge and its application, or between the “real world” and the digital one that exists inside computers. "The other problem is that software patents are often granted on key ideas that cannot be coded around. This creates a kind of choke hold on knowledge. The situation has got so bad that programmers no longer investigate whether their code infringes on software patents, since it is almost inevitable that it does - so many broad and trivial patents have now been granted around the world. Moreover, in the US penalties for infringement are trebled if there is “knowing” infringement, which leads to the ridiculous situation that it is better not to try to find out whether you are infringing."

His submission continues in a similar vein and concludes "to promote the UK computer industry, and encourage innovation here, software patents of all kinds should be eliminated"

Quora: Costs and benefits of patents for start-ups

Advice and experience from someone who's been there Ken Tola's answer to In what scenarios will software patents filed during the early stages of a startup become a defensive barrier?:

"patents and NDA's are only as good as your lawyers and your legal budgets. Having been involved in patent litigation, I can tell you that they are easily some of the most complex cases around and the uncertainty of winning a case is extremely high. "To go further down the negative path, it takes 2-3 years to get a patent and about $50K - do you really have that kind of money?"

It looks like his experience hasn't been that great but he sees them as a necessary evil to get early seed money.

Qualified support to draft patent guideline by NZOSS

The New Zealand Open Source Society was given a briefing by the IPONZ office of the MED and their president, Don Christie, says:

"When MED walked us through it, we found we were largely in agreement, we went into the meeting thinking software that merely improves the operation of the computer itself could be patented under the guideline.

"On careful reading, the guideline makes it clear that efficiency gains are only a relevant test for inventions containing embedded software, not the operation of general-purpose computers. The guideline also distinguishes physical effects from logical effects — merely transforming or displaying information is not a physical effect.

"NZOSS believes there is room to improve the guideline ..."

More...

Original released under a CC BY creative commons licence.

Why Software Patents are worse than useless

Kiwi software developer Dave Lane on Why Software Patents are worse than useless:

"MS had tried to submit the same patent in New Zealand after the applications were denied by the US, Europe, South African, and Japanese patent offices for being obvious and subject to prior art. They thought they could count on the incompetence of the NZ patent assessors - and they would've been right had it not been for our challenge! It was a disgusting and highly unethical move by Microsoft. But if we had only caught one, how many other trivial software patents (or those subject to prior art) had already been passed?"

Quite a long personal essay on his experience with Software patents, his opinions and his involvement in opposing them. This is pertinent as New Zealand is being lobbied by the USA which want it to adopt their Software Patenting system in place of the recent law that makes software essentially unpatentable.

Florian Mueller on Android Round 2

A few days ago I reported that Florian Müller had found some proprietary code in the Android code base and various bloggers from ZD Net and Ars Technica had disputed his claims.

Müller has now published a rebuttal of the ZD Net rebuttals. His claims broadly are

• He did find proprietary Oracle code with licences altered in the Android code,
• He did find this Oracle code in more than one Android device,
• He did not claim it was in every Android device,
• The counter arguments against his discovery are largely straw men.

 Müller has given links to where he found the code he considers infringing, so anyone wanting to verify his claims is able to do so.

The Oracle Android suit is about both patents and copyright. Müller is known as a software patent commentator, but Müller is only addressing the copyright issues in his post.  (That's not a criticism, just an observation).

Declining to have your name put on a software patent?

Interesting question over at Stack Exchange by Chase Seibert:

legal - How would you decline to have your name put on a software patent? - Programmers - Stack Exchange: "Your company wants to patent something you implemented. You do not agree with the concept of patenting software. How do you proceed?

• Would it be acceptable to file the patent, but keep your name off it?
• Would you attempt to convince your company to NOT file the patent?

Are there any downsides to having your name on a patent? "Read More

There's been a few answers so far, more showing opinion than anything else.

Florian Mueller on Android Patent Case

The blogs are all abuzz this morning on this blog posting by renown software patent expert and campaigner Florian Müller. The standard statement seems to be that his findings seriously weaken Google's defence against Oracle's patent claims over Android's Dalvik not-really-a-jvm jvm.

Müller himself doesn't seem to go that far. My reading of his blog posting is that what he has done is compare a number of source files and shown that Google's source files appear to be direct copies of Sun Java source files that were not  released by Sun / Oracle under an open source license that permits Google's use or relicensing. He also reports that it looks like someone has attempted to disguise this copying.

Oracle are suing Google over both patent and copyright for Android.  The facts  Müller reported would certainly have a bearing on the copyright claims. I can't see where Müller makes claims that his analysis could be directly relevant to the patent claim.

Update (23 Jan 2011 16:34 NZT)

Müller's analysis isn't uncontested. ZD Net blogger Ed Burnette has posted disputing the importance of the file copying Müller reported.  While fellow ZD Net blogger Adrian Kingsley-Hughes has updated his earlier posting to include a rebuttal from Android Central.

Meanwhile Müller through his twitter page @FOSSpatents has said that he he intends to post a follow-up article addressing points made by these articles. I'm not sure which of the articles he was referring to when he said "That article attacks strawmen put up by its author, and contains factual errors"

This looks like there is more to be said by both sides of the argument.

More details on Novell's software patents sale

Novell have filed this proxy statement with the US Securities and exchange commission, included in it are some details of the patent sale to CPTN (Microsoft, Apple, EMC Corporation and Oracle).

The issued patents and patent applications to be sold to CPTN pursuant to the Patent Purchase Agreement relate primarily to enterprise-level computer systems management software, enterprise-level file management and collaboration software in addition to patents relevant to our identity and security management business, although it is possible that certain of such issued patents and patent applications read on a range of different software products. Approximately 43% of these are US issued patents; approximately 30% are US patent applications; approximately 22% are foreign issued patents, and approximately 5% are foreign patent applications.

Historically, the issued patents and patent applications included in the patent sale have been used to facilitate and protect our current and planned business activities, and to reduce the risk of potential infringement claims against us. We do not currently license any of these issued patents and patent applications on a royalty-bearing basis, but the patents are subject to specific non-royalty bearing licenses granted by Novell during the period of its ownership of the patents.

There is a lot more detail in the filing surrounding the sale but precious little detail on the sold patents.

Quora Do software patents help or hurt innovation?

There's an interesting discussion at Quora, the question is "Do software patents help or hurt innovation?" and there are 7 substantive replies, many from IP lawyers and the majority view is that software patents are only advantageous for litigation lawyers. Well worth a read

Reply to "depth first search"

Software Patents : depth first search: "That the people behind the standard get (relatively low) fees seems both fair and a reasonable price to pay in terms of aligning incentives with the need to innovate in order to develop technologies for new markets. It’s hard to square these obvious benefits against somewhat nebulous objections of open source developers."

The problem isn't that open source developers don't like software patents. The problem is that open source developers are effectively unable to use patented technology. If you give your software away and allow other people to give away copies of your software and modify your software and give that away there

• Is no revenue stream to pay licence fees, no matter how small (on a unit basis)
• Is no central register from which a count of numbers of deployments can be made
• The end users of the software with whom you have no relationship may be exposed to patent claims

There are licences that allow the patent owner to offer free use of their patents, but they have to agree to waive all hope of an income from the patents to do that.

Seeking Stupid Software Patent Examples

Over on Google Groups, Linux advocate Kari Laine has posted a request for examples of stupid software patents, preferably from Microsoft, to be referenced in a paper opposed to software patents and the cross-licencing mania that leaves Open Source Software out in the cold.

Microsoft Patents Sudo? Groklaw

Groklaw reports.

Here it is, patent number7617530. Thanks, USPTO, for giving Microsoft, which is already a monopoly, a monopoly on something that's been in use since 1980 and wasn't invented by Microsoft. Here's Wikipedia's description of sudo, which you can meaningfully compare to Microsoft's description of its "invention".

Groklaw - Microsoft Patents Sudo?

The article contains a reprint of Wikipedia's summary of the history of the Unix (Linux, FreeBSD, Mac OS X) Sudo utility and claims that Microsoft's patent is bogus because of this prior art and that Microsoft must have known about Sudo.

NB: From 2009, but I only found it in January 2012. I've adjusted the post date appropriately.