Source: http://techrights.org/category/eff/
Timestamp: 2019-04-22 18:50:14+00:00

Document:
35 U.S.C. § 101/Alice (SCOTUS) has compelled the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) to either stop granting software patents or risk the perception that it is granting patents it knows courts would reject (if a lawsuit was filed).
Last year the USPTO received fewer quantities from its “customers” or “clients” (what it calls applicants) and the number of granted patents decreased (compared to what it had granted the prior year, under Michelle Lee).
It is worth noting that technology companies oppose Iancu’s proposal. They also support Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) inter partes reviews (IPRs) — another thing that has come under attack from Iancu. In many ways he turned out to be an 'American Battistelli'.
A belated Happy New Year to all of you! As I reflect on this column, which has gone through various permutations over the past seven years, I am amazed how readership has grown organically via the Tangible IP website from a dozen (including several family members) to more than 15,000 professionals in the IP and business communities.
I must admit, this baby is a real time investment. But every time I think of retiring it, someone new tells me that he or she actually reads it and even enjoys it. Go figure!
AS WE have noted many times before, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office’s (USPTO) Director Iancu cannot do anything to change courts' decisions unless he attacks judges the way Battistelli did at the European Patent Office (EPO) — something that he began doing in subtle ways some months back. His agenda was all along very clear to see (no surprise here; Iancu is worse than Ajit Pai and it’s not hard to see why he got this job at the USPTO), but the EFF’s alarmist headlines did not help. We have confidence that 35 U.S.C. § 101 will be upheld by SCOTUS, the Federal Circuit, and the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB), whose inter partes reviews (IPRs) were also upheld as constitutional (as per the US Constitution) less than a year ago. The EPO, by contrast, no longer respects its ‘constitution’, the EPC. It was in fact promoting software patents in Europe as recently as half a day ago, pretending these patents are “for SMEs” and “medical”. This is why EPO abuses have taken priority for coverage here.
That omission is not incidental. Instead, of defining a precise “abstract idea” category, the Court endorsed an approach that should be familiar to lawyers: figuring out whether the claims in a given case are abstract, by using past cases. That’s how the Court determined that the Alice patent—which covered the idea of using a third-party intermediary—was abstract. It was similar to other abstract patents, like one on the idea of hedging risk. Following Alice, courts have repeatedly recognized abstract ideas by comparing them to other abstract ideas. That is the method the Supreme Court has approved, and the Patent Office should instruct its examiners to apply it as well—not to effectively rewrite its own wishes into the Supreme Court’s decision.
AT THE end of last year we promised ourselves not to feed the (Watch)trolls, but here they go again, not with the typical attacks on judges; rather, this time around they’re claiming that all these comments, personally submitted to the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) from people against software patents, are just “EFF” (they’re not) just because EFF issued a call for participation in a blog post (as did Watchtroll and others). It’s about the § 101 guidance water-down attempts by Iancu.
Gene Quinn wants us to think that because the EFF told people who oppose software patents and patent trolls to write to the USPTO it therefore means that any comment submitted to that effect came from EFF. Janal Kalis insinuated so explicitly and Watchtroll says it’s a form of “trolling” even if he himself does it all the time (so does Dennis Crouch, who urges people to push/nudge SCOTUS in trolls’ direction).
To put it in plain terms, USPTO officials asked for input; patent maximalists told people to send such input and so did the EFF. But the patent maximalists now call the EFF a “troll” for doing so (as if it is harassing the USPTO). Hypocrisy much? What gives? In relation to Janal Kalis (very vocal patent maximalist) we pointed this out as recently as yesterday, comparing it to the conspiracy theories about Google.
“It’s looking really grim for software patents in US courts.”From what we could gather, based on the tweet from Kalis, almost all the comments were against § 101 changes and in favour of Alice. Software patents are widely being opposed. It’s easy to see why Watchtroll is upset and why Quinn took another job, stepping down from “editor” position after two full decades.
The new § 101 guidance makes two major changes to examination for subject matter eligibility. First, it requires examiners to classify abstract ideas into one of three categories: mental processes, mathematical formulas, and methods of organizing human activity. Claims directed to an abstract idea not in one of these categories are to be allowed. Second, it bars examiners from considering whether a given claim is directed only to an abstract idea plus routine and conventional technology if the claim is “integrated into a particular application.” If a claim is integrated, but using conventional technology, the guidance would require an examiner to allow the claim. Both changes represent departures from previous examination practice and both appear to present the potential for conflict with case law. CCIA has commented on these disparities, and suggested that the USPTO clarify the guidance to ensure that it helps examiners comply with case law. However, there’s no guarantee the USPTO will make any such changes—for example, the USPTO recently declined to make any changes in response to public comments on the 2018-2022 Strategic Plan.
Given the possibility that the guidance will remain unchanged, it’s important to consider how it might have been applied to patents that we know have been invalidated under § 101 in a district court. A recent set of arguments in Delaware provides a set of three patents of just that type.
THE DIRECTION the European Patent Office (EPO) has taken since António Campinos inherited Office is no different from Battistelli’s. One Frenchman just inherited another’s task. He inherited a policy that he has no problems with; he has also inherited all the worst elements of the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO), notably software patents which we will deal with separately in our next post.
“Licensing” just means taxing and those who are doing this represent patent mills rather than innovators. On that same trip there were other revealing activities attributed to Campinos; he also met Andrei Iancu on that visit. Aseet Patel wrote in Watchtroll 2 days ago that “Andrei Iancu has led the charge to improve predictability of patent-eligible subject matter.” Rather the opposite; he promotes granting fake patents that are predictably bunk, reducing the legal certainty associated with US patents.
Over the weekend we’ve surveyed some of the latest software patents to be thrown out by US courts or get wrongly granted by the Office. This gross disparity shows that the USPTO departed from the rule of law (like EPO under Battistelli). The EFF, as it turns out, belatedly realises Iancu was all along trouble.
Patent trolls aren’t a myth. They aren’t a bedtime story. Ask a software developer—they’re likely to know someone who has been sued or otherwise threatened by one, if they haven’t been themselves.
Unfortunately, the new director of the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) is in a serious state of denial about patent trolls and the hurt they cause to technologists everywhere. Today a number of small business owners and start-up founders have submitted a letter [PDF] to USPTO Director Andre Iancu telling him that patent trolls remain a real threat to U.S. businesses. Signatories range from mid-sized companies like Foursquare and Life360 to one-person software enterprises like Ken Cooper’s. The letter explains the harm, cost, and stress that patent trolls cause businesses.
Patent trolls aren’t a thing that happens once in a while or an exception to the rule. Over the past two decades, troll litigation has become the rule. There are different ways to measure exactly what a “troll” is, but by one recent measurement, a staggering 85 percent of recently filed patent lawsuits in the tech sector were filed by trolls.
That’s almost 9 out of 10 lawsuits being filed by an entity with no real product or service. Because the Patent Office issues so many low-quality software patents, the vast majority of these suits are brought by entities that played no role in the development of the real-world technology they attack. Instead, trolls use vague and overbroad patents to sue the innovators who create products and services. This is how we end up with patent trolls suing people for running an online contest or making a podcast.
This is unfortunately what also happened at the EPO.
IAM is literally funded by patent trolls and also by the EPO’s PR firm. IAM is almost literally an extension of the EPO’s PR department and it’s also lobbying Iancu, who spoke alongside Battistelli at IAM events.
“Negotiation” is sometimes merely a euphemism for blackmail and extortion, I’ve told them — something that the EPO facilitates with low-quality and incorrect grants for patent trolls. These prey the most (or most effectively) on SMEs that aren’t able to afford a legal fight (day in court), so they end up settling over patents they know to be bogus.
While options exist to slow down prosecution if desired, this increased prosecution speed opens up a new possibility for an international filing strategy. The strategy proposed below shows that a granted EP patent can be secured before the 30/31m deadline for further PCT national phasing, especially where a positive WO-ISA is issued by the EPO.
The granted EP patent may be used to streamline prosecution before other national patent offices of interest, especially if a national patent office is part of a Patent Prosecution Highway (PPH) agreement. For example, the IP5 PPH covers the five biggest patent offices, namely China, Japan, Korea, the United States and the EPO.
THE EPO scandals should have become familiar to longtime readers. The Office basically operates outside the rule of law, it attacks judges, and it routinely violates the rights of its own staff. It’s run by autocrats and dictators who are well connected (the current President, for instance, is an old friend of his predecessor).
“Having reviewed this week’s tweets and articles, it seems clear that patent maximalists lack any “good” news from CAFC, PTAB and district courts, so they obsess over rare and exceptional patent application anomalies (situations where PTAB and examiners do not agree).”We have been seeing similar patterns in the Office across the Atlantic lately. Many top-level appointments are patent maximalists with history working for patent trolls. The Director's firm had worked for Donald Trump before Trump gave him the job. The main person of the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) has since then been removed (or compelled to leave), the Federal Circuit‘s (CAFC) judgments are being ignored (or cherry-picked at best), and 35 U.S.C. § 101 (Section 101) is being worked around in spite of Alice (SCOTUS). This means that examiners end up granting many patents in error.
Having reviewed this week’s tweets and articles, it seems clear that patent maximalists lack any “good” news from CAFC, PTAB and district courts, so they obsess over rare and exceptional patent application anomalies (situations where PTAB and examiners do not agree). Watchtroll (the patent trolls’ and software patents advocacy site) has just published “Bioinformatics Innovations Thrive Despite 101 Chaos”; but Section 101 is order, not chaos. Unless you’re a parasitic lawyer whose business is litigation and blackmail. Patently-O has just moaned about another Alice/Mayo case (Section 101). They just don’t get their way, do they?
EFF critics like to frame it in the context of Google (not entirely wrong any longer), but the issue is very much real and the concern is very broad. Using a dozen of so software patents in Eastern Texas, for instance, one parasite targets Google right about now and Patently-O reports that Google is hoping to shift venue (anything but Texas). Patently-O has also just amplified Trump SOTU lies on so-called ‘IP’ (as did IP Watch).
WHEN the announcement/proclamation of the prospective acquisition of Red Hat was first announced we were cautiously optimistic (it soon turned out that Red Hat had considered selling itself to Microsoft). We were hopeful that IBM would change course, but seeing the latest Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) inter partes reviews (IPRs) and patent lawsuits in district courts and the Federal Circuit it seems clear that IBM continues gaming the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO), lobbying politicians for software patents and so on. They even recruited the former Director of the Office as a lobbyist (David Kappos). We’re going to have to become more vocal given IBM’s continued lobbying for software patents and ongoing bullying with patents on algorithms, even against small entities like online shops/retailers (as the latest IPRs reveal). They’re extorting legitimate businesses using likely illegitmate patents, knowing the cost of invalidating these patents may be too great for these businesses (they might choose to settle, instead). What is going on at the top (management) of IBM? It’s like they don’t give a damn whether Red Hat is becoming a part of them. What is Red Hat’s reaction? So far silence. I asked a few prominent employees, who prefer not to comment (maybe fear of losing their job). I know some people from Red Hat who follow me online; not even one tried to comment/explain/excuse IBM’s behaviour when it comes to this. It’s all silence.
“IBM’s patent policy is extremely incompatible with Red Hat’s.”IBM has been lobbying for abstract patents even in Europe, where software patents aren’t generally allowed (European Patent Office (EPO) President António Campinos does not care what the law says, however, as he’s just another Battistelli with extra secrecy).
At the turn of the new year, seeing that the founder of Watchtroll (Gene Quinn) stepped down as chief editor after 2 decades, we said we would not link to Watchtroll anymore (sending it traffic), not even to rebut its torrent of nonsense. Looking at the latest articles, however, we continue to see more nonsense. “Winning Strategies for Getting Past the Five Types of Patent Examiner” is the title of a new post from Watchtroll. They view examiners as enemies who need to be undermined or fooled/manipulated. How revealing. How anti-scientific of them. Another new post from Watchtroll says “Canada Patent Law Changes Are Bad News for Patent Owners”; by that it means Canada does the right thing and more parasitic lawyers would be out of a job and would likely need a career change.
So these are the people at the top of IBM. Unless the Board of IBM flushes them down and replaces them with more Red Hat-like mentality, Red Hat will generally be part of the problem, part of the threat to software development and perhaps to GNU/Linux at large.
THE epidemic of patent trolls in the US has slowed down and suffered some blows in recent years (TC Heartland being more recent and pretty major because it’s a SCOTUS ruling). But the epidemic or this plague isn’t a done deal. It’s not over yet.
This is Iancu speaking about patents amassed not only by the millions (in the US alone) but as much as 10 million, with the majority of these granted in recent decades when the system lost sight of its original goal/s. “10 million is the accumulation of creativity of such magnitude and concentration the likes of which humanity has never seen,” says a lawyer. Actually, a patent represents monopoly, not necessarily innovation and creativity (which as a lawyer he cannot recognise).
Either way, the above statement demonstrates that the current Director — unlike his predecessor — has no problem with trolls. Like Watchtroll, he refuses to recognise that they exist or that they’re a problem.
Let’s remember that Iancu is not a judge, however, so the more he deviates from what courts are saying (or keep saying), the steeper the decline in US patent certainty and therefore the value of pertinent US patents.
The EFF meanwhile presses on with its fight against patent trolls, having just mentioned AlphaCap again.
Patent trolls know that it costs a lot of money to defend a patent case. The high cost of defensive litigation means that defendants are pressured to settle even if the patent is invalid. Fee awards can change this calculus and give defendants a chance to fight back against weak claims. A recent decision [PDF] from the Federal Circuit has overturned a fee award in a case involving an abstract software patent on crowdsourcing. This disappointing ruling may encourage other patent trolls to file meritless cases.
Patent troll AlphaCap Ventures claimed that its patent covered various forms of online equity financing. It filed suit against ten different crowdfunding platforms. Most of the defendants settled quickly. But one defendant, Gust, fought back. After nearly two years of litigation in both the Eastern District of Texas and the Southern District of New York, AlphaCap Ventures dismissed its claim against Gust. The judge in the Southern District of New York ruled that AlphaCap Ventures’ attorneys had litigated unreasonably and ordered them to pay Gust’s attorneys’ fees. Those lawyers then appealed.
On October 17, 2018, the Board issued an order terminating IPR2017-01467 pursuant to a joint settlement request filed by Unified Patents and Global Equity Management (SA) Pty. Ltd. (“GEMSA”) (an NPE). U.S. Patent 6,690,400, directed to a graphical user interface (GUI) displaying graphics representing various partitioned storage devices in a computer, has been asserted in multiple district court cases, 35 of which were pending at the time of settlement.
On October 18, 2018, Unified added a $1,000 contest to PATROLL seeking prior art for US Patent No. 9928044, the latest patent asserted in a wave of litigation filed by Express Mobile Inc. (an NPE). The ’044 patent generally relates to a method and system for displaying a website on a mobile device. The contest will expire on January 18, 2019.
On October 15, 2018, Unified added a $2,000 contest to PATROLL seeking prior art for US Patent No. 6470345, owned and asserted by Uniloc USA, a well-known NPE. The ’345 patent, titled “Replacement of substrings in file/directory pathnames with numeric tokens,” generally relates to a system and method for a file directory system. The contest will expire on January 14, 2019.
Granted to Hewlett-Packard Development Company in 2013, U.S. Patent No. 8,539,552 for a “System and method for network based policy enforcement of intelligent-client features” details techniques for controlling services in packet-based networks. Described in the IP’s main claims are methods for messaging policy enforcement including signaling, authentication and routing to correct services based on stored information.
The patent in question, AppleInsider reports, covers intelligent-client features in IP telephony networks and more specifically relates to how a pair of devices can communicate with one another on a packet-based network.

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