Tag Archives: software patents

Patent war goes nuclear: Microsoft, Apple-owned “Rockstar” sues Google

Posted on by

This afternoon, that stockpile was finally used for what pretty much everyone suspected it would be used for—launching an all-out patent attack on Google and Android. The smartphone patent wars have been underway for a few years now, and the eight lawsuits filed in federal court today by Rockstar Consortium mean that the conflict just hit DEFCON 1.

Google probably knew this was coming. When it lost out in the Nortel auction, the company’s top lawyer, David Drummond, complained that the Microsoft-Apple patent alliance was part of a “hostile, organized campaign against Android.” Google’s failure to get patents in the Nortel auction was seen as one of the driving factors in its $12.5 billion purchase of Motorola in 2011.

via Patent war goes nuclear: Microsoft, Apple-owned “Rockstar” sues Google | Ars Technica.

Google wants a patent on splitting the restaurant bill

Posted on by

Google Patent Application, October 2013: “For example, continuing with the example of FIG. 4, assume that Users A-C have drinks at a bar and User B pays a bill of $45 for the drinks. User B adds the payment transaction as an expenditure of the group and allocates $15 of the transaction to User A, $20 to User B, $10 to User C. In this example, the balance module 308 would update the individual balances of Users A-C to indicate that User B now owes $115 to User A ($130-$15) and User C owes $10 to User B ($0+$10).”

via No joke: Google wants a patent on splitting the restaurant bill – GeekWire.

I didn’t think one could patent a mathematical formula.

Victory Lap for Ask Patents

Posted on by

The other 40,000-odd software patents issued every year are mostly garbage that any working programmer could “invent” three times before breakfast. Most issued software patents aren’t “inventions” as most people understand that word. They’re just things that any first-year student learning Java should be able to do as a homework assignment in two hours.

via Victory Lap for Ask Patents – Joel on Software.

There is, though, an interesting lesson here. Software patent applications are of uniformly poor quality. They are remarkably easy to find prior art for. Ask Patents can be used to block them with very little work. And this kind of individual destruction of one software patent application at a time might start to make a dent in the mountain of bad patents getting granted.

…

Got 15 minutes? Go to Ask Patents right now, and see if one of these RFPAs covers a topic you know something about, and post any examples you can find. They’re hidden in plain view; most of the prior art you need for software patents can be found on Google. Happy hunting!

AT&T Invents The Ultimate Anti-Piracy System

Posted on by

The patent in question is named “Real-time content detection in ISP transmissions” and focuses exclusively on tracking and deterring online piracy. According to the telco, copyright infringement is a “recurring problem in Internet usage” that is hard to police without the proper tools..

via PRISM for Pirates: AT&T Invents The Ultimate Anti-Piracy System | TorrentFreak.

It looks like deep packet inspection comparing against hashes of known violating content that constantly updates.  Even the patent seems obvious as I had that idea circling in my head how they would do that as soon as I read the headline of this article.   This is not innovative.  AT&T must feel comfortable with their monopoly status to screw over customers like this.  I can’t imagine keeping hash tables of content violations accurate will be very easy.   Add to that the security implications of hackers infecting these tables with bogus hashes and you have a recipe for disaster.  Only a company with monopoly status can take such a risk because many of their “customers” have no other choice for Internet access.

VCs Get Their Pick Of Hungry Start-ups

Posted on by

But there is a dark side because VC’s often only make safe bets, backing companies which can show they have enough valuable intellectual property (IP) to reassure the funders that they can salvage a large part of their money through IP asset-stripping, if the business doesn’t thrive.

Perhaps the slogan for the session should have been: “No IP, no VC”.

via Demo Europe: VCs Get Their Pick Of Hungry Start-ups.

CLS Bank v. Alice Corp: Court Finds Many Software Patents Ineligible

Posted on by

In a much awaited en banc decision, the Federal Circuit has affirmed the patent ineligibility of Alice Corp’s claims to a computerized method, a computer-readable medium containing computer instructions, and a computer system that implements those instructions.

via CLS Bank v. Alice Corp: Court Finds Many Software Patents Ineligible – Patent Law Blog (Patently-O).

Also from: Federal Circuit, en banc, rules in CLS Bank ~pj Updated

The Federal Circuit. OMG. We’ve worked hard for so many years to get to this point, I almost can’t believe it. And I suppose it’s possible it could be appealed, but this is proof of what I’ve always told you, that education is never a waste. Judge Rader is very upset, I gather. He has written a dissent. But he didn’t prevail. And I’m sure he gave it his best effort. OMG. This is a new day.

Original opinion here. (pdf)

Help Stop 1-800-CONTACTS from Abusing Patents to Squelch Competition

Posted on by

1-800-CONTACTS also protests that there is nothing “scandalous” about its CEO visiting Ditto’s site to check out its product. We agree. There is certainly nothing wrong with keeping tabs on the competition. What we do think is scandalous, however, is what the company did next. After checking out Ditto’s product, 1-800-CONTACTS apparently went out and purchased a patent in order to sue its competitor.

via UPDATED: Help Stop 1-800-CONTACTS from Abusing Patents to Squelch Competition | Electronic Frontier Foundation.

China to Provide Financial Incentives For Filing Patent Applications Abroad

Posted on by

Under the new Measures, patentees can be subsidized only after the patent is issued. The new regulation also requires novelty, inventiveness, utility, and a stable legal status of the foreign patent

via China to Provide Financial Incentives For Filing Patent Applications Abroad | China IPR – Intellectual Property Developments in China.

European Commission’s Low Attack on Open Source

Posted on by

This secrecy allowed the organisers to cherry pick participants to tilt the discussion in favour of software patents in Europe which shouldn’t even exist, of course, according to the European Patent Convention, FRAND supporters and proprietary software companies, even though the latter are overwhelmingly American so much for loyalty to the European ideal. The plan was clearly to produce the desired result that open source was perfectly compatible with FRAND, because enough people at this conference said so.

via European Commission’s Low Attack on Open Source – Open Enterprise.

Also worth noting in the above statement from the report is the claim that “the distinction between software and hardware is increasingly artificial”. I think if we decode this, what it means is that in the old world of hardware – for example, in telecommunications or codecs – FRAND standards were common, and that’s perfectly true. But in the world of software, the key modern forums for standards such as W3C or OASIS require RF, not FRAND. So this is a crude attempt to force old-fashioned hardware approaches on modern software, because once again the convenient result is that open source is excluded.