GNOME Patent Troll Gets Stripped of Patent Rights (opensource.org) 40
An anonymous Slashdot reader writes: Remember that patent lawsuit filed against GNOME's Shotwell in 2019? An enterprising open source lawyer has challenged it within the patent office and gotten the whole thing canceled!
OpenSource.org argues that decision by the U.S. patent office "may well give patent trolls cause to steer clear of open source projects — even more than the fierce resistance the community impressively funded and mounted in the GNOME case." Of the many methods developed over the past 20 years to eliminate patent threats against FOSS, none is as powerful as challenging the nefarious patents directly. That's what McCoy Smith, founder of OSI sponsor LexPan Law, did.... Smith pointed out in a re-examination request to the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office that the patent was not for any new invention.
They agreed. As a result, all of these "claims" in the Rothschild '086 Patent — the part of a patent describing what the patent rights cover — have consequently been canceled. The Rothschild '086 patent can no longer be used against any victim, including open source projects.
Of course, that's little comfort to the 20+ victims attacked after GNOME with the now-proven-worthless Rothschild '086 patent, or the 50+ companies targeted with related patents that haven't yet been re-examined.... Still, it's good to know there are open source champions of all sizes defending the development of open software.
OpenSource.org argues that decision by the U.S. patent office "may well give patent trolls cause to steer clear of open source projects — even more than the fierce resistance the community impressively funded and mounted in the GNOME case." Of the many methods developed over the past 20 years to eliminate patent threats against FOSS, none is as powerful as challenging the nefarious patents directly. That's what McCoy Smith, founder of OSI sponsor LexPan Law, did.... Smith pointed out in a re-examination request to the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office that the patent was not for any new invention.
They agreed. As a result, all of these "claims" in the Rothschild '086 Patent — the part of a patent describing what the patent rights cover — have consequently been canceled. The Rothschild '086 patent can no longer be used against any victim, including open source projects.
Of course, that's little comfort to the 20+ victims attacked after GNOME with the now-proven-worthless Rothschild '086 patent, or the 50+ companies targeted with related patents that haven't yet been re-examined.... Still, it's good to know there are open source champions of all sizes defending the development of open software.
A little good news for a change (Score:4, Informative)
A little good news for a change.
"The wheels of justice turn slowly, but grind exceedingly fine."
Not always, but occasionally.
Re:A little good news for a change (Score:5, Insightful)
Justice would at least require that the thug give back what he stole. That isn't justice, just the prevention of further injury with the same weapon. But it's better than nothing.
Re: (Score:2)
Justice would at least require that the thug give back what he stole. That isn't justice, just the prevention of further injury with the same weapon. But it's better than nothing.
I hear what you're saying, but it's not a perfect world, and we can't expect perfect justice. I would have hoped for more severe penalties but this is where we are.
Like you said, it's better than nothing; sometimes that's all we get.
Re:A little good news for a change (Score:5, Funny)
An enterprising open source lawyer has challenged it within the patent office and gotten the whole thing canceled!
Typical radical-left cancel culture, good honest hardworking patent trolls are being cancelled, cancelled I tell you, by these socialists. Everyone knows that Linux is communism, and now we have proof!
Gnome-racism (Score:4, Funny)
The poor little guys never get a break.
This guy is a major troll (Score:5, Interesting)
Rothschild is one of the major patent trolls.
Something that surprised me while learning about patent trolls is that there are just three or four assholes who file something like 70% of the patent suits. This jerk is one of them.
Be a dear and tell us something useful (Score:1)
So one patent from this patent troll's arsenal got invalidated.
What about the rest? Patent trolls don't fuck around, they have many patents. How many more does this one have yet? IOW unless this one was its last patent, "stripped of patent rights" is a little grandiosely misleading.
The problem is like erosion at shorelines. (Score:3)
FWIW, it's still not the year of the Linux desktop. Desktops are for users; by the time a person can consider themselves ready for the power of FOSS, they're likely to decide that the desktop is a pretty toy for end users, but hardly necessary to keep a real computer/service/network up and running (unless you're supporing an app with a GUI, of course!) All the same, nice to see the good guys win once in a while!
Re: (Score:3)
If FOSS makes money then it's worth attacking it because it has money you might be able to get.
If FOSS doesn't make money it's worth attacking it because it's a threat to revenue streams and it's unable to defend itself.
Nothing you can do will make FOSS not worth attacking.
The only thing that can be done without overhauling the patent system is continue to obsolete proprietary software with FOSS, because that decreases the power of corporate publishers and patent trolls alike.
Re:The problem is like erosion at shorelines. (Score:5, Insightful)
Punitive treatment (Score:4, Interesting)
These trolls should be hammered into the ground and bankrupted / punished for the act of trolling.
Re: (Score:2)
I am not a lawyer, but I presume there would need to be some legislation to make patent trolling illegal. How do you tell the difference between a genuine invention and a pile of bovine excrement? As far as I know, this would entail lawyers making their technical points in a court of law, and that costs money. Dodgy patents are but one example of people winning legal fights, because they can afford the lawyers, and their opponents can't. Given sufficient funds, pretty much anything can be proved in a civil
Re: (Score:2)
Patents aren't supposed to monopolise ideas, anyway. They exist to create (short-term, limited) monopolies on inventions and, specifically, inventions that are detailed enough and described well enough to enable other people to make them and/or improve them.
If you can invent another, different machine/process/method that implements the same/similar underlying idea as a patented invention, then that's fine, you
Time to revamp the USPTO? (Score:5, Interesting)
How much money would had been saved should the USPTO had right resources to better understand what is being patented? Or should an update to the registration that requires identifying any known similar patents be submit as proof this is not a troll patent request?
Re: (Score:2)
But that would be considered "anti-business" and a "job killer" because think of all the lawyers, law clerks, courthouse staff, etc who would have less to do!
Re:Time to revamp the USPTO? (Score:4, Insightful)
The USPTO gets money any time anyone even attempts to do anything regarding a patent. It's not in their best interest to limit patent applications especially, or grants either really.
Re: (Score:2)
But does the money cover their costs or do they make it up in volume?
It doesn't cover the costs of a job done right, so they're motivated to do it wrong so there are more and more filing fees. But at some point they also have to grant the patent, because if they didn't grant all these shit patents then less people would make the applications, and they could make less money by rubberstamping them without a sufficient examination.
Re: (Score:2)
In which case, every time we see a patent troll suing anyone, we should invest in attempting to invalidate every single patent owned by that troll? Not just the patent in issue?
Re: (Score:3)
The USPTO gets money for the application. They don't get additional money if the patent is granted. The OP was saying this could be avoided if they were resourced in a way so they could reject these pointless fucking patents.
And yes that is in the interest of everyone.
Re: (Score:2)
The system was designed when inventions were physical things. I blame Alan Turing. It's all his fault!
But seriously - I'd have thought copyright law would be more appropriate than patent law. After all, despite rumors (spread by me), I did not actually flip the bits on the disk platter using a bar magnet. I wrote code - in effect, I authored the set of instructions which permitted another (previously written) set of instructions to do a bunch of stuff I only vaguely understand to make those magnetic do
Re: (Score:3)
Another nice step that would REALLY cut down on trolling, if the patent is invalidated, any and all royalty payments or judgments EVER made based on the patent are reversed (since it was never actually valid).
That way, a troll that manages to steal once will be strongly incentivised to shelf the patent rather than risk invalidation and loss of their gains (however ill-gotten) to date.
It doesn't solve the problem, but it would certainly reduce it.
Re: Time to revamp the USPTO? (Score:2)
It would seem those who settled, might have done so without knowing what the patent holder did know: that the patent was bogus and the settlement was being offered under fraudulent pretenses. Perhaps there are already remedies available through civil and criminal courts?
Re: (Score:2)
There may be, but why waste limited judicial resources on that?
Re: (Score:2)
In the absence of there yet being a new law to reverse licensing payments for invalid patents, this might be a way for people to get their money back using existing law.
Re: (Score:2)
What in the world is in any way stupid about the principle that nobody should be paid for an invalid patent? And especially, nobody should be paid for snookering a court into supporting an invalid patent?
Actual justifiable patents don't get invalidated. The bias is so strong that few bad patents get invalidated. If you are actually doing something useful with your patent the years of exclusivity are the value, not cash awarded in court.
Why No Condemnation of Software Patents? (Score:1, Interesting)
Software should not be patented. (Score:3)
It should be copyrighted. Patents are for inventions. Copyrights are for software, music and literature. I should be able to copyright my code (the story I wrote), not the means by which I wrote the code (I used for...next loops, if/then/else evaluations and unconditional goto's).
But . . . let's not ditch the patent system just yet, eh? I'm pretty sure we'd still be living in a pre-industrial society, were it not for the technical evolution which the patent system (imperfectly) promotes.
Re: (Score:2)
If we don't revamp the patent system, it arguably does more harm than good. The tradeoff is supposed to be that the means of replication of the patent are revealed in exchange for a reasonable period of protections. One might reasonably argue that neither of those purposes are satisfied by the current patent regime in the USA. The means of replication are often inadequately satisfied for real inventions, and the period is almost undeniably excessive when it comes to imaginary ones. The latter is also arguab
Re: (Score:2)
OTOH, if we don't significantly re-vamp it, it will drive us back to feudalism but this time with imaginary property.
Re: (Score:2)
Patents are for inventions.
I assume that it is possible to invent something useful that is implemented purely in software, rather than in electronics, or a mechanism. An example of such an invention would be provably correct multi-threaded computing. As it happens, Edsger Dijstra did not seek to exploit his invention financially, but I have no doubt that it was an invention. Earlier than that, what about the work of Grace Hopper? Creating the first assembler was an inventive step.
Re: (Score:3)
Inventions are hardware. Software is ideas. Believe me, I wouldn't want to shortchange Admiral Hopper - but her work in programming would (IMHO) be more correctly protected by the same copyright laws which protect other creative works. She deserves a patent for those nanoseconds she used to hand out, and copyright protections for any code she ever wrote - even the code that made the first symbolic assemblers (i.e., the first compilers) work.
Re: (Score:2)
I think the distinction between hardware and software inventions is specious.
Invention is about creativity, and there are ideas that are implemented in software that would not be correctly protected by copyright. Copyrights and patents protect different things. Copyrights protect the actual code / written content while patens protect ideas.
Granted, software patents are easily abused - but we should not pretend that patents and copyrights are equivalent. They are not.
Re: (Score:2)
Inventions are hardware. Software is ideas.
From what I know of patent law, inventions are ideas. When I applied for patents, I did not have to demonstrate working hardware to a patent examiner, which is just a silly folk myth. All I needed was a technical description, including drawings and diagrams, and a list of claims detailing what was inventive in my work. The claims are the part of a patent that generally need professional advice. There is a strategy to making a list of claims, which amounts to claiming you invented everything, then narrowing
Re: (Score:2)
It should be copyrighted. Patents are for inventions. Copyrights are for software, music and literature. I should be able to copyright my code (the story I wrote), not the means by which I wrote the code (I used for...next loops, if/then/else evaluations and unconditional goto's).
Unfortunately artistic works are now being litigated under patent-like conditions. An recent example was the plagiarism case filed against singer/songwriter Ed Sheeran. While Sheeran won the case, the basis for the case [theguardian.com] was something that in the past would have fallen under the fair use rule: