Open Source Fights Back: 'We Won't Get Patent-Trolled Again' (zdnet.com) 8
ZDNet's Steven Vaughan-Nichols reports: [...] At KubeCon North America 2024 this week, CNCF executive director Priyanka Sharma said in her keynote, "Patent trolls are not contributors or even adopters in our ecosystem. Instead, they prey on cloud-native adopters by abusing the legal system. We are here to tell the world that these patent trolls don't stand a chance because CNCF is uniting the ecosystem to deter them. Like a herd of musk oxen, we will run them off our pasture." CNCF CTO Chris Aniszczyk added: "The reason trolls can make money is that many companies find it too expensive to fight back, so they pay trolls a settlement fee to avoid the even higher cost of litigation. Now, when a whole herd of companies band together like musk oxen to drive a troll off, it changes the cost structure of fighting back. It disrupts their economic model."
How? Jim Zemlin, the Linux Foundation's executive director, said, "We don't negotiate with trolls. Instead, with United Patents, we go to the PTO and crush those patents. We strive to invalidate them by working with developers who have prior art, bringing this to the attention of the USPTO, and killing patents. No negotiation, no settlement. We destroy the very asset that made patent trolls' business work. Together, since we've started this effort, 90% of the time, we've been able to go in there and destroy these patents." "It's time for us to band together," said Joanna Lee, CNCF's VP of strategic programs and legal. "We encourage all organizations in our ecosystem to get involved. Join the fight, enhance your own company's protection, protect your customers, enhance our community defense, and save money on legal expenses."
While getting your company and its legal department involved in the effort to fend off patent trolls is important, developers can also help. CNCF announced the Cloud Native Heroes Challenge, a patent troll bounty program in which cloud-native developers and technologists can earn swag and win prizes. They're asking you to find evidence of preexisting technology -- referred to by patent lawyers as "prior art" -- that can kill off bad patents. This could be open-source documentation (including release notes), published standards or specifications, product manuals, articles, blogs, books, or any publicly available information. All entrants who submit an entry that conforms to the contest rules will receive a free "Cloud Native Hero" t-shirt that can be picked up at any future KubeCon+CloudNativeCon. The winner will also receive a $3,000 cash prize.
In the inaugural contest, the CNCF is seeking information that can be used to invalidate Claim 1 from US Patent US-11695823-B1. This is the major patent asserted by Edge Networking Systems against Kubernetes users. As is often the case with such patents, it's much too broad. This patent describes a network architecture that facilitates secure and flexible programmability between a user device and across a network with full lifecycle management of services and infrastructure applications. That describes pretty much any modern cloud system. If you can find prior art that describes such a system before June 13, 2013, you could be a winner. Some such materials have already been found. This is already listed in the "known references" tab of the contest information page and doesn't qualify. If you care about keeping open-source software easy and cheap to use -- or you believe trolls shouldn't be allowed to take advantage of companies that make or use programs -- you can help. I'll be doing some digging myself.
How? Jim Zemlin, the Linux Foundation's executive director, said, "We don't negotiate with trolls. Instead, with United Patents, we go to the PTO and crush those patents. We strive to invalidate them by working with developers who have prior art, bringing this to the attention of the USPTO, and killing patents. No negotiation, no settlement. We destroy the very asset that made patent trolls' business work. Together, since we've started this effort, 90% of the time, we've been able to go in there and destroy these patents." "It's time for us to band together," said Joanna Lee, CNCF's VP of strategic programs and legal. "We encourage all organizations in our ecosystem to get involved. Join the fight, enhance your own company's protection, protect your customers, enhance our community defense, and save money on legal expenses."
While getting your company and its legal department involved in the effort to fend off patent trolls is important, developers can also help. CNCF announced the Cloud Native Heroes Challenge, a patent troll bounty program in which cloud-native developers and technologists can earn swag and win prizes. They're asking you to find evidence of preexisting technology -- referred to by patent lawyers as "prior art" -- that can kill off bad patents. This could be open-source documentation (including release notes), published standards or specifications, product manuals, articles, blogs, books, or any publicly available information. All entrants who submit an entry that conforms to the contest rules will receive a free "Cloud Native Hero" t-shirt that can be picked up at any future KubeCon+CloudNativeCon. The winner will also receive a $3,000 cash prize.
In the inaugural contest, the CNCF is seeking information that can be used to invalidate Claim 1 from US Patent US-11695823-B1. This is the major patent asserted by Edge Networking Systems against Kubernetes users. As is often the case with such patents, it's much too broad. This patent describes a network architecture that facilitates secure and flexible programmability between a user device and across a network with full lifecycle management of services and infrastructure applications. That describes pretty much any modern cloud system. If you can find prior art that describes such a system before June 13, 2013, you could be a winner. Some such materials have already been found. This is already listed in the "known references" tab of the contest information page and doesn't qualify. If you care about keeping open-source software easy and cheap to use -- or you believe trolls shouldn't be allowed to take advantage of companies that make or use programs -- you can help. I'll be doing some digging myself.
This is not how "prior art" works (Score:1)
Bad guy has a patent (how dubious it might be)
You infringe on his patent.
I can proof prior art.
You have a problem!
I have not.
To invalidate a patent, you need more than "prior art".
Perhaps that is why they wrote it in quotes.
You have to show it is a standard procedure, everyone is doing.
Re: (Score:3)
You are entirely wrong [wikipedia.org]:
Prior art (also known as state of the art or background art) is a concept in patent law used to determine the patentability of an invention, in particular whether an invention meets the novelty and the inventive step or non-obviousness criteria for patentability. In most systems of patent law, prior art is generally defined as anything that is made available, or disclosed, to the public that might be relevant to a patent's claim before the effective filing date of a patent application for an invention.
Emphasis added. Prior art doesn't have to be "standard procedure".
Re: (Score:2)
False.
Get yourself an education before offering your ignorance to others.
Great, but the real solution (Score:3)
This is great - just like you should never pay off ransomware, you should not feed the patent trolls.
However, the long term solution has to be fixing the patent system. Require genuine innovation, and an actual product. Non-practicing entities should have no right to file patent infringement claims (since they have no products being infringed).
And obviously: patents on software or processes should not exist at all, in any form.
Re: (Score:1)
This is great - just like you should never pay off ransomware, you should not feed the patent trolls.
However, the long term solution has to be fixing the patent system. Require genuine innovation, and an actual product. Non-practicing entities should have no right to file patent infringement claims (since they have no products being infringed).
And obviously: patents on software or processes should not exist at all, in any form.
Products don't get infringed. Patents do. A patent is a how-to guide for others to follow explaining how a new idea and how to implement it.
I can legally make the same product as you without your permission as long as I don't use your patented ideas. If we had product patents then I could not. Your product patent idea is far worse than the system already in place so be careful what you wish for.
Why do you think software patents are special? An idea is an idea. Just because "it's on a computer" doesn't
Re: (Score:2)
Algorithms and math formulas are already not patentable.
Algorithms can be patented.
An example is the LZW compression algorithm used by GIFs. Before the patent expired, you needed a license to create a GIF.
Re: (Score:2)
The patent law doesn't require a product to exist for a patent to be valid. You may think the law is wrong, but that makes sense before software patent is a thing. A person may design something but fail to get fund to materialize the design. So patent law in the old days prevent competitors or big capitals "steal the idea" by starving the inventor.
Obviously, if pure software patent couldn't exist, then there ought to be less patent troll. I think "pure software are already protected by copyright" shall b
$3,000 cash prize? (Score:2)
$3,000? What an insult. Attorneys handling patent litigation could bill that in a day or two. They're offering you the tip on their steak dinner (a week's invoices) in exchange for you providing them with the most crucial argument in a case that will pay them for years. Fuck off.
Also, here's the patent: https://patents.google.com/pat... [google.com]
And here's the first claim:
1. A system comprising:
a programmable network device adapted to host a plurality of network device applications;
a programmable cloud device ada