Prominent Pro-Patent Judge Issues Opinion Declaring All Software Patents Bad
from the and-over-an-intellectual-ventures-lawsuit dept
Well here’s an unexpected surprise. A lawsuit brought by the world’s largest patent troll, Intellectual Ventures, and handled on appeal (as are all patent cases), by the notoriously awful Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (CAFC) may have actually killed off software patents. Really. Notably, the Supreme Court deserves a big assist here, for a series of rulings on patent-eligible subject matter, culminating in the Alice ruling. At the time, we noted that you could read the ruling to kill off software patents, even as the Supreme Court insisted that it did not. In short, the Supreme Court said that any patent that “does no more than require a generic computer to perform generic computer functions” is not patent eligible. But then it insisted that there was plenty of software that this wouldn’t apply to. But it’s actually pretty difficult to think of any examples — which is why we were pretty sure at the time that Alice should represent the end for software patents, but
bemoaned the Supreme Court not directly saying so, noting it would lead to lots of litigation. Still, the impact has been pretty widespread, with the Alice ruling being used both by the courts and the US Patent Office to reject lots and lots of software and business method patent claims.
But this latest ruling, from the very court that upended things nearly two decades ago in declaring software much more broadly patentable than anyone believed, may now be the nail in the coffin on software patents in the US. The headline, of course, is that the patents that Intellectual Ventures used against anti-virus firms Symantec and Trend Micro, were bunk, because they did not cover patent eligible subject matter. But the part that has everyone chattering is the concurring opinion by Judge Haldane Mayer, that says it’s time to face facts: Alice killed software patents. And Mayer is not some newcomer. He’s been at the Federal Circuit since the 1980s and was actually the chief judge in the late 90s/early 2000s when CAFC was at its worst in terms of expanding patent law. And it appears he’s been born again into the anti-software patent world. It’s… quite a conversion.
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https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20161005/15280135720/prominent-pro-patent-judge-issues-opinion-declaring-all-software-patents-bad.shtml
Month: October 2016
Creepy Halloween Clowns are Everywhere this year and more
HALLOWEEN SONGS, FILM, CULTURE, HISTORY AND OTHER MUSIC HOLIDAYS WE CELEBRATE
2016 Folklore – The Horrible Clown Sightings
Be Afraid Be Very Afraid for the IoT
IoT devices will use a technology called Universal Plug and Play (UPnP) that will automatically open specific virtual portholes or “ports,” essentially poking a hole in the router’s shield for that device that allows it to be communicated with from the wider Internet. Anyone looking for an easy way to tell whether any of network ports may be open and listening for incoming external connections could do worse than to run Steve Gibson‘s “Shields Up” UPnP exposure test.
Case in point: In February 2016 I published This is Why People Fear the Internet of Things, which examined a whole slew of IP cameras sold by Chinese Web camera giant Foscam that — by default — included a feature which would quietly phone home to a vast peer-to-peer (P2P) network run by the company. As I explained in that piece, while the Web interface for those P2P cameras included a setting allowing users to disable the P2P traffic, disabling that option didn’t actually do anything to stop the device from seeking out other Foscam P2P cameras online.
Interestingly, Karas said he’s been pressing Dahua — whose IoT devices are heavily represented in the above default password list — to tell him how many of their devices are vulnerable. Karas said Dahua told him that although the company’s newest models didn’t have this problem, the company was preparing to launch a trade-in program for customers with default-insecure devices.
“They didn’t give me a straight answer on this one, but that that tells me is they have a whole bunch of devices that may not be firmware updatable, which means they can’t make those devices more secure without swapping out the underlying hardware.” Update, 8:30 p.m. ET: Added final section with the sobering caveat that all of this hassle in changing the default passwords and updating the firmware may not actually solve the problem for many (if not all) of the affected devices.
https://krebsonsecurity.com/2016/10/who-makes-the-iot-things-under-attack/
Here's my plan to save Twitter: let's buy it
Here’s my plan to save Twitter: let’s buy it
Corporate sharks are circling around the platform we love. But there is another way: shared ownership, where the community takes control
By Nathan Schneider
Sep 29 2016
<https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/sep/29/save-twitter-buy-platform-shared-ownership>If you ask Wall Street, Twitter is in trouble. The user-base is growing, but not quickly enough. Ad revenue is growing too, but not as quickly as it once did. The only answer to this leveling-out, it seems, is the platform’s acquisition by a bigger corporate bird, which can regurgitate an influx of capital and absorb our tweets into its own data-craving metabolism. Disney, Salesforce, Microsoft, and Google’s parent Alphabet are all circling above Twitter’s wobbly stock price, salivating.
For lots of us users, it’s a different story. Twitter is pretty great. We reporters rely on its instant access to the chatter of the world more than we like to admit. The running commentary of friends and celebrities has turned horrible presidential debates and State of the Unions into Mystery Science Theater 3000. And the platform nurtures communities fighting for justice; historian Anthea Butler has argued, for instance, that Black Twitter has come to inherit the mantle of the Black Church. It also delivers us frequent access to Donald Trump’s id, if we want.
The trouble is, Wall Street’s economy has become Twitter’s economy, even if Wall Street’s view of the platform’s usefulness isn’t necessarily our view. But what if we changed Twitter’s economy? What if users were to band together and buy Twitter for themselves?
This is the kind of thinking at work in the growing movement for platform cooperativism – a series of experiments in shared ownership and governance for online platforms. But it’s an old idea, too. When I mentioned a Twitter buyout to co-op and crowdfunding veteran Danny Spitzberg, he reminded me of the Green Bay Packers. Have you ever wondered why the small-ish city of Green Bay has held on to its really good football team? It’s because, rather than being traded around by billionaires, the team started selling shares to its fans, starting in 1923. That has resulted in sold-out games, affordable ticket prices, tasteful stadium advertising, and an all-around successful, sustainable business model for generations.
I’m sure many of us have ideas about how we could make Twitter meet our needs better. One suggestion that came my way: “actually moderating threats and hatespeech.” But what would it take to put Twitter in the hands of those who rely on it most?
Armin Steuernagel, founder and managing partner at the innovative new investment firm Purpose Fund, suggested to me that it could go down this way: assemble a company and invite investment for shares that grant dividend rights, but not voting; gather about 20% of the funds needed for the buyout, then borrow the rest, and buy. As for the voting rights, they’d be distributed according to a “ladder of engagement,” including investors and general users, but allocating more control to those who contribute the most value to the platform, such as employees and the most active users. Finally, there could be a few “golden shares” with veto rights, perhaps controlled by a foundation representing all users.
It’s a long-shot, Steuernagel admits, but he points out that this kind of thing recently worked with Prokon, a sizable wind-power company that escaped bankruptcy and buyout by converting to a cooperative.
Robin Chase, founder of Zipcar and author of Peers Inc, wonders whether Twitter’s current leaders could play a role. “Could existing employees (or founders) who believe in such a purchase,” she wrote in an email, “be willing to roll-over some of their stock into the new ownership structure?” We might also need to ask this Saudi prince.
[snip]
Corporate sharks are circling around the platform we love. But there is another way: shared ownership, where the community takes control
By Nathan Schneider
Sep 29 2016
<https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/sep/29/save-twitter-buy-platform-shared-ownership>If you ask Wall Street, Twitter is in trouble. The user-base is growing, but not quickly enough. Ad revenue is growing too, but not as quickly as it once did. The only answer to this leveling-out, it seems, is the platform’s acquisition by a bigger corporate bird, which can regurgitate an influx of capital and absorb our tweets into its own data-craving metabolism. Disney, Salesforce, Microsoft, and Google’s parent Alphabet are all circling above Twitter’s wobbly stock price, salivating.
For lots of us users, it’s a different story. Twitter is pretty great. We reporters rely on its instant access to the chatter of the world more than we like to admit. The running commentary of friends and celebrities has turned horrible presidential debates and State of the Unions into Mystery Science Theater 3000. And the platform nurtures communities fighting for justice; historian Anthea Butler has argued, for instance, that Black Twitter has come to inherit the mantle of the Black Church. It also delivers us frequent access to Donald Trump’s id, if we want.
The trouble is, Wall Street’s economy has become Twitter’s economy, even if Wall Street’s view of the platform’s usefulness isn’t necessarily our view. But what if we changed Twitter’s economy? What if users were to band together and buy Twitter for themselves?
This is the kind of thinking at work in the growing movement for platform cooperativism – a series of experiments in shared ownership and governance for online platforms. But it’s an old idea, too. When I mentioned a Twitter buyout to co-op and crowdfunding veteran Danny Spitzberg, he reminded me of the Green Bay Packers. Have you ever wondered why the small-ish city of Green Bay has held on to its really good football team? It’s because, rather than being traded around by billionaires, the team started selling shares to its fans, starting in 1923. That has resulted in sold-out games, affordable ticket prices, tasteful stadium advertising, and an all-around successful, sustainable business model for generations.
I’m sure many of us have ideas about how we could make Twitter meet our needs better. One suggestion that came my way: “actually moderating threats and hatespeech.” But what would it take to put Twitter in the hands of those who rely on it most?
Armin Steuernagel, founder and managing partner at the innovative new investment firm Purpose Fund, suggested to me that it could go down this way: assemble a company and invite investment for shares that grant dividend rights, but not voting; gather about 20% of the funds needed for the buyout, then borrow the rest, and buy. As for the voting rights, they’d be distributed according to a “ladder of engagement,” including investors and general users, but allocating more control to those who contribute the most value to the platform, such as employees and the most active users. Finally, there could be a few “golden shares” with veto rights, perhaps controlled by a foundation representing all users.
It’s a long-shot, Steuernagel admits, but he points out that this kind of thing recently worked with Prokon, a sizable wind-power company that escaped bankruptcy and buyout by converting to a cooperative.
Robin Chase, founder of Zipcar and author of Peers Inc, wonders whether Twitter’s current leaders could play a role. “Could existing employees (or founders) who believe in such a purchase,” she wrote in an email, “be willing to roll-over some of their stock into the new ownership structure?” We might also need to ask this Saudi prince.
[snip]