● 08.15.21

● Links 15/8/2021: Joomla Sued, GNU Health Helps in Haiti

Posted in News Roundup at 1:16 pm by Dr. Roy SchestowitzContentsGNU/LinuxDistributionsDevices/EmbeddedFree Software/Open SourceLeftovers

GNU/Linux

Kernel Space

=> ↺ Apple M1 PCIe Driver Under Review For The Linux Kernel

• While Linux 5.12 saw initial support merged for the Apple M1, it was quite the basic support with more robust support still to come. Besides the graphics support being a large work-in-progress, one of the areas now coming about is the new PCI Express driver that is necessary for supporting more functionality of this driver.

• This Apple PCIe driver created by the open-source community — including Correlium and Asahi Linux — is for the M1 right now while presumably will be applicable to future iterations of the Apple Silicon SoCs. With this driver Linux can begin working for the Apple M1 device USB Type-A ports as well as the Ethernet port.

Instructionals/Technical

=> ↺ How to Create Command Shortcuts with Aliases in Linux | Tom’s Hardware

• The word “alias” conjures up images of espionage, secret identities and mystery. In reality an alias is really just “another name for.” In Linux, an alias is used to create a command / shortcut that in reality can be a long and unwieldy command with difficult switches (options) that are difficult to remember.

• In this tutorial we will learn how to create our own aliases that will be ready for use every time we open a terminal window. And the best thing is that they are really easy to make.

• For this tutorial we are using Ubuntu 21.04, but the tutorial can be followed with any version of Linux and also the Raspberry Pi.

=> ↺ How To Upgrade To Debian 11 Bullseye From Debian 10 Buster – OSTechNix

• Debian 11, codenamed bullseye, has been released! This step by step guide explains how to upgrade to Debian 11 bullseye from Debian 10 buster from command line.

=> ↺ How To Install Concrete5 CMS on Ubuntu 20.04 LTS – idroot

• In this tutorial, we will show you how to install Concrete5 CMS on Ubuntu 20.04 LTS. For those of you who didn’t know, Concrete is an open-source content management system for teams. It is written in PHP and uses MariaDB as a database backend. It provides an easy-to-use builder that helps you to create pages and content through the web browser. It is flexible, secure, mobile-ready, and based on Model-View-Controller architecture.

• This article assumes you have at least basic knowledge of Linux, know how to use the shell, and most importantly, you host your site on your own VPS. The installation is quite simple and assumes you are running in the root account, if not you may need to add ‘sudo‘ to the commands to get root privileges. I will show you the step-by-step installation of the Concrete5 Content Management System on Ubuntu 20.04 (Focal Fossa). You can follow the same instructions for Ubuntu 18.04, 16.04, and any other Debian-based distribution like Linux Mint.

=> ↺ Certificate Authority with OpenSSL

• Digital certificates are documents used to prove the ownership of a public key. For example, a digital certificates is used to authenticate an accessed website via HTPS. Another example of a common use are document signing.

• Certificates includes information about the key, identity of its owner, and the digital signature of an entity that has verified the contents. A certificate authority (CA) is the organization that issues digital certificates.

• In this article I’ll show how to set up a CA to issue your own certificates and how to tell other hosts to trust them.

=> ↺ How to install OmniOS ce – Unixcop

• In this article I will show you how to install OmniOS Community Edition on VirtualBox. OmniOS is a distribution (as different linux distributions but) of illumos, which is based on OpenSolaris from Sun Microsystems.

• I’m using VirtualBox for this tutorial, but you will get better results using server systems for OmniOS.

• You can download from here: https://omnios.org/download.html I’m using the ISO CD image.

=> ↺ MongoDB cluster install and configure – Unixcop

• MongoDB is a database that is a source-available cross-platform document-oriented database program. It was classified as a NoSQL database program. MongoDB uses JSON-like documents with optional schemas. MongoDB was developed by MongoDB Inc.and licensed under the Server Side Public License (SSPL).MongoDB cluster is another type of configuration.

=> ↺ Redis server install and configure – Unixcop

• Redis server is an open-source (BSD licensed), in-memory data structure store used as a database, cache, and message broker. Gives data structures as strings, hashes, lists, sets, sorted sets, including range queries, bitmaps, hyperloglogs, geospatial indexes, and streams. In addition to, Redis has built-in replication, Lua scripting, LRU eviction, transactions, and different levels of on-disk persistence and provides tremendous availability via Redis Sentinel and automated partitioning with Redis Cluster.

• Also Written in C and works in most POSIX like Linux, *BSD, and OS X, without dependencies.Linux and OS X are mostly the operating systems that Redis was developed and tested. Also I would recommend using Linux for deployment. So Redis may work in the Solaris systems.There is no official statement that supports Windows builds.

=> ↺ How to Use Passwd Command in Linux Complete Guide for beginners 2021

• The use of passwd command in Linux is necessary for changing passwords of users and root user from time to time as per requirement and password policy.

• A root user means the superuser can change the password of any users any time without any restrictions imposed by the password policy already applier earlier.

• It means the root user is one who can decide any time who will be using the system at what time and for how many duration at all. However, the users can also change the password of their own user account as per the password policy.

• Overruling of password policy can not be possible in any condition by a normal user. Also, the unauthorized user can not change the password of other users or root user anyway.

=> ↺ Nmap options for Firewall IDS evasion in Kali Linux 2021 | CYBERPRATIBHA

• Firewall is a software or hardware to protect private network from public network. If hacker make activity to scan network, these methods are discarded by Firewall. so this is most important for hackers and Pentester to scan the network without being caught. If you can bypass firewall then you are safe. In this tutorial you will learn how to bypass and test firewall.

=> ↺ Nessus scan policies and report Tutorial for beginner 2021

• When you have finished the installation and configuration of Nessus How to Install Nessus on Kali Linux 2.0, then you have ready to scan and finding vulnerabilities of local, network, window, and Linux machines. In this note, I will guide you to find vulnerabilities of the network and system step by step.

=> ↺ How to Install or Update to Latest Version Cockpit on Ubuntu 20.04 – LinuxCapable

• Cockpit is a free remote server manager that is lightweight and easy to use for GNU/Linux servers. Cockpit is a web-based graphical interface for servers intended for people new to Linux to the experts such as sysadmins. Cockpit makes Linux discoverable, allowing anyone using the software to perform tasks such as start containers, administer storage, configure networks, and inspect logs.

• One of the drawbacks of using Cockpit with Ubuntu 20.04 LTS is being a long-term stable release newer versions of Cockpit will not feature in the default repository. However, in the following tutorial, you will learn how to install or upgrade to the latest version of Cockpit for your Ubuntu 20.04 system.

Wine or Emulation

=> ↺ Wine 6.15 is out seeing more PE library conversions, work for the GDI syscall interface

• The latest and greatest development release is available for Wine so you can defeat those Sunday blues with some tasty fresh bottled code. Wine 6.15 brings various new features and bug fixes.

• For newer readers and Linux users here’s a refresher – Wine is a compatibility layer built for operating systems like Linux, macOS and BSD. The idea is to allow other platforms to run games and applications only built and supported for Windows. It’s also part of what makes up Steam Play Proton. Once a year or so, a new stable release is made.

Games

=> ↺ The Humble Jackbox Summer Party Bundle is live

• Ready to party and play some rather silly games? The Humble Jackbox Summer Party Bundle went up and it has good Linux support for the big packs and a few of the standalone games too.

=> ↺ Didn’t last long: Back 4 Blood no longer working on Linux with Proton | GamingOnLinux

• Well, looks like the previous excitement around Back 4 Blood and the Open Beta for Linux users is over, as it appears whatever they tweaked recently now stops Linux players with Steam Play Proton.

• As we reported recently, apart from a few issues it actually worked quite nicely. Sadly, this seems to be another example of Easy Anti-Cheat blocking Linux users from enjoying a game on their systems. Even though it’s currently only a Beta, it means it’s not looking good for the full release in October.

• This is a continuing problem for Steam Play Proton, with the likes of Easy Anti-Cheat and BattlEye usually blocking Linux users. Right now then, it looks like we’re back onto the waiting game for whenever Valve releases a build of Proton that works with them, which we know they’re working on since they already announced it with the Steam Deck.

=> ↺ OpenRazer 3.1 Released With Support For More Razer Devices – Phoronix

• OpenRazer 3.1 is now available as the newest version of this open-source, third-party solution for enabling Razer devices under Linux.

• OpenRazer is a collection of drivers for Razer hardware on Linux along with a common interface for user-space configuration and management. This unofficial Razer for Linux solution allows many of the company’s keyboards, mice, headsets, and other peripherals to work under Linux and allow for their configuration.

• Today’s OpenRazer 3.1 brings support for another batch of Razer devices. Now supported with OpenRazer 3.1 are the Razer Blade Advanced (Early 2021), BlackWidow V3 Tenkeyless, BlackWidow Tournament Edition 2014, Basilisk Essential, Blade 15 Advanced (Mid 2021), and Huntsman V2 Analog.

=> ↺ Valve puts up a Steam Deck trailer and the head of Xbox seems to really like it | GamingOnLinux

• Valve has remembered they have an official YouTube channel with the release of a new advert for the Steam Deck, plus the Steam Deck gets a nod of approval from an unlikely source.

• The first video they’ve put up here since the last CS:GO operation, it doesn’t actually give anything new. However, it’s another sign that Valve is actually properly marketing the device (unlike the Steam Machines). Claiming it’s the “most powerful gaming handheld in the world” and going on to briefly show off a few game clips we’ve seen before like Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order. It doesn’t mention SteamOS, Proton or anything Linux related but simply mentions it runs a “new version of Steam” and ends by telling people to reserve now.

Desktop Environments/WMs

K Desktop Environment/KDE SC/Qt

=> ↺ KDE Connect iOS Design Overview: From Material to Cupertino

• With an interface that brings nostalgia to the days of iOS 8 and 9 and the directly scaled up aspect ratio and interface scale originally designed for the iPhone 5S, it was clear that a major goal of the KDE Connect iOS (2021) project would be to revamp the User Interface of the existing codebase from 2014 drastically.

=> ↺ Kraft Version 0.97

• Ich freue mich, die Kraft-Version 0.97 herauszugeben. In dieser Version sind wieder einige Bugfixes und Detailverbesserungen zu finden, die die Arbeit mit Kraft noch weiter erleichtern werden.

GNOME Desktop/GTK

=> ↺ Sophie Herold: Get set: Apps for GNOME on its mark

• Almost all strings in Apps for GNOME are translatable now. You can check the apps-for-gnome module translation status over at Damned Lies. Be aware, that all app-specific strings will not appear in the apps-for-gnome module! Most apps have their own module in Damned Lies where you will find the respective strings that are used on the Apps for GNOME page. If you want to work on the translation of those app details, you have to consult the respective app module. Also note, that some apps do not use the GNOME translation infrastructure.

Distributions

IBM/Red Hat/Fedora

=> ↺ 3 rules for applying principles of GitOps to enterprise architecture

• GitOps is an automated approach to system and infrastructure administration in which the capabilities of continuous integration/continuous deployment (CI/CD), and Git-based source code control management are combined to create and subsequently manage enterprise systems quickly and accurately.

=> ↺ Should Managers Code?

• Becoming a manager can be a triumphant milestone of working life. It’s often a recognition of leadership and, in the tech industry, technical skill. Many argue those skills necessarily become casualties to the management track. But it’s hard to let go of your creative side to make room for managing others. Can they do both? Should managers code? It’s an old question that never seems to receive a clear answer.

• From the Red Hat offices to the moons of Jupiter, Compiler explores why it’s such a complex issue. We spoke with Red Hatters who are vocal about what role, if any, managers have in the code base—and why they fight to keep their hands on keys for as long as they can.

=> ↺ IBM to allow only fully vaccinated to return to U.S. offices from September 7

• The resurgence of COVID-19 cases in the United States due to the Delta variant and the new guidance from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) that requires fully vaccinated individuals to wear masks have led companies to change their plans on return to office, vaccinations and masking. Earlier on Thursday, Facebook Inc has pushed back its office return date for all U.S. and some international employees until January 2022, while AT&T Inc said it will require management employees to be vaccinated before entering a work location.

=> ↺ Beige Against the Machine: The IBM PC turns 40

• It is 40 years today since the IBM Model 5150 was unleashed upon the world, creating a tsunami of beige that washed over offices everywhere.

• IBM was famously late to the game when the Model 5150 (or IBM PC) put in an appearance. The likes of Commodore and Apple pretty much dominated the microcomputer world as the 1970s came to a close and the 1980s began. Big Blue, on the other hand, was better known for its sober, business-orientated products and its eyewatering price tags.

Debian Family

=> ↺ Debian 11 “bullseye” is officially out now | GamingOnLinux

• Seeing more than two years in development, the Debian team has announced the release of Debian 11 “bullseye” as their latest major stable upgrade. One of the most important Linux distributions around, which multiple others are based upon like Ubuntu. With it being a stable release it’s going to be supported for at least 5 years.

=> ↺ 7 New Features in the Newly Released Debian 11 ‘Bullseye’ Linux Distro

• The much awaited release of Debian 11 codenamed Bullseye is finally here after two years of development. The release will be supported for the next five years like any other Debian stable version release.

• Excited about it? Let’s see what’s new in Debian 11.

• [...]

• Debian has updates its package repositories. Debian 11 includes over 11294 new packages taking the total to over 59551 packages. Over 42821 software packages have newer versions. Over 9519 packages have been removed for the distribution.

• This means that you should see newer versions of the popular applications like LibreOffice, Emacs, GIMP and various server and programming related tools.

=> ↺ Debian 11 ‘Bullseye’ Released! Kernel 5.10, exFAT, Modern Printers Support

• Debian 11, code-name ‘Bullseye’, officially released. Features 5-year support, Kernel 5.10 LTS, out-of-the-box support for exFAT file-system and most modern printers.

• Debian is free open-source community-supported Linux distribution started in 1993. It aims to be “The Universal Operating System” that is suitable for Desktop users, servers to cluster systems; and for database, web, and storage servers. And it’s the basis for many other distributions, including Ubuntu.

• In my mind, Debian is a quite stable and reliable system for production use. While serving with less system resources, it’s very popular for server users. Though the package base is a little old, there are package teams keep working for the security, stability and performance. And in “Bullseye”, the Debian Med team has been flighting against COVID-19 by packaging software for researching the virus on the sequence level and for the tools used in epidemiology.

Devices/Embedded

Mobile Systems/Mobile Applications

=> ↺ 10 Best Cricket Games for Android That Every Cricket Fan Must Try

=> ↺ 8 new Android games from the last week: The best, worst, and everything in between (8/8/21 – 8/15/21)

=> ↺ The Best Sci-Fi Game for Android 2021 – Xcom, Star Wars, Lifeline and More – Droid Gamers

=> ↺ Top Stories: 50MP camera Pixel 6, Android 12 ‘Ongoing call’ – 9to5Google

=> ↺ Android 12 easter egg: how to summon the spots in the new software update | TechRadar

=> ↺ The OG Motorola Razr foldable phone is getting Android 11 update at Verizon – PhoneArena

=> ↺ Nokia T20 tablet with Unisoc CPU and Android 11 tested on Geekbench | Nokiamob

=> ↺ PUBG Mobile Lite 0.21.2 Latest Version Available For Android Devices: Here’s How Users Can Download Game

=> ↺ How to use your Android phone as a PC webcam, mouse, or keyboard | Laptop Mag

=> ↺ Here’s how you can block spam SMS on Android phone and iPhone – Information News

=> ↺ GPD XP: Android-based gaming handheld presented with a modular controller and LTE support – NotebookCheck.net News

=> ↺ Android users beware: Don’t be duped by this nasty new text threat | Express.co.uk

=> ↺ Google TV vs Android TV: which is better? | TechRadar

=> ↺ NVIDIA Shield TV Stick delivers Android TV at $130 following rare discount – 9to5Toys

Free, Libre, and Open Source Software

=> ↺ Open Source Drives IoT and Edge Computing Adoption

• The IoT and Edge Computing market is growing, and the Eclipse IoT & Edge Native working groups offer a mature and growing open source ecosystem upon which to build and deploy applications.

• By way of full disclosure, I work for an open source foundation. While this may result in some bias on the topic, it also puts me in a great position to share what I know and learn about industrial open source ecosystems. My purpose in writing this article is to do exactly that — to share what I consider to be important and timely information about the commercial adoption of open source IoT and Edge Computing technologies.

=> ↺ how to Open Source weather forecast in privacy respecting ways that actually work! – 100% Open Source Android Weather App

=> ↺ The Open Library Foundation Adds Three Board Members

• The Open Library Foundation is a community of open source projects. Tom Cramer, Associate University Librarian and Director of Digital Library Systems and Services at Stanford University, is the President of the Open Library Foundation Board. He says the Foundation casts a wide net when looking for new Board Members who can bring their expertise to the Open Library Foundation. “We are fortunate to have three new members of our Board that bring such strength and diversity of experience to the Open Library Foundation. The OLF is a global non-profit, and their voices and expertise will help us advance open source software for libraries across the world.”

=> ↺ How this San Francisco-headquartered open-source platform is providing a chatbot to NGOs

• Recently, many companies, NGOs, and ecommerce platforms are turning to online chatbots to assist customers and users at any time of the day.

• In fact, during the COVID-19 pandemic, many NGOs leveraged social media apps, like WhatsApp, to form groups for communication. However, there were limitations to these groups due to the limited participants.

• To address these problems, San Francisco-headquartered Glific — an open-source, two-way communication platform for NGOs — was created in 2019 to smoothly connect and communicate with their beneficiaries. The code for the platform can be downloaded for free.

=> ↺ How open-source software shapes AI policy

• Open-source software (OSS), software that is free to access, use, and change without restrictions, plays a central role in the development and use of artificial intelligence (AI). Across open-source programming languages such as Python, R, C++, Java, Scala, Javascript, Julia, and others, there are thousands of implementations of machine learning algorithms. OSS frameworks for machine learning, including tidymodels in R and Scikit-learn in Python, have helped consolidate many diverse algorithms into a consistent machine learning process and enabled far easier use for the everyday data scientist. There are also OSS tools specific to the especially important subfield of deep learning, which is dominated by Google’s Tensorflow and Facebook’s PyTorch. Manipulation and analysis of big data (data sets too large for a single computer) were also revolutionized by OSS, first by the Hadoop ecosystem and later by projects like Spark. These are not simply some of the AI tools—they are the best AI tools. While proprietary data analysis software may sometimes enable machine learning without the need to write code, it does not enable analytics that are as well developed as those in modern OSS.

Web Browsers

Chromium

=> ↺ Mike Gabriel: Chromium Policies Managed under Linux

• For a customer project, I recently needed to take a closer look at best strategies of deploying Chromium settings onto thrillions of client machines in a corporate network.

• Unfortunately, the information on how to deploy site-wide Chromium browser policies are a little scattered over the internet and the intertwining of Chromium preferences and Chromium policies required deeper introspection.

• Here, I’d like to provide the result of that research, namely a list of references that has been studied before setting up Chromium policies for the customer’s proof-of-concept.

Mozilla

=> ↺ Firefox 91 introduces cookie clearing, clutter-free printing, Microsoft single sign-on… so where are all the users?

• Mozilla has released Firefox 91, with single sign-on for Microsoft 365, improved cookie clearing, automatic switch to HTTPS in private windows, and more, but the browser’s market share remains small despite a redesign.

SaaS/Back End/Databases

=> ↺ Where’s the nearest exit? ServiceNow continues on acquisition spree with interior mapping startup Mapwize • The Register

• More difficult to fit into the ServiceNow jigsaw is Swarm64. The Berlin startup builds technology specifically designed to accelerate open-source RDBMS PostgreSQL – in particular its analytical performance – as co-founder and CEO Thomas Richter told The Register last year.

CMS

=> ↺ American Airlines Sues Software Provider, Web Host Over Phishing Site

• American Airlines has sued the nonprofit Joomla, which provides web publishing software, and web host Cloud Access, for allegedly allowing fraudsters to use “American Airlines” in a domain name, in order to trick consumers into providing sensitive data.

FSF

GNU Projects

=> ↺ Grep 3.7 Released To Fix “Extreme Performance Degradation”

• If you have noticed grep regressing performance-wise in recent releases, you may want to upgrade to GNU Grep 3.7 released this weekend as it fixes a nasty performance regression.

• GNU Grep is widely-used by programmers, system administrators, and others for searching textual data from the command-line. Grep 3.7′s release is primarily driven by a fix for “extreme performance degradation” plaguing recent Grep releases.

=> ↺ GNU Health: GNU Health emergency response in Haiti

• Yesterday, yet another devastating earthquake hit the southern area of Haiti.

• Immediately knowing about the earthquake, we contacted our representative in Haiti, Michel Pierre Augustin, and started an emergency humanitarian response in coordination with our team in the country .

• Haiti suffers recurrent natural disasters (hurricanes, earthquakes). In the last years, Haiti has also been a victim of structural poverty and civil unrest. Haitians are strong, resilient, noble people. Haiti is the land of the free and the brave (see my post “My trip to Haiti, the land of the Free and the Brave” ), yet it seems like the world has forgotten about Haiti.

Openness/Sharing/Collaboration

Open Access/Content

=> ↺ Internet Law

• This fall I’m teaching Internet Law again after a hiatus. One aspect of law school that is changing is that professors are publishing freely available textbooks and (some) professors are assigning those books for the students.

Programming/Development

=> ↺ Rotten Chicken & Structural Pattern Matching

• I imagined cycling the power on and off for ninety seconds every half hour to start and stop the ozone generator. I cobbled together an experiment with webthings.io, a project spun out of Mozilla last year. It is IoT software that’s both easy to program and YAML-free. I setup webthings.io on a RaspberryPi with a ZigBee adapter. In my work at Mozilla a few years ago, I wrote my own Python package to assist in controlling IoT devices (starting at: Things Gateway Series 2), so it was easy to throw together a rule.

• At the same time as this project, I was looking at the advancements in the Python language introduced in version 3.10. I’m especially fascinated with Structural Pattern Matching. Python finally gets something akin to a case statement. It’s a controversial feature for several reasons. It employs some syntactic surprises.

Perl/Raku

=> ↺ Perl’s Community Affairs Team chair quits as org put on ice by code language’s foundation

• The Perl Foundation has put its Community Affairs Team (CAT) on hiatus, and the team’s chair has resigned.

• Samantha McVey’s departure came in the wake of the decision by The Perl Foundation (TPF) board to retract the CAT statements of April 19, and May 2, and put the CAT on ice “while its charter is formalized.”

Python

=> ↺ Elastic amends Elasticsearch Python client so it won’t work with forks then blocks comments • The Register

=> ↺ monopoly of racism

• Elastic has modified the official Python client for its Elasticsearch database not to work with forked versions, and closed the GitHub issue to comments.

• Elasticsearch is a database manager and analytics engine, often used for log analytics. The elasticsearch-py client has over 202,000 downloads and is described as the “official low-level client for Elasticsearch. Its goal is to provide common ground for all Elasticsearch-related code in Python; because of this it tries to be opinion-free and very extendable.”

Leftovers

Science

=> ↺ Steinar H. Gunderson: Baseus 65W USB charger

• There’s an evolution in charger technology going on right now; gallium nitride (GaN) technology promises smaller and more efficient chargers than the older all-silicon designs. I was curious at whether it was actually good or not, so after a recommendation, I bought a Baseus Pro 65W charger off AliExpress.

=> ↺ A Canadian startup refuels to take on a rare cardiac condition that many patients don’t realize they have – Endpoints News

• A year and a half ago, a small biotech launched out of Laval, Que­bec to one-up be­ta block­ers for the treat­ment of a rare heart con­di­tion that of­ten goes un­di­ag­nosed.

Education

=> ↺ Gogi promotes art for activism in education

• There was a long queue of applicants with their vehicles to collect free books for their welfare schools; they included women running garage schools, as well as those teaching children in shanty schools, community schools, and schools running on string budgets. These books were given as gifts by Nigar Nazar, founder of Gogi Studios, for children who have probably never held a glossy colourful picture book.

• Gogi Studios presented a set of 7 Gogi books as a free gift for every child to mark Independence Day. “We are proud to say that our books went from one end of Pakistan i.e., Gilgit-Baltistan, to the desert of Badin. In all, these books will touch the lives of about 40,000 children and if shared by friends, neighbours and relatives, the number will be way bigger,” Nigar stated.

=> ↺ I-Day Special | Pandemic-hit children need better education – The Hindu BusinessLine

• As we enter the 75th year of Independence, it would be hard to say that India’s progress in education has been exemplary. As is well known, India’s literacy rate at 76 per cent compares poorly with China, Indonesia, Sri Lanka, the Philippines, Thailand and Vietnam, all of which have achieved near total adult literacy levels as a proportion of the population above 15 years. As Amartya Sen and Jean Dreze point out in their book An Uncertain Glory, education should be viewed as public good in its own right, rather than just a driver of economic progress.

Health/Nutrition

=> ↺ U.S. Preparing Plan to Offer Vaccine Boosters, Perhaps By Fall – The New York Times

=> ↺ If I set sars-cov-2 medical policy: intranasal vaccination booster and mandated real N95 masks

• There are only 7 intranasal sars-cov-2 vaccinations undergoing early phase 1/2 trials right now and of them only 2 are using a sane design: one live attenuated sars-cov-2, one protein fragment of the receptor binding domain. I hope one of the two manages to clear phase 3 and be manufactured. Otherwise the only option may be ordering peptides and assembling the community designed RaDVaC sars-cov-2 intranasal vaccine at a price point of $5k for a couple dozen doses.

=> ↺ U.S. Pandemic Death Toll Rises Again

=> ↺ Pandemic provokes acceleration of healthcare innovation

• Medical technology is characterised by constant innovation. In 2019, nearly 14 000 patent applications were filed with the European Patent Office (EPO) in the field of medical technology, more than in any other technical field. In Europe, there are more than 32 000 medical technology companies, employing some 730 000 people.

=> ↺ Duke University to Study COVID-19’s Impact on Athlete Health

• The Duke Heart Center has begun recruiting for its Hearts of Athletes study that will investigate the impact of COVID-19 on college and pro athletes. The study is funded by the Joel Cornette Foundation and will use Deloitte’s ConvergeHEALTH MyPath software platform.

• Hearts of Athletes is seeking to enroll athletes both with and without COVID-19. The goal of the study is to identify the prevalence of myocarditis, a type of heart inflammation found among some patients dealing with COVID-19, and then determine signs and symptoms of the heart condition that would aid accurate diagnoses.

=> ↺ Signs of COVID Scams and Fraud

• Phone-based and online scams have been on the rise during the COVID-19 pandemic. Here’s what you need to know.

Integrity/Availability

=> ↺ Come fly with me. But first we need to find a boot device

• Stansted, or “London Stansted” as it is often called, is located quite some distance from London and serves as a hub for the likes of budget airline, Ryanair. Indeed, the same person that sold the location as “London” was probably cut from the same cloth as whoever flogged the airport an iffy screen as the latest and greatest in digital signage.

Proprietary

Pseudo-Open Source

Openwashing

=> ↺ OpenAI offers API for GitHub Copilot AI model

• OpenAI, the artificial intelligence research and deployment venture that co-developed the GitHub Copilot AI-based coding tool, has released an API version of the model that powers Copilot.

=> ↺ Facebook shares its Time Card atomic clock tech to speed internet services

=> ↺ HPA Engineering Excellence recipients include Arch Platform, Autodesk, The Foundry, Mo-Sys Engineering

Security

=> ↺ Lockbit ransomware attack didn’t affect ops, claims Accenture amid lurid payoff rumours • The Register

• Outsourcing and accounting firm Accenture has been struck by Lockbit ransomware.

=> ↺ Re-volting: AMD Secure Encrypted Virtualization undone by electrical attack • The Register

• AMD’s Secure Encrypted Virtualization (SEV) scheme is not as secure as its name suggests.

• Boffins from the Technische Universität Berlin have devised an attack that defeats the primary purpose of this silicon safe room technology: protecting the data in virtual machines from rogue administrators in cloud environments.

• In a paper titled “One Glitch to Rule Them All: Fault Injection Attacks Against AMD’s Secure Encrypted Virtualization,” Robert Buhren, Hans Niklas Jacob, Thilo Krachenfels, and Jean-Pierre Seifert from TU Berlin’s Security in Telecommunications group, describe how they succeeded in mounting a voltage fault injection attack.

=> ↺ Court rules man who exploited bug to mint $14M in ICX tokens can legally pursue – CoinGeek

• In what is one of the most unique legal battles in the industry, a U.S. federal judge has sided with one man’s legal effort to keep his tokens, despite having mined them by exploiting a bug in the system. The judge ruled that the man has every right to fight for the right to own the tokens in court, after he had been denied access to the tokens on Kraken and Binance.

• It all started in August 2020. According to court documents, when Mark Shin attempted to transfer staked ICX tokens from his wallet, he discovered he had received 25,000 newly-minted tokens. ICX tokens are the native tokens that power the ICON decentralized network.

=> ↺ Google Releases Tool to Help Developers Enforce Security | IT Pro

• The AllStars tool allows software maintainers to automatically check specific facets of their project, such as security policy.

Privacy/Surveillance

=> ↺ Apple Outlines Security and Privacy of CSAM Detection System in New Document

=> ↺ Apple responds to critics of CSAM scan plan with FAQs – says it’d block governments subverting its system

=> ↺ PR director at Chinese Twitter analogue Weibo detained on bribery and fraud charges

• The director of public relations at Sina Weibo – China’s equivalent to Twitter – was arrested on suspicion of bribery and fraud, Chinese state media reported on Tuesday.

• State-owned Global Times said PR exec Mao Taotao was fired and blocked from future employment with the Sina Corporation microblogging website.

• An internal memo was sent to staff and republished in the media accusing Taotao of “seriously [harming] the interests of the company.” The memo said Sina is assisting with the investigation and confirmed the exec is no longer an employee.

=> ↺ Pegasus row: Tamil Nadu MP seeks Attorney Gen consent to initiate contempt against NSO directors, Home Secy

• Tamil Nadu MP Dr T Thirumavalavan on Saturday wrote to Attorney General of India KK Venugopal seeking his consent for initiation of criminal contempt proceedings against Home Secretary Ajay Bhalla, former Home Secretary Rajiv Gauba, and directors of NSO Group, the Israel-based company, which owns spyware Pegasus.

• The MP sought initiation of contempt proceedings against them while alleging using “military-grade surveillance” against a Supreme Court justice, while he still was in office, two Supreme Court registry officials on the judicial side of the writ section, and another Supreme Court staffer.

=> ↺ The controversy over Apple’s plan to protect kids by scanning your iPhone

• Apple, the company that proudly touted its user privacy bona fides in its recent iOS 15 preview, recently introduced a feature that seems to run counter to its privacy-first ethos: the ability to scan iPhone photos and alert the authorities if any of them contain child sexual abuse material (CSAM). While fighting against child sexual abuse is objectively a good thing, privacy experts aren’t thrilled about how Apple is choosing to do it.

=> ↺ Palantir abandons any attempt at curating nice-guy image with ‘Global Information Dominance Experiments’ • The Register

• For an AI biz associated with the CIA and the much-criticised US immigration agency ICE, whose founder helped finance impeached ex-president and alleged insurrectionist Donald Trump, it might be fair to assume Palantir would endevour to avoid giving the wrong impression.

• For example, publicising a project under the title “Global Information Dominance Experiments”, run by the US Airforce, might not be first on the list to create a friendlier image. But that’s not for Palantir.

=> ↺ China stops networked vehicle data going offshore under new infosec rules

• China has drafted new rules required of its autonomous and networked vehicle builders.

• Data security is front and centre in the rules, with manufacturers required to store data generated by cars – and describing their drivers – within China. Data is allowed to go offshore, but only after government scrutiny.

• Manufacturers are also required to name a chief of network security, who gets the job of ensuring autonomous vehicles can’t fall victim to cyber attacks. Made-in-China auto-autos are also required to be monitored to detect security issues.

Defence/Aggression

=> ↺ Taiwan president pokes the bear by saying the nation needs to lessen its supply chain dependency on China

• Taiwan’s need to pull in external tech talent and the nation’s supply chain dependence on China were two topics covered in a rare interview with President Tsai Ing-wen by Japanese outlet Bungei Shunju.

• Taiwan’s semiconductor industry dominates the global marketplace with homegrown giants like TSMC and in 2020 claimed 70 per cent of the world’s OEMs. Tsai attributed (see transcript – in traditional Chinese) this success to its mature industrial clusters and concentration on foundries as a business model, which faces little competition.

• One struggle that concerns Tsai is keeping up with high-tech talent, particularly as Taiwan’s semiconductor companies continue to set up manufacturing plants overseas.

• “It is very difficult to rely solely on Taiwan to provide excellent talents,” said Tsai.

Environment

=> ↺ Antarctica is changing. The impact could be catastrophic

• Camille Seaman didn’t need Monday’s UN report to learn that the Earth has been warming at a breakneck pace.

• She’s seen it with her own eyes.

• The photographer has been visiting Antarctica on and off since 2004, working on expedition ships for National Geographic. In just the past few years, she has witnessed a noticeable change on the continent.

• “What I have seen from 2016 to now, it’s like a different place altogether,” she said.

• [...]

• The melting of polar regions is also having a troubling effect on some of the wildlife that calls those places home.

• Chinstrap penguin colonies in some areas of the Antarctic have declined by more than 75% over the past half-century, according to independent researchers who joined a Greenpeace expedition to the region before the pandemic. They believe climate change is largely to blame, saying less sea ice and warmer oceans have reduced the krill that many of the penguins rely on for food.

• “Phytoplankton blooms on the underside of the sea ice, and that is what the krill feed on,” Seaman explained. “And then the penguins feed on the krill, the whales feed on the krill, seals and sea lions feed on the krill. So it has this incredible chain effect. If you lose the sea ice, you lose this phytoplankton. You lose the phytoplankton and then you start losing the krill, and it starts to chain all the way up.”

Finance

=> ↺ SA must dump failed Marxist ideas

• The unwarranted complete destruction of our economy and multiple deaths of innocent people in KZN and parts of Gauteng points to an ANC that has no regard for the welfare of our nation.

=> ↺ Congress’s Misstep on Crypto Reporting Shows the Dangerous Allure of Surveillance

• The visceral pushback to Sen. Rob Portman’s reporting requirements isn’t about avoiding taxes – it’s about protecting digital liberties.

=> ↺ Against the US Senate’s Heavy-Handed Crypto Provision

• CoinDesk almost never adopts a formal editorial position on issues. We feature a wide variety of outside and internal opinion pieces, including those the two of us pen in our personal capacities. We usually leave the task of presenting the organization’s common perspective to the breadth and balance of the newsroom’s reporting, rather than explicitly taking an official point of view on any given topic.

=> ↺ US senators reach last-minute compromise on cryptocurrency regulations as infrastructure bill vote looms • The Register

• US Senators have reached an agreement to amend the definition of who counts as a digital asset “broker” in the bipartisan infrastructure bill, a change that makes sure cryptocurrency miners and engineers are exempt from the proposed regulations.

• In an attempt to pay for the trillion-dollar bill [PDF], Congress is introducing rules that will make it more difficult for crypto investors to evade paying taxes whenever they buy or sell digital cash like Bitcoin or Ethereum.

=> ↺ The US Senate’s infrastructure bill passed with a privacy problem for crypto

Misinformation/Disinformation

=> ↺ Researchers Claim Facebook Threatened To Sue Them Unless They Shut Down Project

• AlgorithmWatch, a German research and advocacy organization, issued a statement Friday alleging Facebook had threatened it with legal action. The group was researching Instagram’s news feed algorithm by recruiting volunteers to install a browser extension that automatically scraped their Instagram newsfeed data.

• Researchers allege Facebook, the owner of Instagram, told them the extension violated its terms of service and the company would pursue a “more formal engagement” if they did not disable it. The group said this was a “thinly veiled threat.”

Internet Policy/Net Neutrality

=> ↺ What domain name to use for your home network

• There’s a definitive answer to this question, and you can find it in RFC 8375: use home.arpa. Never heard of it before? It wasn’t assigned as a special purpose top-level domain (spTLD) name for residential and small networks until 2018.

• The home.arpa spTLD isn’t a globally unique domain name, and you can’t resolve it across the internet. It’s only meant to be used inside a small network, such as your home network. Routers and DNS servers know, [in theory,] not to forward ARPA requests they don’t understand onto the public internet.

Monopolies

=> ↺ Big Tech’s Stranglehold on Artificial Intelligence Must Be Regulated

• Google CEO Sundar Pichai has suggested—more than once—that artificial intelligence (AI) will affect humanity’s development more profoundly than humanity’s harnessing of fire. He was speaking, of course, of AI as a technology that gives machines or software the ability to mimic human intelligence to complete ever more complex tasks with little or no human input at all.

=> ↺ Amazon Game Studios to its own devs: All your codebase doesn’t belong to us • The Register

• E-goliath’s subsidiary drops ‘draconian’ contract terms that absorbed personal work, demanded license rights

• Amazon Game Studios has reportedly dropped terms in its employment contract that gave the internet giant a license to the intellectual property created by employees, even to games they develop on their own time.

• The expansive contractual terms received some attention last month when James Liu, a software engineer at Google, recounted via Twitter how in 2018 he turned down a job offer at Amazon “due to absolutely draconian rules regarding hobbyist game dev.”

=> ↺ KOL022b | “Libertarian Legal Theory: Property, Conflict, and Society, Lecture 5b: Q&A” (Mises Academy, 2011)

• I don’t understand how a lack of patent protection would work in some parts of the economy, pharmaceuticals for example. Prices are inflated. Okay, what were the incentives for these companies to extend large amounts of capital? Okay, well, I think I know where you’re going. I’ve heard this.

=> ↺ The sideloader weeps tonight: Unsealed court docs claim Google said ‘install friction’ would ‘drastically limit’ Epic’s reach • The Register

• A freshly unsealed filing [PDF] in the Epic smackdown between the maker of the Fortnite video game and Google reveals claims that a “senior Google Play” exec had noted users might be put off by the “frankly abysmal… awful experience” of directly downloading and installing games on Android kit.

• Another juicy detail uncovered by the still partially redacted document was that Google had thought about buying all or part of Epic and had approached the company about establishing a “special deal” for Fortnite.

=> ↺ FOSS Patents: Today is the first anniversary of app developers’ D-Day: #FreeFortnite — Apple will lose if it doesn’t change course and present real solutions

• August 13, 2020. One year ago, to the day. At 2 AM local time, Epic Games CEO Tim Sweeney threw down the gauntlet to Apple by email, telling Tim Cook that Epic would from there on out refuse to comply with Apple’s in-app payment rule and expressing “the firm belief that history and law are on [the Fortnite maker's] side.”

• The timing of the email was deliberate. This way, it was going to take a few hours before Apple would see this (and the fact that Epic activated a “hotfix” that presuambly was just a simple server-side value) and made an alternative payment system available in Fortnite. Apple kicked out Fortnite. So did Google, where Epic did the same thing. Epic filed its private antitrust complaints in the Northern District of California that day.

• At the end of closing argument in Epic Games v. Apple (in late May), Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers jokingly said she’d try to hand down her judgment by today. She later clarified that she just said so because of the first anniversary of the dispute, but cautioned that this important decision might take time given the complexity of the case.

=> ↺ IP Week @ SG 2021

• In slightly over a decade, IP Week@ SG (ie., Singapore) has become a leading global IP event…

=> ↺ UIC Law Virtual Seminar on Mediation and Arbitration in Intellectual Property Disputes

=> ↺ Apple drops intellectual property lawsuit against maker of security tools

=> ↺ Apple drops lawsuit against Corellium in confidential settlement

Patents

=> ↺ “No Turning Back” From EVs

=> ↺ Meet DABUS: The world’s first AI system to be awarded a patent

• DABUS (which stands for “device for the autonomous bootstrapping of unified sentience”) is an AI system created by Stephen Thaler, a pioneer in the field of AI and programming. The system simulates human brainstorming and creates new inventions…

=> ↺ Patents: inventors can be inhuman

• First we heard that a South African patent for an invention that lists artificial intelligence (“AI”) as its inventor had been issued, a world first. Then we heard that an Australian court had handed down a judgment allowing AI to be listed as the inventor of a corresponding patent in Australia.

• The Australian judgment, Stephen Thaler and Commissioner of Patents, delivered by Judge Beach, is technical yet very readable.

=> ↺ Australian Federal Court Says An AI Can Be The Inventor

• In this article for The Patent Lawyer, partner Jeremy Smith provides an update to his earlier comments regarding the South African patent office issuing the world’s first patent for an invention that lists an artificial intelligence (AI) as the inventor (available here), in response to news that the Australian Federal Court has now also handed down a decision that an AI can be named as the inventor in a patent application.

=> ↺ eInventor 2.0 – Patents in the age of AI

• In a landmark decision, Thaler v Commissioner of Patents [2021] FCA 879, Justice Beach of the Federal Court of Australia has made the first judicial determination that recognises artificial intelligence (AI) as an inventor. The decision also confirms that under the Patents Act 1990 (Cth) (Patents Act), non-human inventors can neither be an applicant, nor a patentee.

• Although likely to be controversial, the decision is, arguably, consistent with the reality of scientific advances in technology and computing we have seen this century, and the need for patent law to evolve in parallel with these advances. This need was recognised by the widening conception of manner of manufacture by the High Court of Australia in D’Arcy v Myriad Genetics Inc (2015) 258 CLR 334. The decision is arguably also consistent with the promotion of innovation underlying the policy considerations and Objects Clause contained in the Patents Act.

• What is perhaps less clearly established by the judgment, and may well form the basis for an appeal, is the application of the general law of ownership in property to the vesting of entitlement to a patent in the applicant under section 15(1) of the Patents Act.

=> ↺ Printed Publication: Documents Made Available only to Customers

• The 1836 Patent Act added the caveat that no patent should issue on an invention previously “described in any printed publication.” That language has carried through the various major patent law overhauls and continues as a prominent aspect of 35 U.S.C. 102(a)(1).

=> ↺ Inbound Important Emails that go Unread due to Technology Fails: Another Case

• This is not a patent case, but I have seen similar problems in prosecution, patent litigation, and related contexts over the years: an important email goes to a spam filter, or some other place, and gets left unread.

• In a recent Fifth Circuit case, Rollins v. Home Depot (Here), plaintiff’s counsel was trying to settle a case when defense counsel filed and so e-served a motion for summary judgment — with a 14 day response deadline. For whatever reason, it did not get seen by the plaintiff’s lawyer. The time for response came and went, and the district court granted the defense motion. When plaintiff’s lawyer a short time later reached out to defense counsel again about settlement, defense counsel informed plaintiff’s counsel final judgment had already been entered.

=> ↺ China IP Newsletter (July 2021)

• This month, Chinese government authorities and courts announced new measures to implement the patent linkage system, a key feature of the new Patent Law. They specified the rules for challenging the marketing authorisation of a patented drug both at the administrative and judicial levels.

=> ↺ The changing profile of users of the UK patent system

• Trends in patent applications made to the Intellectual Property Office (IPO) between 2000 and 2020 were analysed and compared to trends at the European Patent Office (EPO).

• Applications to the IPO have dropped over time, with a clear change in the pattern occurring around 2010. On closer inspection, the fall is due to a particular group of UK-based individual applicants rather than companies. These customers often do not pursue their applications beyond the search stage. This could be through lack of interest or merit, so the reduction in applications has made less impact on the number of publications and grants.

• Underlying demand from other customer groups has remained. Non-UK based applicants, large businesses, and users of the Patent Cooperation Treaty (PCT) in particular. The number of applications reaching publication and grant from business customers is significant.

• Factors affecting patent applicants were considered. The Great Recession of 2008 had a big influence on applicant behaviour with a significant turnover of applicants at the time. There are early indications that Brexit and COVID-19 have also affected applicant behaviour. This is despite the fact that no fundamental changes to the patent system have resulted from Brexit. Internal IPO and EPO priorities have an effect on the number of patents granted and in force, but do not appear to influence applicant behaviour.

• UK-based applicants use the IPO more than the EPO, but the gap has closed. There is some evidence of a small number of applicants shifting to using the EPO instead of the IPO. The differences in fees and coverage of these two offices drive customer behaviour. The majority of applications at the IPO are from UK applicants. UK-based applications to the IPO have dropped whilst overseas applications have remained constant. International applicant behaviour has changed, with applications from China growing.

=> ↺ Analysing the global filing activities of UK patent applicants – GOV.UK

• The trends in the patenting activity of UK applicants are analysed over time. The Intellectual Property Office (IPO), United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) and European Patent Office (EPO) are offices that most frequently publish applications from UK applicants. Almost all applications are pursued in at least one of these jurisdictions.

• Over time there has been an increasing tendency to pursue protection in China and in the USA. There has been a decline in the number of applications published in Japan.

• The majority of applications with UK applicants fall into one of two categories. Patents for which broad worldwide protection is sought, including EP and US coverage, and patents that only seek protection in the UK. The former often relates to chemistry patents, and are more likely to be granted than those for which only UK protection is sought.

=> ↺ Double Patenting.

=> ↺ it is widely known (and proven) by now that the Enlarged Board of Appeal (EBA) of the EPO is a rigged court ruled by criminals from the Office, not judges

• On 22 June 2021, the Enlarged Board of Appeal (EBA) of the EPO issued Decision G 4/19 on double patenting. The EBA held that a European patent application can be refused if it claims the same subject matter as a European patent that has been granted to the same applicant and that has the same effective date.

=> ↺ WIPO and the International Day of the World’s Indigenous Peoples

=> ↺ WIPO

• The World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) has shared some news in connection with International Day of the World’s Indigenous Peoples, celebrated on 9 August every year.

• [...]

• The first program in this series took place in 2019 (as reported here), and was attended by 24 women from, inter alia, Mexico, Russian Federation, Papua New Guinea, Cameroon, New Caledonia, Norway, Peru, Australia, and Brazil.

• The program is addressed to women in light of the role they often play as custodians of TK and TECs, as well as the challenges faced concerning unequal access to education, funding and support services.

=> ↺ Life Sciences A to Z – U is for Unified Patent Court – Stevens & Bolton LLP

• As a tool for protecting innovation, patents are an important asset for research-based life sciences companies, and high-stakes, high-cost litigation in multiple jurisdictions is common where “blockbuster” drugs are concerned. The proposed EU Unified Patent Court (UPC) system aims to streamline patent litigation in Europe and to avoid forum shopping between different EU courts. Although some remain sceptical, many in the life sciences industry have welcomed this initiative.

=> ↺ How patent evergreening plays out in India

• Pharma counsel analyse the relevant provision to curb patent evergreening in India and its recent application by the patent office and the courts

=> ↺ Artificial Intelligence as the Inventor of Life Sciences Patents?

=> ↺ “Life Sciences”

• The question whether an artificial intelligence (“AI”) system can be named as an inventor in a patent application has obvious implications for the life science community, where AI’s presence is now well established and growing. For example, AI is currently used to predict biological targets of prospective drug molecules, identify candidates for drug design, decode genetic material of viruses in the context of vaccine development, determine three-dimensional structures of proteins, including their folding form, and many more potential therapeutic applications.

=> ↺ Dallas Invents: 103 Patents Granted for Week of July 27

• Dallas Invents is a weekly look at U.S. patents granted with a connection to the Dallas-Fort Worth-Arlington metro area. Listings include patents granted to local assignees and/or those with a North Texas inventor. Patent activity can be an indicator of future economic growth, as well as the development of emerging markets and talent attraction. By tracking both inventors and assignees in the region, we aim to provide a broader view of the region’s inventive activity. Listings are organized by Cooperative Patent Classification (CPC).

=> ↺ Australian Court determines that an Artificial Intelligence system can be an inventor for the purposes of patent law

• This rapid uptake of AI and machine learning in the life sciences industry has raised questions regarding the effects of incorporating such technologies into the inventive process, including the patentability of resulting inventions, to ensure a company’s investments in new drug candidates, methods of treatment, and/or therapeutic uses are protected and rewarded.

• In Australia, a first instance decision by Justice Beach of the Federal Court has provided some guidance: pursuant to Thaler v Commissioner of Patents [2021] FCA 879, an AI system can be the named inventor for an Australian patent application, with a person or corporation listed as the applicant for that patent, or a grantee of the patent.

=> ↺ Ask the Experts: Can a patent attorney help your business?

• If you have watched the BBC programme ‘Dragons Den’, you’ll almost certainly have heard entrepreneurs asked about intellectual property [sic] rights [sic], such as patents, design rights, trademarks and so on.

=> ↺ Backlash grows against decision to grant patent to AI system

• At first glance, a recently granted South African patent relating to a “food container based on fractal geometry” seems fairly mundane. The innovation in question involves interlocking food containers that are easy for robots to grasp and stack.

• On closer inspection, the patent is anything but mundane. That’s because the inventor is not a human being – it is an artificial intelligence (AI) system called DABUS.

=> ↺ Giving Meaning to Silence (Claim Construction) | Patently-O

• The Magseis invention here is fully enclosed single case seismometer. The patent explains that “hundreds to thousands of receivers” might be deployed in order to conduct a seismic survey. U.S. Pat. No. RE45,268. A key feature of a seismometer is the “geophone” that actually detects the vibrations. Prior to this invention, seismometers were already known as were the geophones used. The improvement here is the arrangement of all the components within the single case. Of importance to this case is that every claim requires the geophone to be “internally fixed” to either the housing or an internal compartment.

• Magseis sued Seabed for infringement; Seabed turned around and petitioned for inter partes review (IPR). Although the IPR was initiated, the PTAB eventually sided with the patentee and concluded that the claims had not been proven invalid.

• The basic issue on appeal was a question of whether the prior art showing a “gimbaled” attachment counts as being “fixed.” A gimbal is a mount mechanism that allows multiple degrees of freedom and are often an element of a camera tripod setup. Gimbaling of the geophone was admittedly common in the art at the time of the invention.

• [...]

• On appeal, the Federal Circuit has rejected that claim construction and vacated for reconsideration. According to the opinion, the PTAB erred in delving into the extrinsic evidence since the intrinsic evidence was clear, even though entirely silent as to the gimbal issue.

=> ↺ GlaxoSmithKline LLC v. Teva Pharmaceuticals USA (Fed. Cir. 2021)

• Most judicial outcomes, particularly on appeal, are broadly based on varying combinations of process and outcome. The law is replete with process-based decisions (standing, jurisdiction, waiver, to name a few) and of course even more frequently perhaps coming to the “correct” outcome is a major decisive factor in a court’s opinions. Rarely are these two features of judicial consideration juxtaposed in opposition (albeit not so rarely that the aphorism that “hard cases make bad law” is not appreciated in practice) but such a case is illustrated in the Federal Circuit’s latest (and second) decision in GlaxoSmithKline LLC v. Teva Pharmaceuticals USA.

• The matter arose in litigation over GSK’s Coreg® product (carvedilol) for treatment of hypertension (the initial approved indication; U.S. Patent No. 4,503,067), congestive heart failure (CHF) (the subject of U.S. Patent No. 5,760,069), and left ventricular dysfunction following myocardial infarction (LVD-MI). The ’069 patent recites a method of treating CHF with a combination of carvedilol and “one or more of an angiotensin-converting enzyme (“ACE”) inhibitor, a diuretic, and digoxin.”

• [...]

• The Federal Circuit reversed, in an opinion by Judge Newman joined by Judge Moore; Chief Judge Prost provided a lengthy, comprehensive dissent.

• [...]

• The contrasting opinions by the majority and the dissent raise the issue (outside the policy one) of the extent to which a reviewing court (whether the district court or the Federal Circuit) can make judgments on the substantiality of the evidence upon which a jury bases its verdict. The substantial evidence standard is intentionally deferential (“more than a scintilla”), based on the prudent principle that a jury has had the opportunity to hear evidence from witnesses and gauge the weight their testimony is given, based on considerations (demeanor, for example) unavailable to a court on appeal. JMOL includes additional considerations (including the district court’s opportunity for observing this same inferential evidence). Here, the majority applied Third Circuit law on the standard for reviewing JMOL decisions, which according to the opinion was that JMOL should be granted “sparingly” and “only if, viewing the evidence in the light most favorable to the nonmovant and giving it the advantage of every fair and reasonable inference, there is insufficient evidence from which a jury reasonably could find liability” citing Marra v. Phila. Hous. Auth., 497 F.3d 286, 300 (3d Cir. 2007). The majority, both based on the standard of review as well as the conventional deference given to jury verdicts, felt bound by these procedural considerations to reinstate against Teva the jury verdict of induced infringement liability. Judge Prost, viewing the matter on outcome (for policy) grounds once again disagreed. The only aspect that has changed (to the extent it has) is a perhaps comforting (and more informative) recitation of the standard the Federal Circuit will apply to induced infringement in the context of skinny labels; by itself this may be (and of course has to be) enough.

=> ↺ [Old] Nokia suing Oppo over patent infringement in several countries

=> ↺ Nokia still made products, based on Linux, before criminals from Microsoft infiltrated the company like an aggressive cult and turned Nokia into this zombie

=> ↺ Vietnam: Trouble arises in legal documents on intellectual property rights related to AI

=> ↺ In A First, An Invention By AI Granted A Patent

• South Africa granted patent to a food container based on fractal geometry invented by AI system named DABUS

=> ↺ I have heard what the Federal Circuit has to say on motions to transfer, says WDTX’s Albright

=> ↺ IAM

• US District Judge Alan Albright’s Waco court in the Western District of Texas is the US’s busiest patent litigation venue. It is also the most controversial. In an exclusive IAM interview, the judge explains how he has responded to recent CAFC criticisms and discusses plenty more besides

=> ↺ Pharma should make good use of the UPC from the beginning, says Bayer’s head of IP

=> ↺ the propaganda mill of the EPO

• The proceedings in the case now continue in writing to allow the parties involved an opportunity to comment on the referred questions. At oral proceedings, the Opponent wished the effective date in the question to be more clearly defined (is it the priority date or the filing date that is most crucial for determining plausiblity?). The patentee suggested that an additional question should be included, addressing the burden of proof of the occurrence or absence of the technical effect. We thus await the written decision from the Board of Appeal finalising the referred questions.

=> ↺ New referral expected to the EBA on the use of post-published data to support inventive step

=> ↺ rigged and corrupted court that is basically ruled by gangsters who shamelessly break all the laws

• A Board of Appeal is about to refer questions to the Enlarged Board of Appeal (EBA) on the ability of a patentee to rely on post-published evidence to support the inventive step of a claim, and particularly to support the plausibility that the technical problem has been solved over the full scope of the claim. The referral (expected to be G2/21) will arise from the opposition proceedings for EP2484209. The patent claims insecticides, and was opposed by Syngenta.

• [...]

• The proceedings in the case now continue in writing to allow the parties involved an opportunity to comment on the referred questions. At oral proceedings, the Opponent wished the effective date in the question to be more clearly defined (is it the priority date or the filing date that is most crucial for determining plausiblity?). The patentee suggested that an additional question should be included, addressing the burden of proof of the occurrence or absence of the technical effect. We thus await the written decision from the Board of Appeal finalising the referred questions.

=> ↺ Kilburn & Strode bolsters semiconductor expertise with Mathys & Squire partner

=> ↺ JUV

=> ↺ Germany gives green light to UPC

• The German government has finally approved legislation enabling the ratification of the UPC

=> ↺ German UPC law comes in force

• The German legislation enabling Germany to ratify the Unified Patent Court (UPC) Agreement and its Protocol on Provisional Application (PPA) was published yesterday in the Bundesgesetzblatt Teil II (Federal Law Gazette) Part II (No.18, 12 August 2021) and came into force today. This follows the decision of the BVerfG (Federal Constitutional Court), reported here, to dismiss the interim injunction applications in two complaints which were preventing the legislation coming into force.

=> ↺ [Old] German Court Ruling Opens The Way To New European Patent Court

• The long-running process of setting up a new patent court and unitary patent system should shortly be moving into its final phase.

Software Patents

=> ↺ On the Nature of Prior Art in the 35 U.S.C. § 101 Inquiry

• Diamond v. Diehr, decided by the Supreme Court in 1981, seemed to establish a bedrock principle of statutory construction for patent law. The Court stated that “[t]he ‘novelty’ of any element or steps in a process, or even of the process itself, is of no relevance in determining whether the subject matter of a claim falls within the 35 U.S.C. § 101 categories of possibly patentable subject matter.” That proclamation appeared to slam the door shut on any consideration of novelty, or by extension non-obviousness, as part of the subject matter eligibility calculus. Indeed, this tenet held for over 30 years.

• Then, in 2012, Justice Breyer wrote in Mayo v. Prometheus, “[w]e recognize that, in evaluating the significance of additional steps, the § 101 patent-eligibility inquiry and, say, the § 102 novelty inquiry might sometimes overlap.” This statement, if made in isolation, might have been considered misguided dicta in an opinion that otherwise relied on the reasoning of Diehr. Yet Mayo went further, as Justice Breyer analyzed the claim language in question:

Trademarks

=> ↺ Case: Trademarks/Summary Judgment (11th Cir.)

• The Eleventh Circuit affirmed the decision of a federal district court in Florida granting EWC P&T LLC summary judgment in its action for violation of the Anti-Cybersquatting Consumer Protection Act against an individual who registered the domain names “europawaxcenter.com” and “euwaxcenter.com.” EWC P&T LLC runs the nationwide beauty brand European Wax Center and holds the trademark “European Wax Center.”

=> ↺ Gower Peninsula lamb flies the flag for Britain as the first new product to be registered under the post-Brexit GI scheme

• The first product to be protected under the UK’s post-Brexit Geographical Indication (GI) scheme, which came into effect on 1 January 2021, was announced on 11 August as Gower Salt Marsh Lamb.

• Meat produced from sheep born and reared on South Wales’s Gower Peninsula will now be protected thanks to its recognition as a Protected Designation of Origin (PDO). Such schemes are used to label products which come from certain regions or with traditional methods to ensure that imitations cannot be sold as authentic. As a result, Gower Lamb producers are now able to affix a GI logo on their products.

• [...]

• Moreover, more than 5,000 UK-produced products, such as Melton Mowbray pork pies, were already part of the EU scheme prior to the end of the transition period on 31 December 2020. This means that they were already protected automatically in the UK when the new scheme came into effect.

=> ↺ Survey as evidence in trademark proceedings

• On 30 June 2021 the new rules of the CP12 Common Practice on Evidence in Trademark Appeal Proceedings became binding in Poland. The CP12 was adopted by the EUIPO Management Board in November 2020 and published the European Union at the end of March 2021. The rules were adopted by the Polish Patent Office and apply to proceedings commenced after 30 June 2021.

Copyrights

=> ↺ [Guest post] German court: copyright infringement by ‘re-pin’ on Pinterest

• Former GuestKat Mirko Brüß analyzes a very interesting recent German decision, which has tackled the application of such exclusive right in the context of linking within online image sharing service Pinterest.

• [...]

• This decision shows that the legal questions regarding hyperlinking to protected content have still not been fully answered. There will very likely be more cases about the “profit-making intention” and the threshold that has to be reached in order to rebut the assumption of knowledge that the content linked to is unlawful. The Hamburg judges took a reasonable approach to the latter issue by applying a dynamic standard that considers the nature of the business model, e.g. whether hyperlinks are posted automatically in large numbers or (as was the case here) “hand-picked”.

• One (technical) aspect of Pinterest was not addressed in the decision, but gives “re-pins” a high conflict potential:

• When a user uploads an image to the site, that is then “re-pinned” by another user, and the original uploader deletes his “pin”, the “re-pinned” image will remain visible on the second user’s board. This makes the scenario very similar to the Renckhoff case, where a re-post occurred after the file was copied to another server. There, the CJEU held (at para 31) that it “is clear that, even if the holder of the copyright holder decides no longer to communicate his work on the website on which it was initially communicated with his consent, that work would remain available on the website on which it had been newly posted. The Court has already held that the author of a work must be able to put an end to the exercise, by a third party, of rights of exploitation in digital format that he holds on that work, and to prohibit him from any future use in such a format, without having to submit beforehand to other formalities”. Applied to the specific technicalities of Pinterest, this could mean that even re-pins of content that was originally uploaded to Pinterest by the copyright owner could become infringing when the original “pin” is deleted, but the “re-pins” remain accessible on the site. Let’s see if (or rather when) this question will be answered by the courts.

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