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Posted in News Roundup, Site News at 4:08 am by Dr. Roy SchestowitzContentsGNU/LinuxDistributionsDevices/EmbeddedFree Software/Open SourceLeftovers
I’ve been meaning to upgrade my microphone for quite a while and I’ve now bought the last microphone I’ll ever buy, sure there are other use cases but the shure sm7b is the lst desk mic I’ll ever need.
Linus Torvalds has declared Linux 5.15-rc4 as the latest weekly release candidate of the maturing Linux 5.15 codebase.
The 5.15-rc4 kernel prepatch is out for testing.
Bookworm is a lightweight eBook reader application that provides an easy way for you to organize and read your collection of eBooks. It has support for numerous common eBook formats, such as EPUB, MOBI, and PDF. The interface is quite simple and nicely designed, making Bookworm easy to use.
Upon opening Bookworm, you’ll be presented with the library page, where you can view and load in your collection of eBooks. To import an eBook, click on the + button down in the lower left corner and select a file to load. To remove a book, simply click on the check mark button down in the corner, select the eBooks that you wish to remove, and then click on the – button. You can choose to arrange the books in list view or thumbnail view, and there’s also a handy search bar at the top to help you find books more easily. If you right-click on a book, you can then edit information such as the title and author, and you can also add a cover image for the book. Simply click on a book to begin reading.
Capturing audio and video on PClinuxOS (and any Linux for that matter) can be a frustrating task. Either the applications don’t work properly with the audio/video capture software, or, the sound server is not compatible with the capture application (or vice versa, a capture application that requires a sound server that is not the default of the installation).
Java applications, for example, access the DSP directly and are not as flexible about routing audio as native PCLinuxOS applications.
I’ve subscribed to several YouTube pages, just like many people have. One of the pages I’ve subscribed to is named Logos by Nick. In his channela he has many tutorials for GIMP and Inkscape. In this one, he describes five mistakes that new Inkscape users make. Let’s look:
Today we are looking at Lubuntu 21.10 Beta. It comes with Linux Kernel 5.13, LXQt 0.17, and uses about 500-600MB of ram when idling. Enjoy!
Please take note that this is a beta release, so there might be bugs.
In this video, we are looking at Lubuntu 21.10 Beta. Enjoy!
Furthermore, there’s ample evidence that Daylight Savings Time has a negative effect on people’s health. This article on Health.com lists seven ways Daylight Savings Time can have an impact on your health.
In a way, we are fooling ourselves with the foolishness of thinking we are gaining more hours of sunlight by messing with the hands on the clock. On any given day, there are a certain number of hours of daylight available. If you want to avail yourself of that daylight, then get up when the sun rises, and go to bed when the sun sets, just like our ancestors did, and just as the other animals on this planet do.
Daylight Savings Time has long outlived its usefulness. Let’s just pick one time, whether it’s “Standard Time” or “Daylight Savings Time,” and just stick to it. Personally, my vote is for just maintaining Standard Time all year round. Bouncing the hands back and forth on a clock introduces more chaos and havoc than the meager benefits we receive from doing so.
Most people install software through their package manager. If the package manager tracks the dependencies between static libraries and their dependents, the package manager could detect changes and run reassmblies as necessary.
If we wanted to go further, we could. We could add a mechanism to the OS to be able to discover when the IR files for a library used by a program it launches has changed. We could even have the OS start the compiler and have it exec() into the new binary.
This would make sure that even libraries and programs installed by hand are properly updated.
With lots of patience and care, she and project partner Elaine Solowey managed to grow date palms from seeds dating back to the Kingdom of Judah which emerged in the 11th century BC.
The kingdom was “renowned for the quality and quantity of its dates”, praised at the time for their “large size, sweet taste… and medicinal properties,” the two wrote in an article for Science magazine.
Bringing back the ancient variety with Solowey, a specialist in sustainable agriculture, was not just a novelty project, Sallon said, but offered “a beacon of hope” for a planet battling the climate crisis and mass species extinction.
The pandemic taught us two lessons: in-person learning is optimal, and remote learning is sometimes necessary. We should improve public digital learning infrastructure, or else private companies will corner the market and use it to undermine public education.
Springhill has declined to name the ransomware that was behind the July 2019 attack, but given the timing and the lack of scruples in targeting a healthcare facility, there are plenty of possibilities.
Tor users are facing persistent malicious actors repeatedly running large fractions of the tor network’s capacity to exploit them [1] [2] [3]. Detecting all malicious tor network capacity is not practically feasible using active scanners in many cases since attackers have moved from attacking all connections to more targeted approaches where only users of specific domains (that are not necessarily known to defenders) are exploited. Transport level encryption (HTTPS) can defeat many types of attacks by malicious exit relays and the global HTTPS availability has significantly increased over the past years but is still not ubiquitous yet, especially on the first connection. Therefore we propose to publish relay operator trust information to limit the fraction and impact of malicious tor network capacity.
[...] I don’t need a Microsoft website to validate my previous professional experiences.
The other thing, I wrote about, is the lack of great opportunities there. The copied/pasted sentences from headhunters that, sometimes, don’t even read your resume piss me off. How many times I got offers for jobs with Windows system when there is not a single line about that OS on my CV.
With the app you can play a sound on AirTags and find it easily. Afterward, you can view at which locations the device has tracked you. For this we use background location access. All location data never leaves your device.
AN EXPOSÉ BY PROPUBLICA details how Facebook has undermined “privacy protections” for its 2 billion WhatsApp users. Despite assuring users that no one can see their posts, Facebook runs an extensive monitoring operation, and even regularly shares personal information with prosecutors. It’s odd typing “Facebook” and “privacy” in the same sentence, as the two are as antithetical as any two words could possibly be. This just illustrates that point perfectly.
PROTONMAIL HAS REMOVED “WE DO NOT KEEP ANY IP LOGS” FROM ITS PRIVACY POLICY, according to an article on ArsTechnica. Based in Switzerland, the privacy-focused email provider was forced by Swiss courts to log and disclose a French climate activist’s IP address and browser fingerprint to Swiss authorities. Being a Swiss-based company, ProtonMail was forced to comply with a Swiss court injunction ordering it to log the IP address and browser fingerprint of the particular ProtonMail account. Since then, ProtonMail has changed its privacy statement to users, removing “By default, we do not keep any IP logs that can be linked to your anonymous email account”. The replacement privacy statement is a bit muddier, and makes no mention of logging IP addresses.
In more Facebook news, a lawsuit (PDF) by shareholders filed back in August 2021 and just made public against Facebook and Facebook upper management discloses that FACEBOOK PAID $4.9 BILLION MORE TO SETTLE A FEDERAL TRADE COMMISSION LAWSUIT FOR THE CAMBRIDGE-ANALYTICA SCANDAL than it had to. And why, you might ask? All to “protect” CEO and founder Mark Zuckerberg from being named as a defendant, or to keep him from even having to give a deposition in the case, according to an article on The Guardian.
According to a blog entry from the internet security company called Expel, they HAVE IDENTIFIED THE TOP PHISHING KEYWORDS FROM THE LAST 10,000 MALICIOUS EMAILS THEY HAVE INVESTIGATED. Emails with the following words were associated with phishing attempts: Invoice, Message, Required, Request, and Action, among others. Believe it or not, even emails where the subject line was left blank made the list. If you’re concerned about phishing attempts (defined by Merriam-Webster’s online dictionary as a scam by which an Internet user is duped (as by a deceptive email message) into revealing personal or confidential information which the scammer can use illicitly), you might want to head on over to the blog entry to see the full article.
Following the taxonomy deployed by the legendary Ghanaian revolutionary, Kwame Nkrumah, the Arab states can be divided into two main camps: those which are under the effective control of the former colonial powers and their allies (which he termed ‘neocolonial’ states), and those which are not. In the former camp are states such as Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Qatar, Kuwait, and the UAE, all of them creations of the British empire and to this day still controlled by the ruling families handpicked by Britain at the height of empire. The consolidation and reinforcement of the relationships between Britain and these families, and the shoring up of their power, is a core part of the role of the British royal family, and much of their time is taken up with hosting and visiting these families. This is especially important at times when their rule is under threat, providing an expression of solidarity at the highest level, an assurance that the British state will stand shoulder-to-shoulder with whatever repression is deemed necessary to hold onto power. To read this article, log in here or Subscribe here. In order to read CP+ articles, your web browser must be set to accept cookies.
One of the longest-held prisoners in the U.S. global war on terror is finally getting a day in court. Sort of. The prisoner, Abu Zubaydah, who has never been charged with a crime, has been waiting 14 years for a federal judge to rule on his habeas corpus petition that challenges the legality of his detention. But next week, the Supreme Court will hear arguments on a separate case: Zubaydah’s request that he be permitted to take testimony from the two CIA contractors who oversaw his torture.
Despite the enmity that the new algorithms were feeding, Facebook found that they helped keep people coming back – a pattern that helped the Menlo Park, Calif., company sell more of the digital ads that generate most of its advertising.
Haugen, who previously worked at Google and Pinterest, said Facebook has lied to the public about the progress it made to clamp down on hate speech and misinformation on its platform.
She added that Facebook was used to help organize the Capitol [insurrection] on January 6, after the company turned off safety systems following the U.S. presidential elections.
The 37-year-old former Facebook product manager who worked on civic integrity issues at the company says the documents show that Facebook knows its platforms are used to spread hate, violence and misinformation, and that the company has tried to hide that evidence.
“The thing I saw at Facebook over and over again was there were conflicts of interest between what was good for the public and what was good for Facebook, and Facebook over and over again chose to optimize for its own interests, like making more money,” Haugen told “60 Minutes.”
The documents, first reported by the Journal, revealed that Facebook executives had been aware of negative impacts of its platforms on some young users, among other findings. For example, the Journal reported that one internal document found that of teens reporting suicidal thoughts, 6% of American users traced the urge to kill themselves to Instagram.
Haugen pointed to the 2020 election as a turning point at Facebook. She said Facebook had announced it was dissolving the “Civic Integrity” team, to which she was assigned, after the election. Just a few months later, social media communications would be a key focus in the wake of the January 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol.
“When they got rid of Civic Integrity, it was the moment where I was like, ‘I don’t trust that they’re willing to actually invest what needs to be invested to keep Facebook from being dangerous,’” Haugen told “60 Minutes.”
Facebook, which has been under fire from a former employee who has revealed that the social network knew of many of the harms it was causing, was bracing for new accusations over the weekend from the whistle-blower and said in a memo that it was preparing to mount a vigorous defense.
The whistle-blower, whose identity has not been publicly disclosed, planned to accuse the company of relaxing its security safeguards for the 2020 election too soon after Election Day, which then led it to be used in the storming of the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, according to the internal memo obtained by The New York Times. The whistle-blower planned to discuss the allegations on “60 Minutes” on Sunday, the memo said, and was also set to say that Facebook had contributed to political polarization in the United States.
Why it matters: Facebook appears to be launching a pre-emptive strike against the whistleblower with the memo, also shared with Axios, ahead of her CBS “60 Minutes” interview airing Sunday and her scheduled appearance at a Senate hearing Tuesday.
The threats to a free and fair presidential election don’t come from Congress alone. Since Jan. 6, Republican-led state legislatures have been clambering over one another to pass new laws making it easier to reject their own voters’ will, and removing or neutralizing those officials who could stand in the way of a naked power grab — like Georgia’s secretary of state, Brad Raffensperger, did when he resisted Mr. Trump’s personal plea to “find” just enough extra votes to flip the outcome there.
A civil war between Ethiopia’s federal government and the country’s northern Tigray region, which began late last year, has led to widespread atrocities and created famine conditions in parts of the country. Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed’s decision to expel UN officials from the country comes after they raised concerns about the worsening humanitarian situation.
UN officials have repeatedly warned that Ethiopia’s government is blocking the movement of critical supplies — like medicine, food, and fuel — into the Tigray region, with as little as 10 percent of the needed humanitarian supplies being allowed in. Those accusations were echoed this week by the head of the UN’s humanitarian aid arm, as well as a report finding the region on the brink of famine.
Around 6 p.m., two red flares were shot into the air. Dressed as civilians, soldiers and members of the Olympia Battalion — a secret security force assembled ahead of the 1968 Olympic Games — mixed with the crowd and opened fire.
Seven years after they were captured by the Islamic State, some members of the Iraqi religious minority are still being held captive by fighters in Syria. Others are with families of ISIS militants.
Malm’s book — it’s titled How to Blow Up a Pipeline — is obviously meant to provoke. But embedded in the provocation is a morally serious challenge to how we think about, and act on, the crisis humanity faces. And to be perfectly honest, I’m not sure how I feel about it. For instance, I think his summons to violence vastly overstates our ability to “control” such violence once it’s unleashed. I’m also less confident in the strategic utility of violence (even if it’s limited to the destruction of property, as Malm recommends) considering the enormous blowback that might result from it.
I reached out to him for this week’s episode of Vox Conversations to talk about how we got here, why he says it’s time to escalate, and the problems — both obvious and subtle — with such a radical approach.
Below is an edited excerpt from our conversation and some additional material from a follow-up exchange over email. [...]
With the Biden administration’s US$3.5-trillion climate legislation hanging in the balance in the U.S. Congress, fossil lobbyists and environmental justice groups are duking it out via Facebook ads.
Appearing on Facebook “millions of times a week,” writes The New York Times, are ads that “take aim at vulnerable Democrats in Congress by name, warning that the $3.5 trillion budget bill—one of the Biden administration’s biggest efforts to pass meaningful climate policy—will wreck the United States economy.”
With record-breaking floods becoming the new normal, experts at the United Nations University (UNU) have developed a new tool that generates instant, accurate street-level resolution maps of floods worldwide since 1985.
The free online World Flood Mapping Tool will help all countries, but especially those in the Global South, where flood risk maps are rare and often badly out of date.
Nearly two thirds of social media posts put out by six major European fossil fuel and energy companies since the end of 2019 present a “green” image of the company, despite the majority of their business activity remaining in fossil fuels, reveals new analysis by Desmog. The findings add to campaigner concerns that fossil fuel companies are promoting a misleading image of their business models as the need to decarbonize the economy becomes increasingly urgent.
DeSmog’s investigation shows a disproportionate focus on green or environmental efforts by the companies — including highlighting their net zero targets — compared to the share of their business that is made up of clean energy efforts compared to their continued extraction or use of fossil fuels.
South Africa is accelerating its emissions reduction targets as renewable energy costs decrease, but climate experts say more is needed.
The country’s new cap will restrict emissions to 420 megatonnes of CO2 equivalent by 2030, a full third less than the previous target of 614 Mt, writes Climate Home News. But while campaigners are calling the target “a step forward” and proof of the value of official climate advisory bodies like the country’s Presidential Climate Commission (PCC), they also warn that “that the target was still not compatible with 1.5°C of global warming.”
Pressure is building to rapidly decarbonize the United Kingdom’s construction sector, with 450,000 of the country’s engineers urging higher priority for low-carbon procurement and retrofits.
“Making bricks and steel creates vast amounts of CO2, with cement alone causing 8% of global emissions,” writes BBC, reporting on a new paper just published by the National Engineering Policy Centre, a partnership of 43 of the country’s professional engineering organizations.
British Columbia is subsidizing oil and gas well drilling on the same land it has promised to protect for caribou, new research has found.
“The B.C. government has made a lot of commitments to caribou habitat restoration and it’s not really working,” said Adriana DiSilvestro, a University of British Columbia graduate student and lead author on the project, which is published on the website of ARCGis Online, a cloud-based mapping software.
As cleanup crews on Sunday rushed to contain the damage from one of the largest oil spills in recent Southern California history, environmentalists stressed the necessity of ending offshore drilling—and ultimately, of keeping all fossil fuels in the ground.
At least 126,000 gallons of crude oil gushed from a ruptured pipeline off the coast of Huntington Beach into ocean waters and local wetlands, the Los Angeles Times reported late Saturday.
From surging fuel costs in Europe and North America to rolling blackouts in China, a global spike in fossil fuel prices is raising concern that the shift off carbon could be uneven and messy—and feeding the argument that the transition can’t happen soon enough.
Europe has seen a record-high increase in natural gas prices, “raising concerns that consumers will be hit hard by high energy bills this winter as global demand for fuel rises,” Euronews reports. In the UK, “average energy prices this past month were almost three times higher than in any other September in the past 10 years, with the average household expecting to pay nearly US$190 more this year,” Gizmodo adds. “Energy bills are set to increase even more steeply after Friday, when a price cap on bills is set to rise.”
Only a few years after vowing to no longer act in the service of climate deniers, global PR behemoth Edelman has been caught in the act of doing just that.
Edelman’s stealth involvement in ExxonMobil’s year-long Facebook offensive against the Biden administration’s promise to get tough on carbon pollution has been revealed, courtesy of a coding error, reports Gizmodo. The error was uncovered by the watchdog Clean Creatives during its investigation of Exxchange, a web platform through which Exxon distributes its ads.
The global pipeline of new coal plant projects has shrunk 76% since 2015, a new analysis shows, putting many countries in a good position to carry out UN Secretary General António Guterres’s call for no new coal investment.
“The economics of coal have become increasingly uncompetitive in comparison to renewable energy, while the risk of stranded assets has increased. Governments can now act with confidence to commit to ‘no new coal’,” reports climate think tank E3G in its analysis.
In what’s being called the “biggest-ever leak of offshore data,” a cache of nearly 12 million documents published Sunday laid bare the hidden wealth, secret dealings, and corruption of hundreds of world leaders, billionaires, public officials, celebrities, and others.
The bombshell revelations—known as the Pandora Papers—were published by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) and include private emails, secret contracts, and other records obtained during a two-year investigation involving more than 600 journalists in 117 countries and territories.
This month, the University of Minnesota, Boston University and Harvard, our own institution, announced that they’ll divest from the fossil fuel industry.
These decisions are the latest wins for both the planet and for activism against the industry most responsible for the climate crisis. The three universities join over 1,300 schools and institutions — including foundations, pension funds, institutional investors and others — that have divested or announced plans to divest, at least in part, from fossil fuels. In doing so, they have affirmed that continued investment in fossil fuels is neither financially responsible nor morally defensible.
More than a dozen heads of state and government, from Jordan to Azerbaijan, Kenya and the Czech Republic, have used offshore tax havens to hide assets worth hundreds of millions of dollars, according to a far-reaching new investigation by the ICIJ media consortium.
Though they hired the firm Cyber Ninjas Just to show that Trump votes did surmount Those of Biden, it found the reverse. But who knew that a ninja can count?
According to a report from the American Enterprise Institute, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) oversees a slew of organizations dedicated to the censorship of various media in the People’s Republic of China. These include such divisions as the State Administration of Radio, Film, and Television as well as the Central Propaganda Department.
One of the most remarkable examples of the government-led censorship witnessed in the country is in the irrelevant and convoluted search engine results pertaining to the Tiananmen Square Massacre of 1989.
According to a government report last February, cited by Variety, there are currently more than 75,000 halls in China, of which nearly 20,000 were built between 2018 and 2019 and more than 5,700 built in 2020, despite the effects of the coronavirus pandemic. To give the idea, in the first weekend of its release in China, last May, Fast & Furious 9 it grossed the equivalent of $ 136 million (€ 115 million), nearly double the amount in the United States over the same period.
Although China has created its own franchises in recent years and has become less and less dependent on American cinema, films produced and shot in the United States have continued to be highly viewed. For this reason, foreign film studios have begun to pay more and more attention to avoid content at risk of censorship: “they censor themselves in advance,” wrote James Tager, director of the NGO PEN America, which deals with freedom of expression in the media and published a extensive report on censorship in Chinese cinema.
The global economic centre of gravity is moving towards Asia, signaling the fast-paced consolidation of a China-led economic order. The most populous country in the world relies on its geo-economic preeminence to acquire geopolitical concessions from rivals and friends alike. And Hollywood is no exception to that.
It took a lot of people by surprise when the professional wrestler turned movie star John Cena profusely apologized after calling Taiwan a country. “I made one mistake. I am very, very sorry for this mistake, my apologies,” he said in Mandarin. The apology came after the actor had provoked the wrath of mainland Chinese fans by inadvertently challenging China’s three Ts — Taiwan, Tibet, and Tiananmen — subject matters that are best left unaddressed if you wish to stay in the Chinese Communist Party’s good graces.
Aynne Kokas, a media studies professor at the University of Virginia and the author of the book “Hollywood Made in China,” told Insider that the “Shang-Chi” controversy is happening “in parallel with widespread tightening” of China media and its film market.
Vilks, 75, lived under police protection after being subjected to death threats over the cartoon.
Censorship fixes the fight and provides a controlled habitat (of course, whatever the habitat the censor is comfortable with). If ideas are at their best when tested, evolved, and developed – so too our shared collective thought. And it’s not just that potentially good ideas are gagged, but the open market of idea exchange itself. Instead of rational deliberation where all are allowed to express their views – it removes the debate and our collective intellectual rigor. When the censors gags the opposing viewpoint, their motivations are now in question. Aren’t their ideas good enough to stand on their own merits?
Half a century after Indigenous elder Jacó Krenak and dozens of fellow natives were bound and forcibly taken to concentration camps run by Brazil’s military dictatorship, a federal court has ordered the government to apologize and deliver reparations to the Krenak people.
For example, most United Statesians remain blithely unaware that they have among the worst health care outcomes of any advanced capitalist country while paying by far the most money. A Commonwealth Fund report, for example, found that the U.S. “placed last among 16 high-income, industrialized nations when it comes to deaths that could potentially have been prevented by timely access to effective health care.” As one of the few countries on Earth without a national health care system, health care is a commodity for those who can afford it, not a right as it is almost anyplace else.
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With a federal consultation into a Canadian just transition act now under way, a prominent Indigenous activist is challenging the Trudeau government to ensure the legislation doesn’t end up as little more than empty words.
“If Canada is to do what it takes to tackle both the violence of colonization against Indigenous Peoples along with the climate emergency, we need to fundamentally change our economy,” writes Clayton Thomas-Müller, a senior campaign specialist at 350.org and member of Pukatawagan Cree Nation, in a September 30 op-ed for the Globe and Mail.
Britney Spears has been locked in a court battle 13 years in the making. While her father was suspended as conservator of her estate on September 29, 2021, her conservatorship might not be terminated until the next hearing on November 12.
Spurred perhaps by discussion and criticism of this conclusion, Diamond went on, six years later, to publish his best-known book, Guns, Germs, and Steel. It set out to explain in vivid detail, region by region, and era by era, how some branches of humanity came to dominate and even eradicate others. This was an ambitious undertaking, and one that would inevitably clash with established ideologies and political interests. Perhaps most significantly, it provided a scientific rebuttal of white supremacist beliefs—one that had previously been missing from the debate on race. In the introduction, Diamond writes of racist theories of history: “The objection to such explanations is not just that they are loathsome, but they are wrong.”
On this basis alone, one might have expected the Left to have embraced the book; but in making its case, GGS steps on too many ideological toes. Where one encounters scepticism and hostility towards GGS or Diamond himself, it tends to come from people on the Left, rather than from white nationalists. By the time of the book’s publication, white nationalism had already retreated into the fringes. But it was not replaced by a new regard for scientific curiosity, but by dogmatic social science theories about “power” and “privilege,” built on a new set of mythologies, just as hostile to science as the old ones, and written from a thoroughly American perspective.
Yet even when you have a free ebook reader in your hands, you will still need to be vigilant about your freedom. Many ebooks on the market are laden with Digital Restrictions Management (DRM), which prevents you from exercising the freedom to read and share the books you buy and own. Consenting to the DRM that many ebooks are distributed with is a sure way to lose control of your digital autonomy, no matter what kind of device you have. Despite the Internet giving us the means to share textbooks or works of literature seamlessly and without cost, publishing companies still operate under old assumptions, meaning that libraries and storefronts alike ignore the “solved problem of lending” and distribute books under restrictive terms.
Despite the technology behind ebooks having been with us for years, ebook DRM has only gotten more restrictive. It’s common for textbooks to now require a constant and uninterrupted Internet connection, and that they load only a discrete number of pages at a time. Such requirements, especially when placed on students in the global south, where connections aren’t as reliable, directly detract from the quality of their education. This is what motivated our decision to make textbook DRM (and one of its top peddlers, Pearson) our target for the International Day Against DRM (IDAD) in 2019. And though the pandemic may have prevented people from meeting, DRM was undeterred. Even libraries fell victim to “lending” services like Kanopy, putting an artificial lock on digital copies of books, the last place it makes sense for them to be.
On May 20th, Junior Party the University of California, Berkeley; the University of Vienna; and Emmanuelle Charpentier (collectively, “CVC”) filed its Substantive Preliminary Motion No. 3 in Interference No. 106,127 (which names ToolGen as Senior Party), asking the Patent Trial and Appeal Board to add claims in ToolGen’s U.S. Patent No. 10,851,380* to this interference, pursuant to 37 C.F.R. §§ 41.121(a)(1)(i) and 41.208(a)(2) and Standing Order ¶ 208.3.2. On July 5th ToolGen filed its Opposition. On August 27th, CVC filed its Reply.
In its Motion No. 3, CVC argued that the only difference between the language of the Count and the claims in the ’380 patent is that those claims require the addition of two guanine residues (“GG”) positioned before the crRNA portion of the sgRNA sequence. CVC argued that these species of sgRNA (the fusion of crRNA and tracrRNA) recited in the ’380 patent claims were solely a consequence of using the T7 phage RNA polymerase to produce sgRNA, and that in vitro RNA production using T7 RNAP promoters was well-known in the art (“for decades”; emphasis in brief) at the priority date of the ’380 patent; these arguments are supported by testimony from CVC’s expert, Dr. Scott Bailey and this method of producing sgRNA and relevant prior art disclosing the use of T7 RNAP and promoters recognized by the polymerase was set forth in the brief.
The business lobby group says the decision is even more pressing as a global corporate tax deal looms into view.
First, of all, the concept of software patents has been around for a long time (even since the 1960s), but the debate on the patentability of software became widespread when the Free Software Foundation was founded in the 1980s. While the FSF does not take a position on the impact of patents in other spheres, we consider them to be both unethical and counterproductive in the field of software. One of the most worrying effects of software patents is the way they prevent new software from being written, yet even if this weren’t the case, software patents would still be an inherently unethical restriction on individual freedom. Even in the 1980s, it was clear that the magnitude of the problem was such that Richard Stallman founded the (now defunct) League for Programming Freedom in 1989, an organization aiming to ally all developers (including those of proprietary software) against software patents.
Today, few people are aware of the dangers behind software patents, and how the world is affected by them. To give a quick overview, in the US, patents are handled by the federal courts, while Europe has different, independent national laws on patents. Recently, however, the adoption of the Unitary Patent and the Unitary Patent Court are bound to replace regulations of individual EU member states with ones that are valid for the entirety of the EU, making (software) patent enforcement in Europe drastically easier. Globally, each country has unique patent laws and the patentability of software may differ considerably. But the general picture is that software patents are continuously granted.
It is crucial to emphasize that software patents are enforced without ever going through a process of direct approval by the public. In 2002, a proposal was made to legitimize software patents in the EU, but it was defeated in the European Parliament by an overwhelming majority of 648 to 14 votes, thanks in part to a massive effort by the free software movement and its allies. The success of that campaign demonstrated that people are able to change the course of proposed life-affecting policies, provided that they are included in the process, and properly informed. Unfortunately, the course of events both then and now also proves that democracy requires the utmost vigilance, and any period of relaxation works against the will of the people. Despite the defeat of the software patent directive in 2002, the software industry has successfully pushed for new policies that will favor it. This is where the aforementioned Unitary Patent and Unified Patent Court come into play, since it is well known that the European Patent Office has a vested interest in expanding patent dominance in all fields, particularly in the software sector.
A few months back, a Single Judge bench of the Bombay High Court delivered what has now been revealed to be a very problematic decision on deceptive similarity in alcoholic beverage trademarks. Brought to light upon being set aside by the Division Bench, this decision rendered findings that threatened to set dangerous precedents on what constitutes a trademark, and how deceptive similarity is evaluated. In this post, I revisit the Single Judge’s ruling and underscore the ways in which the Division Bench corrects the approach.
[...]
When a defendant in an infringement suit applies for registration of the contested mark, it is deemed to be an acknowledgement of similarity and thus operates as estoppel. On this basis, the Defendant had argued that the reverse of this would also be true and the Plaintiff’s attempt to separately register the mark used by the Defendant amounts to admission of dissimilarity between the marks.
Thoroughly unimpressed, the Division Bench cautioned that in the absence of any legal precedent or statutory provision, the converse of a statement could not be automatically accepted by substituting completely opposing concepts. It also refused to accept that because it was the Defendant who brought certain facts on record in the defence, the Plaintiff was guilty of suppressing facts.
With this, the Division Bench set aside the Single Judge’s decision and remanded the matter back for reconsideration.
While this appellate stage analysis did not bring about a conclusion to the interim application, it goes a long way in clarifying important principles in trademark infringement litigation. A common theme in all the issues is that it focuses on the various tests from the perspective of actual impact on consumers who would interact with the products in the market. While it remains to be seen what the outcome of the infringement suit would be, the Division Bench has cleared the air on what the adjudicating court must inquire into while deciding the case.
SpicyIP reviewed a ruling from the Bombay High Court concerning the deceptive similarity between signs. The case at hand dealt with the names ‘ASĀVA’ and ‘RAMPUR ASĀVA’ in connection with whiskey, in light of an earlier trade mark, ‘THE ASWA’, registered under Class 33 for alcoholic beverages. The blog questioned the judge’s decision to rely solely on a phonetic comparison of signs, and to apply an Australian precedent directly to an Indian judicial proceeding.
In the recent case of iCollege (Pty) Ltd (iCollege) v Excellence Skills Development and Mentoring (Expertease Skills) and ZA Central Registry NPC (Domain Name Registry), iCollege (Pty) Ltd sued Expertease Skills for trade mark infringement and passing off for their use of the mark ICOLLEGE, and requested the transfer of the domain name icollege.co.za from the Domain Name Registry. The citation of the Domain Name Registry is a mechanism for enforcement of the judgment, and they did not take part in proceedings.
It is apparent from the decision that the High Court, in dismissing the claim, has still not got to grips with the proper application of the trade mark infringement tests, and this post will focus on these errors and omissions and once again appeal to the court and legal practitioners to adopt and follow the step-by-step approach used in Europe (see earlier posts here, here and here) as it will help reduce errors in application. The majority of the decision surrounds the trade mark infringement claim under S34(1)(a) and so this post focuses on that.
I previously wrote about the TTAB decision denying TBL’s attempt to register the shape of its Timberland Boots as a protectable trade mark. Crouch, Iconic Timberland Boots–Trade Dress Worthy? Now, the company has filed a civil action in the Eastern District of Virginia seeking a court order that TBL is entitled to a registration.
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This is apparently the same process used in other recent trademark civil actions. Booking.com B.V. v. Matal, 278 F. Supp. 3d 891, 900 (E.D. Va. 2017) (“The parties have ‘expressly agree[d] that if the Court determines after reviewing the briefs and evidence on summary judgment that any material issue of fact exists, the Court is authorized to resolve any such factual dispute.’”); Seacret Spa Intl. v. Lee, 1:15CV405(JCC/IDD), 2016 WL 880367, at *2 (E.D. Va. Mar. 8, 2016) (“The parties have agreed that . . . the Court may resolve those disputes on the basis of the record before it.”); Autodesk, Inc. v. Lee, 1:13-CV-1464 AJT/JFA, 2014 WL 5500799, at *1 (E.D. Va. Oct. 30, 2014) (parties “stipulated that the Court should resolve any material factual disputes without any further proceeding based on the summary judgment record.”).
A couple of months ago, the Chamber of Deputies & the Senate approved the adherence of Chile to the Agreement of the Madrid Protocol for the International Registration of Trade marks, which is expected to be in force in March of the next year 2022 (since the deposit of the instrument before the World Intellectual Property Organization WIPO should take place on January of 2022).
With this adherence, Chile will be part of a small group of Latin American countries that have already implemented the System, such as Colombia (2012), Mexico (2013), and more recently Brazil (2019).
In this context, it is important to analyze what can we expect for Chile with the incorporation of this System, and what could be the legal, social and economic implications, the advantages and challenges that this may represent for our country, which are closely related to the definition of public policies that Chile wishes to adopt.
Coffee capsules have turned out to be a revolution for how coffee is served in millions of homes … and also for case law on 3D trade marks. In a decision that has just been published (available here in French), the Swiss Federal Supreme Court invalidated the 3D mark of Nestlé’s related to the shape of the capsules. The decision echoes one by the German Federal Court of Justice given a few years ago (Katpost here).
In the 1970s, Nestlé invented a hermetically-sealed capsule containing a dose of ground coffee, and a “Nespresso” coffee machine in which to insert the capsule. Nestlé had received several patents for various aspects of the machines and the capsules (all of which had expired by this point). The shape of the capsule compartment has changed over time, but the technology has essentially remained the same.
Nestlé has become the largest supplier of single-serve coffee in Switzerland – and no doubt in many other countries. In 2000, Nestlé filed an application with the Swiss Trademark Office for registration of a 3D trade mark in class 30 for coffee, coffee extracts and coffee preparations. The Office registered the mark based on acquired distinctiveness.
The respondent and counterplaintiff, Ethical Coffee Company, developed a biodegradable coffee capsule (based on vegetable fibers and starch) compatible with the Nespresso system.
In 2011, Nestlé secured a preliminary injunction in Switzerland, based on its registered 3D mark, against Ethical Coffee Company’s capsules. This decision was eventually overturned by the Federal Supreme Court on procedural grounds and the lower court, in a second decision, rejected the request for preliminary injunction on the grounds that the shape of the capsule was technically necessary.
In days or yore, I would have spoken of ‘my copy of The Times.’ After all, it is a hard copy, I paid for it and I can port it around. It is, for all intents and purposes ‘mine.’ But in the digital age it isn’t ‘my copy,’ rather it is my temporary access so long as the subscription lasts.
Of course, in the era of ‘my copy’ there was not assertion to a copy(right), much less copy(left), over the printed work. Just the joy that it was ‘mine’ to possess for as long the ink remained indelible.
The growing proclivity of issuing “dynamic injunctions” to block the online illegal diffusion and distribution of audio-visual copyrighted content has recently caught the attention of several scholars (see here, here and here). In fact, the preventive nature of the rights involved, the need to preclude imminent damage, and the fact that most IP addresses targeted by blocking injunctions are univocally dedicated to this type of illicit activity, has led to the issuance of ex parte blocking injunctions. In layman’s terms, these are issued without the participation of the respondent to the case. This is due to the fact that courts are often faced with situations in which delays could cause irreparable damage to the right for which protection is sought. Over the years this novel practice has given rise to “live”, “fast” and even “super” injunctions in various jurisdictions. The majority of these focus on the protection of major sports events, like the Italian Lega Calcio, the English Premier League and the UEFA Champions League (for a detailed analysis see here, here and here). Unsurprisingly, the rise of dynamic injunctions in that particular sector is largely due to the mammoth profits that these events yield for right holders.
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The Egyptian Copyright legislator addresses the issue of injunctive relief in the body of the Egyptian copyright law (ECL – law no. 82 of 2002) itself. By virtue of article 179 of the latter, any interested party, not only right holders, can request provisional and conservatory measures to put an end to any sort of infringement. Upon such request, and if deemed both urgent and necessary, the competent court possesses a wide range of non-exhaustive measures, including but not limited to the “suspension of production, exhibition, publication or reproduction of the work, performance, sound recording or broadcast program” (art. 179(2) ECL) and the seizure “of the original and infringing copies and any material used in republication or reproduction provided that such material can be used only for such republication” (art. 179(3) ECL). In any case, the plaintiff must deposit an adequate financial guarantee with the competent court, following which the latter issues its order within twenty-four hours. The competent court may also designate an expert to assist the bailiff in charge of the execution of any ordered measures.
Italian public broadcaster RAI will use the NexGuard watermarking technology to secure its content. The company is the first free-to-air broadcaster to implement NAGRA’s anti-piracy technology, which makes it possible to trace the source of online piracy so rightsholders can take appropriate action in response.
What is a “single”, anyway? A long extinct 45? A song that charted? Something you first heard on the radio? A song that stays floating in the stream, long after it was released? For me a single is a hit. Not in terms of sales, but a song that hits the gut. A singular experience. A song I heard a fragment of for the first time, probably on the radio or on Soul Train, and immediately wanted to hear again, rushed to track down in Obadiah’s head shop/record store on Meridian Street in 70s Indianapolis or Olsson’s Books and Records on Wisconsin Ave. in 80s Georgetown or Music Millennium on East Burnside in 90s Portland. A song with punch, that echoes in the head. A song you never forget, never tire of hearing again. A song that changed you in ways small and profound. A song that consoled you, made you want to screw or go out and smash something. To read this article, log in here or Subscribe here. In order to read CP+ articles, your web browser must be set to accept cookies.
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