Update. In rural America, right-to-repair laws are the leading edge of a pushback against growing corporate power.
https://theconversation.com/in-rural-america-right-to-repair-laws-are-the-leading-edge-of-a-pushback-against-growing-corporate-power-199372

"Under the agreement, John #Deere promises to give farmers and independent repair shops access to manuals, diagnostics and parts. But there’s a catch – the agreement isn’t legally binding, and, as part of the deal, the influential #FarmBureau promised not to support any federal or state #RightToRepair legislation."

#patents

As I suspected, high costs of hardware production to run on-device voice models, paired with difficulties to find hardware partners (which together resulted in high costs for the Mark II, as they had to rely on off-the-shelf components purchased at retail price) are among the reasons why #Mycroft is on its way to shut down.

But apparently there's a darker and more angering reason behind it.

The CEO mentions millions spent in a legal litigation with Voice Tech Corp., a "patent troll" that eventually dropped its charges, but only after costing millions to the startup.

I've done a bit of digging and I've found the text of the complaint: https://www.eff.org/document/voice-tech-corp-v-mycroft-ai-complaint. (Btw I've also found that this company has a single employee, acting as CEO, president and advisor, and not a single voice-based product ever released). And I'm quite horrified by what I've read.

Voice Tech Corp. accused Mycroft of allegedly breaking two of its patents - 9,794,348 and 10,491,679.

The title of these patents? "Using Voice Commands from a Mobile Device to Remotely Access and Control a Computer".

It's probably worth taking a look at one of these patents: https://patents.google.com/patent/US9794348B2/en.

A lot of text just to say "this patent is about any solution that can parse human speech to text, find if it matches a command on a computer, and execute that command if required". The whole solution can be summarized in a ridiculously simple flowchart diagram worth of a barely sufficient assignment from a fresh college student.

But that's all you need (with a lot of technical jargon to gaslight a largely untechnical audience) to make money out of anyone who eventually develops something that looks like your naive flowchart.

These patent trolls didn't go after Google or Amazon for implementing exactly the same thing that they patented, well aware that their legal teams would have eaten them alive for breakfast. But they weren't scared to go after a startup with limited funding, hoping to squeeze some money out of them - and maybe put them out of business, for reasons that are still unclear.

Eventually it's smaller businesses and open-source projects that get harmed by this patent weaponization strategies - exactly the kind of actors that you need to keep a level playing field. Big Tech has large shoulders to defend themselves from these attacks, and they proactively purchase smaller companies just to be able to weaponize their patents. But smaller enterprises are much more vulnerable. Even if the lawsuit is eventually dropped, or if the court doesn't find sufficient ground to sue the defendant, the money, time and resources the small enterprise invests in the trial is often sufficient to put them out of business. And that's not to mention the case where the defendant is not even a small business, but an individual contributor of an open-source project.

Have I already said that #patents in technology are a tragic mistake that needs to burn in a ball of fire? We're way past the point where they could encourage innovation. They are a legal weapon used to achieve exactly the opposite nowadays. Up to grotesque and sad situations like Voice Tech vs. Mycroft.

It's almost like Voice Tech patented the sketch of a car drawn by a 2-year-old, and then sued somebody for actually building a real car. How is this shit supposed to actually foster innovation?

https://news.fabiomanganiello.com/share/b5695473e3ae947e350676052073ba26e8c7130b

I am so glad patents were a later invention of Humanity.

Had the person who 'invented' fire patented it with our current intellectual property laws and convoluted ways of preserving the rights forever, we would have never left the stone age.

#OpenSource has always been the way of advancing our quality of life.

Our ability to collaborate is our superpower.

(Picture by K. Mitch Hodge on Unsplash)

#patent #patents #humanity

"A handful of companies own the #patents on virtually every #seed planted in the US. Now, a new crop of unowned seeds is bringing #biodiversity back to #farming."
https://worldsensorium.com/open-source-seeds-loosen-big-ags-grip-on-farmers/

#agriculture #food #monopoly #ossi (Open Source Seed Initiative)

FYI, I link to two earlier reports on this problem (2017 and 2019) in a tweet from 2020.
https://twitter.com/petersuber/status/1317831041055399936

Oh great, looks like Fedora has lost hardware-accelerated video support BECAUSE PATENTS… ffs!

https://reddit.stuehieyr.com/r/Fedora/comments/xpt34f/fedora_37_drops_vaapi_accelerated_hardware_video/iq6ilao

#tech #foss #patents #fedora

Everyone seems to forget why #GNOME and GNOME 3 and #Unity happened https://liam-on-linux.dreamwidth.org/85359.html

Another good reason to ban #software #patents. #Microsoft #Linux