Finding people near you with shared interests, and talking to them, has a very long history in human culture. We’re social animals. We need to find other people close to us to work together with, play games with, and build… Read More ›
Tag Archive for ‘Patents’
Podcast Episode: Making Hope, with Adam Savage
The joy of tinkering, making, and sharing is part of the human condition. In modern times, this creative freedom too often is stifled by secrecy as a means of monetization – from non-compete laws to quashing people’s right to repair… Read More ›
Fighting For A More Open, Balanced Patent System: 2021 in Review
At EFF, we’ve always stood up for the freedom to tinker and innovate. Unfortunately, our patent system doesn’t promote those freedoms. In some areas, like software, it’s causing much more harm than good. And the system is rife with patent… Read More ›
Our Patent Review System is Ten Years Old. It’s Time to Make It Stronger.
The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) grants more than 300,000 patents each year. Some of those patent grants represent genuine new inventions, but many of them don’t. On average, patent examiners have about 18 hours to spend on each… Read More ›
EFF’s How to Fix the Internet Podcast Offers Optimistic Solutions to Tech Dystopias
It seems like everywhere we turn we see dystopian stories about technology’s impact on our lives and our futures—from tracking-based surveillance capitalism to street level government surveillance to the dominance of a few large platforms choking innovation to the growing… Read More ›
The Public Should Know Who Profits From Patent Troll Lawsuits
It’s often impossible to find out who owns a United States patent. Even people who get sued over patents often can’t figure out who is demanding money from them. That’s even more true when the lawsuit comes from a patent… Read More ›
Senators Push To Study “Unstable” Patent Law, While Patent Trolls Cheer Them On
Led by a group of senators that spent much of 2019 trying to change U.S. patent law for the worse, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (PTO) has agreed to study the “current state of patent jurisprudence.” The details of… Read More ›
The Catalog of Carceral Surveillance: Patents Aren't Products (Yet)
In EFF’s Catalog of Carceral Surveillance, we explore patents filed by or awarded to prison communication technology companies Securus and Global Tel*Link in the past five years. The dystopian technology the patents describe are exploitative and dehumanizing. And if the… Read More ›
The Catalog of Carceral Surveillance: Voice Recognition and Surveillance
Prison phone companies have been profiting off the desire for human connection for as long as they’ve been in business. Historically, there’s been one primary instrument for that connection — voice — and only one way to milk it for… Read More ›
The Catalog of Carceral Surveillance: Prison Gaming and AR/VR Services
No matter how many rights are taken away from people in prison, no matter how brutally they are treated by the prison industrial complex, there is one right so fundamental, so essential, that even controversial prison telecommunications company Securus can’t… Read More ›