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By: Phyllis Chesler

Occupation is a word that dominates most debate about Israel, but the truth is that pro-Palestinian propagandists are occupying Google and Wikipedia to keep debunked narratives alive.

This was recently confirmed when I attended a webinar featuring a physician who worked in Israels undercover Duvdevan unit, which is the basis for the popular series Fauda. She talked about her work in Gaza and on the West Bank during Operation Protective Edge.

I thought nothing would surprise me. But many things did, she said. The physician told the story of trying to save the life of a 2-year-old West Bank boy accidentally run over by his father. They rushed the boy to an Israeli hospital, providing treatment along the way.

Despite all our efforts, she remembered, the boy died. When I asked this father if he would donate any of his sons organs to another child, he said: Only to an Arab Palestinian child, not to an Israeli Jewish child.

This was a father who had just seen the enormous effort that Israeli Jews had undertaken to save his sons life; it was a very dramatic and emotional moment. Old prejudices might have died on the spot, at least momentarily. Instead, this mans Jew and Israel hatred kicked in immediately. The doctor was stunned by the sudden appearance of such political realities.

This is the kind of psychological enemy Israel is up against. And then there are the Palestinian terrorist leaders, who indoctrinate their own people and use them to carry out terrorist attacks against civilian Israelis. This fact is minimized by Western media and global leaders.

Given the worlds diabolical double standards, Israeli soldiers stand accused of atrocities they did not commit, while Palestinian terroristsHamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, Palestinian Liberation Organization, Fatah, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestinewho torture, kidnap, hijack, use human shields, including children, are still viewed as innocent victims.

Contrary to public opinion, the IDF is exceptionally ethical, and military leaders from other countries have attested to it. Israeli soldiers are haunted by any accidental civilian deaths and grief-stricken by the deaths of their own comrades. Unlike the Palestinian terrorist leaders, they do not glorify death and they mourn each life lost in necessary battle. This must be said, not once, but over and over again to counter the monstrous propaganda against Israel.

Yet, poisoned anti-Israel propaganda continues to overwhelm all platforms. For example, remember Israels alleged 2002 massacre of civilians in Jenin? It generated international headlines.

But it never happened.

For nearly two years, Arab Palestinian terrorists had been attacking Israeli civilians non-stop. The death toll and the numbers wounded were very high. In March 2002, terrorists murdered 100 Israeli civilians. On March 27, a suicide bomber blew himself up inside the Park Hotel in Netanya, just as Jews were seated for a Passover Seder. Thirty people were killed, mostly elderly. Another 140 people were injured.

This was a final straw. Reservists voluntarily flew home to Israel from all over the world. Many of the suicide bombers attacking Israeli civilians had come from Jenin.

The IDF sent soldiers into Jenin. They went from one booby-trapped house to another, all while under fire, just so that Israel would not be accused of bombing civilians from the air or committing a massacre.

Reports from the Palestinian side described a wanton Israeli killing fest, leaving hundreds of innocents dead. Some said thousands were killed. The entire town, they claimed, was destroyed.

In truth, 56 Palestinians died, most of whom were armed. Israel lost 23 soldiers. Despite that, if someone wanted to look into it now and Googled Jenin, here is what theyd find.

The first five pages about Jenin feature 27 anti-Israeli articles promoting a false history and only seven articles that tell the truth about what really happened.

Search Google for How many Palestinians died in Jenin, 2002, and heres the first thing you see today:

It was a lie then. Its a lie today.

News coverage, two excellent filmsPierre Rehovs The Road to Jenin and Gil Mezumens Jenin Diary: The Inside Storyand a very moving book, Brett Goldbergs A Psalm in Jenin, easily rebut Googles pernicious history-by-algorithm and remind us what really happened.

Heres whats important. The propaganda about the non-massacre in Jenin is not confined to 2002-2003. The falsehoods continued throughout the 21st century.

As of 2017-2018, Islamist propagandists Yvonne Ridley and Ilan Pappe continued to engage in this blood libel.

Just last week, Ridley referred to the Jenin massacre-that-wasnt as one of its biggest war crimes of this century.

There are more than half a million dead Syrians that might take issue with that.

But propaganda like Ridleys inevitably leads to real massacres and lynchingsof Jews and Israelis.

Part of the problem is Googles linkage to Wikipedia, which is fully dedicated to an anti-Israel and pro-Palestine position. For example, look at what pops up when you search the phrase Palestinian terrorist groups today:

The first thing you see is a Wikipedia summary of Palestinian political violence.

Palestinian political violence refers to acts of violence or terror motivated by Palestinian nationalism. These political objectives include self-determination in and sovereignty over Palestine, the liberation of Palestine and recognition of a Palestinian state, either in place of both Israel and the Palestinian territories, or solely in the Palestinian territories. Periodically directed toward more limited goals such as the release of Palestinian prisoners in Israel, another key aim is to advance the Palestinian right of return.

Like the so-called massacre at Jenin, the al-Dura Affair concerns the alleged cold-blooded murder in 2000 of a 12-year-old Palestinian boy by Israeli soldiers at the Netzarim junction. Yasser Arafat had again rejected peace and launched his long-planned intifada against Israel. The Muslim world embraced al-Dura as a martyr and ran his photo over and over again in the media, on t-shirts, mugs, posters, etc. They still do.

Journalist Nidra Poller describes the al-Dura matter as a long range ballistic myth. For many years, the entire world believed Israeli soldiers deliberately murdered a child. Even the IDF quickly ventured an apology, which it later retractedall due to the heroic and persistent work undertaken by Poller and by Richard Landes, Esther Schapira, Philippe Karsenty, and Nahum Shahaf, an Israeli physicist.

Over time, it became clear that if al-Dura was shot at all, it was not by Israelis.

Although Google continues to automatically link to Wikipedia, it eventually included the fact that a controversy about what happened actually exists. However, the controversy section appears at the very end of the Wikipedia entry, long after the false narrative has had its way with most readers.

The 2019 Gaza protests on the Israeli border provide the latest example of Palestinians instigating violence, only to grossly exaggerate the Israeli response.

The anti-Israel group Jewish Voice for Peace joined a chorus of voices claiming that Israel was gunning down peaceful protesters. Israeli snipers, it claimed, were deliberately targeting children and persons with disabilities, among others.

It turns out the overwhelming majority of casualties were members or affiliates of terrorist organizations. About half of those killed were Hamas members and affiliates.

We learned this from Hamas officials.

But search Gaza border protests, and these facts are nowhere to be seen.

It is clear that this deadly disinformation campaign will never end, but those who direct traffic on the internet should not aid and abet this crime.

(Investigative Project on Terrorism)

Dr. Phyllis Chesler is the author of 18 books, including A Politically Incorrect Feminist, Islamic Gender Apartheid, and A Family Conspiracy: Honor Killing and An American Bride in Kabul. She is a Fellow at the Middle East Forum.

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Palestinian Lies Never Die; Wikipedia and Google Keep Them Alive - The Jewish Voice

Adam Schlesinger, who died of COVID-19 complications on April 1, is best known from Fountains of Wayne, but that was just one of his adventures in the music industry. Another was Scratchie Records, the label he cofounded with some other alt-rock stars, including two Smashing Pumpkins, James Iha and Darcy Wretzky.

Dan Bryk, an idiosyncratic Toronto singer-songwriter who would eventually settle in Durham, was signed to Scratchie. In 1999, he got a call from Schlesinger, who was working on the soundtrack for Loser, a teen comedy starring Jason Biggs and Mena Suvari.

According to Bryk, the obvious theme song, Becks Loser, had fallen through, and Schlesinger wanted to know if he had anything in his pocket. Naturally, because this is Dan Bryk, he sure did have a song with the words Im a loser in it. He demoed it quickly, FedExing the CD-R off to New York.

Here, narrative form calls for a decisive triumph or defeat. But that just wouldnt be a Dan Bryk story.

Bryk is a gifted indie piano man, a nerdy-Ben-Folds-meets-louche-Randy-Newman type whose off-kilter confessions come swathed in a sweet voice and a sweeter falsetto. His 2001 album Lovers Leap got an A-minus from Robert Christgau in The Village Voice when that still mattered. Its a lost indie-pop classic full of cockeyed odes to computer programmers and chunky girlsthe kind whos just my size, Bryk singswhere even tender ballads like Memo to Myself make room for a little heavy petting and Leonard Cohen. (Weight is a recurring theme in Bryks songs; he used to call his home studio Flabby Road.)

Lovers Leap was a commercial high-water mark, and it took him as far as Japan with Stephen Malkmus. Still, it sold poorly, a textbook victim of what Bryk aptly calls the the major-label faux-indie-rock gold rush. Its not on modern streaming services for the same reason. He made a great record in the wrong place at the right time. Classic Bryk.

Regarding Loser, Schlesinger reported back that the movie folks were looking for a finished master, not a demo, though they liked the song. Im sure they didnt, lol, Bryk wrote, in his usual self-deprecating fashion, when he posted the demo on his website several days after Schlesinger died. But Adam was master of the soft letdown.

After Lovers Leap foundered, Bryk kept at it, off and on. During his first stint living in the Triangle, in the mid-2000s, he earned local notoriety with a song about Cherie Berry and made a Christmas record to benefit Raleigh music education. He released Pop Psychology, his last record to date, on his own label in 2009, had a kid, and promptly abandoned album promotion to be a stay-at-home dadvocate in New York. After one year in Tanzania (Bryks wife, Erin McGinn, works for an NGO) and two in Washington, D.C., the family landed back in Durham, where theyve lived since 2016.

Bryk has been fairly quiet since then, but that changed on April 5, when he released the 1999 Loser demo and a 2019 demo called The Elements of Style. Since then, hes released one archival track per day, conjuring projects and albums that might have been if not for label-and-immigration woes, wrong turns and bad luck, and his lifelong insecurity, which hes been reconsidering in light of discovering that he has ADHD.

It seemed like the perfect time to introduce you to the best local singer-songwriter youve never heard. We decided to do so by drawing our questions from Bryks surprisingly detailed, surprisingly accurate Wikipedia page. When youre a real original adrift in the music industry, truth is stranger than fiction, but these tracks just might spur a second or third act in Bryks career. With any luck.

INDY: At age eight, did you briefly receive piano lessons from Earl Mlotek at the Toronto Royal Conservatory of Music but drop out due to hyperactivity and unwillingness to practice?

DAN BRYK: I think its pronounced mo-tek. Maybe this is where the ADHD story comes in. Ive started some mindfulness training to combat something which really seems to have been a self-limiting factor my whole life. The amount of negative messages a kid gets because of ADHDIve dealt with some crippling insecurity and lack of confidence in my musical work, sort of self-sabotage.

Where do you think Wikipedia got the idea that you stopped because of hyperactivityif youre only discovering that in recent years?

I feel like I wrote that in a blog entry a long time ago. Theres a super-long interview I did with PopMatters, I think some of this came from that. There are a bunch of Toronto people that are really possessive or proud of me [laughs]. I know some of them are really active on Wikipedia and Discogs and stuff.

Did you establish a recording club and record your music under the name The Cunning Linguists at St. Martins High School?

Yes! The Cunning Linguists was me and my friend Mike Feraco. We were really into New Romantic synth stuff: The Associates, Depeche Mode, Human League. Kids today are so spoiled because theyve got every synth in the world on their laptop. If I had the resources back then that I have today, I might have actually sounded decent [laughs].

Did you give an edgy solo debut performance at St. Martins 1988 Battle of the Bands that was censored by Mississauga Cable 10 community-access television?

This is true! I spent so much time in the music department without being in a music class. The music teacher kind of tolerated me because he could tell I was creative, even if I was a two-fingers-with-each-hand style of songwriter. I always had better ideas than discipline to practice.

I was supposed to play this battle of the bands with a three-piece band of older guys Id befriended in Toronto. But as we got closer to the date, I think they realized, oh, man, weve gotta actually go up to Mississauga and play at a high school? So they canceled, and I scrambled and sequenced a set. Stayed up all night, hooked up drum machines. I had one song which was kind of like a rap. It had a four-bar loop from It Takes Two, and I swore, which probably wasnt cool with the school.

When people realized cable was going to broadcast it, it became a thing, like, were gonna get to see Bryk swear! But they just cut off my set before the last song.

"Losing [Adam Schlesinger] and Daniel Johnston in a yearthats like my alpha and omega, my yin and yang. Thats my fucked-up side and my professional side, and Im always stuck in the middle."

Did you hungrily devour jazz and popular music under Prof. Howard Spring at the University of Guelph?

Yeah, once again, I was the person who was in the music department without being in it. The only 100 I ever received was from him. Later on, I said, why? And he said, in the years I offered this course, youre the only person who wrote the essay on country music in the final exam. Instead of doing my studies, I spent a lot of time in the library going through microfiches of Rolling Stone and Crawdaddy. Professor Springs course was like a slingshot into country music, which I liked in that snotty-undergrad Hank Snow not Garth Brooks way.

I didnt actually graduate from Guelph then. I got hired as a graphic designer when I was in school, and they were like, you could finish your degree and pay for that, or you can come learn stuff here.

That bit me on the ass much later, when I moved to America.

Did you move to downtown Toronto in 1994 and break into the scene with Dan Bryk, Asshole?

Totally, as any aspiring bohemian would. I did Dan Bryk, Asshole as a cassette and also an eight-track. That was a bit of a stunt, but it picked up a bit of press.

Did a CBC Radio 2 RealTime session in 1997 result in you signing to Scratchie?

Yeah, I had called in periodically to this live Saturday-night national radio show which focused on big Canadian indie music. They were marvelous people and took pity on me. They started playing Asshole a bit, and they were doing a series, sort of like Peel Sessions, and asked me to do one. My manager was like, I could put a band together for you, and Id already been playing with Kurt Swinghammer. Hes one of my heroes in Toronto, so the fact that he played on my stuff was kind of like Brian Eno and Gordon Lightfoot rolled into one being a fan.

Those were the songs I handed to [label cofounder] Adam Schlesinger after a Fountains of Wayne gig. A month later, Im at work, and my coworkers like, James Iha is on the phone for you. He was really cool and low-key. He really just wanted to talk about Randy Newman. Mojo used to do The Best Thing Ive Heard All Year every December, and Adam gave my CD-R as his favorite thing of the year, and it picked up steam. So his label, Scratchie, offered me a deal, and the best of intentions turned into a real textbook music-business story.

Adam, honest to god, was the hardest-working man in show business. He turned me on to so much stuff and always had an iron in the fire. If Id had his works habits, I wouldveI dont know what [laughs].

[Major label] Mercury wanted Scratchie because those guys were hot, and then they started to be less hot, and the deal cooled, but I was stuck in that deal. Scratchie was this artist-centered label, but the contracts were Mercury boilerplate. The whole experience was of the era, the major-label faux-indie-rock gold rush. Mercury and Universal and Polygram merged, and everyone responsible for the Scratchie deal was fired. It turned into a mess, and I ended up sitting on Lovers Leap for years while they were trying to extract themselves. They werent going to push any of the records, so Adam was like, theres no point in putting this record out and letting it die.

Its really hard to have a business relationship with your hero, which is why Adam passing without us having more than cordial hellos in a couple of years is really rough. To other people, he was a genius, but to me, he was like a mentor. Losing him and Daniel Johnston in a yearthats like my alpha and omega, my yin and yang. Thats my fucked-up side and my professional side, and Im always stuck in the middle. I havent been able to listen to any Prine, any of Adams stuff. I dont know if I can handle it yet.

"But its typical Dan Bryk luck. Every silver lining has a black cloud."

When Scratchie finally independently released Lovers Leap in 2000, did it receive a positive review from Robert Christgau in The Village Voice and meager sales?

Yeah, all the people at Scratchie who worked on the Fountains of Wayne stuff had to take better jobs. So I ended up with the really well-meaning but less-connected people. I remember the day that Adam called me and said, Christgaus coming to your gig at The Knitting Factory tomorrow, dont fuck up [laughs]. And I was on tour when someone called and said, hey, man, you got an A-minus from Christgau. After being this gadfly, like who does that guy think he is, in Toronto, to rate with Christgau was such a huge deal.

Did you tour Japan with Stephen Malkmus and have radio hits there?

Yeah, it was awesome and surreal. I felt like Thom Yorke, sitting in a room for five hours a day of interviews. I took Erin, my then-girlfriend, now-wife, and I think she got a really unreasonable expectation of what the trajectory of my career would be, based on being spotted in the street and playing for thousands of people. Once again, in Canada, it was like, oh, they like him somewhere else, maybe we need to pay attention to him.

Did you move to Durham but settle in Raleigh in 2003, and whats up with that weird equivocation?

We rented in Durham and then decided to buy a place in Brier Creek. I had been in Toronto, still on Scratchie, doing demos. Adam kept saying, were doing this deal with New Line Cinema, so hang in there, because if that happens well have a decent budget. Then Erin got offered a gig in RTP.

I was in this other band called The American Flag. It was these two high school kids that had made a record Bob Pollard put out on Rockathon. These kids put together a band of Toronto scenesters they were fans of, so thats how I ended up in that. We opened all these gigs for Guided by Voices on U.S. tours. Because of that, I had a musician visa that lasted a year, and then you renewed it. But 9/11 happened, and they started yanking visas from Canadians.

I came down to New York City for a wedding and the guy at the border stopped me with my suitcase of recording gear. He said, how do I know youre not going to New York to record bands and make money? So I was refused entry. Then you have a flag on you, and my musician visa expired, and it became a real headache.

I realized if I was going to stay with Erin, I needed a job. I had to finish my BFA to get an actual work visa. I could literally only be a graphic designer. I couldnt play any shows or act as if I was a musician, including online. So in the nascent Myspace days, I had to be really low-key. It took a few years until I got a green card in 2006.

Did you get dropped by Scratchie after it was acquired by New Line?

New Line asked for more demos, and the first set I gave them is on my Bandcamp as Mississauga Rattler. The word I got back from Adam was like, theres not really any ringers here, I want you to dig deeper and give me elemental Dan Bryk songs. New Line didnt hear the ca-ching of any cash registers. If Id stayed in Canada and been more active in that timewell I shouldnt say I was inactive. I put out a handful of good records by other people on my label, Urban Myth.

"Theres not a day in the music business without a small indignity. But I guess Im having the last laugh, because what music industry?"

Did you give a song about Cherie Berry to WKNC as Tha Commissioners and only admit it was you when the e-mails were found to originate from your computer?

I think that was the story [laughs]. The co-hosts goaded me into the pseudonymous pretense. They started playing Cherry Berry six times a day, and it picked up steam. It actually turned into a heartbreak for me, because Swinghammer had written a song, The Signature of Marilyn Churley, about being seduced by the signature of the minister responsible for elevators [in Toronto]. On some level, I forgot that that was the inspiration, and Kurt got really mad, like I stole his idea. And because it turned into this media cause clbre, people perceived that it was more of a success than it was. Its kind of weird getting the front page of The News & Observer over this goofy thing I did in an afternoon. But its typical Dan Bryk luck. Every silver lining has a black cloud.

Is The Old Ceremonys song Stubborn Man about you?

I think its a composite. I remember Django [Haskins] saying something like, oh, man, theres a song youll hear tonight, I think youll know what its about.

[Haskins says: Ha! Ive never heard that. No, it was aboutwait for itme. But in another sense, it was about every one of us who continues on this path despite the obvious difficulties. So I guess it is about him as well. I do love DB.]

Does Stubborn Man reflect you?

Um, yeah, probably. Ive probably erred on the side of thinking that recalcitrant and prickly was good promo, and it probably hasnt been. It comes back to this whole ball of ADHD stuff; over the years Ive made a persona which has more to do with being fundamentally insecure. Theres not a day in the music business without a small indignity. But I guess Im having the last laugh, because what music industry?

Tell me about these coronavirus archives tracks youve been releasing.

It sounds silly saying Im a perfectionist because part of my whole thing is that its a bit off-kilter. But I just havent been able to part with a lot of things. I dont play guitar after all these years, lord knows Ive tried. Im still just a keyboard player. So I have a lot of things that are done except guitar. Im releasing one a day until I run out or the songs start sucking too much. I figured Id do this for a couple weeks and see if anyone was interested.

Honestly, losing a bunch of people to coronavirus and other stuff has made me realize that if I died tomorrow, I do have a lot of stuff that people might find interesting while Im alive. This situation was enough to kick me out of a sense that Ive got to have all this stuff right. Id rather just have it out there, I guess.

Correction: Robert Christgau's review of Lovers Leap appeared in The Village Voice, not Rolling Stone.

Contact arts and culture editor Brian Howe at bhowe@indyweek.com.

DEAR READERS, WE NEED YOUR HELP NOW MORE THAN EVER.Support independent local journalism byjoining the INDY Press Clubtoday. Your contributions will keep our fearless watchdog reporting and essential arts and culture coverage viable in the Triangle, coronavirus be damned.

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Dan Bryk's Misadventures in the Music Industry as Told by Wikipedia - INDY Week

Welcome to Twitter, where everyone thinks they're an expert at literally everything and will give you second-hand embarrassment while trying to prove their pointless points. A beautiful Twitter exchange like that happened yesterday when a few desi people tried to argue about how Wikipedia works, with, wait for it, the founder of Wikipedia. It all started with some questioning why a Wikipedia page was deleted and I mean asking questions are fine but the entire bribing narrative? Oof.

Jimmy Wales, the founder of Wikipedia, decided to resolve the matter but that would be in vain.

The argument continued with Jimmy again telling how it works on HIS site.

He's not even talking about religion, he's talking about how Wikipedia works and well, I would think that he's somewhat of an expert on it.

The man is just trying to tell them the quality of whatever is written on different pages matters and they're still not listening.

He's still trying to politely diffuse the situation and is even open to a discussion. Reliable sources are required by people; it's not that hard of a concept to grasp.

Just to fill the gaps since the tweet Jimmy is replying to below has been deleted but the person basically said that almost every article on Wikipedia doesn't have sources. Yep, people are that thick.

One would think it can't get worse than this, but just wait for it. Someone thought this was actually a valid argument to put forward.

Twitter

I can feel his frustration through the screen.

Same.

The quality content we need.

I would personally like to say thank you to everyone involved, this was way too hilarious.

Photo: Wikipedia (Main Image)

Original post:
Desi People Telling The Founder Of Wikipedia How Wikipedia Works & We Wish We Had That Confidence - MensXP.com

That is where projects like Lingua Libre, a Wikimedia Foundation-funded platform to record oral languages, come in. The archive, run by Wikimedia France, opened in August 2018 and already contains more than 100,000 recordings in 43 languages that, otherwise, could have been lost forever.

Back in Guatemala, Miguel ngel Oxlaj Kumez is aware that the challenges ahead remain difficult and complex, but he is not discouraged. We see the challenges as opportunities, he says. In the workshops, I raised the question Why is it necessary to have my language on the internet? And an activist turns it over and tells me Why shouldnt I have my indigenous language on the internet?."

He is currently working with other online indigenous activists to create Kaqchikel Mayan versions of Wikipedia, WhatsApp and Duolingo. Five years ago, I did not imagine my language on the internet, and there are people who still dont think of that possibility.

In the meantime, hes glad that theres a growing network of indigenous speakers fighting to get their languages online.

"Now it is in the hands of this network of activists," he adds. "And we all have the dream of making it happen.

--

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The many languages missing from the internet - BBC News

from the not-a-good-idea dept

WordLogic is a patent troll. The company has been around for a while and holds a bunch of patents (such as US Patent 7,681,124) which it claims covers the concept of predictive text writing. While WordLogic is (was?) a publicly listed company, the stock is currently worth $0.0001 per share. About the only news about the company has to do with hiring patent lawyers and failing to live up to bragging press releases.

The company has spent the last few years filing a whole bunch of patent shakedown lawsuits. A quick glance shows 12 federal cases involving the '124 patent, and they don't appear to have gone all that well for WordLogic. I didn't check all of the cases to see how they ended up, but I haven't come across one that they've won yet. Two cases are notable. Unified Patents asked the patent office to review the patent, saying it should never have been granted in the first place. The PTAB (the review board) came out with an initial ruling that the patent was likely invalid, at which point, WordLogic suddenly found religion and "settled" the case before the PTAB could issue a final ruling on the validity of the patent.

But that meant that WordLogic could continue to shake down companies with that patent. Indeed, it looks like 9 of the cases over the '124 patent were filed after the review was "settled." In one case, against Fleksy, WordLogic's lawyers were facing Rule 11 sanctions in which Fleksy highlights that nothing it does comes anywhere near what the patent asserts and that WordLogic knew this. Just a snippet:

Fleksy invites the Courts attention to the brief filed in opposition to this motion. It is aguarantee that there will be nothing in the realm of evidence that Fleksy does this. But, moreimportantly, counsel for Plaintiffs will be unable to cite anything non-evidentiary to convince thisCourt that he had a good faith basis to believe that the app he accused of infringing this patentclaim actually satisfies the recited element. A thirty-second review of the app would haveconfirmed that multi-level search or anything close to it simply does not occur and has neveroccurred on Fleksys app. There isnt an iota of evidence in the public domain that couldplausibly support a reasonable belief that discovery would uncover such evidence. Any barebones pre-filing investigation would have revealed to counsel that on Fleksys app, when a useraccepts a completion candidate, the app inserts the word, then inserts a space bar after the word,and then awaits the users entry of a brand new word. It does not obtain and display a list offurther completion candidates. That is, the Fleksy app does not process a user selection of acompletion candidate as a request by the user to continue searching for further completioncandidates, i.e., multi-level search of the sort explained in the 152 patent specification andclaimed in claim element (h) of Claim 19.

And then this:

Here, the accused product is a mobile app that was freely and easily available fordownload and inspection at the time Wordlogics counsel filed this patent lawsuit. For zerodollars and ten minutes of his time, counsel could have confronted the factual realities aboutFleksys app that Fleksy has detailed in this brief. These factual realities collide head first withentire claim elements recited in the two patents-in-suit.

After a weak response from WordLogic's lawyers, WordLogic agreed to drop the case a few days later.

This is all pretty typical of an out-and-out patent troll. Focus on shaking lots of companies down for a license fee, and sue a few hoping for a big win or to convince someone to pay up to settle the suit... but it turns tail and runs the second things start to look bad.

Its latest target... was not wise. WordLogic sent a shakedown threat letter over the same patent to Wikimedia Foundation. The letter itself is fascinating as a perfect example of how patent troll shakedown normally works. It starts out with grand claims about WordLogic's patents, and insists that Wikipedia infringes on one specific claim (#19 in the '124 patent), but then says "likely other claims in the WordLogic patents." That sort of vagueness is pretty typical of trollish thuggery. The threat letter blusters about how the company is a "global leader" in the field -- which is laughable given that the company appears to have made literally zero revenue for the last two years that it disclosed its income statements publicly.

The letter references the Fleksy case, calling it "ongoing litigation" which is odd, considering that that the case was dismissed with prejudice nearly two years before this shakedown letter was sent. I'm not up on legal ethics rules, but I'm curious if it's at all appropriate for a legal threat letter to claim that there's ongoing litigation two years after the case was dismissed.

In the end, the letter demands... $30,000. This kind of fee is typical of patent trolls, because they know damn well that litigating this (even to an easy victory) will cost Wikipedia significantly more than $30,000. Thus, the economical choice is to just pay up and move on. That's what's so scammy about WordLogic and this legal threat from lawyer Artoush Ohanian:

We recognize that WIKIPEDIA has several options for addressing WordLogic's infringement concerns, including litigation and/or WIKIPEDIA attempting to invalidate the patents by filing an Inter Partes Review (IPR) with the Patent Office. Although we are confident in the validity and infringement of the WordLogic patents, we appreciate the inherent risks and costs to a patent owner in pursuing litigation and/or facing the uncertainties of IPR proceedings. To that end, and to encourage the continued use of WordLogic patented technology, WordLogic is offering a discounted, lump sum fee of $30,000 in exchange for a paid-up one-time license.

That, right there, is a quintessential patent troll shakedown paragraph. Gee, we know that challenging this patent and going to court is expensive and uncertain -- so why not just pay us to leave you alone. Disgusting. And I'll note that while it misleadingly mentions the Fleksy litigation, it leaves out the settled IPR process in which the PTAB said that patent was likely invalid. I wonder why...

Wikipedia, correctly, is not one to give in to such trollish bullying. It turned around and went to court asking for declaratory judgment that it does not infringe on the patents that WordLogic was waving around. Wikimedia notes that (1) WordLogic's patents are invalid due to prior art, (2) that they are invalid for not covering patentable subject matter, and (3) that anyway, it doesn't even infringe on the patents if they were valid.

The claims of the Asserted Patents are invalid under 35 U.S.C. 102 and/or 103(a).For example, the Patent Office determined to institute IPR2017-01856. In reaching that decision,the Patent Office considered prior art references to the Asserted Patents, including U.S. Patent No.5,724,457 (Fukishima), U.S. Patent No. 5,367,453 (Capps), U.S. Patent No. 6,307,548(Flinchem), U.S. Patent No. 5,797,098 (Schroeder), and John J. Darragh & Ian H. Witten,Cambridge Series On Human- Computer Interaction, The Reactive Keyboard 3 (J. Long ed. 1992)(Witten). The Patent Office determined that it would review the claims of the 124 patentbecause it found that these prior art references established a reasonable likelihood that the claimsof the 124 patent were unpatentable under 35 U.S.C. 103(a). These same prior art referencesalso establish that the claims of the other Asserted Patents are invalid.

The claims of the Asserted Patents are also invalid under 35 U.S.C. 101. Forexample, Fleksy Inc. filed a motion to dismiss on February 3, 2017 in WordLogic Corporation etal v. Fleksy, Inc., Case No. 4:17-cv-07169-JSW, in which it set forth reasons why the claims ofthe 124 patent are invalid under 35 U.S.C. 101.

The allegations of infringement made by the WordLogic Entities fail to show thatWikimedia infringes any claim of any Asserted Patent. For example, for claim 19 of the 124patent, the Wikipedia search box that WordLogic identifies as infringing does not perform therequired step of obtaining and displaying in the search list a further modified plurality ofcompletion candidates from among the group of completion candidates, if a completion candidateis accepted via the search list from the modified plurality of completion candidates.

If WordLogic is smart (big if), it should probably come grovelling to Wikimedia promising to leave it alone. If it's not smart and pushes forward, I can't imagine this ending well for the "company" or its patents. Considering that the patents expire in a couple years anyway, it may try to turn tail and run again and look for someone else to shake down who it hopes will be easier prey.

In the meantime, it's still ridiculous that Wikimedia (and anyone else) continues to have to deal with this kind of bullshit trolling activity.

Filed Under: artoush ohanian, patent troll, patents, predictive text, shakedownCompanies: wikimedia, wordlogic

Originally posted here:
Predictive Text Patent Troll Tries To Shake Down Wikipedia - Techdirt