I am dutifully offended, OFFENDED, that word will get out that I do, on occasion, fancy myself a... vegetarian meal on an airplane.

OH MY LORD! I HOPE THIS DOESN'T RUIN MY PUBLIC IMAGE!

Carbon monoxide, not oxygen.

In the 1990s, after the fall of the Berlin Wall and demise of the Soviet Union, the age of globalization [aided by the "information superhighway"] swept over the industrialized world: manufacturing migrated more intensely overseas, outsourcing was all of the rage, and overall cost efficiencies became achievable within years instead of decades. This business opportunity (economies of scale) was the underbelly behind Amazon from a profits-by-volume measure.

China became the dominant manufacturing hub but there was plenty of blowback for the increasing Made-in-China labels across all kinds of consumer goods. In the US, Made-in-America became a rallying cry for politicians and a marketing campaign by manufacturers... all with the promise that higher-quality domestic production, which would command higher price tags relative to the global market choices, would win-out the consumers' overall purchasing habits.

And it did: opinion polls all over agreed that domestic production was of higher-quality, and opinion polls agreed that their higher price tags were fully justified. Fast-forward to today and manufacturing in China far outweighs domestic production regardless of cost because money talks and everyone, by and large, would rather save money than not.

The same will happen with AI-or-AI-free products development and marketing. Will people be willing to pay more? Sure. But will people actually pay more for non-AI-laden products? Hahaha, no. Reduced operating costs for the products while increasing the product pricing equals MORE PROFITS and that's the last thing people want to pay for... loading up executives' pockets over the increase in profit margins.

Any products marketed as, "and now without any AI," should be viewed skeptically as just another money-grab. It's the same decision model used by many crooks holding positions of power, also.

Only the completed form (and associated metadata) is transferred to the IRS API -- not the various workflow processes used to populate or generate the completed form.

Depending how people sort out their financial lives, the various tax laws are more imperative for their everyday accounting software rather than their quarterly/annual tax prep steps. So it's not a technical challenge/issue but rather how individuals do NOT leverage accounting tools and often feel caught off-guard by their annual income tax reporting actions.

Yeah, I know! People spend their lives completing their taxes EVERY SINGLE YEAR and yet they continually, constantly, without any sense of irony or sarcasm, remark how they had no way of being prepared and having their affairs sorted in order to complete their taxes on schedule! That's bananas to me!!!

From Wikipedia:
Cloud and Artificial Intelligence (Azure, GitHub, Visual Studio, npm, C#, .NET, TS)
Experiences and Devices (Windows, Microsoft 365, Outlook, Teams, Bing, Edge, Surface, HoloLens)
Gaming (Xbox, Xbox Game Studios, ZeniMax Media, Activision Blizzard, Game Pass, Cloud Gaming, Xbox network)
Technologies and Research [now Mustafa's AI Research team](Garage, M12, Microsoft Research)

So, in fact, the extreme majority of household consumer brands for Microsoft are within the E+D Group. Definitely no small potatoes!

I would argue obtaining IRS API authorization (those pesky API keys that would actually accept the data transmissions) is the trickier part -- especially since those processes occur behind-the-scenes already (server-to-server calls).

The summary (and The Verge's rephrasing) is much more confusing than the actual internal memo -- which is short and crystal clear:

Rajesh heads the E+D Group, Mustafa heads the AI Group, Scott Guthrie heads the Cloud + AI Group (and these are the 3 "Engineering" Groups, while most of the other groups are more distinct, like Gaming, IT, Legal, HR, etc.)
Ryan (CEO LinkedIn) is also becoming EVP Office/Microsoft365Copilot (which reports to Rajesh in the E+D Group),
Charles (BIC Team) is moving adjacent to Ryan (so BIC/Charles will also report to Rajesh in the E+D Group).

The takeaway is that Rajesh is handing off hands-on duties of Office/M365Copilot to Ryan, and Ryan and Charles will collaborate on a unified Business Copilot strategy across these respective portfolios.(As noted, the consumer-oriented and research divisions of Copilot things are staying firmly with Mustafa.)

You know what would be interesting to see happen? AT&T partners with Google Fiber (Alphabet, really) to make this financing scheme work. Perhaps Google could piggyback off of AT&T (nee Lumen's Quantum Fiber infrastructure) to broadly offer their services as online-only bundles with devices, and the same infrastructure would equally be utilized by AT&T for their existing consumer and business services needs.

It's rather telling that the acquisition agreement came before the equity partner agreement -- it means AT&T needs the assets to get an equity investor (thus leveraging the Lumen fiber network as collateral and stacking up the NetworkCo with insane debt levels).

Much as you said, this will not end well... it's basically Free Money for the AT&T executives.

In case you missed it, I attended law school with concentrations in international law and IP law; I worked for a global IP law firm with top-flight clients; I specialized in anticounterfeiting and innovative quality improvement technologies; the attorneys I fired were IP lawyers with egos akin to your own and those matters mostly dealt with the USPTO.

And out of all of your bullshit, at no point did you ever concede to ANY OF YOUR OWN misinterpretations. Yet you continue your condescending attitude as though you're God's Gift To Mankind. Holy Fucking Shit!

Your toxic alpha-male-bro-dude attitude is what discourages discourse online (including beyond the confines of Slashdot). I stopped indulging your strongheadedness when this entire comment thread is just plain boring to me. I'm not even phased in the slightest. It's rather sad how much effort you put into these comments just for me to throw it away due to your inability to take ownership of your own misunderstanding/misinterpretation of written words. THIS IS NOT A LEGAL FILING. THESE ARE NOT LEGAL PROCEEDINGS. YOU ARE NOT GOD.

kthxbye

You started with name-calling, then rolled-in low-grade cuss words, added insults and more insensitive terms most mature human beings would not want their school-age children to speak aloud to strangers, you doubled-down on your usage of those terms... and this is after you've already engaged with your registered account.

You should know that no reasonable person would presume these Anonymous Coward replies were from any other account (especially since the Slashdot system already notified me that it was your logged-in account which replied although you simply ticked the 'Post Anonymously' checkbox). Hiding behind the Post Anonymously feature is not sound legal advice; then again, neither is your word choices altogether.

Also, in my professional career, I have regularly dismissed attorneys from working on my filings due to their unprofessionalism and/or poor work quality and/or improper conduct. Without knowing who you are (because I don't care enough to cross-reference your slashdot handle with any other digital traces of whom you actually are) I can assure you that I would also dismiss you from working on my cases.

Please think of the children (including yourself).

Changed your replying from your account to Anonymous Coward? Nice!

You keep deviating from the crux of everything I've said (whilst actually corroborating exactly what I said) and nit-picking over a colloquialism of "generic" for the usage of "Dev Mode" rather than the legal categorization of "generic" in trademark law. Bravo! You selectively take words out of context. Bonus points for you!

To summarize: I summarized the saga, you nitpick over 1 word by arguing with your reframing of literally everything I said by reaffirming everything I said, and you continue to do so.

This self-pwn is incessant.

Your reading comprehension throughout is severely lacking. "Holy shit," indeed.

In the initial rejection, the USPTO examiner did not behind-the-scenes auto-submit the application to the Supplemental Register. This is as indicated and stated BY THE GODDAMN EXAMINER in the initial rejection document, as I cited. Amendment pathways were thus provided therein. Does this make sense to you, self-proclaimed keyboard warrior genius?

The Figma attorneys then amended the original (rejected) filing to the Supplemental Register. AT NO POINT DID ANYONE CLAIM OTHERWISE, so idk wtf you're barking on about.

The gist remains the same; the takeaways remain the same; the overall reasons and limited value-add remain the same.

PS: I have been intimately involved with matters of intellectual property law, law firms, and direct dealings with the USPTO since Clinton was the sitting US President. This isn't some hobnobbing ABA networking cocktail, you've wholly misunderstood what I've been writing, and you're angry at your own shadow.

https://ancillary-proxy.atarimworker.io?url=https%3A%2F%2Ftsdr.uspto.gov%2Fdocumen...
Check out Page 3 of 26. The USPTO rejected the original filing for being descriptive (as I summarized and you repeated) however they explicitly DID NOT amend to Supplemental Register on their own; it was not automatic because the filing as-is did not qualify for automatic referral. Rather, the USPTO indicated that they may amend from Principal to Supplemental as per their instructions at https://ancillary-proxy.atarimworker.io?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.uspto.gov%2Ftrademar...

Regardless of my opinion about the term's generic nature (and it's used commonly enough that young elementary school-age kids at the local community center use the term when playing their video games and making character adjustments...NOT IN FIGMA...just to give you one quick example while walking home from the bus stop yesterday), there's a lot of invalidation research the USPTO did NOT conduct in this filing.

As per the thoughtful analyses by the publishers NOLO, https://ancillary-proxy.atarimworker.io?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.nolo.com%2Flegal-enc...

In other words, the actual protections of Figma's trademark are on the shakiest grounds. They're trying to protect "Dev Mode" as being the marketed name of some software feature but (should) recognize that continued common usage of the term "dev mode" (or other generic expressions like "kleenex" for tissue napkin or "q-tip" for ear swab) invalidates any real infringement damage claims over the generic term.

Yeah, Figma's trying to preemptively protect some weak sauce trademark. Their investors/management/sales want things to cheer about and thought this is a good bullet point worth putting effort into it. And the USPTO gladly took their registration moneys.

https://ancillary-proxy.atarimworker.io?url=https%3A%2F%2Ftsdr.uspto.gov%2F%23caseNu...

This a huge procedural fail at the USPTO. Here's a rough summary of what happened:

Figma lawyers filed trademark paperwork for the term "Dev Mode" in 2023. USPTO rejected it as being simply descriptive. USPTO tasked Figma lawyers to amend their application with proofs in how they're using it in commerce. Figma's lawyers submit a PDF (of screenshotted webpages) where "Dev Mode" is used from Figma's own website. USPTO acknowledges the submission. USPTO examiner rubber-stamps the filing with a Registration number in November 2024.

The upshot? USPTO examiner backed down from arguing for the term's generic and descriptive nature; they stated that its use on Figma.com was enough evidence that Figma is using it to identify (something). USPTO did not conduct any reasonable Prior Art search beyond a heavily-filtered keyword search in their own database.

Since there was no active "Dev Mode" filing the USPTO rubber-stamped it, no further questions.

Any sensible judge/adjudicator upon challenge of this Registration would immediately invalidate it. But in the meantime, the USPTO keeps the registration fees and the trademark attorneys stay in business with this stuff.

I wouldn't call it banal but I would guess it's impacted by the Broadcom-VMware licensing nonsense that AT&T ultimately came to terms with. In order to shore up their budgets, they probably looked at the legitimate utilization of the services and decided to "cut their losses," as the saying goes.