03.04.16
Gemini version available ♊︎Unitary Patent (UPC) Propagandists Are Louder Than Ever as Its Architect in Chief (Battistelli) is Probably About to Get Sacked
The ‘danger’ of democracy may become too much for the Unitary Patent Court to survive
Nothing new for Benoît Battistelli and Michel Barnier with their conspiracy to overcome democracy (imposed top-down) and shove UPC idealism down Europe’s throat
Summary: The Unitary Patent Court, a deeply flawed system that almost nobody in Europe even knows anything about, is being negotiated behind closed doors and its leader, the EPO President (for now), may be on borrowed time
JUST as we’re about to learn that Battistelli is history his biggest current ‘project’, the UPC, has patent lawyers panicking a bit, especially those who put all their bets (or eggs) in the UPC basket. Joff Wild of IAM (follow the money and the agenda [1, 2]) speaks for the EPO and the UPC (attributing mere claims of “success” to the UPC), making it two birds with just one stone. Cheerleading for the British government to fall into the UPC trap, i.e. running all over democracy by trying to make UPC happen without any public consultation on the matter, here is what came from the UPC propagandist (Ward) and a colleague [1, 2], only to be met with sceptical comments from those who aren’t patent maximalists, e.g. patent lawyers. “Strange comments indeed about the UK re-joining the UPC after a Brexit,” one person wrote. With context:
Strange comments indeed about the UK re-joining the UPC after a Brexit. I have yet to see an explanation (let alone a convincing one) of how that might work.
My main concerns, however, relate to the divergences in the laws of infringement for the four different categories of patents (national vs. opted out EPs vs. unitary EPs vs. not opted-out EPs). Given Spain’s arguments relating to Article 118 TFEU, judges of the UPC may be reluctant to fix the matter (at least for the latter two categories) by relying upon direct references to the UPCA. Thus, significant problems could be caused by those countries that have ratified the UPCA without amending their national laws. With respect to the laws of infringement, at least France currently falls into that category – and, unless I have missed something significant, Germany looks set to follow suit.
What a fine mess we could be getting into!
“But such salaries are clearly insufficient to attract applicants from the EPO,” wrote another person, “even taking into account the harshness of the working conditions.” They are trying to slowly extinguish national patent offices and courts. The matter of fact is, UPC is anything but a done deal because many barriers remain, including Spain (we wrote a lot about this).
“Things that inherently work against Europe’s interests shouldn’t leap their way into law in spite of democracy.”Some patent lawyers are evidently upset at my stance on this (see what I got last night from one [1, 2 3, 4, 5, 6]), but they only serve to reinforce my views on the UPC when they do this. UPC is good for large corporations (often from abroad), their patent lawyers (usually European), patent trolls, and of course software patents, based on a lot of internationally-renowned people who keep warning about this.
The UPC should go down into the ashtray of history, along with “Community patent” (another name for the same thing, promoted by Michel Barnier, who is close to Battistelli not just in the nationality sense, going back even half a decade ago) and Team Battistelli. Things that inherently work against Europe’s interests shouldn’t leap their way into law in spite of democracy. █
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