09.13.16
Team UPC Has Not Grown Tired of Kicking a Dead (Trojan) Horse
Summary: Remnants of the UPC lobbying by those who stand to profit from it at the expense of Europe, as seen around the Web so far this week
THERE IS nothing as dishonest as small firms in large numbers, wherein the goal is to just maximise the number of lawsuits generated through patents. Lawsuits are the ultimate (and most expensive) “product”. Thus, those who profit in the process, irrespective of its outcome (plaintiff or defendant winning), just love the idea of more lawsuits with broader impact, higher damages (they receive percentages), injunctions continent-wide and so forth.
Earlier tonight we wrote about UPC advocacy by Team UPC, a cliquish collective of relatively small law firms that keep trying to promote the UPC despite its undemocratic nature and threat to the whole of Europe (especially small firms that actually produce things and haven’t an in-house legal team).
“Lawsuits are the ultimate (and most expensive) “product”.”Found earlier today via Twitter was this latest UPC ‘development’. “The legislation enabling the Netherlands to ratify the Agreement on a Unified Patent Court (UPC) has now been promulgated by the Minister of Security and Justice on 6 September 2016 and officially published,” Bristows (part of Team UPC) writes, but it’s hardly a major milestone and after the Brexit vote it’s all pretty meaningless. If the Dutch ever push for an antidemocratic thing like the UPC, the public should protest in the street (like it does against TTIP/TPP/CETA/TISA/other shells for similarly horrific new laws).
For information about the UPC, as some people never heard of it (secrecy is intentional), recall who's lobbying for it and why the UPC would harm SMEs. UPC promotion, nonetheless, can still be found in IP Kat (lots of nonsense that was started there by Bristows again, only to be refuted to some degree in the comments section). Honestly, no link needed anymore as it’s a load of misinformation that is not worth entertaining.
“Honestly, no link needed anymore as it’s a load of misinformation that is not worth entertaining.”Over at IP Watch, in the mean time, there is an article about “Specialized IP Courts” (behind paywall and “IP” is too vague a term for anyone to know if it means patents, copyrights, trademarks, trade secrets etc.) and a new book about the UPC, probably composed well before Brexit (which pretty much undermined if not killed the whole shebang), is reviewed by IP Kat (“Merpel thinks this interviewee is very economics-friendly,” notes the author). A disclosure is added at the bottom to say: “In my previous role at the UK IPO, I was involved in the underlying research project discussed in the final chapter.”
Also from Bristows, the usual Kat who promotes UPC in there writes about an EPLAW event (Bristows is to EPLAW) with “mock trials!” And no, she’s not talking about the fake ‘trials’ of Battistelli at the EPO. In fact, it’s all part of that same old agenda.
Why don’t they just give up and stop meddling with democracy? █
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katkatkat said,
September 14, 2016 at 4:14 pm
Germany will not ratify the UPC treaty. Thus the project is dead.