Bonum Certa Men Certa

Will the Patent Microcosm of London Please Stop Misleading the Public About UPC?

Remember where UPC money and support come from (Battistelli and his PR agency)

IAM events



Summary: Response to some British blogs that want us to believe that the UPC is about to come true, even in the face of very obvious barriers and facts that are not convenient to Team Battistelli and Team UPC

THE EPO is not alone in lying about the UPC. Team UPC helps with that and all of them do so for personal gain, not because the UPC would be desirable to Europe.



Joff Wild's wild and loaded latest headline ("As the UK moves closer to UPC ratification, there could be a litigation spurt at the new regime's birth") wants us to forget that the UK simply cannot ratify the UPC. We have already explained this in the following series of recent posts:



Wild, being an habitual Battistelli mouthpiece and UPC pusher (the EPO even supported Wild's pro-UPC events), now repeats Bristows' talking points, first in Twitter and then in a "blog" that says:

The UK’s ratification of the Unified Patent Court agreement moved one step closer yesterday with the confirmation that it had signed the UPC’s Protocol on Privileges and Immunities. This provides EU privileges and immunities to the court’s judges in those countries hosting divisions of the court and signing it was a necessary step on the path to the UK’s full membership of the system.


What a misleading pile of rubbish. This does not change anything when it comes to tackling the main barrier, which is Brexit. And without London there is no UPC, either.

Responding to the latest from Team UPC ("Bristows UPC" to be precise), we have some new public comments that remind Team UPC to get off its high horse. Bristows' site is pretty much dead (maybe a few visitors per week, not even much activity), so like a parasite it's now preying on a host, IP Kat. A lot of the pro-UPC talking points get posted there by Bristows staff and the responses are more or less the same. IP Kat readers are not gullible enough. As the first comment put it:



This is so unreal! How can they ratify an agreement that depends on EU membership??? Would the EY really go ahead with spending money on this stillborn part of the UPC? What do they think they are doing???


UPC is dead here and Bristows refuses to accept it, having invested much time and money on UPC propaganda, marketing (not the same thing, includes a rebrand), etc. Here is the next comment:



My guess is that no one actually read the UPC article in detail and that therefore no decision maker is really aware of Art. 20 and Art. 21 of the UPC agreement. We should not forget that politicians often are no lawyers and get a lot of knowledge via Powerpoint from their staffers who might be general lawyers but no IP experts.

At least this is my explanation for what is going on.

My second theory is that Italy was heavily lobbying that the seat of the court is going to Milan rather than London and the UK government felt that it is necessary to stop this at least for the time being by indicating that they will ratify.



One person says in this comment that Lucy did what she did "so as not to block the UPC for other EU member states. Since the UK will be out of the EU, it does not really care what the other EU states get up to and if they want their UPC system, let them have it."

Another person explained it like this:

To me, it would appear to be a tactical exercise in frustration, something that successive UK governments have been very good at ever since the UK became a member of the EU - pre-23/06/2016 : we want in, but we don't really want to play in the same schoolyard as everyone else - post-23/06 : now we want out, and we'll be damned if anyone else is going to grab the main venue court (glares at Italy and Germany alike) and take it away from London until we've hammered out "the best deal possible" for the rest of the exit proceedings. It thus gives the UK government another iron to put in the fire and keep warm while both the EU and UK (ir)responsible ministers bluster about principled positions. Sometimes cynicism really is the mother of all diplomacy. It really all makes perfect sense.


In reality, what Lucy did is likely to further delay things and put the whole system in a deadlock which is contingent upon Brexit. This, in part, is why the UPC won't be going anywhere any time soon. Another comment on the topic said:



Well, it looks like there was some truth in the well-informed rumours that I heard: http://ipkitten.blogspot.co.uk/2016/12/will-uk-industry-suffer-from.html?showComment=1481284766354#c8489500711255308227

What you make of this will, I guess, depend upon which side of the UPC fence that you sit.

With the UK legal profession being the principal beneficiary of the move to ratify, I guess that the government decided that it may as well benefit from the extra tax revenue that will come its way from the bumper profits that will be generated by UK lawyers. Set against that, the (very obvious) disadvantages for "industry" probably looked a bit less concrete.

It's just a shame that the system has now been set up so that no one in their right mind (or at least no one who wants patent protection in the UK) will seek to obtain unitary patents... which, coupled with all of the opt-outs that will be filed, could make the workload of the UPC very light indeed!


Team UPC is not sober. It's drunk on Kool-Aid. If it's not deliberately lying (the self-fulfilling prophecy method), then we should worry about the mental state of people who wish to inherit and dominate Europe's legal/juridical system for handling of patents.

Recent Techrights' Posts

Our Three Lawsuits Against Microsofters Are About to Become a Lot More Relevant to GNU/Linux
The Master will easily understand why Garrett has been attacking me since 2012
Slop Is Not Intelligence and It Does Not Enhance Productivity
Like voice dictation, which cannot tell the difference between "sheet" and "shit"
 
Links 23/07/2025: Slop Patents Tackled, Slop Copyright Misuses Tackled by Politicians
Links for the day
Links 23/07/2025: Retreating From Transparency on Jeffrey Epstein, We No Longer Have Press Freedom
Links for the day
Gemini Links 23/07/2025: Piano and Food
Links for the day
New and Old
On Ageism in Tech
EPO Crimes Are Spreading to the British Court System
Society is now paying the price for failing to tackle crimes at the EPO
It's Time to Dump SharePoint and Here's What to Use Instead
Nextcloud, ownCloud, Bookstack, MediaWiki, and MediaGoblin
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Tuesday, July 22, 2025
IRC logs for Tuesday, July 22, 2025
Brett Wilson LLP Has Gone Silent
Sometimes silence says more than nothing at all
Slopwatch: LinuxSecurity, Planet Ubuntu, and LinuxTechLab
some slopfarms show no remorse and they don't value their reputation at all
Links 23/07/2025: Book Bans, Storms, and Kangaroo Court for Patents Commits More Unlawful Acts of Overreach
Links for the day
Gemini Links 22/07/2025: Thinkpad and Pinephone
Links for the day
Links 22/07/2025: "Blog Restart" and Microsoft Clobbered by “ToolShell"
Links for the day
Global Warming and Global GAFAM Energy-Wasting
Burn more money (borrowed, loans), then hope the waste will somehow translate into profit?
No Compliance With the European Patent Convention (EPC) at the European Patent Office (EPO)
It's about preventing competition against this autocracy
Blue-Collar Trolls vs White-Collar Trolls
Examples of white-collar trolls
Apple Vision Pro Failed So Badly That Its Sales Are About 2,000 Times Smaller Than iPhone Sales
What's left for Apple to offer other than hype?
To Millions of People "Year of the Linux Desktop" Was Some Time in the 1990s (Bootable GNU/Linux as a Complete Operating System is Over 33 in Age)
In some sense, "year of the Linux desktop" was 33 years ago
Make No Assumptions (or Demands) About the Screen Resolution Used by Other People
There are usability aspects, aside from accessibility aspects
Why Wayland (and XWayland) Won't Solve the Key Problem It Proclaims to be Tackling (the Same Is True for Rust)
The problem isn't Wayland per se but the false promises and efforts to force everybody to move to it whilst insulting or demonising everyone who won't play along
They Don't Tell Us that 'Digitalisation' (Now Sold as "Hey Hi") Just Means Customers Become Unpaid Staff and Are Made Accountable
People are being conditioned to associate technology with something undesirable, at times even unbearable
Diplomatic Immunity Should Not Exist for Anybody
The EPO in its current form gradually 'normalises' the end of European democracy
Brett Wilson LLP Stopped Sending Me Papers When I Showed It had Sent Me Over 5 Kilograms of Legal Papers
A week ago we lodged our third lawsuit
Microsoft Mass Layoffs and Shutdowns Became the New Normal at Microsoft
Microsoft mass layoffs became a topic of everyday media coverage since May
Amazon Web Services (AWS) Has Layoffs and Microsoft Gaming/Entertainment Division Has an Uncertain Future
it's good to see all those horrible things crashing and burning
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Monday, July 21, 2025
IRC logs for Monday, July 21, 2025
FSF "Raised Almost $139,000 During This Summer Campaign"
"Thank you for making a stand against dystopia!"
Gemini Links 22/07/2025: VPS Exploited and Fear of View
Links for the day
LLM Bots vs Techrights
Slows things down a bit
New Publication Sheds Lights on Abuse of Workers at the European Patent Office (EPO)
Put in simple terms, they're killing the Office, harming remaining staff, try to hire rubber-stampers
Links 21/07/2025: Hardware, Health, and Imperialism
Links for the day
Gemini Links 21/07/2025: "When Buying Isn't Owning" and "CMS Special Edition"
Links for the day
Links 21/07/2025: Indie Web and Toxic Politics
Links for the day
[Meme] Microsoft Lawyers Throwing Stones in Glass Houses
threatened me with bankruptcy
Google "AI Overview" is Not AI and Not Overview
do not be misled; what Google does isn't smart, it's just ripping off the sites it already crawled for as long as 27 years
Making the Case to Dump Microsoft and GAFAM for National and Digital Sovereignty
"Sovereignty is difficult"
The Tactics of the Opposition (Microsoft Lunduke): Associate With K00ks, Throw in Vaccines to Muddy the Water
Who stands to gain from this?
Europe's Second-Largest Institution (EPO) and Largest Patent Monopoly Office Needs More Transparency, Not Less Transparency
In the EPO, what good are elections when one candidate literally bribes all the voters?
How Not to Report News About Microsoft
This pattern of misreporting is so widespread that it's hard to believe it's not intentional
Computer Science is Under Attack, They Want Everyone to be a Consumer
If people can no longer acquire Computer Science education and real Computer Science experience, they will not know how to control their own digital destiny or emancipate the very same universities that now control the syllabus and instead of teaching Computer Science encourage the outsourcing of systems
The Best Tools Are the Simplest Tools
There's a hidden message here about the merits of sticking with X
Ofcom Online Safety Group Speaks of Protecting Women Online, Will Brett Wilson LLP Ever Listen?
They've essentially became like the Taliban's "burka police"
Social Control Media Relies on Advertisers, So It'll Always Be Hostile Towards Free Software
Sales, sales, sales
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Sunday, July 20, 2025
IRC logs for Sunday, July 20, 2025
Fragmentation of Data
Life is too short to "hoard" data
In Defence of "Spinning Rust"
Just because something is "old" (or older) doesn't mean it ought to become extinct
Using Free Software to Prepare Legal Documents
LibreOffice is openly complaining about OOXML as an obstacle
Tech and Technology Are Not the Same Anymore
"Are you into tech, Sir?"
Our Articles About SLAPPs Receive Recognition and Interest
This week we shall continue writing about the 3 lawsuits we filed