TECHRIGHTS turned 10 earlier this year (only to experience DDOS attack on the day, so planned celebrations got delayed). It also reached a milestone of 20,000 blog posts back in February.

"Nokia, being a European company, represents the growing threat of patent trolls in Europe -- a threat which the UPC threatened to make ever more real and concrete."Aside from that, in 2016 we got the EPO's management on the defensive. They are losing the battle (Brexit pretty much axed the UPC's prospects, too) and in 2017 we hope to get the EPO (the one people respected) back on track.

Joe Mullin, a good journalist who has been writing a lot about patent trolls for nearly a decade, has just listed "most dramatic patent and copyright cases of 2016", ending the list with the news that came in just before Christmas. He writes that "Nokia has backed out of the smartphone business, but is still licensing its patents, so the two companies are back at war. Nokia has sued Apple over patents in 11 different countries. Meanwhile, Apple has filed an antitrust lawsuit against Nokia, accusing the Finnish firm of working together with "patent-assertion entities"—a.k.a. patent trolls—to "maximize the royalties that can be extracted from product companies.""

"Combative attitude against us, including routine DDOS attacks, certainly toughened us and we are prepared to do whatever it takes to get truth out."Nokia, being a European company, represents the growing threat of patent trolls in Europe -- a threat which the UPC threatened to make ever more real and concrete.

In 2017 we intend to continue to write about the EPO, highlight the woes associated with patent trolls, combat software patents, and highlight patent attacks on Free/Open Source software. 2017 will be a continuation of this past year. We intend to leak more and to escalate the tone where necessary. Combative attitude against us, including routine DDOS attacks, certainly toughened us and we are prepared to do whatever it takes to get truth out. ⬆