03.16.17
Gemini version available ♊︎Incredibly Unscientific: EPO is Making up Excuses for Decline in Patent Applications
China’s growth in patents is superficial and misleading; In Europe there is negative growth, but ‘infographics’ like the one below try to paint the opposite picture
Poland missing from the map as it’s part of what the EPO is trying hard to hide
Summary: The European Patent Office continues to insult nations and also insult science, essentially by spreading lies and deleting from the map particular nations in order to legitimise these lies
WE have decided to leave aside USPTO articles until the weekend because the frequency of lies from the EPO is increasing again and if these lies are not confronted with facts there is risk that even some EPO employees will believe them.
We previously explained that application numbers at the EPO are declining in Europe. Prior to that we showed how the EPO had been lying. See for example the following:
- EPO Record Low on Quality of European Patents (EPs) in 2016
- The European Patent Office is Wasting Its Already Limited Budget on Misleading Press Releases/Paid-for Coverage That Overlook Sharp Decline in Patent Quality
- Latest EPO ‘Results’ Should be Grounds for Immediate Dismissal of Battistelli Rather Than Celebrations
2 days ago we wrote about unscientific (if not antiscientific) and rather offensive maps from the EPO, serving as a sort of propaganda or misinfographics for the lazy. They have already mentioned Belgium (highest growth), so now it’s Italy’s turn (second highest), as the screenshot of this tweet (above) shows. In spite of criticism, knowing that they are being bashed for it, the EPO’s PR team has decided to tweet, yet again, this offensive, antiscientific map. Later they wrote: “Patent applications from Poland dropped after increases in 2015″ (screenshot above, as they recently removed such tweets and we caught the deletion).
“Has the EPO removed Poland from the map just for king Battistelli and his desperate need for brainwash throughout this week? Is Poland no longer part of Europe?”Notice how, for obvious reasons, they are not even showing the map because Poland was conveniently removed from it! Has the EPO removed Poland from the map just for king Battistelli and his desperate need for brainwash throughout this week? Is Poland no longer part of Europe? Mind the fact that they also make excuses for this decline, as if to say, “yes, it’s down, but it’s actually up!”
This is the kind of “alternative facts” that we are seeing more and more of, courtesy of an Office that has become a disgrace to science itself.
Where is the EPO seen as a growth opportunity? The land of patent gold rush, where patent quality thresholds/barriers are so low that last year alone there were over a million patent applications (at SIPO). We have been writing a lot about it, irrespective of our EPO coverage. See yesterday’s article “Brighter prospects for business method and software related patents in China” (alternative headline: SIPO lowers quality of Chinese patents to zero).
“WIPO does not want to tell the full story, but the devil is in the detail.”At the EPO, the only region of growth is China (US demand for EPs is down very sharply). But then again, the same is true for other patent offices across the world. It’s not just an EPO phenomenon, it’s a Chinese phenomenon. According to Korean media (e.g. the Korea Herald, which is published in English), patent lawsuits are totally out of control in China, exactly as we predicted (it’s up 37% in just a short period of time). China is now destroying its own leadership and wrecks its own industry with litigation, making only a bunch of law firms richer. They didn’t learn from the mistakes of the US, did they? Another Korean publication stresses the ramifications for Korean companies operating in China. The patent maximalism encouraged by SIPO is destructive and suicidal (in the commercial sense). This is why companies won’t want to operate in China, or will be reluctant to expand to China. According to a lot of reports from yesterday [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6], patents are down except in China (with few exceptions here and there). WIPO does not want to tell the full story, but the devil is in the detail. WIPO wrote: “International #patent applications grow by 7.3% to a record 233,000 in 2016: http://ow.ly/l87S309VSfu”
Francisco Moreno looked at the underlying figures and wrote (in Spanish, but obvious to non-Spanish speakers):
Solicitudes internacionales de patente (PCT) en 2016:
Totales 233.000 +7,3%
*de origen chino: 43168 +45%
*de origen español: 1503 -1,7%
WIPO does not show this breakdown to a wider audience. No word about the role played by China (+45%) just patenting everything under the Sun. Spain (-1.7%) is absent from the EPO’s map, for obvious reasons. Now, watch this new tweet from the EPO. Yesterday is said: “Philips remains no. 1 patent applicant at the EPO in 2016 – 2nd year in a row. http://buzz.mw/b1wxh_f”
“In today’s EPO, it’s garbage in, garbage out (applications, granted patents).”But Philips is the only European company at the top. 60% of the top 5 are east Asian, and only one is European. So much for “European” Patent Office… “90 per cent of patents in Australia are foreign owned,” someone pointed out to me last night, but Europe is not a population as small as Australia’s. There are similar numbers in India, where software patents are not permitted.
Whose interests are served? In today’s EPO, it’s garbage in, garbage out (applications, granted patents). The GIGO Office is what Battistelli is after.
“It doesn’t matter to them what it means to innovation, as long as there is a lot of litigation and money keeps flowing into the pockets of middlemen (including robber barons like Team Battistelli).”Last year, shortly after the so-called ‘results’, we spent some time explaining that patents from China aren’t quite what they seem. Many are just in Mandarin. It’s faked growth and the quality of this ‘growth’ is low.
Pro-litigation (or pro-trolls) sites like IAM are obviously infatuated with east Asia these days, as we noted here before. They see this is a growth (profit) opportunity, at least for those who make money — at professionals’ expense — by suing and settling. Baker McKenzie, a legal firm, has just written about Thailand and IAM relayed this placement/ad for a firm from Taiwan. It doesn’t matter to them what it means to innovation, as long as there is a lot of litigation and money keeps flowing into the pockets of middlemen (including robber barons like Team Battistelli). █
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