03.30.17
Gemini version available ♊︎EPO is a Laughing Stock in International Media This Week (Quality of Patents) After Decades-Long Reputation Building
How thoroughly devalued are EPs (older ones too) in the Battistelli era of incredible lies, foul play, corrupted media, unprecedented tyranny and deadly mischief?
Summary: The reputation of European Patents (EPs) is quickly going down the drain, as Battistelli defies the law and the very fundamental principles of patenting
THE EPO, both the Office and the Organisation, may be compromised beyond repair. As we explained yesterday, the Battistelli coup has strong-armed the Council through Kongstad, his protector if not mole (or chinchilla). It’s now an unsupervised and unaccountable body, disconnected from the rule of law of any nation (while willfully disregarding also international safeguards like ILO).
One comment said yesterday that Battistelli may attempt to stay forever at the throne, extracting more money from the Organisation (or what’s left of it by then). “Trust Battistelli,” the comment said, “to use all tricks (do not forget he seats on a yearly budget of 2 billions Euros with zero decent financial control…) to have the selection of a successor postponed until the end of times since he has NOTHING waiting for him in France where he is persona non grata
“He violated the EPC as he see pleased and the Admin Council delegations let him do this so those who expect him to go on 30th June 2018 dream with open eyes.”
“To paraphrase the immortal words of playwright Sebastian Barry,” continues another comment, “He will live forever … like a f***ing vampire!”
Battistelli is already embarrassing Europe and fracturing the EU (see comments at The Register for instance). Europe as a whole is being ridiculed over behaviour of EPO management, or European politicians’ reluctance to intervene. At the same time, articles such as these [1, 2] continue to be published, making Europe seem like the laughing stock of patent offices (more like 'SIPO Europe'). The BoA will look into it sooner or later (it seems inevitable), but it no longer enjoys any form of independence from the "vampire" (to use the above from Sebastian Barry).
There are several more press releases and financial news about firms associated with CRISPR; it’s truly nauseating. What has the EPO sunk to? A lot of people don’t know what CRISPR is about (the acronyms are a lot more confusing than helpful), but it’s clearly what the Office must object to, for legal reasons as well as economic/practical reasons. Does the EPC turn into toilet paper in Battistelli's private deluxe shower room? Does the EPC matter at all anymore, now that the Office openly advocates software patents in Europe, as demonstrated twice in the past week alone [1, 2]?
Another thread, this one about BoA, speaks about the EPC as follows:
Essentially the question boils down to whether the EPC, in particular Article 72 thereof should be applied to assignments of the right to (refer to the) priority. Here we have currently two standards to consider.
1) The standard of T62/05, the restrictive standard requiring bilaterally executed assignments to demonstrate legal succession, applying Article 72 EPC by analogy to transfers of (national) prior rights, i.e. the problematic one.
2) A more reasonable standard set by decisions T160/13, T517/14 and T205/14. Both T517/14 and T205/14 determine the relevant law that governs the requirements for a valid transfer of the right of priority (to be the relevant national law; Reasons point 2.7 of T517/14, point 3.6 of T205/14) and explicitly dismiss the approach of T62/05 to apply the formal requirements set through Article 72 EPC.
The recent edition of the Case Law of the Boards of Appeal of the EPO (8th Ed. July 2016) also rather promotes the more reasonable approach of the later decisions to consider a transfer valid if it was in line with the national law of the parties concerned.
For EP filings, I recommend to have the inventors and the (later) assignee as joint applicants on the second filing (EP) and to record a change to the assignee as only applicant later on. If all parties are comfortable with this course of action, it saves a lot of possible trouble (identity of the parties, change of assignee’s name, completeness of signatures on the assignment documents, etc.).
Forget about the EPC. Battistelli doesn’t give a damn about the EPC and there’s nobody to enforce the EPC anymore.
We don’t think that the EPC matters any longer. Not as long as the “vampire” stays. He’s so eager to make the UPC a reality that everything including human rights, the rule of law and so on goes down the toilet of the 10th floor. Has Battistelli gotten/secured himself a private lift and a limousine yet? If not, why not? If a bicycle tale is enough to ‘sell’ millions of Euros in bills for personal bodyguards, another elevator is just slush funds. Maybe some tale about someone farting in the elevator would do. What a laughing stock the EPO has become. I used to actually be proud of the EPO. █
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