04.01.17
Gemini version available ♊︎Bristows UPC Delusions Are Back, Attempting to Distract From Bad News (UPC Isn’t Happening)
Summary: Tackling some of the blogs, owned and run by Team UPC, which attempt to tell us that everything is under control even though the UK strictly cannot participate in the UPC as a non-EU country (which it’s en route to becoming)
BATTISTELLI and his EPO cronies must be pleased. They need not lie when others do the lying for them. UPC 'lobbyist' Annsley Merelle Ward, citing MIP (the supposed 'reports' we've just tackled) and the UPC Preparatory Committee (which is the likes of Bristows, basically a bunch of moles who try to make their own project go down the throats of misguided politicians), is lobbying again in IP Kat. The headline is not even true, just more wishful thinking for the echo chamber.
It says this: “The update from the UK IPO also confirmed that the UPC Preparatory Committee’s HR team is ready to proceed with the judicial recruitment process following the commencement of the provisional application period. This update came during Wednesday’s Preparatory Committee’s Interim Team meeting held at the UPC Court of Appeal building in Luxembourg. The Interim Team consists of 5 sub-groups in charge of finalizing practical arrangements for the UPC.”
“Executive cannot become legislator. One or more does not change anything.”
–Benjamin HenrionA lot of readers probably don’t even know what the “UPC Preparatory Committee” actually is. They don’t know who’s in it. It’s not what it sounds like. It’s like those think tanks that call themselves the very opposite of what they stand for.
We are not surprised that Bristows, which refuses to honour democracy, has yet again ‘borrowed’ IP Kat (blog to be ‘loaned’) for some UPC lobbying and “damage control”. Seeing the lack of interaction (and probably traffic) in Bristows’ own site, they could really use some extra audience. Here is Bristows’ misdirection to Latvia, where Battistelli's secret visit raises all sorts of serious questions. We suppose that Bristows has had nothing positive to say about the UK, so it attempted distract from it, later writing about Belgium as well (non-news).
Someone called Josep Maria Pujals (from Spain) responded to the above and said: “Everyone doing its home work but no news from UK, deadline for PPA next 29 May..”
“Right now there is nobody in the UK who can wholeheartedly ratify the UPC, more so after Brexit (Article 50 invocation makes it almost irreversible).”Yes, they know they have run out of time. They promised the UPC by March 7th and the end of March. But that never happened. Another false prediction or deliberately bad advice (or lobbying) from the people who advertised job openings that never existed and probably will never exist. Isn’t that some kind of offense?
“Executive cannot become legislator,” Benjamin Henrion pointed out the other day. “One or more does not change anything.”
Right now there is nobody in the UK who can wholeheartedly ratify the UPC, more so after Brexit (Article 50 invocation makes it almost irreversible).
Dr. Luke McDonagh, a London-based academic who understands Brexit pretty well, says: “I think Joris’ point is that the EU holds most of the chips. Even if the UK holds a UPC card, it is still a comparatively weak one…”
“Britain will carry on with the usual system and so will Spain.”Bargaining chips or card analogies aside, British companies do not want the UPC. They would rather keep the the UPC out of the UK and consider that a favour.
“Sorry to put an UPC angle on this,” wrote a patent attorney from Germany, “but doesn’t this mean that the UPC is a bargaining chip for the EU?”
Not even companies in continental Europe want the UPC. Law firms try to fool some of them into thinking that the UPC is desirable, but it’s the “the other way around,” as Henrion noted. The UPC is a negative, not a positive, and moreover Brexit is in conflict with it. A nation must be an EU member to participate in the UPC. Josep Maria Pujals seems to be very well aware of this (as a Spanish lawyer) and since Spain is not ratifying either, this thing is going nowhere. Remember the lies/distortions that have been spread about Spain in an effort to compel the UK to ratify in March? Well, that evidently didn’t work and there is now an “[e]ntry into force of the new Spanish patent law” without the UPC, as explained in this new post. To quote:
The Council of Ministers approved today the Regulation for the implementation of the Patent Law (Law 24/2015) by means of a Royal Decree. The new patent law and regulation will enter into force on April 1, 2017.
Britain will carry on with the usual system and so will Spain. What all those other nations choose to do with their UPC (which has London and English embedded in it), let’s just hope that they get rid of this big pile of papers in an environmentally-friendly fashion. The UPC belongs in the compost pile. We expect the nefarious rumours and dirty tricks of Team UPC to carry on for a few more months before some of them simply give up and realise that their investment in UPC was money down the drain and reputation in the bin. █
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