04.22.17
Yann Ménière Resorts to Buzzwords to Recklessly Promote Floods of Patents, Dooming the EPO Amid Decline in Patent Applications
Photo credit: Last year’s talk on “Patent Hold-Up”
Summary: Battistelli’s French Chief Economist is not much of an economist but a patent maximalist toeing the party line of Monsieur Battistelli (lots of easy grants and litigation galore, for UPC hopefuls)
WE recently published quite a few articles about software patents that piggyback buzzwords like “cloud” and “AI” (or phrases like “in a car”, “on a device”, “from a phone”, “over the Internet” and so on). Another such buzzword is “IoT”, which simply means some embedded device with a IPv4/6 module built onto it. It’s nothing innovative or even new. The buzzword itself is relatively new, not the underlying technology.
“It’s rather embarrassing to watch. The EPO has been reduced to quite a circus!”The EPO seems to have hired some truly incompetent managers recently. Many of them are French and quite a few are friends of Battistelli. The degree of nepotism at the EPO is nothing to sneeze at and last year we saw Yann Ménière joining the team, replacing those who had warned about low patent quality. He was last mentioned earlier this year in relation to his rather bizarre talk wherein has been reduced to Battistelli’s shadow, just like Margot the UPC propagandist of Battistelli. It’s rather embarrassing to watch. The EPO has been reduced to quite a circus! See this new puff piece which conflates patents with invention (titled “Young Italians becoming great inventors again”); it’s nothing more than EPO parroting, distracting from the fact that EP applications are actually down, not up (the EPO tried hard to hide it if not lie about it).
“A lot of software components are typically at the core of these things and it was recently reported by IP Watch that the EPO figureheads openly promote and defend patents on those (i.e. software patents, in defiance of directives, the EPC, and common sense).”But anyway, about Ménière, IP Watch‘s Dugie Standeford, writing behind a paywall, said this: “The European Patent Office has a “tradition of looking forwards” to anticipate patenting trends, and it sees the Internet of Things (IoT) as the next challenge, Chief Economist Yann Ménière said at 20 April OxFirst webinar on the office’s contribution to the coming world of billions of connected objects.”
A lot of software components are typically at the core of these things and it was recently reported by IP Watch that the EPO figureheads openly promote and defend patents on those (i.e. software patents, in defiance of clear directives, the EPC, and common sense). In other words, it certainly sounds like Battistelli got himself a patent maximalist in the role of “Chief Economist”, spouting out things about technology which he neither practiced nor understands. That has truly become the hallmark of Battistelli appointments. They send the Office crashing and burning and it is painful to watch, especially for insiders whose job is on the line and may soon become redundant because not enough applications are coming in. It’s simple, just do the maths. The stock is running out. Battistelli ordering the issuing en masse of EPs does a lot of harm not just to existing stakeholders but also past applicants, whose patents will inevitably lose value/worth. What kind of economist would be incapable of grasping it? If the EPO was a for-profit business, it would be heading towards bankruptcy right now and even pensions would not be assured (there are rumours, based on another French hire, that these too are going to be cut soon). █
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