Bonum Certa Men Certa

At the European Inventor Award Ceremony Benoît Battistelli Lied to a Lot of Scientists and “Media Partners” About the UPC

“Media partners” = corruptible media that one pays for

Financial Times on UPC
This was published by the EPO's "media partner" just before the vote on Britain's membership in the EU



Summary: The Liar in Chief, Benoît Battistelli, still lives in a fantasy world or simply lies intentionally, which would be worse

SOFTWARE developers in the UK (I'm one of them) oppose the UPC, FFII might soon file a complaint to block it in Germany, and the FSFE protested against the EPO's granting of software patents less than a week ago. Also see "Challenging the ICT Patent Framework for Responsible Innovation". There is an ongoing survey about it this month.



The EPO isn't functioning and the UPC would not offer redemption; not only is this not happening but if magically enough it did happened, it would make things worse. European is already attracting a growing number of patent trolls (we gave some examples from the UK and Germany recently) and they are eager to use the UPC to cause even greater damage (see what the USPTO did to the American industry by assigning patents to trolls). Bristows even boasts about it and treats it like good news (it profits from that). In fact, responding to an older post from Bristows' Annsley Merelle Ward, someone wrote last night: "Added matter has long been a powerful attack at the EPO, who take things strictly. Therefore any patent attorney would naturally consider an added-matter attack. If there is a trend in added-matter attacks in national litigation, is this a result of more patent attorney involvement? e.g alternative business structures? or patent attorney litigators?"

It ought to be widely agreed by now that the UPC is desirable to almost nobody. Except the people who crafted the UPCA (agreement)... firms like Bristows, which keep lying about the UPC and censor comments that antagonise the UPC.

As one comment recently put it, "specialized patent-justice means extra patent-troubles. The court of eggs, will find eggs everywhere."

Dr. Thomas Hirse and Paetrick Sakowski from CMS Hasche Sigle have just published this article titled "More bad news for the European Unitary Patent: The Federal Constitutional Court pro-visionally stops transposition laws"

It's not bad news at all. It's wonderful news.

The UPC is an enemy of European businesses and people, but not the enemy of firms like CMS Hasche Sigle, which markets itself across Germany (Leipzig, Stuttgart, Hamburg, Berlin, Duesseldorf and Frankfurt) for UPC-related services.

"In addition to the uncertainty caused by Brexit," the authors admit, "exacerbated by the results of the 8 June 2017 General Election in the UK, this is another setback to the European Unitary Patent and the UPC. Just last week, on 7 June 2017, the Preparatory Committee for the UPC announced that the commencement date scheduled for December 2017 would be postponed once again; a new date has not yet been announced."

Because they don't know if it'll ever happen. At all!

Meanwhile, however, the puff piece partners of Battistelli (EURACTIV) compose this hilarious piece about the UPC. Jorge Valero published this article that several readers already told us about yesterday (shortly after it had been published).

It certainly seems like Team Battistelli has wasted a fortune (of EPO budget, i.e. stakeholders' money) trying to wash away/outnumber meaningful pieces about abuses/evilness. The mainstream press continues to ignore the real news and has instead been paid by the EPO to produce puff pieces about something called European Inventor Award (a misnomer). Valero's piece is one of those pieces. To quote from it:

EU patent court to remain in London despite Brexit… for now



[This is nonsense. It technically cannot happen, so Battistelli has officially lost his mind or is maliciously lying]

[...]

“It is indispensable for the EU economy, and mainly for small and medium-sized companies and scientific centres,” said Benoît Battistelli, president of the European Patent Office (EPO), a non-EU body selected to manage the EU patent.

He spoke to reporters invited to follow the European Inventor Award that took place in Venice on 15 June.

The court will represent “an important step in the EU construction because, for the first time, there will be litigations among citizens”, he added.


Benoît Battistelli is a terrible liar. He has just lied to many scientists in an event where nobody in the crowd can stand up and challenge/refute him. That's the kind of platform he feels comfortable with and "media partners" swallow all the lies and spew these out onto newspapers.

This year, for a change, we did not write much about European Inventor Award because we don't wish to give it visibility, other than point out that a lot of the publicity is paid for and possibly ghostwritten by the EPO's PR firms. We did leak some material related to that.

Recent Techrights' Posts

Microsoft XBox is Dying as More Retailers Stop Stocking It and Massive Layoffs Planned Again
Microsoft is circling down the drain
Linux and the Freedom Paradox
Linux is losing freedom if some external actors who only use Microsoft tools for development wrest control
Watch the FSF Party Live (via Livestream)
It's in WebM format, which is widely supported by now
Advocacy of Software Freedom Changed, LUGs Became Less Relevant
The way we see it, support groups like LUGs sort of outlived their usefulness when it became easier to install GNU/Linux
 
Links 05/10/2025: Slow News Day and Wondering About the Canada Post Walkout
Links for the day
Gemini Links 05/10/2025: Telnet Debugging and The Programmer’s Brain
Links for the day
More Than "Just a Rumour": XBox Seems to Have Just Died
At this point, why would any studio out there target or partner with XBox?
How to Tell Your Community, Project or Company is Being Infiltrated by Saboteurs
How to identify nefarious social engineering
The Fortieth Birthday of the FSF Made Us Extremely Happy
It feels like the 'hacker community' is regrouping to discuss things and prepare for the next Big Challenge
Chat Control 2 Them, Not 2 U
Follow the advice of Dr. Patrick Breyer
Mozilla: Throw Away Your "Old" PC and Enable "Digital Rights Management (DRM)"
This is heading in a bad direction
Controlling Our Computing for Another Forty Years
40 years of freedom
Motivational Small Place to Run Large Sites
We deem this scenery motivational and inspiring
Techrights' Text Version (Daily Bulletin) Turns Five This Month
our plain-text bulletins are turning 5 this month
We'll Continue Covering the Moribund OSI and Other Dysfunctional if Not Hostile Institutions
Stefano Maffulli's departure is due to his defection and due to him failing the mission in pursuit of money (his salary)
Links 05/10/2025: Lufthansa Layoffs (4,000) and More Spotify Woes (Aside From Massive Debt)
Links for the day
The Free Software Foundation's Livestream Has Ended, Video/s Might be Online Next
I've asked whether they'll upload video of some of the event; I still wait for an answer
The Register MS Does Not Know the Difference Between Microsoft GitHub and GitLab
At the time of writing (October 5) the article from "Thu 2 Oct 2025" remains uncorrected
"Bullshit Generators" (What RMS Calls LLMs) and Fake Images Already Target the FSF
Why does Google News promote fake articles about the FSF while omitting all the real ones?
Software Patents as a Bubble
Don't invest resources in hype; if you detect a bubble, run away from it
Links 05/10/2025: Political Leftovers, Climate Change, and Security Incidents
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Saturday, October 04, 2025
IRC logs for Saturday, October 04, 2025
For the Second Time in a Few Weeks Microsoft Lunduke Makes False Accusations Against Senior Red Hat Staff to Incite a Despicable 'Troll Army'
Nothing that Microsoft Lunduke claims or says can be trusted
When Microsoft "Integrates" Something With "AI" It Means It's Losing Money and Is Generally Hopeless
how did Bing fare after 36 months of LLM slop being hyped up as "replacement" for search?
Most Certificates Don't Improve Security, They Mostly Increase Downtime (for No Good Reason)
The 'Gemini sites' (capsules) are a growing force
The statCounter Site Has Data Integrity Problems
Maybe we'll get back to statCounter when its data becomes more "stable" again
10 Ways to Combat Software Patents
software patents are loathed also by proprietary software developers
"Just a Little Bit of Meat..."
Free software "absolutism" is not a radical stance, more so if the only "radical" belief the user possesses is that he or she must be in control of his or her software, and by extension his or her computer
Compromised by NVIDIA Proprietary Library
Meanwhile in Boston there are "[r]oundtable talk with FSF volunteers (both in-person and online)"
Red Hat is Ignoring the Free Software Community, It's a "Fortune 1000" Vendor
Red Hat's blog also participates a lot in promoting of Wall Street's latest pump-and-dump "AI" scheme
Free Software Foundation Party Has Begun
We shall be focusing a lot on software patents today
Former Head of the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) Lina Khan Knows Whatever Microsoft Touches Will Die
Just like Skype (as recently as months ago) [...] When Microsoft grabs things, or when it buys things, it almost never ends well
Slopwatch: Fake Articles About LibreOffice in Austria and Wine 10.16
very short
Links 04/10/2025: "attempted Coup" Noted in Facebook, Russia Kills Journalists via Drones
Links for the day
Gemini Links 04/10/2025: Anesthesia and Baudpunk
Links for the day
How Software Patents Were Viewed or Their General Status Changed Over Time
A rough summary
Links 04/10/2025: "Privacy Harm Is Harm", Criticism Outlawed in US
Links for the day
Garmin Uses Linux for Some of the Garmin Products, Now It's Sued by Strava Using Software Patents
Software patents should never have been granted in the first place
Richard Stallman Will Give a Talk in Sweden in 6 Days
Dr. Stallman, despite his battle with cancer is still alive and mentally sharp
FSF Turns 40
We'll be focusing on patent-related topics this weekend
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Friday, October 03, 2025
IRC logs for Friday, October 03, 2025
Gemini Links 04/10/2025: Distro Hopping and "Part Time"
Links for the day
We Are Turning 19 in One Month, FSF Turns 40 in 3 Hours (CET)
For our anniversary next month we still have no concrete plans
Patent Docs (or PatentDocs) Learned the Wrong Lessons From the Death of TypePad
Had they gone ahead with an SSG, they'd become a lot more future-proof
USPTO Patent Bubble Already Imploding, After Decades of Artificial Inflation, Entire Offices Close for Good
we can deduce that financial pressures (lack of "demand" for monopolies) play a role
TikTok is Not Harmless (Being CheeTok in the US Will Advance Orange Agenda)
Social control media isn't "fun and games"; it's a digital weapon that lets hostile groups or nations infiltrate others, then turn them against themselves
Andy Farnell and Helen Plews Explain What "Modern" Tech Does to Old People
Imposing terrible tech "religion" on people is not helping them
Tomorrow the Free Software Foundation (FSF) Turns 40 and Its Web Site is Still Slow Due to DDoS by LLM Slop Bots
For an advocacy group, uptime is important (for its message to remain accessible)
Slopwatch: Google News as a Firehose of LLM Slop About "Linux"
Google News is really bad
Datamation, Where I Used to Publish Articles, Appears to Have Been Sold to TechnologyAdvice Only to Become a Slopfarm
I'd prefer to not associate with that site anymore
Links 03/10/2025: "NPR’s Economics Lessons Come With Neoliberal Spin" and Canada Post at Risk
Links for the day
Gemini Links 03/10/2025: Panic Attacks and Food Adulteration
Links for the day
Links 03/10/2025: Lawyers Caught Using LLM Slop Explain Why They Did It, LibreSSL 4.1.1 and 4.0.1 Released
Links for the day
FSF Board Grew 50% Since Last Year, Has New President, Turns 40 in Two Days
It's a good move for the FSF and - by extension - for software freedom
Links 03/10/2025: Conflicts, Death of TypePad, and TikTok/CheeTok Gives a Boost to Far Right Groups in Europe
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Thursday, October 02, 2025
IRC logs for Thursday, October 02, 2025
Slopwatch: Linux Journal, Google News, and LinuxSecurity
They carry on polluting the Web with fake articles
Gemini Links 02/10/2025: Kubernetes With FreeBSD and robots.txt
Links for the day