08.25.17
At EPO, “Producing Stronger Patents (or Being Able to Produce Them) is Also a Matter of Professional Pride for the Examiners”
If the EPO produced an academic journal, nobody would subscribe to read it
“Peer Review for Journals: Evidence on Quality Control, Fairness, and Innovation,” J. Scott Armstrong, The Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania
Summary: Producing European Patents (EPs) that are solid and have merit is still a priority for examiners at the European Patent Office (EPO), but not for the management
THE ACCELERATION of granting, to be followed by accelerated litigation, is a horrible legacy of Battistelli. PPH, Early Certainty, PACE, UPC etc. are designed to tilt the system in favour of bullies and patent trolls, not actual inventors. It is basically a rather gross distortion of what the patent system (not only in Europe) was intended to do and supposed to accomplish. Patent examiners are clever enough to understand this, whereas Battistelli and his unqualified team understand nothing but power and leverage (and gratuitous bonuses for themselves).
“The worryingly low quality of patents (EPs) granted over the past few years threatens to engulf Europe with litigation; UPC would give such litigation even more ‘teeth’.”The UPC is quite likely dead, but the EPO‘s management tries to float it in headlines like these ones from the past 24 hours [1, 2].
“Germany and the UK still need to ratify the Unified Patent Court Agreement before the unitary patent system can come into force,” one article says. “Once a European patent has been granted, a separate, simple post-grant procedure can be initiated at the EPO with a view to obtaining a Unitary Patent,” says the other. But there is no UPC yet and there may never be UPC at all. Nor should be…
The worryingly low quality of patents (EPs) granted over the past few years threatens to engulf Europe with litigation; UPC would give such litigation even more ‘teeth’. Who would suffer the most? Vulnerable people/companies like SMEs. They cannot even afford going to court for patent justice.
We expect the UPC nonsense to resume (a lot of misinformation about it) next week when more people return from holiday. They’ll probably just pretend that the UPC is around the corner to benefit SMEs when in fact neither is true.
Yesterday we spotted this discussion in IP Kat‘s last post about EPO scandals. It’s about patent quality:
If Ford can make cars with acceptable quality for the driver, and safety for the public, does everyone need to pay the price for a gold-plated Rolls-Royce, and experience the delay while it is hand made?
Admittedly, you might not want a Trabbi from the USPTO, but shouldn’t there be a happy medium?
Days later came this response:
fair point indeed. Only in the past 30 years the Ford production did not decrease quality but instead tremendously increased it.
At the EPO the contrary occured. Come on face it, accept it and let us not whine about it but redress it. Nothing more nothing less.
Producing stronger patents (or being able to produce them) is also a matter of professional pride for the examiners, thus allowed to do their work as they should and not to cut corners.
Not sure you would currently like to step in in a Ford built by EPO staff given the way they are forced to work
The analogy can go further to say that Battistelli has turned the EPO from something sort of scholarly into a mere production line where truth matters not, only so-called ‘production’. No wonder examiners are not tolerating it. █
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