12.12.17

Battistelli-Campinos Transition Will Be a Smooth One as the Administrative Council Remains the Same and the Boards Still Besieged

Posted in Europe, Patents at 6:36 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

The loyal 'chinchilla' changed nationality from Danish to German and the President remains French. Maybe Campinos can inherit that infamous pair of ‘presidential’ bicycles to ride in his massive pub. If he gets drunk and crashes, he can always bring up “immunity!” [1, 2]

Summary: A rather pessimistic (albeit likely realistic) expectation from tomorrow’s meeting of the Administrative Council, which continues to show that no lessons were learned and no strategy will be altered to avoid doom (low-quality patents and stocks running out)

TOMORROW will be an interesting day at the EPO — perhaps the culmination of many scandals and Battistelli getting reprimanded (if that’s not far too optimistic). Nobody expects Battistelli to get fired and perhaps he feels safe knowing that his imminent departure makes him immune to anything — even within the Council. Earlier today it was the Campinos-led EU-IPO helping the EPO distract from scandals. EU-IPO said that the EPO’s “new #patent study confirms growth in Fourth Industrial Revolution technologies…”

We are still trying to determine what’s going on with the media because based on a comment we received a few hours ago, Battistelli had time to prepare his ‘damage control’. He knew the outcome in advance or at least intended to disregard the ruling from ILO. This is disturbing (if true).

Something just isn’t right. With the media that is…

“The Boards of Appeal scandals only serve to reinforce and vindicate the complainant for it clearly demonstrates utter dysfunction, including but not limited to deficient separation of powers.”Why isn’t Dutch and German media making a big deal out of it? It is a very big deal, yet hardly a bleep on the radar for some. Notice how IP Kat, for instance, has said nothing — not even a word — about it, having meticulously followed this whole affair for over 2 years.

What has IP Kat turned into? I say this as a former fan. A lot of the patent posts at IP Kat come from Bristows, complete with the pro-software patents, pro-trolls, pro-UPC, FRAND, SEP agenda. Bristows does something similar in Kluwer Patent blog and we suspect this is the latest (today’s article about Tilmann — a subject that we covered earlier than that). This is probably Bristows writing anonymously again, having received some truly harsh comments for its recent spin in that blog. Today it wrote in its sad and lonely blog about France and the UK, but what the staff won’t admit is that it makes no real difference. The cards are now on Brexit and the ball is in Germany’s court (literal court, not just a sports metaphor). Tilmann, Bristows and others (we collectively refer to them all as “Team UPC” — a term they recently chose to adopt) try hard to influence the outcome, which may in fact be years away. The Boards of Appeal scandals only serve to reinforce and vindicate the complainant for it clearly demonstrates utter dysfunction, including but not limited to deficient separation of powers.

Earlier today someone wrote this comment about the Administrative Council (AC), which will be meeting within half a day (in view of protesters, namely EPO staff). To quote:

AC putting its house in order, and growing a set of morals and a backbone? No chance, Simon.

I see the supine and amoral AC as ruined beyond repair. The little countries have found out how much voting power they can exert, against the complacent Big Country Bullies. From now on, it is they that will continue to extract from their beloved Cash Cow, its Golden Goose, what they want, namely fat dividends. It’s called “Shareholder Value” and it destroys even the best companies, particularly the best companies.

What the AC did (or didn’t do) will be a textbook example. It’s case of complicity by inaction or blind compliance with a person they were entrusted to regulate. The tail was wagging the dog for longer than half a decade and bribes were perfumed as “projects” or “cooperation” or “agreements” and so on. It’s just grotesque.

“The tail was wagging the dog for longer than half a decade and bribes were perfumed as “projects” or “cooperation” or “agreements” and so on. It’s just grotesque.”It’s hard to see if/how the Boards will ever recover now that they’re in Haar and in a state of limbo. Earlier today Mark Schweizer wrote about the Technical Board of Appeal and the Enlarged Board of Appeal, alluding to another case which in our humble assessment demonstrates need for more staff (so-called ‘human resources’ — a task assigned to Battistelli’s friends’s wife at the Office). The Boards are so grossly understaffed that one starts to wonder if they have a future at all; Battistelli keeps them besieged while lobbying for the UPC. To quote parts of Schweizer’s post:

Svarovski-Optik’s patent EP 1 746 451 had been upheld with limited claims by the Opposition Division. Upon appeal, the Technical Board of Appeal 3.4.02 revoked the grant of the patent. Svaroski-Optik filed a petition for review by the Enlarged Board of Appeal under Article 112a(2)(c) EPC (fundamental violation of Article 113(1) [right to be heard).

[...]

Neither party had advanced such a claim construction or formulation of the objective problem during the entire proceedings. Since this construction was first advanced by the BoA in the written grounds for the decision, Svaroski-Optik could not have objected to it during the appeal proceedings, and the objection was raised in a timely manner in the petition for review (Rule 106, last part of sentence).

By adopting a surprising claim construction only in the written grounds, without giving the parties the opportunity to comment on it, the Board of Appeal had violated Svaroski-Optik’s right to be heard. While it had been discussed whether a limitation of the zoom level of the telescope IOR-01 could lead to the above discussed feature without inventive step, the discussion did not occur in the context of claim construction and did not change the fact that the newly adopted claim construction was surprising.

In a properly-functioning Organisation the Council would announce the hiring of dozens of people for the Boards, not a handful of interns. But alas, the Council seems all too complicit with Battistelli, so we urge readers to remember who will ‘govern’ Campinos when he arrives. It’s the very same people, including (according to court documents) a Head of Delegation who sleeps/slept with the Vice-President. █

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