Bonum Certa Men Certa

The UPC Lobby Wants to Crush the Boards of Appeal (BoA) While EPO Changes Rules of Procedure of the BoA

Related: Crazed Battistelli is Trying Plan B to Demolish the Boards of Appeal (Quality Control), Praesidium/Association of Members Strikes Back

Battistellius



Summary: The Unified Patent Court (UPC) push has slowed down if not ground to a halt, but attacks on the Boards of Appeal (BoA), which UPC lobbyists are hoping to replace, appear to carry on under the guise of "consultation" (a concept that Battistelli never seems to have grasped)

THE UPC lobby has been relatively quiet, knowing that Germany put the whole thing on the ice if not in the bin. It may take several years for Team UPC to even know the outcome.



A US-based front group, Center for the Protection of Intellectual Property (CPIP) (not to be mistaken for Center for Intellectual Property Understanding (CIPU)), was mentioned here a couple of years back (amongst other times). It's USPTO-centric and it's now pushing for the UPC, so it's simpler to know it's not a good thing for Europe. It said: "This new paper from our Patent Valuation Symposium by Roya Ghafele et al. is already having an impact in Europe: Using Patent Valuation Methods to Assess Damages in Patent Infringement Cases Under the Unified Patent Court..."

We attempted to find out who sponsored the work, knowing that the EPO already corrupts academia for so-called 'studies' which are really UPC advocacy. The EPO corrupted academia both in the US and in the UK for this. The author, Ghafele, is based in Oxford and works for a private consultancy. From the abstract:

We illustrate how publicly sanctioned IP valuation guidelines prevailing in Europe can be applied to assess damages as foreseen under the provisions of the UPC Agreement. With the help of a hypothetical example, we then evaluate if and to what extent the various ways proposed by European institutions to value IP fit with the provisions of the UPCA. We find that in situations where courts have all the necessary information required to determine damages, the IP valuation methods are a very useful tool in determining damages. It can however be expensive to obtain the necessary data to adequately determine damages.


The author has history with the EPO. From his LinkedIn account:

A changing climate: the IP landscape of clean energy technologies

Oxford Journal of Intellectual Property Law and Practice

2012

This article is a review of a report titled 'Patents and Clean Energy Technologies: Bridging the Gap between Evidence and Policy', published in 2010 by the European Patent Office and the International Centre for Trade and Sustainable Development.


Maybe the apple does not fall far from the tree after all...

Either way, UPC lobbying can be seen elsewhere. "Both the UPC’s Court of Appeal and Registry will be in Luxembourg," Bristows' Brian Cordery wrote a couple of days ago. No, there's no "will" (at best "would") because there's no UPC, but Team UPC does not care about facts and truths. A "unitary" patent system would mean more lawsuits, hence more money for such litigators. They just keep pushing fake predictions to mislead clients and politicians, hoping that they would ratify things hastily, in a great rush, even recklessly.

"They just try to give the public or the "users" the mere impression that they get to decide."What about the EPO itself? Well, yesterday (for the second time in a week) it said: "Our online consultation on the proposed revised Rules of Procedure of the Boards of Appeal will close on 30 April. To take part go to http://bit.ly/2nDHz6V" (that's the direct link, but be aware that it's an epo.org link).

"What makes Battistelli so dangerous is that he very routinely breaks the law and always gets away with it."They just try to give the public or the "users" the mere impression that they get to decide. On Boards of Appeal, however -- like anything else at the EPO -- management doesn't care what anyone but Battistelli thinks. If Battistelli ever saw the UPC (he would never see it, not from within the EPO anyway), there would be no Boards of Appeal left at all. He tries to make them completely obsolete while maintaining not an impression of independence but an perception that he gives a damn about the EPC. What makes Battistelli so dangerous is that he very routinely breaks the law and always gets away with it.

Recent Techrights' Posts

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
 
How Software Patents Were Viewed or Their General Status Changed Over Time
A rough summary
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
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
Links 02/10/2025: 'Open' 'AI' Resorting to Gimmicks and Fake Funding, Europe’s ‘Drone Wall’ Discussed
Links for the day
Links 02/10/2025: Brave Passes 100M Users Milestone, Kodak Selling Its Own Film Again
Links for the day
Michael “Monty” Widenius: It Started in 1983 With Richard Stallman (RMS)
The other co-founder of MySQL is a bit notorious for confronting RMS rather viciously
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 of says can be trusted
su lisa && rm -rf /home/ibm/power
Novell was ruined by another person from IBM, Ronald Hovsepian
A Record Demand at Microsoft: Demand to Cancel
What we're witnessing is a very ungraceful destruction of XBox
Microsoft is Losing Europe
Hence all the "support" and "discount" offers that are limited to Europe
The Free Software Foundation Starts Fund-raising for 40th Anniversary
New pop-up 2-3 days ahead of the 40th anniversary event
Systemd Breaks Networking in Debian and Microsoft Staff Rushes to Make Face-Saving Excuses in LWN
Microsoft's bluca is already there in the comments, his Microsoft money pays for LWN to let him leave comments early
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Wednesday, October 01, 2025
IRC logs for Wednesday, October 01, 2025
What the End of XBox Will Look Like: a Fiery Crash
XBox is the next Skype. It won't last much longer. Expect many more layoffs.
Richard Stallman is Going to Finland to Give a Talk Next Thursday
A day later he speaks in Sweden
Gemini Links 02/10/2025: SMTP Pipelining and End of ROOPHLOCH 2025
Links for the day
Slopwatch: Plagiarism, Fake Articles, and FUD About Linux
not a day goes by without Google News feeding FUD from slopfarms
Gemini Links 01/10/2025: Chat Control and End of Life
Links for the day
Links 01/10/2025: Long Covid Risk Reiterated, "Bitcoin Queen" Caught
Links for the day
Links 01/10/2025: EA $55 Billion Deal is Debt and Slop "Raises Vishing Risks"
Links for the day
Bluewashing at Red Hat Means Redundancies
The man who sold Red Hat to IBM meanwhile became a Microsoft Mono booster
After Killing OpenSource.com, IBM ('Red Hat') and OSI Told Us OpenSource.net Would Replace It (But That Didn't Happen)
Now it's time to move on, perhaps tarnishing the "Open Source" label some more (for whatever sponsor wants this)
Linux is Not a Community Project, It's a Wall Street Product
The core goal should be freedom
Bad Actors Abusing the Free Software Community, Vandalising It Using Rogue Politics and Old Tactics
Oil giants have long attempted to do this; now, the digital equivalent of Big Oil does this in technology
Social Control Media Isn't the Future, The Federation or Fediverse Isn't Growing, People's Accounts Vanish for Good
users' accounts will get deleted, not just become inactive
IBM is Failing, This Helps Show Wall Street is Entirely Detached From Actual Commercial Performance
IBM is unable to grow, it's just constantly shrinking
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Tuesday, September 30, 2025
IRC logs for Tuesday, September 30, 2025
Clerical Aspects of Publishing and Development
In Free software, the management aspects are considerably reduced
Slopwatch: Fake Articles and Google News Promoting "Linux" Spam or Bot-Generated Fear, Uncertainty, Doubt (FUD)
These slopfarms help misplace blame
Third Wave of Microsoft Layoffs in September, This Time Many in Liverpool Affected
Be ready for more waves of layoffs ahead of the so-called "results" in late October