02.23.18
The Unified Patent Court (UPC) is Dead, But Spin From Team UPC is Now Abundant
Bristows seems to be promoting the EPO’s management again (even at IP Kat, which makes one wonder who controls this blog after the silence on EPO scandals)
Team UPC is as bad as Big Tobacco lobbyists
Summary: As we predicted, Team UPC is now denying the very facts about a German court agreeing to hear a major UPC complaint, exploiting blogs with a larger audience to spread falsehoods
THE UPC has been a zombie for quite a while and a few days ago it was the final nail on its coffin. EPO management has said not even a single word about it; silence in this case is deafening. As for Team UPC? That’s another story…
“UP & UPC Conference”, a relatively obscure account with almost no followers, carries on as though nothing happened. The UPC is effectively dead, but people/accounts whose whole/sole purpose is UPC promotion do not let facts get in the way. “Liz Coleman, Divisional Director of @The_IPO,” [UK-IPO] it says, “will speak at the upcoming UP&UPC conference on 3 July, @EPOorg in Munich.”
That’s 3 days after Campinos takes over and by that stage, more or less for sure, it will have been too late for the UK (of UK-IPO) to do anything about UP&UPC. Brexit timeline suggests so. So what is even the point of this event? They might as well just call it off to save people the trouble.
We are rather worried to see what goes on at IP Kat, which until recently had among its writers a Battistelli friend from CIPA. Bristows wrote no less than 4 articles in IP Kat yesterday (that’s just one day). Makes one wonder who controls the blog nowadays… the most prolific writer is from Bristows, which lies a lot for the UPC. Bristows is like a leech that uses other people’s blogs (Kluwer Patent Blog and IP Kat for the most part) to disseminate its lies because almost nobody reads Bristows’ own blog. It’s almost defunct. Yesterday, like 3 days ago, Bristows published a “test” page (long UPC ramble/marketing) and forgot to remove it. Why does that keep happening?
Anyway, going back to IP Kat, yesterday it published an EPO ad and it was posted by Bristows’ Annsley Merelle Ward; pure job advert. Also on Friday there was this EPO tweet which said: “More information on how to comment on proposed changes to our appeal boards’ rules of procedure here…”
They are trying to prop up the illusion of caring about the Boards of Appeal, knowing that the constitutional complaint against the UPC has a lot to do with it. It’s worth noting that Bristows’ ad for the EPO is followed by provocative comments (trying to accuse people who work for the EPO of greed). There’s a correction to that and another person points out: “Something of a misrepresentation to label the job “permanent”, I would have thought, since the period is only for five years.”
And Battistelli can just fire the person using false accusations. So much for job security…
“The ‘non-compete’ clause is unfair,” the next comment added. “Restricting people so they can only work for a non-competing European Patent Organisation is unduly limiting!”
And it’s only getting worse, as we noted in our previous post.
What has happened to IP Kat?
Mind the infiltration of Bristows spin in IP Kat comments:
I’m sure The Register will be publishing a correction shortly.
The Register: “The German Constitutional Court has agreed to hear a case about the legitimacy of the European Unified Patent Court (UPC)”
Kluwer Patent Blog: “According to a spokesman of the FCC [Federal Constitutional Court], cases on the list haven’t necessarily been admitted for decision.”
This is denial of facts by Bristows. We wrote about this before the weekend. Also see Bristows’ nonsense being mentioned in IP Kat‘s latest “Around the IP Blogs!”
To quote:
Kluwer Patent Blog reports that the final piece of legislation in the process of ratification of the UPCA in the UK (i.e. The Unified Patent Court (Immunities and Privileges) Order) by the Privy Council) has been formally passed, and it is available here. As a next step, the UK Intellectual Property Office will need to collect together the relevant evidence that all legislative steps have been taken to enable ratification, and provide this to the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, which will then check the evidence, prepare the formal instrument, have it signed by the Minister (Boris Johnson MP) and finally lodge it in Brussels. If given priority, this process would normally take a few weeks.
When they say “Kluwer Patent Blog reports” they should really say “Bristows claims” (anonymously because it knows it’s lying).
Kluwer Patent Blog and IP Kat have essentially become sewers where facts come to die. This is troubling.
Meanwhile, according to this account whose whole purpose is UPC promotion, we can simply ignore what happened a few days ago. Why? Statistics. Bristows kept using statistics to say that the complaint would be considered inadmissible and it was wrong. Now they use the same spin: “Since average pendency of constitutional complaints w BVerfG has been mentioned, this is the stats spanning 2008-16: 64% terminated in 1 yr, 22,6% in 2 yrs, 5,7% in 3 yrs. Importantly, this includes the huge number (among the 6000 filed annually)”
“UPC and EPC problems [are] complicated enough and still ongoing,” I told him, “it’s not like you can treat all cases as equal.”
The lengths to which these people will go are incredible. They live in a fantasy land and no matter how many times they’re wrong, they’ll just carry on lying.
There’s press coverage regarding the latest news, some of which in English (British media). Here’s WIPR with “German court agrees to hear UPC complaint” — an article that says this:
The German Constitutional Court (Bundesverfassungsgericht, BVerfG) has agreed to hear a constitutional complaint disputing the legitimacy of the Unified Patent Court (UPC).
In June last year, the court announced it was delaying Germany’s ratification of the UPC Agreement because of the complaint, which was believed to have been filed by Düsseldorf-based attorney Ingve Stjerna.
Stjerna questioned the democratic accountability of the regulatory powers overseeing the UPC’s operation and the independence of the judiciary. He also argued that the UPC breaches existing EU law.
The complaint prompted the BVerfG to ask Germany’s Office of the President not to sign the law on ratification while the case was being dealt with, a request which the presidential office has agreed to.
Fair enough.
And back we go to Team UPC (“UPCtracker”) which says: “German constitutional complaint, further background/stats: the two Senates of the German Constitutional Courts had no more than 7 oral hearings in 2017.
So what? Does that mean to say that nothing will happen?
A British site for lawyers went with the headline “Unified Patent Court project at risk, warns Munich lawyer” just before the weekend.
Understatement. The UPC is dead, but this Munich lawyer refuses to admit this. Must be shellshocked. To quote:
Peter Koch of Pinsent Masons, the law firm behind Out-Law.com, said that despite some positive news on the UK’s ratification process in recent times, an ongoing legal challenge in Germany is threatening to derail the whole project – even if the challenge is unsuccessful.
Germany’s Constitutional Court is to consider whether legislation approved by Germany’s parliament to ratify the UPC Agreement is constitutional after a complaint was filed last year.
Here’s a response to it from former ‘Kat’ David Pearce: “As I keep saying, the #UPC is dead. The UK would be idiotic to ratify before Germany decides on constitutionality. Best to keep it as a (rather small) negotiating card for now, but chances are it will not get a chance to be played.”
Even Team UPC took note of the above article, quoting: “Koch said that it is likely that, even if the legal challenge fails, Germany’s ratification of the UPC Agreement might not come prior to the UK leaving the EU. This would have implications for the whole project, he said.“
We expect the likes of Bristows to carry on lying for weeks if not months. Letting them lie unchallenged is not an option because they attempt to influence the outcome with these lies. They already increase censorship of comments in an effort to muzzle people who say the truth about the UPC. █
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