Bonum Certa Men Certa

Patent Quality, Not Quantity, is What Really Matters

EPO adopts the Chinese model (patent trolls magnet), unlike somewhere like India

EPO patents criticised



Summary: The EPO's policy of "grant fast/first, ask questions later" is a recipe for disaster not just for the EPO but for Europe in general

THE EPO crisis (this particular term, "crisis", seems suitable) is a ticking time-bomb. Applications are running out and UPC is as dead as can be (it has barely even been mentioned this past month). Florian Müller is right when he says, as IP2Innovate quoted the other day: “Whenever the Unitary Patent Court (UPC) will be ready, Europe will become a paradise for patent trolls and the likes of Nokia and Ericsson...”

IP2Innovate has repeatedly warned about it and lobbyists of patent trolls attacked IP2Innovate over it. They also attacked people who 'dared' cite IP2Innovate. Such is the behaviour of aggressive trolls...

"Applications are running out and UPC is as dead as can be (it has barely even been mentioned this past month)."The problem we're seeing is that the EPO basically 'offloads' examinations onto courts; it issues patents recklessly and in a rush, only for courts and lawyers to clean up the mess that lawyers themselves all along made. They want lots of litigation. That's their bread and butter.

Found earlier this week via this tweet was a new article titled "Liberaler Mittelstand fürchtet Patentflut & Qualitätsmangel". It was then mentioned also in a comment that said:

On patent quality at EPO

WIPR https://www.worldipreview.com/news/wipr-survey-epo-patent-quality-is-endangered-claim-readers-15689

Landshuter Rundschau http://la-rundschau.de/landshut/politik/33298-liberaler-mittelstand-fuerchtet-patentflut-qualitaetsmangel.html


EPO examiners generally know that they issue low-quality patents. They admit it, but they stress very strongly that this is the fault of the management. The examiners don't want to do it, but they feel as though they must in order to keep their job.

The EPO is meanwhile bragging, yet again, about growth in the number of patents. Yesterday it wrote that "Italy filed over 4% more applications at the EPO in 2017 compared with the previous year."

"It doesn't look like these discounts had any fundamental effect in Europe, perhaps except income going down.""But in order to get this message right (across to the readers)," I've told them that the discounts should be taken into account. You "gave a DISCOUNT on applications and 'demand' went DOWN," I told them in response to this other tweet in which EPO said: "Belgium posted fewer patent applications in 2017 (-1.9%) after its strong increase in 2016 (+7%)..."

It doesn't look like these discounts had any fundamental effect in Europe, perhaps except income going down. And that's before work even runs out! It's going to get a lot worse when staff is made redundant.

What does the EPO even strive for? Issuing as many patents as possible, e.g. by consciously lowering the quality of examination? Yesterday there was this press release which said:

Constant Pharmaceuticals, LLC, a privately held biopharmaceutical company focused on the treatment of stroke recovery, today announced that the European Patent Office (EPO) has notified the company that it will grant a patent covering the use of TXA127 in the treatment of stroke. TXA127 is a pharmaceutical grade formulation of the naturally occurring peptide Angiotensin (1-7), which Constant is developing for the treatment of stroke recovery.


A few days ago someone showed us that the EPO had just granted a patent on chewing gum. The above is naturally-occurring -- something which typically disqualifies patents.

"A few days ago someone showed us that the EPO had just granted a patent on chewing gum."But hey, who cares about patent quality anyway? Certainly not patent lawyers, who are typically patent maximalists as that equals/implies more income for lawyers.

Earlier today the Sottish Legal was posting this Marks & Clerk puff piece/ad in the form of an 'article'. Marks & Clerk sucks up to EPO management by promoting patent maximalism. To quote:

The UK has enjoyed a consistent rise in energy-related European patents with the number of patents granted by the EPO in the energy sector having nearly doubled since 2008. The volume of patents applied for has also increased by nearly 40 per cent since 2008.

Newly released data from the European Patent Office (EPO) found that ‘electrical machinery, apparatus, and energy’ was the fourth most patented technical field in 2017, behind only medical technology, digital communication, and computer technology.


Is this like a competition? Which field gets the most monopolies?

Compare that to India, where software patents are not allowed and pharmaceutical giants don't get their way, either. It's actually a pretty good system which improves access to medicine and makes India a very powerful software-developing country.

"Is this like a competition? Which field gets the most monopolies?"Ananya Bhattacharya, writing this piece earlier this week, has called such a sound policy "least friendly"; it is a gross distortion of the reality because it might as well be called "most friendly" (towards the population, not a bunch of foreign multinational giants). To quote: "India is no country for filing patents. Riddled with problems, from lack of awareness to systemic flaws, the country is one of the least friendly when it comes to intellectual property (IP) rights. In 2016, just 45,000 patents (pdf) were filed in India—China registered over 1.1 million in the same year."

So what? China is insanely irrational when it comes to patent grants, we suppose in anticipation of sanctions/trade war. They just want to have a wall of worthless patents.

China is actually proof that overgranting leads to trolling (there's a massive increase there in terms of patent trolls) and only a tiny fraction of these patents ever makes it into patent offices outside China (only those of decent quality would get granted).

"The EPO has become a farce under Battistelli. He is leaving in almost exactly 3 months, but he will leave in charge an old friend, who is also French and also lacks background in science."The EPO needs to take India, not China, as an example. But Battistelli never even bothers visiting India. Instead he keeps visiting former French colonies (maybe his friend Sarko got some funds from there too?), having just named Morocco and Tunisia alongside Cambodia in this new 'blog' post of his. (warning: epo.org link, already promoted by the EPO's Twitter account).

Watch Benoît Battistelli as he brags about Cambodia with zero European Patents and French colonisation roots:

When Cambodia became a validation state at the beginning of this month, it was somewhat of a watershed moment in the EPO’s history. While we have already seen the European patent become valid in North Africa, through agreements with Morocco and Tunisia, Cambodia is the very first country in Asia to become a validation country. With four validations in the last few years (Morocco, Moldova, Tunisia and Cambodia), the advantages of the EPO’s validation system are becoming more and more known. European inventors can now easily and efficiently file a European patent application that will be recognised in Cambodia. That means it will have the same legal effect as a corresponding Cambodian patent and will be subject to Cambodian patent law.


The EPO has become a farce under Battistelli. He is leaving in almost exactly 3 months, but he will leave in charge an old friend, who is also French and also lacks background in science.

Recent Techrights' Posts

Slop Nihilism is Funded by Big Oil
Eventually human civilisation will destroy itself
Professor Eben Moglen Recovering From Open Heart Surgery
From his public pages (this is not secret)
There Are Red Hat (IBM) Layoffs, But Google News is Infested With Slopfarms
It contributes a lot to misinformation and it encourages plagiarism
USA Not a Place for Free Speech
In America, as in the US, the attacks seem more enhanced or advanced these days
 
Slopwatch: Fake Articles, Fake Text, Fake Images, Negative Slant on "Linux"
Google News has lost its value; the signal-to-noise ratio has fallen off a cliff
Gemini Links 17/09/2025: Relax-and-Recover on Proxmox and New Smolweb File Transfer Service
Links for the day
Fact: EFF Got Corrupted by Corporate Money. Microsoft Lunduke (Political Noise): The Issue With EFF is, It Kills Babies.
Microsoft Lunduke - as usual - finds a way to make it about abortions
Pacing Publication Up a Bit
The news cycles have gotten rather light and slow
Links 17/09/2025: Power Outages, Digital Controls, and Attacks on the Mainstream Media (by Insecure and Corrupt Dictators)
Links for the day
Gemini Links 17/09/2025: Flashing LineageOS and ROOPHLOCH
Links for the day
Links 17/09/2025: Long COVID Study, "Exposing Pegasus", and Chatbots Exposing Sensitive Data
Links for the day
Links 17/09/2025: Secret Settlement for Internet Archive and Google’s LLM Slop Summaries Attracting Lawsuits
Links for the day
The True Cost of 'Generative Models'
Funded and promoted by the companies that profit from the waste
'Big Slop' Attacks Contemporary Information/Knowledge and Creative Works, 'Big Copyright' (Cartel) Attacks the Old
Someone at IA will hopefully "blow the whistle" on what they actually agreed
Why We Find It Difficult to Trust Rust
A comparison between C/C++ and Rust
Watching the OSI: Our Series Will Carry on Irrespective of the Chief's 'Resignation'
the OSI isn't even the real guardian of the term "Open Source"
Just What LibreOffice Needs? Another Language? (Rust)
what's all this concern about memory safety?
Many Microsoft Managers Are Leaving
"Hey hi" chaff or chaff about "hey hi" cannot eternally distract from the difficulties inside the company
Tomorrow, Microsoft's Tim Anderson's 'The Register MS' Offshoot Will Have Been Inactive for 2 Months (There's Also a Slop Problem)
We've already caught The Register MS using LLM slop for articles
Microsoft's Chief Legal Officer Leaves Microsoft After Nearly 30 Years
And not retiring
Even Windows Users Are Having Problems With "Secure Boot"
When it comes to security - Microsoft strives for the very opposite
Another Competition Crime of Microsoft, Long Facilitated and Advocated by a Bad Actor, Who is Funded by a Third Party to Commit Extortion Against People Who Have Correctly and Repeatedly Warned About It for Over 13 Year
We must always go back to the core issues
3 More Reasons to Replace Mozilla Firefox With LibreWolf
Thankfully there are de-enshittified versions of Firefox
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Tuesday, September 16, 2025
IRC logs for Tuesday, September 16, 2025
Links 17/09/2025: Google Layoffs in "Hey Hi" (AI), Perplexity Hit With More "Hey Hi" (Plagiarism) Lawsuits
Links for the day
Gemini Links 17/09/2025: Reclaiming Things in a Digital Age and Moon Phases in CGI
Links for the day
Slopwatch: Google News is Slop, Google News is Plagiarism, Google News is Dying
Google is off the rails
Links 16/09/2025: "The Censorship Alarm Is Ringing in the Wrong Direction" and ASRock Does Microsoft E.E.E. on GNU/Linux
Links for the day
Serious "Breach of Confidentiality of Personal Data" in Europe's Second-Largest Institution, the EPO
Yes, the same EPO that routinely uses "data protection" and "GDPR" as a pretext for hiding or covering up its corruption and white-collar crimes (it even uses that as an excuse for refusing to obey courts' orders)
Adrienne Rockenhaus Says Her Husband Was Arrested for Running Tor and Denied Basic Rights in the United States
the US seems to be getting "russified" in its approach towards Tor
This is What Happens When Microsoft Canonical Lets Decisions on Ubuntu be Made by a Youngster From the British Army (Where He Did Mass Surveillance)
"Is Ubuntu Compromised?"
Back Doored Windows Giving GNU/Linux a Hard Time (Under the Guise of 'Security')
Is this complication intentional? Most likely, yes
Links 16/09/2025: Science, Security, and Conflicts
Links for the day
Gemini Links 16/09/2025: Command-line Options in POSIX Shell and Introducing Acre 0.9
Links for the day
Microsoft 'Secure' Boot Versus Dual Boot With GNU/Linux
they're meant to assume everything is OK
Links 16/09/2025: While Oracle Pretends to be Rich It's Firing About 70 MySQL Workers, "Oracle's Revenge" (Faking Demand With "AI")
Links for the day
Microsoft Has Just Published a New Web Page About "Secure Boot Update Process" (Microsoft Also Admits Issues; PCs Can Stop Booting)
Why was this page issued and published only hours ago?
Microsoft Lunduke: I Spread Hate and Then I Receive Hate
Cry us a river, Microsoft Lunduke
"Use Wayland" Isn't a Bugfix for X (X11 is Still Necessary)
They tell us X is "dead" and we must all be herded into Wayland ASAP
"Disable Secure Boot and Fast Boot. Wipe and Start Over."
At least they didn't say, buy a new computer...
The Oracle Ponzi Scheme
Oracle isn't doing well, but it's nowadays fashionable to say "clown" and "hey hi" to prop up one's stock, even based on nothing at all
The New Head of OSI is an "Hey Hi" (AI) Obsessed Person
when Bryant says "AI" that doesn't mean AI
Taking Out the Battery, Opening Up Your Computer, Just Like a "Normie" Would
At this stage, any person who still says "enable Secure Boot" is misguided or persuaded by companies that sell rootkits
Slopwatch: Serial Sloppers and Slopfarms Still Infesting Google News (Fake 'Articles' About "Linux" Spreading FUD)
searching for "Linux" today yields a lot of FUD
"Governments, local authorities, schools and hospitals can lead by example by procuring only Free Software"
Crossposted from Tux Machines
Cindy Cohn Leaving the Electronic Frontier Foundation While Its Co-founder John Gilmore, Whom She Apparently Helped Oust, Will Celebrate 40 Years of the Free Software Foundation, Inc.
EFF has been busy hoarding GAFAM money, whereas the latter is where all the real activism is done
The Reach of Techrights Has Broadened
We nowadays cover a broader range of issues
"Google is Googlebombing KDE's Project Banana"
So is Google googlebombing KDE's Project Banana? You decide.
Complicating Things for No Actual Benefit, Just Added Risk and More Difficulties Adding GNU/Linux and BSDs
Watch what it's like for people who wish to use BSDs
Some Very Large IRC Networks Are Growing
IRC will turn 38 next year
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Monday, September 15, 2025
IRC logs for Monday, September 15, 2025
Links 16/09/2025: Autumn Party, RPG Planet, and Optical ROOPHLOCH
Links for the day
Geminispace Growing at Pace of Over 10% Per Year
Contrary to what some pessimists try to claim
Linux Mint Forums Today: Disable 'Secure Boot', It Doesn't Improve Security, It's Just a Microsoft Obstacle to GNU/Linux Users
They also mention MOK
What Ruben Amorim and Stefano Maffulli Have in Common
Censors Wikipedia and Social Control Media
Microsoft Won't Cooperate in Trying to Tackle EPO Corruption (Microsoft Profits From This Corruption)
Use something like BigBlueButton, Jami, Ring, and Jitsi instead
Solved Less Than an Hour Ago: Trying to Escape Windows, 'Secure Boot' Gets in the Way
'Secure Boot' wasn't meant to even exist in the first place
Stefano Maffulli, Executive Director of the Open Source Initiative, Resigns or Gets Removed (We'll Continue Covering OSI Scandals)
A dozen mentions of "AI", not much about "Open Source"
Andy Has Just Nailed It (Regarding Complexity and Failure, a la UEFI)
The users no longer own or control what they buy
Compatibility Support Module (CSM) Versus GNU/Linux Simplicity
what Andy recently called "solutionism"
Links 15/09/2025: "Postal Traffic to US Down by Over 80%" and 'Smart' Spinozacampus Laundry Room Goes AWOL
Links for the day
Gemini Links 15/09/2025: Dungeon Hustle and Deleting Oneself From the Net
Links for the day
Breach of EPO's Duty of Care or Cigna Reimbursement Issues
This is the sort of thing that motivated Luigi Mangione to assassinate a CEO
Ask Ubuntu About "Secure Boot" Violation and Laptops That Don't Boot GNU/Linux
Does anyone still believe that "Secure Boot" has anything at all to do with security?
We Are Sad to Hear the Story of Jonathan Riddell, Champion of KDE and GNU/Linux on Desktops/Laptops
I have enormous respect for Jonathan and everything he has done
Talking About the Problem vs Talking to the Problem
Wanting an audience is never a good excuse for compromising one's values and principles
Focusing on Patents
The reason we cover the EPO so much is that it's close to home
"Secure Boot Violation": The 'Joys' of Fake Security Gone Wrong
Not everyone reboots every day
Links 15/09/2025: Russia Invades Romanian Airspace, Penske Media Sues Google Over LLM Slop
Links for the day
Links 15/09/2025: Bitcoin ATMs Scam and "Conservative Cryptography" (Backdoors Fantasies)
Links for the day
EPO Imitates Microsoft: "Three Days or More Per Week" Inside the Office to Get a Desk to Work on; "the Office Breaches Its Promise Towards Staff and Acts in Breach of Its Duty of Care"
The EPO serves no actual function in Europe
Links 15/09/2025: Political Affairs, Censorship, and Copyrights
Links for the day
Gemini Links 15/09/2025: Music Genres, Invisible Networks, and Akademy 2025
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Sunday, September 14, 2025
IRC logs for Sunday, September 14, 2025