05.15.18

EPO Has Become Overzealous About Software Patents, Probably More So Than Almost Anywhere Else

Posted in Europe, Patents at 4:52 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Software patents in Europe

Summary: The promotion of an extreme patent regime in Europe continues unabated; whether it succeeds or not depends on what EPO examiners and citizens of Europe can do

THE patent extremists have lost their moral compass and have sunk to an ethical abyss. We habitually cover this in relation to American law firms, but in Europe there’s some of that too.

“Radio silence unless/until the EPO dedicates some budget for PR firms to flood the media with advertisements for the European Inventor Award (which the EPO promotes in Twitter about half a dozen times per day).”Earlier today we saw a firm of UPC boosters advertising a “Seminar” about something which does not even exist: “German and UPC patent infringement litigation proceedings” (the page is in German).

The EPO was meanwhile (earlier today) pushing for software patents in the US ahead of the other ‘seminar’ (even if software patents in Europe are generally not allowed). They will probably advise people to use all sorts of buzzwords (like the AI hype promoted some hours ago at IP Watch). Why does the media not raise this issue, let alone the EPO scandals and corruption? Finnegan is reposting/cross-posting this puff piece that we mentioned last week in another site, but there was no other news about the EPO today. Radio silence unless/until the EPO dedicates some budget for PR firms to flood the media with advertisements for the European Inventor Award (which the EPO promotes in Twitter about half a dozen times per day).

As we noted some days ago, KIPO and South Korean press nowadays repeat EPO-funded propaganda in favour of software patents. There’s an EPO push for software patents these days, they just refer to these as “4IR” or whatever. As IAM explained some hours ago, patent trolls have begun coming out of Korea:

Last month this blog reported on Firstface, an apparent NPE headquartered in Seoul which recently brought patent infringement complaints against both Apple and Samsung in the United States. A new set of statistics released by the Korean Intellectual Property Office (KIPO) show that this is not an isolated case, but part of an unambiguous trend. In conjunction with the Korea Intellectual Property Protection Agency, KIPO prepares a detailed annual report on US patent litigation involving Korean entities. Overall, 2017 was a busier year than 2016 for in-house patent counsel in Korean firms.

In general, KIPO does not allow patents on algorithms.

Software patents are not allowed in India either, but similar loopholes exist there (European says “as such” and India says “per se”). Earlier today a news site spoke about Newgen Software as follows:

It has four patents registered in India and 28 outstanding patent applications in India and two outstanding patent applications in the USA.

Forget about it. Such patents are not allowed and would not be accepted by courts. Neither in India nor in the US after 2014 (Alice, USPTO, Section 101). As for the UPC, it’s generally regarded/considered to be a Trojan horse for software patents in the whole of Europe, bypassing national patent laws/policies. It is just as insane as that sounds. █

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