We can't let these people get their way with patent maximalism and UPC

Summary: A status update about EPO affairs and our Web host's plan to shut down (as a whole) very soon, leaving us orphaned or having to pay heavy bills

OUR USPTO coverage reached an unexpected halt last night at around 6PM. Our host is shutting down soon. He's an old friend of mine who hosted the site as a favour for nearly a decade. Speaking to alternative hosts, it seems likely that our hosting costs would at least quadruple. It's a painful experience. I barely slept; it's hard to fall asleep. Certain readers, some of whom connected in one way or another to the EPO, expressed concern about the downtime (almost half a day). The problem is far broader than a downtime, caused by a routing issue among other things.

"This is scary and dangerous to the prospects of science and technology in Europe. It's like patents take priority over facts. It should never be like this."Techright is turning 12 in a few weeks. I've dedicated most of my adult life to this site. I'm not asking for sympathy, I just want to reaffirm and reassure to readers that the site has always been financially independent. That's never going to change.

I can envision some readers asking questions like, what about "the cloud"? As if sending one's blog to some private company can assure independence... there's plenty of evidence to the contrary. There are many ways in which a centralised blogging platform censors those who participate, with a broadening brush by which they sweep away particular voices.

“The possibility of a deferred examination could therefore further improve the attractiveness of the French patent.”
      --Grégoire Desrousseaux and Thierry LautierFlorian Müller's latest two articles, "The new smartphone patents battlemap (infographic featuring Apple, Huawei, Intel, Qualcomm, Samsung)" and "Patent exhaustion keeps Qualcomm on the run from Apple's claims and motions," are as usual hosted by Google. Just before the weekend he wrote about a notorious European Patent of Qualcomm. He's very supportive of our work covering the EPO (we've published nearly 3,000 articles about the EPO alone).

“Your server does not respond.”
      --AnonymousLike we've said here several times since September, publishers are struggling, even the patent maximalists'. IAM, for example, went sort of 'dark', i.e. everything behind paywall, except pure commercials and intentional propaganda. As an example of the latter, see what turned up in Google News yesterday. IAM wrote this:

‘No deal’ Brexit may mean no UPC, says UK government – The United Kingdom government released a notice on the likely implications for patents in the event of a ‘no deal’ Brexit. Relevant EU legislation, such as that relating to Supplementary Protection Certificates for drugs, compulsory licences and the patenting of biotechnology innovations, will be retained in UK law under the EU Withdrawal Act 2018 in such a scenario, it reassures rights holders. Such legislation will form the basis of an independent UK patent regime in which existing rights and licences will automatically remain in force. No such certainty is provided regarding the prospective Unified Patent Court (UPC), however. If the pan-European court is fully ratified, but the UK leaves the EU without a deal, the country would not necessarily be part of the UPC or the unitary patent system, the government admitted. However, any unitary patents that exist at the point of the UK’s departure will automatically give rise to patent protection within the UK.

This repeated the two famous lies. Also published yesterday was this short blog post from Kluwer Patent Blog (they barely publish in long form anymore). It's akin to the "shoot with patents first, ask questions later" attitude of UPC. Adrian Crespo wrote that (in Spain at least) "a defendant wishing to object to an injunction for invalidity reasons must put forth “very clear and evident indicia” of invalidity. For that reason, the Court of Appeal focused on a relatively straightforward objection on grounds of added matter."

This is scary and dangerous to the prospects of science and technology in Europe. It's like patents take priority over facts. It should never be like this.

Meanwhile, over at Mondaq, a French law firm that habitually promotes itself over there speaks of the EPO and INPI. Grégoire Desrousseaux and Thierry Lautier (August & Debouzy) compare one terrible patent office to another:

Incidentally, this would also allow the INPI to "smooth" the number of examination requests it will receive in the medium term, which would facilitate the implementation of the strengthened substantive examination and the opposition procedure, while maintaining sufficiently short deadlines (which is a decisive parameter for the attractiveness of the French system).

The possibility of a deferred examination could therefore further improve the attractiveness of the French patent.

It is widely known that INPI doesn't really assess quality of patent applications; they're presumed valid. Imagine what the UPC would look like if the French-led UPC ever went ahead, possibly with Battistelli as its chief. France has been reserved a leadership position, the EPO promotes this, its current President is French and in two decades it's like France clings onto power at the EPO for 16 years.

We are open to ideas as to how sponsor the hosting costs for the server; I don't wish to be paid for my writings about the EPO (by anyone), but the costs of underlying infrastructure may need coverage. I spend over 80 hours per week on the sites (not including my daytime job). Things aren't sustainable and we need to keep watching the affairs of the EPO and patent scope in general. There's too much at stake. ⬆