TEAM UPC -- collectively speaking -- does not like to disclose who it works for, but it has always been pretty evident that they're litigators who work for a lot of patent trolls, usually foreign patent trolls that prey on European firms (taxing, blackmailing, suing them). Over the past week Bristows, for example, wrote lots of posts in defense of patent trolls in the UK. Kluwer Patent Blog and IP Kat obliged to provide a platform for that.
"Over the past week Bristows, for example, wrote lots of posts in defense of patent trolls in the UK. Kluwer Patent Blog and IP Kat obliged to provide a platform for that."It's also interesting to learn that Team UPC's "top gun" Tilman Müller-Stoy (he's highly vocal about it) works for the world's most notorious patent troll. It really says quite a lot about the UPC in general, not just Team UPC.
What can be said about JUVE? Well, maybe it makes good "business sense" to give an award to these people. JUVE is a publisher. Like IAM. That's just the business model. Rewarding this kind of behaviour, however, might be expected from the patent trolls' lobby, e.g. IAM. This, in our view, harms perception of objectivity (e.g. about UPC). Paid (indirectly) endorsement for those who serve patent trolls? For example by advertising money? Hard to tell.
Microsoft's troll wants the UPC desperately in order to more easily blackmail firms in Europe like it does in the US (with abstract patents granted by the USPTO like they are nowadays granted by the corrupt European Patent Office (EPO)). ⬆