Bonum Certa Men Certa

To Mask the Decline in Patent Quality, e.g. Granting of Software Patents a.k.a. Computer-Implemented Inventions (CII), EPO Makes Oppositions Harder

Georg Weber
Photo source



Summary: Using a bunch of two-, three- and sometimes four-letter acronyms/buzzwords the EPO tries to rationalise the granting of patents on algorithms, dubbing these "emerging technologies”

FOR over a decade we have been protesting software patents in Europe, seeing how a directive against them was being worked around ("as such") by Brimelow, then Battistelli and now more than ever by António Campinos, whom we mentioned this morning because of his blog advocating software patents.



"The above conference is yet more of the same advocacy of software patents under the guise of "emerging technologies” (marketing and buzzword)."Today's EPO does not value quality, only money. The management of the EPO still believes it is a corporation that sells "products" to then send millions of euros into the bank accounts of its corrupt officials (or colleagues/other employers of theirs). As the EPO put it a few hours ago: "We aim at providing you with the best products for your patent information needs."

"Products"?

Sadly, with the staff representatives gagged like never before and the media barely covering EPO affairs (see EPO PR from IP Kat, where earlier today Rose Hughes had nothing do say about EPO scandals, only press releases from the management of the European Patent Office), we often feel rather lonely in criticising serious abuses. Staff of the EPO essentially lost its voice. Instead of actual examiners expressing their views all we see out there is management spreading lies and engaging in mischievous behaviour. Hours ago the EPO wrote: "Georg Weber, operational director at the EPO, and Yann Ménière, EPO Chief Economist, will discuss how the EPO is rising to the challenge of searching #blockchain & its current patent landscape at our upcoming conference."

"Management at the EPO suggests calling algorithms "AI" to get software patents in defiance of the EPC and the courts."Georg Weber [1, 2] and Yann Ménière have long promoted software patents under the leadership of corrupt Battistelli. The above conference is yet more of the same advocacy of software patents under the guise of "emerging technologies” (marketing and buzzword). The EPO wrote earlier today: "Don't delay – registration for our “Global patenting and emerging technologies” conference co-hosted with @GoI_MeitY on 29 Nov closes soon. See you in Munich!"

Then came the typical "AIpatents" nonsense: "If you are looking for insights from experts on patenting #AI, this summary of the EPO’s recent conference on the topic might be of interest to you: http://bit.ly/AIpatents"

Management at the EPO suggests calling algorithms "AI" to get software patents in defiance of the EPC and the courts. They pretend it's a new, emergent and separable discipline, but it clearly is not. José Santacroce (Moeller IP Advisors) wrote about it earlier today under the title "The European Patent Office (EPO) Publishes New Guidelines On Computer-Implemented Inventions (CII)" and to quote some bits:



The section on mathematical methods has been completely revised, adding a distinction between contribution in producing a technical effect that serves a technical purpose, by its application to a field of technology and/or by being adapted to a specific technical implementation.

[...]

Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning (G-II 3.3.1)



The new CII Guidelines for the first time provide a section relating to AI and ML, which are first defined as computational models and algorithms for classification, clustering, regression and dimensionality reduction. They are considered per se to be of an abstract mathematical nature, irrespective of whether they can be "trained" based on (real) training data.

In order to overcome the first hurdle, a causal link to the technical purpose should be established, e.g. use of mathematical method in a heart monitoring apparatus for the purpose of identifying irregular heartbeats, classification of digital images, videos, audio or speech signals based on edges or pixel attributes, and avoid using expressions that may encompass cognitive aspects of data (e.g. textual content of a document).

Furthermore, the new EPO CII Guidelines now specify that steps of generating the training set and training the AI models also may contribute to the technical character of the invention if they support achieving a technical purpose.

[...]

Inventions realized in a distributed computing environment (F-IV 3.9.3)



This new section relates to CII realized in a distributed computing environment, in order to give guidance on unity requirements.

The new EPO CII Guidelines specify that it may be necessary to refer to the specific features of the different entities in the environment and to define how they interact to ensure the presence of all essential features, unless this is not essential to performing the invention. The different entities participating in the distributed system can be claimed without incurring a non-unity objection, however it may happen that not all claimed entities are new and inventive. This is the case when for example an entity encodes information in a more efficient way, but an information-receiving entity decodes such encoded information in a conventional way: the information-receiving entity is normally neither new nor inventive.


Like the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO), the EPO is trying to come up with new tricks to allow patents that should really be rejected outright. Can this be corrected? Well, it has just gotten a lot harder. As FRKelly's David Brophy put it earlier today, the "EPO tightens up on inventive step attacks in opposition" (calling legitimate objections "attacks" is a gross inversion of narratives, presuming monopolies are benign).

So the management basically heralded changes that lower patent quality and make it harder to squash fake European Patents. To quote Brophy:

A recent change in the EPO Guidelines suggests that opponents will be constrained in the number of attacks which they can mount using different starting documents.

Opposition divisions have traditionally been reluctant to decide in advance which document is the closest prior art, and even less inclined to force an opponent to stick to that starting point. The opposition division will usually prefer to consider all attacks put forward (within reason) on the basis that the public interest requires them to be satisfied that the claims are non-obvious in the face of any plausible attack.

To be fair to the opposition divisions, the EPO Guidelines have traditionally supported this approach. Until a recent (November 1, 2018) revision, the instruction in the Guidelines stated:

In some cases there are several equally valid starting points for the assessment of inventive step… If a patent is to be granted, it may be necessary to apply the problem-and-solution approach to each of these starting points in turn… In such a situation, there is no need to discuss which document is “closest” to the invention; the only relevant question is whether the document used is a feasible starting point for assessing inventive step…”.

This passage gave opponents considerable latitude to present a multiplicity of attacks from different starting documents.


Some time soon the liars from the management of the EPO might claim a reduction in opposition, 'proving' that patent quality has improved rather than the decline obscured. The USPTO is trying to do the same thing by limiting access to the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB), particularly when it comes to inter partes reviews (IPRs). Appeals too have become a lot harder since Battistelli understaffed and attacked the independence of appeal boards' judges.

Recent Techrights' Posts

Microsoft's Big Lies Regarding This Week's Mass Layoffs Have Already Begun (and They're Already Being Spread by Slopfarms)
Microsoft is the "market leader" in slop
They Made Technology Scary and Taught Us That It's Innocent, Friendly, Even "Social"
Rejection of all this "apps" and "gadgets" and "Smart" (whatever that means!) status quo isn't a rejection of society
 
Our Desktops Are Not Your Experiments, X is Not an Experiment
Breaking what already worked
Summer Plans in Techrights and Elsewhere
massive layoffs at Microsoft
Explaining the Full Story of SLAPPs From Microsoft Staff
For every action there is a reaction, for every attack there will be proportionate consequences
The Openwashing Shills Initiative (OSI) - Part III: IRS and Status of OSI
"They lied to the US IRS and there’s a paper trail"
IBM Red Hat's Dogmatic Fanaticism Under a Thin Veil of "Modernism"
IBM now has the audacity to paint people who don't agree as "nazis"
Microsoft's Share in Guatemala Fell From 97% to 14%
Eventually Microsoft will get stuck in a loop of layoffs, layoffs, and more layoffs
The Media is Under Attacks Partly Because There's Little Other (Remaining) Press to Speak in Its Defence
The biggest danger here is that when there's very little press or no "opposition media" left it becomes even easier to crush critics because there aren't many people left to speak about the matter
If Your Web Site is Run by Bots, Eventually Nobody Will 'Read' It Except Bots (People Don't Want to Read Slop)
Eventually people learn from mistakes
Links 29/06/2025: Microsoft Releases False/Fake Benchmarks, "Google Wants You to Watch Ads or Take Surveys to Read Articles"
Links for the day
Links 29/06/2025: Data Breaches and Online Censorship
Links for the day
Gemini Links 29/06/2025: "The Price Of Eggs" and Gemini 3D Tic Tac Toe
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Saturday, June 28, 2025
IRC logs for Saturday, June 28, 2025
The "News" You Saw About Canonical is Misleading, It Made Only 18 Million Dollars Last Year and Barely Paid Any Taxes
Lies are the norm these days...
Pushing Wayland Using Straw Man Arguments
phoronix.com has long promoted the talking point of "Wayland people" (for at least a decade already)
Australia: Windows Fell to All-Time Low, Even Lower Than iOS
There's a good reason why next week there will be so many Microsoft layoffs
Slopwatch: Linuxsecurity, WebProNews, and Google News Boosting Slopfarms as 'News'
People who don't recognise the slopfarms and don't know which sites are fake would struggle to understand what's really going on
Links 28/06/2025: Hardware/GPU Wars, GAFAM Throws Money (Borrowed Cash) at Hopeless Slop Pipe Dream
Links for the day
Gemini Links 28/06/2025: Shellshock and Network UPS Tools
Links for the day
Links 28/06/2025: The Age of Integrity and FreeBSD Foundation Added John Baldwin as Board Member
Links for the day
Fedora 44
IBM now does to Fedora what it did to RHEL
Microsoft Already Shaved Off Costs Anywhere It Could. It Was Not Enough.
Office and Windows aren't "selling" (licences) like they used to
Scheduled Maintenance Next Week
Our community is alive and well
BetaNews: We're Publishing LLM Slop About LLM Slop
Beta version of a slopfarm?
3-Month Updates on Our Complaint to the Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA)
In short, the complaint remains open, updated, and is advancing
IBM Red States Hat (Project 2025): Our "New Thing" Replaces This "Old Thing"
The new replaces the old. That's how IBM frames it.
Start X
Just because something is old does not mean it is bad
Slopwatch: Linuxsecurity, Google News Slopfarms, and Linux Journal (LJ)
Today we take a quick look at 3 slopfarms
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Friday, June 27, 2025
IRC logs for Friday, June 27, 2025
Links 28/06/2025: "CC Signals" Virtue-Signals to Slop Ponzi Schemes, North Korea Aims for Tourism
Links for the day
Links 27/06/2025: International Tensions and Contentions Over Plagiarism Perfumed as "Hey Hi" and "Fair Use"
Links for the day
Gemini Links 27/06/2025: Poetry and Censorship by Social Control Media Centralisation
Links for the day
Links 27/06/2025: Journalists Under Fire and Microsoft Has Serious Slop Problems
Links for the day
X is Dying, But Not XServer/X11. Twitter X.com is Dying.
People or businesses or government officials (and departments) that still rely on Social Control Media are playing Russian Roulette with their future online
Wayland is About Less Choice, About Removing Choices, It's Not About Freedom
IBM insists that it cares about "diversity"
Keeping Things Accessible
Gemini Protocol seems to be growing
Escaping Colonialism (or 'Hegemony') Requires Abandoning GAFAM, Microsoft in Particular
Europe is already in the process of abandoning Microsoft
Microsoft Will Shut Down More Studios This Week, Its Media Operatives Will Tell Lies About the Magnitude of the Shutdowns and Layoffs (They Always Do)
Many people who get counted as "workforce" are "temps" or similar
Not Much Better Than LLM Slop: Linux Foundation-Funded 'News' Site Writes Linux Foundation 'News', Composed by Linux Foundation Operative, Quoting Linux Foundation Staff
...they get paid (sponsored) to produce this spam. Then they call it "journalism".
What Linux Foundation 'Research' is: Paid Marketing
What is Linux Foundation 'Research'?
Annual Southern California Linux Expo (SCALE 22x) 'Bought' by Microsoft and Microsoft Exceeded Sponsorship Limits by Giving Double the Maximum Permitted Amount
When people get bribed they tend to forget how to utter a simple word: "No."
No, IBM Does Not Care About People With Disabilities
"Aktion T4" did not seem to bother Watson
Microsoft's Financial Problems Mean Shutdowns, Not Just Mass Layoffs
If the original rumour is true, then expect almost 30,000 Microsoft workers to be let go this year
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Thursday, June 26, 2025
IRC logs for Thursday, June 26, 2025
The Netherlands: GNU/Linux Measured at All-Time High
Are any Dutch cities going to announce dumping Microsoft?
Gemini Links 27/06/2025: "Interstitial Existence" and Autocorrect
Links for the day