Bonum Certa Men Certa

With 'Brexit' in a Lot of Headlines Team UPC Takes the Unitary Patent Lies up a Notch

Bristows EPO



Summary: Misinformation continues to run like water; people are expected to believe that the UPC, an inherently EU-centric construct, can magically come to fruition in the UK (or in Europe as a whole)

THE lies told by Team UPC are nowadays pathetic. The European Patent Office (EPO) seems more reluctant to lie after António Campinos started his term, so the EPO basically says almost nothing.



Funnily enough, even the biggest liars have been mostly silent. Bristows LLP, for instance, barely posts anything on the matter (since the summer) and when Alan Johnson mentioned the UPC a few days ago it wasn't even about the UPC but about SPCs. It seems as though his employer is now paying to spread its nonsense elsewhere (from its marginalised blog that is barely active anymore). We took note of it at the time.

"They don't want people to publicly call them "liars" (even implicitly) when they lie. They believe that massively repeating the lies ad infinitum will help these lies stick and thereby shape perceptions. At the same time they attack their critics, albeit only anonymously."An article by Alistair Maughan, Wolfgang Schönig, Sana Ashcroft, Robert Grohmann and Jana Fuchs (Morrison & Foerster LLP) promoted the same old UPC myths earlier this week. UPC was also mentioned here yesterday. They don't seem to care about facts. It's just that same old nonsense about Britain joining something that does not even exist and that it cannot technically join anyway. Team UPC's Wouter Pors wrote about it first thing in the morning; he carries on with the infamous UPC lies (citing as sources other Team UPC fantasists). These 'unitary' patents do not exist and will never exist; they're just fantasies. They're staging a legislative coup for self enrichment and in order to succeed they increasingly attempt to rely on lying to politicians, e.g. Wouter's claim that "if it [UK] does leave the EU, it can still remain part of the UPC, which at least in my view is an honourable cause."

No, it profitable for you, Wouter, it's harmful to the UK, and technically it is not even possible. Deep inside Wouter knows it.

Even though they 'sanitise' comments to remove dissent (to the UPC) from this blog, Concerned observer's first and sole comment soon thereafter appeared (one must remember that these commenters have to be exceedingly polite to not have their comment deleted at the back end). To quote:

Wouter,

With all due respect, I think that the above analysis misses one or two key points.

Firstly, it is important to note that Opinion 1/00 included the following conclusion: “Therefore, the mechanisms for ensuring uniform interpretation of the rules of the ECAA Agreement and for resolving disputes WILL NOT HAVE THE EFFECT OF BINDING THE COMMUNITY and its institutions, in the exercise of their internal powers, to a particular interpretation of the rules of Community law incorporated in the agreement”.

In other words, rulings on provisions of EU law in connection with the ECAA Agreement (in common with rulings of the EFTA Court) would NOT be binding on any EU Member States, and so would not threaten the autonomy of EU law. By way of contrast, the UPC Agreement purports to make rulings of the UPC binding upon the Participating Member States. This is a highly significant difference, meaning that it is IMPOSSIBLE to draw any positive conclusions from Opinion 1/00 (or either of Opinions 1/91 and 1/92) when it comes to the question of compliance of the UPC Agreement with EU law.

Secondly, I do not believe that paragraph 26 of the CJEU’s ruling in Wightman and others has any significance for the UPC. The key part of that paragraph reads as follows: “it is solely for the national court before which the dispute has been brought, and which must assume responsibility for the subsequent judicial decision, to determine in the light of the particular circumstances of the case, both the need for a preliminary ruling in order to enable it to deliver judgment and the relevance of the questions which it submits to the Court”.

In essence, the CJEU is saying that it is up to the national court to determine the need for a preliminary reference under Article 267 TFEU. However, the CJEU’s answer is based upon the undisputed assumption that the national court in question was a “court or tribunal of a Member State” in accordance with Article 267 TFEU. Given that the UK’s future participation in the UPC appears to hinge upon that court being classified an INTERNATIONAL court (ie NOT a “court or tribunal of a Member State”), there is at least a prima facie reason to doubt that the CJEU would accept any preliminary references from the UPC.

In other words, the ruling of the CJEU in Wightman and others simply does not address the key point of contention for the UPC.

One final point: the combination of the above two points could well provide reason to doubt Prof. Tilmann’s assertion that the UK’s loss of EU membership is not a fundamental change of circumstances within the meaning of Article 62 VCLT. This is because a potential consequence of that change is the conversion of the UPC to the status of an international court, the rulings of which could then threaten the supremacy and autonomy of EU law. Thus, whilst it is clear that the CJEU is prepared to entertain arguments based upon the VCLT, I do not believe that this would be the end of the matter for the UPC.


One might assume that other comments have been posted or will be posted albeit removed before anyone can see them. Such is the nature of this blog and such is the nature of Team UPC in general (it censors other blogs too, as we've demonstrated for a number of years). They don't want people to publicly call them "liars" (even implicitly) when they lie. They believe that massively repeating the lies ad infinitum will help these lies stick and thereby shape perceptions. At the same time they attack their critics, albeit only anonymously [1, 2].

Recent Techrights' Posts

Computers Got Smaller, So GNU/Linux Got Bigger
Many people here recognise the lack of urgency (or need) to get expensive new laptops
GNU/Linux Grows at Windows' Expense and Microsoft Trolls Infest and Maliciously Target Articles About It
Microsoft is - and has long been - organised crime
They Say I'm Mr. Bombastic
They didn't take good lawyers
 
Live as You Preach
technology is fast becoming dysphoric
Culling Bad RSS Feeds of Bad Sites
Not throwing out the baby with the bathwater
Gemini Links 09/06/2025: Addition Addiction and Nitride
Links for the day
Links 09/06/2025: Science, Hardware Projects, and Democracy Receding
Links for the day
BetaNews is a Plagiarism and LLM Slop Hub, the Chief Editor Isn't Addressing This Problem Anymore
SS Fagioli is basically a parasite leeching off or exploiting other people's work
Links 09/06/2025: Chaos in Los Angeles and Hurricane Season
Links for the day
Links 09/06/2025: Windows TCO and Many Data Breaches
Links for the day
Abuse Inside the Polish Patent Office (UPRP) - Part VI: Political Stunts by Former President Edyta Demby-Siwek and the Connection to Profound Corruption at EUIPO
it's like a money-laundering operation where one politician rewards another at taxpayers' expense
Gemini Links 09/06/2025: Pipelines and Splitgate
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Sunday, June 08, 2025
IRC logs for Sunday, June 08, 2025
Links 08/06/2025: Tiananmen Carnage Censorship Persists, North Korean Goes Offline
Links for the day
Gemini Links 08/06/2025: Love as an Ethnographic Method and Monitorix Gemini-Frontend v0.1
Links for the day
Links 08/06/2025: Exposure of More GAFAM Surveillance and Social Security Records Compromised
Links for the day
Linux Foundation is a Mediator for Microsoft et al, Not for Small Companies That Support Rather Than Attack the GPL
Many people still wrongly assume that because it is called "Linux Foundation", then it is pro-Linux and represents the same mindset
This Past Friday, Confirming What We Said All Along About Brett Wilson LLP: It's Shrinking, Has Considerable Debt, Loss of Net Assets Despite the Microsoft SLAPP Money
The documents only became publicly available less than 2 days ago
Some of the Many Reasons We Sued Microsofters for Harassment
perpetrators of harassment
For 20 Years Many People Were Sharecropping for Canonical's Oligarch, Now He's Deleting All Their Contributions
"Ubuntu has erased instead of archiving the trove of material at Ubuntu Forums"
There Was Always Too Much 'Crazy Stuff' Going on Around Freenode
What many IRC users lost sight of
Exposing Crime is Not a Crime (It Never Was)
In the eyes of rich and powerful people, those who speak about their crimes are the "criminals"
GNU/Linux Distros Abandoning Microsoft GitHub
Will curl be next to leave Microsoft GitHub?
Expect More XBox Mass Layoffs Soon If the Rumours Are True
From a Microsoft media operative
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Saturday, June 07, 2025
IRC logs for Saturday, June 07, 2025
Europe Needs to Move Away From GAFAM; The Sooner, the Better
Europe - not just the EU - must abandon GAFAM as soon as possible
The Issue Isn't GNOME's Promotion of Diversity But GNOME Corruption, Abuse, Censorship, and Worse
So-called "Conservative" (republican, pro-Trump, bigoted) people want you to think the problem with GNOME is politics
When the News Sources Become Scarce and Increasingly Full of Polluted/Contaminated 'Content' (With LLM Slop and Slop Images)
Integrity matters
"Linux" Sites That Spew Out LLM Slop
We're lacking enough material for another "Slopwatch"
Abuse Inside the Polish Patent Office (UPRP) - Part V: Breaking the Law, Just Like EPO
We'll hopefully cover some of the pertinent details later this year