06.20.19
Patent Professionals in Europe Have Devolved Into a Marketing Industry
It’s just a big buzzwords salad
Summary: Lies, buzzwords and hype waves is all that the patent bubble in Europe boils down to these days; loads of bogus patents get granted only for European judges to smack these down (if one can afford the court battle)
European Patent Office (EPO) President António Campinos and others were in Austria today. They tell us that the EPO has budgetary woes (it's a lie); but at the same time they blow several millions of euros per hour on a stupid, wasteful ceremony that’s a slap across the face to patent neutrality.
“The EPO has offered bribes to both media and academia in recent years, trying to get both on its side (that also means not covering EPO corruption).”We promised ourselves that this year we wouldn’t give this ceremony any publicity (even negative) because it’s mostly a distraction from bigger issues. We can certainly note that it seems plausible that the EPO now pays Euronews for PR, meaning that this publisher is as corruptible as Les Echos (which this year/week too has produced puff pieces and eliminated all the negatives). The EPO has offered bribes to both media and academia in recent years, trying to get both on its side (that also means not covering EPO corruption). Some publications that covered this festival in the early afternoon literally copied and pasted the EPO’s press release and in the late afternoon the EPO’s site had a rather dull statement. Thankfully, none of the winners had software patents; finalists with such patents won nothing. Does that mean that the EPO will quit granting bogus patents? Of course not. Maybe it won’t glorify these, but it’s still granting them by the bucket-loads.
Looking instead at the situation of the staff, there’s no word from SUEPO. They just dump a few links every now and then, but since the strike ballot was postponed (we assume it’ll come sooner or later) not much has been said. On the patent quality front, it’s all buzzwords. It has become so incredibly childish and pathetic. Law firms and EPO management are acting like marketing firms, not like patent professionals. Let us explain using this week’s examples (from the news).
Phillips Ormonde Fitzpatrick’s Alyssa Telfer wrote about how to keep monopolies in positions of perpetual monopoly — using the fiction of “AYE PEE” (IP) leveraged by their corporate lawyers. Those who still refer to patents as “IP” merely perpetuate misleading propaganda. The words in the acronym are a misfit, both technically and legally.
“The challenge of obtaining patent protection for artificial intelligence (AI) inventions from IP offices across the globe dominated discussion,” said this new article. Having eliminated some writers, WIPR (World Intellectual Property Review) now participates in illegal agenda of promoting invalid, abstract software patents by calling them "HEY HI" (AI). WIPR, which no longer covers EPO scandals, has become an utter marketer; PR rather than news and lobby rather than a publication; it’s funded by the patent microcosm and composed by relatively clueless buzzword aficionados, picking headlines with both “AYE PEE” (a lie) and “HEY HI” (fiction). Here’s another new example, entitled “Is it time for IP monopoly to come to an end in AI datasets space?”
Databases (or datasets) created by algorithms are not “HEY HI” databases; they’re computer-generated data. And there’s no “AYE PEE” on these, there might be copyright applicable somewhere and one wonders who it’s assigned to (the machine?).
Francis Gurry, the ‘other Battistelli‘ (he almosy became WIPO’s chief and might retry in the future), also props up the “HEY HI” hype so as to allow illegal, invalid software patents. We covered this in past months. This new article/preview shows him talking mostly about ‘owning’ what gets generated by some algorithms and obviously they call it “HEY HI” (the headline is “Preview: WIPO director general predicts AI liability changes”).
The director general of WIPO says that questions of liability for artificial intelligence should be linked to IP ownership as technological developments begin to change established laws.
So they justify change to laws based on hype waves? Here’s that very same front group of the patent and copyright lawyers (MIP) promoting “HEY HI” (AI) hype, or “artificial intelligence”. “In-house counsel at Getty, Expedia and the BBC tell Managing IP about the opportunities and threats posed by artificial intelligence, and call for clarification over Brexit,” said the next article. The majority of their articles in recent days are about “HEY HI”. Talk about hype…
Meanwhile, another cabal of patent lawyers lobbies for patent monopolies on life and nature. In their own words:
Coverage of the morning sessions of CDR’s Life Sciences Litigation Symposium held this week, including highlights from keynote speaker Michael Prior of the UK government’s Intellectual Property Office.
While Britain’s exit from the European Union was not a topic the Intellectual Property Office’s (IPO) Michael Prior could discuss in an official capacity, he did say that unanswered questions around when and how that exit happens “has been the biggest challenge for the IPO” in a number of years.
Prior, who serves as deputy director of patents policy, focused his keynote address on three areas: policy, filing trends and working together.
For those who have not given any thought to it, those patents help few oligarchs claim to ‘own’ the whole world; what a sham…
Thankfully the European courts continue to reject patents on life, nature, and maths. There’s no sign that these courts will be overridden. Some more UPC spin has come from Bristows (it was mentioned briefly earlier today) and Team UPC is happy to cite that as ‘proof’ of ‘progress’. But when one looks for underlying substance it turns out there’s none. It’s all marketing. █
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