07.18.19

Media Not Interested in G 2/19, Which Demonstrates Patent Justice is Nowadays Impossible at the EPO

Posted in Europe, Law, Patents at 4:45 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Keep out, journalists…

Summary: The EPO spreads patent injustices to other countries and courts; the media is miraculously enough not interested, almost as though there’s a coordinated blackout

NOT a single patent blog is writing about G 2/19 at the moment. Nothing. We’ve checked. We’re not surprised, either.

It’s like media access is being obstructed (it isn’t, as we clarified earlier this week and I’ve urged some local bloggers to attend) or media is instructed not to deal with it anymore. IP Kat was sanctioned by the European Patent Office (EPO) after it had covered the attacks by Battistelli (and now António Campinos) on judges. How can these judges stop European software patents later this year? They cannot. We don’t expect a ‘European Alice’ or 35 U.S.C. § 101.

“Will EPO bring patents on life and nature to the UK as well?”A new comment from IP Kat (posted in the blog by Kant) said: “Apparently, Haar is indeed in Munich.” So says a rigged panel? We shall see. We are going to publish the final part of our series in a moment (see Part 1, Part 2 and Part 3).

It is meanwhile being reported that the UKIPO is cooperating with the EPO. Is this the effect of Rowan? Recall "Stephen Rowan: From UK-IPO to Operation Coverup of Team António Campinos" (published recently).

Ben Wodecki (IPPro Magazine) wrote: “The EPO is able to help under its bilateral cooperation agreement with UKIPO, which entered into force in July 2018.”

The ‘Rowan effect’? Will EPO bring patents on life and nature to the UK as well?

To quote Wodecki:

The European Patent Office (EPO) has agreed to conduct some biotechnology patent searches for the UK Intellectual Property Office (UKIPO) to help tackle its large backlog of applications.

UKIPO said it has recruited and trained patent examiners in this area, but “remain[s] unable to deliver the timeliness that we want for our customers, particularly in relation to searches”.

The EPO is able to help under its bilateral cooperation agreement with UKIPO, which entered into force in July 2018.

IP Kat is meanwhile reporting on Richard Arnold’s promotion in “Mr Justice Arnold to become Lord Justice Arnold: congratulations!“

“…external members of the Enlarged Board of Appeal can be problematic and help form a biased, rigged, stacked panel of judges. The final part of our series is about it and will be out soon. External members of the Enlarged Board of Appeal of the EPO can be hand-picked for ‘favourable’ (to Office management) outcomes.”So British courts will soon have a connection to the EPO as well. Wodecki (IPPro Magazine) noted: “In March 2016, he was appointed as an external member of the Enlarged Board of Appeal of the European Patent Office (EPO)…”

As we shall show in our next post, external members of the Enlarged Board of Appeal can be problematic and help form a biased, rigged, stacked panel of judges. The final part our series about it will be out soon. External members of the Enlarged Board of Appeal of the EPO can be hand-picked for ‘favourable’ (to Office management) outcomes.

From Wodecki’s article:

Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II has approved the appointment of judge Richard Arnold to the UK Court of Appeals.
Arnold served as a High Court of Justice judge in the Chancery Division from 2008 and was appointed to be judge in charge of the Patents Court in April 2013.

In March 2016, he was appointed as an external member of the Enlarged Board of Appeal of the European Patent Office (EPO).

During the high profile patent dispute between Warner-Lambert and Mylan/Actavis, it was justice Arnold’s rejection of Warner-Lambert’s arguments on the basis of lack of an inventive step that the Court of Appeal’s ruled as correct.

Going back to IP Kat, earlier this week Rose Hughes write about a Board of Appeal decision, but still said not a word about the more important Haar case that started yesterday and had a seemingly stacked panel of judges to render the case inadmissible. Hughes wrote about T 0439/17 instead:

In T 0439/17 (published online 1 July 2019), the Board of Appeal of the EPO considered the circumstances under which a third party may intervene in an opposition. In general, a third party may intervene in opposition proceedings, after the opposition period has expired, if infringement proceedings relating to the patent have been started against the third party (Article 105(1)(a) EPC). The meaning of “infringement proceedings” under this provision has presented some difficulties, given the diversity of potential “patent infringement” related court proceedings (civil and criminal) throughout EPC member states.

[...]

KCC also argued that the admissibility of the accession need not necessarily be assessed at the precise time of the submission. Other subsequent events (e.g. the bringing of an infringement action), should also be taken into account. KCC pointed to Rule 89 EPC as providing the possibility for ex tunc assessment, in particular the wording “the [statement to initiate proceedings] is only deemed to have been made when the [fee] prescribed has been paid”. The Board also dismissed this argument (r. 13). The Board commented that the wording used in Rule 89 EPC was used throughout the EPC and was not considered to have a retroactive legal effect. The appeal was dismissed.

T 0439/17 therefore confirms that pre-infringement evidence procurement procedures in national courts are not considered sufficient to allow a third party to intervene in opposition proceedings. The Boards of Appeal maintain that the intervention under Article 105(1)(a) EPC is to be considered “a procedurally exceptional situation, which is justified only by a substantial legitimate interest of the assumed infringer to enter the opposition proceedings” (T 1713/11, r.2.2). The BA thus seeks to prevent the definition of “infringement proceedings” in Article 105(1)(a) EPC from being elaborated to encompass national procedures beyond an infringement action per se. The onus is thus on potential infringers wishing to avoid lengthy and expensive national revocation proceedings to pay close attention to newly granted European patents, such that they can file timely oppositions of their own. The BA stresses that there can be no benefit of hindsight.

T 0439/17 and every other decision very much depend on G 2/19, which questions the legitimacy of all decisions issued in recent years, just like one single ILO-AT judgment rendered perhaps hundreds of others ‘invalid’ (Battistelli ignored that anyway).

We don’t suppose the EPO will say anything at all about G 2/19; it hasn’t mentioned it for a long time (probably months) and yesterday it wrote: “The EPO’s #SocialReport2018 is out! Our multinational staff, based in 4 amazing cities is what makes the EPO such a success story! Read all the facts and figures here: http://bit.ly/2Sgn3Hw pic.twitter.com/p2aoSf8mui”

As we explained before, the EPO bombarded with puff pieces the very moment G 2/19 started, painting itself with “ethics” and “peace”. These puff pieces were perfectly timed to distract… or to divert attention away from the violation of the EPC (and stacked panel chosen to thwart justice). It is abundantly clear that the location of the judges is outside the EPC’s geographical scope:

The EPO’s PR people keep dictating to European media what to do/say about the EPO (or avoid covering). Not too hard a task when there’s so much bribery money at their disposal and they indeed use it all the time to bribe publishers in creative, “innovative” ways…

The UPC Preparatory Committee and Alan Johnson (Bristows LLP) are once again desperately trying (yes, again!) to create an illusion of UPC ‘progress’ as they recently admitted to FT (they admitted they try to create a false impression). How can they justify advertising false job ads almost 4 years ago? For jobs that will never exist…

“For the 2016 applicants,” Johnson wrote, “the Preparatory Committee stated in a Press Release of 19 December 2018 that ‘Those that have applied for judicial positions in the Unified Patent Court are being contacted separately’ to enable applications to updated or withdrawn, as necessary.”

Put that on bus, Johnson! What liars and charlatans. As we’ve said many times over the years, how is it not an offense to publish false/fake job ads? █

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