Bonum Certa Men Certa

Today's EPO is Pursuing 'Troll Justice' (Bullying and Blackmail), Not Real Justice

Judges have also been demoted to 'yes men' of the President

Koch delay at ILO



Summary: The bullying tactics of the EPO and of patent trolls have so much in common; in the interim whatever remained of a legal system inside the EPO has been diminished or reduced to symbolism with a massive (and growing) backlog of over 10,000 cases and ILO-AT can take half a decade to examine staff grievances (sometimes more than half a decade, see screenshot above)

There's no justice at the European Patent Office (EPO); nowadays it is just a patent-granting 'machine' with an illusion of checks and balances (recall Carl Josefsson's worrying past). Battistelli and then Campinos openly promote software patents in Europe "as AI" or "as 4IR" or "as "IoT", unlike Brimelow with "as such" (whatever that even meant). Does anyone seriously think that Josefsson's people will put an end to it? They cannot, they're still controlled by Campinos, like Battistelli before him. Josefsson got the job partly from Battistelli and he too understands that they're incapable of/can't quite do the job, based on this new interview. There's already a backlog of over 10,000 cases and it'll get worse. From the interview:



he president of the EPO’s Boards of Appeal says he is not certain whether the boards’ revised rules of procedure will result in a “front-loading of requests” but has insisted that they should make proceedings more predictable.

Speaking to Managing IP, Carl Josefsson says the revised rules will reduce a party’s options to amend its case as appeal proceedings progress and make it more difficult to withhold submissions for tactical reasons.

However, he confirms the views of some regular users of the system that there will be an increased workload for first instance departments.

“Whether these [the rules] will, in the end, really lead to a ‘precautionary front-loading’ of numerous different lines of argument remains to be seen. After all, procedural economy is in the interests of the parties too,” Josefsson says.


As expected, the person who represents an attack on judges' independence (he himself is a symptom of the problem) downplays the issue at hand. Even if more people were employed by the board, that still would not resolve the principal issue, which is lack of independence (not capacity).

In the eyes of patent maximalists, this isn't a problem anymore. IP Kat used to write about this problem routinely, but key people have left; it became an amplifier of patent extremists at Watchtroll (most patent links this week are to that blog), so rhetorics of judge- and court-bashing are fine with them. It's just those 'perky' judges who keep turning patents down. How dare they? That interferes with rubber-stamping efforts by profit-motivated offices.

The EPO's management is more or less 'in the pockets' of the litigation 'industry'. They're a loose cannon. It's litigation, litigation, litigation...

"The EPO's management is more or less 'in the pockets' of the litigation 'industry'. They're a loose cannon."Every day for well over a week now, sometimes by amplifying EUIPO "tweets" and sometimes directly, the EPO promoted a new 'study' (actually not new but repetition of prior years). This so-called 'study' is a paid-for lie, part of the EPO's programme that bribes scholars to bolster patent trolls' lies. Here's the latest such "tweet": "IPR-intensive industries have become even more integral to GDP, employment and trade in Europe."

Those industries do a lot more than this "IPR" thing, which is a propaganda term anyway (patents are not rights and they're not property). The other EPO "tweets" aren't much better; retweeted by EPO PR people was the Research and Innovation Department of Enterprise Ireland, which said: "The High-Growth Business Conference invites a variety of speakers to discuss IP and the values of patenting. This includes Yann Ménière, Chief Economist at @EPOorg who is an IP expert..."

"...this isn't about startups but about trolls."He's not an "IP" expert and there's no such thing as "IP" (it's not property). Why does the Irish government associate with that disgraced bunch of Battistelli? Possibly because of this: "Join us in Dublin where Jürgen Graner, Founder & CEO, Globalator, will share his expertise in transactions powered by intellectual assets. If you are a #startup, don't miss this event..."

It doesn't say so in the tweet, but this isn't about startups but about trolls. It's an event in which the EPO is working for patent trolls (the litigation 'industry' has taken over what used to exist for science and technology). There are more LESI tweets, in effect promoting a front group of patent trolls. Over in Law360 there's now this new article about patent trolls that prey on the British market, partly enabled by the EPO's fake patents and the intentional lie known as "FRAND" (Law360 is always eager to repeat this propaganda term). To quote:

For four days beginning Oct. 21, the U.K. Supreme Court will hear arguments in the joined cases of Unwired Planet International Ltd. v. Huawei Technologies Co. Ltd., Huawei Technologies v. Conversant Wireless Licensing SARL, and ZTE Corp. v. Conversant Wireless Licensing.[1] Among the questions presented is whether an English court — specifically, the Patents Court for England and Wales — is a proper forum for determining the terms of a global license for the use of fair, reasonable and nondiscriminatory-committed standard-essential patents.[2]


We wrote about this case many times before. It serves as a timely warning about the real beneficiaries. Those are patent trolls. They don't actually make anything; they just sue and threaten to sue.

Recent Techrights' Posts

Speed of GNU/Linux
The media seldom speaks of the dangers of "proprietary software"
Proprietary Windows Versus "Linux" News (Trying to Keep People on Windows, Never Exploring GNU/Linux)
Good editors know better how to recognise threats and not give them lip service
Ensuring That Every Computer User Anywhere in the World Can Take Control of All His or Her Computers
We must fight the people who attack general-purpose computing, in particular those who push this agenda very aggressively inside Linux
Gemini Links 28/04/2025: Autism and Structural Navigation
Links for the day
What Happened to the Open Source Initiative (OSI) Elections: The Purge, the Cover-up, and the Witch-hunts
OSI has gone "full Microsoft"
 
If Tesla Shares (and Alleged Value) Fell 55% (From $489 to $222) in a Few Months Maybe It's Not Worth Anything At All (It's Just Gambling)
Tesla swasticars have turned from a "status symbol" into a "public embarrassment" and cause for casual humiliation
Coming Soon: Microsoft Fake Results, Mass Layoffs, and Silence About All the People Microsoft Pressured to "Quit" (So That They Don't Get Counted as Layoffs)
there will be more mass layoffs
Chromebooks' Adoption in Sweden No Longer Depends on Schools
School breaks are when classrooms are shut
No, IBM is Not Investing $150 Billion in the US and It Doesn't Even Have That Kind of Money
Here we go again... media as a vehicle of lobbying and misinformation
Leak: The EPO's General Consultative Committee (GCC) Does Not Consult Staff on Crucial Matters and Bypasses the Administrative Council (AC) to Do Illegal Things
violations against the EPO's very staff
New Leaks Coming Soon, We Maintain 100% Record of Successful Resistance to Censorship
We won't be told what we can and cannot say (especially when it's true)
Central African Republic (CAR): Vista 11 is Only ~0.2% Market Share
99.8% to go!
BSD and GNU/Linux Replaced Microsoft in Secure Servers, All Microsoft Has Left is LLM Slop for Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt (FUD)
the FUD machine never rests
Gemini Links 28/04/2025: A Simple Task Tracking and Auto-Prioritization Tool and Other Programs
Links for the day
Links 28/04/2025: Canada's Election, Pakistan-India Conflict
Links for the day
Glue Inside Your Pizza (or Why People Will Get Fed Up With Slop)
People are given "answers" from non-intelligence word dumpsters
Links 28/04/2025: Cyberattacks Happening, Chatbots Disappointing, and "Free Speech Under Fire"
Links for the day
Phone Adoption Very Low in Vatican, Windows Usage Fell Nonetheless
Even in places where people still use desktops/laptops most of the time (and have access to these) Windows is gradually losing ground
GNU/Linux 9% in Cuba, Vista 11 Waning, Android Dominant
Microsoft has pretty much lost Cuba
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Sunday, April 27, 2025
IRC logs for Sunday, April 27, 2025
In 24 Countries Observed by statCounter Vista 11 is Still Less Than a Quarter of Windows Users Despite All Other Versions Being 'Expired'
They ought to move to GNU/Linux
Links 27/04/2025: Pope Goodbyes, "Politics of Fear", Slop Redux and More Google Shutdowns (Google Debt Had Grown This Year)
Links for the day
Links 27/04/2025: Serenity Dialectics, Hockey Jersey Ethics, and More
Links for the day
Links 27/04/2025: Death of Nest Thermostats, Death of Metaverse
Links for the day
Links 27/04/2025: Projects Workflow and Discovering Technology
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Saturday, April 26, 2025
IRC logs for Saturday, April 26, 2025
Microsoft Isn't on the Map in USSR
To them, it's either Google or Yandex
In Central America Windows Became a Small Force
These are countries where Windows used to have well over 95% of the "market"
What's Very Vexing to GAFAM, EPO and Others Is That It's Incredibly Hard to Censor Us (and Nobody Ever Successfully Did That Before)
resist, do not capitulate
Site May be Even Faster Now
It basically takes less than a tenth of a second to serve the page
Receiving SLAPPs and Collecting Them Like Trophies (the SLAPPs Always Fail)
People who file lawsuits bring even more attention to themselves (or to embarrassing statements about them)
Year of GNU/Linux on the Laptop?
It's not happening only in Lenovo
What People Must Understand About the Open Source Initiative (OSI)
some facts about the Open Source Initiative (OSI)
Many of the Scandals Are Interconnected (Overlapping People and Corporations)
We're only getting started
More Copyright Lawsuits Against LLM Slop Providers and Suppliers of LLM Slopfarms Would Benefit Society
It's not just bad for the Web and for society; it's also legally dangerous
Links 26/04/2025: General Assassinated in the Town of Balashikha, US Promoting Seafloor Mining
Links for the day
Links 26/04/2025: Facebook Layoffs Again, Remembering What's Real, and Say No to Mass Surveillance
Links for the day
Links 26/04/2025: NOAA Budget Cuts and "Dog Days Ahead"
Links for the day
In defence of JD Vance, death of Pope Francis
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
Three Years in Prison for Disney Employee’s ‘Menu Hacking’: The Economic Fallout of Digital Menus
Reprinted with permission from Ryan Farmer
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Friday, April 25, 2025
IRC logs for Friday, April 25, 2025