10.11.19
EPO is Trying to ‘Force-Feed’ Europe Some Fake Patents by Hijacking Courts
Source: Yesterday’s tweet
Summary: Having granted a lot of dubious European Patents (to maintain constant growth despite a decreasing number of applications) the EPO seeks to subvert the court system; so far only the constitutions and the laws are being subverted — to the point where these ambitions are collapsing in Europe’s highest courts
THE U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) is nowadays seeing a lot of its patents rejected by American courts at all levels, citing a bunch of sections that greatly limit the scope of patents.
The European Patent Office (EPO) is currently at the phase the USPTO was in a decade or so ago. It’s just trying to grant more and more patents each year. António Campinos has similar demands to those of Battistelli (endless growth), so it necessarily means reduction in patent quality to the point of illegally granting patents (noncompliance with EPC). This is why we see patents on life, on plants, on seeds and even classic software patents, nowadays disguised as “IoT” or “4IR” or “AI” or whatever…
“This is why we see patents on life, on plants, on seeds and even classic software patents, nowadays disguised as “IoT” or “4IR” or “AI” or whatever…”This is what happens when a patent office is captured by nontechnical people, including lawyers, politicians and PR agents. There’s no integrity whatsoever and now they try to do the same to the court system under the guise of a so-called ‘unified’ patent court dealing with so-called ‘unitary’ patents. As Benjamin Henrion put it a couple of days ago: “Capitalize on the Unitary Patent, when “specialized” means “captured”…”.
Captured by the litigation zealots who profit from fighting, embargoes, extortion and so on.
It doesn’t take a genius to see that it would greatly damage European businesses and cripple the EU economy.
“It doesn’t take a genius to see that it would greatly damage European businesses and cripple the EU economy.”Notice the calm if not silence surrounding this coup attempt; it wasn’t successful. It just wasn’t. But only because people fight back.
Yesterday we saw this article from AA Thornton’s Rachel Havard promoted by lawyers’ media and notice that it does not even comment on the UPC at all because she probably knows it’s dead. How could she gloss over it unless she intentionally omits it?
A few days ago we saw the article “Brexit: How Do US And Overseas Investors Take Advantage?” reposted in lawyers’ media (we debunked it earlier this month). When these people speak of businesses and investors they think primarily of litigation, not science. Something like the UPC would be a boon to them and ‘open up’ the litigation ‘market’.
“Here we are edging towards the end of 2019 and comments in Kluwer Patent Blog don’t exactly predict much progress.”“Regardless of whether the UK leaves or remains in the EU, European patents will be unaffected,” said the above article. “The European Patent Office is independent of membership of the EU.”
Again, no comment at all regarding the UPC. Shades of CIPA. They address the wrong question.
Compare this to articles like this one from almost 3 years ago (“Unitary patent expected this year, despite Brexit”).
How foolish do they look now? Here we are edging towards the end of 2019 and comments in Kluwer Patent Blog don’t exactly predict much progress. It’s all negative (all the comments). The following two comments (almost latest ones) mention the EPC — not just Brexit — as a concrete barrier. To quote:
Good thoughts from Concerned Observer. One thing though: who (other than the judges of the BVerfG) cares?
In particular, you write optimistically that a decision of the BVerfG will force the EPC Contracting States to “sit up and take notice”. Really? I don’t believe that for one second. They couldn’t care less.
In these populist times, they all have better things to do, pandering cravenly to voters who have been whipped up by irresponsible rabble-rousers who give them the message that it’s quite OK to ignore anything that an expert has to say on their area of speciality.
The depth of the hole we are in is evidenced by the irresponsible behaviour (and dereliction of their duty to educate and inform) of venerable public TV channels (including the BBC) that depend for maintenance of their funding stream on decisions by politicians.
And the reply:
Max, a BVerfG ruling that the EPC is incompatible with the Basic Law of Germany would surely catch the attention of even the most complacent politicians and civil servants. However, despite the manifest and numerous ways in which the EPC departs from the minimum standards demanded by Germany’s Basic Law, it is not clear whether the BVerfG will be comfortable with reaching the only logical conclusion – namely that Germany must either withdraw from the EPC or ensure that the EPC is amended in a manner that addresses its fundamental flaws. We shall just have to wait and see.
We shall explain in our next post that lack of independence for judges remains a serious problem. It’s a lingering barrier that Campinos has done nothing to tackle. █
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