Bonum Certa Men Certa

The EPO's Low Patent Quality is Not Just Suicidal; It is Illegal

The attack on judges is also illegal

We increased production by 80%. You increased production? You mean you destroyed patent validity.



Summary: With help from the besieged Boards of Appeal (BoAs), which complain that they can no longer judge cases (appeals/referrals) autonomously and independently, the Office in Munich continues to grossly violate the EPC and mimic China's ridiculously low patent bar, which even formally permits patents on algorithms

LAWLESSNESS is the norm in EPOnia. We're expected to think that it's OK for the EPO to violate the law every day. We're also expected to think we're so much better than China when it comes to tackling corruption, accountability and so on. The EPO has caused some of these myths to shatter, leaving some of us growingly disillusioned. What is the EPO trying to become? What is its role model?



Well, look no further than this latest EPO announcement. (warning: epo.org link) (promoted via Twitter as well)

"We're also expected to think we're so much better than China when it comes to tackling corruption, accountability and so on."The EPO nowadays gets close to the patent printing machine that is CNIPA (formerly SIPO) -- the patent office where quality is a joke nowadays! Is Europe as well going down the route of assessing millions of applications per year? Yes, millions....

There aren't millions of inventions per year and those that exist rarely merit a patent. But does today's EPO understand this simple fact? Does it care? Perhaps like WIPO it won't sleep peacefully until there are millions of patent applications per day. Yes!! Innovation!!!

"This is typical 'Battistelli operandi'.""At their annual meeting in Suzhou today," EPO wrote, "EPO President António Campinos and the Commissioner of the China National Intellectual Property Administration (CNIPA), Shen Changyu, agreed to enhance their bilateral co-operation in the framework of the Patent Cooperation Treaty (PCT). The aim is to give patent applicants filing an international patent application in English at the CNIPA as Receiving Office the choice to opt for the EPO as their International Searching Authority (ISA)."

Yes, there are photo ops as usual. This is typical 'Battistelli operandi'.

It didn't take longer than a day for World Intellectual Property Review (WIPR) to remind us that it's not a news site but a propaganda outlet of the EPO and other litigation lunatics. They used to have one or two good writers (who covered EPO corruption), but not anymore. Nowadays they're copy-pasting from the EPO, almost as though the EPO sends over 'prepared' articles for so-called 'editors' to just mildly edit. It's no secret that the PR department of the EPO is corrupt; they have 'back channels' at WIPR, so they actively intervene in the editorial work. The problem isn't limited to EPOnia by the way. Earlier this week News Corp. promoted the lie that patents and ideas are the same thing; the author 'measured' the wrong thing, as usual (when the media is owned by billionaires it looks this bad). The EPO was also mentioned:

The number of domestic patents issued to British companies and entrepreneurs declined by 8 per cent last year, the biggest dip in five years, as Japan, China and the United States forged ahead in the global innovation race.

The 3,001 patents granted to British inventors by the UK’s intellectual property office in 2018 represents the most significant year-on-year decline since 2013, when there was a 17 per cent fall.


So what? Maybe they just don't bother applying. Maybe they realise that many granted patents aren't worth anything; the EPO too saw a decline in the number of patent applications and it's trying to fake 'demand' by lowering the bar. Does this bother large law firms? Of course not, it's a temporary boon for them.

Earlier this week we saw Sanam Habib and Maeve O’Flynn (Finnegan, Henderson, Farabow, Garrett & Dunner, LLP) celebrating the EPO lowering the patent bar to grant illegal software patents (in violation of the EPC) under the guise of "AI", alongside "mathematical methods" (because all of these things are just maths).

In Mondaq they published:

Mathematical methods, artificial intelligence and machine learning

Guidelines: G-II 3.3 and G-II 3.3.1

Last year, to be in line with the ever growing area of artificial intelligence (AI), the Guidelines added a brand new section for AI. This year the EPO has updated the section relating to patentability of AI and machine learning, and mathematical methods to clarify that "term such as 'support vector machine', 'reasoning engine' or 'neural network' may, depending on the context, merely refer to abstract models or algorithms and thus do not, on their own, necessarily imply the use of a technical means. This has to be taken into account when examining whether the claimed subject-matter has a technical character as a whole (Art. 52(1), (2) and (3))".

Classifying text documents solely in respect of their textual content is not regarded as per se a technical purpose, but a linguistic one. Care needs to be taken in the presentation of the technical purpose of semantic AI systems.


So for two weeks now examiners at the EPO have been put under pressure -- formalised in words -- to grant software patents that call themselves "AI". The EPO has just tweeted: "Artificial Intelligence presents the patent system with a number of challenges & opportunities. Find out more about them here..."

"Surely these people know that the Boards of Appeal (all of them) lack independence, but large firms like Finnegan and Kilburn & Strode couldn't care any less about the law; all they measure is money, just like EPO management. They're even breaking the law to accomplish this.""You exploit this buzzword to grant illegal software patents courts would toss out," I responded. And people generally agree with me on this. Even examiners! Are they being reduced to buzzword interpreters?

Here's a new comment by "Quality, what do you expect", who says that if "it is thus to make money by granting useless patents, I think this is a distortion of what the granting procedure should be."

The full comment:



I have to disagree as betting that no opposition will come is a mind set up which I cannot consider wise or as an example of good practice.

If it is thus to make money by granting useless patents, I think this is a distortion of what the granting procedure should be.

It is difficult to believe that all applications looked at by an examiner end up with a grant. If it is to close both eyes in order to achieve a given production target, I might show some understanding in view of the present situation at the EPO, but I cannot consider this a being correct.


The problem of patent scope isn't limited to software. We've long complained about patents being granted on nature and life too (it's like Alice and Mayo at SCOTUS).

Kilburn & Strode LLP's Jamie Atkins has just promoted in third party sites his new article about the EPO wasting time by dealing with patents that are obviously invalid and fake, even illegal. By sending the case to a tribunal the Office terrorises in violation of the EPC!

The Board of Appeal (BoA) recently issued its preliminary comments in preparation for Oral Proceedings in, arguably, the most high profile appeal at the EPO in recent years (T 0844/18).

The only issue for the Oral Proceedings is whether the priority claim of the patent, namely EP2771468 is valid. Patent EP2771468 is one of the early foundational CRISPR cases, jointly held by the Broad Institute, MIT and Harvard. In a Decision in March 2018, the Opposition Division (OD) found that the priority claim is not valid and revoked the patent for lack of novelty. The Patentees appealed the OD Decision and the Oral Proceedings before the Board of Appeal on this critical issue are scheduled for 13-17 January 2020.

The outcome of this Oral Proceedings could significantly change the patent landscape at the EPO.


Surely these people know that the Boards of Appeal (all of them) lack independence, but large firms like Finnegan and Kilburn & Strode couldn't care any less about the law; all they measure is money, just like EPO management. They're even breaking the law to accomplish this.

Recent Techrights' Posts

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
 
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
Links 08/06/2025: Security Lapses, CISA Cuts, and More
Links for the day
Gemini Links 07/06/2025: Mime Types and Geminisphere Introduction
Links for the day
Links 07/06/2025: Slop Companies Retain All Private Data, More Books Banned in the US
Links for the day
Gemini Links 07/06/2025: "A Monk's Guide to Happiness" and "Wireless Earbuds"
Links for the day
Links 07/06/2025: More Rumours of Mass Layoffs in Microsoft's XBox Division, New COVID Variant
Links for the day
Drug Addiction is a Real Problem, It Destroys Families
a rather sensitive matter
Abuse Inside the Polish Patent Office (UPRP) - Part IV: Political Scrutiny and Errors/Inconsistencies in Official Documents
When such organisations receive scrutiny they start focusing on cover-up and muzzling of facts (or crushing people who say the truth)
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Friday, June 06, 2025
IRC logs for Friday, June 06, 2025