03.03.20
Gemini version available ♊︎Inverted Narratives: UPC Thugs Are Being Framed as Poor Victims and Patent Trolls Claim to be the Target of Violence
The collapse of the UPC served to reveal corruption in the media that covers patents (it’s lobbying, not journalism)
Summary: UPC is dead. Team UPC isn’t dead, at least not yet. We’re supposed to think that the biggest abusers of the system face life-threatening risks and the real zealots are their victims. This only harms trust in the media.
THE UPC proponents and Team UPC/lobbyists must be really desperate at this point. They spent half a decade (if not more) of their lives advocating zombies. Ignore their latest propaganda. Benjamin Henrion keeps mocking some of it.
“It’s a shame that all of his articles vanished — articles that covered (sometimes exclusively) the views of EPO staff representatives and their associates.”World Intellectual Property Review (WIPR) has just found a polite way to say “UPC is dead” (“Future of UPC as uncertain as ever, say lawyers”) and of course it didn’t bother speaking to non-lawyers. As if only lawyers exist in this world…
Now that IPProPatents has collapsed (ippropatents.com is still only an empty directory listing, just like weeks ago) Barney Dixon, a reasonably good writer who gave SUEPO a voice, is writing elsewhere. It’s a shame that all of his articles vanished — articles that covered (sometimes exclusively) the views of EPO staff representatives and their associates. Here is his new article in which the UPC is mentioned further down along with the question: “This begs the question: why did it ratify the [UPC] agreement in the first place?”
The IP industry is an important part of the UK economy. It could suffer deeply post-Brexit, as legal firms redomicile in the EU and the UK loses its place as a English speaking gateway into Europe.
Even the areas in which the UK has attempted to maintain closer relations with the EU – such as a long-mooted Unified Patent Court – have been met with confusion and indecision. First the UK ratified the agreements relating to the unitary patent and the Unified Patent Court, but has just recently said it is now pulling out of them.
This begs the question: why did it ratify the agreement in the first place?
It seems everyone is equally confused. And the reason they are confused is obvious – because the UK government does not seem to know what it wants, or even if these issues exist in the first place.
Barney Dixon says about the UPC (and other things) that the government “recently said it is now pulling out of them.”
Notice how EPO management or even the ‘preparatory’ ‘committee’ and its people have said nothing about it (yet). This shows they’re uncaring about truth, eager only to break laws, treaties, and constitutions. When the facts don’t suit them they simply hide or tell lies.
As for the media? It has been very much participating with full complicity. Irish Legal News, for example, currently spreads the lie that industry wanted the UPC. It’s the legal zealots, who aren’t even an industry, that wanted and lobbied for it. These people even crafted it.
“As for the media? It has been very much participating with full complicity.”The article barely says anything at all and the headline is intentionally misleading. The headline is basically a Big Lie and the rest of this article is just a massive copy-paste job of Team UPC, not actual reporting (e.g. “Graham Burnett-Hall, partner at London-based IP specialists Marks & Clerk, said: “Previously there was a degree of optimism about the likelihood of participation in the Unified Patent Court, even if we decided to leave the EU, but this announcement has made it clear that will not happen.””)
We’ve also just noticed a massive understatement from Law 360.
So-called ‘news’ sites of the litigation giants never ever speak to even one opponent of the UPC… even though those are the large majority of the people out there. This is corrupt journalism disguised as professionalism. It’s like think tanks. Here’s what they wrote outside the paywall, barely supporting the headline:
The U.K.’s announcement last week that it will not participate in the European Union’s Unified Patent Court system is another major blow to the long-gestating project, a setback that may lead companies to question its viability and casts doubt on whether it will ever launch.
After years of saying it would seek to remain part of the UPC even after its departure from the EU, the U.K. government did an about-face Thursday, pulling out of the system and saying that because the court would apply EU law, participating “is inconsistent with our aims of becoming an independent, self-governing nation.”
Who at this point seriously thinks that the UPC stands a chance? It’s just delusional.
“Who at this point seriously thinks that the UPC stands a chance? It’s just delusional.”The UPC was without a doubt promoted by firms whose main clients are aggressors and trolls. Evan Langdon at Watchtroll currently ‘perfumes’ patent trolls as “PAEs”, but we know their modus operandi and the damage caused by them. As a new example, consider this victim that makes Free software and was sued by a troll this year. We’ve mentioned it in our latest Daily Links, quoting a rather polite message which stated: “The ability to issue useless patents has created an entire industry. There is now a whole class of “inventors” who file obvious patents with the sole purpose of suing real entrepreneurs once the technology is inevitably perfected. These “inventors” have no plans to create a product. They are simply trolls hiding under a bridge waiting for real entrepreneurs to cross. All they want is to collect a toll by gaming America’s flawed patent system.”
Guess how Law 360 covered it. Right from the headline it’s casting the victim of the troll as “Inciting Death Threats Against IP Atty”. This so-called ‘IP’ attorney is a patent troll and the site is shamelessly promoting a false narrative wherein patent trolls pretend to be the victims and the victims are “aggressors” — a common theme these days in the Free software world.
“Welcome to the world of inverted narratives — a world where victims of trolls are murderers, trolls and their lobbyists are poor/impoverished victims, challenged bogus patents — in-suit — are merely being “attacked” (we wrote a lot about this spin over the years), aggressors are “protecting” and so on.”Such is the effect of lawyers controlling the media which covers patent issues. Basically, someone out there sent a threatening (and anonymous) message and this is somewhat creatively being blamed on a polite blog post that describes the lawsuit.
Welcome to the world of inverted narratives — a world where victims of trolls are murderers, trolls and their lobbyists are poor/impoverished victims, challenged bogus patents — in-suit — are merely being “attacked” (we wrote a lot about this spin over the years), aggressors are “protecting” and so on. █
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