03.23.20
The Fall of the UPC – Part II: Team UPC Will Pay Dearly — for Years If Not a Decade to Come — for Having Repeatedly Lied About Unitary Patent/Unified Patent Court (UPC)
So will media which participated in (e.g. amplified) these lies; will readers and clients trust them any longer?
Summary: Proponents of patent trolls such as Intellectual Ventures (which has just lost another case in the US) will no doubt carry on lying to us all; but they do so at their own expense (or peril); we’re meanwhile coordinating observation and response to the lying
IN Part I we focused on the response to the fantastic news from circles which actually create things, not litigate things. It’s rather clear that nobody really wants the UPC except few vocal monopolists and their lawyers. They try to give an impression that this is not the case, which necessitates lying constantly and also controlling debates, media etc.
The facts are on our side. People, once they actually properly understand what’s at stake, are also on our side. “However,” an associate of ours said, “as far as the UPC goes, the proponents will fuss and fume for a while but probably quiet down after trying to sow doubt. Then after around 18 months from now, beyond the average memory span of the average adult, they will pop and try to resume where they left off taking advantage of the world having forgotten the reasons against software patents and the counter arguments and counter strategies to their shilling…”
We’ll still be here to counter them.
The update at the top of this post is all that matters. The court has decided. There are no appeals. It’s final. UPC is dead. The ‘spinfest’ has thus begun. At least Mr. Ramsay can look for another job, but will he? How long before he’s treated as obsolete or as too worthless a peon? It’s not a good time to be looking for a job because of Coronavirus. Sure, it’s really depressing to a lot of people. But a good reason to be happy this week is the collapse of the UPC. FFII did a little ‘online party’ (“If you wan[t] to discuss the German decision on UPC,” Benjamin Henrion said after he made made this promise, “here is a live video conferencing room https://meet.jit.si/PatentLawDoesNotEvolveInTheSilenceAndReclusionOfATrappistMonastry …”).
“We’ll still be here to counter them.”Quite frankly, partying would come across as unprofessional. The FCC’s decision is set in stone and there’s no point ‘lobbying’.
“Some people still think Bundestag can revote with a 2/3 majority,” Henrion wrote to me, “but by reading the press release of the court. [...] But if you read the actual decision in German (I am going through the google translate decision in english), they trashed the Administrative Committee. Even juniors know that you cannot setup courts like this. I guess now Germany will ask the Commission to renegotiate. But we should be much more organized for another round.”
As we said before, it’s expected that Team UPC will rebrand and have another go with another marketing spiel, a set of strategies, a new bag of lies, new names and so on.
“The German FCC may have dangerously left an out for the UPC,” as an associate told us, “bribing and lobbying the hell out of the parliament. It may not be achievable, but they will almost certainly try all the options, legal or not.”
Well, we’ll be watching closely, as will others.
Team UPC earned nothing but scorn (even from people inside the legal “community”) and some people who belong to it have left or retired early. We named some of them. They really dislike the label “Team UPC” although few others adopted it for themselves (like “deplorables” had done).
“Team UPC earned nothing but scorn (even from people inside the legal “community”) and some people who belong to it have left or retired early.”Over the next few days we will be collecting responses to the decision without surrendering to the temptation to mock them; instead we’ll only politely rebut, however succinctly, with substance and facts. We’ll categorise the responses and explain what they tell us about the media, not the messengers, and the inaccuracy (if not fantasy) in the message.
“Thanks for the work you’ve been putting in over the years on this,” one technical person told me. “Let’s make sure it is acknowledged dead by its proponents and that it stays dead.
“It is important to drive home why this victory over the UPC is a good thing for European business and Europe in general.”
In the next part, which is imminent, we’ll start blasting the media. █
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