"Animal office" (an internal caricature from the EPO, poking fun at António Campinos and the subservient Council)
THE U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) has had its share of bad publicity and it is routinely being sued. See all the "v Kappos", "v Lee" and "v Iancu" cases in the docket. There's at least some sense of accountability in the US patent system -- something we still lack here in Europe, as Benoît Battistelli very well demonstrated (he belongs in prison, not the top of a prestigious law school).
"...if the press isn't capable of critically assessing parts of this system, "productivity" will mean a million monopolies per year and "quality" imply immediacy."Patent law doesn't seem to apply here either; it's made up on the spot by a bunch of people who collect money and then gamble it away. They'd call software patents "CII", "ICT", "4IR", "AI" and so on.
The media in Europe is farcical and compromised. Whatever was left of it to cover EPO scandals was bribed, co-opted or blackmailed. Watch how World Intellectual Property Review (WIPR) went all rogue (after getting rid of people who exposed EPOnia's abuses every now and then). Now it does greenwashing spam [1] for corrupt European Patent Office (EPO) officials. Who writes such nonsense? Pure fluff, not journalism. They used to have some decent writers; I knew some of them in person.
There was only one exception we found this week. DW wrote: "Two patents relating to the genetic modification of apes were removed by the European Patent Office (EPO) on Thursday." [2]
So finally they mention the crazy patent maximalists who want patents on seeds, plants, mammals and various micro-organisms.
God complex comes to mind...
Any rational person would acknowledge that this is not a normal mindset but a deranged one, attributed to those who are eager and determined to bribe officials into making it OK and codified into law in defiance of public objections and protests by the still-sane. Such outlandish thinking led to the EPO even considering such ludicrous patent applications. The media should have ridiculed it for years, but where was it? Hiding in the pockets of some law firms?
The media crisis will exacerbate the patent crisis; if the press isn't capable of critically assessing parts of this system, "productivity" will mean a million monopolies per year and "quality" imply immediacy. ⬆
Related/contextual items from the news:
The European Patent Office (EPO) has published its first annual review of its current strategic plan, revealing progress on international partnerships and environmental sustainability.
Two patents relating to the genetic modification of apes were removed by the European Patent Office (EPO) on Thursday. The patents themselves still exist but can no longer include apes, an EPO spokesperson said.
Animal welfare activists have celebrated the decision as a success, including world-renowned British primatologist Jane Goodall who called it a "wise and responsible decision."
The assigning of patents resulted in "the suffering of these animals without any substantial medical benefit to man or animal," the EPO said.
The controversy arose after a US company filed two patents claiming that genetically modified chimpanzees as well as other animal species, were an invention that could be used in experiments. The patents were filed in 2012 and 2013, with 14,000 signatories supporting groups that opposed the patents.