Bonum Certa Men Certa

A Patent System for Giant Corporations Like Boeing and Airbus, Not for Ordinary European Citizens

Video download link



Summary: There's hardly any illusion left that the patent system in Europe is supposed to serve the public; instead what we're seeing is an office that lost sight of its purpose and is instead trying to make law firms and their largest clients richer

THE EPO is out of control. It's granting patents like water and examiners are made to feel like jelly. They joined the Office to challenge themselves (and patent applications) intellectually, not to be mindless clerks with steep quotas/targets. It's the difference between peer-reviewing scholarly papers (unique) and marking school exams. One teaches you a lot, the latter is mostly repetitive and robotic.



"How many people can afford 9 years of legal bills?"In the video about I'm not going into the depths of this latest high-profile patent to be revoked/nullified (Konstanze Richter wrote about the EPO Boards of Appeal doing so, but it's akin to another Juve marketing piece for law firms); instead I show this latest utter nonsense (warning: epo.org link) from António Campinos, who just like Benoît Battistelli fills up the "news" section with self-promotional trash, not news. They're just floating a whole bunch of nonsense about quality and processes. The "news" section of epo.org became a stream of lies (JUVE reprints those verbatim); ask examiners what they think of it and they'll gladly say that themselves! Many stakeholders feel the same way, astonished to see what the Office says about e-EQE blunders and kangaroo courts. SACEPO is another one of those subservient and propagandistic entities akin to think tanks, hardly a substitute/surrogate to oversight, audit, scrutiny, outside assessment and so on. Also check the composition of SACEPO and other such "Working Parties"; they're industry-tied or industry-led. Large companies.

The above were both published this morning, minutes or about an hour apart. There's nothing unusual about that. In fact, we've been getting accustomed to seeing all sorts of stories like that. We see them all the time, but they've recently been relegated to Daily Links. Many are in disciplines we don't grasp too well, unlike software patents. Notice the part where the EPO is pushing proprietary Microsoft Office formats (DOCX) while internally outsourcing all the key operations to Microsoft. It's illegal.

The cost of the EPO's corruption/incompetence is huge. As pointed out in the video above, you need to fight for almost a decade over one single patent. To quote:

The US aerospace company Boeing and its European competitor Airbus have been fighting at the EPO for almost nine years. The disputed Boeing patent EP 1 798 872 protects a method for handling aircraft communications.


Yes, that's right, 9 years. Almost half a patent's total term. Who is this system designed to serve and encourage? How many people can afford 9 years of legal bills?

Recent Techrights' Posts

Representing and Speaking for Animals
If I ever choose to take this matter to tribunal with animals-centric NGOs on my side, it'll get some press coverage for sure
Slopwatch: Fake Articles About "Linux", Slop Images in VentureBeat, Linux Foundation Spam Made With LLM Slop and Slop Images
The only relief or upside - if any exists - is that the pace of slop was down a bit this week
 
Financiers and Sponsors of the Slop Hype (Pyramid Scheme Waiting to End, Bubble That Will Inevitably Implode)
It's also burning the planet
Slopwatch: Fake Articles About "Linux", Google Helps Ponzi Schemes and Slopfarms in Google News
Slopfarms are a real pain
Gemini Links 29/08/2025: Retiring at 62 and URL Filtering HTTP(S) Proxy on Qubes OS
Links for the day
Links 29/08/2025: Lisa Cook Sues Convicted Felon and Backdoor Mandate in UK Resisted
Links for the day
Links 29/08/2025: Arti 1.5.0, War on Public Health (CDC), and Slop 'Bros' Made to Pay for Their Mass Plagiarism
Links for the day
No, 4Chan is Not Fighting for You by Lawyering Up Against Ofcom (UK)
Don't mistake proto-fascists for people who "fight for you". They don't.
Downlplaying the Impact of "UEFI 9/11" is a Losing Strategy
we won't publish much whilst on holiday
In Many Places in the World Vista 11 "Market Share" is Going Down, Not Up
In some countries Windows is already down to third place or lower
More Microsoft-Connected Layoffs, at Least Third Time This Month! (Also Another Death on Campus)
Microsoft as a "gaming" company is where studios, projects, games, and even developers come to die
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Thursday, August 28, 2025
IRC logs for Thursday, August 28, 2025
Gemini Links 29/08/2025: Poems, Games, and Java 25 Performance
Links for the day
Links 28/08/2025: Greenland 'Interferences' by US and Skinnerboxes to Get Banned in Korean Schools
Links for the day
Richard Stallman (RMS) Talk in Ethereum Cypherpunk Congress Will be Remote
This past week RMS received lots of accolades online
The Register MS (Run by Microsoft Operatives): Free Software is Putin, Hence Evil and Dangerous
The current editor in chief is an American Microsofter, the previous one went to work for Google (US)
Links 28/08/2025: Chatbots Distorting/Fabricating History and Also Driving Suicide
Links for the day
Gemini Links 28/08/2025: Back in Japan and Why "Hacker News" Sucks
Links for the day
A Much-Needed Wake-up Call to Users of Wordpress.com, Blogspot, Substack and All Those Other Outsourced (and Centralised) Platforms
There are several lessons in there
The UEFI 9/11 - Part II - Campaign of Censorship and Defamation Against Critics
In dictatorships, humour serves an important role. It's tragic.
Open Source Initiative (OSI) Resists Software Freedom, Even by Attacking Its Own
The OSI is compromised
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Wednesday, August 27, 2025
IRC logs for Wednesday, August 27, 2025
Slopwatch: linuxsecurity.com, Slopfarms in Google News, and More
Some readers of ours end up sending us links that are from slopfarms, not realising those are slopfarms
Gemini Links 27/08/2025: Katrina Memories and Google Versus Software Freedom
Links for the day
Links 27/08/2025: Police Against Media Freedom in the UK, Energy-Hungry Countries Targeted by China
Links for the day
Microsoft Windows Fell to All-Time Lows in Egypt This Summer, Vista 11 Adoption Decreases While GNU/Linux Increases
Vista 11 is going down rather than up
Links 27/08/2025: Microsoft Demoralises Staff With Slop Demands, Leaving Mastodon Explained
Links for the day
12 Hours Ago The Register MS Published a Fake (Paid-for) Article, But This One for a Change Did Not Promote a Ponzi Scheme
There are also Free software alternatives, but they don't pay The Register MS for "synthetic" so-called 'journalism'
More People Need to Call Out and Put a Stop to Serial Sloppers
Unless slopfarms are stopped, people will read and share Microsoft propaganda made by chatbots
Gemini Links 27/08/2025: Headphones and Tartarus
Links for the day
Morale at Microsoft is Terrible (Proprietary Plagiarism Machines Have No Future, LLM Slop is a Bubble)
The slop sceptics/critics are going to have lots of "told you so" moments
GNOME "governance issues, staff reduction, etc." amidst Albanian whistleblowing and women trafficking
Notice the connection to Software Freedom Conservancy (SFC) and GNOME
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Tuesday, August 26, 2025
IRC logs for Tuesday, August 26, 2025