And We're Back to the EPO... Software Patents Flooding a Deeply Crooked System, Piggybacking Buzzwords Like "Hey Hi" (AI)
A couple of days ago SUEPO published a couple of links to new articles ("Discover the latest headlines: July & August 2024 press articles"). The one in English was already included in our Daily Links ("EPO v USPTO: In-house reveal patent quality concerns"), but it's behind a paywall only SUEPO members can bypass (short of paying the publisher, which is in the pockets of notorious crooks).
There's a bit of a story behind the article in German (from Süddeutsche Zeitung, which sold out to the EPO after it had exposed it about a decade ago; Benoît Battistelli vandalised their journalism about the EPO and they didn't bother investigating the abuses of António Campinos at all).
It's very rare to see articles about European software patents these days; those patents just get granted quite a lot and nobody scrutinises that practice anymore, not even FFII (which is barely active).
To the credit of SUEPO, it did comment on what Süddeutsche Zeitung had published, contacting the staff as follows: (when they say "patent applications in the field of artificial intelligence" they mean software patent applications, or algorithms spiced up with the junk buzzword du jour)
Dear Colleagues,
The Süddeutsche Zeitung of 12 August 2024 contains a detailed article highlighting the fact that companies from Asia and the USA are filing many more patent applications in the field of artificial intelligence than European companies.
What is special about the article in the Süddeutsche Zeitung is that several patent attorneys are quoted and that the European Patent Office is heavily criticised: the EPO wants to be fast and efficient, but it is much more important to have valid and internationally enforceable patents, especially in the field of AI and digital simulation.
The intention of Mr Campinos to continue simplification of processes and procedures and to maintain timeliness in order to bring certainty to the market is now under severe attack. Whereas the EPO published 64.613 granted patents in 2014, last year the number of published patents already reached 104.609. At the end of 2014 the patent granting procedure was staffed by 4.221 examiners, whereas at the end of 2023, the staff count was down at 3.987 examiners.
The news that, as a result, one of the largest applicants for European patents, namely Siemens AG, is considering turning away from the EPO should be of great concern. However, the Central Staff Committee is stunned that since 12 August 2024, the top management of the EPO has not issued even a basic internal statement on the allegations raised. As the criticism could harm the EPO’s reputation, it would have been essential to address it promptly to maintain public trust.
For the past decade, the Central Staff Committee has consistently pointed out that the combination of increasing production pressure and the New Career System would lead to quality issues. Despite these warnings, top management has dismissed such concerns.
In this open letter, the Central Staff Committee calls for a reaction from the President.
Sincerely yours,
The Central Staff Committee – CSC
We occasionally add links to Daily Links regarding illegally-granted software patents getting squashed, either in courts or some appeal processes. That's not cheap. Challenging and successfully invalidating even one single patent is a long and expensive process. The real solution is to not grant these in the first place, but EPO management hoards money (for gratuitous bonuses) while offloading all the real-world costs to the rest of society - so that European society fills the bank accounts of patent lawyers, merely to prove one's innocence. This is not OK and the EU playing along by providing kangaroo courts that charge tens of thousands in courts fees is consciously destroying SMEs to appease litigation firms and their lobbyists. █