Bonum Certa Men Certa

EPO and UPC in Europe Now the Hope of Patent Maximalists, China Too is Assimilating

Unitary Patent
Picture from FFII



Summary: A form of globalisation or unification among patent offices, courts and policies can serve to highlight the great role played by rich and powerful monopolists, including their rich lawyers who profit from protectionism

Patent monopolies, including monopolies on algorithms, are not going away quite so fast. There is resistance from very rich entities. These patents need to be squashed faster than they spread to more continents. There is a struggle between practitioners and lawyers, similar to the military industrial complex conflict with a peace-seeking public. The disparity between public will and moneyed interests (promoted to the public through corporate media) is not unique. The press likes to quote patent lawyers (almost exclusively) on patent-related matters, perpetuating a cycle of ignorance that we also view as overly prevalent in the copyright debate (propaganda terms/words like "intellectual property" and "pirates" don't help).



"There is a struggle between practitioners and lawyers, similar to the military industrial complex conflict with a peace-seeking public."Despite being corrupt, the EPO, which promotes software patents in Europe, has not come under scrutiny for years. There is some very blatant article from patent lawyers, titled "securing software patents through the EPO", and it says: "In June 2014 the US Supreme Court provided its opinion in Alice Corporation v CLS Bank. This is the latest in a number of decisions from the higher US courts which confirm the considerable uncertainty which has existed in the United States in recent years as to the boundary between what is and is not patentable. The Supreme Court’s opinion follows a high-profile decision from the US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit in which the court sat en banc and reached what one of its judges referred to as “judicial deadlock”, such was the disagreement as to what should be patentable and how patentability under the US statute should be assessed."

Further down it says: "Some European practitioners could be forgiven for feeling a sense of déjà vu on reading the Supreme Court’s opinion. After a rocky few years in the late 1990s and the early part of the 21st century, the European Patent Office (EPO) has now adopted an approach which is intended to focus only on the technical features of a claim when assessing patentability. That is, the mere presence of a computer or a generic computer implementation cannot in itself save subject matter from exclusion from patentability. In order to be patentable, an invention must provide a technical solution to a technical problem defined with reference to the closest prior art, and features excluded from patentability cannot contribute to the technical solution which the invention provides. In practice, it seems that this is a slightly different route to arriving at the position advocated by the US Supreme Court in its latest opinion – the invention itself must lie outside the abstract (in the United States) and outside the specifically excluded subject matter (in Europe)."

As we showed before, while USPTO reluctantly but surely moves away from software patents Europe goes the opposite way.

Here is another pro-patents blog (of lawyers) uttering some sentiments about patents in Europe, stating that "Pro-patent bias is a serious risk at the Unified Patent Court" (that's the headline). To quote a key part: "‘When all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail.’ At the EU Patent Package Congress in Brussels, organized on 17 October by the universities of Antwerp en Louvain attended by Kluwer IP Law, several speakers tackled the issue: is the creation of a specialized court for patent litigation necessarily positive?

"For companies and innovation the answer, in theory, is yes. That’s why the Unified Patent Court (UPC) was created in the first place. Patent litigation would be centralized, and lawsuits in a large number of countries would no longer be necessary. Life was going to be a lot easier.

"But specialization has its downsides too, critics in Brussels warned. The hammer metaphor has been used since the sixties of the last century to warn for overreliance on familiar tools or systems. In Brussels it was quoted by Rochelle Dreyfuss, a prominent IP and litigation expert from the US, to refer to the pro-patent bias that developed in the US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (CAFC).

"The CAFC was created in 1982 to handle all patent cases. The first 15 years of its decisions, only eight cases were reviewed, four of which were on procedural grounds. But over the last 15 years, the Supreme Court reviewed more than thirty cases, mostly placing stricter limits on substantial issues: patentability, validity and scope of patents, remedies."

CAFC has been abducted by pro-patents lawyers, so we know how that goes. Finally, quoting another lawyers' blog (IPKat), there are issues surrounding the UPC. Just published over at the IPKat was also this analysis about bad behaviour at the EPO:

For a considerable time, both the IPKat and Merpel have received a steady stream of emails seeking to bring to their attention certain allegations concerning a Vice-President of the European Patent Office. Until recently, the nature of these allegations has been rather difficult to verify, since the sources have been invariably pseudonymous, and any corroborating information available in Croatian only. The IPKat is a site for community discussion of intellectual property law, not an investigative journalism site, and Merpel does not have the resources to undertake independent investigations.

Recently however, Merpel has been alerted to some further developments that are both newsworthy and raise some interesting legal issues. In particular, she has been informed that a Petition has been filed with the European Parliament, asking the European Parliament to investigate the appointment of Mr. Željko Topić as the Vice-President of Directorate-General 4 of the European Patent Office back in March 2012. Mr Topić had previously been Director General of the State Intellectual Property Office of the Republic of Croatia since 2004. In formation about the background to this, and a copy of the Petition itself, can be seen here (which is the same link as the first in this paragraph). The complaints about the suitability of Mr Topić for office relate to allegations about his previous position.


"It references one of the Techrights articles so it seem like the series is starting to have an effect," added one of our readers.

André Rebentisch (FFII) writes in the comments: "It is possible to empower the European Parliament to bring its questions to the attention of the EPO presidency by an inter-institutional treaty.

"In any case it seems advisable to harmonise substantive patent law within the European Union to make it part of the Acquis. The EPO is not authorised by its treaties to become a legal harmoniser of national patent laws, a de-facto role it successfully pursued."

China too seems to be going down the path of creating new courts for dealing with patents, which is bad news. It means that the patent maximalists are gaining influence in the big system. Here is one relevant report from China:

A special court for intellectual property rights (IPR) cases will open in Beijing early this month, said the Supreme People's Court (SPC) here Monday.

Two similar courts in Shanghai and Guangzhou will open by the end of this year, said Wang Chuang, deputy head of the IPR division with the SPC.


It is funny to see China using the 'IP' term which is typically used to insult China.

All in all what we have here is a sort of coup d'état by patent lawyers and their clients. They need to be stopped.

Recent Techrights' Posts

Destruction and Distortion of Information, Including Facts About Linux (Bonus: This is Destroying the Planet)
All that LLMs have going for them is hype, and moreover media that intentionally misrepresents them and their supposed capabilities
IBM Layoff Rumours, Large-Scale Implementations Weeks Ahead (in March 2025)
There are some people corroborating
Microsoft Blasted for Adding Insult to Injury: Workers Laid Off Without Prior Notice, Without Severance Payment and Basic Coverage (Like Health), Then Stigmatised as Bad Performers So They Cannot Find a Job Elsewhere
Such stereotypes end entire careers
 
Microsoft Skype in a Freefall: About 20% Decrease in Site Traffic in 3 Months (Amid Microsoft Phasing Out Credits)
Microsoft axing more services/features may mean that now they scrape the bottom of the barrel and Skype will simply die, discontinuing service (like ICQ) in a matter of years
Gemini Links 12/02/2025: Depression, Gabbro, WikiTok, and More
Links for the day
Links 12/02/2025: Health, Security, and Monopolies
Links for the day
Gemini Protocol is Increasingly Important to the Net
Gemini Protocol will turn 6 this summer
Former EPO Manager Warns That the Illegal 'Court' for "Unitary Patents" Enables “Law Shopping”
Daniel X. Thomas opposed the very existence of the UPC, which any honest person could recognise was both illegal and unconstitutional
Like GAFAM, the EPO is Passing the Financial Pains to Staff
the EPO is operating illegally at this point
Morale at Microsoft Ruined by the Company Labelling Thousands of Workers 'Low Performers', Sacking Them on the Spot and Denying Them Basic Benefits
people laid off as "low performers" go to social control media to bemoan the label
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Tuesday, February 11, 2025
IRC logs for Tuesday, February 11, 2025
Links 11/02/2025: Current state of the Internet and Smallnet Information Services (SIS)
Links for the day
Conservative Estimate: Over 10,000 IBM Workers to Be Laid Off in the Next Two Waves
The morale is low and layoffs are expected soon, with mass layoffs likely happening next month and then again later
Links 11/02/2025: Trade Wars and "Crisis for American Universities"
Links for the day
Parasitic LLM Slop Sites Destroy the Ability to Find "Linux" News in Google News
Remember that Google News laid off lots of its workers
Richard Stallman's English Talk in Italy Less Than 24 Hours Away (Torino) and Then Another Talk in Italy Scheduled (University of Bozen-Bolzano)
He's active and he travels a lot in spite of his medical condition
Links 11/02/2025: Nutritional Poverty, Closure of USAID, More Fictional 'Valuations' Around Buzzwords
Links for the day
Perl Programming Leftovers
recently in perl.org
Microsoft in Africa: From 98% to Less Than 10% in Just 16 Years
Microsoft being on less than 1 in 10 Web-connected devices in Africa is a very big deal
Almost as If MElon Reads Techrights
The joke we started appears to be spreading
Gemini Links 11/02/2025: NeoVim and Deploying Other People's Code
Links for the day
BetaNews is Still Publishing LLM Slop/SPAM About "Linux"
Assuming it is indeed LLM slop, it seems clear BetaNews has no intention of improving or is simply unable/unwilling to improve
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Monday, February 10, 2025
IRC logs for Monday, February 10, 2025
Scheduled Maintenance Tomorrow and on Valentines
If the site (or Gemini capsule) is offline for a bit, the maintenance windows are likely the root cause
If Matthias Kirschner Loves Free Software, He'll Change the Name of the Microsoft-Sponsored Organisation He Governs (in Order to Avoid Confusion)
The FSF-EEE does not really like Software Freedom, it just loves money (including Microsoft's)
Soylent News Lessens the Scope of Discussion Due to Persistent Trolling and Online Abuse
if they make it a lot harder for new people to participate, then they limit the "general appeal" and reach
EPO's Local Occupational Health, Safety and Ergonomics Committee (LOHSEC) in The Hague: Workers Are Getting Sicker, Conditions in Which to Assess Patent Applications Deteriorate
"According to the Office statistics the total number of days of absence has gone up from 12.4 to 13.1 total number of sick days per Full Time Equivalent (FTE) from 2023 to 2024."
The Standard Needs to Improve Its Standards for Fact-Checking, Aaron Swartz Had Nothing to Do With Reddit and He Detested the Company That Created It
The Web is already bad enough as it is
When the Livestream of Richard Stallman is Apparently Bury-Brigaded Offline You Finally Learn to Avoid Google/YouTube for Streaming
Please, people, stop uploading to Google/YouTube
New Paper From the EPO Highlights Large-Scale Discrimination at the Office, Where People Are Rewarded for Granting More and More Illegal Patents
Even the Kremlin is probably more competent than this
Links 10/02/2025: Ban on D.E.I. Language, Listeria Risk/Outbreak
Links for the day
Links 10/02/2025: Announcing "Stringless" and Mental Health Improvement
Links for the day
Links 10/02/2025: Facebook Mass Layoffs, "Meta" Did What Aaron Swartz Had Done But to the Tune of 81.7 Terabytes
Links for the day
Microsoft Tarnishing the Brand of Arch
Of course Arch can do whatever it wants, but being associated with Microsoft is a badge of shame
The Ultimate and Inevitable Fall of OpenAI (Even Brave is 'Bigger' Now)
"When you advertise at the Super Bowl, you’ve reached just about every consumer in America. It’s the last stop. If you’re not profitable yet, you never will be."
Adding Slop to Your Blog Only Makes One Assume All the Text is LLM Slop
Simon Coter from Oracle has turned to slop
Macao is Leaving Microsoft Behind
Windows is falling to new all-time lows
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Sunday, February 09, 2025
IRC logs for Sunday, February 09, 2025
Microsoft's WSL (LSW) Shows That It Can Never Love Linux, Only Windows
that's just how Microsoft rolls
Activism in Times of War and a Coup
'Linux' Foundation works for fascism
What the Silencing of Neatnik Tells Us About Linus Torvalds Inside a Microsoft-Dominated 'Linux' Foundation
Is Linus Torvalds free to express his mind as he wishes about every topic, even just any technical topic?
Windows Down to 11.35% in Senegal, as Measured by statCounter
Another all-time low (Windows was at 99% in 2009)
"Latest Technology News" in BetaNews is LLM Slop Promoting OOXML and Proprietary Software at the Expense of LibreOffice and OpenDocument Format (ODF)
Remember that "open-source" and Open Source aren't the same; the former is fake