Battistelli's commandment: thou shalt not question the management
Summary: The inability to (safely) scrutinise patent maximalism at the European Patent Office (EPO), where declining standards are exploited as desperate means geared towards meeting or beating quality-agnostic goals
SEVERAL countries in the world have rather ruthless patent policies. They would be willing to grant and protect/enforce patents on just about anything, under the wrong assumption that monopoly is virtuous and collectively beneficial. The EPO increasingly serves the big monopolies, even when they're not European. The EPO, as we showed in part II of this series, also starts supporting monopolies on cancer, not just on software/mathematics/logic (inherently inseparable). It's incredibly misguided and controversial.
India is one of those very few countries that became widely known for rejecting patents on a lot of drugs, for the benefit of the
collective health of Indian people (a very large population). India restricts patents in several other domains as well, e.g. software. Victory (for now [
1,
2]) over
software patents in India has been big in the Indian news sites today/yesterday, at least the English-speaking sites. Here are three new examples:
Europe's EPO has been odd when it comes to software patents ("as such") and increasingly when it comes to patents on life, as we noted here several times in recent months. Those inside the EPO who dare to speak out about it apparently suffer retribution. How do we know? Well, stay tuned for the remainder of this long series, which binds together several stories of several people who suffered the wrath of the EPO's management. Under the Battistelli-led regime, more than ever before, staff is reduced to mere lemmings having to accept the systematic robbery of their basic rights, the abduction of the Office by brutes with mates in the industry, and the detrimental 'public' 'service' to Europe. This is effectively a coup d'etat and merely suggesting that it exists had become a punishable offence. If the EPO was a purely theist institution (not science in disguise), Battistelli would be its Mohammad or Jesus or Buddha or Moses. There is no room for questioning, however unscientific it may seem.
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