Bonum Certa Men Certa

Battistelli and His Circle -- Not Just Team UPC -- Still Delusional About the Prospects of a Unified Patent Court (UPC)

Long nose



Summary: The crazy theory or baseless belief that somehow, somewhere, by some truly miraculous means, UPC will suddenly become a reality, damaging the whole of Europe for the sake of patent law firms

IT IS TRULY SAD to see that Team UPC and the EPO's President are still living in a delusional world, surrounding themselves only with equally delusional people (echo chamber/choir). They want us too to live in a fantasy, and maybe even believe that the UPC still has a chance. We refuted/debunked this fairy tale many times in July (after Brexit) and to quote a comment we've received this week, "Germany will not ratify the UPC treaty. Thus the project is dead." It seems rather obvious, but when one has an agenda, reality has a distortion field. Unlike Team UPC, yours truly has no financial stake when it comes to the UPC. It's just that the UPC is unjust, it is undemocratic, and it would render many patent examiners (i.e. scientists) redundant. The UPC is very harmful to Europe, even though it will never happen anyway. It's just a lot of effort and resources down the drain.



Madman in chief Battistelli is still lobbying for the UPC. He never gets tired of this, having done so since before he was even a President at the EPO. "European Patent Chief Wants Post-Brexit UK In Unified Court" is the headline of a new article from Law 360 and some people are distorting this headline to suit their agenda ("EPO wants UK to ratify Unified Patent Court agreement despite Brexit" is not what the original said), equating the "EPO" with Battistelli as if it's a one-person organisation (Battistelli has 0% approval rating at the EPO, so clearly his own workers strongly disagree with him). To quote Law 360: "The European Patent Office is urging the U.K. to ratify an agreement to create a Unified Patent Court system for the European Union, even though voters in the country passed a referendum to leave the bloc, EPO President Benoît Battistelli said Tuesday."

Team UPC is desperately trying to float this dead project (Germany won't ratify it) and Italian elements of this team speak up amid new reports like this one ("Changing places: why Milan should host a UPC central division court"). We have heard it before (about Milan as a theoretical substitute for London), but it's not so suitable a substitute and it requires a massive overhaul of the UPC and what it stands for (not even renaming Milan "London" would shift all the skilled people to Milan). Found via Twitter was this firm of "Intellectual Property Consultants" (their own description) trying to convince us that the UPC is somehow coming because, in their own words:

Italian Parliament’s lower house passes ratification of Unified Patent Court Agreement



The lower house of the Italian Parliament has approved a bill on ratification of the Unified Patent Court Agreement, a passage through the upper house is necessary for final approval.

Yesterday the Italian Parliament’s lower house, the Chamber of Deputies, approved the draft law on ratification of the Unified Patent Court Agreement (UPC Agreement), with 302 votes in favour, 108 against and 25 abstentions.

The Unified Patent Court is the supranational tribunal that will eventually have exclusive jurisdiction on both European and unitary patents.

[...]

The Committee for EU Policy asked the government to consider the opportunity, within the United Kingdom’s Brexit process, of requesting that Italy forward its candidacy for the seat of the Unified Patent Court’s central division originally assigned London.

The bill must pass through the Italian Senate before final approval.



Several other Italian patents-centric firms want the UPC and spoke about it today. Why? Because it would pass Europe's wealth into their pockets while retarding science, technology, medicine, etc. The Unified Patent Court is not about Europe but about some European lawyers. Not even all of them...

For reasons we laid out before, the UPC is almost certainly dead and unlike some others who deny it here's one firm which at least acknowledges the role of Brexit in burying the UPC, probably in the whole of Europe if not just in the UK. "Netherlands ratifies #UPC agreement with press release noting uncertainty over Brexit," says this tweet, linking to a Dutch article. Watch what Bristows (probably the most vocal among Team UPC) wrote about it a short while ago. Certainly, especially in the UK, the UPC is a dead (Trojan) horse and Bristows speaks of a "Great programme from BBC radio4 on Brexit's impact on the #law including the #upc"

All this UPC lobbying is intended for Team UPC "to get what they want - the UPC in operation asap," said a new comment today. This rightly speaks of "delusions of grandeur":



I fear that delusions of grandeur abound. Much of the analysis (but not all) is based on how to get what they want - the UPC in operation asap. That seems to require the UK to sign up quickly, while the UK government is dealing with a Brexit scenario! There seems to be a lot of yes, yes but we are more important so the UK will act against its citizens' mandate as that's in our best interest. They may be surprised to hear that the UK government, irrespective of its personal opinion, is facing a new reality and may have reasons not to help them on this matter. It astounds me that there is such a lack of appreciation for the changed framework. All those pushing for change and acceptance of change appear to be the least able to accept change when it involves them.



No matter what self-serving patent law firms are saying, the UPC (or the unitary patent) is basically dead in the water. They try to mislead the public and confuse politicians. They tried this on David Davis here in the UK (Bristows). It's rude if not just pathetic. "UPC will not replace EPO patent opposition procedure," one person wrote, "further view from pharma industry" in the Managing IP UPC advocacy events in France and Germany last week [1, 2, 3, 4]. These lobbying events with the EPO inside were filled to the rim with Team UPC. To quote one person: "Thanks @ManagingIP for an excellent #patent forum http://bit.ly/2bUxYpI including key updates from @EPOorg on #UPC + industry perspective" (lawyers are not an industry but a meta-industry).

These patent law firms are trying to perturb patent law to increase their profits (more damages, more lawsuits) and one such firm published Unitary Patent, Unified Patent Court, and “Brexit”, having noted (from the lobbying events) that "British EP patent attorneys probably in better position to represent at #upc than English solicitors!"

We expect the conspirators behind the UPC to rename and restructure it, maybe start from scratch or try to patch the whole thing in vain. They won't know the impact/outcome of Brexit for years to come, so this is tremedously premature and they don't even know whether to include the UK or not. It's almost a non-starter.

Remember. Mark our words. The UPC will never happen, not under this name and not in this current form. It's just reality distortion.

Recent Techrights' Posts

Techrights Does Not Compete With LLM Slop, It Exposes the Bastards, Plagiarists and Scammers Who Do That
People like Scam Altman, still facing a lawsuit from his own sister for sexual abuse against her
Slopwatch: Planet Ubuntu Became LLM Slop and Some People Fail to See the Immorality of Plagiarism
it lessens the incentive for people to publish real articles
Microsoft Layoffs Again in Bay Area
Microsoft relies on people's false belief that being "in LinkedIn" will get you a job; well, seems like even working inside LinkedIn really sucks and you lose the job
 
The "AI" (Slop) Bubble Already Popped, But It's Not an Overnight Collapse
where Microsoft put its money
No More Steven Astorino at IBM, Chatter About Weekly/Nonstop Layoffs at IBM
What happened? Good luck guessing.
Looking at Corruption in Europe, Going Beyond the EPO
Expect a new series to kick off very soon
Slopwatch: Security SPAM and LLM Slop for SEO and FUD Purposes, Perpetually Tarnishing the Perception of Linux and (Open)SSH Security
A lot of this Fear, Uncertainty, Doubt (FUD) comes from Microsoft and its LLMs
Links 30/05/2025: Google's LLM Slop Pushers Are Killing Journalism and Shira Perlmutter Fails to Stop Bribed Regime From Legalising Plagiarism (in "AI" Clothing)
Links for the day
Links 30/05/2025: Offline Arts and "Threshold of Patience"
Links for the day
Signing Off Serious Lies With a Statement of Truth is No Joking Matter
It's not hard to see what's happening here
Links 30/05/2025: LLM Slop Already Ingests and Vomits Its Own Garbage, Facebook Exec Admits Copyrights a Concern Too
Links for the day
Mass Layoffs at Microsoft Result in More Whistleblowers From Microsoft
Microsoft's predatory pricing is further
EPO Poll: 68% Dissatisfied With Quality of Slop (Wrongly Framed as "AI") for Patent Classification
Slop does not work, it's just falsely advertised with extra hype (funded by slop pushers that sponsor the major media)
Big Crowds Gather to Learn About Software Freedom From the Man Who Started GNU/Linux in 1983
"It was a great success"
Gemini Links 30/05/2025: Fighting Against the Bad News, and Slop is Dehumanisation Disguised as "Intelligence"
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Thursday, May 29, 2025
IRC logs for Thursday, May 29, 2025
Links 29/05/2025: Chinese Cracking Against EU Institutions (Prague), More Assaults on Media and Its Funding Sources
Links for the day
EPO Workers Caution That the Officials Are Still Illegally Trying to Replace Staff With Slop (to Lower Quality and Validity of European Patents)
Nobody in Europe voted for any of this
Links 29/05/2025: US Health Deficit and Malware Disguised as Slop Generator
Links for the day
Links 29/05/2025: Turtle Roadkill, Modern 'Tech' as a Sting
Links for the day
Thanks for All the Fish, Linux Format
people who once wrote for it (or for other magazines) comment on the importance of this news
People's Understanding of the History of GNU/Linux is Changing
RMS is not a radical, he's just clever enough to see and foresee what's going on
Microsofters Were Scheming to Take Over This Entire Web Site (in Their Own Words!)
Money gets spent censoring/deplatforming people who speak about real issues; no money gets spent actually tackling those underlying issues
Bicycles for the Minds and the Story Harrison Bergeron
"The goal of having people in charge of the tools they use and that the tools should amplify ability" has long been abandoned
Links 29/05/2025: YouTube Problem and Giant Privacy Hole in Microsoft OneDrive
Links for the day
[Video] Cory Doctorow Explains DMCA: DRM in the Browser (or Webapp) Will "Make It a Felony to Protect Your Privacy While You Use It."
Pycon US Keynote Speaker Cory Doctorow
United States Courts With Sworn Testimonies Are on Our Side, We'll Present the Same Here
Chronicling what happened is a moral imperative
Serial Sloppers Ruin and Lessen the Incentive to Cover "Linux"
The Serial Sloppers (SSs) ought to be named and shamed, but almost nobody does this
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Wednesday, May 28, 2025
IRC logs for Wednesday, May 28, 2025
Links 28/05/2025: 'Emulation Layers' (Measurements and Linguistics), Libraries, and Discomfort
Links for the day
Links 28/05/2025: More Arrests for Bitcoin-Connected Torture and Prosecutions for Dieselgate-Linked Executives
Links for the day
Even Microsoft (MSN) Covers Richard Stallman's Public Talk in Milan 2 Days Ago
He spoke in Spanish earlier this month (Alicante)
Gemini Links 28/05/2025: Techo-authoritarianism With Slop Plagiarism and "No Online June" (Going Offline)
Links for the day
Links 28/05/2025: GitHub MCP Exploited and MathWorks Discovers Huge Windows TCO
Links for the day
Very High Attendance Level at Richard Stallman's Talk Shows People Can Relate to His Message
Smear campaigns have their limits
Gemini Links 28/05/2025: Celsius-Fahrenheit, Endless Scrolling/Infinite Scrolling, and Trapping LLM Slop Bots
Links for the day
Prison gate backdrop to baptism by Fr Sean O'Connell, St Paul's, Coburg
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
More Photos From This Week's Milan Talk by Richard Stallman
The posts are in Italian, not English
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Tuesday, May 27, 2025
IRC logs for Tuesday, May 27, 2025