Bonum Certa Men Certa

The Battistelli Effect: “We Will be Gradually Forced to File Our Patent Applications Outside the EPO in the Interests of Our Clients”

All that political UPC lobbying from Battistelli and his cronies (like Margot Fröhlinger) merely served to discredit the EPO

EPO ship
Sailing nowhere, fast.



Summary: While the EPO dusts off old files and grants in haste without quality control (won't be sustainable for more than a couple more years) the applicants are moving away as trust in the EPO erodes rapidly and profoundly

THE EPO has done virtually nothing to repair its bad reputation. Paying over a millions Euros to fracking propagandists is hardly a sound plan and as long as union-busting activities carry on, staff of the EPO will perceive the management -- not SUEPO -- as their biggest enemy. What's more, stakeholders outside the EPO are paying attention and some take action, knowing that patent quality at the EPO is far from what it used to be. Insiders tell us so as well.



"Team Battistelli lied to the public (and to staff) about the UPC's inevitability and here in the UK we saw Team UPC (perhaps fraudulently) advertising UPC jobs that did not exist and would never exist."The EPO's top-level management put all its eggs in the UPC basket. Team Battistelli lied to the public (and to staff) about the UPC's inevitability and here in the UK we saw Team UPC (perhaps fraudulently) advertising UPC jobs that did not exist and would never exist. We complained about this at the time. How do they get away with this? They hate democracy so much (or disregard it so blatantly) that they quit caring about -- or they're not paying attention to -- the enormous damage caused to their reputation and integrity. What are European companies supposed to think of the UPC and the EPO right now?

"This purely academic exercise is all well and good," one person wrote in a thread stuffed with UPC hopefuls (Team UPC and the patent microcosm, especially in the UK), "but a complete waste of time and money. There will be no political will to make this work because Brexit means Brexit. Don't you get it yet? Forget it and move on...."

Indeed, but they have spent so much effort and time on UPC preparations, so they refuse to move on. Another commenter then added that "we will be gradually forced to file our patent applications outside the EPO in the interests of our clients," so we assume this commenter has moved on already. To quote in full:

The discussion about Brexit and UPC continues to be maddening as not based on the possible (to avoid repeating myself I refer to my previous comments http://ipkitten.blogspot.de/2016/09/does-david-davis-want-to-ratify-upc.html?showComment=1474556188098#c99464718469530613 Thursday, 22 September 2016 at 15:56:00 BST ) If financial leviathans in the City are struggling to persuade the UK government to protect their financial passports post Brexit to preserve a status quo in London from which the UK benefits to the tune of tens of billions each year, what on earth makes any realistic observer believe the minnow of the patent community could persuade the UK government to move against the Brexit tide by ratifying the UPC pre-Brexit? That would be true if the UPC was the best idea ever (which it isn’t), if there was a ground swell of support for it from UK industry and potential users (there isn’t), if it would encourage innovation in the UK or Europe (it won’t) or if the EPO was the most respected patent office in the world (it isn’t). Indeed, regretfully, I must be even more blunt, the EPO’s continuing flogging of this UPC dead horse is yet more evidence (amongst many examples well known to all) that current EPO management continue to act against the long term interests of the patent community and industry in Europe. The present EPO President has zero credibility as his administration undermines the EPO on multiple levels with increasing irrationality. Reduction in patent quality, horrendous abuse of staff, attacking the independence of BoAs are but three examples and it is to the utter shame of the Administrative Council that he has survived so long. Rather than focussing short term attention on the fate of the UPC, the most important and urgent action which would help improve the patent system in Europe is for the AC to remove Benoît Battistelli (and his team) from office without delay and bring back humane, credible and competent leadership to the EPO. Only then can a rational discussion of the challenges begin with all stakeholders, and users such as myself can have their confidence and faith in the EPO restored in a post Brexit world with or without the UPC. If not, reluctantly we will be gradually forced to file our patent applications outside the EPO in the interests of our clients and the EPO will begin a slow decline to irrelevance.


"That the EPO still pushes for UK ratification is hard to understand," wrote one person in response to the aforementioned comments about the EPO's resort to lobbying (we wrote about that yesterday). To quote:



I could not agree more with the blogger of 12.43 BST.

Ratifying now would be utterly counter-productive and only increase problems. Sorry Meldrew, but ratifying now has nothing to do with pragmatism, but sheer panic to be left out of a system which could have been so lucrative. Actually, I was expecting better from Meldrew.

That the EPO still pushes for UK ratification is hard to understand. I would say there are more urgent problems to be solved at the EPO than fighting for UK ratification. Seeing the way the AC does not do its job of controlling the EPO and its president, one wonders about a hidden agenda.

How can it be that training for search and training for examination used to be three years for each job, now it is three years for both. Have the newcomers suddenly become more intelligent? Please allow me to doubt. Quality is thus lowering for a long time, but the lowering can only accelerate.

The problem lies with the EPO and its management. I leave here purposely aside any discussion about the ill treatment of staff representatives, but concentrate only on the horrendous production figures which are now required. Here it is not only BB who is to blame, but much more VP1, who has always thought that examination, and hence the grant of solid patents, is of secondary importance.

What matters are production figures. Who gives a damn about the patent quality, production figures have to be according the plan. Basta as would a former German chancellor say. The erosion of quality is nothing new, but when one sees what is coming out one can only shudder.

What good could be a UPC when faced with patent of little or no value.

A court be it called UPC or not, cannot do a good job on shaky patents! Why is it then so necessary to quickly ratify?


In our next post we'll remark on patent quality again.

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