Bonum Certa Men Certa

UPC Roundup: War on the Appeal Boards, British Motion Against the UPC, Fröhlinger Recalled, and Fake News About Spain

Team UPC still distorts the facts, as if the end justifies the means

UPC Dead



Summary: Taking stock of some of the latest attempts to shove the Unitary Patent (UPC) down Europe's throat, courtesy of Team Battistelli and Team UPC

THE EPO's management is eager to ram the UPC through, having decided to replace the Boards' location, keep them understaffed and perpetually scared, etc. The management calls it "reform" but it's actually an overhaul which serves the patent microcosm and large foreign corporations; it would be an enormous, historic disaster. It needs to be stopped, both by EPO insiders (not Team Battistelli) and outsiders.



Decision T 2561/11



An EPO-friendly legal firm wrote the other day (earlier this week) about decision T 2561/11 from the Boards, noting that "the EPO Board of Appeal found an Appeal to be admissible despite certain omissions in the Notice of Appeal. In particular, the Notice of Appeal failed to mention the Appellant’s name and address, and was alleged not to contain a request defining the subject of the Appeal, both requirements of Rule 99 EPC."

"In the above case, it would be so convenient for the Office to just blame the Boards and punish them for it, as is so common/habitual nowadays."Since then, as was covered here before, the EPO got even stricter, not when it comes to patent scope but when it comes to signatures etc. It further complicates the process not of patent-granting but merely the bureaucracy. In the above case, it would be so convenient for the Office to just blame the Boards and punish them for it, as is so common/habitual nowadays.

Douglas Carswell in Motion to Bury the UPC in the United Kingdom



Putting aside the war on the Boards -- a war long fought by Battistelli -- how about the war on British law, or the pretense that Brexit is magically compatible with UPC (it's not)? Dr. Luke McDonagh, who had repeatedly explained why the UPC is untenable here, said it is "interesting that Carswell seems all on his lonesome in putting this UPC motion forward - what is the Tory position?"

"Remember that Carswell is a longtime Tory (Conservative) politician.""Be interesting to keep an eye out on this UPC EDM by UKIP's Douglas Carswell this week," Max Walters from the Law Society Gazette wrote.

Remember that Carswell is a longtime Tory (Conservative) politician. He is hence pretty mainstream and he comes from a high-profile family of famous doctors of medicine. His defection to UKIP is pretty recent and wasn't motivated by nationalism, racism and so on (the stereotypes).

"Her Master's Voice," Margot Fröhlinger



"Founded doubts regarding a legal UPC with UK after brexit," wrote another person the other day, "IP system need certainty..."

"Is this the first time that [the EPO's] Mrs. Fröhlinger is not 100% certain in public about UK participating in UPC after Brexit?"

That's what Christopher Weber wrote before noting that "it's just an old article preceding the UK's intent to ratify that I mistook for a later statement. My bad."

But nothing has technically changed since then. In fact, the person who expressed intent to ratify has since then been sacked or resigned. We also did a long series explaining why ratification makes no sense and even if it ever happened, it would not be sustainable, in particular after Brexit. Here is that series again:



What's noteworthy about Fröhlinger's remark is that she has always been "her master's voice" (Battistelli's echo chamber) and rejected simple facts when it suited Battistelli's agenda [1, 2, 3, 4, 5], as pointed out here before. Fröhlinger is in many ways an extension of if not part of Team Battistelli, wherein lying has become banal and routine.

The Rain in Spain...



Meanwhile, fake news about Spain is being spread again (we have seen a lot of fake news about the UPC recently, e.g. [1, 2]) and Team UPC is trying to connect it to Brexit (there is no connection). This one tweet, linking to Manuel Rey-Alvite Villar from Bristows LLP (some of the worst liars out there), says: "Will the Spain joins the UPC System and the Unitary Patent? Brexit can make Spain changes his mind..."

“Spain's ruling party and authorities still reject the UPC and have stated the reasons as recently as a year ago.”Nonsense. First of all, none of this is news; Francisco Moreno has already demonstrated that it goes a couple of years back. And what does the self-serving Bristows base its ridiculous headline on? "The motion [which] will be debated in the Committee on Economy, Industry and Competitiveness of the Congress of Deputies (the lower house of the Spanish parliament)."

But the party behind this motion has already spoken about it and attempted it before. Spain's ruling party and authorities still reject the UPC and have stated the reasons as recently as a year ago.

Recent Techrights' Posts

Slop Causes Global Warming
in some parts of the world people die from overheat (heat strokes) as temperatures reach almost 50 degrees as early as May in the northern hemisphere
Vatican Speaks Out Against Slop, Promoting Instead "Truth, Dignity of Work, Social Justice, and Peace."
Religion (no matter which) does not oppose machines, but LLMs aren't useful machines
SLAPP Censorship - Part 87 Out of 200: Access to Justice
this part will be short
A Promise IBM/Red Hat Could Not Keep
"all about control, not so much optics."
Links 25/05/2026: Russia Lobbing Oreshnik Ballistic Missile Again, Slop Comes Under More Fire
Links for the day
Gemini Links 25/05/2026: Injury in Gym and Abusive LLMs DDoSing Software Developers While Misusing Their Code
Links for the day
A 'Bank Holiday' When National Debt Doubles in a Decade
Maybe it's time to rename "Bank Holidays"
Links 25/05/2026: Lingering Environmental Concerns and Domain Registrars Targeted for Unmasking
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Sunday, May 24, 2026
IRC logs for Sunday, May 24, 2026
Gemini Links 24/05/2026: Impressions of Auckland, the Age of Left or Right Extremism, and .zim files
Links for the day
Microsoft's 'Hiring Freeze' (Layoffs) and Salary Freeze (While Inflation Approaches Double-Digit Rates)
If they get replaced by anyone, it'll be low-paid folks in low-salary regions [...] workers' stress levels shoot up, compensation goes down
Slop Will Not End Humanity, The Pushers of It Do (Artificial Scarcities and Global Warming)
Causing hunger and poverty in the name of "computation"
How Can the 'Broligarchs' Love Us When They Don't Even Love Themselves?
Their SLAPPs have their limits
Death at IBM Due to Overwork
Dying for IBM is never worth it
We Publish Less, We Get More Exposure
UbuntuPit is coming to realise that quantity isn't what comes to matter or truly "count", especially when quantity comes at expense of authenticity
Codecs and Software Patents - Part IX - GNU Project Has Chosen to Adopt AV1 for Its Videos, Conversion and Additions Underway
One of our readers is working to help GNU through the maze of software patents and maze of patent lawsuits, which aren't the same thing but are somewhat overlapping issues
SLAPP Censorship - Part 86 Out of 200: The Position of Courts on Computer-Generated Lawsuits and Filings From Another Continent (Made by Two Men Who Work for Slop Companies)
Lawsuits by proxy from California
Links 24/05/2026: SoftBank CEO Getting Conned by Scam Altman, Hotter 2026 and El Nino With Growing Impact
Links for the day
Links 24/05/2026: Ebola Outbreak and "Journalists Identify Murder Victims Of Trump’s Boat Strike Program"
Links for the day
IAM Magazine is in Effect Dead, It's Now Fused Into Microsoft's Patent Troll (Which It Has Promoted All Along)
Microsoft-connected patent trolls in Europe [...] Now, in his new job, Wild can use his 'expertise' to help guide blackmail/extortion to better harm Europe's industry
A Huge Proportion of 'Articles' in The Register MS Are Actually Paid Spam of the Communist Party of China, Selling Compromised (for Wiretapping) Technology
The Register MS is having a go at becoming a marketing company or "B2B"
Top Officials Have Just Left Microsoft, Layoffs in Anything But Name
Microsoft's debt is very fast-growing
Local Staff Committee The Hague (LSCTH) Meets "Alicante Mafia" at the European Patent Office (EPO)
Report on meeting with VP1 and his team on 21 April 2026
UbuntuPit (ubuntupit.com) Has Deleted Slop Pages, Its Slopfarm Experiment Has Failed (Like Always!)
Turning one's site into a slopfarm is a death knell
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Saturday, May 23, 2026
IRC logs for Saturday, May 23, 2026
The "Next Big" Bonus for IBM's CEO Apparently Comes From American Taxpayers While Veteran IBMers Are PIP'd and RA'd (Laid Off)
the next big thing will be the CEO's bonus
Links 23/05/2026: Starbucks Scraps Disastrous Slopfest, Colbert’s Final ‘Late Show’
Links for the day
Gemini Links 23/05/2026: Poetry, Hobbies, ROOPHLOCH, and More
Links for the day
Government Bailouts Won't be Enough to Save IBM
Bailouts from taxpayers in the US
Links 23/05/2026: Social Media Bans and Demise of Userbase of LLM Chatbots
Links for the day
Legal Letters Are Not Postcards
It seems like intimidation, nothing more
SLAPP Censorship - Part 85 Out of 200: The United Kingdom's Rating for Press Freedom Has Improved, But We Can Do Even Better
we see the US at #64
Sites Realise That Becoming More Active by Using Bots (LLM Slop) is Self-Destructive
We'll soon (maybe next year) also show that some of the 85+ KG of legal papers sent our way are computer-generated garbage, which might run afoul of some rules
European Patent Office (EPO) Strikes Persist, EPO Management Tries to Give False Impression of "Happy Staff"
EPO is trying to broadcast to the world a totally phony image of itself
Gemini Links 23/05/2026: Patience, LLM Chatbts Being Bad, and Unexpected Computer Surgery
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Friday, May 22, 2026
IRC logs for Friday, May 22, 2026