Reference: When Lobbyists Literally Write The Bill
ADDITIONAL people are signing the petition against the UPC, but the vast majority of the public here in the UK still does not know what it is or what it is for (or who the UPC is really for). The EPO has gone as far as paying crates of money to publications in order to generate fake news [1, 2, 3, 4, 5] about the UPC, or to distort public perceptions. That's just one among many abusive aspects of the EPO under Battistelli's embarrassing 'leadership' (more like a reign of terror, in which even bloggers are being threatened).
"The EPO has gone as far as paying crates of money to publications in order to generate fake news about the UPC, or to distort public perceptions."Dimitris Xenos wrote the other day [1, 2] that the "#unitarypatent is available to EUmember states only:‘this [ #UPC] Agreement should be open to accession by any Member State’ at 6 #Brexit [...] the term ‘member state(s)’ appears 127 times in the #UPC http://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/HTML/?uri=CELEX:42013A0620(01)&from=EN … #unitarypatent #Brexit"
It doesn't take a genius to see that the UPC is inherently incompatible with Brexit, yet there has been a lot of lobbying and deception about it, courtesy of Team Battistelli and Team UPC (a marriage of convenience). Publications are moreover being paid to lie about it, at the expense of EPO budget. Last night we wrote about yet another event which will soon become a platform for the EPO's UPC propaganda. In some cases, such events are sponsored by the EPO's PR firm and supported by the EPO. It should be scandalous and covered in the media accordingly (as a scandal), but it certainly seems like the corporate media has become a willing if not also witting cooperator. Some of this supposedly 'elite' media is paid by the EPO, so why bite the hand that feeds?
According to this new post from IP Kat, there is an upcoming discussion about the issues associated with the UPC amid Brexit. To quote this short post:
This event is organised by the United Kingdom Association for European Law, and features three speakers who will be familiar to IPKat readers:
Dr Christopher Stothers, partner at Arnold & Porter Kaye Scholer LLP Dr Luke McDonagh, Lecturer in The City Law School at City, University of London Prof Duncan Matthews, Professor of Intellectual Property Law at the Centre for Commercial Law Studies, Queen Mary University of London
“The Unified Patent Court (UPC) without Britain is a far less potent idea,” says Nick McDonald, partner of Potter Clarkson.
In this video interview with LSIPR, McDonald explains that there are many good reasons why the UK should be part of the UPC and discusses the implications of Brexit.
The only people who really care about patent law are patent holders, patent lawyers and patent academics. And yet Theresa May's rash promise to remove the UK from the jurisdiction of the European Court of Justice (ECJ) is about to turn this esoteric area into a major Brexit battleground. No matter how you approach it, there is no way to square what the government is doing on patents with its red line on the ECJ.
The fundamentalist fringe of the hard Brexit movement has started to notice too. A couple of weeks ago, Douglas Carswell put down an early day motion demanding a change on patent policy.
The Daily Express covered it with its usual restraint. "EXPOSED," it said. "Secret plan to tie Britain to EU". Ukip warned of a "stealth attempt" by ministers to carry out some sort of Brexit conspiracy.
"Several days remain for concerned European citizens who can hopefully spare one minute to sign this petition."If the UPC ever became a reality, a lot of small firms would receive a lot of letters through the post, not just from patent trolls that demand a lot of money but also from large competitors in other countries, threatening to take down small rivals all across Europe (one ruling, in one single city in Europe, affecting all "member states" in one fell swoop).
Several days remain for concerned European citizens who can hopefully spare one minute to sign this petition. ⬆