Bonum Certa Men Certa

Higher Patent Quality Guarded Even Under the Trump Administration While the EPO Goes the Other Way

Patents by the bucketloads at EPO*, devaluing all European patents (past and present)

Empty bucket



Summary: The European Patent Office (EPO) keeps kicking the bucket, whereas the US patent system seems to be taking its old place, owing to more pedantic management that comprehends patent quality and its effect on patent trolls

THE EPO is all bad news these days, but the US patent system is exactly the opposite. We were delighted to learn today, based on this post published just after midnight, that "Michelle K. Lee is the Director of the United States Patent and Trademark Office" (i.e. she officially managed to keep her job under Trump, contrary to malicious rumours).



Regular readers of ours probably already know how she was personally attacked, heckled, falsely 'scandalised', subjected to a witch-hunt and even whispering campaigns (with fake news to that effect). She survived and endured all that. "I still do not sufficiently understand DC politics," Patently-O remarked, "to grasp why the Dir. Lee’s position was not public for the past 50+ days, but I am glad that we may now return to some semblance of normalcy in relations between the USPTO and the public."

"It's a symptom of a real problem; many illegitimate patents are still lodged inside the belly of the Office, presumed valid unless or until proven otherwise."We recently wrote about a dozen posts defending Michelle Lee, who had done a good job getting patent quality under control. We recently wrote about that notorious IBM patent on "out-of-office electronic mail messaging system” (covered before were even worse examples than that). It's a symptom of a real problem; many illegitimate patents are still lodged inside the belly of the Office, presumed valid unless or until proven otherwise. Just a short while ago yet another site wrote about this IBM patent, noting that "In January 2017 the United States Patent Office granted a patent application lodged seven years previously by IBM for an Out-of-Office email notification system. Seven weeks later IBM formally disclaimed the patent. What does this say about software patents?"

What does that say about IBM's widely-celebrated patents? What does that say about quality control among patent examiners in 2017, three years after Alice? Was this an accident, oversight, negligence, or simply an attempt to fill up quotas?

Earlier today in IP Kat someone commented on Merpel's last post (regarding the EPO) and noted that "EPO used to work like a machine producing reliable and high-quality patents..."

Now, however (as Battistelli kills the EPO by opening the patent floodgates), "[d]epending on the examiner, I simply get a patent that should never have been granted" (like the USPTO a decade ago). See? Even stakeholders realise that it's harmful to them and it's hardly shocking that Battistelli's approval rating among stakeholders sank to 0% (it does not get any lower than this). To quote the comment in its entirety:

Merpel, you really have done an excellent job. Many thanks for your dedication!

I had always great respect for the patent examiners working at the EPO. They produced detailed search reports. The correspondence with them during the examination phase showed profound technical know-how and a broad domain knowledge. I felt treated fairly in the procedures as well as in oral proceedings. The EPO used to work like a machine producing reliable and high-quality patents, no matter who was the primary examiner and no matter whether I was co-operative or not.

This has changed. Examiners told me that they mainly rely on the output of computer-generated overviews of the prior art now. Sometimes a simple search in Google produces better results than an EPO search report costing 1,875 euro. Furthermore, examiners now try to charge applicants for non-unity based on dubious reasons. I have received so many quasi-empty letters from examiners. It is obvious that they do not spend enough time anymore to get things right. Depending on the examiner, I simply get a patent that should never have been granted, or I have to deal with procedural traps into which they try to entice me.

I understand that the examiners have moved to this working practice because Battistelli introduced Rank and Yank. Last year, the EPO granted 90,000 patents, which is 50% more than in the years before. The examiners increased their production by 50% just to compete with their colleagues for a salary increase of about 2,000 euro per year, which only half of the examiners are entitled to receive.

I am sorry, but I have lost all my respect for the patent examiners in the EPO. They might be excellent scientists or engineers. But falling into this well-known trap shows that they are dumb, irresponsible, and greedy. The annual salary of a patent examiner is about 100,000 euro (tax-free). Battistelli managed to lure them with a bonus of 2,000 euro for every second examiner and achieved a performance increase of 50%.

But it is even worse. A judge remains in limbo, union officials have been fired, the appeal court will be moved to the outskirts of Munich. And the staff in the EPO remains silent. Poor people! They get what they deserve. "Even if you win the rat race, you are still a rat."


The above stakeholder ought to take a look at this leak. It's probably even worse than he or she imagines. _________ * Covered here in five:

  1. EPO Record Low on Quality of European Patents (EPs) in 2016
  2. The European Patent Office is Wasting Its Already Limited Budget on Misleading Press Releases/Paid-for Coverage That Overlook Sharp Decline in Patent Quality
  3. Latest EPO 'Results' Should be Grounds for Immediate Dismissal of Battistelli Rather Than Celebrations
  4. 'Evil Tongues' Inside and Outside the EPO Explain Why Battistelli's 2016 'Results' Are Bad While the Media Mindlessly Repeats EPO Management's Talking Points
  5. The EPO is Lying About Patent Quality in Its Official Web Site


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