A FEW days ago we mentioned how IP Kat, which no longer covers EPO scandals, deleted a comment about its plagiarism regarding UPC.
A German minister had to resign as big chunks of his PhD Thesis were copied......
He should have applied for a job at the EPO as a Vice-President.
"Comments do not seem to be getting through," said another comment. "Is the moderator gone to sleep or is is a deliberate policy of censorship."
Well, we already know for a fact that on numerous occasions in the past comments about UPC got deleted. So we're left only with what passed the 'Kat' filter, namely comments that say "lobbyists and politicians alike would do well to take heed of the principle outlined last month by Frans Timmermans" (First Vice-President of the European Commission). To quote:
Regardless of what any of us might think about the constitutional complaint, one hopes that the BVerfG will be left entirely to their own devices to make up their minds upon the correctness (or otherwise) of the grounds of complaint.
In this regard, lobbyists and politicians alike would do well to take heed of the principle outlined last month by Frans Timmermans (when discussing the rule of law in connection with Poland) that:
"Everybody living in the EU has the right to rely on an independent national and European judicial system and deserves courts free from any form of interference, including by politicians".
They would do even better to take heed of the words of Prof. Siegfried Broß recently published in GRUR:
"To begin with it is necessary to point out that the Member States of the EPO and the EU act not only in a contradictory but in a blatantly dishonest manner when they raise serious accusations, for example, against Poland, Hungary and Turkey, because of their unlawful treatment of the judiciary, whereas on the other hand as a result of the serious defects in the drafting of legal agreements in their own house, they leave the door wide open for crude attacks on the individual rights of EPO staff members, and in the end retreat behind the "immunity" of the international organisation which they have created.
http://rsw.beck.de/cms/?site=GRUR-Int
EPLA was submitted to the CJEU, with the result we all know, Opinion 1/09.
Why has the UPC not been submitted as well beforehand?
Would it have been too dangerous for some? One can only wonder why.
We would now be clear, and we could have avoided all the innate discussions about the UK being able or not to participate in the UPC.
As far as the interest for European industry is concerned, I am rather sceptical as not much more than a third of applications at the EPO stem from EU member states. How many from European SMS?