Bonum Certa Men Certa

Next Week's Annual Report From the EPO Will Say Nothing About Decline in Patent Quality

The EPO is going downhill, but its PR people will claim the exact opposite (it's their job to mislead)

Decline



Summary: Decline in patent examination standards for the purpose of 'faking' growth (like Battistelli wants) won't be accounted for in the annual report, nor will attempts to attract more applications/applicants by offering them 'discounts'

THE management of the EPO will release its annual report in a few days. As we explained some days ago, this report will hide the negatives and accentuate the positives, just like last year. We wrote many articles last year in order to explain how facts had been distorted and poorly presented by the EPO.



"As we explained some days ago, this report will hide the negatives and accentuate the positives, just like last year."EPO PR people already prepare their rather limited audience (many followers are not real people): "Stay tuned to find out about patenting trends in 2017. We will publish our annual report on 7 March."

On Friday they also resorted to more greenwashing tweets about patents that typically prevent proliferation of 'green' technology, rendering it an overpriced monopoly rather than the Commons.

"We wrote many articles last year in order to explain how facts had been distorted and poorly presented by the EPO."In the meantime we are assessing the sorts of patents granted by the EPO. Some are more controversial than others, so those subjected to appeals/oppositions are a little more interesting. Well, meanwhile we have been looking into some European Patents (EPs) on algorithms as they do exist.

Patent number/ID EP2179387/EP2179387A4 (publication number 08775543) seems interesting because it's summarised as follows: "Disclosed is a method and an advertising system for delivering advertisements in a mobile communication network. The method comprises detecting a need to deliver an advertisement, and arranging said delivery such that one or more indicators of advertisement behaviour specific to individual recipients of advertisements and/or to the overall system are taken into account. delivery of advertisements in mobile advertising system."

No device or anything, just a simple chart. I've read it and it seems like a classic software patent. It's not supposed to have been granted (in my humble assessment), yet law firms are all too eager to see everything patented. Benjamin Henrion, for example, has just highlighed this new blog post from epc.nl (entitled "Software patenteren vergt creativiteit"). The domain they chose for their firm is interesting because it sounds like EPC in the Netherlands (the EPC denies software patents actually), so the acronym "EPC" got sort of hijacked by software patents proponents.

"In the meantime we are assessing the sorts of patents granted by the EPO."When the annual report comes out next week remember that this annual report includes no measure of quality and it exploits a depleted pool of pending/queued applications that are assessed and often granted in a rush. This annual report would not account for reduction in fees, which in our assessment may contribute to an artificial surge in number ("discount"/"sale" tactics) without adjusting the numbers accordingly, e.g. total revenue.

Someone has just posted the following comment at IP Kat to say:

But it does put me in mind of the current obsession inside the EPO with the "clarity" of the text of patent specifications. This obsession is absurd, but it does provide a glorious proof of what you write about, that every reader has a different and unique interpretation of any given text.

No patent attorney ever reached 100% "clarity". For the EPO to refuse a petition from the inventor, applicant or patent owner because its clarity is less than 100% is outrageous. Perfect clarity is something one can approach only asymptotically. The EPO should confine its enquiry to whether the level of clarity is good enough, whether it is "fit for purpose", and not whether it is 100%


From what we have heard or read, one serious issue at the moment is that many rejections are due to rather superficial things or clerical mistakes (how an application gets filed) rather than underlying technical deficiencies, lack of merit, prior art etc. It's a lot easier to disqulity an application this way, creating an illusion of high 'production' whilst also maintaining similar rejection rates. If anyone inside or outside the EPO has further insight on this, please get in touch. Forums for discussions of EPO matters (e.g. CSC publications, blog comments and so on) are being suppressed these days, impeding free flow of information. EPO management has so much to hide.

Recent Techrights' Posts

Microsoft's Demise in the Global News Cycle is Rather Telling
It should be noted that Microsoft is, in general, no longer prominent or dominant in news headlines
 
GNU/Linux Distributions as "Appliances" and DRM Platforms (the Case of ChromeOS and SteamOS)
Is this what we envisioned in the 1980s and 90s?
Gemini Migration and Backup Capsule (Archive)
At the end we'll end up with something a lot better than before and latency should be massively reduced
Links 01/10/2023: Science, Education, and pro-Russia Slovakia Leadership
Links for the day
IRC Proceedings: Sunday, October 01, 2023
IRC logs for Sunday, October 01, 2023
Links 01/10/2023: Climate, Patents, Programming, and More
Links for the day
Apple and Microsoft Problems
half a dozen links
Malware in the Ubuntu Snap Store, Thanks to Canonical Bloatware Mindset
Reprinted with permission from Ryan Farmer
Gemini Rising
There are 3523 capsules
Richard Stallman Gave a Talk Yesterday, Will Give Another Talk Today, and Will Give Two More Talks in Germany Later This Week
Those cover at least 2 different topics
Beware the Microsoft Sharks
We won't forgive and forget
IRC Proceedings: Saturday, September 30, 2023
IRC logs for Saturday, September 30, 2023
Don't be Afraid of the Command Line, It Might Even be a Friend
There's a tendency to think that only graphical interfaces were made to simplify usage, and any declarative interface is by design raw, inherently unfit for usage
One Positive Note About GNU/Linux Coverage in 2023 (Less Microsoft)
GNU/Linux users do not want this, with very rare exceptions
Snaps Were Never Good at Security, But the Media Coverage is Just Appalling
The media should focus on culling Windows, not making a huge fuss over minor things wrongly attributed to "Linux"
Better Footage of Richard Stallman's Talk Last Week: “Freedom in computing, forty years after starting to really protect it”
Richard Stallman speaks about the cancer situation early in his speech
Links 30/09/2023: A Government Shutdown and More Blizzard Layoffs
Links for the day
Links 30/09/2023: Bing Almost Offloaded Due to Failure/Losses, Nvidia Raided
Links for the day
A Lot of Technological 'Progress' Has Been Nothing But Buzzwords
Free software does not try to excite people people over nothing
Community is the Lifeblood of Freedom in the GNU/Linux World
Removing or undoing the "cancerd" (systemd) is feasible but increasingly difficult
Proprietary Software: Here Today, Gone Tomorrow
Proprietary software has an entirely different mindset, revolving around business models rather than science
Web Hostnames Down to Lowest Number in More Than 7 Years!
the number of hostnames is falling rapidly (they hide this by choosing logarithmic scale)
Over at Tux Machines...
2 days' worth
Richard Stallman Says He Will Probably Live Many More Years
"Richard Stallman has cancer. Fortunately it is slow-growing and manageable follicular lymphona, so he will probably live many more years nonetheless. But he now has to be even more careful not to catch Covid-19."
Quitting 'Clown Computing' and GAFAM is Only the Start
The Web and the Net at large became far too centralised
Stop Begging Companies That Don't Value Your Freedom to Stop Pushing You Around
That's not freedom
They Say Free Software is Like Communism When They, the Proprietary Software Giants, Constantly Pursue Government Bailouts (Subsidies From Taxpayers)
At the moment Ukraine is at most risk due to its dependence on Microsoft (inside its infrastructure)
Social Control Media Has No Future, It Was Always Doomed to Fail (Also Promoted Based on Lies)
Recent events, including developments at Twitter, meant that they lost a lot of their audience and then, in turn, sponsors/advertisers
The forbidden topics
There are forbidden topics in the hacker community
They're Been Trying to 'Kill' Richard Stallman for Years (by Mentally Tormenting Him)
Malicious tongue wanted to do him what had been done to Julian Assange
We Temporarily Have Two Gemini Capsules
They're both authentic and secure, but they're not the same
Consumerism is Lying and Revisionism
We need to reject these liars and charlatans
Links 30/09/2023: Open VFS Framework, CrossOver 23.5, Dianne Feinstein Dies
Links for the day
Security Leftovers
GNU/Linux, Microsoft, and more
Microsoft Down on the World Wide Web, Shows Survey
down by a lot in this category
IRC Proceedings: Friday, September 29, 2023
IRC logs for Friday, September 29, 2023
A Society That Fails Journalists Does Not Deserve Journalism
It's probably too later to save Julian Assange as a working publisher (he might never recover from the mental torture), but as a person and a father we can wish and work towards his release
Almost Nothing To Go With Your Morning's Cup Of Coffee
Newspaper? What newspaper?