Waste of stakeholders' money and a source of shame for the EPO, which goes in the opposite direction of the USPTO and the EPC itself

Referring to abstract patents as a "revolution" (as in "4IR")

Summary: With silly new terms such as "4IR" (the EPO used to say "ICT", "CII", "Industry 4.0" etc.) Team Battistelli is hoping to make software patents look/sound acceptable, honourable and inherently innovative or "revolutionary"

THE US moves further and further away from software patents -- a subject we'll revisit yet again in the weekend. The USPTO, even under newer leadership, does not intend to change that. It cannot. The highest court calls the shots.

But watch what the EPO has been doing today. It's actively promoting software patenting at an event in the US. Totally inappropriate. It did it this morning and once again later in the day.

"This is a showing of how grotesque EPO corruption of media has gotten; it poisons everything worldwide."The EPO's buzzword of choice for software patents is nowadays "4IR" (we'll show some time very soon how the EPO presents that in its Gazette). It's an EPO-sourced of EPO-boosted buzzword (which it literally paid the media to promote) and it stands for 'Fourth' 'Industrial' 'Revolution', which means pretty much nothing. All these words are misnombers. It's pure marketing.

This buzzword has just spread to Korea. This is a showing of how grotesque EPO corruption of media has gotten; it poisons everything worldwide. The Korea Bizwire has just published this nonsense and it ought to know that accelerating the granting of monopolies is not a desirable thing, especially not in technology (they mean software) where one has to be highly careful distributing monopoles. The Korean Intellectual Property Office (KIPO) does not allow software patenting, but what if it labeled these "4IR" like the EPO does?

From the article:

South Korea has cut short the patent application process for a number of technologies that are part of the so-called ‘Fourth Industrial Revolution’.

The Korean Intellectual Property Office (KIPO) launched a fast track today for patent applications for a select few technologies including 3D printing, self-driving, big data, cloud computing and the Internet of Things, allowing companies to obtain a patent in fewer than six months.

The fast track program is available for ongoing technology development projects and those by startups, as well as ones for which the KIPO has reached agreement with international intellectual property offices.

[...]

Other countries have taken similar steps. Japan launched an assessment team dedicated to technology patents last year, and set out new standards for software development this year, while China also ramped up efforts to protect software patents last year.

To explain the term "4IR" they just use some more buzzwords (one buzzword expanded to mean several others) and we remain concerned that this may eventually become 'normal'.

"To explain the term "4IR" they just use some more buzzwords (one buzzword expanded to mean several others) and we remain concerned that this may eventually become 'normal'."The Knowledge Group (mentioned here several days ago) has just promoted this upcoming 'webcast' in which it will explain "How to implement it [2017 Actavis Decisions] in oral proceedings and submissions before the EPO..."

In the case of software, the EPO's leadership already suggests using all sorts of buzzwords and then brainwashes patent examiners (we'll show the contents of the Gazette some time soon) to urge them to accept software patent applications. In Seattle it's about to explicitly give tips on how to achieve this. ⬆