Reference: Order of succession
THE EPO has become a lot worse than a banana republic. At the moment we're doing several parallel investigations into Battistelli scandals, some of which will hopefully yield additional articles next week. How on Earth did someone like Battistelli manage to become President of this high-reputation Office? People at very senior levels had warned about him before it happened. The Office was put in the hands of a sociopath, a chronic liar, a bully and a textbook example of people who must never ever receive immunity of any kind. Donald Trump is 'small potatoes' compared to this.
"The Office was put in the hands of a sociopath, a chronic liar, a bully and a textbook example of people who must never ever receive immunity of any kind."Yesterday we saw this French article titled "France: Cambodia Joins The European … Patent Organisation". It had been published on the 4th of May (somewhat belatedly) by Francois Pochart and Geoffroy Thill from August & Debouzy. This article appears to actually celebrate the banana republic of the EPO connecting with a former French colony that has zero European Patents (EPs) -- a subject we wrote about as recently as late last year and earlier this year. Here is what they wrote:
The European Patent Organisation (EPO) confirms its expansion. The EPO now rallies 44 states far beyond the European borders. The EPO has indeed signed agreements with Morocoo [sic] and Tunisia and from now on with Cambodia; that one might regard as an old reminiscence of the former French protectorates from the beginning of the 20th century.
"The article is laughable because it's not about the EPO but about Battistelli, as usual; it's all about him and it's full of quotes from him."Battistelli seems to believe that he's on some sort of Napoleonic expedition across Europe, having almost reached Russia already. His lobbying tours and handouts for agenda (if not votes) has been noted here for a number of years. It often seems like he's using small countries in East Europe (with almost no EPs) to 'secure' votes. As of yesterday (warning: epo.org link), there's another new example, this time from Ljubljana. It's accompanied by a new Benoît Battistelli photo op, this time with Eva Ã
 travs Podlogar and Vojko Toman in Slovenia. Did he do enough over there to 'secure' votes this time too? Misusing EPO budget? Like anyone is even keeping track of that budget (other than one of Battistelli's French confidants)...
The article is laughable because it's not about the EPO but about Battistelli, as usual; it's all about him and it's full of quotes from him. There's also a UPC 'plug':
Some 200 representatives from the 36 countries gathered in Ljubljana this week at the EPO's 2018 PATLIB conference to discuss how best to support companies and inventors through their patent information services. The event, organised annually since 1990, brings together staff of patent information centres to share their experience and knowledge in providing information and advice on intellectual property at local level.
"I am particularly pleased to see so many of Europe's patent information specialists here in Ljubljana today," said EPO President Benoît Battistelli, in his welcome address. "The EPO attaches great importance to supporting the PATLIB network, which serves the patent system - and the public interest - by providing much-needed patent information services, and thus fostering a favourable climate for innovation."
[...]
Both sides welcomed the news of the ratification of the Unified Patent Court Agreement by the United Kingdom last week as a decisive step forward. The EPO President also stressed the importance of a full completion of ratification of the UPC Agreement by Slovenia, not least because Ljubljana will host one of the seats of the new court's Mediation and Arbitration Centre.
I was also mulling over the reasons why a quote that I had read from Mr Johnson appears to indicate that he believes that the UPCA can come into force post-Brexit. Now I understand: his view is predicated upon the assumption that it will not be necessary to amend the UPCA (to deal with Brexit issues), as, in his view, an interpretation protocol (or statement) will do.
Mr Johnson's view presumably takes into account of the ability, under the Vienna Convention, for parties to an Agreement to reach a new Agreement regarding interpretation. Whilst I can concede that this proposed "fix" is at least not wildly implausible, it appears to me that there is still a long way to go before any conclusions can be reached upon whether it will work.
First question: is it possible for a later Agreement to provide an interpretation that was clearly not meant in the original Agreement? For example, is it possible to proclaim in a later Agreement that, were the original Agreement says "black", this is to be interpreted to mean "white"?
Second question: will an Agreement upon interpretation suffice if the proposal is to interpret the same term in different ways in different provisions? For example, the Gordon & Pascoe opinion proposes a number of amendments that seem impossible to replace with single (new) interpretations of terms.
Third question: is it even possible to craft an Agreement on interpretation if the original Agreement is not yet in force?
Fourth question: is an Agreement on interpretation even valid if, to all intents and purposes, it represents an amendment of the Agreement? This is especially pertinent to the UPCA, Article 82 of which prohibits amendment except in very specific circumstances after the Agreement has come into force.
Fifth question: the proposed "reinterpretation" takes a very different view on the fundamental nature of the court, namely seeing it as a court "Common to the Contracting States" (instead of "Common to the Contracting [EU] Member States"). Would this not have constitutional implications in the Contracting States? This suggests that any subsequent Agreement would need to be ratified according to the constitutional requirements of the Contracting States.
Any answers?