Bonum Certa Men Certa

The Lack of Genuine, Honest Discussion About Patent Quality Means That Under António Campinos Software Patents Will Continue to be Granted, Campinos Strives to Make Them 'Unitary'

Still basking in and glorifying Battistelli's "Quality Report 2017" rather than what examiners say

Napoleonic cannon
The Napoleonic President just wanted lots of patent wars in Europe



Summary: The agenda of the litigation 'industry' is still being served by the existing EPO administration; this is a problem because not only do they grant patents on just about anything but they also attempt to broaden litigation jurisdiction

THE EPO appears to be changing its management (not just António Campinos), but will it change its policies too? So far, judging by the first week of Campinos, it doesn't seem so because they actively deny the decline in patent quality and still viciously pursue 'unitary' effect, effectively spreading low-quality patents and rulings about them to the whole of Europe in defiance of local patent laws, constitutions etc.

"Several times yesterday Boult Wade Tennant was acting like a mouthpiece for Battistelli and his team, parroting whatever it takes to distract from EPO crises (such as patent quality plunging)."Will the EPO mention the apparent collapse of Team Battistelli or leave that ‘buried’ in the “Jobs” section while posting fluff like this? Battistelli's corruption isn't forgotten/forgettable, nor is the role of his enablers.

Several times yesterday Boult Wade Tennant was acting like a mouthpiece for Battistelli and his team, parroting whatever it takes to distract from EPO crises (such as patent quality plunging). Matthew Ridley posted this thing in Lexology, noting: "My guess is that many users of the patent system would much prefer to see the quality of granted European patents increase rather than see further increases in the speed of grant or rejection."

Also in Lexology his colleague Phil Merchant (Boult Wade Tennant) cited Battistelli's "Quality Report 2017," missing the point that the EPO now fakes 'quality' by conflating it with speed, or "timeliness". To quote Merchant:

As those familiar with the experience will attest, applying for a patent is often not a quick process. It takes time for a patent office to process an application, perform a search on relevant prior art and conduct an examination on whether an invention should be granted a patent. This delay can be frustrating for applicants, who would prefer to be able to commercialise their Intellectual Property as soon as possible.

In recognition of applicants’ desires, the European Patent Office (EPO) launched the ‘Early Certainty’ initiative in 2014 to attempt to speed up the patent granting process – initially to speed up delivery of search results, but revised in 2016 to speed up substantive examination and opposition. The EPO’s Quality Report 2017 (found here), published this week, reports on the progress towards achieving these goals.

[...]

The Quality Report 2017 provides some reassurance that the EPO is taking such concerns seriously, including positive steps toward quality assurance. We in the profession are therefore hopeful that the progress in timeliness at the EPO can continue to be made without sacrificing the high quality for which it is well respected across the world.



António Campinos just kept repeating the word "quality" and, as expected, a roundup of this spiel of his was written up at the end (warning: epo.org link, via Twitter).

"The EPO pretends that the 'epoch' was 8 years ago. It's always 8 years. Always Battistelli. They still pretend it was some kind of "golden era" rather than the collapse of the EPO."The EPO has also just mentioned the Boards of Appeal (page contents repeated in Twitter yesterday), making it all about Battistelli. To reproduce their own words (warning: epo.org link): "In the past eight years the event has attracted more than 1.400 participants to attend and engage with Boards of Appeal members and each other on key topics relating to Boards of Appeal decisions."

The EPO pretends that the 'epoch' was 8 years ago. It's always 8 years. Always Battistelli. They still pretend it was some kind of "golden era" rather than the collapse of the EPO. What happened to patent quality? What happened to staff quality? What happened to the EPO's reputation? How about the death of the UPC? The vision of 'unitary' patents is dead and only Bristows is still delusional enough (or sufficiently self-deluding) to speak about the CMS that will never be used. Yesterday it wrote this:

Over the last nine months, various members of the judiciary, their clerks, lawyers (including our own Luke Maunder), and others have been engaged in user acceptance testing (UAT) of the ‘sunrise’ version of the Unified Patent Court (UPC) Case Management System (CMS) test site.


It's never going to be used. They might as well call off development, having wasted a lot of money and time on this unconstitutional pile of rubbish. UPC was never desirable; it's a patent trolls' fantasy, which is being promoted by sites that support patent trolls. Mind Watchtroll's EPO interview from yesterday and mention of a new lawsuit in Eastern Texas, which typically attracts patent trolls. "U.S. Patent No. 10,000,000 just issued June 19, 2018," it said, "and already a patent in the 10 million series is being enforced. On July 3, 2018, the day the patent issued, Whirlpool Corporation filed a patent infringement lawsuit in the United States Federal District Court for the Eastern District of Texas."

"It ought to be noted that the EPO too has been promoting software patents; is this what Battistelli had in mind for 'unitary' patents? Abstract ideas as monopolies EU-wide?"The vision/purpose of 'unitary', low-quality European Patents was supposed to attract much of such litigation to Germany, causing a headache to a lot of companies for the sake of the litigation 'industry'.

The patent trolls' lobby, IAM, meanwhile reports another new lawsuit in Eastern Texas. Richard Lloyd wrote about the former owner of SUSE (UK-based with German pedigree) getting sued in the patent trolls-friendly courts. To quote:

Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) and British software company Micro Focus have been accused of infringing three patents relating to the development of mobile applications in a pair of lawsuits filed last week in the Eastern District of Texas. The plaintiff, which is demanding damages of at least $400 million, is listed on the court filing as Wapp Tech Limited Partnership and Wapp Tech Corp, although the three patents in question were developed and are owned by inventor Donavan Paul Poulin.


These are software patents. This is why they target the courts in Texas. It ought to be noted that the EPO too has been promoting software patents; is this what Battistelli had in mind for 'unitary' patents? Abstract ideas as monopolies EU-wide?

"The EPO (in collaboration with IAM) has already admitted this is about software patents..."Yesterday we noticed that the University of Detroit Mercy promotes buzzwords which Battistelli and the EPO used to promote/popularise even in the US, notably "Fourth Industrial Revolution" or "4IR" ("Industry 4.0"), adding to other (older) buzzwords, e.g. "ICT", "CII", "AI" and so on.

Wissam Aoun (University of Detroit Mercy's School of Law) wrote this abstract:

During the first Industrial Revolution, the patent system developed in an era of democratized invention. Individual inventors dominated patent filings and helped create a narrative surrounding the transformative impact of the patent system on the lives of inventors and society. Existing scholarship often overlooks the role of patent agents, those individuals who assisted inventors in securing patent rights, during this era. Industrial Revolution era patent agency was broad and indiscrete compared to its current form, which was largely a product of the needs of individual inventors and a pre-professionalization view of the discipline. As corporatization slowly replaced the individual inventor and professionalization began to dominate many occupational fields, the professional patent agent materialized. However, the emergence of disruptive technologies in our new Fourth Industrial Revolution may be reversing both of these trends, with the re-emergence of democratized invention and challenging the discretization of many fields of professional service.


The EPO (in collaboration with IAM) has already admitted this is about software patents and here is how they excuse this internally in the Gazette.

Software patents in Europe



Recent Techrights' Posts

KillerStartups.com is an LLM Spam Site That Sometimes Covers 'Linux' (Spams the Term)
It only serves to distract from real articles
 
Gemini Links 21/11/2024: Alphabetising 400 Books and Giving the Internet up
Links for the day
Links 21/11/2024: TikTok Fighting Bans, Bluesky Failing Users
Links for the day
Links 21/11/2024: SpaceX Repeatedly Failing (Taxpayers Fund Failure), Russian Disinformation Spreading
Links for the day
Richard Stallman Earned Two More Honorary Doctorates Last Month
Two more doctorate degrees
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Wednesday, November 20, 2024
IRC logs for Wednesday, November 20, 2024
Gemini Links 20/11/2024: Game Recommendations, Schizo Language
Links for the day
Growing Older and Signs of the Site's Maturity
The EPO material remains our top priority
Did Microsoft 'Buy' Red Hat Without Paying for It? Does It Tell Canonical What to Do Now?
This is what Linus Torvalds once dubbed a "dick-sucking" competition or contest (alluding to Red Hat's promotion of UEFI 'secure boot')
Links 20/11/2024: Politics, Toolkits, and Gemini Journals
Links for the day
Links 20/11/2024: 'The Open Source Definition' and Further Escalations in Ukraine/Russia Battles
Links for the day
[Meme] Many Old Gemini Capsules Go Offline, But So Do Entire Web Sites
Problems cannot be addressed and resolved if merely talking about these problems isn't allowed
Links 20/11/2024: Standing Desks, Broken Cables, and Journalists Attacked Some More
Links for the day
Links 20/11/2024: Debt Issues and Fentanylware (TikTok) Ban
Links for the day
Jérémy Bobbio (Lunar), Magna Carta and Debian Freedoms: RIP
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
Jérémy Bobbio (Lunar) & Debian: from Frans Pop to Euthanasia
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
This Article About "AI-Powered" is Itself LLM-Generated Junk
Trying to meet quotas by making fake 'articles' that are - in effect - based on plagiarism?
Recognizing invalid legal judgments: rogue Debianists sought to deceive one of Europe's most neglected regions, Midlands-North-West
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
Google-funded group distributed invalid Swiss judgment to deceive Midlands-North-West
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
Gemini Links 20/11/2024: BeagleBone Black and Suicide Rates in Switzerland
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Tuesday, November 19, 2024
IRC logs for Tuesday, November 19, 2024
Links 19/11/2024: War on Cables?
Links for the day
Gemini Links 19/11/2024: Private Journals Online and Spirituality
Links for the day
Drew's Development Mailing Lists and Patches to 'Refine' His Attack Pieces Against the FSF's Founder
Way to bury oneself in one's own grave...
The Free Software Foundation is Looking to Raise Nearly Half a Million Dollars by Year's End
And it really needs the money, unlike the EFF which sits on a humongous pile of oligarchs' and GAFAM cash
What IBMers Say About IBM Causing IBMers to Resign (by Making Life Hard/Impossible) and Why Red Hat Was a Waste of Money to Buy
partnering with GAFAM
In Some Countries, Desktop/Laptop Usage Has Fallen to the Point Where Microsoft and Windows (and Intel) Barely Matter Anymore
Microsoft is the next Intel basically
[Meme] The Web Wasn't Always Proprietary Computer Programs Disguised as 'Web Pages'
The Web is getting worse each year
Re-de-centralisation Should Be Our Goal
Put the users in charge, not governments and corporations in charge of users
Gemini Links 19/11/2024: Rain Music, ClockworkPi DevTerm, and More
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Monday, November 18, 2024
IRC logs for Monday, November 18, 2024