Bonum Certa Men Certa

CIPA and EPO, Two UPC Boosters, Get Together to Promote Software Patents in Spite of the EPC

Shredding the rule of law

A paper trail



Summary: The private sector of patent litigation paints itself as the victim (never mind the many victims of their often-frivolous lawsuits) while lobbying for irrational patents that serve nobody in science and technology; this is troublesome for a plethora of important factors and reasons

THE MANAGEMENT of the EPO has long attempted to paint itself as the victim (of "defamation" or a "smear campaign" or whatever). These are patently absurd inversions of narratives because it's the EPO that defames employees (sometimes calling them "Nazis") and smearing the staff union, SUEPO. It's all about perception and EPO managers spent an extraordinary amount of money (EPO budget of course!) on PR agencies, whose job was to lie to the public.



It wasn't too long ago that Josh from Patent Progress refuted some nonsensical chart much like the EPO's supposed 'results', where companies get ranked only by their patents (enumerated, aggregated).

"It's all about perception and EPO managers spent an extraordinary amount of money (EPO budget of course!) on PR agencies, whose job was to lie to the public.""The number of patents received by a company has little to do with its creativity," Josh said, "and yet we get this kind of nonsense all the time."

How many patent lawyers/attorneys seriously believe that patents and inventions are the same thing? This is not just pure nonsense but it is paid-for propaganda; there's an agenda here and it's often delivered/amplified by corporate media...

The "Cult of Patents" people (as we often refer to the likes who promote such charts) are writing entire articles about a Samsung patent as if a patent is a product [1, 2]. It's not. And from war on (particular) drugs we've apparently moved to patenting them, based on this new press release. Incredible. Truly incredible. It's all because of money; it's all about commercial interests, not safety or ethics or health...

"How many patent lawyers/attorneys seriously believe that patents and inventions are the same thing?"Are these drugs any good for treating depression? Well, hopefully...

According to CIPA, the real victims aren't those who get sued by patent holders, usually baselessly. The real victims are those who are responsible for these lawsuits. That's a lot like those articles about "bored" and "depressed" drone operators, who basically slaughter a lot of people using a joystick halfway across the world. Many articles have been composed for over half a decade about the "stress" and "fatigue" of these operators. We recently started seeing similar articles about NSA analysts, as if those who illegally and unconstitutionally infringe the privacy of millions are actually the victims worthy of public sympathy. Isn't that grotesque?

According to CIPA and the likes of it (see Ben Wodecki on Twitter), we need to be sorry for patent attorneys. Remember that CIPA is their front group in the UK. It's a highly nefarious front group that liaised with Battistelli some months ago. It's also the foremost lobbyist for UPC in the UK.

"According to CIPA, the real victims aren't those who get sued by patent holders, usually baselessly. The real victims are those who are responsible for these lawsuits."Are attorneys unhappy at their job? Then they need to change occupations. As patent maximalism may be coming to an end (at least in the US) the market will become more competitive and over-congested. It will be harder to attract 'business'; we already see some mergers and acquisitions that are symptoms of it.

"You just need to read 2 or 3 patent claims," Benjamin Henrion wrote, "and your brain start to hurt. No wonder if you have to write those claims the whole day [go] #mental..."

We remind readers that CIPA representatives basically 'infiltrated' IP Kat, whereupon EPO coverage virtually ground to a half. They're UPC boosters who seem to have no qualm about doing photo ops with Battistelli and software patents in Europe is an agenda they totally and wholeheartedly support. CIPA can be blamed for erostion of patent quality at the EPO. EPO staff should be upset at CIPA; they're not on the same side, they're almost opposites.

Mind what the EPO wrote in Twitter some hours ago: "We're holding a free-of-charge #ICT seminar in London on 28 Sep in co-operation with @TheCIPA. For more details, and to sign up, click here: http://bit.ly/ICTseminar18 pic.twitter.com/5ksdupirtC"

"EPO staff should be upset at CIPA; they're not on the same side, they're almost opposites."ICT is one of those buzzwords (or terms) they use for software patents. CIPA and EPO are again liaising in order to 'conspire' for software patents. Well, see the description in the cited page (warning: epo.org link): "The event will focus on patentability issues and the major aspects of filing and prosecuting ICT-related patent applications at the EPO. Three break-out workshops will be offered related to the drafting of European applications in the respective areas of Business Methods, examination of cloud computing at the EPO: claims for the Cloud as well as Human Computer Interaction (HCI) and Graphic User Interface (GUI). An EPO expert and a European patent attorney will chair each workshop which will cover information both on the legal framework and on the claim drafting aspects."

This is CIPA's agenda. Suffice to say, terms like "cloud" are just masks for software patents.

Then they come out with nonsense like this sob story, trying to garner some sympathy:

An IP Inclusive and Chartered Institute of Patent Attorneys (CIPA) survey showed that 33 percent of patent professionals are uncomfortable, unhappy or very unhappy, with disturbing numbers confessing to thoughts of self-harm or suicide.

The ‘Report of IP Inclusive & CIPA survey for Mental Health Awareness Week 2018’ found that almost 70 percent of respondents admitted to having their mental health affected at work by high stress levels.

The report showed that 66.9 percent of the 180 respondents admitted to having been adversely affected at work by high stress levels, with over half suffering from anxiety.


CIPA (patent maximalists) should encourage them to seek employment with industries that create things, not doing patents and litigation. The latter isn't as fulfilling.

"We caution EPO staff not to view CIPA is an ally with shared concerns. CIPA's only concern seems to be that there aren't "enough" patents; it wants a lot more!"The above has since then been mentioned by circles close to EPO too (and retweeted by anonymous EPO staff). Maybe they feel like they can relate, but actually the CIPA types are very much 'enemies' of examiners; they propped up Battistelli, they reduce patent quality, and they lie to the public about UPC. And of course, like almost every day, the EPO has just promoted software patents again, dubbing them "AI" for hype/buzz. This is the sort of thing CIPA wants the EPO to do and actively participates in.

We caution EPO staff not to view CIPA is an ally with shared concerns. CIPA's only concern seems to be that there aren't "enough" patents; it wants a lot more! It's what makes examiners' lives a lot more miserable and emboldens Team Battistelli.

Recent Techrights' Posts

Rust is Starting to Seem More Like Microsoft-hosted "Digital Maoism", Not a Legitimate Effort to Improve Security
Maybe this is very innocent, but they seem to have taken a solid, stable program from a high-profile Frenchman and looked for ways to marry it with GitHub, i.e. Microsoft/NSA
Finland, Lithuania, and Latvia Fortify Their Digital Border With GNU/Linux
This month's data from statCounter is particularly interesting near the Baltic Sea
Richard Stallman Gives Public Talk at Technical University of Liberec, Czech Republic
"For programs that you could run, and for network services that could do your own computing, under what circumstances is it reasonable to trust them?"
Another Wave of Microsoft Layoffs Comes Shortly. Microsoft Propaganda Sites and Slopforms Powered by Microsoft LLMs Already Spew Out Face-Saving Nonsense.
Based on last month's leak, some very extensive layoffs are now imminent [...] Perhaps we can expect a lot of noise, some of it spewed out by bots, to distract from or belittle the impending mass layoffs
Ubuntu Becomes Microsoft GitHub, Based on Decision Made by British Army Officer
You're hopeless, Canonical
 
People Used to Talk
If pets can live a measurably happy life without gadgets and "apps", why can't humans?
Outsourcing GNU/Linux to Microsoft GitHub Promoted by Microsoft LLM Slop and Army Officers
Something doesn't seem right
Weaponisation of For-Profit Dockets - Part III: No More Media Lawsuits From Brett Wilson LLP This Year, One Can Only Guess Why
People leak a lot of material to Techrights because they know, based on the track record, that the sources will be protected and whatever gets published will stay online, in full, no matter how stubborn an effort (even lawsuits and blackmail) will be sent its way
Gemini Links 07/05/2025: Adopting GrapheneOS, Further Enshittification of Flickr
Links for the day
Links 07/05/2025: CISA Gutted, Debt-Saddled (Likely Insolvent) 'Open' 'AI' (Proprietary Slop) Faking Its Financial State Again
Links for the day
The European Patent Office (EPO) Has a Very Profound Corruption Issue, Far More Urgent an Issue Than Pronouns
a rather long document
Today We Turn 18.5
The eighteenth "and a half" anniversary
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Tuesday, May 06, 2025
IRC logs for Tuesday, May 06, 2025
Microsoft Finally Admits That XBox is ****
In this case, "enshittification" is an understatement
Slopwatch: Microsoft Slop, Anti-Linux Slop, and IBM Marketing Itself as a Slop Company
Microsoft-controlled LLM spewing out garbage about "Linux"
Links 06/05/2025: Microsoft's Assassination of Skype After Years of Failure, Slop Hallucinations Are Getting Worse
Links for the day
Links 06/05/2025: Changing Places and StarGrid for PalmOS
Links for the day
Windows and Microsoft Causing Serious Data Breaches, Media Rushes to Blame That on "Linux" Somehow
While selling us some rusty old propaganda about how moving to Microsoft GitHub (Rust) will improve security
Making Site Archives More Easily Accessible (Approaching 50,000 Blog Posts)
Efforts to censor us have always backfired badly
Weaponisation of For-Profit Dockets - Part II: Hiding Behind Lawyers and Barristers Who Lack Standards so as to Engage in Classic Corporate Extortion
They're trying to scare people and they misuse their licence to operate
Links 06/05/2025: LLMs/Chatbots Attract More Scrutiny (Getting Worse Over Time), PwC Has Many Layoffs
Links for the day
Thanks for listening. How can this Morse feed be further improved?
Right now any and all feedback on the audio would be helpful
statCounter: Bing's Market Share Lower Right Now Than It Was When LLM Hype Began (With "Bing Chat")
If anybody gains at Google's expense in search, it is BRICS' alternatives such as Yandex
Gemini Links 06/05/2025: Failure and Proxmox Cluster
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Monday, May 05, 2025
IRC logs for Monday, May 05, 2025
Weaponisation of For-Profit Dockets - Part I: Hiding Behind Lawyers (or Guns for Hire) After Abusing Many People and Even Strangling Women While Microsoft Paid Salaries
This whole thing is very typical of the Microsoft and Bill Gates mindset
From EPO to "MAGA Regime": A Shift Away From Reality to Fake News and False Metrics
Disbelief in itself isn't a bad thing; but the problem is that people are taught to believe rich people in suits more than they believe others
Skype is Officially Dead Today and This is Why People Should Use Free Software Instead (Goodbye, Microsoft)
It's also a good reminder of why people should move to GNU/Linux
'Simple Articles' in MyGemini Just One of Many New 'Sites' in Geminispace
Geminispace has grown fast lately; it's turning 6 next month
Links 05/05/2025: TikTok Still a Romanian Woe/Foe, Signal Perils Showing
Links for the day
Gemini Links 05/05/2025: Debian and GNOME and a "Welcome to Simple Articles"
Links for the day
Links 05/05/2025: US Economy Shrinks, US Presidency Spreading Deepfakes
Links for the day
Links 05/05/2025: Breaches, Environment, and Conflicts
Links for the day
SUSE the Company Now Uses LLM Slop to 'Write' Its Blog, What Does That Tell Us About SUSE?
There are many giveaways
Richard Stallman is in Alicante Today to Give a Talk, Czech Republic in Two Days (Wednesday)
Of course he can deliver the talk in Spanish
Gemini Links 05/05/2025: XL Bullies and Luddites
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Sunday, May 04, 2025
IRC logs for Sunday, May 04, 2025