Bonum Certa Men Certa

Search Matters Not at the European Patent Office

Early Certainty From Google (April 1, 2018)

Campinos in the penthouse



Summary: The EPO has found out that "System Battistelli" [1, 2] has been catastrophic for the quality of patents; it stops short of openly admitting it as such and in fact it keeps the message strictly confidential (explained to insiders, who will inevitably notice a system being abandoned)

IT ought to have become clear by now that the European Patent Office (EPO) is unable/unwilling to reform. António Campinos is not changing anything except the level of advocacy for software patents in Europe (i.e. lowering patent quality even further).



Earlier this month we wrote about teffgate and now it's mentioned in IP Kat as well, courtesy of yesterday's post from Jonathan Pratt. He mostly cites other sources, but he binds together several items we covered earlier this month (about departure from the EPC, decline of patent quality/legitimacy, and courts throwing out European Patents).

Kluwer's patent blog has also posted a number of articles this week. This started with an analysis of how to deal with unusual prior art when applying the EPO's Problem and Solution Approach, in particular when there are doubts about whether the closest prior art is enabling. The second post related to the changes in the latest version of Visser's Annotated European Patent Convention. Next up, a court in the Netherlands ruled that two Dutch patents for processing teff (a kind of grain) are invalid. This was declared as "great news" for Ethiopia which has been using teff for thousands of years. This was followed up with a comparison of the test for sufficiency in Australia and the UK following recent cases relating to Lyrica. Finally, there was an analysis of the recent decision of the District Court of The Hague that the Dutch part of Eli Lilly and Company's patent EP 1 313 508 is valid.


As recently as last week we wrote about the "AI" buzzword/hype taking over Europe in an effort to promote bad things like surveillance; it’s often a Trojan horse/back door for software patents as well and hours ago Intellectual Property Watch published "EU Members Adopt Plan To Make Europe A Leader In Artificial Intelligence". It turns out that it isn't necessarily about patents, but it likely cites things like that recent UN/WIPO report. "The European Council of member states has adopted an all-encompassing plan to make Europe a global leader in artificial intelligence and integrate AI into all aspects of regional life. The plan, which comes as Europe has been identified as lagging in AI research and investment behind the United States," says the opening (not behind their paywall).

Speaking of "AI", belatedly the EPO admits it's failing to replace examiners with so-called 'AI' (which means just "Algorithms" or "Computers" these days). As Märpel has just explained:

Märpel heard that the office computer tools are not working as well as they should. This was confirmed at the beginning of this month by an audit that was concluded by Boston Consulting Group and published by President Campinos. Märpel is frankly surprised that the audit did not leak into the general public as it paints a dismal picture of system Battistelli. Our readers will certainly remember that under President Battistelli millions were paid for software development and that a surprisingly high proportion of the IT firms chosen were French.

The pinacle of the IT tools was supposed to be the "Electronic dossier system" or eDossier. The office had great hopes in the eDossier, as it would have rendered formality officers redundant: the computer would have managed the procedural aspects automatically. The catastrophic state of formalities results from a continuous policy of understaffing in the past years: why replace staff if the computer will render them all redundant anyway?

But the e-dossier does not work. The audit suggested to close the project and the decision was published last week.


The original message came from a new appointee and former colleague of Campinos.

It seems clear that for a number of years the EPO foolishly attempted to replace examiners with low-quality automation which SUEPO repeatedly warned about/against (as did we). In fact, almost every day this month the EPO published "searchmatters" tweets like this one from half a day ago: "Check out this collection of lectures and workshops to see why #SearchMatters..."

Well, if only the EPO truly believed that "SearchMatters"; it seems to be trying to cut costs and cut the legitimacy of European Patents. If these were the goals, it succeeded at both. However, that puts at peril the future of this entire institution. This is why there was such strong resistance from examiners. In the next post we shall give new examples of bogus (as confirmed by assessors) European Patents.

Recent Techrights' Posts

Techrights Does Not Compete With LLM Slop, It Exposes the Bastards, Plagiarists and Scammers Who Do That
People like Scam Altman, still facing a lawsuit from his own sister for sexual abuse against her
Slopwatch: Planet Ubuntu Became LLM Slop and Some People Fail to See the Immorality of Plagiarism
it lessens the incentive for people to publish real articles
Microsoft Layoffs Again in Bay Area
Microsoft relies on people's false belief that being "in LinkedIn" will get you a job; well, seems like even working inside LinkedIn really sucks and you lose the job
 
The "AI" (Slop) Bubble Already Popped, But It's Not an Overnight Collapse
where Microsoft put its money
No More Steven Astorino at IBM, Chatter About Weekly/Nonstop Layoffs at IBM
What happened? Good luck guessing.
Looking at Corruption in Europe, Going Beyond the EPO
Expect a new series to kick off very soon
Slopwatch: Security SPAM and LLM Slop for SEO and FUD Purposes, Perpetually Tarnishing the Perception of Linux and (Open)SSH Security
A lot of this Fear, Uncertainty, Doubt (FUD) comes from Microsoft and its LLMs
Links 30/05/2025: Google's LLM Slop Pushers Are Killing Journalism and Shira Perlmutter Fails to Stop Bribed Regime From Legalising Plagiarism (in "AI" Clothing)
Links for the day
Links 30/05/2025: Offline Arts and "Threshold of Patience"
Links for the day
Signing Off Serious Lies With a Statement of Truth is No Joking Matter
It's not hard to see what's happening here
Links 30/05/2025: LLM Slop Already Ingests and Vomits Its Own Garbage, Facebook Exec Admits Copyrights a Concern Too
Links for the day
Mass Layoffs at Microsoft Result in More Whistleblowers From Microsoft
Microsoft's predatory pricing is further
EPO Poll: 68% Dissatisfied With Quality of Slop (Wrongly Framed as "AI") for Patent Classification
Slop does not work, it's just falsely advertised with extra hype (funded by slop pushers that sponsor the major media)
Big Crowds Gather to Learn About Software Freedom From the Man Who Started GNU/Linux in 1983
"It was a great success"
Gemini Links 30/05/2025: Fighting Against the Bad News, and Slop is Dehumanisation Disguised as "Intelligence"
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Thursday, May 29, 2025
IRC logs for Thursday, May 29, 2025
Links 29/05/2025: Chinese Cracking Against EU Institutions (Prague), More Assaults on Media and Its Funding Sources
Links for the day
EPO Workers Caution That the Officials Are Still Illegally Trying to Replace Staff With Slop (to Lower Quality and Validity of European Patents)
Nobody in Europe voted for any of this
Links 29/05/2025: US Health Deficit and Malware Disguised as Slop Generator
Links for the day
Links 29/05/2025: Turtle Roadkill, Modern 'Tech' as a Sting
Links for the day
Thanks for All the Fish, Linux Format
people who once wrote for it (or for other magazines) comment on the importance of this news
People's Understanding of the History of GNU/Linux is Changing
RMS is not a radical, he's just clever enough to see and foresee what's going on
Microsofters Were Scheming to Take Over This Entire Web Site (in Their Own Words!)
Money gets spent censoring/deplatforming people who speak about real issues; no money gets spent actually tackling those underlying issues
Bicycles for the Minds and the Story Harrison Bergeron
"The goal of having people in charge of the tools they use and that the tools should amplify ability" has long been abandoned
Links 29/05/2025: YouTube Problem and Giant Privacy Hole in Microsoft OneDrive
Links for the day
[Video] Cory Doctorow Explains DMCA: DRM in the Browser (or Webapp) Will "Make It a Felony to Protect Your Privacy While You Use It."
Pycon US Keynote Speaker Cory Doctorow
United States Courts With Sworn Testimonies Are on Our Side, We'll Present the Same Here
Chronicling what happened is a moral imperative
Serial Sloppers Ruin and Lessen the Incentive to Cover "Linux"
The Serial Sloppers (SSs) ought to be named and shamed, but almost nobody does this
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Wednesday, May 28, 2025
IRC logs for Wednesday, May 28, 2025
Links 28/05/2025: 'Emulation Layers' (Measurements and Linguistics), Libraries, and Discomfort
Links for the day
Links 28/05/2025: More Arrests for Bitcoin-Connected Torture and Prosecutions for Dieselgate-Linked Executives
Links for the day
Even Microsoft (MSN) Covers Richard Stallman's Public Talk in Milan 2 Days Ago
He spoke in Spanish earlier this month (Alicante)
Gemini Links 28/05/2025: Techo-authoritarianism With Slop Plagiarism and "No Online June" (Going Offline)
Links for the day
Links 28/05/2025: GitHub MCP Exploited and MathWorks Discovers Huge Windows TCO
Links for the day
Very High Attendance Level at Richard Stallman's Talk Shows People Can Relate to His Message
Smear campaigns have their limits
Gemini Links 28/05/2025: Celsius-Fahrenheit, Endless Scrolling/Infinite Scrolling, and Trapping LLM Slop Bots
Links for the day
Prison gate backdrop to baptism by Fr Sean O'Connell, St Paul's, Coburg
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
More Photos From This Week's Milan Talk by Richard Stallman
The posts are in Italian, not English
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Tuesday, May 27, 2025
IRC logs for Tuesday, May 27, 2025