Bonum Certa Men Certa

Corporate Media Will Never Cover the EPO's Violations of the Law With Respect to Patent Scope

EPO management is giving out patents it knows to be bunk, invalid

Special water
They would patent 'special' water and air too (if it wouldn't have caused backlash)



Summary: The greed-driven gold rush for patents has resulted in a large pool of European Patents that have no legitimacy and are nowadays associated with low legal certainty; the media isn't interested in covering such a monumental disaster that poses a threat to the whole of Europe

THE domain of patents rarely receives media coverage; it's certainly uncommon in Europe. There are some ads (for law firms) disguised as 'news', but lawyers and attorneys aren't journalists and their 'coverage' or 'columns' are just shameless self-promotion and lobbying. It's all about money.



"They continue to spam Scottish media, marketing European Patents under the guise of Brexit 'news'."Here's a new example from yesterday. HeraldScotland published this fake 'article' from "Graham Murnane [who] is a qualified UK and European Patent Attorney based in Murgitroyd’s Glasgow office."

So a Scottish patent law firm is at it again. They continue to spam Scottish media, marketing European Patents under the guise of Brexit 'news'. Remember last week's example from Marks & Clerk, which used another Scottish paper to insult Scotland and urge people to pursue patents at Marks & Clerk? It was far from the first time. They had done it before in Scottish media -- a fact that we documented in articles such as:

  1. Marks & Clerk is Still Pushing Patent Maximalism Agenda in Europe and Britain, Including UPC/UPCA/Unitary Patent (UP)
  2. Marks & Clerk Blames Battistelli's Victims, the Boards of Appeal, Whose Job Guarded Patent Quality
  3. Software Patents Are a Dying Breed, So Marks & Clerk and Other Legal Monoliths Promote the EPO's Buzzwords (Loopholes)
  4. UPC Puff Piece in the Scottish Media is Just an Advertisement by Marks & Clerk


The latest puff piece says this:

In these times of change in relation to many things European, one thing that won’t change is how businesses protect their innovations.

A lot of people are surprised when I tell them that the UK is, and will continue to be, part of the European Patent Office (EPO).

The EPO is not an EU institution, so whatever happens to our relationship with the EU, the UK will continue to be an EPO member state.


Well, duh. How is that even news? But how valid would the patents be in the UK? They aim for quantity now, not quality.

Yesterday the EPO wrote: "The Maltese and Moroccan #patent registers are now available via deep links from the European Patent Register."

As if there's much of value (in the patents sense) to be found there. The EPO just wants to add all countries to its group/syndication, much like NATO, rendering nobody safe from litigation with fake European Patents (or attacks from Russia in NATO's case).

"They aim for quantity now, not quality."When we speak of fake European Patents we mean European Patents that would not survive a court's scrutiny and must therefore not be granted in the first place. Even SUEPO (Staff Union of the European Patent Office) recently complained about these.

The EPO is again boasting about software patents and applications ("Europe has witnessed a marked upturn in blockchain patent filing since 2015, with more than two thirds of applications being filed at the EPO," the EPO wrote yesterday). European software patents called "blockchain" are not valid and that's what these are; they're just software patents, by the EPO's own admission. António Campinos promotes this nonsense in his "blog", so he too is personally culpable. Will all these patents fall in an avalanche some time soon? Maybe.

"Will all these patents fall in an avalanche some time soon? Maybe."A firm that mentioned it before (as we noted at the time regarding judges' lack of impartiality) had posted about it in its own site, perhaps realising just how realistic the prospect is (that software patents would all be invalidated). Haven't we learned from what happened a few weeks ago in the UK Supreme Court?

Mondaq has this fresh copy of an article by Gordon Harris and Paul Inman (Gowling WLG) on fake European Patents i.e. patents EPO granted only to be found invalid by British courts. In their own words:

On the other hand, Lord Hodge considered it well established that although not bound to do so, the courts in the UK "should normally follow the settled jurisprudence for the EPO (especially decisions of its Enlarged Board of Appeal) on the interpretation of the European Patent Convention in the interests of uniformity, especially when the question is one of principle".


Today's European Patents are very dubious and even EPO staff complains about these. SUEPO estimates that tens of thousands of fake European Patents are being granted every year (non-compliant w.r.t. EPC).

Recent Techrights' Posts

In defence of JD Vance, death of Pope Francis
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
Three Years in Prison for Disney Employee’s ‘Menu Hacking’: The Economic Fallout of Digital Menus
Reprinted with permission from Ryan Farmer
Approaching 10,000 Articles/Pages Since Going Static
Trying to silence or derail the site was always a dumb strategy
Microsoft is Shedding Off Loads of Staff and That Can be Dangerous Too
Working for Microsoft is a choice; nobody forces you to do it
Richard Stallman and the Unix Philosophy
When asked about systemd people must remember that RMS speaks as an active Board member of the FSF and also the founder of the FSF
 
Links 26/04/2025: General Assassinated in the Town of Balashikha, US Promoting Seafloor Mining
Links for the day
Links 26/04/2025: Facebook Layoffs Again, Remembering What's Real, and Say No to Mass Surveillance
Links for the day
Links 26/04/2025: NOAA Budget Cuts and "Dog Days Ahead"
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Friday, April 25, 2025
IRC logs for Friday, April 25, 2025
Links 25/04/2025: Slop Fatigue and Patent Judges Flocking to Fake, Unconstitutional and Illegal Kangaroo Court (UPC, Captured 'Justice')
Links for the day
Gemini Links 25/04/2025: Night Manager and Devuan in Hosting
Links for the day
Windows Falls to New Lows in Nicaragua, Now Below a Quarter (It Used to be Almost 100%)
Another all-time low for Windows
The Cost (to Linux) of LLM Slop
Slop 'artists' like Fagioli are far from harmless
Links 25/04/2025: Ubisoft Spyware, Hegseth Fails at Tech on Every Level
Links for the day
Gemini Links 25/04/2025: Food Forest Update and Facebook Destroying the Net
Links for the day
Get Rid of Back Doors, Don't Obsess Over Bounties and Other Corporate PR Stunts (or Needless Reboot Rituals)
Security as a term has mostly lost its meaning due to repeated misuse for many years
Serial Sloppers Are Killing the Web (They Probably Don't Care, Either)
Slop is a disease on the Web
Streaming Apps Are “Investor Fraud” That Kills the Planet
Reprinted with permission from Ryan Farmer
Things Get Increasingly Nasty at Microsoft Ahead of the Fake Results and May's Mass Layoffs Wave
They try to get people to 'resign' so that they won't count as layoffs and the company's 'wellbeing' will seem better
IBM's Debt Ballooned by 8.5 Billion Dollars in Just 3 Months!
Hallmark of a company in a state of disarray, trying to spend its way out of trouble
Big Trouble in GNOME
even GNOME people admit the CoC went wrong
Slopping the Trough: Disney Plus Loses Billions and the Decline of Physical Media in America
Reprinted with permission from Ryan Farmer
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Thursday, April 24, 2025
IRC logs for Thursday, April 24, 2025
Links 24/04/2025: GAFAM Problems and No Peace (or Ceasefire) in Sight
Links for the day
Slopfarms on the Web Almost Always Generate Anti-Linux FUD When They Produce "Linux" Output
Welcome to the dying Web
Richard Stallman's Oxford Talk Has Just Ended, Here Are Some Photos
he might hop over to another European country
Gemini Links 24/04/2025: Birthday and Good Work of Academia in Esotericism
Links for the day
Links 24/04/2025: EU fines Apple and Facebook, Another Microsoft GitHub Security Blunder
Links for the day
New Article Explains How the GPL Came About and WordPress Having Copyleft Obligations
Having been involved in the WordPress development community since almost the beginning, I know why it chose the GPL and how it restricts abuse by Automattic
IBM Gained Almost 6 Billion Dollars in "Goodwill" Value in Just 3 Months, According to IBM
Congrats to the management!
In Belarus, Yandex is Now Measured as 50 Times More 'Popular' (by Usage) Than Microsoft
Yandex continues to gain, whereas Bing cannot even register at 1%. Last month it was registered or measured at a measly 0.65%.
IBM Cannot Lie to Shareholders Anymore
"I would not be surprised if we see a layoff every quarter this year."
Dr Richard Stallman (RMS) Gives Talk in Oxford University in 4 Hours
If you live nearby, go there (it's free as in gratis)
Using a Law Firm's Licence to Exercise Politics Through Frivolous SLAPPs and Nastygrams (to Silence People, Remove Pages, Demand Fake or Forced 'Apologies')
Things must be getting really bad when lawyers act for raving antisemites
We're Working to Make Full-Site Search Available
This site has over 1,000 'wiki' pages, many thousands of documents, several thousands of videos, and about 50,000 blog posts or articles. We need to make them easier to find/navigate.
Links 24/04/2025: IBM Loses Many Contracts, Intel to Lay Off Over 20% (Not Counting Those Who Leave 'Voluntarily')
Links for the day
Richard Stallman Can Explain to Oxford Artificial Intelligence Society Why LLM Slop is Not Artificial Intelligence and Why It Hurts Society
another 'crop' of LLM slop that damages GNU/Linux and facts
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Wednesday, April 23, 2025
IRC logs for Wednesday, April 23, 2025