"The EPO has offered bribes to both media and academia in recent years, trying to get both on its side (that also means not covering EPO corruption)."We promised ourselves that this year we wouldn't give this ceremony any publicity (even negative) because it's mostly a distraction from bigger issues. We can certainly note that it seems plausible that the EPO now pays Euronews for PR, meaning that this publisher is as corruptible as Les Echos (which this year/week too has produced puff pieces and eliminated all the negatives). The EPO has offered bribes to both media and academia in recent years, trying to get both on its side (that also means not covering EPO corruption). Some publications that covered this festival in the early afternoon literally copied and pasted the EPO's press release and in the late afternoon the EPO's site had a rather dull statement. Thankfully, none of the winners had software patents; finalists with such patents won nothing. Does that mean that the EPO will quit granting bogus patents? Of course not. Maybe it won't glorify these, but it's still granting them by the bucket-loads.
Looking instead at the situation of the staff, there's no word from SUEPO. They just dump a few links every now and then, but since the strike ballot was postponed (we assume it'll come sooner or later) not much has been said. On the patent quality front, it's all buzzwords. It has become so incredibly childish and pathetic. Law firms and EPO management are acting like marketing firms, not like patent professionals. Let us explain using this week's examples (from the news).
Phillips Ormonde Fitzpatrick's Alyssa Telfer wrote about how to keep monopolies in positions of perpetual monopoly -- using the fiction of "AYE PEE" (IP) leveraged by their corporate lawyers. Those who still refer to patents as "IP" merely perpetuate misleading propaganda. The words in the acronym are a misfit, both technically and legally.
"The challenge of obtaining patent protection for artificial intelligence (AI) inventions from IP offices across the globe dominated discussion," said this new article. Having eliminated some writers, WIPR (World Intellectual Property Review) now participates in illegal agenda of promoting invalid, abstract software patents by calling them "HEY HI" (AI). WIPR, which no longer covers EPO scandals, has become an utter marketer; PR rather than news and lobby rather than a publication; it's funded by the patent microcosm and composed by relatively clueless buzzword aficionados, picking headlines with both "AYE PEE" (a lie) and "HEY HI" (fiction). Here's another new example, entitled "Is it time for IP monopoly to come to an end in AI datasets space?"
Databases (or datasets) created by algorithms are not "HEY HI" databases; they're computer-generated data. And there's no "AYE PEE" on these, there might be copyright applicable somewhere and one wonders who it's assigned to (the machine?).
Francis Gurry, the 'other Battistelli' (he almosy became WIPO's chief and might retry in the future), also props up the "HEY HI" hype so as to allow illegal, invalid software patents. We covered this in past months. This new article/preview shows him talking mostly about 'owning' what gets generated by some algorithms and obviously they call it "HEY HI" (the headline is "Preview: WIPO director general predicts AI liability changes").
The director general of WIPO says that questions of liability for artificial intelligence should be linked to IP ownership as technological developments begin to change established laws.
Coverage of the morning sessions of CDR’s Life Sciences Litigation Symposium held this week, including highlights from keynote speaker Michael Prior of the UK government’s Intellectual Property Office.
While Britain’s exit from the European Union was not a topic the Intellectual Property Office’s (IPO) Michael Prior could discuss in an official capacity, he did say that unanswered questions around when and how that exit happens “has been the biggest challenge for the IPO” in a number of years.
Prior, who serves as deputy director of patents policy, focused his keynote address on three areas: policy, filing trends and working together.