THE overall strategy of the European Patent Office (EPO) has generally been shallow, misguided and even illegal. Battistelli sought new ways to undermine oversight, attack judges, lower patent quality and promote new buzzwords that correspond to software patents that are illegal in Europe. António Campinos implements deep cuts that further harm quality or intimidate staff into increased 'production' (i.e. decreased quality) whilst also lowering salaries, pensions and even outsourcing key jobs.
"The overall strategy of the European Patent Office (EPO) has generally been shallow, misguided and even illegal."To distract from all the above the EPO has already ensured media remains on its side, either by silence (complicity) or cheerleading. The EPO did so by intimidation and bribery -- examples of which were covered here before. Before the weekend the EPO issued this ridiculous statement (warning: epo.org link). The latest EPO "press release" is gross and embarrassing greenwashing; it's hardly the first time these corrupt people try to come across as environmentalists. In Twitter they wrote: "European Patent Office joins City of Munich @muenchen ’s #climatepact to cut CO2 emissions..."
"To distract from all the above the EPO has already ensured media remains on its side, either by silence (complicity) or cheerleading."Munich is happy to have these EPO abuses on its soil in Bavaria. After all, that can generate income (circulation of money) in the city, but what's in it for all the other cities in Europe?
The EPO has also just tweeted: "How do you make the best use of patent documents as a source of information for developing new #climatechange mitigation technologies?"
"These are patent monopolies," I responded, "so when the EPO grants these it actually reduces the availability is new-developed solutions by which to tackle the climate crisis..."
All these greenwashing tweets and press releases are old distraction tactics. Sometimes they talk about stuff like social responsibility, SMEs, ethics, innovation and so on. In other words, the very same things the EPO fights against.
"All these greenwashing tweets and press releases are old distraction tactics. Sometimes they talk about stuff like social responsibility, SMEs, ethics, innovation and so on. In other words, the very same things the EPO fights against."The EPO may be impressing itself (not the staff but the administration); it's not fooling judges and the media is hardly fooled, it's just being bribed for puff pieces and threatened for silence. It's very gross abuse.
What we've mostly been left with is so-called 'news' sites that are actually lobbying platforms of law firms. That's not journalism. Lawyer Monthly Magazine, for instance, has just said (earlier this week) that "it is highly likely that Brexit will impact on the implementation of the proposed (EU) unitary patent and the Unified Patent Court in London."
There's no UPC. It's dead. It is not a matter of London or not, not even Brexit or not. There are many reasons UPC failed, irrespective of Brexit.
From France/Paris we have this new nonsense about "IP [sic] Regime" (the misleading language of patent maximalists).
"There are many reasons UPC failed, irrespective of Brexit.""Dan Prud’homme is a professor of innovation, strategy and international business at the EMLV Business School in Paris," it says at the bottom and over at Harvard Business Review he promotes the myth (lie) of "IP" and says the following about China (the focus of his article): "There is faster invention patent pendency (time to grant patents) in China than at the European Patent Office (EPO) and US Patent & Trademark Office (USPTO), and invention patent examination is widely accepted to be of higher quality in China than at some national offices in Europe. [...] potential discrimination against foreigners during the patent examination processes at the EPO, Japanese Patent Office, and in other liberal democracies; and, more generally, the US and EU are the world’s leading defendants in WTO cases and have the worst records in terms of timely and full compliance with WTO judgments."
While there's no disputing EPO patent quality became low this article fails to explain that China has "faster invention patent pendency" because patent quality is totally awful. Examination not being done means 'optimal' pendency!
These people don't care. All they care about is litigation. Money. Money, money and money. Legal bills.
"All they care about is litigation."Suffice to say, lots of Chinese software patents would hardly survive courts; but China doesn't care because to thwart sanctions they need to create this illusion of innovation rather than copycats; they game the patent systems nowadays... and WIPO could not be happier!
Here's a new article from a law firm (FB Rice's Paul Whenman and Mary Turonek), promoted through Lexology just a few days ago. This one is about Singapore which has a large Chinese community and far too many software patents. Notice how patent litigation firms paint as "stars" countries that just grant lots of patents i.e. monopolies, to sue over. All about money and monopolies (rich clients), right?
As we've noted here many times in the past, Singapore grants loads of software patents the rest of the world (courts) would reject. In that regard, IPOS is a POS. To quote Whenman and Turonek:
To foster innovative growth in its already strong financial sector, a Fintech Fast Track initiative has been in place since April 2018. This program is designed expedite the patent application to patent grant process as a means to support commercialisation of underlying financial technology. This initiative was recently complemented with the launch in April 2019 of the Accelerated Initiative for Artificial Intelligence.
"Many software patents are nowadays being painted as "hey hi" and so-called law firms encourage this dodge (because they're dishonest and all they care about is robbing clients and defendants)."As Henrion put it the other day, the EPO does the same thing. "EPO says AI do not need a change of the EPC, I say otherwise. Especially when their "technical" swpat doctrine is not a solid foundation."
Many software patents are nowadays being painted as "hey hi" and so-called law firms encourage this dodge (because they're dishonest and all they care about is robbing clients and defendants). Watch this newly-promoted article from Gowling WLG's Shahrzad Esmaili and Roch J. Ripley who say:
Artificial intelligence (AI)—the use of various methods and algorithms to simulate cognitive functions in machines—has its origins dating back to the 1950s. In recent years, the confluence of advancements in computational power and the abundance of rich data sets has led to a surge in the number of practical applications for AI. The time and money required to properly train, test, and deploy AI in these applications makes protecting them using patents a crucial consideration in any business plan.
"What will happen when all these patents perish in courts, by means of precedents at least?"Bardehle Pagenberg, the software patents zealots, publicly admit some of these patents turn out to be bogus ("There's a new entry in the EUROPEAN SOFTWARE PATENTS knowledge base: De-identifying data for privacy reasons: non-technical") and Axel B. Berger and Nils J. Lindenmaier (Bardehle Pagenberg) have begun comparing courts' assessments to the EPO's only outside the realm of software! They openly say that the "European Patent Office (EPO) applies the enablement regulations in a more stringent manner in this regard." This is what the German Federal Patent Court -- not the EPO -- has decided about a patent covering a physical thing:
The subject matter of the patent-in-suit is an apparatus for the drying of particulate material of a type known as such in which the drying takes place in superheated steam in a closed container, in the upper part of which a dust-separation cyclone is arranged.
According to the patent-in-suit, a disadvantage of the known apparatus type is to be eliminated by means of the claimed apparatus, namely the fact that the steam flow and, thus, the drying capacity cannot be increased without an unacceptably great amount of particulate material simultaneously being swept into the dust separation cyclone together with the steam.
Specifically, the patent-in-suit defines that the problem to be solved by the invention is the provision of an apparatus which has a greater drying capacity than the known types of apparatus, without this giving rise to an increase in the cost of the apparatus, and without any reduction in the quality of the finished product.
To solve the problem, the patent-in-suit provides that at least a half part of the steam is fed into the upper part of the cyclone through corresponding openings instead of not feeding the steam into the bottom part of the dust separation cyclone, or only feeding the steam into said bottom part to a small extent, as was the case in the known types of apparatus.
[...]
The German Federal Patent Court dismissed the nullity complaint as unfounded and, in particular, affirmed the enabling disclosure of the invention. In its statements of grounds, the German Federal Patent Court also made reference to the worked example described in the patent-in-suit, according to which all of the steam and dust is fed through openings in the upper part.
[...]
The European Patent Office (EPO) applies the enablement regulations in a more stringent manner in this regard. While disclosing a way in which the person skilled in the art may carry out the invention is usually sufficient, even in the practice of the EPO, this only applies if the invention may also be realized in the whole area claimed on this basis. Therefore, in the present case, the EPO could conceivably have considered the provision of only one enabling way of the claimed invention in the form of the threshold value of 100:0% not sufficient regarding the distribution of 50:50% to 100:0% of the steam and the dust in the upper part claimed by means of feature 5.1. This would have been conceivable at least if the person skilled in the art had not been able to realize the full range up to a distribution of 50:50% on this basis without undue burden.
"Bardehle Pagenberg is, in our experience, one of the least credible firms in Germany."Here in the UK, according to this new press release, there's an upcoming seminar teaching people how to overcome the EPC (patent law) by tricking EPO examiners. They conveniently target a patent office where patents are nowadays granted easily, only due to corrupt management that consciously violates the law in order to fake so-called 'production'.
Henrion has meanwhile noted, using about half a dozen tweets, the latest scandal implicating Thierry Breton. Here he focused on patent aspects, noting that "Thierry Breton nomination is bad news for software freedom, ex-CEO of Technicolor/Thomson who was collecting royalties over MP3. Plus he seems to be in the Batistelli/EPO sphere https://www.francophonie.org/Discours-SG-prix-inventeur-europeen-2018-48929.html …"
He also noticed that "Juve awards people like "Arnold Ruess" for defending patent trolls like Sisvel https://www.juve-patent.com/news-and-stories/people-and-business/juve-awards-names-arnold-ruess-and-thyssenkrupp-ip-teams-of-the-year/ …"
JUVE has awarded even worse and pushed UPC all along.
What happened to media which is actually objective and actually investigates facts? ⬆