Bonum Certa Men Certa

The EPO Continues to Publicly Brag About Granting Illegal Patents to Fake 'Production' (It's Not Really Production But Abuse of the Granting Authority)

The EPO 'racket' needs to end; the 'fat cats' in the management just pillage and plunder this institution, in effect breaking the laws while exploiting diplomatic immunity

Fat cats: What they want you to think of EPO and what actually goes on



Summary: Patents on life, nature and mathematics serve to highlight the degree of corruption embraced by EPO management, eager to fake 'production' in order to hoard money, which is then stolen and misused in other ways

"European patent applications in image data processing and generation increased 11% between 2018 and 2019," said this tweet from yesterday, echoing similar prior tweets.



Those are illegal software patents which are often being granted against the rules in Europe (but courts will never get around to assessing these individually). The António Campinos-led European Patent Office (EPO) -- just like Benoît Battistelli's -- publicly brags about welcoming and granting illegal patents so as to artificially fake (inflate) numbers, hoard money, then pass the external costs to the public that can be trolled/blackmailed by these patent scams. A lot of this goes under the radar because no lawsuits are filed; it's a shakedown. Which means that the real costs are unknown.

The pattern of the above buzzwords was explained here several times back in March and April. It even impacts my personal field of research, which is clearly about software and maths. Nothing else. Images are data and image processing/manipulation is reducible to mathematics. But like the 35 U.S.C. ۤ 101-hostile USPTO today's EPO doesn't seem to mind the rules or even courts' repeated decisions/caselaw. Law seems to be a 'dirty' word in today's EPO; all that matters is 'production'... as if they're nothing but a factory.

"It even impacts my personal field of research, which is clearly about software and maths."Things have gotten so bad that for a long time the EPO was granting patents on life and on nature; we made some jokes about it last week and included in Daily Links (already) are additional articles from law firms, dealing with the latest admission by the EPO that it had granted fake patents. The following were mostly promoted to a wider audience through Lexology (they're 1-2 days old):



Last week the EPO even promoted software patents in the Vision Without Illusion Conference (which was basically cancelled and became a measly webstream, just like many other conferences). EUIPO said about it that it had a "wide range of experts from the IP field will be sharing their views about the importance of intellectual property in economic growth, taking into account the new challenges that the future will bring," then naming "the World Intellectual Property Office (WIPO), the European Patent Office (EPO), and the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), among others..."

"Campinos recently admitted in an IAM interview that a huge proportion of newly-granted European Patents involve software."No counterpoints, no critics, no public interest groups present, i.e. the usual. Also published a few days ago was this shallow survey entitled "European Patent Applications filed by Applicants from Africa," giving people the false impression that Africa stands to gain anything by participating in a system that even grants monopolies on seeds (see what happened in Ethiopia). "Despite small fractions of “EP Africa patent applications” having applicants from Seychelles, Egypt, Morocco, and Tunisia," it concluded, "most African corporations do not seem to seek protection by means of a European patent. Considering that the examination criteria have not changed significantly in the last few years at EPO, it is possible to assess that the quality of the “EP Africa patents applications” has been improving, in view of the respective growing tendency of European patents granted."

This is false; the EPO changed a lot and the examination criteria changed too. For instance, half a year ago the EPO went even further to allow if not encourage software patents. Nowadays it makes appeals more expensive and possibly priced out of reach deliberately (to conceal injustices). Appeal processes are illegally handled over Microsoft webstreams and EPO staff is still being crushed and robbed by unqualified management that gives itself additional bonuses amid a public health crisis.

The sordid mess we're seeing at the EPO isn't at all explained by any of the above self-serving puff pieces (the media that covers patents is controlled, composed, manipulated and even censored by the litigation giants/interests, so we increasingly rely on what's left of anonymous comments after filtering). Heck, the subject of judges' loss of independence isn't being brought up at all. It remains to be seen whether this year will bring us "European Alice" and seeing the judges' persistent lack of autonomy, we somehow doubt they can put an end to software patents (and even if they do, rest assured Office management will simply ignore it, maybe even threaten or retaliate against individual judges to keep the rest terrified). Campinos recently admitted in an IAM interview that a huge proportion of newly-granted European Patents involve software. Who's to stop an unaccountable office with no effective oversight in place?

Going back to patents on life, who actually wants these? Nobody almost...

As for software patents, software professionals strongly object to these. So why do we still have those?

And to quote one new comment, citing the feedback of actual farming economies:



The anonymous of Monday and the reply by Attentive Observer raise a number of fundamental points. Such fundamental points not only occur with the EPC and its interpretation but also with other patent laws in which e.g. an exception to the patentability of naturally occurring products is laid down. In analogy with the argument provided by Anonymous the following could be argued in those cases. Imagine that a naturally occurring organism harbours protein A. Because of its natural occurrence protein A is then rendered unpatentable. If, however, I change a few amino acids of protein A by using conventional chemistry, I may be able to obtain a protein with improved properties (e.g. an increased effect, a longer shelf life, etc.). Because of these chemical modifications I have ended up with a protein molecule that would be patentable. Unless it appears that such a mutation would also be occurring in nature (e.g. in a closely related naturally occurring organism). Hence, also in this case, it is not the product itself, but the way it is obtained which governs the patentability (or, if you prefer, the patent eligibility). Now, the possibility to exclude naturally occurring compounds from patentability has been discussed during the negotiations coming to the TRIPS agreement. Especially the developing countries lobbied for such an exclusion and in 1990 they opted for a text of Art. 27 TRIPS to be: 'Parties may exclude from patentability: .... Plants and animals, including microorganisms, and parts thereof and processes for their production. As regards biotechnological inventions, further limitations should be allowed under national law. [Document IP/C/W/383 WIPO (Documents of the Council for TRIPS with respect to the review of the provisions of Article 27.3(B), the relationship between TRIPS and the Convention on Biological Diversity and the protection of traditional knowledge and folklore]. This text, which would allow national laws to exclude biotechnological inventions, such as inventions relating to DNA, proteins and living organism, from patentability was disapproved in favour of the current wording of Art. 27.3(B), which is identical to Art. 53(b) EPC. Thus, from a legal perspective - apparently - there is an approval for the patentability of products in all fields of technology (Art. 27(1) TRIPS) and also for products obtained by a process which process itself would not be fit for patent protection. This seems to be the consequence of allowing patent protection for products. Where the TRIPS agreement forced developing countries to adapt to this when joining the WTO, it now seems that some of the developed countries - for whatever reasons - seem to slip away from the general principle provided by the TRIPS agreement.


Does patent law exist only for monopolists and barons? What does the above indicate?

In relation to the Haar question we previously wrote about odd composition of judges and the next (last, posted Thursday by Mike S) comment says: "Has anyone else noticed that, for G 3/19, the composition of the EBA changed between May 2019 and May 2020? H. Rothe (legally qualified) and W. Sieber (technically qualified) were replaced with A. Galgo Peco and P. Gryczka.

"Unless I missed something, this change was not announced. Perhaps this has something to do with the fact that the "procedural documents" link for G 3/19 has not worked for many months now."

As we already know, the Office President can just toss out judges in violation of the EPC and face no consequences for it. Then he can even become head of a law school, adding insult to injury.

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