IT SEEMS TO be common a strategy to troll Free software activists over "ethics" by bringing up animal welfare, so this article won't be about that.

"We previously highlighted ethical issues associated with patents on cancer (or cancer treatment) and vaccination."We were recently made aware of ongoing work highlighting the aspects unseen by EPO examiners, some of whom helped grant patents on animals, seeds, plants, the act of breeding and more things that are basically life and nature (it's not limited to GMO and CRISPR). We previously highlighted ethical issues associated with patents on cancer (or cancer treatment) and vaccination.

"I just stumbled upon your articles on the EPO and how it has been misbehaving," one reader told me a few days ago. "I found them very interesting as I myself am at the moment writing an essay about the EPC and EPO and how animal welfare is being completely ignored/ patents granted by examiners who have no clue about animal welfare."

When we started covering EPO affairs around 14 years ago we focused almost exclusively on European software patents, having witnessed the directive in the EU (connected to EPO) just a couple of years earlier, 5 years before Benoît Battistelli turned the Office into a laughing stock -- a tradition maintained by António Campinos.

Hopefully we'll be able to produce material to the effect named above. Work in progress. ⬆