Bonum Certa Men Certa

The EPO Bubble — Part XI — The Viennese ICT Patent Orchestrator

Overview: [Teaser] The EPO's Deflating Patent Bubble and Pursuit of Illegal Software Patents (With Kangaroo Courts, UPC, and Bullied Examiners)

Series parts:

  1. otherwise-fast-imploding bubble
  2. The EPO Bubble — Part II — Signs of a Deflating Bubble?
  3. The EPO Bubble — Part III — Dividing Up the Spoils...
  4. The EPO Bubble — Part IV — A Cashflow Problem Looming on the Horizon?
  5. The EPO Bubble — Part V — Propping Up the Bubble?


  6. The EPO Bubble — Part VI — From Humble Examiner to CO€³
  7. The EPO Bubble — Part VII — A Multifaceted Man of Letters
  8. The EPO Bubble — Part VIII — The “Algerian Skirmisher” Replaces the “British Grenadier”
  9. The EPO Bubble — Part IX — A Well-Remunerated Faustian Pact?
  10. The EPO Bubble — Part X — A Leaked E-mail Provides Some Clues...
  11. YOU ARE HERE ☞ The Viennese ICT Patent Orchestrator


Georg Weber at Bengaluru
The EPO's Georg Weber, reputed to be a zealous advocate of so-called "software patents", appeared as a guest speaker at the lobbyists' Global Intellectual Property [sic] Convention in Bengaluru (India) in 2019.



Summary: Benoît Battistelli increased grant rates of software patents from 2% to 10% and António Campinos plans to make another five-fold (or higher!) increase, in effect violating the European Patent Convention (EPC) by granting lots of invalid European Patents which help maintain an otherwise-fast-imploding bubble

In this part we will take a closer look at the EPO director who has been entrusted with orchestrating the planned shift in EPO examination policy in the G06Q area. The person in question is Georg Weber, a graduate of the University of Agriculture in Vienna.



Weber will be a familiar figure to readers of Techrights, which has already reported on his activities as a zealous proponent of "software patents" in 2017 and 2018. For example here, here, and here. But before getting into this aspect of things in more detail, let’s start off with the earlier phases of his career.

Weber’s alma mater, which was founded in 1872, is known locally in Austria as the BoKu (from the German word "Bodenkultur" meaning "agriculture"). Since Weber’s student days during the 1980s, the BoKu has rebranded itself with the more modern title of "University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences".

Weber graduated from the BoKu with an engineering degree, Dipl. Ing (univ.), in the field of food and biotechnology.

"In 2005, he was put in charge of a directorate in the field of telecommunications in the ICT sector - despite the fact that he had no technical background in this area."In 1988, he started off with his career at the EPO as an examiner in the technical fields of food chemistry, pharmaceuticals and cosmetics, as well as agriculture, mining and general process engineering.

In 2003, he was promoted to a managerial position as director of a department dealing with biomedical engineering.

In 2005, he was put in charge of a directorate in the field of telecommunications in the ICT sector - despite the fact that he had no technical background in this area. This move was inspired by a policy of "rotation of directors" adopted by the EPO’s senior management some time around 2000.

The policy involved transferring directors to completely alien technical fields as part of some hare-brained scheme to promote office wide "harmonisation". EPO staff representation opposed this managerial policy on the grounds that the optimal functioning of a patent search and examination directorate required, amongst other things, that the director in charge of it should have a proper grounding in the relevant technical field.

"Before long he was marketing himself as an expert on the "patentability of computer-implemented inventions"."It’s not clear whether Weber’s transfer from biomedical engineering to ICT back in 2005 was entirely voluntary. In any event, whatever the background story may have been, he appears to have taken to his new position like the proverbial duck to water.

Before long he was marketing himself as an expert on the "patentability of computer-implemented inventions".

The concept of "computer-implemented inventions" (CII) is reducible to fiction or pseudo-scientific gobbledegook which simply misframes the problem domain and starts introducing an alternative universe, wherein algorithms are just something "technical" and are to be superficially judged using some managerial lingo such as "problem-solution", avoiding discussion of underlying logic, let alone substance. This is what happens when people who never coded and cannot read code are put in charge of tribunals or examination units that decide on such patents. They can barely understand that such programs are reducible to mathematics, statistics, and sometimes laws of nature.

Weber gradually became a regular attendee and guest speaker at events to promote "software patents". In recent years, such events have tended to focus on the latest fashionable buzzwords such as "artificial intelligence" and "blockchain".

For example, he was a "keynote speaker" at a one-day conference [PDF] on the subject of "Patenting Blockchain" (warning: epo.org link) sponsored by the EPO which took place in The Hague on 4 December 2018.

Georg Weber at Patenting Blockchain
Weber featured as a guest speaker at a one-day conference on the subject of "Patenting Blockchain" sponsored by the EPO which took place in The Hague on 4 December 2018. [PDF]



As a matter of fact, Weber is known to have been active in promoting so-called "computer-implemented inventions" since at least 2014.

"Weber is also a regular attendee at "global IP junkets" outside Europe."In October 2014, he attended a CERN Computing Seminar where he was responsible for a presentation entitled "The European Patent Office and its handling of Computer Implemented Inventions".

Weber is also a regular attendee at "global IP junkets" outside Europe.

One of his favourite destinations for such "duty travel" is India. In 2017 he was a guest speaker at a session on "Drafting International Patent Applications in the Field of ICT" which took place at Pune on 1 December 2017 on the margins of the 5th Indo-European Conference on Creating a Robust IP Ecosystem for ICT in the 21st Century. In January 2019 he turned up as a guest speaker at the Global Intellectual Property Convention (GIPC) in Bengaluru.

To those in the know, it’s clear that the Viennese "patent orchestrator" is a key member of the team entrusted with delivering "new melodies" in the ICT sector, following the EPO’s recent "reorganisation" of 1 April 2022.

From an EPO managerial perspective -- the management being clueless patent maximalists -- he clearly has the "right stuff" and ticks all the boxes for the job of shaking-up examination and granting practice in G06Q.

"From an EPO managerial perspective -- the management being clueless patent maximalists -- he clearly has the "right stuff" and ticks all the boxes for the job of shaking-up examination and granting practice in G06Q."It comes as no surprise that the leaked e-mail which was mentioned in the previous part confirms that Weber has been put in charge of G06Q by his superior, the Chief Operating Office Operations, "with his full mandate and support to address harmonisation and quality" in this area.

In the next and final part we shall review our exposé of the EPO’s deflating grant bubble and conclude by speculating about the "shape of things to come" under the sway of the new COO Operations and his faithful lieutenant in G06Q.

Recent Techrights' Posts

This is How Microsoft's XBox and Entire Consoles (If Not Gaming) Ventures Will Ultimately Die
Ensure you can blame "Tariffs" (politics)? If not "hey hi", the fashionable go-to excuse when businesses fail?
The Complaint About Brett Wilson LLP - Part II - UK SLAPPs for Americans, SLAPPs for Profit
Brett Wilson LLP has a track record of this kind
Cloudflare Gives Us All Another Reason to Boycott Cloudflare
If Cloudflare wants to use its vast surveillance network (which is what it does as a CDN) to foist paywalls and maybe something worse (like DRM on top), then Cloudflare should be more widely rejected as a company
Someone Expiring Certificates on the Day of the 9/11 Attacks is Not Someone I Would Want Controlling My PC (or Deciding What's Authorised for Booting)
"social justice warriors"
More Microsoft-Red Hat Cross-Pollination as the Company Loses a Managing Director
some people move from Microsoft to Red Hat and some do the opposite
 
Punching People Doesn't Work
It makes nobody any safer
Look Ma, No "Cloud"
So far this year we've had an almost perfect uptime
Links 24/09/2025: Autism Blame-Shifting and Typhoon Ragasa Enters China
Links for the day
Buying From Oneself is Not Business Success
This isn't at all a joking matter even if you already laugh at the whole thing because your pension, savings etc. are tied to this scam at some level
What They Really Hate David Heinemeier Hansson (DHH) for
Nothing to do with code
Smart People Won't Buy 'Smart' Cars
Imagine trying to sell someone a house (proper home) while insisting that it'll need to be demolished 5 or 10 years later, then rebuilt again from scratch on the same vacant lot
The Relationship Between IBM Red Hat and Microsoft, Visualised
This metaphor goes a long way (projects, collaborations, and outsourcing
The Complaint About Brett Wilson LLP - Part III - Spying on Reporters' Families, Chaining Cases for Microsoft Employees Who Demand Censorship of Facts (Even Politely Expressed)
the time seems right to wrap up this introductory series
Links 24/09/2025: "NASA Moving Out of Entire Buildings as It's Gutted" and Purge of Online Critics (Opposing Fascism Becomes Unlawful)
Links for the day
Science is Under Attack
Oligarchy prefers a dumbed-down population
The Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA) Has Reportedly Failed People With Wrong Advice
At the moment the SRA has a PR blunder
The Man Suing Brett Wilson LLP and Gervase de Wilde (5RB)
Now he's probably using the (almost) 200,000 pounds he's supposed to receive to sue Brett Wilson LLP and former colleagues/partners
Slopwatch: A World Wide Web That's Rotting for Companies That Won't Even Exist in a Few Years
some of the junk Google News is promoting
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Tuesday, September 23, 2025
IRC logs for Tuesday, September 23, 2025
Links 24/09/2025: Qt Creator 18 Beta, Microsoft Cannot Bail Out "ChatGPT" Anymore, China and US Intensify Censorship
Links for the day
Gemini Links 24/09/2025: Gemlogs and Politics
Links for the day
Links 23/09/2025: Japan Limits Uses of Skinnerboxes ('Smartphones') With Toxic "Apps", Fentanylware (TikTok) Tapped by "MAGAts"
Links for the day
Brett Wilson LLP Has Just Been Sued (by Their Own Clients!)
Vladimir and Alla Yanpolsky sued Brett Wilson LLP in BL-2025-001167 at the end of last week
Mayday: Optus emergency calling crisis
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
Links 23/09/2025: Massive Data Breach, Slop Versus Productivity, and Vista 11 Update Breaks Things Again
Links for the day
Code of Censorship
Extortion is peace
The Free Software Foundation (FSF) Has Un-cancelled the Best People, Just in Time for the Big 4-0
Mr. Oliva should have been there all along (since 2019)
Most "Modern" Technology Makes You Slower and Dumber
Because proprietary software makes you worse off
"What Comes After Free Software?" Wrongly Insinuates We've Reached the Goal (Prison is Not the Goal)
The oil tycoons use similar tactics against environmentalists, giving them fake "wins"
Making More Work Space
I learned the hard way that less is more in circumstances where more means distraction
MAHA is a Lie, Public Officials Never Valued Citizens' Health (They Still Value Private Businesses, Their Sponsors)
Reject demagogues
Free Software Foundation (FSF) Has a New Press Kit for the Weekend After Next Weekend (40th Anniversary)
miles better than social [sic] media [sic] quips, moderated by narcissists and oil tycoons.
Microsoft Had Two Waves of Mass Layoffs This Month (That We Know of) and It'll Get Worse for Microsoft Soon
Will the axe fall again by month's end?
Gemini Links 23/09/2025: Happy Equinox, Photronic Arts, and Perception Cognition
Links for the day
Lessons We've Learned After 17 Years of American Hosting
GAFAM is "all-in" with the "Trump agenda"
Back to Normal Now, We Plan to Do More In-Depth Series (or Multi-part Stories)
Articles (or series thereof) that contain philosophy are important to us
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Monday, September 22, 2025
IRC logs for Monday, September 22, 2025
Microsoft Media is Panicking Amid Mass Layoffs Every Month, H-1B Fees, and "Seattle’s Tech Scene in Trouble"
In "late stage Microsoft", copyleft becomes proprietary
The Next Wave of IBM/Red Hat Layoffs Being Discussed Already
Red Hat is sort of disappearing the way Tivoli did
New Techrights Turns 2
Today starts the third year of the SSG-based Techrights
What Scares Them the Most is Independent News Sites That They Cannot Control and Censor
Wikileaks was a good example of this
If You Don't Control Your Online Platform, Then Someone Else is Controlling You
be (or become) independent
Oracle Started This Year With Slop. Then It Stopped.
Passing fads are like this
Distros That Run on PCs Made 20 Years Ago and Don't Use Systemd
Betas for now
The Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA) Has a Policy on Racism and Sexism
In then future we'll show the misogyny and racial slurs
The Complaint About Brett Wilson LLP - Part I - Abusing British Women on Behalf of American Men Who Abuse American Women
Transparency is important to us, so we've decided to make this series
Slopwatch: Google News and the Evident Slopfarm Infestation
This is what people get about Linux when they query Google for Linux
Links 22/09/2025: Murdochs Might Join Fentanylware (TikTok) 'Investors' (Masters), United Kingdom Recognises Palestinian Statehood
Links for the day
Gemini Links 22/09/2025: Esperanto Music History and Apps For Android
Links for the day
Links 22/09/2025: More American 'Censorship' (Retaliation for Journalism), Cheeto "Might Be Losing His Race Against Time"
Links for the day
The Blob Slop
Give me more words, give me some text
The 50-Pound Note Experiment and the "War on Cash"
Britain is actually seeing a rebound in cash payments, and it's not a temporary phenomenon
Slopwatch: Blaming the Victims for Microsoft's Failures and Plagiarising Phoronix
That's what Google has been reduced to: slop and slopfarms
Links 22/09/2025: Breaches, Windows TCO, and Arrests
Links for the day
Gemini Links 22/09/2025: Rabbit Hole and DeGoogling Fairphone
Links for the day
Links 22/09/2025: Russian War Planes Invade NATO Airspace While Dihydroxyacetone Man Escalates Attack on Free Speech Because of Critics
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Sunday, September 21, 2025
IRC logs for Sunday, September 21, 2025