12.28.11
EPO and Other Lawyers-dominated Circles Push for Software Patenting
Continuation of this post and this post
Summary: A look at support for software patents in Europe and where this is coming from
AS the unitary patent was rushed (while people were preparing to leave for vacation) we kept accumulating news about it. Pro-patenting circles said:
Learn the latest news on the Unitary Patent and Patent Court with Marcin Korolec (PL) along with his counterpart The Baroness Wilcox (UK)
Wilcox [1, 2] is once again doing a disservice to the public. Such people operate under the assumption that the more patents society has, the better off it will be. Gérald Sédrati-Dinet says:
#unitary #patent Negociators of #EU Parliament, Council & Commission have found an agreement
He also notes that: “#unitary #patent pb: some provisions are illegal => the #unitary #patent is already dead before having been voted!”
And “despite propaganda,” explains Gérald Sédrati-Dinet, “Spain & Italy still oppose unitary patent”
Some similar speculative propaganda comes from patent lawyers who ask without basis:
ksnh::law updated posting: Will Italy Join #UnitaryPatent and Ask for Seat of Central Division of #UPC in Return?
Here is more alleged “propaganda” that says:
Agreement by EU ministers today (5 December) on outstanding issues surrounding a unified EU patent would pave the way for the Polish presidency to claim success in the venture at a signing ceremony in Warsaw on 20 December, amid mounting optimism that the new regimes in Spain and Italy could drop their opposition to the idea.
In May, Italy and Spain complained to the European Court of Justice against the use of the so-called ‘enhanced cooperation’ procedure for the patent, which allows a group of countries to go ahead without the approval of all 27 EU member states. They claimed the move went against the spirit of the EU single market.
The proposals recognise English, French and German as the patent’s official filing languages but Rome and Madrid feared this would give an unfair advantage to companies from the ‘big three’ jurisdictions.
This site habitually quotes Microsoft lobbyists as though they are grassroots/independent. The president of the FFII, Benjamin Henrion, says:
With the Unitary Patent, the patent lobby got software patents for free, without having to justify themselves again
Here is what lawyers are saying: “Battistelli: The EPO doesn’t have substantive patent law competencies, but that doesn’t mean we can’t have influence [...] we can influence patent harmonisation through projects such as translation, classification, PPH”
“Look at those EPO examiners granting software patents,” writes Henrion, pointing to EPO videos. The EPO blog is rooting for it very blatantly. To quote a noteworthy remark:
Seems that the EPO has censored my comment over this article
So the EPO is silencing opposition. So much for public service, eh? Henrion adds that:
The EPO deliberately avoids rejecting patents because they are “computer programs”, they keep spamming programmers with patent claims
Some of the vocal patent lawyers from Germany (clearly proponents of software patents) say that the “EPO President #Battistelli still confident on agreement on Unified Patent Court this year” (more on the outcome later) and here is a followup. Watch this funny remark from the FFII in the face of lawyers who try to hack/break the law with help from corruptible politicians whom we wrote about before (many politicians are themselves lawyers). It is like a form of entryism and Henrion writes:
The EU patent system is now fully captured by the patent lobby: Executive: captured; Legislator: captured; Judiciary: captured. CQFD
He also notes that “Software patents was not a victory, EU Parliament was remote controlled by big firms” (including Microsoft).
The system is controlled by lawyers and it shows in just about every country, They are easily influenced by software patents proponents like Philips [1, 2, 3, 4], whose employees help control public debates. There is also IBM, whose former employee is now heading the USPTO (IBM is in favour of software patents). IBM is associated with this company which is patents-dependent. To quote this new announcement,”Software LLC, an IBM Business Partner and proven leader in innovative, integrated solutions for IBM Cognos software, announced today that the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) has issued patent number 8,073,863 for its MetaManager(R) technology.”
There is more here and IBM PR can be found in Watson form, as usual. “The insight platform uses data mining, natural-language processing and analytics to pore through millions of patent filings and biomedical journals to look for chemical compounds used in drug discovery.” That’s just whitewash. IBM is really just looking more business that it advertises for promotional coverage. It’s advertised as a fight against trolls (courtesy of IBM), which promotes software patents and can itself be classified as a troll at times. Here’s more of that PR line (“to battle patent trolls”):
IBM’s Watson is made of many parts: speech recognition, natural language processing, machine learning, and data mining. All of these factors were perfectly combined to beat Ken Jennings in Jeopardy, and now each of these components are slowly finding their way into other applications. Health plan company WellPoint, for example, is using Watson to investigate patient records to improve diagnosis, and in a self-referential, possibly universe-destroying twist, IBM itself is using Watson to help sell Watson (and other IBM products) to other companies. Now, using Watson’s data mining and natural language talents, IBM has created the Strategic IP Insight Platform, or SIIP, a tool that will revolutionize medicine — and perhaps patent trolling, too.
IBM has been part of the problem as even in Europe it supported software patents. With IBM’s support, software patents in Europe continue to be a problem. IBM is not on the public’s side, that’s just boring PR. █
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