11.18.16
Posted in Europe, Patents at 3:18 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Summary: A new report from the Dutch media reveals plans to discuss removal of the EPO’s immunity and yet more lies from the EPO’s management (this time through Jana Mittermaier)
PETRA KRAMER, a Dutch speaker, has just supplied us with the following article translation, having notified us of this week's parliamentary intervention. Highlighted below in yellow are important and/or new bits of information, such as Jana Mittermaier‘s utter lies (does she even hear herself? Lying has truly become the norm at the EPO, implicating not just the PR team but also Minnoye).
Concerns over ‘terror’ Patent Office
RIJSWIJK – The government and the House are very concerned about the three thousand employees of the European Patent Office in Rijswijk. All political parties want a debate now that, according to the union, “terror will continue in the workplace and this week has again claimed a victim.”
The international organisation with seven thousand employees, three thousand of whom live and work in The Hague region, is led with an iron fist by the Frenchman Benoît Battistelli. According to the union SUEPO, the staff is “systematically suppressed and silenced.”
The President directed the arrows at directors of the union, says lawyer Liesbeth Zegveld. ,,After two fired executives in Munich were fired earlier this year, the secretary, Laurent Prunier, is now also fired while he was sick at home,”said Zegveld. ,,The union is undermined in this way. Workers are ruined for life. There are cases of people who are removed from their offices unannounced and after speaking with the leadership left the building in a wheelchair.”
Zegveld, who has filed a lawsuit on behalf of the union at the European Patent Office, calls the upcoming parliamentary debate and the involvement of the Dutch government “encouraging” and “a turning point”. ,,The largest problem so far is that the organization enjoys immunity, so that the Netherlands can not intervene on its own territory,” said the lawyer.
The Ministry of Economic Affairs indicated Friday that the Netherlands supports plans to modernize the internal organisation, but that the implementation can and must be careful. ,,We will continue to push hard on this issue, because in our opinion it’s not going well,” said a spokesman.
The EPO rejects any accusation that the office would have targetted prominent trade unionists. ,,This is completely unfounded,” said Jana Mittermaier, spokeswoman for the EPO. ,,There is harassment and intimidation by employees towards others. Therefore, there are disciplinary actions taken wholly according to the rules of the EPO. The procedure which has been followed meets the highest international standards, as determined by independent experts.”
The EPO was in disrepute for the first time in 2014. While Prime Minister Mark Rutte gave the starting signal for the new building, it became known a strikingly high number of workers have committed suicide. Several countries of a total of 28 member States, which have reappointed Battistelli until 2018, have been critical of working conditions.
Source: Zorgen over ’terreur’ Octrooiburea █
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Posted in Europe, Patents at 7:47 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Summary: Kongstad and Battistelli seem to be perfectly alright with patents on food and beverages, clearly a very steep decline when it comes to patent quality at the EPO
THE WEB page “No Patents on Beer!” was published yesterday. The title is self explanatory and the introduction names Carlsberg from Denmark, where the Chinchilla Man of the Administrative Council is from. Here is what EU Business says:
In 2016, the European Patent Office (EPO) granted three patents to the Danish brewery, Carlsberg. The patents cover barley plants derived from conventional breeding, their usage in brewing as well as the beer brewed thereof. In a joint letter, several civil society organisations are now calling on Carlsberg to drop these patents. They consider the patents to be an abuse of patent law and in conflict with the interests of consumers.
“There should be no patents on beer and barley. Breeding plants and brewing beer are not inventions, but based on centuries-old tradition,” says Erling Frederiksen from Friends of the Earth in Denmark (NOAH). “Carlsberg should make it clear that they just want to produce good beer and are not acting against the interests of citizens and consumers. We do not want corporate control of our food or patent monopolies. No matter whether they are held by Monsanto, Bayer or Carlsberg.”
Quickly afterwards the mainstream media in Germany joined in. It has written about it as well, citing the above. Remember how protests against software patents and patents on life at the EPO culminated in talks, including one from Richard Stallman, in which he sort joked about patents on recipes and what the ramifications would be? Well, his analogy is no longer just an analogy:
The European Patent Office (EPO) in Munich and the Carlsberg company were sloshed Thursday in an open letter by campaigners opposed to the patenting of plants and animals.
No Patents on Seeds, an alliance including Greenpeace, the Catholic charity Misereor, and globally networked small-scale farmers, called on the Danish brewer to voluntarily relinquish three patents it received earlier this year from the EPO.
Documents published by the EPO also list Heineken of the Netherlands as a patent proprietor.
What next after that? Can cooks and chefs pursue patents on their cuisine? How low can one go? Can Mr. Kongstad and his wife pursue patents on methods for cutting a chinchilla? His wife certainly seems to know what she is doing (for the camera even!). Here she is “at work”:
People who planned to apply for a job at the EPO actually told me that they had changed their mind after reading Techrights. If this is what qualifies for an EP (European Patent) these days, then no wonder the EPO struggles to recruit and lies about it instead.
Last year the EPO actually paid respected publications not just for ads but also for puff pieces aimed at recruitment. Science is fundamentally against lies, but at the EPO lies have become the norm. Staff and journalists are habitually lied to by EPO management and now we have European media which is PAID (even large publications like The Financial Times) to repeat these lies. ‘Informecials’ for recruitment and outright defamation of staff that Battistelli does not like now dominate European media. Yesterday the EPO promoted this new puff piece in Twitter. Is this one also of one of these paid puff pieces? It’s hard to tell. The opening paragraph is purely promotional and it says: “Patenting is an integral part in every technology-driven industry since its protects ideas and enables inventors to create a business around them. But not every inventor or researcher necessarily is a man or woman of business, too. They need help by someone to deal with legal questions to patent and to protect their ideas. The European Patent Office (EPO) can help them.”
Well, what the EPO stands for right now isn’t inventors but booze companies and foreign monopolies. It got a lot harder to derive joy and pride from an EPO job. The only time EPO staff actually enjoys is the time down the pub (after work). █
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Posted in America, Europe, Patents at 7:18 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Summary: Another new example of an attempt by large corporations to speak ‘on behalf’ of small businesses and shape patent law for themselves, very much to the detriment of these small businesses
EARLIER this week Benjamin Henrion caught a glimpse and had a go at this letter to Donald Trump (PDF). He said that the “Internet Association speaks about patent litigation for small companies, while none of its members are small” (this can be verified by checking their site). Dimitris Xenos called it a “classic!” and we have made a local copy [PDF] as it’s likely to be removed in the future, making the Internet Association less accountable for these actions.
We have become familiar with and grown accustomed to this tactic (Microsoft has a front group that still does this, for decades now). While the EPO marginalises the appeal boards (if not getting rid of these boards altogether, in preparation for the UPC) we keep seeing the likes of Bristows, principal boosters of the UPC, claiming that the UPC would be good for SMEs (a complete, utter lie, see what SMEs themselves are saying). The firm refuses to give up on the UPC even though without the UK it’s going nowhere. See what it has just published in its increasingly neglected blog:
Following Finland’s ratification of the Agreement on a Unified Patent Court (UPC) on 19 January 2016, the government issued on 26 May a legislative proposal (Bill 87 2016) to enable establishment of a local division of the UPC in Helsinki. The Bill’s first reading in parliament was on 25 October, and parliament approved the Bill in its second reading on 28 October 2016.
It does not mention that Finland — like the UK — might be leaving the EU not too long from now. It’s generally considered to be one of the most likely nations to leave next. Like chronic liars that speak about the UPC’s impact on SMEs, the Internet Association hopes we’ll lose sight of who and what it stands for. The members are all large companies and its just another front group of theirs.
When it comes to patents, shaping everything in favour of megacorporations (like those owned by Trump) is to be expected. It’s MEGA (corporations), not MAGA. Hopefully it won’t be the same in Europe; it is under Battistelli and it’s one among many reasons he needs to leave. █
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11.17.16
Posted in Europe, Patents at 11:54 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Whose system is it anyway?
Reference: “The “Patent Box” – Proof That the UK is a Rogue State in Corporate Tax”
Summary: Patents are, over time, becoming not about innovation but about passage of heaps of monopolies to large corporations that then use them to evade tax (the patent box loophole)
TODAY we became aware of this blog post from just two days ago. “USPTO Memo Indicates a ‘European’ Approach to Software Inventions,” says the headline, tacitly implying that the EPO is strict on software patents even though the opposite is true (especially in recent years). Lawyers’ favourite CAFC cases are presented as evidence. For instance:
Earlier this month, the USPTO issued a memorandum to patent examiners discussing recent court decisions regarding the patentability of software inventions. The memo refers to three federal circuit decisions in which software inventions were found to be eligible for patent protection. The three decisions mentioned in the memo are McRo v. Bandai (Sept. 2016), BASCOM v. AT&T (Jun. 2016) and Amdocs v. Openet (Nov. 2016).
Recently, I summarised the McRo and BASCOM decisions in a blog post for Cambridge Wireless. The Amdocs decision was issued only a day before the USPTO published its memo to examiners on this issue. Therefore, Amdocs is not considered in detail in the memo. However, the USPTO states that further guidance on the Amdocs decision will be given at a later date.
The USPTO is always behind the times when it comes to regulating patent quality. We saw that as recently as this year because it took 2-2.5 years for the USPTO to truly come to grips with Alice. In the mean time, the EPO went in the opposite direction and insiders tell us that they grant software patents because there is growing pressure to keep up with ‘production’ demands (where grants are rewarded, not proper/thorough examination). A new Central Staff Committee report [PDF] was also leaked to us today. The Central Staff Committee is concerned that 15% increase in so-called ‘production’ results in reductions for staff. Figures are shown to support this claim and also some ‘missing money’ becomes the subject of inquiry. One has to wonder where all that money comes from and how this so-called ‘production’ is attained without increases in staffing. Of course, all it means is that patent quality continues to nosedive.
Speaking of fiscal irregularities and low patent quality, Benjamin Henrion highlight this new article about “patent boxes” — a subject we wrote about before. “Race to the bottom and Apple fiscal evasion via patents will continue with the blessing of Europe,” Henrion noted, as it’s quite common and increasingly ‘normal’ for large corporations to dodge (or evade) tax with patents as a hidden instrument of some kind of “money laundering” . Here is what the Wall Street media said this week:
Adoption of legislation for a common consolidated corporate tax base by 27 EU member states would resolve current patent box conflicts and end transfer pricing disputes that cost multinational companies hundreds of millions of dollars in double taxation, according to EU and industry officials.
Speaking at a Nov. 15 conference hosted by the Federation of European Accountants, Uwe Ihli, the chief architect of the October CCCTB proposal unveiled in October, said tax credits for research and development in the pending legislation are seen as a way to prevent harmful tax competition, triggered by the rush to attract investment by high-tech companies via tax breaks on intellectual property profits.
“We believe the research and development tax breaks in the new proposal will not only be a major attraction for businesses but they will also help resolve the divisions in the EU over patent box tax regimes,” Ihli said.
He added that the R&D terms are based on EU state aid rules and in line with the OECD’s modified nexus approach.
If a process patent-granting en masse can become just an instrument for the benefit of large corporations, and patents are made a lot easier to get, what does that say about the real beneficiaries of today’s EPO? Regarding Apple’s patents, we are planning some articles about those. The EPO is doing a terrible job and it’s not hard to guess who will pay the price. █
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Posted in Europe, Patents at 10:14 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Another troubling message from a victim of Battistelli reveals the depths of the boss’ depravity
A once-respected patent office is now ruined by a psychopathic, aggressive bully
Summary: False accusations, manufactured (by Team Battistelli) complaints, lies about the judgment, and secrecy by threats is now the ‘golden’ standard mastered by Battistelli, a liar and abuser so villainous that he deserves no place in society, let alone a well-funded patent office
THIS MORNING’S outline from IP Kat took stock of news regarding Laurent Prunier, whom Battistelli fired while defaming him in front of all staff — certainly a Battistelli classic. This is what IP Kat said:
Firings will continue until morale improves – Merpel revisits the EPO
Merpel growls in disappointment at the dismissal of Laurent Prunier, Secretary of SUEPO The Hague and member of the EPO’s Central Staff Committee.
Understanding of this case is crucial because it’s one of many; it’s part of a pattern which is bound to repeat until stopped.
Battistelli has since then added to his lies using a column at IAM, which is increasingly giving a voice to both sides (more so than before). IAM has thankfully given Prunier (i.e. the accused as well) an opportunity to respond (response behind a paywall, although there are ways for getting around it, at least temporarily). The key part says:
Dear Mr Wild,
As the person directly concerned, I am responding to Mr Battistelli’s letter to you and would appreciate if you could publish this answer so that your readers can be fully informed.
I deny having ever harassed or defamed anyone (nor have I seen any of my fellow colleagues, staff reps and/or SUEPO officials harassing or defaming anyone).
The alleged “victim” did NOT file a complaint against me. The person who filed it was a very close associate of Mr. Battistelli.
The staff representatives in the disciplinary committee have not found that I was guilty of harassment. That finding was 3:2, only by management side.
The easiest solution for the public to assess the truth vs. story-telling is for Mr Battistelli to lift the confidentiality he imposes on me and I will gladly publish all the documents.
Bien cordialement – Best regards
Laurent Prunier
A lot of the above seems familiar as political enemies are often eliminated in this way (someone from the past exploited to manufacture a highly distorted case without that someone’s will at all, only to be followed by mere illusion of justice). Several current examples come to mind, but these are outside the scope of this post (Wikileaks for instance).
The sheer abuse Battistelli subjects staff representatives to, not to mention the systematic harassment from this sociopath, urgently needs to stop. Where are those pet chinchillas of the Administrative Council? It’s clear that Battistelli metaphorically spits on them. He needs to be fired with immediate effect and forced to pay compensation to the Office he ruined. Take away his pension, too. See how he feels about it when he’s the one on the receiving end…
But how can Battistelli be so belatedly dismissed for his antisocial behaviour and violation of his own rules? “The alternative would be unworkable if any one country could effectively fire a president,” says the following new comment. To quote the whole comment:
While I share your pain, the system is of course designed so that a single person or country cannot interfere. The alternative would be unworkable if any one country could effectively fire a president. There are of course ways and means but that is like a policy of mutual destruction whereby no agreement or diplomatic post would be respected (head of the EPO is, I think, a diplomatic passport post). Countries are rightly wary of interfering in what are tacit reciprocal agreements of respect. The ability of a non-office country I.e. not NL, DE, BE to intervene is very limited in any case.
Today (actually bumped up in the news although it’s a little old), from Boult Wade Tennant comes this article “concerning disclaimers at the EPO” as it speaks of the process through which law firms and/or their clients (applicants) typically go along when attempting to be granted an EP. “When the claims of a European patent application or patent are amended,” it says, “the amended claims must satisfy Article 123(2) EPC in order for them to be allowable. Article 123(2) EPC specifies that the European patent application or European patent may not be amended in such a way that it contains subject-matter which extends beyond the content of the application as filed. The European Patent Office (EPO) is well-known for its strict approach in making this assessment. The “gold standard”, frequently cited in EPO case law, requires that an amendment can only be made within the limits of what the skilled person would derive directly and unambiguously, using common general knowledge, from the application as filed (see G 3/89, G 11/91, G 2/10).”
Well, “gold standards” are no more at the EPO. There’s just one man with a golden crown and he has already decided that the goal is to grant patents as much as possible, as quickly as possible, until it all runs out and examiners become redundant. █
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11.16.16
Posted in Europe, Patents at 7:26 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
The naked emperor continues to show his true colours
Summary: The authoritarian boss of the EPO, who tried to prevent his victims from speaking out about how they had been abused by him (using revocation of their pension as a threat), causes even greater anger within the Office, stirring up fresh conversations about how to remove him
THE EPO has gotten so bad that we’ve lost sight of the USPTO. The EPO is now an international scandal and we have begun approaching the world’s leading media, which ought to cover it like it covered FIFA, VW (Dieselgate), and so on.
In response to defamatory union-shaming by Battistelli (echoing/mirroring what he so stridently did to a judge) and some utterly tasteless comment from an anonymous coward, Prunier has just published another comment to clarify the following points:
As the person directly concerned, I am responding to anonymous who posted on Sunday, 13 November 2016 at 07:30:00 GMT
1) I deny having ever harassed or defamed anyone (nor have my other fellow staff reps or SUEPO officials unfairly sanctioned or to be sanctioned, since several are still targeted).
2) The alleged victim did NOT file a complaint against me. The person who filed it was a very close associate (and protégée) of Mr Battistelli.
3) The staff representatives in the Disciplinary Committee have not found that I was guilty of harassment. That finding was 3:2, only by management side.
It is therefore quite inappropriate for you to hide behind anonymity to give credit to Battistelli’s smear campaign without being in possession of any relevant information.
The easiest solution for the public to assess the truth vs. story-telling, is for Mr Battistelli to lift the confidentiality he imposes on me and I will gladly publish all the documents.
Other new comments rightly express worry that nothing can stop Battistelli because the system is broken, partly because he himself broke it. One person wrote:
How does a “President of the Boards of Appeal” fit this paragraph of Article 10 EPC?
Uneasily I would say.
The fact is that the position of the “President of the Boards of Appeal” doesn’t exist under the terms of the primary law of the EPC.
It has been created under secondary legislation at the level of the Implementing Regulations.
In CA/D 6/16 the Admin Council decreed that Rule 12 should be replaced by the following new Rules 12a, b, c and d:
Rule 12a – Organisation and management of the Boards of Appeal Unit and President of the Boards of Appeal
Rule 12b – Presidium of the Boards of Appeal and business distribution scheme for the Boards of Appeal
Rule 12c – Boards of Appeal Committee and procedure for adoption of the Rules of Procedure of the Boards of Appeal and of the Enlarged Board of Appeal
Rule 12d – Appointment and re-appointment of the members, including the Chairmen, of the Boards of Appeal and of the Enlarged Board of Appeal
These new Rules entered into force on 1 July 2016.
They still don’t appear to have been published in the official online version of the Implementing Regulations.
But who cares about such fine points of detail nowadays … ????
Another person wrote:
“Battistelli is not doing what the Council wants. I asked what the Council can do and apparently the Council cannot do much because of the 3/4 of the votes clause. I said Battistelli just needs 10 countries to stay forever and follow his plans and nobody raised a credible objection. …
So let us imagine that Battistelli stays another few years to continue his plans. The Council cannot do much because of this blocking minority. What would the effect be? What would the European Patent system look like in, say, 2 to 4 years?”
Not so simple.
Without a 3/4 majority Batty cannot be replaced and can sit tight.
However, as shown in October a simple majority (i.e. 50%+) would suffice to prevent him from “following his plans”.
Thus, if a simple majority of the states decided to oppose him they could block any further action on his part.
Such a scenario would result in a stalemate situation rather than BB simply continuing his plans.
He would continue to sit on his throne but wouldn’t be able to enact any further “reforms”.
Not sure if we are heading in that direction but it is one possibility.
“I guess that the money the the European Patent Office funnels into the National Patent Offices is enough a reason to keep the ministers shut,” the following comment said; it resembles the hypothesis that delegates have their votes 'bought' by Battistelli. Here is what the comment said:
“He would continue to sit on his throne but wouldn’t be able to enact any further “reforms”.
No further “reforms” certainly, but he still would be able to fire people at will to put the AC under pressure and in an embarrassing situation – as it did with Prunier when the AC denied him the last “reforms” he had submitted.
It’s absolutely incomprehensible that no single European minister responsible for IP is intervening in a situation like this when the president of an international organization that is supposed to be under their control is totally going rogue …
I guess that the money the the European Patent Office funnels into the National Patent Offices is enough a reason to keep the ministers shut …
Disgusting.
In the coming days or weeks we are going to leak yet more documents and we are going to share some of them with leading journalists. It’s time for the whole world to see what happened to the EPO under the leadership of this naked emperor. As always, more leaks are very much welcome and encouraged, at the very least to help Battistelli with his goal of “transparency” (with which comes accountability). █
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Posted in Asia, Europe, Patents at 6:38 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
The future of the EPO is like that of a pipeline/production line, totally drunk on “production” (quantity, not quality)
Summary: The EPO under Battistelli is increasingly just a pipeline of bogus/low-quality patents which fuel patent trolling all around the world and also in Europe (harming the European economy)
THE EPO under Battistelli’s awful leadership gradually becomes more software patents-friendly, whereas the USPTO is moving away from such patents. Such is the nature of the Office under Battistelli, the man who will be remembered as the person who brought down the whole Organisation, severely punishing staff that dared warn about it.
Software patents at the EPO should not be allowed, yet in two counties/continents that forbid these (India also) the EPO keeps promoting these. We have mentioned this many times before, especially last month. Today the EPO did it again and also today an article was published by Tufty The Cat (quite well known in patent circles). “The EPO issues invalid patents too,” said the headline and here is what the body said:
The sole drawing of the patent is shown here on the right. Basically, the patent claims a hairdressing salon in a shipping container (or some other kind of mobile structure) with a window cut into it. This is not, however, even the broadest claim. Claim 9 defines “A mobile structure for a hairdressing salon according to one of claims 1 to 7″. According to the usual EPO interpretation of the word “for”, this would cover any shipping container.
How this application got through the EPO system is at the moment quite beyond me. From a quick review of the prosecution file though, it seems that the examiner was persuaded that adding a window made the invention allowable over US 2006/137188 A1. Just in case anyone has any doubt about whether the invention is novel, let alone inventive, there is prior art in the form of shipping containers repurposed as hair salons such as this article from 11 June 2011 (before the 23 August 2012 priority date of the patent). For further avoidance of doubt, the internet archive wayback machine (which is normally accepted by the EPO as evidence of publication date) confirms that the article was available on 16 June 2011. One of the photographs in the article, shown below, seems to have everything required according to claim 1. Incidentally, the search that led me to this took about five minutes.
The subject of awful patent scope and EPO disregarding the instructions from politicians was discussed in Dutch Parliament yesterday. We have received more information since then and also engaged in a short discussion on the subject with the politician in question. One EPO insider said to us that a “similar debate should simultaneously take place in Germany, Austria and Belgium.”
Speaking of the EPO pushing software patents not only into Europe but potentially India too, see this new article from Jack Ellis at IAM. One patent maximalist said that “Dolby Selects India for Asserting Patents Against Chinese Companies,” but the actual headline is “Dolby is the latest foreign patent owner to select India for asserting against Chinese companies” and it shows a Western company playing a proxy game with patent predators in India (also see IAM’s remarks on this Harman acquisition):
Dolby has reportedly sued Oppo and Vivo in the Delhi High Court, accusing the two Chinese electronics and smartphone manufacturers of failing to pay appropriate royalties for use of its patented technologies. Dolby follows Ericsson in seeking to assert its rights in India, something that may indicate that the jurisdiction is growing in importance from an IP strategy perspective.
BGR India reported on Friday that the Delhi High Court had issued an order relating to cases that the audio technology company had filed against a number of defendants, including Oppo, Vivo and their parent firm BBK Electronics, as well as a number of affiliated local entities. IAM contacted Dolby on this matter, but the company declined to comment.
“Dolby follows Ericsson,” says the above and as we noted last year, Ericsson, a European company, officially brought patent trolls to Europe (to London in fact). █
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11.15.16
Posted in Europe, Fraud, Patents at 1:44 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Very convenient a guise
Whistleblower ist weder Datendieb noch Erpresser
Summary: Whistleblowers at the EPO cannot speak and surveillance reaches extraordinary levels, the excuse being security, stability, justice and so on (surveillance classics)
EARLIER this year we wrote about rumours of fraud at the EPO and not too long ago we became witnesses to the pretext of “fraud” as as exploited to spy on staff and grossly violate their privacy or data security (in a way that no member state would tolerate). The members of the GCC who are members of the CSC wrote the following text: “We obviously do not support fraud and so consider it perfectly legitimate that some controls (checks and balances) are introduced in order to detect and/or prevent fraud also in the field of the healthcare insurance. However, this raises an additional big concern linked to the new contract and its external administrator: fraud control measures and the possible involvement of the EPO’s Investigation Unit. We are completely kept in the dark as to how the EPO intends to put in practice these controls. What will be the role of Cigna who are obviously best positioned (access to the data) to detect fraud)? Are they bound to respect national laws? What will be the role of the Investigative Unit? How will the different parties cooperate? How will medical secrecy be preserved? Which laws will apply at which steps? Why does the Office not collaborate with (local) national prosecutors since this would be compatible with Article 20, EPC? Not only have none of these questions been answered, we have not heard about any safeguards. We fear that this is an area that may raise serious problems in the future with possible damage to the EPO’s reputation. Although we have not been required to give an opinion despite the blatant impact that this new contract will have on staff employment conditions, we nevertheless recommend that the President should not implement the planned modifications as long as a joint Committee has not been established.”
“The way things work at the moment is a recipe for disaster because the Office already fails to attract top talent — the very kind of talent which it takes to deliver a good service and justify the high fees associated with EPs (grant, renewal, search etc.).”We often wonder how many violations it would take for Eponia to finally come under proper scrutiny from member states (beyond a slap on the wrist, at the very least a fine). The way things work at the moment is a recipe for disaster because the Office already fails to attract top talent — the very kind of talent which it takes to deliver a good service and justify the high fees associated with EPs (grant, renewal, search etc.). To make matters worse, a lot of key staff has been leaving and continues to leave the Office (the growing numbers of departures that we see are irrefutable). A new comment in IP Kat asked: “What would the European Patent system look like in, say, 2 to 4 years?” Here is the full comment:
“Anonymous” from Saturday, 12 November 2016 is trying to change the subject, isn’t he/she? The facts are quite simple: Battistelli got instructions from the Council not to fire staff members before new regulations are passed and did just the opposite.
That is the real problem here.
Battistelli is not doing what the Council wants. I asked what the Council can do and apparently the Council cannot do much because of the 3/4 of the votes clause. I said Battistelli just needs 10 countries to stay forever and follow his plans and nobody raised a credible objection. I don’t see how a ministerial conference could solve that problem.
So let us imagine that Battistelli stays another few years to continue his plans. The Council cannot do much because of this blocking minority. What would the effect be? What would the European Patent system look like in, say, 2 to 4 years?
It will be morally — maybe also fiscally — bankrupt (it’s said to be operating at a loss), more so assuming Battistelli continues along the same trajectory which renders examiners redundant in just two years. Will it be folded onto EUIPO? Serious intervention is needed to ensure that the EPO doesn’t just become a relic or a fossil from the past. The way things stand, based on what we are hearing from insiders, there is no promising future for the EPO (if any future at all). █
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