08.30.15
Increase in Lobbying for Software Patents in Europe and Its Trojan Horse, the Unitary Patent (UPC)
Software patents through globalisation
Summary: The relentless campaigns to bring software patents into Europe have not stopped and so-called ‘unification’ — much like so-called ‘trade’ deals — serves to support them
THE EPO will be the subject of many posts next months, having been de-emphasised somewhat during the summer vacation.
One interesting aspect of the EPO is its role in the UPC and the globalisation of patent law (in a US-leaning fashion, not EU-led). Quality is compromised for the sake of quantity, e.g. income and protectionism. This is secretly steered by multinational globalists with effectively no borders — shady people who have no loyalty to any country in particular.
Only a few days ago we showed how the EPO-supported UPC was potentially big news because experts in the field say that the unitary patent regime can bring software patents into Europe. Now we have a new article from some Web site titled “europeansoftwarepatents” (presumably in favour of them*). The article is titled “Software patents in Europe: Marketing campaigns are not patentable” and it says: “The patent application at stake concerned an intelligent mail system to coordinate direct mail with other marketing channels. The invention concerns the calculation of dates on which people should be contacted for marketing purposes. The idea is to predict when marketing mail pieces will arrive at recipients’ homes, and to use those dates to determine an optimal date on which the recipients should be contacted using a further marketing channel (e.g. telephone, e-mail, television, radio).”
“One interesting aspect of the EPO is its role in the UPC and the globalisation of patent law (in a US-leaning fashion, not EU-led).”That would not be patentable also on grounds of triviality, never mind how abstract it is and how overtly software-related it is (nothing physical in the process).
Europeans are meanwhile coming to realise that the UPC may change all this. More of them grasp the simple fact that it herald the start of a software patents era in Europe, dictated by patent lawyers and their biggest clients. One person wrote that “shamefully Gov PT [Portugal] approves unitary patents, no info released” — a subject that we covered here the other day (3 days ago to be precise). We have already explained why it’s so undemocratic and here is one article from earlier this month, showing that this was done with pretty much zero input from the Portuguese public. “Portugal has officially ratified the Unified Patent Court (UPC) agreement, raising the total number of signatories to eight,” wrote WIPR. “The ratification was confirmed yesterday, August 6, after a notice was published in the country’s official gazette on legal developments. The document states that President Aníbal Cavaco Silva ratified the agreement on July 30.
“In a statement on the ratification, published in English, the Portuguese government said the agreement will help to “improve the enforcement of patents and the defence against unfounded claims”.”
That’s a shamelessly misleading statement. The UPC would do exactly the opposite. It would make so-called ‘enforcement’ (litigation) more broad in terms of scope, which is of course a bad thing. This may seem bad on its own right, but UPC would also make more things patentable, which in turn renders many “unfounded claims” well founded. It’s euphoria for the patent maximalists and multinational corporations. █
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* The site describes itself as “your one-stop resource for everything you need to know to protect your valuable software innovations with European software patents.”
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