12.31.16
Posted in Europe, Patents at 2:30 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
The day of strike, the 7th of April (2016), also had this poster with a list of requests.
Summary: A look back at a key event inside the EPO, which marked somewhat of a breaking point for Team Battistelli
THE EPO‘s management lies. It lies a lot. It kept telling the media that only a disgruntled minority was complaining and that there were no strikes (saying nothing about a lot of protests in 2015). Battistelli is an emperor of lies, the Liar in Chief as we often call him, and his staff generally knows this. Almost every sentence that comes out of his mouth these days contains at least one lie.
At the beginning of the year, after Battistelli had showered the media with money (EPO’s budget, not his), one could come across bogus claims that only few employees were causing all the noise and yielding negative publicity for the Office. This lie needed to be debunked and the erroneous claims tackled convincingly enough. That’s why an anonymous individual or group initiated a call for strike and the strike’s result was later advertised as follows:
Dear colleagues
As we write this, the final numbers for the strike on 7 April are not yet known, but it seems possible that it was the biggest ever strike in the history of the EPO. This is an amazing result and it shows what is possible when colleagues committed to the future of our office work together.
Our goal, as initiators of the strike, was to counter the President’s claim that only “a small minority of staff” were against him and his “reforms”. Thanks to you, we achieved that goal resoundingly. Today, there can be no doubt that across the entire EPO, people are profoundly angry about what is happening. On 7 April 2016, staff of the EPO said unmistakably that they will never accept injustice against colleagues, or abusive rules and regulations. We are sure the Administrative Council was listening. The ball is now in their court. Our thanks go to each and every staff member who went on strike!
Your colleagues,
The initiators of the strike on 7 April
We already published a lot of letters about this at the time. One letter which we never published was sent to Battistelli himself. The letter laid out 4 points and now, at the end of the year, we can say with certainty that Battistelli has fulfilled not even one of the conditions. Here is the letter:
Open Letter
Mr Benoît Battistelli
President of the EPO
ISAR – R.1081
cc.: Administrative Council
Notification of a strike
Dear Mr President,
Ms Bergot announced in her publication to staff dated 8 March 2016 the result of the strike ballot organised by the Office: Staff has voted in favour of a strike. Following this decision to start a strike, we inform you of the following.
Grounds for having to resort to the strike
No essential progress has been made on Staff’s claims as expressed in the call for strike entitled “Lawfulness at the EPO” that you received on 10 February 2016:
• the immediate suspension of the disciplinary measures against the three staff representatives
• a truly independent review of the cases against the staff representatives by a body that enjoys the full trust of both the management and the staff of the EPO
• the revocation of all recent changes to the Service Regulations and their implementing texts concerning the legal framework, …
• the initiation of open and fair negotiations between management and staff representatives, led by an internationally recognised mediator/conciliator.
Calendar and EPO sites concerned
The initiators of the call for strike have informed us that they would like the strike to happen at the earliest opportunity. Accordingly, the strike shall take place on 7 April 2016 at all sites of employment: Munich, The Hague, Berlin and Vienna.
Please be assured that the Central Staff Committee has always been prepared to enter a fair social dialogue and continues to be so. The CSC recognises the recent resolution of the AC as a positive signal and a step into the right direction. If social dialogue in the time before the strike day leads to a substantial progress on the grounds for strike, we are willing to recommend to Staff to cancel the strike action.
Yours sincerely,
The Central Staff Committee
We confirm that this letter was legitimately decided and produced by the Central Staff Committee 1.
_______________
1 Pursuant to Article 35(3) ServRegs, the Central Staff Committee shall consist of ten full and ten alternate members.
The CSC presently consists of 9 full and 8 alternate members, because two have resigned in December 2014, one has been dismissed in January 2016 (against the recommendation of the Disciplinary Committee) and one refused replacement of a full member against Article 7(3) of Circular 355.
One full member of the CSC has been downgraded in Jan 2016 (against the recommendation of the Disciplinary Committee). In fact, the Office has launched investigations and disciplinary procedures against several other Staff representatives as well, affecting negatively their health.
[...]
cc.: Mr Tobias Kirchgessner, Lawyer of the initiators of the strike “Lawfulness at the EPO”
Suffice to say, as Battistelli has done not a single thing to improve things, all those who went on strike probably continue to distrust Battistelli and disapprove his regime. A lot of those who did not go on strike probably just feared retribution, as we explained at the time (there was no opportunity for anonymity for those who participated in the strike).
2016 was another slide down a steep hill for Battistelli and his goons. 2017 will be no better until more people like Minnoye gradually exit. There is no room for peace at the EPO as long as megalomania or perception of omnipotence persists at the very top. █
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Posted in Deception, Europe, Patents at 2:01 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
The very antithesis of the Office under Battistelli’s horrible regime…
Reference: Social democracy
Summary: Orwellian misuse of terms by the EPO, which keeps using the term “social democracy” whilst actually pushing further and further towards a totalitarian regime led by ‘King’ Battistelli
STAFF of the EPO is suffering. Staff representatives suffer even more.
The following Open Letter, published earlier this year, helps reveal just to what extent the union-busting activities of Battistelli have contributed to fear and erosion of staff representation in an institution that, without these safeguards, is basically no better than North Korea, with Battistelli as its “Supreme Leader”. To perfume it a little, Team Battistelli attempted to hijack adopt the term “Social Democracy” (something akin to the term used by Bernie Sanders in the US and in various other countries). Here is the letter in full (except the names of representatives, as they are already subjected to enough abuse from Battistelli and his goons):
Open Letter
Mr Benoît Battistelli
President of the EPO
ISAR – R.1081
Dear Mr Battistelli,
The so-called “Social democracy” was one of the policies introduced in July 2014 under the HR roadmap (CA/39/14), with claimed goals to “fill a legal vacuum, adapt and modernise [the EPO] social framework and provide improvements for a more efficient management of the Office.”..
After almost 2 years of implementing these policies none of these goals have materialised. Quite to the contrary and as pointed out by the AC in its recent resolution, the reality is a social situation that gives reasons for grave concern and has been acknowledged as a crisis, not only internally but by the media and other external, interested circles. The conclusion is that this situation is unsustainable and action will be required to meet the challenges set by the AC in its March resolution.
1. “Social Democracy” has a flawed design
The shortcomings of the “social democracy framework” have been pointed out repeatedly by the CSC and SUEPO, both during the statutory (albeit formally superficial) consultation processes and in diverse publications since its introduction, all to no avail.
A non-exhaustive list of unanswered communications is set out in the Annex.
2. Actual “Social democracy” is even worse than anticipated
Unfortunately, the reality of “Social Democracy” has gone well beyond Staff’s already pessimistic forecast. Just to cite some key points (see the CSC letter to the AC for more details):
- Despite all the promises made, the effective time allocated to Staff representation work has been reduced by well over 50% compared to historical figures (in accordance with Communiqué 49, the framework formerly in place). Internal documents show that this is not an accident but according to plan.
- Despite declarations that the new framework would “enhance the representativity and functions of both the Central and Local Staff Committees, regular arbitrary restrictions on nominations, duty travel and training have led to substantial disruptions to the internal functioning of these staff representation bodies. To summarise, staff representatives have been systematically hindered in organizing themselves in an autonomous, independent manner.
- The existing provisions for filling vacated positions, have not been followed: for instance, Mr Brevier (CSC deputy member from The Hague) has still not been allowed, since October 2014, to replace a CSC full member who resigned, He is still not allowed to dedicate 100% of his time for Staff Representative duties, due to an investigation, initiated by Ms Bergot now more than a year ago.
- Other staff representatives have also been targeted by the same and other investigations, which have already resulted in disciplinary procedures, the dismissal of two elected staff representatives and the downgrading of another one. These sanctions have been perceived as political rather than legal actions and were commented to be unfair and disproportionate disciplinary measures by both the media and the AC.
- Many Staff Representatives have in the meantime resigned because of perceived pressure (threats) from the administration and undue work pressure from their hierarchy. Of those remaining, many have suffered severe damage to their health, resulting in e.g. sickness, depressions or even burn-out.
To conclude, the work environment for staff representatives has become unsustainable. Maintaining the present framework amounts to harassment, is irresponsible and has led to severe damages both to the functioning of the institution representing Staff interests in the EPO and to the health of the individuals acting therein.
3. Negligent, unsustainable and not fit to meet the clear challenges set by the AC
The so-called “Social-Democracy” framework no longer allows the nomination of non-elected staff representatives to any working groups and statutory bodies. This has led to a situation where grooming of new staff representatives and delegation of work are impossible.
Combined with unfilled positions, due to resignations and dismissals, the result is today, that particularly in the big sites, the effective work capacity of available “fully fit and functional” staff representatives has reached an all-time low, which is not compatible with their duty to fully represent staff interests. More pertinently, this has become an issue of great concern in the context of the request made by the AC in its March resolution.
Clearly the situation is not sustainable in the long run and urgent action is required both to protect the health of the individual staff representatives and their capacity to genuinely and thoroughly represent staff interests.
4. Urgent action required: request authorisation to delegate work to non-elected Staff members
In the medium term, an in-depth review of the so-called “social democracy” is not only expected but required. The CSC is of the opinion that essential features of Communiqué 49 should be reconsidered and built in to the framework to overcome the obvious shortcomings of the present framework and render it more in line with democratic, best-practice standards used in similar international organisations in western civilisations.
In the short term, urgent action is required now to redistribute the workload. Hence the CSC herewith requests the President to immediately allow Staff Committees to delegate autonomously tasks to non-elected staff representatives as experts and to provide the necessary time to adequately compensate them.
The Central Staff Committee would like to stress that the Office’s apparent lack of due diligence on this matter, i.e. not following the recommendations outlined above, will continue to seriously jeopardise the announced negotiation process. It constitutes institutional harassment of the staff representation and, if continued, may lead to further complaints.
Yours sincerely,
The Central Staff Committee
We confirm that this letter was legitimately decided and produced by the Central
Staff Committee1.
_____
1 Pursuant to Article 35(3) ServRegs, the Central Staff Committee shall consist of ten full and ten alternate members.
The CSC presently consists of 9 full and 8 alternate members, because two have resigned in December 2014, one has been dismissed in January 2016 (against the recommendation of the Disciplinary Committee) and one refused replacement of a full member against Article 7(3) of Circular 355.
One full member of the CSC has been downgraded in Jan 2016 (against the recommendation of the Disciplinary Committee). In fact, the Office has launched investigations and disciplinary procedures against several other Staff representatives as well, affecting negatively their health.
[...]
cc.:
Principal Director 4.3
Members of the WG SR resources
Council Secretariat
Annex:
Non-exhaustive list of communications on the shortcomings and events of the so-called “Social-Democracy”:
- 23/06/2015 social democracy: staff representation dismantling is on track!
- 18/03/2015 [csc] letter to heads of delegation; restoration of social dialogue at the epo
- 08/12/2014 social democracy vs social peace
- 14/10/2014 [csc] battistelli’s “social democracy” – staff representatives banned from attending the administrative council for the first time in the history of the office
- 24/03/2014 letter to the members of the admin. council ” ‘social democracy’ will be quickly outdated”
- 24/03/2014 letter to ac delegations – “social democracy” – mr battistelli’s reform of the staff representation
- 24/01/2014 meeting the president 27.01.14 – social democracy
- 18/12/2013 trias politicabeyond the problems, the way out: “feuille de route” for social democracy by suepo
- 23/10/2014 [csc] the organisation of your central staff committee
- 26/05/2014 letter of vp1 to the local and central staff committee of 26.05.2014 – social democracy in progress
- 02/04/2014 reform of staff representation “social democracy”
- 12/03/2014 opinion of the members of the gac appointed by the staff committee on gac/doc 7/2014 – “social democracy”
- 14/03/2014 report of the 257th meeting of the gac on 4.3.2014 in the hague
- 21/02/2014 letter to mr r. lutz – request concerning “gac 7/14 – social democracy”
- 07/02/2014 social democracy reform of mr battistell
- 05/12/2013 letter to b. battistelli: working group social democracy
The exploitation or misuse of the term “social democracy” is rather gross. There is neither of those two things at today’s EPO. Battistelli does not understand democracy and probably never will. As staff representatives put it earlier this year [PDF] in another context, “President Battistelli has broken an EPO promise to staff to be properly involved in the management process in a Healthcare Insurance Advisory Committee in exchange for the additional risk put on them. President Battistelli seems to dislike advice: not only has he failed to create HIAC, he disbanded General Advisory Committee (GAC) and replaced it with the General Consultative Committee which, although fully populated by Vice-Presidents, is an inferior statutory body when compared to the GAC.”
In other words, Battistelli allows only Team Battistelli, i.e. those totally loyal to him, to decide on matters that don’t even involve them. It’s neither social nor democratic. █
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Posted in Europe, Patents at 12:12 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Bodyguards at nearly 100,000 Euros each?! (mysterious contract with private firm)
Summary: Even the EPO’s Central Staff Committee (not SUEPO) understands that Battistelli brings waste and disgrace to the Office
A document published internally by the Central Staff Committee was recently leaked to us [PDF]. Part of this document is in German, but the majority is in English and it deals primarily with financial aspects although staff representatives correctly point out that patent quality has been compromised to temporarily — while unsuspecting applicants are unaware of this compromise — artificially boost some figures.
“Look what Battistelli has turned the EPO into.”The part shown above vindicates us as we previously wrote about both aspects of the Paranoid in Chief, who is buying positive media because all he otherwise receives is negative press. The subject was more recently covered in light of highly misleading puff pieces about the UPC, courtesy of papers that the EPO had paid for propaganda.
The figure above, 880,000 Euros, is already out of date and is estimated at over a million Euros per year — basically budget thrown at a highly notorious firm that manipulates the media for truly unethical firms.
Look what Battistelli has turned the EPO into. It’s not just a corrupt institution itself; it now corrupts the media too. It misinforms the public, not just employees. █
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Posted in Europe, Patents at 11:13 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Autocracy so powerful that it destroys the whole Office, rather than ensure control and stability
Reference: Omnipotence paradox
Summary: The paradigm of totalitarian control, inability to admit mistakes and tendency to lie all the time is backfiring on the EPO rather than making it stronger
Anonymously posted over a year ago was a long piece in French which compared Battistelli to Napoleon in a not-so-flattering way, putting aside corporate angles. Earlier this year we published a partial translation, but that leaves out some other bits that are worth highlighting.
For example, as one reader put it to us, with additional bits from the original (the only such article posted there from this author):
Ses maréchaux et ministres connurent des sorts divers : de l’exécution capitale jusqu’au service servile de la monarchie restaurée, alors qu’ils devaient leurs carrières à la Révolution et leur fortune à Napoléon. Rares furent ceux qui surent se tenir.
In English: “His marshals and ministers experienced various fates, ranging from capital punishment to the groveling service of the restored monarchy, even though they owed their careers to the French revolution and their fortunes to Napoleon. Few were those who knew how to behave.”
This also aptly describes Mr. Battistelli and his confederates.
Lui, intégra l’École Nationale d’Administration, l’ENA, créée en 1945, qui ne dispense pas de formation à l’autoritarisme. Mais, si elle fournit à la France des administrateurs pétris du sens de l’intérêt général ou de l’État, elle en produit aussi qui imbus d’eux-mêmes ont seuls foi en leur omniscience : il convient donc de dire qu’elle nourrit assez bien l’aspiration à l’omnipotence de certains de ses élèves.
In English: “He was admitted to ÉNA, the National School of Administration, an institution which doesn’t offer training in authoritarianism. But if she provides France administrators steeped in a sense for the common interest or of the State, she also produces self-imbued others who are believe in their personal omniscience; one must admit that she feeds the yearning for omnipotence of a few of her students.”
National School of Administration.
His portrait is thus mostly complete, with the exception of that neo Carlovingian empire bit. I’m coming to that.
Le voici donc décrit, à ceci près qu’il y manque ce néo-Empire Carolingien. J’y arrive.
Let us look at the facts in a broad sense.
Changement dans le régime des pensions à partir de 2009 et passage d’un régime de répartition à un régime par capitalisation : cela a et ne cessera mécaniquement d’avoir pour effet de réduire considérablement la responsabilité financière future de l’OEB au titre des pensions, et cet effet ira toujours en s’accroissant au fur et à mesure que partiront les anciens et arriveront les nouveaux impétrants.
Change in the pension regime beginning 2009, and transition from a pay-as-you-go system to a funded one: this has, and will, automatically reduce the EPO’s future financial liabilities for pensions, and this effect will become increasingly important as new recruits will replace leaving older staff members.
Suppression de facto du droit de grève auquel on substitua une hypothétique autorisation – car fait du prince – de prendre des jours de congés sans solde : ceci était le préalable pour donner naissance aux forceps à un nouvel Office.
De facto abolition of the right to strike, against which was substituted a theoretical permission of taking unpaid holidays, dependent of the monarch’s good will: this was the prerequisite for permitting the forceps delivery of a new Office.
Introduction de la CPC, classification technique commune entre l’office états-unien des brevets, USPTO, et l’OEB, sur la base de la Classification Européenne (EC) que l’Office, qui la développa et la maintint à ses frais, fit don à l’USPTO, à ses dépens, car perdant par là même ce qu’il avait seul construit pour atteindre l’excellence jusqu’à peu reconnue internationalement.
Introduction of the CPC, a common classification scheme for the USPTO and the EPO, which is based…
Fast-forwarding a bit we have:
Alors, que faire ?
English: “Then, what is to be done?”
Over a year has passed and quite a lot has changed. Since then, for example, Battistelli got reprimanded and his team is falling apart, with imminent top-level departures. Even French politicians are lashing out at Battistelli; several of them openly call him an embarrassment to France.
The point about ENA and omnipotence is familiar to us. To repeat a text about ENA, which we translated a year ago, the first sentence in the introduction says “In 2007, for France to survive, we need to free us from the omnipotence of the ENA.” █
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12.30.16
Posted in America, Asia, Patents at 2:42 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
South Korea typically finds a healthy balance on patents, from which the country benefits (economy and innovation)
Seoul Plaza, South Korea
Summary: An outline of recent stories about patents, where patent quality is key, reflecting upon the population’s interests rather than the interests of few very powerful corporations
THE NEW YEAR IS ABOUT to start and we are eager to see governments all across the world recognising that patents have gone too far if examiners are granting millions of them. Techrights was never an anti-patent site; rather, it was pro-patent quality. We need to limit patent scope so as to ensure that the practical (or economic) impact of patents benefits society at large. The former Chief Economist of the EPO spoke about it earlier this winter.
“We need to limit patent scope so as to ensure that the practical (or economic) impact of patents benefits society at large.”Florian Müller has this new article about a Korean antitrust ruling. We have been writing about rulings of this kind for nearly a decade (going back to the Korean ruling on monopolistic Intel) and 3 months ago we wrote about Microsoft's latest patents controversy in Korea. We remind readers that Korea’s official position is that software is not patentable (different from Japan’s and China’s policy).
“I wish to point out,” Müller wrote, “that ACT is generally very IPR owner-friendly, but when it comes to FRAND licensing of standard-essential patents, its positions are pretty consistent with mine. An organization that takes similar positions on FRAND (and of which Google is a member) is the Brussels-based Fair Standards Alliance. Presumably the reason the FSA hasn’t spoken out on the Korean ruling yet is simply that people in Brussels tend to be on vacation this week (to a far greater extent than in the U.S.).”
“For the record, Florian Müller assured me he had been in no way associated with (or paid by) Microsoft for several years now.”As we noted earlier this year, the Fair Standards Alliance is rather mysterious, but the same cannot be said about ACT. I politely told Müller it’s worth pointing out that Association for Competitive Technology (ACT) is a Microsoft front group with decades of history (going back to the nineties, under another name and acronym). We have exchanged some messages about that [1, 2, 3, 4]. For the record, Florian Müller assured me he had been in no way associated with (or paid by) Microsoft for several years now. A lot of what we wrote about Florian Müller is no longer relevant/applicable as he left behind his Microsoft work and has no intention to do that again. Some people will never forgive him for that, but I have. I believe that he’s not “up for sale” now that he leads a team of “app” developers, hence not dependent on contracts from companies like Oracle, either.
“Just updated post on antitrust ruling against Qualcomm with link to unofficial translation of KFTC press release,” he added, after he mostly focused on ACT’s message. Here is a report we found about the news earlier this week:
A South Korean regulator said it would fine Qualcomm Inc. about $853 million for alleged antitrust violations, the highest such penalty handed to an individual company here, as the U.S. chip maker faces global scrutiny over its patent-licensing business.
A lot of people later discussed the relevance of this to the situation in China, where Qualcomm’s shakedown efforts have only met very limited success.
The Reinhold Cohn Group, writing this new article (“China may become more liberal towards business method and software related patents”), reminds us that China has gone bonkers with patent scope. SIPO now copies/emulates the mistakes of the USPTO and it already becomes a patent trolls’ heaven. It’s beneficial to nobody. “On 27 October 2016,” as the law firm put it, “the State Intellectual Property Office of China (SIPO) published, for comments by the public, proposed draft revisions to its current Examination Guidelines for examining software-related inventions. In the draft revised Guidelines SIPO goes one step further, as, in addition to granting patents on software-related inventions that solve a technical problem, is willing to allow patents for data carriers, and, in some cases, even for business methods.”
“SIPO now copies/emulates the mistakes of the USPTO and it already becomes a patent trolls’ heaven.”So basically they want to be the garbage dump of failed patent applications, or the equivalent of scholarly journals that almost blindly accept every submitted paper (and are hence worthless and have no following). We are gratified to see the USPTO departing from this lunacy left (having been accentuated) by David Kappos. Incidentally, some LLC (usually trolls) turns out to have sued the USPTO for last year’s long outage; it has just lost the case*.
Jasper L. Tran, writing in the Iowa Law Review, has just published “Abstracting About “Abstract Idea”” — a short paper in which he tackles the classification of some patents as “abstract”. Also today, an article titled “Software patent eligibility in Canada: IP year in review” was published but then deleted, maybe by accident. █
__________
* To quote Pharma Patents Blog: “On December 2, 2016, Judge O’Grady of the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia granted the USPTO’s motion to dismiss the complaint brought by Elm 3DS Innovations, LLC over the “holidays” declared December 22-24, 2015 when the USPTO experienced a power outage that impacted its electronic filing systems. The decision may leave other stakeholders wondering whether Elm was not the best party to challenge the USPTO’s action, or whether the action is simply unreviewable under the APA.”
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Posted in Europe, Patents at 1:42 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Summary: The role played by Heiko Maas in the UPC, which would harm businesses and people all across Europe, is becoming clearer and hence his motivation/desire to keep Team Battistelli in tact, in spite of endless abuses on German soil
IT wasn’t too long ago that we mentioned Heiko Maas in relation to his complicity, by inaction, in EPO scandals. He has received so many letters (and copies of letters) about the situation, yet he seems to be deaf in both ears and blind in both eyes. It’s like everything about the EPO goes right into his shredder as a matter of policy.
Suffice to say, Germany has plenty to gain from the UPC because it cements Germany’s near-monopoly on EU-wide patents. It does to prosecution what was already done examination- and appeals-wise.
“We are now starting to suspect that Germany’s Justice Minister Heiko Maas ignores EPO abuses (crimes by national laws) out of convenience.”Found today via Christine Robben from Team UPC is this blog post from her employer, which said just before Christmas that a “draft bill for the implementation of the UPCA was published on 9 December 2016 by Justice Minister Heiko Maas. Together with the UK, Germany is one of the two countries that still have to ratify the UPCA before the Unitary Patent system can start functioning.”
We are now starting to suspect that Germany’s Justice Minister Heiko Maas ignores EPO abuses (crimes by national laws) out of convenience. Moreover, he pushes Battistelli’s agenda forward with the UPC. Is he complicit then? Or just a bystander-type enabler? One who refuses to intervene because he has something to gain (or to fear)? How does that relate to Germany's media blackout regarding EPO abuses as of late? It’s almost as though large publishers/editors receive instructions not to ‘meddle’. The EPO wastes a lot of money trying to accomplish just that.
Let it be clear that for Germany to oppose the UPC would make no sense. “Entering into force of provisional [UPC] phase (early opt-outs) is still unclear,” Alexander Esslinger wrote about it, but Germany’s main barriers at the moment are Spain and the UK. WIPR gives a platform to those who promote the UPC in the UK, but the UPC has no future here; even Lucy has just been sacked (or resigned), only a few weeks after she promised the impossible.
The UPC would be utterly disastrous to European businesses. We wrote many articles about this in the past. The UPC would also be very damaging to EPO staff, notably judges. Things are already being pushed to the brink of planned failure, as Battistelli understaffs the boards of appeal (BoA) and limits access to them. Battistelli does to the appeal boards the same thing Tories do to the NHS, as a preparatory step preceding replacement.
Ricardo Ontañón of Clarke Modet & Co has just published this article about the weirdness of EPO oppositions in the Battistelli era. To quote the first paragraph:
Analysis of the lack of clarity in opposition proceedings before the EPO
The European Patent Office (EPO) confirmed in recently issued Decision G3/14 the practice highlighted in earlier decisions (T301/87), whereby establishing that during opposition proceedings of a European patent the Opposition Division of the EPO can only analyze the lack of clarity of the amended claims when the amendments made may introduce an alleged lack of clarity.
Ultimately, considering how eagerly Battistelli seems to be following China's footsteps, all these steps that helped assure patent quality may be phased out/deprecated, leaving both plaintiffs and defendants spending a fortune in ‘unitary’ courts that don’t speak their language and handle patents whose legitimacy ought to have been questioned/scrutinised at the European Patent Office/BoA, not in the courtroom (high costs associated with flights, lawyers, interpreters etc.).
Now that we know Heiko Maas is a wilful enabler of the UPC we are going to approach his utterly reckless attitude towards the EPO’s management as part of the problem. █
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12.29.16
Posted in America, Deception, IBM, Patents at 7:53 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
They even organise events to push their agenda
Summary: The latest facts and figures about software patents, compared to the spinmeisters’ creed which they profit from (because they are in the litigation business)
“L
atest [Section] 101 Statistics Show Improved Validity Prospects at Dist. Cts, Not CAFC or PTAB,” said a patent attorney the other day, reinforcing our response to Mullin's article (titled “These three 2016 [CAFC] cases gave new life to software patents”). The reality in the US right now is undeniably bad for software patents, which are being chopped at PTAB’s block and CAFC’s block. Patent maximalists are trying to pretend otherwise and we repeatedly rebut their arguments, only to see these arguments resurfacing over and over again, courtesy of the usual suspects. If the lies are repeated often enough, then maybe prospective applicants (or clients in need of legal representation) will actually believe them.
“The reality in the US right now is undeniably bad for software patents, which are being chopped at PTAB’s block and CAFC’s block.”The other day we saw this new article titled “Assessing USPTO’s Memo On Software Claim Patent Eligibility”; we keep wondering if USPTO officials will become as rational and realistic as US courts. Right now they just strive to rubberstamp whatever they can and those who pay the price for it are both plaintiffs and defendants; only patent law firms profit from it.
“This method of presentation involves storing and processing applications or parts of applications at a user’s local personal computer rather than at a remote server.”
–PatentDocsAs a side note — although an important note nonetheless — we can’t help but notice that IBM keeps trying to corrupt the system though its former Director, who had worked for IBM beforehand. IBM definitely used to be a (GNU/)Linux friend. Now it’s just an Apple promoter/pusher and a malicious patent aggressor. Yes, IBM has been rather busy going after small companies using software patents. Some of these companies, seeing what a menace IBM is becoming, belatedly turn to PTAB in an effort to invalidate these patents of IBM. Here is one report about IBM’s software patent that will quite likely be invalidated: “The ’967 patent relates to a method for presenting applications in an interactive service featuring steps for generating screen displays of the service applications at the reception systems of the respective users. This method of presentation involves storing and processing applications or parts of applications at a user’s local personal computer rather than at a remote server. This helps avoid possible server bandwidth issues that can be caused by the server being required to serve too much data to multiple users simultaneously. The ’967 patent lists many applications that can take advantage of this method of presentation, including games, news, weather, movie reviews, banking, investments, home shopping, messaging, and advertising.”
This is pretty trivial. It’s akin to caching.
Now watch what David Kappos is cited as saying again. “US is losing the innovation war,” he is quoted by IBM as saying, “to China” (where IBM finds buyers for its failing business units, notably Lenovo).
“Kappos is a paid lobbyist,” Benjamin Henrion noted, “working for patent trolls such as Microsoft or IBM.”
“IBM’s Schecter would know,” I replied, as “he’s IBM’s patent chief ^_^ so [he] has the ‘receipts’…”
What we have here is IBM citing as ‘proof’ a former IBM staff who is now an IBM-funded lobbyist for software patents. Look how dirty (as in dirty play) these people are…
And as if the greater the number of patents, the better… who would be foolish enough to actually believe this?!
“China pushing for software patents,” Henrion noted in relation to another Schecter tweet, “apparatus claims relating to software can contain both hardware and “program” components…” (links to “China Files A Million Patents In A Year, As Government Plans To Increase Patentability Of Software”)
“Kappos is a paid lobbyist working for patent trolls such as Microsoft or IBM…”
–Benjamin HenrionChina is their new bogeyman. One of these people added: “But USA keeps working on UN-patentability of software. What’s wrong with this picture?”
Nothing is wrong with this picture. It’s a good decision. End software patents, end patent trolls.
“China is plain wrong on this,” Henrion wrote, separately noting (to Marietje Schaake regarding software patents in Europe) that it’s “like the unitary patent lie that it won’t affect software development.”
On a final note, worth seeing is this rant from Watchtroll and 'gang' about end of software patenting (or demise thereof). “Stepping Back from the Cliff: The Year Congress Didn’t Cave to the Anti-Patent Lobby” says the title. They’re currently taking stock of a terrible year for them [1, 2] — a year which saw the demise of patent trolls. Watchtroll continues to attack PTAB for doing its job and we can’t help wondering why IBM’s Schecter treats this like some kind of ambassador for his cause. Does IBM really want to be so closely associated with Watchtroll, who even resorts to attacking judges?
For a more balanced summary of recent events, see “Year in Review: The Top-Five Legal Developments of 2016″ (posted days ago). It has a section about software patents.
“…anti patent trolling would be better, even if trolling is considered pejorative.”
–Benjamin HenrionThose who are against software patents, notably people who actually write software, are not “anti-patent” as Watchtroll tries to put it. In fact, as Henrion put it, “anti-patent is a gross and blunt exaggeration here. […] anti patent trolling would be better, even if trolling is considered pejorative.”
Patent trolls, in the majority of cases, rely on software patents. Take the latter away to get rid of the former. █
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Posted in America, Patents at 6:54 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Summary: The US Supreme Court (SCOTUS) is planning to weigh in on a case which will quite likely drive patent trolls out of the Eastern District of Texas, where all the courts that are notoriously friendly towards them reside
MANY patents granted by the USPTO have become the basis for ruinous lawsuits filed by patent trolls, which may soon be dealt an unprecedented and much-needed blow.
Patent trolls are not just a minor nuisance or some small random parasitic companies without products; some of them are gigantic and many are covers (or fronts) for large corporation seeking to shield themselves from counterclaims. Consider this new story about “Cayman Global”, yet another ‘IP’ proxy, this time for Faraday Future. “The Verge reports that Faraday Future does not own its intellectual property, and that it is instead owned by a separate entity called FF Cayman Global,” Business Insider wrote the other day. Microsoft too has created its own patent assertion entity — the one it uses to taunt Linux and Android all the time.
Florian Müller and LWN have both highlighted this good article published on December 27th by Daniel Nazer of the EFF. To quote: “Patent trolls were down but certainly not out in 2016. After a massive burst of litigation at the end of last year, we saw a noticeable drop in patent troll lawsuits at the start of this one. But trolls began returning to court as the year continued and 2016 will likely end with a relatively small overall decline. Consistent with recent trends, troll cases clustered in the Eastern District of Texas. Approximately one in three patent suits were filed in that remote, troll-friendly district, and these suits were almost all filed by companies with no business other than suing for patent infringement.”
“Microsoft too has created its own patent assertion entity — the one it uses to taunt Linux and Android all the time.”A lot of patent trolls lose their battles as software patents reach the wastebasket or never get used at all (due to low certainty of settlement/prosecution).
In 2017 we expect the case that will likely destroy trolls to be decided on by SCOTUS. This new article by Sasha Moss, Technology Policy Fellow at the R Street Institute, says that the “U.S. Supreme Court announced earlier this month it will hear the appeal of a patent infringement case brought by Kraft Foods Group Brands LLC against zero-calorie sweetener manufacturer TC Heartland LCC.”
Even lawyers’ sites wrote about this, e.g. “Will forum shopping days, like holiday shopping days, soon come to an end?”
“Only the more ‘extremist’ sites of (and for) patent lawyers, as we noted here before, prefer to say that nothing will change.”Professor Michael Risch wrote about this case that Patently-O, where he wrote/published his piece, predicts is going to kill patent trolls’ business model. To quote Risch, “I should note that the outset that I favor TC Heartland’s position from a policy point of view. I’ve long said in a variety of venues (including comment threads on this very blog) that there are significant problems with any system in which so much rides on where the case is filed. And I think that’s true whether you think they are doing a great or terrible job in the Eastern District of Texas.”
Only the more ‘extremist’ sites of (and for) patent lawyers, as we noted here before, prefer to say that nothing will change. We shall see next year, but the one newly-introduced factor will be the Republican government and perhaps several new appointments of Justices. █
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