03.29.16

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Scandalous: European Patent Office Serves Only Microsoft Customers With Filing Software

Posted in Europe, Microsoft, Patents at 2:31 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

So much for ‘public’ service…

Become a Microsoft customer and then

Summary: The EPO wrongly assumes that all applicants are customers of Microsoft and are using Windows, which must be highly beneficial to its close friends at Microsoft

MICROSOFT IS quite a VIP inside the EPO, whether examiners like it or not. Putting aside the fact that they must use spyware like Vista and its derivatives/successors (with keyloggers), the examiners need to hurry up with patent applications from Microsoft, which is a malicious patent aggressor with several patent trolls — even in-house — at its disposal (e.g. for attacking GNU/Linux). We have, on numerous occasions, explained why the R.I.C.O. Act ought to be invoked here and maybe Microsoft too is starting to get cold feet.

“Watch how Windows-only software is seen as ‘normal’ at the EPO even in 2016.”Based on today’s announcement which links to this page (caution: epo.org link), among over a dozen download links, almost everything ended up being just Windows executables (a couple are ZIP files for Windows). What makes it worse is that based on their project pages they’re using Java [1, 2, 3], so they could in theory help other platforms get it (but don’t).

Longtime readers may already know that this is a sensitive subject; saying that the EPO is close to Microsoft is risky business. The EPO is hyper-sensitive about it (one ought to see the weak and partial rebuttals from EPO lawyers to understand how poor a basis they have). All the articles they ever wanted removed were about Microsoft and the EPO. About those articles regarding the EPO-Microsoft ‘special relationship’ (which EPO management threatened me over), how are we supposed to ignore it given the above special treatment?

Watch how Windows-only software is seen as ‘normal’ at the EPO even in 2016. Outrageous! They need to fix this or simply perpetuate the perception of a ‘special relationship’ (something other journalists have told us about). █

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2 Comments

Anton_P said,

March 30, 2016 at 2:16 am

You seem to ignore the fact that the EPO offers CMS and web-form filing in addition to the online filing software.

Dr. Roy Schestowitz Reply:
March 30th, 2016 at 4:45 pm
See this followup. I wasn’t ignoring this fact (which I knew all along).