11.24.16

Gemini version available ♊︎

Patent Quality at the EPO Depends on the Future of the Boards of Appeal (Which Battistelli is Killing Not So Softly)

Posted in Europe, Patents at 2:04 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

One of the few singles I happen to have the CD of…

Killing Me Softly

Summary: The decline in patent quality at the EPO is bad news not just for applicants but for all Europeans, and there’s no sign of it improving any time soon (under Battistelli to whom quality is an impediment)

THE EPO was a world-leading patent office for decades; it did not have many patents and this was actually a good thing because it meant that each single EP was of very high quality and there was certainty about it inside and outside the court (less risk, less litigation). Unlike the USPTO, the EPO did strive to maintain quality, which resulted in high fees. The EPO basically did what every patent office should do, but a lot of that changed when it got greedy and in defiance of Parliamentary instructions started granting software patents (covertly, using excuses and loopholes it had created) and patents on life, e.g. seeds, plants, animals. Patent maximalism further accelerated under Battistelli, a person so anti-scientific (crudely speaking, a chickenhawk politician) that he would never manage to come up with a valid patent of his own.

Nowadays, the EPO ignores the European Commission on everything including patent scope, so the rules don’t seem to matter to it. The notion of “rules” hardly even exists at the EPO; what exists can be described as Presidential decrees. Here is a new “international report” from Bart W Swinkels of NLO (European Union). It says the following:

European Commission notice against patentability of plants does not affect European plant patents

On November 3 2016 the European Commission issued a notice regarding the patentability of plants and animals obtained by means of essentially biological processes.

In the view of the commission, the EU legislature’s intention when adopting EU Directive 98/44/EC “was to exclude from patentability products (plants/animals and plant/animal parts) that are obtained by means of essentially biological processes”.

However, the commission’s notice is not legally binding; it is up to the courts and boards – not the commission – to interpret the law.

In other words, as usual, the EPO does whatever the Hell it wants, no matter if it makes it look arrogant, foolish, even corrupt. See this tweet posted today by the EPO. Very vague (but familiar to us) language is being used to masquerade/blur the inclusion of software patents in an upcoming event (yet again! Warning: epo.org link). Based on what EPO examiners say, they no longer have much time to properly search prior art and they actually grant patents on software. They are under too much pressure under their management to “produce” (where production usually gets measured in teams of “products”, not actual work). Watch what the EPO wrote today. It’s totally out of touch!

“In other words, as usual, the EPO does whatever the Hell it wants, no matter if it makes it look arrogant, foolish, even corrupt.”One of our remaining hopes is that the appeal boards will shake things up a bit. The supposedly independent judges need to remind the Office that it cannot just pursue greater quantity of patents by disregarding quality, thereby essentially spitting in the well (or muddying the water) of EPs’ value.

According to this new announcement, quality control is not entirely dead at the EPO. To quote a press releases about it, “BMO Capital analyst, Matthew Luchini, reiterated his Outperform rating on shares of Alder Biopharm (NASDAQ: ALDR) despite shares being under pressure following the European Patent Office’s (EPO) oral decision, which revoked Teva’s patent claims related to CGRP antagonist antibodies for the treatment of migraine but maintained and narrowed method of use claims.”

Here is another new bit of coverage that says “Aegis Capital affirms Alder Biopharmaceuticals (Nasdaq: ALDR) at Buy with a price target of $41 after the EPO maintained claims related to CGRP use in Migraines.

“The supposedly independent judges need to remind the Office that it cannot just pursue greater quantity of patents by disregarding quality, thereby essentially spitting in the well (or muddying the water) of EPs’ value.”“Analyst Difei Yang sees the recent pullback in ALDR shares as a buying opportunity. The analyst commented, “The EPO’s ruling is certainly a setback in the intellectual property legal proceedings of Alder and Eli Lilly, however it is also, in our view, a buying opportunity as the valuation impact to Alder is minimal; an approximate $2 per share decrease from our estimated price target. This reasoning stems from our opinion that there will be limited, if any, carry over to the US, where the large bulk of the future value of ALD-403 is based.””

Here, in this particular example, we’re dealing with patents on drugs, not software, but the principles of patent scope still apply. Consider this new “international report” published yesterday by IAM. It says “Yeda Research and Development Company owned a patent directed to a monoclonal antibody that selectively binds and purifies the human cytotoxin, tumor necrosis factor (TNF).”

“To Battistelli, patent quality control is just some nuisance that stands in the way of his terrible goal of “production” (as measured by the ‘SIPO yardstick’).”As we noted here before, restrictive patent scope is needed in the area of cancer as well, otherwise patients will be killed for the sake of corporate profits. Societal cost analysis suggests that patents should be few but solid. We are not at all against patents (never were!); we’re in favour of high quality patents whose grant can be justified by taking into account externalities like human life.

Battistelli, as this new tweet serves to remind us, is ensuring there’s not much left to preserve patent quality at the EPO (appeals are becoming too expensive, the boards understaffed, no independence). To Battistelli, patent quality control is just some nuisance that stands in the way of his terrible goal of “production” (as measured by the 'SIPO yardstick').

Share in other sites/networks: These icons link to social bookmarking sites where readers can share and discover new web pages.
  • Reddit
  • email

Decor ᶃ Gemini Space

Below is a Web proxy. We recommend getting a Gemini client/browser.

Black/white/grey bullet button This post is also available in Gemini over at this address (requires a Gemini client/browser to open).

Decor ✐ Cross-references

Black/white/grey bullet button Pages that cross-reference this one, if any exist, are listed below or will be listed below over time.

Decor ▢ Respond and Discuss

Black/white/grey bullet button If you liked this post, consider subscribing to the RSS feed or join us now at the IRC channels.

DecorWhat Else is New


  1. Links 27/03/2023: GnuCash 5.0 and Ubuntu 20.04 LTS on Phones

    Links for the day



  2. Links 27/03/2023: Twitter Source Code Published (But Not Intentionally)

    Links for the day



  3. IRC Proceedings: Sunday, March 26, 2023

    IRC logs for Sunday, March 26, 2023



  4. Links 26/03/2023: OpenMandriva ROME 23.03, Texinfo 7.0.3, and KBibTeX 0.10.0

    Links for the day



  5. The World Wide Web is a Cesspit of Misinformation. Let's Do Something About It.

    It would be nice to make the Web a safer space for information and accuracy (actual facts) rather than a “Safe Space” for oversensitive companies and powerful people who cannot tolerate criticism; The Web needs to become more like today's Gemini, free of corporate influence and all other forms of covert nuisance



  6. Ryan Farmer: I’m Back After WordPress.com Deleted My Blog Over the Weekend

    Reprinted with permission from Ryan



  7. Civil Liberties Threatened Online and Offline

    A “society of sheeple” (a term used by Richard Stallman last week in his speech) is being “herded” online and offline; the video covers examples both online and offline, the latter being absence of ATMs or lack of properly-functioning ATMs (a growing problem lately, at least where I live)



  8. Techrights Develops Free Software to Separate the Wheat From the Chaff

    In order to separate the wheat from the chaff we’ve been working on simple, modular tools that process news and help curate the Web, basically removing the noise to squeeze out the signal



  9. Links 26/03/2023: MidnightBSD 3.0 and FreeBSD 13.2 RC4

    Links for the day



  10. IRC Proceedings: Saturday, March 25, 2023

    IRC logs for Saturday, March 25, 2023



  11. Links 26/03/2023: More TikTok Bans

    Links for the day



  12. Links 25/03/2023: Gordon Moore (of Moore's Law) is Dead

    Links for the day



  13. Links 25/03/2023: Decade of Docker, Azure Broken Again

    Links for the day



  14. [Meme] Money Deducted in Payslips, But Nothing in Pensions

    Sirius ‘Open Source’ has stolen money from staff (in secret)



  15. IRC Proceedings: Friday, March 24, 2023

    IRC Proceedings: Friday, March 24, 2023



  16. The Corporate Media is Not Reporting Large-Scale Microsoft Layoffs (Too Busy With Chaffbot Puff Pieces), Leaks Required to Prove That More Layoffs Are Happening

    Just as we noted days ago, there are yet more Microsoft layoffs, but the mainstream media gets bribed to go “gaga” over vapourware and chaffbots (making chaff like “Bill Gates Says” pieces) instead of reporting actual news about Microsoft



  17. Sirius 'Open Source' Pensiongate: Time to Issue a Warrant of Arrest and Extradite the Fake 'Founder' of Sirius

    Sirius ‘Open Source’ is collapsing, but that does not mean that it can dodge accountability for crimes (e.g. money that it silently stole from its staff since at least 12 years ago)



  18. Links 24/03/2023: Microsoft's Fall on the Web and Many New Videos

    Links for the day



  19. IRC Proceedings: Thursday, March 23, 2023

    IRC logs for Thursday, March 23, 2023



  20. Links 24/03/2023: Social Control Media Bans Advancing

    Links for the day



  21. Links 24/03/2023: GNU Grep 3.10 and Microsoft Accenture in a Freefall

    Links for the day



  22. Links 23/03/2023: RSS Guard 4.3.3 and OpenBSD Webzine

    Links for the day



  23. Experiencing 15 Years of LibrePlanet Celebration Firsthand as a Volunteer: 2023 - Charting the Course

    Article by Marcia K Wilbur



  24. [Meme] Grabinski the Opportunity

    Reports of European Patents being invalidated (judges do not tolerate fake patents) have become so common that a kangaroo court becomes a matter of urgency for the EPO‘s Benoît Battistelli and António Campinos; will the EU and the EPO’s Administrative Council go along with it, helping to cover up more than a decade of profound corruption?



  25. Union Syndicale Fédérale Cautions the EPO's Administrative Council About Initiating an Illegal Kangaroo Court System for Patents (UPC) While EPO Breaks Laws and Sponsors the Ukraine Invasion

    Union Syndicale Fédérale (USF) is once again speaking out in support of the staff union of Europe's second-largest institution, which lacks oversight and governance because of profound corruption and regulatory capture



  26. Investigation Underway: Sirius 'Open Source' Embezzled/Stole Money, Robbed Its Own Staff

    In light of new developments and some progress in an investigation of Sirius ‘Open Source’ (for fraud!) we take stock of where things stand



  27. [Meme] Sirius 'Open Source' Pensions: Schemes or Scams? Giving a Bad Name to Open Source...

    What Sirius ‘Open Source’ did to its staff is rightly treated as a criminal matter; we know who the perpetrators are



  28. Sirius 'Open Source' Under Investigation for Pension Fraud, Several Pension Providers Examine the Facts

    2 pension providers are looking into Sirius ‘Open Source’, a company that defrauded its own staff; stay tuned as there’s lots more to come. Is this good representation for “Open Source”? From a company that had many high-profile clients in the public sector?



  29. Links 23/03/2023: Sparky 2023.03 Special Editions and SUSE Changes CEO (Dirk-Peter van Leeuwen)

    Links for the day



  30. Links 23/03/2023: Linux 6.2.8 and XWayland 23.1.0

    Links for the day


RSS 64x64RSS Feed: subscribe to the RSS feed for regular updates

Home iconSite Wiki: You can improve this site by helping the extension of the site's content

Home iconSite Home: Background about the site and some key features in the front page

Chat iconIRC Channel: Come and chat with us in real time

Recent Posts