04.20.17
Bristows-Run IP Kat Continues to Spread Lies to Promote the Unitary Patent (UPC) and Advance the EPO Management’s Agenda
IP Kat truly seems to have been ‘taken over’ by patent maximalists who disregard balance and just try to attract business, even if that means helping Battistelli
Summary: An eclectic response to some of the misleading if not villainous responses to the UPC’s death knell in the UK, as well as other noteworthy observations about think tanks and misinformation whose purpose is to warp the patent system so that it serves law firms, for the most part at the expense of science and technology
AS EXPECTED and predicted by us (among others) yesterday, Team UPC is attempting to distract from the latest news (final nail in the UPC coffin) or spin it somehow. IAM, for example, has not yet said anything about it in its blog; instead, it is trying to discredit the analysis from IP2I about UPC and trolls, completely denying that the problem even exists (even though IAM itself mentioned it before!).
Watch Bristows’ distraction tactics this afternoon/evening, shifting attention elsewhere with “German parliament to vote on UPC privileges and immunities legislation,” having repeatedly lied about it before. No matter how much/often/many times Bristows gets caught lying (possibly even falsifying quotes), there are still fools who quote them as a source. Maybe they just “want to believe”, like alien enthusiasts…
A reader sent us a link to this new article titled “Is the UPC going to be ‘quietly dropped?’” (behind paywall). “Don’t know if you saw that,” our reader said, but it’s “quite a nice summary.”
It might help if we could actually get past the paywall, but the headline alone is quite revealing.
This post will focus on — but not be limited to — the sham that IP Kat has become more recently (past few months). A lot of our readers seem to agree with us about that. Watch how, for example, all of today’s articles (3 articles) came from Bristows. Their worker writes about her beloved patent maximalists’ event (we recently mentioned just what kind of extremist agenda it has and whose), complete with patent aggression from Microsoft, UPC propaganda from the EPO’s Margot Fröhlinger, and then some more in part 3. It’s about Fordham; it became somewhat of a pro-UPC think tank, as we showed here last year. It promotes software patents, trolls, UPC, and just about anything that the most ruthless elements out there are endorsing (and profiting from).
Not only Bristows helped amplify that toxic agenda (in Kat ‘clothing’). One can easily guess who else did this.
One person wrote from the event: “General Counsel Roundtable: IP is the lifeblood of any tech company…”
See the response from Benjamin Henrion. So a bunch of people whose business is just attacking and taxing companies compare this to a life-and-death situation (maybe to their own careers). Just look at this panel. Look who’s in it. It’s a classic example of stuffed panels (fake debates with stakeholders on one side totally absent). The poster of this is unable to recognise that, which says quite a lot about the poster. Henrion said, “an echo chamber it is called.”
The whole event is one giant echo chamber. And wait till it gets to the UPC… courtesy of… the EPO!
Here comes the drinker of Kool-Aid, stating: “Long shot or likely? Will Brexit mean that UPCA may be renegotiated so that non-EU states can join? (Per Justice Arnold again) #fordhamip”
And the above person said: “Diverse and distinguished panel to discuss #brexit effect on IP #fordhamip pic.twitter.com/I33C1T8lHB”
Diverse?
Seriously?!
These people must be on some truly strong Kool-Aid, maybe an overdose.
As Dr. Birgit Clarke (former Kat) put it: “The UK’s future relationship with the European Union Intellectual Property Office is a matter for negotiations with the EU” (something with which Luke McDonagh agreed, stating “Repeat ad infinitum”).
The matter of fact is, the UPC is on the rocks. It will never happen in the UK. It’s almost impossible for all sorts of reasons. Yet the UPC boosters from Managing IP say: “Inevitable that decisions of #CJEU will have persuasive value post-Brexit. Question is persuasive weight” – Mr Justice Arnold at #fordhamip”
Managing IP could argue that it’s just quoting people (in an echo chamber), but it’s actually going as far as becoming a megaphone of Battistelli’s liar (for UPC purposes), Margot Fröhlinger. She literally makes a living by lying about the UPC. That’s her job at the EPO. She recently got herself embedded in the Korean press, spreading lies in English and possibly Hangul too. To quote: “”Updates to #upca can easily be done if there is political will… We will find out in next 2 years” – Margot Fröhlinger @EPOorg #fordhamip”
So it sounds like the EPO is already scheming to change national laws. Battistelli has done even worse things.
Here is another person from the echo chamber stating: “UK election likely to cause 2 month delay to #UPC #unitarypatent – Nicholas Saunders @brickcourt #fordhamip”
No, it can definitely kill it (only a wishful thinker says “delay” at this stage).
Going back to IP Kat, this is where it gets even more disturbing.
“So it sounds like the EPO is already scheming to change national laws. Battistelli has done even worse things.”Today, we’ve finally taken stock of the latest rubbish from Bristows. There is no UPC lobbying opportunity, so yesterday there were three Bristows posts (in a single day, all of Monday’s posts) in IP Kat, as if Bristows now runs the site (it’s Annsley Merelle Ward, who used to do a lot of promotion of software patents, even though she never ever wrote any software herself). The first was relatively innocent but then came grooming of a patent troll that operates in London. Just like IAM (which did this almost every day and sometimes more than once per day), Annsley Merelle Ward from Bristows did a FRAND puff piece, neglecting to tell readers that what we have here is a troll, not FRAND. It’s about trolls coming to Europe. And later in the day this UPC propagandist proceeded to spreading the lie that the Unitary Patent would not be cause for trolls, in spite of many people in the field repeatedly acknowledging that it would. It’s like those old lies about SMEs benefiting from the UPC; the reality is exactly the opposite. Here is the opening part, alluding to some think tank called “UPC Industry Coalition”: “Two years ago, the AmeriKat reported on the UPC Industry Coalition’s website launch and the continued concern that the injunction gap in the UPC would be used as potential sword with which patent trolls would hold to a company’s throat to achieve early (and potentially unjust) settlement. However, irrespective of the ultimate fate of the UPC (especially after yesterday’s UK snap election announcement), patent trolls, NPEs, PAEs (or whatever it is we are calling them now) are already prowling around Europe, especially given that their original hunting grounds in the US have recently become less hospitable (see Kyle Bass’s recent losses, e.g.).”
She is already attracting pro-UPC and pro-trolls anonymous comments like this one, but they are quickly corrected as follows:
The UPC has an extremely important pro-troll feature: the court fee for a counterclaim for revocation of a patent is €20,000. This ridiculously high fee to defend yourself against infringement of a clearly invalid patent does nothing other than facilitate the classic troll behaviour of threatening (UPC) infringement action if a relatively small settlement (perhaps €10,000) isn’t paid.
This court fee alone will make the UPC a troll’s paradise for extorting money from SMEs. All they need to do is get hold of an overly broad patent. Helpfully, the EPO now seems to be issuing more and more of those:
http://tuftythecat.blogspot.co.uk/2016/11/the-epo-issues-invalid-patents-too.html
The above link too is from a former Kat. Some of them seem to have left, having seen the blog decaying and becoming just self promotion (for law firms). Nothing academic.
“These people, like Bristows opportunists, try to build their whole career on UPC promotion and French favouritism.”Regarding trolls, the UPC would make thing even a lot worse and it’s no excuse for pushing for the UPC, which would further exacerbate the problem. It’s a reason for stopping the UPC. Merelle Ward does gymnastics in logic here. That’s like saying, this person has flu already, therefore giving that same person cancer wouldn’t be a big deal. Merelle Ward (“AmeriKat”) then cites the UPC booster Michel Barnier (a zealous proponent of it for a long time, since before it was known as “UPC”), noting that “we have seen these reasons before. Readers may recall this (pretty grumpy) AmeriKat post back in 2014 reporting on the response from then Commissioner Barnier (now European chief negotiator for Brexit) to a question from Marc Tarabella, a Belgian MEP, about the problem and the risk of further abuse in the UPC. Two months later Commissioner Barnier responded that they failed to see how the UPC’s Union legislation – and therefore not the UPC Agreement which creates the injunction gap problem – “could increase activity of so called ‘patent trolls’ in Europe.””
Barnier is your source? Seriously? Who next? Battistelli? These people, like Bristows opportunists, try to build their whole career on UPC promotion and French favouritism.
Thankfully, the UPC is collapsing, so Bristows and other players from Team UPC are grasping at straws. As someone pointed out in this new comment: “Odd decision by Mrs May. I mean, what changed between triggering Article 50 (on 29 March) and yesterday? Certainly nothing relating to any of the “excuses” that she provided yesterday. Perhaps she just hadn’t thought things through before now. If so, that hardly inspires confidence! On a more IP-related note, has the IPO revealed any details on when they now expect the UPC Agreement to be ratified? Seems that a delay of several months (at least) is inevitable.”
The UPC is deadlocked. It will altogether be called off. Unless they call off Brexit or something along those lines…
“The UPC is deadlocked.”An unnamed Partner at the seemingly UPC-sympathetic firm Kather Augenstein (where Christopher Weber is from) wrote about this some days ago. Weber revealed the author’s name as he promoted this by saying: “My Partner Dr. Christof Augenstein commenting on the future of the UPC in today`s FAZ.”
It’s German media (translation would be appreciated), so we don’t know for sure how to best interpret it (Birgit Clarke who is German spotted it first). Apparently they had researched this further to find major barriers to the UPC, even before the General Election barrier crept in. They cite Jo Johnson on Brexit-related barriers and as Benjamin Henrion put it, “FAZ cites Jo Johnson in its last line of UPC article that UPC will be part of Brexit talks…”
Separately he asked: “”Anyone could buy the paper version of Frankfurter Allgemeine of today? There is some article about UPC in Brexit talks…”
As LukeMcDonagh has just put it:
Jo Johnson: Unified Patent Court is an international court not an EU one
Everyone: But it is bound by CJEU
Jo Johnson: We will negotiate…
With who? Battistelli?
Max Walters, who is pretty honest on these matters (and recognises the problems with UPC), wrote in the Law Gazette (UK) about the UPC “delay” (it will be called off even) and McDonagh added that the “Unified Patent Court likely to be delayed further by #GE17 – indeed, will new govt continue ratification process?”
Probably not. It’s an assumption that’s made only by those who drank too much Kool-Aid and spoke to other people who drank Kool-Aid at echo chamber-like events.
“The British software industry does not want the UPC, which is — among many other things — a Trojan horse for software patents and trolls in the UK.”Team UPC’s optimism in Germany is impossible to ignore. “If UK ratification of the UPC Agreement is still on the agenda after UK general election,” one of the boosters wrote. “it is unlikely to take place before July or August…”
Or ever. the UPC has an inherent incompatibility with Brexit. Delaying the inevitable failure won’t help much; they’re misleading clients in the meantime and probably profiting from that. Bad advice too can be profitable!
The FFII wrote back in March (probably about the EPO) that we have “[p]atentability of software thanks to rogue action of patent offices of course,” taking into account the ban on software patents that Battistelli flagrantly disregards while UPC proponents use it as a Trojan horse to normalise the practice EU-wide.
We are not insulted but flattered to see ourselves mentioned in this new comment that says: “Maybe like Brexit for Cameron this is all about internal Tory politics? Re UPC, techrights made me chuckle with his happy cheer for Another Final Nail in the Coffin. How many final nails can there be?”
Sometimes a coffin needs more nails than initially estimated because Team UPC keeps trying hard to escape the coffin, even if by misquoting people, intentionally lying, and manipulating politicians. If we need to knock some more nails on this coffin, we will. The British software industry does not want the UPC, which is — among many other things — a Trojan horse for software patents and trolls in the UK. █
Content is available under CC-BY-SA