Bonum Certa Men Certa

The European Patent Office No Longer Acts Like a Patent Office But a Prosecutor

Prosecution 'industry' served, not the real industry

Prosecution



Summary: With Patent Prosecution Highway (PPH), Unitary Patent (UPC) and “early certainty” it seems clear that the EPO's objectives are not aligned with those representative of a proper, functioning patent office

THE EPO continues trying -- however futile this effort may seem -- to distract from any meaningful discussion about the crisis. The "SME" nonsense (not a new thing), for example, was repeated once again yesterday. It was repeated pretty much every single day in November. "How can a business leverage the power of patents and other IP rights to achieve business success?" Those are the sorts of loaded questions brought up every day by the EPO. It has become too tiring to even bother responding to them.



"The UPC is going nowhere, but Bristows keeps spreading fake news about it.""The objective of the study," wrote the EPO in another tweet, "is to assess the role played by the current European patent system," linking to the so-called 'study' which is not objective and has already been debunked. It's the EPO-commissioned propaganda for the EPO and its UPC lobby.

Two days ago we wrote about the latest fake news about the UPC. Check out this comment that says "K. Mooney, W. Pors and consorts have been ridden by an illness called "wishful thinking"."

To quote the whole comment (JJ is Jo Johnson):

When JJ is talking about negotiations re post Brexit stay of the UK in the UPC, it clearly means that all those claiming that the stay is easy to obtain (K. Mooney, W. Pors and consorts) have been ridden by an illness called "wishful thinking".

It is understandable that they see big profits flowing away, so that self illusion is an attempt to overcome the loss. The more so since they have invested a lot of time and efforts in devising the RoP of the UPC.

It would be better if they would come back to reality rather than trying to pull wool over our eyes!



The UPC is going nowhere, but Bristows keeps spreading fake news about it. Yesterday it wrote about Belgium. This is nothing noteworthy (of progress); it's a meaningless move, as Belgium has, by Bristows' own admission, "already ratified the UPC Agreement, and has made a declaration regarding its provisional application."

"The agenda of the EPO, as set in stone by the UPC, is worse than malignant. It may be fatal to Europe's producing industries (as opposed to some law firms in England and Germany)."Quite frankly, it no longer surprises us that Team UPC and Team Battistelli are lying so much. Both are rife with abuse. Check out yesterday's EPO puff piece about Brazil and Tunisia (warning: epo.org link), former Portuguese and French colonies, respectively (the next EPO President is a dual Portuguese/French national, as we noted in relation to the validation agreements with Tunisia and Angola, another former Portuguese colony where his father had been born).

This time it's about the Patent Prosecution Highway (PPH), which speeds up examination at the expense of meticulous analysis. To quote the EPO: "Two major [sic] agreements signed by the EPO with Brazil and Tunisia will enter into force today. The agreements will mean new services for companies and inventors from Europe and the two countries and support innovation through legally robust patents."

How many European Patents even come from Tunisia? How many patent applications? Brazil, in spite of its large population side, isn't so major a player either. So for the EPO to call these "major agreements" with a straight face? Come on...

As someone pointed out in the 14th and last comment this week:

Even it might be legal, it is simply unbelievable to go from the much heralded “early certainty” into “long term uncertainty”.

If it should be necessary it shows how badly the EPO is managed!

The document linked to by head down is a paper introduced in 2009 by 3 member states two of which,DE and NL had deferred examination. It was an attempt to resolve the backlog problem, may be a first instance level, but does not work at the BA level.

If files are under deferred examination, they will not any longer appear in the statistics. This a clear attempt to cheat, as the secret hope is that lot of these applications will be withdrawn at one moment or the other.

It is not sure that the member state will be willing to wait to have their share of the renewal fees.

Wait and see if the new chairman of the AC will accept to put the proposal of the agenda of the AC. Bad management should be sanctioned, certainly not encouraged!


This relates to the UPC in the sense that the envisioned system passes or 'offloads' the task of proper patent examination to courts, where fees are humongous and the language spoken may not been understood at all by the defendants.

The agenda of the EPO, as set in stone by the UPC, is worse than malignant. It may be fatal to Europe's producing industries (as opposed to some law firms in England and Germany). The "official languages", which oddly enough include French but not Spanish, tell quite a lot about who would literally profit from the destruction of one's own national scientific sector.

Recent Techrights' Posts

Brett Wilson LLP Sent Over 5 Kilograms (or Over 12 Pounds) of Legal Papers! Because Writing About Microsoft Abuses is 'Illegal'.
How do you guys sleep at night? On a big pile of Microsoft money?
Extremism as a Weapon Against GNU/Linux (Microsoft Lunduke)
He ought to know the Halloween Documents. Wasn't he a Microsoft employee when these came out?
 
Microsoft-Sponsored Propaganda Site Has Removed False 'Hit Piece' About Dr. Stallman (With Fake and Misrepresented Imagery) But Only After 4 Years
So they only removed that page some time around 2025, i.e. about 4 years after it had been published
Always Check Your Inputs
Garbage in, garbage out. Or wrong assumptions, wrong corollary.
Dan Neidle Said That Tax Evasion Facilitator Mr Zahawi (Working to Silence Bloggers Through Brett Wilson LLP) Targeted Not Only Him (But The Others Kept Quiet)
"Mr Neidle said after repelling Mr Zahawi he was contacted by bloggers and tweeters who had received similar threats. They deleted their work “and in most cases never commented publicly on anything again”."
SLAPP Funding Transparency Urgently Needed in the UK and Elsewhere (in Practice, Not Just in Theory)
Writing about crime - including Microsoft crime - is not a crime
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Wednesday, July 09, 2025
IRC logs for Wednesday, July 09, 2025
Elodie Bergot Still Doing Illegal Things at the EPO, Based on the Local Staff Committee Munich
They keep taking away from the staff while compelling the staff to do illegal things
Gemini Links 09/07/2025: Extreme Testing and Golang Documentation in Geminispace
Links for the day
Vice President of the European Patent Office (EPO) Complains That Techrights Gives Visibility to Legal and Technical Issues at the EPO
"Follow-up on enquiries relating to Dir. 1218 and 1001"
Slopwatch: linuxsecurity.com and Various Slopfarms That Lie About "Linux" and Are Promoted by Google News
Google does not seem interested in tackling this problem
Links 09/07/2025: War Updates and Microsoft Moving to India to Cut Costs
Links for the day
GNU/Linux Was Always a 'Movement' of Inclusion of Tolerance
Even the licences themselves remove access barriers
Links 09/07/2025: "Subprime AI Crisis" and "OpenAI May Be in Major Trouble Financially"
Links for the day
Huge Piles of Legal Papers ('Paper DDoS') Do Not Impress Judges and Regulators
they just make judges and regulators even more suspicious of the eagerness to resort to 'paper DDoS'
Lunduke Isn't Even Hiding His Anti-Linux Agenda (From "Linux Sucks" to "Linux is Pedophiles")
just trying to make a lot of trouble
Some People Use Computers to Get Actual Work Done
Tolerance and inclusion must extend to acceptance that some people don't agree with you, might never agree with you, and imposing what allegedly works for you on them is unreasonable
Example of "Old" Things That Still Work
The notion that something being "old" implies it must be discarded is typically advanced by those looking to sell more of something
Some Scheduled Maintenance Later Today
Typically the most vulnerable service during short interruptions is IRC
Computers Are Just a Tool
People don't get married because they love weddings, folks don't join the army because they love war, and most drivers don't drive to work because they love cars
Apple Way Past Its Prime
Apple deserves a decline
The FSF's SysOps Team Recovered From Serious Hardware Issue Within Hours
About half a day ago I noticed that all/most GNU/FSF sites were not reachable and thus reached out to a contact for any details
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Tuesday, July 08, 2025
IRC logs for Tuesday, July 08, 2025
Slopwatch: Turning Bugs Into FUD About "Linux", Getting Basic Facts Wrong
all the screenshots are of fake articles; we don't want to link to any
Technical Reasons, Not Politics: With Wayland "it feels a lot like Linux from 20-25 years ago, which is horrendously frustrating, because it feels like we wasted one or two decades of progress and stability"
Lately, quite a few benchmarks were published to show Wayland compares poorly compared to what we had
PCLinuxOS Recovering From Fire
It looks like a nightmare scenario, where even backups onsite get destroyed
Links 09/07/2025: More Heatwaves, Officials Culled in Russia
Links for the day
Gemini Links 09/07/2025: XScreensaver and Resurrection
Links for the day
Links 08/07/2025: "Cyberattack Deals Blow to Russian Firmware" and "Cash Remains King"
Links for the day
FSF40 T-shirt message
by Alex Oliva
Gemini Links 08/07/2025: Creativity, Gotify with NUT Server, and Sudo Bugs
Links for the day
More on "Lunduke is Actually Sending His Audience to Attack People"
"pepe the frogs"
Links 08/07/2025: Sabotage of Networking Infrastructure, Microsoft XBox Game Pass Deemed “Unsustainable”
Links for the day
Dalai Lama Succession as Evidence That Determined, Motivated People Can Reach Their Nineties
And we need to quit talking about their death all the time
Many Lawyers (for Microsoft) and 1,316 Pages to Pick on a Litigant in Person Who Exposed Serious Microsoft Abuses
Answers must be given
Gemini Links 08/07/2025: Ancillary Justice and Small Web July
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Monday, July 07, 2025
IRC logs for Monday, July 07, 2025