Bonum Certa Men Certa

The '4iP Council' is a Megaphone of Team UPC and Team Battistelli at the EPO

A patent maximalism council, serving the interests of patent trolls in Europe

4iP Council



Summary: The EPO keeps demonstrating lack of interest in genuine patent quality (it uses buzzwords to compensate for deviation from the EPC and replaces humans with shoddy translators); it is being aided by law firms which work for patent trolls and think tanks that propel their interests

Grünecker, Hoffmann Eitle, Maiwald and Vossius & Partner have finally found the courage to speak out against the EPO for at least some of its many scandals. Rest assured the German FCC will take note of that when dealing with several concurrent constitutional complaints regarding the EPO (like denial of travel to the World Cup which starts today and the UPC complaint).



"It's a piece which promotes software patents using buzzwords like "AI" and "4IR" (like in the EPO's Gazette, with a similar article there authored by Ménière)."The UPC is dead. Team UPC has barely said anything about it for over a week and Bristows' UPC blog has just moved goalposts to SPCs [1, 2]. As for Team Battistelli, it barely even mentioned that lately, except in some delusional statements from Battistelli himself (in the threatre which he manages).

As we have mentioned in this post the other day, something called "4iP Council" (we hadn't heard of it before!) posted some puff piece for the EPO's fake 'economist' (Battistelli's new friend) Yann Ménière. It's a piece which promotes software patents using buzzwords like "AI" and "4IR" (like in the EPO's Gazette, with a similar article there authored by Ménière). He's clearly clueless on technical matters and his only quality appears to be 1) some degree; 2) being French and 3) being loyal to a corrupt president that loots the employer. The EPO is worse than a laughing stock these days. It's a den of corruption, nepotism and worse. So we sort of had to laugh at the sight of this tweet, which was retweeted by the EPO this morning. To quote:

Did you see our interview with Yann Ménière, the @EPOorg's Chief Economist on how #patent filing data illustrates the speed of the 4th Industrial Revolution? Includes a great update too on the Unitary Patent. https://bit.ly/2HQFRpY #AI, #IP, #IoT pic.twitter.com/LRD4PwE0P6


"4iP Council", at least in Twitter, has just about 160 Twitter followers, with an almost identical number followed back (which means they're likely mutual and thus 'fakes'). For all we can tell, it's a patent trolls' think tank which promotes 'unitary' patents for a patent trolls-friendly litigation pipeline.

"Notice how, in one single tweet, at least 4 buzzwords or meaningless acronyms were included: 4IR, IoT, AI, and IP."The EPO's previous chief economist warned about patent quality and patent trolls, but Ménière seems like merely an appendix of Battistelli. He never deviates from the official 'party line', which is basically a bunch of lies (e.g. about quality) and buzzwords. Notice how, in one single tweet, at least 4 buzzwords or meaningless acronyms were included: 4IR, IoT, AI, and IP.

And speaking of buzzwords, Mondaq has this new article by Taro Yaguchi (Keisen Associates). According to him, Japan's JPO sets aside patents -- mostly software patents -- on buzzwords like "IoT". Japanese courts are not entirely friendly towards these hyped up things, but here go the patent maximalists:

The Japan Patent Office (JPO) announced on June 6 that it has begun to make available its multi-category classifications for patent inventions directed toward Internet of Things (IoT) technology in various sectors. This is to enable more precise searching and analysis of IoT technology that is being developed in Japan.

This change builds on the addition the JPO made of subcategories to the IoT classification ZIT back in April 2017, which itself was a new thing in the world of patent office classification systems. Now the JPO’s searchable database J-Plat Pat treats the subcategories as acceptable input for searches


There are many Japanese patents at the EPO, almost twice as many as Chinese and Korean combined. Earlier today the EPO wrote: "Our experts on the Japanese, Chinese & Korean patent systems offer support in searching original-lang. databases..."

To which I reponded with: "While EPO offers and promotes entirely automated translation which -- especially for technical disciplines -- are utterly worthless, misleading..."

Only a short time later the EPO promoted automated translations again (on the same day), as it has been doing every couple of days lately. It wrote: "Patent Translate helps you to understand patent documents from all over the world..."

"They keep stressing that privacy is important to them, but in reality they conduct mass surveillance at the Office (even illegal surveillance by a firm that enlisted former Stasi staff)..."Well, let's just use scare quotes around 'understand'. They probably hope that people (readers/audience) never actually experimented with these so-called 'translations', which can be horrible depending on the target language. Patents are meant to be clear and unambiguous, not a salad of words that may or may not remotely make some sense, sometimes (if one gets lucky) even a coherent sentence.

Either way, so much for patent and service 'quality', eh?

Later in the day the EPO spoke of "[i]mprovement to the security of our online services," linking to its site (warning: epo.org link) which now says: "As of 18 June 2018, you will need TLS 1.2 to connect securely to our online services (a secure connection is indicated by "https" in your browser's address bar). Older protocols such as TLS 1.0 and 1.1 will be unavailable from this date on."

They keep stressing that privacy is important to them, but in reality they conduct mass surveillance at the Office (even illegal surveillance by a firm that enlisted former Stasi staff) and what the EPO neglects to say is that it's giving lumps of its very personal data 'wholesale' to private firms (example here and here, with more context in here).

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