Bonum Certa Men Certa

The Fiction That Spain (or Italy) Can Salvage the UPC

Spanish bullfight



Summary: The proponents/lobbyists of the Unified Patent Court (UPC), firms that make money from patent litigation (we collectively call these "Team UPC"), are nowadays backpedaling, having come to grips with the death of the UPC, realising it's time to save face by pretending everything they said in the past wasn't a lie

THE NEW year is well underway, but the European Patent Office (EPO) has said nothing about the UPC. Team UPC has not apologised for misleading the public with fabricated rumours, either. Days ago we noticed that Bristows corrected at least 3 errors in its latest blog post, dated late December. These people know they're lying, but they try to save face and retain some level of credibility. Bristows uses an arcane CMS that reveals when they make edits, so we compared/assessed the latest edits using Google Cache. It's quite revealing.



"Bristows uses an arcane CMS that reveals when they make edits, so we compared/assessed the latest edits using Google Cache. It's quite revealing."Anyway, no ratification in 2018. Not even close. What will be the next talking point then?

DLA Piper's Gualtiero Luca Dragotti has just mentioned the UPC in relation to Italy; these people hope that Milan can just magically replace London and suddenly make UPC possible. But the UPC is dead. Team UPC needs to move on. "Unitary Patent" and anything predating it (other names for the same thing) was all along a zombie and nowadays it is a failure, as even its paid media cheerleaders finally admit. They had spent years lying about Spain, spreading what many nowadays call "fake news". These cheerleaders (IAM) try to save face by belatedly admitting that UPC is dead.

"Guess who else is trying to save face: Kluwer.""UPC Tracker", a Twitter account dedicated (for years) to Unified Patent Court propaganda, is also late to admit (or quote): "Saying that the UK can still be a member of the UPC Agreement because it was an EU member at the beginning of the negotiations – even though it is not an EU member anymore – is, in my humble opinion, complete nonsense. Law doesn€´t work like that."

Guess who else is trying to save face: Kluwer. "Deal or no deal," they've repeated the headline in Twitter, the "UK cannot stay in the Unitary Patent system post-Brexit," based on "Kluwer Patent blogger," quoting some UPC proponent from Spain; he's now promoting two lies or fictions: 1) that 'unitary' patents are inevitable and 2) that there's will in Spain to make it happen. From this article/interview (more like a pro-UPC puff piece in dialogue form):

I€´m not sure what Spain would do in such a scenario. The translation issue has not been solved yet and it does not look like there will be an acceptable solution for Spain any time soon. Furthermore, litigation is also an issue and might even clash with the Spanish Constitution and what it says about jurisdiction concerning intellectual property rights. The Spanish Constitution could of course be changed, but as said before, given the current political situation in my country, I don€´t see the Parliament opening the Pandora€´s box of our Constitution because of a patent matter. However, this whole issue is of course a political battle and, as such, it may have very easy solutions that we may not be thinking of right now, such as increasing agriculture aids; new fisheries agreements or Gibraltar. Who knows.’


Fictional nonsense, to put it relatively politely. So their latest strategy might be to pretend that Spain will "save the (their) day..."

"This relates to the issues associated with legal proceedings in a foreign language -- one of several Constitution-violating issues raised EU-wide."The sole comment so far (made it past the blog's censorship of UPC critics) is from Jan Van Hoey, who rebuts one aspect among many when he says: "Automated translation is discriminatory anyway. There are 2 kinds of people: those who can rely on legally binding laws, and the ones who have to rely on non-legally binding automated translations."

This relates to the issues associated with legal proceedings in a foreign language -- one of several Constitution-violating issues raised EU-wide. Can the defendant be accused, sued and then 'convicted' in some court he or she cannot even understand? This redefines the whole concept and theory of the Rule of Law.

The UPC was never meant to be. The fact that it managed to get as far as it has should be seen as extraordinary and it serves to highlight how ripe the political system is to overt corruption (by law firms in this case).

Recent Techrights' Posts

Distinguished Lecture by Richard Stallman This Coming Monday in Rome
After "Free software, Crucial for Freedom in a Digital World"
The Lawsuit by Clients of Brett Wilson LLP Against Brett Wilson LLP is Officially On, It is Progressing, The 'Experts' Pick Outside Law Firms (RPC and Mills & Reeve) to Spare Them From Litigants in Person
So it is probably quite potent
The 'Culture Wars' in Free Software Have Gone Out of Control
Social control media amplifies such utterly infantile discourse
Teaser: To Compensate for the Fact Our Clients Are Terrible Human Beings Who Strangle Women (While on Microsoft's Payroll) and We Get Paid by Mystery Parties We Bombard You and Your Wife With Almost 10 Kilograms of Legal Papers
If you can't win an argument, then drown the other side with papers?
Now Confirmed in Western Media: Microsoft Azure Layoffs This Month
Affirmed by more sources moments ago
10 Out of 10: RMS Attracts Massive Audience in Göteborg, Sweden (All Seats Occupied, Some People Standing)
a 55-second clip of his talk
Slopwatch: Plagiarism and "Linux" Articles by Bots
Sites that do this won't survive; many of them rely on slop services (suppliers) that will cease to exist after the bubble bursts
 
The Demise of Shopping in Person
In a world like this, how valued is the customer?
We Are Safe in a Modern "Tech" Society, Right?
People are safer if they control their own computing
This Past Friday, "Nearly 700 People Came to Listen to RMS!" (Richard Stallman)
"Nearly 700 people came to listen to RMS!"
Slopwatch: UbuntuPIT Churning Out Plagiarism and the Slopfarm LinuxSecurity Turns to Pseudonyms
Our hunch is, UbuntuPIT will sooner or later realise that this toxic approach is just harming UbuntuPIT and tainting the reputation of past articles
Gemini Links 11/10/2025: Nyctography, Gerrymandering, and Lurking
Links for the day
Links 11/10/2025: World Mental Health Day 2025, Another European Legal Defeat for Microsoft 360
Links for the day
MIT Technology Review is Part-Time SPAMfarm of Billionaires and Mega-Corporations
Does MIT operate its own "b2b" SPAMfarm?
Open Source Initiative Executive Director Leaves, Replacement Sought by Monopolists, Not the Community or OSI Members
Serves to show who runs this show...
Links 11/10/2025: China-US Tensions Grow Again, "Hey Hi" More Widely Recognised as Bubble Made of Capital That Doesn't Exist
Links for the day
Peter O'Callaghan QC represented grandparents, Westernport Hotel, at Liquor Royal Commission
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
Either The Register MS Divests From FOSS Coverage or Liam Proven is on Long Holiday
Publishers perish when their audience loses trust in them
Microsoft Cancelling Another Datacentre is a Sign of Financial Trouble and Lack of Growth
The debt continues to grow
Gemini Links 11/10/2025: An Evening at the Fair and Fast Fourier Friday
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Friday, October 10, 2025
IRC logs for Friday, October 10, 2025
Geminispace is Very Large
The word continues to spread and the number of participants grows
Another Wave of Microsoft Layoffs, This Time During National Day Holiday
This time it's China again
Staying Happy in Times of Crackdowns on Civil Society
Optimism in this sort of "new reality" or "new normal" seems like something for the irrational person
"Nobel" Exploited Posthumously for "AI" Hype, Now They Do the Same With "Quantum"
ere have been many jokes about "Nobel" for peace (often granted to pro-war people) and a fake one for "Economics" (establishment propaganda)
Links 10/10/2025: Putin Admits Russia Downed Azerbaijan Airlines Jet, More New Heat Records
Links for the day
Noteworthy Claim That IBM is Firing a Lot of Lawyers This Week (RAs in the Legal Department)
A lot of what they do is patent 'trolling' or lawyering up against their own staff (e.g. HR disputes)
Links 10/10/2025: US Judge Bars Attacks by ICE On Journalists and Protesters; “We Took The Freedom of Speech Away” Says the President
Links for the day
Slopwatch: Serial Sloppers, Google News Gifting Slopfarms, and Fake News/Plagiarism About "Linux"
Google itself is a slop pusher these days
Qualcomm, the New Owner of Arduino, Blasted for Its Software Patents Tax on 'Smartphones'
A lot of Qualcomm's patents are on software. We wrote about this in prior years.
XBox Layoffs Rumours, Downtime, and Criticism From XBox Co-Founder
"everyone is ditching the xbox."
Links 10/10/2025: Honoring The Legacy Of Robert Murray-Smith, Many Articles on the Hey Hi (AI) Bubble
Links for the day
Gemini Links 09/10/2025: October Gothic and Reading Middle Earth Role Playing; C and Ada
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Thursday, October 09, 2025
IRC logs for Thursday, October 09, 2025
Links 09/10/2025: Farewell to Jane Goodall, California Bans Algorithmic Price-Fixing
Links for the day
Gemini Links 09/10/2025: Lost Wages and a Saga Of Continuing To Use Palm PDAs
Links for the day
Richard Stallman's Talk in Helsinki is Done. Tomorrow Göteborg.
There are scarce details in Finnish about Dr. Stallman's talk
New XBox Leaks Probably Serve to Confirm XBox's Collapse (Many More Layoffs)
It's very much consistent with what many other sites have reported lately
The Slop Song
The train wreck marches on
LLM Slop/Advanced Plagiarism Flooding the Zone With Capital That Does Not Exist
Many publishers out there still participate in this bubble instead of calling it what it is
Links 09/10/2025: Sacked Microsoft Workers Make "Sackbird", IBM Taps CockroachDB for PostgreSQL
Links for the day
"Happy Hacking Day" Richard Stallman Talk This Afternoon (From 14:00 to 16:00) at Haaga-Helia University in Pasila
Richard Stallman in Helsinki, Finland
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Wednesday, October 08, 2025
IRC logs for Wednesday, October 08, 2025
Links 09/10/2025: Impact of Microsoft Layoffs, More Data Breaches
Links for the day
Gemini Links 09/10/2025: Autumn Blues and C IRC Bot
Links for the day