Bonum Certa Men Certa

Software Patents Are a Dying Breed, So Marks & Clerk and Other Legal Monoliths Promote the EPO's Buzzwords (Loopholes)

Anything to promote bunk/junk patents

Marks & Clerk



Summary: Patents that courts would almost certainly reject (and invalidate) are routinely promoted as "AI", "SDV" and similar acronyms and buzzwords, either misleading or intentionally misplaced (nowadays "AI" is often just a synonym for "machine" or "algorithm")

THE atmosphere of buzzwords worries us. Everywhere one looks in the media, especially technology media, it's all buzzwords. Maybe that's because real journalism is dying and reporters get replaced by the marketing/PR industry and by extension law firms looking to market their services in the respective domains. Readers who are technical quite likely know what those buzzwords are and some of these were covered here before.

"This patent litigation giant, Marks & Clerk, is helping the EPO promote software patents on computer vision (my area)..."Here in Techrights we no longer keep track of all the software patents tweets (they don't say "software patents" explicitly but instead use buzzwords) that have been far more abundant and frequent since António Campinos took over as President. Yesterday we saw this new article from Marks & Clerk's Philip Cupitt (the patent maximalists if not extremists*). Weeks ago we explained how the European Patent Office's (EPO) corruption -- and avoidance of the law in general -- nowadays helps the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) similarly dismiss the courts/caselaw, proceeding to grant software patents that aren't legally solid (courts would almost certainly can these).

Then, also as recently as yesterday, we saw another Marks & Clerk article, this one with the "self-driving vehicle (SDV)" buzzword that the EPO has been promoting.

This patent litigation giant, Marks & Clerk, is helping the EPO promote software patents on computer vision (my area), never mind if that's in clear defiance of the EPC, violating the fundamentals of patent scope; buzzwords to bypass the law basically...

With investment announcements coming thick and fast, and testing taking place on ever more roads, might 2019 be the year of the self-driving vehicle (SDV)?

A recent statistical release from the European Patent Office (EPO) might suggest so, or at the very least suggest that momentum is building in this important sector. In 2017, the last year in which figures are available, the EPO saw nearly 4000 patent applications related to self-driving vehicles – up from 922 applications in 2011.

This is a staggering 330% increase in just 6 years! To put it into context, filing in this area has grown more than 20 times as fast as patent applications generally at the EPO.


They are just reclassifying patents. We recently saw a similar article in the US -- one in which they basically classified many patents on algorithms as "AI", then crafted headlines claiming that in recent years there were hundreds of thousands of patents on "AI"; the EPO and the USPTO both use this trick -- a subject covered here several times towards the end of last year. _____ * Among the articles we previously wrote about Marks & Clerk (loud proponents of patent maximalism in Europe, including the UPC):

  1. Marks & Clerk is Still Pushing Patent Maximalism Agenda in Europe and Britain, Including UPC/UPCA/Unitary Patent (UP)
  2. Marks & Clerk Blames Battistelli's Victims, the Boards of Appeal, Whose Job Guarded Patent Quality
  3. UPC Puff Piece in the Scottish Media is Just an Advertisement by Marks & Clerk

Recent Techrights' Posts

Links 10/06/2025: Jaws at 50 and US Democracy Crushed Very Rapidly (Martial Law Seems Imminent)
Links for the day
Abuse Inside the Polish Patent Office (UPRP) - Part VII: Washing Their Hands After Corruption and Abuse
"Tragedy or comedy?"
Culling Bad RSS Feeds of Bad Sites
Not throwing out the baby with the bathwater
Live as You Preach
technology is fast becoming dysphoric
 
Links 10/06/2025: Apple Hype and Physical Attacks on Bloggers
Links for the day
Gemini Links 10/06/2025: Loon Lake, Farming, and Forth
Links for the day
If 'Microsoft v Techrights' is Dealt With by a 'Microsoft Court' (or a Court Outsourced to Microsoft)
More on that later
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Monday, June 09, 2025
IRC logs for Monday, June 09, 2025
Gemini Protocol Turns Six in 10 Days From Now
If you haven't tried it yet, then give it a go today
Gemini Links 09/06/2025: Addition Addiction and Nitride
Links for the day
Links 09/06/2025: Science, Hardware Projects, and Democracy Receding
Links for the day
Computers Got Smaller, So GNU/Linux Got Bigger
Many people here recognise the lack of urgency (or need) to get expensive new laptops
BetaNews is a Plagiarism and LLM Slop Hub, the Chief Editor Isn't Addressing This Problem Anymore
SS Fagioli is basically a parasite leeching off or exploiting other people's work
Links 09/06/2025: Chaos in Los Angeles and Hurricane Season
Links for the day
GNU/Linux Grows at Windows' Expense and Microsoft Trolls Infest and Maliciously Target Articles About It
Microsoft is - and has long been - organised crime
They Say I'm Mr. Bombastic
They didn't take good lawyers
Links 09/06/2025: Windows TCO and Many Data Breaches
Links for the day
Abuse Inside the Polish Patent Office (UPRP) - Part VI: Political Stunts by Former President Edyta Demby-Siwek and the Connection to Profound Corruption at EUIPO
it's like a money-laundering operation where one politician rewards another at taxpayers' expense
Gemini Links 09/06/2025: Pipelines and Splitgate
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Sunday, June 08, 2025
IRC logs for Sunday, June 08, 2025
Links 08/06/2025: Tiananmen Carnage Censorship Persists, North Korean Goes Offline
Links for the day
Gemini Links 08/06/2025: Love as an Ethnographic Method and Monitorix Gemini-Frontend v0.1
Links for the day
Links 08/06/2025: Exposure of More GAFAM Surveillance and Social Security Records Compromised
Links for the day
Linux Foundation is a Mediator for Microsoft et al, Not for Small Companies That Support Rather Than Attack the GPL
Many people still wrongly assume that because it is called "Linux Foundation", then it is pro-Linux and represents the same mindset
This Past Friday, Confirming What We Said All Along About Brett Wilson LLP: It's Shrinking, Has Considerable Debt, Loss of Net Assets Despite the Microsoft SLAPP Money
The documents only became publicly available less than 2 days ago
Some of the Many Reasons We Sued Microsofters for Harassment
perpetrators of harassment
For 20 Years Many People Were Sharecropping for Canonical's Oligarch, Now He's Deleting All Their Contributions
"Ubuntu has erased instead of archiving the trove of material at Ubuntu Forums"
There Was Always Too Much 'Crazy Stuff' Going on Around Freenode
What many IRC users lost sight of
Exposing Crime is Not a Crime (It Never Was)
In the eyes of rich and powerful people, those who speak about their crimes are the "criminals"
GNU/Linux Distros Abandoning Microsoft GitHub
Will curl be next to leave Microsoft GitHub?
Expect More XBox Mass Layoffs Soon If the Rumours Are True
From a Microsoft media operative
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Saturday, June 07, 2025
IRC logs for Saturday, June 07, 2025
Europe Needs to Move Away From GAFAM; The Sooner, the Better
Europe - not just the EU - must abandon GAFAM as soon as possible
The Issue Isn't GNOME's Promotion of Diversity But GNOME Corruption, Abuse, Censorship, and Worse
So-called "Conservative" (republican, pro-Trump, bigoted) people want you to think the problem with GNOME is politics
When the News Sources Become Scarce and Increasingly Full of Polluted/Contaminated 'Content' (With LLM Slop and Slop Images)
Integrity matters
"Linux" Sites That Spew Out LLM Slop
We're lacking enough material for another "Slopwatch"
Abuse Inside the Polish Patent Office (UPRP) - Part V: Breaking the Law, Just Like EPO
We'll hopefully cover some of the pertinent details later this year