04.09.19
Who Does the Legal System Really Serve or Favour in European Patent Disputes?
People like myself are being denied access to the underlying facts
Image credit: Florian Müller
Summary: People who oppose software patents are being denied access to the courts, the media and so on; the EPO keeps getting away with serving patent trolls, e.g. those that are connected to large companies such as Ericsson (as above)
THE existence of software patents in Europe is a threat to all programmers. Why are they being granted? It’s illegal. The European Patent Office (EPO) has not had a scientist as President for over a decade now. António Campinos is a former banker, Battistelli is a politician and Brimelow is regarded or considered to be a public servant (vague term). This is a problem because it means that people with no clue are responsible for bad decisions, having perhaps been instructed by (or consulted) law firms, legal departments, and even patent trolls. They barely ever meet any scientists. It’s like they don’t care about the impact of patents on science and technology — an impact which is rather intricate.
“It’s like they don’t care about the impact of patents on science and technology — an impact which is rather intricate.”Yesterday, responding to this new post that said “IP [sic] has become ever more concentrated into the hands of capitalism’s high temple – the corporation,” Australian attorney Mark Summerfield said: “Not only is this true, it is possible to track the transition historically.”
He added the following, linking to his blog:
There is data on this in Australia, that I think may be unique globally. Last year I worked with IP Australia to generate data (using a machine learning system) going back over 100 years distinguishing between corporate and individual applicants. The results show a clear transition during the period between the first and second world wars, between dominance of individual applicants (i.e. the inventor as patentee) and corporate applicants (i.e. the employer as patentee).
I think that this data is fascinating, and I would love to see it linked to economic or sociological research. However, there does not seem to have been much interest in this to date.
An article presenting this data (with links to the source) can be found on my blog: https://blog.patentology.com.au/2018/05/new-data-released-by-ip-australia.html
This is a real problem. The patent system has been rigged.
Yesterday, for example, a famous patent blogger (Florian) wrote: “An Ericsson privateer named #OptisWireless opposed a petition I filed last year for access to a Federal Patent Court case file, arguing that I’m “a blogger known for positions critical of the #patent system.” Court ruled in favor of my petition: screenshot #privateering #patents” (screenshot at the top).
Ericsson keeps a bunch of these patent trolls around. We wrote about these before. I happen to know that Florian attempted to crack open some more ‘worm jars’ (secret or scarcely-explored patent disputes in his country) only to be fought by corporate lawyers and judges, who are terrified by people like us, the critics and sceptics. No transparency. Florian had sent me some legal documents to show reactions. It would be jaw-dropping it I didn’t already know that it is a system of powerful people; it’s a system that discriminates against ‘poor’ ‘activists’, unlike greedy and monopoly-centric corporations. The above just serves to show what we patent realists face in a court of law.
Speaking of Ericsson, watch how the patent trolls’ lobby (literally funded by trolls), a site called IAM, is publishing Ericsson propaganda (composed by Ericsson itself). They promote a large thicket of bogus patents, mostly software patents, wrapped up using buzzwords such as “IoT” (published Monday at 2PM). Ericsson tries to distance itself from the extortion, so it uses trolls in various parts of Europe to bully just about everyone, even Chinese companies. It’s a protection racket.
Where does the EPO stand on all this? Well, yesterday it promoted software patents again, using hype waves as usual. “Over 300 participants from around the world attended our conference on #patentingblockchain,” it said.
Benjamin Henrion looked at the cited document [PDF] and quoted “Klaus Haft, attorney-at-law at Hoyng Rokh Monegier, added that open source does not mean patent-free #blockchain #swpats …”
Software patents and “open source” (Free/libre software) can never coexist and they know it. IBM-centric and Microsoft-connected front groups lie to us about it.
Meanwhile, the EPO is also intentionally conflating inventions with patents. It does so every single day (almost) and yesterday it wrote: “This guide is intended to help you avoid many of the common mistakes associated with inventions” (they mean patents).
Words like “inventions” are commonly being misused by these people. Here is an example from yesterday (article titled “Pam Bryer: Scots have never lost the urge to invent”). The corporate media is really that awful* and it is not being composed by journalists.
The Scotsman is regularly used for patent propaganda (marketing/sales as “news”), usually from Marks & Clerk LLP. This includes software patents promotion and lawyers’ lies about UPC prospects. We covered that before and named The Scotsman as a culprit. Generally, this so-called ‘news’ paper may be good in other sections, but by posting such crap it does its reputation a great disservice. In this case, patent extremists smear Scotland to cause Scots to come to their employer, Marks & Clerk LLP, and ask for patents (thinking it’s the same as inventions). Just look at the insulting headline. It’s worth noting that only at the very end the disclosure comes: “Pam Bryer is a patent attorney for Marks & Clerk LLP” (so it is marketing and should be labeled as such).
Novagraaf’s Philippe Vigand has meanwhile written about the EPO getting another chance to eliminate software for good. “The EPO’s Enlarged Board of Appeal is to consider the patentability of computer-implemented inventions in the context of appeal T0489/14,” he wrote. Will he mention that the appeals board lacks independence and may therefore not be able to judge impartially? An issue that the judges themselves keep complaining about? █
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* We’ve just noted the lack of coverage about EPO corruption. Due to an ‘economic’ nature of this greedy society and publication ‘industry’, a lot of so-called ‘news’ these days is just “tweets”, ads, computer-generated crap, self-promotional nonsense and intentional falsehoods/fabrications with agenda in mind. Really bad state of affairs. Honesty may be dead.
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