01.05.20
Gemini version available ♊︎How IP Kat Had Become a Patent Litigation Pressure Group Until the Site’s Founder Left
Good example of how sites can lose direction and control when people (so-called ‘HR’) change
Summary: From “IPKat does not endorse or recommend any of the products or services” (in 2003) to the exact opposite; it became a litigation lawyers’ nest, over time…
YESTERDAY we wrote a short rant about how poor debates regarding the European Patent Office (EPO) or how poorly-researched reporting can contribute to the issues. It doesn’t help that Team Battistelli and António Campinos are liars who constantly churn out lies (e.g. press releases and “tweets”) and pay people to produce propaganda under the guise of EPO ‘studies’. They additionally bribe, threaten and censor the media. A short while ago a news site called Screen Rant published “AI Cannot Patent Their Creations Says EU Court“ (EPO is not a court and not EU). We’ll include that in the Daily Links; there’s not much to be said as it’s simply not accurate in a lot of other ways, beyond the truly ridiculous headline. Nowadays it’s also quite common to see coverage about the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) alluding to patents as “inventions” or “innovation”, sometimes also “property” that is “owned” and is a “right” (these are all conceptual misnomers and deliberate mischaracterisations). We see terms like “software inventions” instead of just “implementations” (which is what algorithms are) when the EPO reasons about granting software patents in Europe in defiance of the EPC (and USPTO does this in defiance of 35 U.S.C. § 101).
“Contributors who were scholars have mostly left by now. So now it’s a lot of shameless self-promotion, a sort of ‘sticky notes’ board for a collective of law firms and even pressure groups like CIPA.”A long time ago IP Kat habitually questioned some of these misnomers. Sometimes it still does, albeit not so often. Contributors who were scholars have mostly left by now. So now it’s a lot of shameless self-promotion, a sort of ‘sticky notes’ board for a collective of law firms and even pressure groups like CIPA. The writers there often push the employers’ agenda, the employers typically being law firms or some legal departments. It has gotten bad enough that at least one of them now justifies Battistelli’s attacks on EPO judges, even under the name “Merpel” which constantly bemoaned this attack (when different people ran the same blog). So we’ve decided to do a quick survey of who was in charge of the blog and when. The results are shown below, with differences highlighted in yellow (spoiler: people who ran the blog between 2003 and 2010 are all gone, so there’s a sort of ‘shift of power’ and the most ‘senior’ in the team is a Bristows LLP employee who is in favour of patent trolls and software patents). █
Today (who’s in charge, as per the introduction):
The team is Eleonora Rosati, Annsley Merelle Ward, Neil J. Wilkof, and Merpel.
The team is joined by GuestKats Léon Dijkman, Antonella Gentile, Ieva Giedrimaite, Rose Hughes, Thomas Key, Peter Ling, Nedim Malovic, Frantzeska Papadopolou, Tosshan Ramgolam, and Alex Woolgar.
SpecialKats: Verónica Rodríguez Arguijo (TechieKat), Hayleigh Bosher (Book Review Editor), Tian Lu (Asia Correspondent) and Chijioke Okorie (Africa Correspondent).
InternKats: Riana Harvey, Kan He, and Lucy Isaev.
Back in September 2019:
The team is Eleonora Rosati, Annsley Merelle Ward, Neil J. Wilkof, and Merpel.
The team is joined by GuestKats Léon Dijkman, Antonella Gentile, Ieva Giedrimaite, Rose Hughes, Thomas Key, Peter Ling, Nedim Malovic, Frantzeska Papadopolou, Mathilde Pavis, Tosshan Ramgolam, and Alex Woolgar.
SpecialKats: Verónica Rodríguez Arguijo (TechieKat), Hayleigh Bosher (Book Review Editor), Tian Lu (Asia Correspondent) and Chijioke Okorie (Africa Correspondent).
InternKats: Riana Harvey, Kan He, and Lucy Isaev.
August 2018 (starting to list people with as little as one guest article, sometimes self-promotional and/or lobbying-esque):
The team is Eleonora Rosati, Annsley Merelle Ward, Neil J. Wilkof, and Merpel. Nicola Searle is currently on sabbatical.
The team is joined by GuestKats Mirko Brüß, Rosie Burbidge, Nedim Malovic, Frantzeska Papadopolou, Mathilde Pavis, and Eibhlin Vardy.
SpecialKats: Verónica Rodríguez Arguijo (TechieKat), Hayleigh Bosher (Book Review Editor), and Tian Lu (Asia Correspondent).
InternKats: Rose Hughes, Ieva Giedrimaite, and Cecilia Sbrolli.
July 2017:
The team is Neil J. Wilkof, Annsley Merelle Ward, Nicola Searle, Eleonora Rosati, and Merpel, with contributions from Mark Schweizer.
May 2016:
The team is Neil J. Wilkof, Annsley Merelle Ward, Darren Smyth, Nicola Searle, Eleonora Rosati, David Brophy, Alberto Bellan and Merpel, with contributions from Mark Schweizer.
April 2015:
The team is David Brophy, Birgit Clark, Merpel, Jeremy Phillips, Eleonora Rosati, Darren Smyth, Annsley Merelle Ward and Neil J. Wilkof.
March 2014:
The team is Birgit Clark, Merpel, Jeremy Phillips, Eleonora Rosati, Darren Smyth, Annsley Merelle Ward and Neil J. Wilkof.
March 2013:
The team is David Brophy, Merpel, Jeremy Phillips, Eleonora Rosati, Darren Smyth, Annsley Merelle Ward and Neil J. Wilkof.
March 2012:
The team is David Brophy, Birgit Clark, Catherine Lee, Merpel, Jeremy Phillips, Annsley Merelle Ward and Neil J. Wilkof.
March 2011:
The IPKat team is Birgit Clark, Matt Fisher, Merpel, Jeremy Phillips, Mark Schweizer, Annsley Merelle Ward and Neil J. Wilkof.
March 2010:
The IPKat team is Birgit Clark, David Pearce, Jeremy Phillips, Mark Schweizer, Tufty the Cat and Annsley Merelle Ward.
July 2008:
The IPKat team is Johanna Gibson, David Pearce, Jeremy Phillips, Ilanah Simon Fhima and Tufty the Cat.
July 2007:
The IPKat team is Johanna Gibson, David Pearce, Jeremy Phillips and Ilanah Simon Fhima
June 2006:
The IPKat weblog, founded by Jeremy Phillips and Ilanah Simon in June 2003, covers copyright, patent, trade mark and privacy/confidentiality issues from a mainly UK and European perspective.
Same (as above) in 2005:
July 2004:
Welcome! We’re Jeremy Phillips and Ilanah Simon from London and this is our intellectual property blog.
October 2003: (first snapshot)
IPKat does not endorse or recommend any of the products or services for which advertisements may be displayed on this site by Blogger
The oldest post we’re able to see (oldest snapshot still publicly accessible) says that IAM was promoting Microsoft: “Law publishers Globe White Page have just sent the IPKat a free copy of issue two of Intellectual Asset Management (September/October 2003). The cover story is “Microsoft gets serious about IP”. This may be startling news for those of us who have just returned from a distant galaxy, but for the rest of us it’s about as surprising as “Rain sometimes falls in England”. The article is however quite informative, giving a good account of how Marshall Phelps plans to rework Microsoft’s IP strategy in the coming years. Ed Kahn’s piece on patent mining and Joff Wild’s review of the nanotech patent market are also worth a read.”
“[The EPO] can’t distinguish between hardware and software so the patents get issued anyway.”
–Marshall Phelps, Microsoft
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