OUR recent posts about the EPO have had a profound impact and management of the EPO paid attention. We know this for a fact. Long-term readers of this site already know that we have a grudge not just because of abuses at the EPO but also a rogue agenda, which includes expansion of patent scope well beyond what is reasonable. The same goes for geographical expansion, transcending even Europe's borders (see yesterday's announcement titled "Morocco recognises European patents as national patents"). It's like the military industrial complex in the patent sense, seeking to create itself more business; instead of promoting fear of terrorism to make money from, the EPO is promoting fear of lack of "protection" (as in protectionism) and other such stuff. It's quite a coup d'état.
"What Europe needs is sharing, not protectionism."In order to stop the plague of patent trolls, which usually use software patents, we need to keep the EPO in check. Like the military industrial complex, left unchecked it would expand infinitely and seek ways to justify this expansion, even to the point of costing trillions of dollars (in national debts, risking austerity everywhere). What Europe needs is sharing, not protectionism. The latter only serves few powerful corporations and makes them even stronger. It is a threat to democracy itself. Just watch the distribution of patents at the EPO; it doesn't serve the "little guy" (or gal) but the rich and powerful.
Linux-backing players are increasingly dominant, but they face patent risk and are trying to embrace patents to defend against those who hoard patents (e.g. Nortel's and Novell's) to damage or tax the competition's products, even in Europe where software patents are informally invalid. Nevertheless, EPO management, as corrupt as it has become, tries to legitimise software patents, e.g. with the unitary patent that we wrote about in past years. Here are some older articles of ours:
[PDF] from Ingve, an attorney at law from Düsseldorf (Germany), the recent chaos at the EPO may play a considerable role. Ingve is practicing in the area of patent litigation and he regularly writes about the Unitary Patent, so he should know. "I follow closely your blog posts," he wrote, "on the developments at the EPO."