"I have no problem with G14. How can I oppose something that as far as I am concerned, does not exist?"

--Sepp Blatter

Summary: The EPO's higher management is gradually 'disappearing' one of the last remaining points of supervision and outside scrutiny

The EPO is killing the boards. We already know why this is happening. It's so easy to guess, having seen how the EPO's management systematically destroyed anything that can possibly question the President's authority and disrupt the tyranny. The numbers are rather telling, putting aside the absence of very high-profile/key people like Wim Van der Eijk. Merpel called it "the EPO Board of Appeal manpower shortage" because the cull is on and the boards are being shrunk, irrespective of the possible exile to a different German city (which will itself help get rid of much of the staff). "If Merpel's arithmetic is right," she wrote (referring to herself as a third person, "and assuming that no appointments are being made between now and the end of the year, this all means that there are seven legal, 14 technical and six chairs missing [not counting the one currently suspended member]." They're probably not even hiring anyone; that's one way to make an entity silently dissolve.

Yes, Blatterstelli -- as Florian Müller called him (hence the picture above) -- is surely quite determined to destroy the boards (illegal suspensions are in the books too), perhaps replacing them with something else (see Merpel's analysis for details).

"They're probably not even hiring anyone; that's one way to make an entity silently dissolve."Müller himself is still covering Apple v. Samsung, having recently shown that Apple evoked Alice to thwart software patents. The latest on this is that Apple still resorts to trying to shoot down software patents. As Müller recalls, "Apple brought a motion for summary judgment of invalidity against two Ericsson patents, based on the exclusion of abstract subject matter under 35 U.S.C. § 101 and its interpretation by the Supreme Court in the famous Alice case, in the declaratory judgment case in the Northern District of California. Ericsson's opposition brief argues that there is so much technology involved in the operation of a wireless network, it's just impossible to hold such patents to cover abstract subject matter, lest an extreme interpretation of Alice spell doom for patent law as a whole."

Half a decade ago I wrote a detailed letter to the Enlarged Board of Appeal, pleading for them to stop the issuing of software patents by the EPO. That's just the law. Back then they were like the last resort, even though other regulatory/auditory bodies existed (Blatterstelli squashed these years later). If Blatterstelli manages to crush the boards too, then he'll have free (from supervision) reign that's virtually impossible to undermine and software patents might become a norm in Europe.

Where are the European politicians? This is the hallmark of a coup, a junta, and of complete lawlessness. The EPO has turned into the Wild West. This simply cannot last. European politicians seem to be more concerned about football (FIFA) than the decades-old patent system. ⬆