THE EPO lies not only to journalists but also to staff, as we showed here numerous times before. "The European patent microcosm tries to convince itself that its Unitary Patent castle is not collapsing," wrote someone who was bullied by the EPO some years ago because he had criticised the UPC (Battistelli's EPO is very legally aggressive towards UPC critics). He links to the latest nonsense from the EPO -- nonsense which we rebutted earlier this month.

"What we have here is lobbying and meddling by patent lawyers and other who stand to profit from more litigation in more places."The Kluwer Patent Blog, one of the biggest pushers of the UPC for a number of years now, still pretends that IP Federation somehow speaks for British businesses, but people should know better. To quote the latest regarding IP Federation: "The IP Federation in the UK is even more adamant. In a position paper published this week, it states that certainty regarding the future should be a prerequisite for further steps by the UK government and parliament: ‘We support the Unitary Patent), and the Unified Patent Court with the UK participating on the current terms, including the location of the branch of the Central Division in London. Without a guarantee of continued UK participation post-Brexit, the UK should not ratify the UPC at present. We consider that ratifying the UPC to bring it into effect and subsequently being forced to leave the system would bring an unacceptable amount of uncertainty to industry across the UK and EU.’"

What we have here is lobbying and meddling by patent lawyers and other who stand to profit from more litigation in more places. Team UPC (people from the inside) is still at it in spite of Brexit, but what will they say when it all fizzles and goes away? Over the past few weeks we saw very little coverage about the UPC (virtually none). It seems like it's dying or at least put on the ice. ⬆