Pretending all is fine and dandy won't make it so

Reference: Trump's Truck Photo Op Becomes Popular Meme

Summary: Behind the façade of legitimacy, the EPO suffers from an incompetent, insecure and delusional boss, whose actions will almost certainly lead to the collapse of both the Office and the entire Organisation (whose founding document he routinely shreds to pieces)

THE EPO scandals refuse to end. It's almost as though Battistelli wants to lose leadership to the USPTO not just in terms of quality of patents but also quality of staff (people are walking away and the EPO is visibly desperate for applications).

"All photo-ops can backfire one day, especially if they are suggestive of a bond between individuals (public officials typically)."The other day we saw the latest Battistelli photo-op (warning: epo.org link). As usual, nobody important was in that photo-op. Respectable individuals want nothing to do with Battistelli. It's likely to turn out to be as much as a 'trophy' as an old photo-op with Jimmy Savile. All photo-ops can backfire one day, especially if they are suggestive of a bond between individuals (public officials typically).

Battistelli is visiting or appealing to south America again; we saw this coming and wrote about it some days ago. Somebody told us about the Argentina visit. We decided to check how many EPs Argentina has. Well, that's 13 patents last year (page through to granularity level/page 6 and be warned that it's another epo.org link). Cuba and Monaco (the other two 'darlings' of Battistelli) are adjacent to Argentina with 12 patents each. That's utterly minuscule compared to the United States with 21,939, Germany with 18,728 and Japan with 15,395.

"The EPO's mania (or maniac) puts the EPO at existential risk."What is the purpose of these visits? Why need they always throw in Battistelli's photo-ops? Like a king building his personal portfolio/legacy, he has taken over the entire Web site. epo.org now looks like the site of some Sultanate, with Battistelli's face and quotes showing up everywhere. We are not joking. It's like he never intends to leave the EPO and it's almost as though he views himself as "benevolent dictator for life". Is this man insane? Donald Trump has done something similar and the press berates him for it.

One reader recently told us, "we are all aware that a big amount of transparency would quickly sanitize the EPO."

Well, that's because the EPO has plenty of closets full of skeletons; they are brought out belatedly, ushering in accountability.

"It is meanwhile all too obvious/easy to see that Battistelli is not interested in quality."The EPO's mania (or maniac) puts the EPO at existential risk. This, in turn, puts many European businesses at risk. Someone recently published "Putting the Pedal to the Metal at the EPO", cross-posting an article we remarked on several days ago. It's clear that Battistelli's plan is to kill the goose for all its eggs, even if that death means that no more eggs will ever come out. Examiners may become redundant as early as next year. What happens then? There are scary speculations about that...

It is meanwhile all too obvious/easy to see that Battistelli is not interested in quality. To him, quality is just a barrier or a nuisance. The Boards of Appeal (all the boards in fact) have been thoroughly destroyed by Battistelli, but a new piece from Marks & Clerk ignores this reality by looking back at this older case:

The Board of Appeal concluded that “all due care” had not been exercised by the applicant, for two reasons. Firstly, the applicant’s system for docketing filing information did not cross-check to confirm that data had been entered into the system. An independent and effective docketing system requires a cross-check that new information is input into the system, in addition to a check that the information input into the system is correct. Secondly, the applicant had ignored the email from its European attorney notifying it that the application would be withdrawn if the renewal fee (plus a surcharge) was not paid by a specified date.

European attorneys are not cheap and a couple of days ago the EPO suggested hiring them, perhaps knowing that applicants are discriminated against without them (we covered examples of that in the past, supported by leaked communications). "Seek a patent attorney's advice," the EPO wrote, having made things complicated enough for everyone (that they need to hire outside help at rates of about $300/hour).

If the resultant patent (EP) is not even legitimate -- for it resulted from shoddy/hurried assessment -- what would it be worth? It would be worse than useless.

There is another new article from Marks & Clerk (these two were published a few hours apart) and it conveniently ignores the fact that the European Patent Convention (EPC) too has long been disregarded by crazy Battistelli; he's a serial violator, a repeat offender, yet nobody at the Council seems to mind.

Here is what Marks & Clerk wrote:

A recent decision by the EPO’s Boards of Appeal, T 1846/11, concerns an appeal filed by Rigaku Corporation (appellant) against the decision of the examining division, refusing European patent application no. 04012578.3.

This decision deals with the importance of ensuring that correct authorisations are obtained for legal practitioners to act on behalf of an applicant in EPO proceedings.

The European Patent Convention (EPC) draws a clear distinction between professional representatives (ie qualified European Patent Attorneys) and legal practitioners (qualified practitioners in a contracting state who are entitled to act in patent matters and having his place of business in that state). Examples of legal practitioners include Rechtsanwalt in Germany and solicitors and barristers in the UK. Under the EPC, legal practitioners may represent an applicant in proceedings before the EPO in the same way as professional representatives as long as the relevant authorisation is obtained from the applicant and submitted at the EPO.

Can one seriously expect the EPC to be taken seriously when the President himself shreds it? Is the EPO still a lawful institution? When judges who are independent are subjected to illegal actions by Battistelli? And mock 'trials'? Even defamation?

"Can one seriously expect the EPC to be taken seriously when the President himself shreds it? Is the EPO still a lawful institution?"Suffice to say, the EPO’s Boards of Appeal represent just one Battistelli scandal among so many. IP Kat used to cover the subject, but it does not anymore. Now it actively helps Battistelli and yesterday it yielded this new post from Katfriend Heiko Sendrowski (BASF). Isn't it great? Corporate patent attorneys now write the 'news'. "The Board of Appeal," he wrote, "emphasized that each document must be interpreted by respecting the context of each part thereof to determine its true meaning. The claims of the prior art document according to the Board chiefly serve to define the subject matter for which protection is sought. The skilled person thus understands that claims may artificially combine (and omit) features of an invention to maximize scope of protection such that claims may not "truly correspond to the technical teaching of the document" (see sec. 3.8). In the present case, all examples required a further technical feature ("user intervention"). The skilled person would thus understand that the claims of D2 do not unambiguously disclose an embodiment without the additional feature (see sec. 3.9). The appeal was therefore allowed given that the subject matter of claim 1 involved an inventive step."

So much about pertinent details regarding the Boards of Appeal yet nothing in months about EPO scandals. So much for "popular source of material, comment and amusement for IP owners, practitioners, judges, students and administrators [which] does not carry paid advertising and does not subscribe to any online advertising services" (the authors just advertise their own interests/employers). ⬆