Bonum Certa Men Certa

The European Patent Office No Longer Acts Like a Patent Office But a Prosecutor

Prosecution 'industry' served, not the real industry

Prosecution



Summary: With Patent Prosecution Highway (PPH), Unitary Patent (UPC) and “early certainty” it seems clear that the EPO's objectives are not aligned with those representative of a proper, functioning patent office

THE EPO continues trying -- however futile this effort may seem -- to distract from any meaningful discussion about the crisis. The "SME" nonsense (not a new thing), for example, was repeated once again yesterday. It was repeated pretty much every single day in November. "How can a business leverage the power of patents and other IP rights to achieve business success?" Those are the sorts of loaded questions brought up every day by the EPO. It has become too tiring to even bother responding to them.



"The UPC is going nowhere, but Bristows keeps spreading fake news about it.""The objective of the study," wrote the EPO in another tweet, "is to assess the role played by the current European patent system," linking to the so-called 'study' which is not objective and has already been debunked. It's the EPO-commissioned propaganda for the EPO and its UPC lobby.

Two days ago we wrote about the latest fake news about the UPC. Check out this comment that says "K. Mooney, W. Pors and consorts have been ridden by an illness called "wishful thinking"."

To quote the whole comment (JJ is Jo Johnson):

When JJ is talking about negotiations re post Brexit stay of the UK in the UPC, it clearly means that all those claiming that the stay is easy to obtain (K. Mooney, W. Pors and consorts) have been ridden by an illness called "wishful thinking".

It is understandable that they see big profits flowing away, so that self illusion is an attempt to overcome the loss. The more so since they have invested a lot of time and efforts in devising the RoP of the UPC.

It would be better if they would come back to reality rather than trying to pull wool over our eyes!



The UPC is going nowhere, but Bristows keeps spreading fake news about it. Yesterday it wrote about Belgium. This is nothing noteworthy (of progress); it's a meaningless move, as Belgium has, by Bristows' own admission, "already ratified the UPC Agreement, and has made a declaration regarding its provisional application."

"The agenda of the EPO, as set in stone by the UPC, is worse than malignant. It may be fatal to Europe's producing industries (as opposed to some law firms in England and Germany)."Quite frankly, it no longer surprises us that Team UPC and Team Battistelli are lying so much. Both are rife with abuse. Check out yesterday's EPO puff piece about Brazil and Tunisia (warning: epo.org link), former Portuguese and French colonies, respectively (the next EPO President is a dual Portuguese/French national, as we noted in relation to the validation agreements with Tunisia and Angola, another former Portuguese colony where his father had been born).

This time it's about the Patent Prosecution Highway (PPH), which speeds up examination at the expense of meticulous analysis. To quote the EPO: "Two major [sic] agreements signed by the EPO with Brazil and Tunisia will enter into force today. The agreements will mean new services for companies and inventors from Europe and the two countries and support innovation through legally robust patents."

How many European Patents even come from Tunisia? How many patent applications? Brazil, in spite of its large population side, isn't so major a player either. So for the EPO to call these "major agreements" with a straight face? Come on...

As someone pointed out in the 14th and last comment this week:

Even it might be legal, it is simply unbelievable to go from the much heralded “early certainty” into “long term uncertainty”.

If it should be necessary it shows how badly the EPO is managed!

The document linked to by head down is a paper introduced in 2009 by 3 member states two of which,DE and NL had deferred examination. It was an attempt to resolve the backlog problem, may be a first instance level, but does not work at the BA level.

If files are under deferred examination, they will not any longer appear in the statistics. This a clear attempt to cheat, as the secret hope is that lot of these applications will be withdrawn at one moment or the other.

It is not sure that the member state will be willing to wait to have their share of the renewal fees.

Wait and see if the new chairman of the AC will accept to put the proposal of the agenda of the AC. Bad management should be sanctioned, certainly not encouraged!


This relates to the UPC in the sense that the envisioned system passes or 'offloads' the task of proper patent examination to courts, where fees are humongous and the language spoken may not been understood at all by the defendants.

The agenda of the EPO, as set in stone by the UPC, is worse than malignant. It may be fatal to Europe's producing industries (as opposed to some law firms in England and Germany). The "official languages", which oddly enough include French but not Spanish, tell quite a lot about who would literally profit from the destruction of one's own national scientific sector.

Recent Techrights' Posts

Links 06/07/2025: Climate Change and "The Right to Criticise"
Links for the day
The Mainstream Media Took 4 Days to Realise Microsoft Shut Down Its Operations in Pakistan and Fired Everybody
We estimate that Microsoft has had about 29,000 layoffs since January
“Twibel” Actions Against Comedians (and Why It's a Truly Low Blow)
they try to make up in quantities for a lack of merit or quality
 
Gemini Links 06/07/2025: Tinylog and Certification Rotation
Links for the day
PCLinuxOS Sites Coming Back, Gradually
let's just be patient
Social Control Media, Even If Based on Free Software, Still Has Many Problems
a distraction from what actually mattered and still matters
IBM is Not Your Master
IBM makes friends with people who exclude the majority of the population: women
Help Fund the Free Software Foundation (FSF)
If you have some dollars to spare, go support the FSF
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Saturday, July 05, 2025
IRC logs for Saturday, July 05, 2025
A Short History of Attacks on Techrights (and Boycott Novell Before That)
good opportunity to tell again the story of several (not all) attempts to silence us
Leadership in Free Software
Don't let IBM lead. It's a terrible flag bearer.
Linux Foundation Apparently Flirting With Slop (Marketing by LLM-Generated SPAM)
The Web is in a really bad state!
COVID-19 Sped Up Site Improvements in Techrights
A few months later we created our very own IRC network
Gemini Links 05/07/2025: Negative Questions and 'Touching Grass' (Going Outside)
Links for the day
Links 05/07/2025: Dalai Lama Succession as 90th Birthday Approaches, 40 deg C in China
Links for the day
Links 05/07/2025: Hungary and US Defecting to Russia, "Google's Hotseat Hypocrisy"
Links for the day
Gemini Links 05/07/2025: 4th of July 2025 and "Zig Roadmap 2026"
Links for the day
How to Combat the Exploitation and Abuse by Microsoft GitHub
Not to mention corruption and crimes against women
Bryan Lunduke is Actually Sending His Audience to Attack People
"[Lunduke] is actually sending his audience to attack people."
Even The Right Wing is Rejecting Bryan Lunduke
no wonder he became so irrelevant and marginal
Microsoft's MSN Helps Microsoft Spread Lies About the Layoffs' Scale (Well Over 25,000 People Laid Off This Year)
There seem to be monopolies on lies and on truth
The Death of X Has Been Greatly Exaggerated (by Compromised Media)
X.Org Server is alive and well
Rewriting Things in Rust
How far would you go?
In 2025 Everything is "AI". Remember Blockchains?
Talk about what companies and things (services, products, software) actually do, not the labels they use
Julian Assange Has Been Free for a Year
Julian Assange and I disagreed on some things
Monopolies and Scalping
Monopolies gravitate towards price hikes
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Friday, July 04, 2025
IRC logs for Friday, July 04, 2025
Microsoft's August Layoffs Wave: "August is Confirmed for Additional Performance Based Cuts"
"August is confirmed for additional performance based cuts from the recent connects along with additional organizational cuts."
What Microsoft Reputation Laundering (With a Weaponised Law Degree) Looks Like in a Foreign Continent
You would expect this in uncivilised and primitive countries
Slopwatch: LLMs 'Write' Fake or Distorted 'News' About "Linux"
LLM slop disguised as news
Links 04/07/2025: Google Replaces the Web With Slop, "AI Might Kill Us All"
Links for the day
Gemini Links 04/07/2025: Mindfulness and F1
Links for the day
Weeks After Microsoft Bankruptcy in Russia the Company Shuts Down in Pakistan, Too
Last month Windows' share in Pakistan fell to an all-time low
Rob Musial's June 2025 Additions of Malware in Proprietary Software
Via the GNU Web site this week
Links 04/07/2025: Microsoft's H-1B Visa Applications Show Another Crisis Unfolding, Many More Deep Cuts and Shutdowns Revealed, Complete Microsoft Exits
Links for the day
Gemini Links 04/07/2025: A Day To Remember and "Stop Killing Games"
Links for the day
Crime and Corruption at Microsoft GitHub Cannot be Covered Up by SLAPPs in Another Continent
We'll write about this for a long time to come
Slop Videos Are Disappointing Garbage, Nothing New, Just Brute Force up on Display or a Pedestal of Slop
Slop videos aren't a new thing
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Thursday, July 03, 2025
IRC logs for Thursday, July 03, 2025
The War on Local Storage (People Hosting Their Files Locally and Privately)
There's nothing wrong with controlling one's computing
What Digital Independence Means
Independence in the digital realms means abandoning platforms like GitHub, not just rejecting proprietary software
NVidia is a Bubble
they temporarily see fortunes and wrongly assume perpetuity thereof
Fedora Does Not Care About Diversity and Inclusion, It's About Optics (Corporate Image)
any notion of inclusion is superficial and misleading
Don't Buy the Excuses for Microsoft's Mass Layoffs
Back in the 90s, Microsoft bought a lot of companies to get and stay ahead