Starting the new year with old lies

Source (original): Rospatent

Summary: Structures and procedures that helped ensure high patent quality (e.g. the Boards of Appeal) are under unprecedented attacks and a new statement -- with Benoît Battistelli's fingerprints all over it -- is this year's first example of lies as the norm at the European Patent Organisation

THE EPO scandals and EPO lies are nothing new. They're routine now; it's almost mundane.

Check out the latest "news" item from the EPO's site (warning: epo.org link). It was published yesterday, claiming "higher quality patents," as usual. This is a lie. Every paragraph contains lies. Basically, the EPO continues to disregards the law, the truth, and human lives. It just cannot be trusted. To quote: "The European Patent Office has completed an internal re-organisation which will enhance the efficiency of its patenting process. The move is also expected to foster the timeliness of the patent granting procedure for users and contribute to higher quality patents and services."

People are also complaining about the quality of services, but the EPO will never publicly acknowledge that. As usual, they're interjecting Benoît Battistelli into everything in this "news" item. It's him who has been responsible for many of the scandals.

"This is the best opportunity to get a closer look a the activity of the Boards of Appeal," the EPO wrote yesterday, advertising internships again.

The Boards of Appeal urgently require actual full-time staff, not interns. Battistelli wants to destroy them through (DG3 as a whole). It's a violation of the EPC. Nobody new was hired and they've just lost Patrick Corcogan, a valuable technical judge.

In light of suggestions that DG3 members ought to give testimonies in German courts (e.g. Patrick Corcogan, now in DG1, after his mistreatment), a new comment was posted to say that it's rather unlikely to happen due to fear of retribution and "would it not rather prove the point that the Boards of Appeal are not truly independent if the President could forbid them from providing evidence on this subject in a court of law?"

Obviously.

If they cannot speak to the constitutional court about what Battistelli is doing, it will make opposition to the UPC harder.

Speaking of the UPC, IAM used to spread fake news about UPC in Spain [1, 2]; that culminated last year. This week it gives this "[r]ough translation - "From 1st January, Spanish SMEs and entrepreneurs which wish to do so can submit their PCT applications in English as well as Spanish, and conduct all proceedings before the Spanish Patent Office in English"" (Spanish here).

So forget about the UPC; they too know it's not happening. They already come up with language bridges that aren't UPC.

Donald Zuhn has just noted that UPC's forever promises go quite a while back. "After making it onto our 2012 and 2013 lists," he said, "the unitary patent and Unified Patent Court (UPC) initiatives took a three-year sabbatical from our top stories list." It will probably disappear again this year because the UPC is stuck. It cannot move on.

"Alfalahi, Birss, Campinos, Cao and Nokia," according to IAM, are the "IP [sic] personalities of 2017," but when patent trolls like Kasim Alfalahi, judges like Colin Birss (rules for trolls' interests) and António Campinos (amid EPO scandals) are top picks, what does that say about IAM? Here's what IAM's editor said about Campinos:

Antonio CAMPINOS - In July, the Administrative Council of the European Patent Organisation did something that it had never done before and invited applications to be the next president of the European Patent Office (EPO). Previously, the appointment has been made behind closed doors following a secretive election process with no criteria given as to why the successful candidate got the job. But this time we know exactly what it is that the Council requires of António Campinos, who will succeed current incumbent Benoît Batistelli on 1st July 2018. The job spec provides a benchmark against which to judge Campinos’s success – and such a level of transparency has previously been unknown at the EPO and it would be nice to think it will be followed by a lot more in the future (though don’t hold your breath on that one!). It always looked like the job as described in the July announcement was a perfect fit for Campinos, who as executive director of the EU IP Office has established a strong reputation as a political operator while keeping sometimes fractious national agencies onside, ensuring a top class service for users and maintaining an amicable relationship with staff members. They are skills he is going to need in spades in his new job.

How gently worded; and the list goes on in part 2 (probably to be published later today)... ⬆