Bonum Certa Men Certa

The Patent Microcosm's Embrace of Buzzwords and False Marketing Strives to Make Patent Examiners Redundant and Patent Quality Extremely Low

Patent maximalism defeats the very purpose of patent systems

Aristotle



Summary: Patent maximalists, who are profiting from abundance of low-quality patents (and frivolous lawsuits/legal threats these can entail), are riding the hype wave and participating in the rush to put patent systems at the hands of machines

THE USPTO keeps tightening patent scope (more on that later today), whereas the EPO goes in the opposite direction and broadens the scope of patents. This is a recipe for disaster and it puts at greater threat plenty of European businesses. Not law firms, but actual European businesses.



"This is a recipe for disaster and it puts at greater threat plenty of European businesses."Sadly, a lot of policy decisions are steered by lawyers, not scientists, and law firms rather than actual European businesses (which make things) have leverage over law. That's how UPCA managed to get as far as it has.

Yesterday we saw another dumb idea resurrected, owing to a lot of hype. "We are going to continue hearing for some time about #blockchain methods being applied to #patent transactions and procedures," said a patents person from the US. We were recently told similar things about "AI". The craze over these things (especially in the media) is troubling; not only is "AI" not a new thing but it's also not so Earth-shattering. Something as simple as patent searches (based on text and word density, textual patterns etc.) can already be framed as "AI". The more one knows about the origins of the term, the more easily one accepts that almost any algorithm can be painted "AI" (given the will/motivation). As for blockchain, it's not a buzzword but an actual implementation or set of implementations (based on the concept of blockchains), yet there's plenty of hype around it.

"The craze over these things (especially in the media) is troubling; not only is "AI" not a new thing but it's also not so Earth-shattering."Alexander Esslinger responded to a commenter (context being the above) by stating: "Blockchain could provide a global, distributed, immutable, time-stamped invention disclosure register independent of patent offices, fees, and formality requirements..."

Algorithms, however, cannot quite correlate patents based on words and images. SUEPO already explained, repeatedly in fact, why this would never work. Marketing hype seems to have charmed non-techies and now they believe that some algorithms make examiners obsolete. Maybe they can, to a degree, do as well as low-trained, no-experience examiners, but they cannot replace domain experts like professors in their respective field.

"Algorithms, however, cannot quite correlate patents based on words and images. SUEPO already explained, repeatedly in fact, why this would never work."Then came the "AI" hype (again). Esslinger wrote: "A blockchain-based time-stamped invention disclosure register together with AI-enabled prior art search could in the future significantly change the way patent offices work - after over a century of basically unchanged procedures..."

"You overestimate "AI" based on the latest hype wave," I told him. "Battistelli did the same thing, thinking he can replace domain experts with lousy algorithms [that are a] self-deluding trap. Quality slips, people use different wording to dodge prior art matches..."

Examiners at the EPO and elsewhere ought to watch out. Patent attorneys, to whom patent quality does not seem to matter (they profit from abundance of low-quality patents), are all fine and dandy replacing examiners with algorithms. Having programmed for more than two decades, I can tell for a fact that many of these capabilities are grossly overstated for marketing purposes. Whether Battistelli falls for the marketing because he's dumb or greedy (i.e. for purely economic reasons) is not a judgment for us to make.

"Some people conveniently forgot what patent systems are about or were made for. To them, the more patents get granted, the better."Languages are many; thousands! Among those, maybe a dozen are commonly used in patents (over 90% of all patents). To believe that correlation of text, where terminology can vary across languages and even within one single language (e.g. "car", "vehicle", "transportation", "auto"), would somehow capture underlying ideas is absurd. Some have gone as far (off the deep end) as to suggest that we should also allow machines to actually generate (using so-called 'AI') patents, rendering the whole patent pool so polluted that it would be meaningless and inaccessible for human 'consumption'.

'Patentism' is like a religion. Some people conveniently forgot what patent systems are about or were made for. To them, the more patents get granted, the better. As the old saying goes, "Too Much of Anything Is Bad For You" (even patents).

Recent Techrights' Posts

Techrights Does Not Compete With LLM Slop, It Exposes the Bastards, Plagiarists and Scammers Who Do That
People like Scam Altman, still facing a lawsuit from his own sister for sexual abuse against her
Slopwatch: Planet Ubuntu Became LLM Slop and Some People Fail to See the Immorality of Plagiarism
it lessens the incentive for people to publish real articles
Microsoft Layoffs Again in Bay Area
Microsoft relies on people's false belief that being "in LinkedIn" will get you a job; well, seems like even working inside LinkedIn really sucks and you lose the job
 
The "AI" (Slop) Bubble Already Popped, But It's Not an Overnight Collapse
where Microsoft put its money
No More Steven Astorino at IBM, Chatter About Weekly/Nonstop Layoffs at IBM
What happened? Good luck guessing.
Looking at Corruption in Europe, Going Beyond the EPO
Expect a new series to kick off very soon
Slopwatch: Security SPAM and LLM Slop for SEO and FUD Purposes, Perpetually Tarnishing the Perception of Linux and (Open)SSH Security
A lot of this Fear, Uncertainty, Doubt (FUD) comes from Microsoft and its LLMs
Links 30/05/2025: Google's LLM Slop Pushers Are Killing Journalism and Shira Perlmutter Fails to Stop Bribed Regime From Legalising Plagiarism (in "AI" Clothing)
Links for the day
Links 30/05/2025: Offline Arts and "Threshold of Patience"
Links for the day
Signing Off Serious Lies With a Statement of Truth is No Joking Matter
It's not hard to see what's happening here
Links 30/05/2025: LLM Slop Already Ingests and Vomits Its Own Garbage, Facebook Exec Admits Copyrights a Concern Too
Links for the day
Mass Layoffs at Microsoft Result in More Whistleblowers From Microsoft
Microsoft's predatory pricing is further
EPO Poll: 68% Dissatisfied With Quality of Slop (Wrongly Framed as "AI") for Patent Classification
Slop does not work, it's just falsely advertised with extra hype (funded by slop pushers that sponsor the major media)
Big Crowds Gather to Learn About Software Freedom From the Man Who Started GNU/Linux in 1983
"It was a great success"
Gemini Links 30/05/2025: Fighting Against the Bad News, and Slop is Dehumanisation Disguised as "Intelligence"
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Thursday, May 29, 2025
IRC logs for Thursday, May 29, 2025
Links 29/05/2025: Chinese Cracking Against EU Institutions (Prague), More Assaults on Media and Its Funding Sources
Links for the day
EPO Workers Caution That the Officials Are Still Illegally Trying to Replace Staff With Slop (to Lower Quality and Validity of European Patents)
Nobody in Europe voted for any of this
Links 29/05/2025: US Health Deficit and Malware Disguised as Slop Generator
Links for the day
Links 29/05/2025: Turtle Roadkill, Modern 'Tech' as a Sting
Links for the day
Thanks for All the Fish, Linux Format
people who once wrote for it (or for other magazines) comment on the importance of this news
People's Understanding of the History of GNU/Linux is Changing
RMS is not a radical, he's just clever enough to see and foresee what's going on
Microsofters Were Scheming to Take Over This Entire Web Site (in Their Own Words!)
Money gets spent censoring/deplatforming people who speak about real issues; no money gets spent actually tackling those underlying issues
Bicycles for the Minds and the Story Harrison Bergeron
"The goal of having people in charge of the tools they use and that the tools should amplify ability" has long been abandoned
Links 29/05/2025: YouTube Problem and Giant Privacy Hole in Microsoft OneDrive
Links for the day
[Video] Cory Doctorow Explains DMCA: DRM in the Browser (or Webapp) Will "Make It a Felony to Protect Your Privacy While You Use It."
Pycon US Keynote Speaker Cory Doctorow
United States Courts With Sworn Testimonies Are on Our Side, We'll Present the Same Here
Chronicling what happened is a moral imperative
Serial Sloppers Ruin and Lessen the Incentive to Cover "Linux"
The Serial Sloppers (SSs) ought to be named and shamed, but almost nobody does this
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Wednesday, May 28, 2025
IRC logs for Wednesday, May 28, 2025
Links 28/05/2025: 'Emulation Layers' (Measurements and Linguistics), Libraries, and Discomfort
Links for the day
Links 28/05/2025: More Arrests for Bitcoin-Connected Torture and Prosecutions for Dieselgate-Linked Executives
Links for the day
Even Microsoft (MSN) Covers Richard Stallman's Public Talk in Milan 2 Days Ago
He spoke in Spanish earlier this month (Alicante)
Gemini Links 28/05/2025: Techo-authoritarianism With Slop Plagiarism and "No Online June" (Going Offline)
Links for the day
Links 28/05/2025: GitHub MCP Exploited and MathWorks Discovers Huge Windows TCO
Links for the day
Very High Attendance Level at Richard Stallman's Talk Shows People Can Relate to His Message
Smear campaigns have their limits
Gemini Links 28/05/2025: Celsius-Fahrenheit, Endless Scrolling/Infinite Scrolling, and Trapping LLM Slop Bots
Links for the day
Prison gate backdrop to baptism by Fr Sean O'Connell, St Paul's, Coburg
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
More Photos From This Week's Milan Talk by Richard Stallman
The posts are in Italian, not English
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Tuesday, May 27, 2025
IRC logs for Tuesday, May 27, 2025