Bonum Certa Men Certa

Yesterday's UPC Event Was a Reminder That Team Battistelli is Still in Charge of the European Patent Organisation, Fronting for Team UPC

These sorts of UPC lobbying events are almost a monthly occurrence now and their tone keeps being escalated

Team UPC event
They think that a vendor capture of legislation is just a joke



Summary: Team Battistelli, which still comprises Margot Fröhlinger and now António Campinos, joins Team UPC in pressuring politicians and courts to introduce an unconstitutional patent trolls' fantasy, spurring a boon for litigation firms

THE Unified Patent Court Agreement (UPCA) is a great example of law being corrupted by greedy opportunists and legal thugs. When they say "industry" they mean the litigation 'industry', e.g. patent trolls. Consider this tweet from yesterday, quoting the EPO's liar (yes, Team Battistelli is still in charge): "the long term participation of the UK in the UPC is legally possible if there is political will. The clear view of industry should be listened to by DE, FR and other member states..."



Which industry, Margot Fröhlinger?

"They're not receptive or open to any critics. UPC is, to these people, just something to be shoved down people's throat."World Intellectual Property Review (WIPR) belatedly wrote some time yesterday about changes in Team Battistelli, coinciding with the above event. UPC promotion was the first step of António Campinos, which isn't a promising sigh. It indicates there's no profound change on the way. Basically the new President has revealed that he is another Battistelli as far as patent agenda goes (never mind social aspects or management style). "Yet another UPC echo chamber conference where they do not invite critics" is how Benjamin Henrion described the above. They always make it like that. They're not receptive or open to any critics. UPC is, to these people, just something to be shoved down people's throats. They did, after all, come up with and wrote UPCA. They are self-appointed 'lawmakers' whose sole motivation is self-enrichment. It's hard to know what exactly happened there (without something like a transcript of the speech from Campinos), but live tweeting from the event shows that "Select Committee's Jerome Debrulle [said] If the UPC fails it will be a "political and economical failure for the EU.""

"They did, after all, come up with and wrote UPCA. They are self-appointed 'lawmakers' whose sole motivation is self-enrichment."Jerome Debrulle is a notorious Battistelli and abuses facilitator, whose government should (in our humble opinion) sack him for what he did last year. We have heard lots more about his special relationship with the UPC and his role in the appointment of Campinos with Battistelli pulling strings behind the scenes. Debrulle should be considered an extension of Team Battistelli along with the above propagandist (Margot Fröhlinger). They're inseparable.

Watch how Team UPC responded to constitutional challenges, all of which have thus far been successful. These are the sorts of people who also attended this event. It's not a debate but more of a battle plan. Alex Robinson, referring to himself/themselves as "#TeamUPC" yesterday, thinks this is funny. He spoke of needing to "resume our deliberations on taking over the world ;-)"

Ha, ha, ha. Not funny. And no, they just try to hijack Europe's patent system, including the courts, aided by their hero Battistelli. IAM's revisionism and whitewash about Battistelli is all one needs to see in order to understand that Team UPC is fully behind Team Battistelli. Just watch what happened to IP Kat after CIPA and Bristows had taken leading positions there. They're egging Team Battistelli on.

"...Team UPC is fully behind Team Battistelli. Just watch what happened to IP Kat after CIPA and Bristows had taken leading positions there. They're egging Team Battistelli on."Robinson has in fact just belittled the constitutional challenge to UPC (yet again) and his employer added: "The Hungarian Constitutional Court ruled that the Unified Patent Court Agreement (UPCA) is contrary to the Hungarian constitution and therefore cannot be ratified by Hungary..."

Compare that to the actual headline. Bristows' was even worse, insinuating that Hungary should now change its Constitution to facilitate its Constitution being violated by Team UPC. These people are absolutely nuts. And it's dangerous. It's like the Battistelli mindset, wherein breaking the law is acceptable when the supposed ends justify any means. Team UPC is not just arrogant; it rigs the rules, it breaks the law, it corrupts politicians, and it seems to be absolutely OK with corruption and suicides at the EPO as long as they might get their 'precious' UPC. Robinson continued: "His personal views: a way will be found to allow UK to continue, because so many people want it to happen. But if that happens, it is likely there will be a legal challenge. And that could take some time to resolve. [...] Let's see what is quicker - Germany killing the UPC or the UK leaving the EU!" This is nonsense because the sequence of this does not matter and they have several more serious obstacles to overcome, the least of which is Hungary.

"The goal is to cause a litigation Armageddon and overcome limits on patenting (scope)."Team UPC seems to become more radical as a function of how unlikely the UPC becomes. What next? Will they start openly bribing politicians? They already lobby them in the open and proudly associate -- even in photo ops -- with notorious crooks who belong in a prison.

The UPC is a threat not because of the stench of Battistelli; it's objectively terrible for Europe, unless one is a prosecutor for one's living. The goal is to cause a litigation Armageddon and overcome limits on patenting (scope). As someone put it last night in IP Kat comments: "On numerous occasions, EPO decisions have (usually when UK practitioners have argued on the basis of EPO case law) stated that, unlike Anglo-Saxon jurisprudence, the instances of the EPO are not bound by precedent case law, but only by the provisions of the EPC. Therefore there appears to be no good reason why the UK courts should feel obliged to follow EPO case law when such case law does not bind the EPO itself."

Recent Techrights' Posts

Real Life Should be Offline, Not Online, and It Requires Free Software
Resistance means having the guts to say "no!", even in the face of great societal burden and peer pressure
Security Isn't the Goal of Today's Software and Hardware Products
Any newly-added layer represents more attack surface
Godot 4.2 is Approaching, But After What Happened to Unity All Game Developers Should be Careful
We hope Unity will burn in a massive fire and, as for Godot, we hope it'll get rid of Microsoft
 
Microsoft Deserves a Medal for Being Worst at Security (the Media Deserves a Medal for Cover-up)
There are still corruptible/bribed publishers that quote Microsoft staff like they're security gurus
10 Reasons to Permanently Export or Liberate Your Site From WordPress, Drupal, and Other Bloatware
There are certainly more more advantages, but 10 should suffice for now
About 200,000 Objects in Techrights Web Site
This hopefully helps demonstrate just how colossal the migration actually is
Good Teachers Would Tell Kids to Quit Social Control Media Rather Than Participate in It (Teaching Means Education, Not Misinformation)
Insist that classrooms offer education to children rather than offer children to corporations
Twitter: From Walled Gardens to Paywalls and/or Amplifiers of Fascism
There's moreover a push to promote politicians who are as scummy as Twitter's owner
The World Wide Web is Being Confiscated From Us (Like Syndication Was Withdrawn About a Decade Ago) and We Need to Fight Back
We're worse off when fewer people promote RSS feeds and instead outsource to social control media (censorship, surveillance, manipulation)
Next Up: Restoring IRC Log Pipelines, Bulletins/Full Text RSS, Wiki (Archived, Static), and Pipelines for Daily Links
There are still many tasks left ahead of us, but we've progressed a lot
An Era of Rotting Technology, Migration Crises, and Cliffhanging
We've covered examples from IBM, resembling the Microsoft world
First Iteration of Techrights as 100% Static Pages Web Site
We want to champion another decade or two of positive impact and opinionated analysis
Links 25/09/2023: Patent News and Coding
some remaining links for today
Steam Deck is Mostly Good in the Sense That It Weakens Microsoft's Dominance (Windows)
The Steam Deck is mostly a DRM appliance
SUSE is Just Another Black Cat Working for Proprietary Giants/Monopolies
SUSE's relationship with firms such as these generally means that SUSE works for authority, not for community, and when it comes to cryptography it just follows guidelines from the US government
IBM is Selling Complexity, Not GNU/Linux
It's not about the clients, it's about money
Birthday of Techrights in 6 Weeks (Tux Machines and Techrights Reach Combined Age of 40 in 2025)
We've already begun the migration to static
Linux Foundation: We Came, We Saw, We Plundered
Linux Foundation staff uses neither Linux nor Open Source. They're essentially using, exploiting, piggybacking goodwill gestures (altruism of volunteers) while paying themselves 6-figure salaries.
Linux Too Big to Be Properly Maintained When There's an Incentive to Sell More and More Things (Complexity and Narrow Support Window)
They want your money, not your peace of mind. That's a problem.
Modern Web Means Proprietary Trash
Mozilla is financially beholden to Google and thus we cannot expect any pushback or for Firefox to "reclaims the Web" a second time around
GNU/Linux Has Conquered the World, But Users' Freedom Has Not (Impediments Remain in Hardware)
Installing one's system of choice on a device is very hard, sometimes impossible
Another Copyright Lawsuit Against Microsoft (or its Proxy) for Misuse of Large Works by Chatbot
Some people mocked us for saying this day would come; chatbots are a huge disappointment and they're on very shaky legal ground
Privacy is Not a Crime, Reporting Hidden Facts Is Not a Crime Either
the powerful companies/governments/societies get to know everything about everybody, but if anyone out there discovers or shares dark secrets about those powerful companies/governments/societies, that's a "crime"
United Workforce Always Better for the Workers
In the case of technology, it is possible that a lack of collective action is because of relatively high salaries and less physically-demanding jobs
Purge of Software Freedom and Its Voices
Reprinted with permission from Ryan Farmer
GNOME and GTK Taking Freedom Away From Users
Reprinted with permission from Ryan Farmer
GNOME is Worse Today (in 2023) Than When I Did GTK Development 20+ Years Ago
To me it seems like GNOME is moving backward, not forward, mostly removing features and functionality rather than adding any
HowTos Are Moving to Tux Machines
HowTos (or howtos) are very important in their own right, but they can easily distract from the news and howtos are usually quite timeless or time-insensitive
Proprietary Panda: Don't Be Misled by the Innocent Looks of Ubuntu (and Microsoft Canonical)
Given the number of disgruntled employees who leave Canonical and given Ubuntu's trend of just copying whatever IBM does in Fedora, is there still a good reason to choose Ubuntu?
Debian GNU/Linux is a Fine Operating System, But What if People Die Making It for Somebody's Corporate/Personal Gain?
Will companies that exploited unpaid volunteers ever be held accountable for loss of life, caused by burnout, excessive work, or poverty?
Links 24/09/2023: 5 Days' Worth of News (Catchup)
Links for the day
Leftover Links 24/09/2023: Russia, COVID, and More
Links for the day
Forty Years of GNU and the Free Software Movement
by FSF
Gemini and Web in Tandem
We're already learning, over IRC, that out new site is fully compatible with simple command line- and ncurses-based Web browsers. Failing that, there's Gemini.
Red Hat Pretends to Have "Community Commitment to Open Source" While Scuttling the Fedora Community (Among Others)
RHEL is becoming more proprietary over time and community seems to boil down to unpaid volunteers (at least that's how IBM see the "community")
IBM Neglecting Users of GNU/Linux on Laptops and Desktops
Reprinted with permission from Ryan Farmer
Personal Identification on the 'Modern' Net
Reprinted with permission from Ryan Farmer
Not Your Daily Driver: Don't Build With Rust or Adopt Rust-based Software If You Value Long-Term Reliance
Rust is a whole bunch of hype.
The Future of the Web is Not the Web
The supposedly "modern" stuff ought to occupy some other protocol, maybe "app://"
YouTube Has Just Become Even More Sinister
The way Google has been treating the Web (and Web browsers) sheds a clue about future plans and prospects
Initial Announcement of GNU (for Gnu's Not Unix) on September 27, 1983
History matters
Upgrade and Migration Status
Git is working, IPFS is working, IRC is working, Gemini is working
Yesterday in the 'Sister Site', Tux Machines (10 More Stories)
Scope-wise, many stories fit neatly into both sites, but posting the same twice makes no sense logistically
The New Techrights Will be Much Faster
A prompt response to FUD is important. It's time-sensitive.