Bonum Certa Men Certa

Latest Loophole: To Get Software Patents From the EPO One Can Just Claim That They're 'on a Car'

EPO is riding (or driving) hype waves again

A muscle car



Summary: The EPO has a new 'study' (accompanied by an extensive media/PR campaign) that paints software as "SDV" if it runs on a car, celebrating growth of such software patents

THE age of 'computerised' cars is here. What does that mean? Usually general-purpose computers inside cars, that's all. Innovative? Maybe. Exciting? Arguably. A novel/new concept? Not quite. Some computers are there just for entertainment (like in commercial aircrafts/airliners), whereas others connect to various mechanisms inside the car, e.g. brakes, throttling, steering, electric system, seats/belts and physical locking (windows, doors). None of that is particularly complicated except the steering as that relies on sound input and computer vision; both of those are reducible to software. Sensory components are general-purpose sensors. We wrote about them before, e.g. US patent number 10,000,000.

Take for example these new (days-old) reports about Tesla [1, 2]. The latter of these says: "A recently published patent has revealed that Tesla is exploring the idea of a user interface allowing drivers to launch and display up to four apps simultaneously in a four-way split screen arrangement. What’s more, Tesla also seems to be preparing a setting that will enable users to customize the arrangement of icons in their vehicles’ main taskbar."

That's just a classic software patent, likely invalid as per/in lieu with 35 U.S.C. €§ 101 (Section 101) at the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO). So why was it granted? We know that Tesla pledged not to sue with its patents, but how is this considered innovative and patent-eligible? It's neither. There's also prior art in other contexts/domains.

Unfortunately, things like the above are becoming normal and more fake patents (or software patents) are being granted to entities in the capital of patent trolls. Several days ago Dallas Business Journal showed 'news' 'coverage' being reduced to spammy advertising of malicious patent bullies and a site called Dallas Invents (or Innovates) revealed new patents, including one of Toyota whose summary/abstract says: "An adaptive vehicle control system that includes processors, memory modules communicatively coupled to the processors, and machine readable instructions stored in the one or more memory modules that cause the adaptive vehicle control system to determine an autonomous operation profile of a target vehicle positioned in a vehicle operating environment, wherein the vehicle operating environment includes a roadway having one or more lanes, determine an autonomous operation profile of one of more neighboring vehicles positioned within the vehicle operating environment, compare the autonomous operation profile of at least one of the one or more neighboring vehicles with the autonomous operation profile of the target vehicle, and alter a condition of the target vehicle such that the autonomous operation profile of the target vehicle matches an autonomous operation profile of an individual neighboring vehicle of the one or more neighboring vehicles positioned in the same lane as the target vehicle."

This boils down to algorithms. It's very easy to see this. But because cars are a physical thing we assume that examiners can somehow convince themselves that it's not abstract.

To make matters worse, the EPO under the leadership of António Campinos constantly promotes software patents in Europe and the latest stunt is pretending these patents have something to do with "cars". They started a whole new PR campaign (the EPO keeps coming up with new three-letter acronyms by which to promote software patents), so the media plays along, e.g. German media (RTL), east European media [1, 2], and British media (examples to follow below). There's even Les Échos coverage, not noting that it's actually a paid propaganda apparatus which Battistelli notoriously used to mislead the public. Here's a new article about "automotive software" that mentions patents. A Web site of a law firm, Out-Law.com, also helped the EPO some days ago when it wrote: "Technology and telecoms companies dominate the list of companies that have filed the most applications for European patents relating to driverless cars, according to data compiled by the European Patent Office (EPO)."

They use the acronym SDV to make it sound catchy. The distribution of such patents is the same as for other areas: "Europe, the US, Japan, South Korea and China are the five most popular jurisdictions for applying for driverless car patents, according to the EPO."

So how's that even unique? It's not. On Friday the EPO wrote: "We had a look at the trends in European #patent applications for one of today’s emerging technologies: self-driving vehicles. Read our findings here: http://bit.ly/SDVstudy #FutureOfCars #SelfDriving pic.twitter.com/oLYhJL0YI9"

They do exactly what Battistelli did; they commission their own 'study' to advance some questionable agenda. IPPro Patents wrote that the EPO "conducted [this 'study'] in cooperation with the European Council for Automotive research and development (EUCAR)..."

No vested interests there? These are mostly software patents (e.g. computer vision, my research domain in which I developed car navigation software) referred to by another name; the EPO should be shamed of itself. We should note that about half of all EPO tweets on Thursday (about a dozen in total) promoted software patents. They also retweeted this thing about patents on "cars" (actually software, albeit used somewhere inside a car) and retweeted this blog post's tweet that said: "@EPOorg has just published a report on "Patenting and Self-Driving Vehicles". This is one of the fastest growing technologies for patent applications. The report analyses and categorizes the patent data and considers some of the uses for those technologies https://nipclaw.blogspot.com/2018/11/patents-and-self-driving-vehicles.html …"

Notice how none of them bothered checking the underlying patents, except naively assuming that they're something to do with "a car"; never mind if those mostly come down to algorithms that aren't patent-eligible as per the EPC.

Recent Techrights' Posts

Microsoft's Windows is a Niche Operating System in Africa
African nations aren't a large contributor to Microsoft's income, but if many African nations move away from Windows, then the monopoly is at risk
Gemini Links 19/06/2025: Unix Primitivism, Zine Club, and Gemini Protocol Turns 6 at Midnight
Links for the day
 
Links 19/06/2025: Ghostwriting Scam and Fentanylware (TikTok) Buying Time
Links for the day
Links 19/06/2025: WhatsApp Identified as Assassination 'Crosshairs', Patreon Now Rips Off People Even More
Links for the day
"Told You So": Another Very Large Wave of Microsoft Layoffs Now Confirmed in Mainstream Media
So we were right to believe the rumours, based on the credibility of prior such rumours
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Wednesday, June 18, 2025
IRC logs for Wednesday, June 18, 2025
Gemini Links 18/06/2025: Magit and Farming
Links for the day
Slopwatch: BetaNews is Now a Slopfarm (Like Linuxsecurity) and Google News is Overwhelmed by Slopfarms
The Web is bad
Links 18/06/2025: SCOTUS Decision on Fentanylware (TikTok) Still Ignored, 4.5-Day Work Weeks
Links for the day
Links 17/06/2025: Windows TCO and G7 Rifts
Links for the day
The Right to Know and the Freedom to Report on Crime (at the Higher Echelons)
I'd like to do the same thing for the next 20 years
BetaNews Appears to Have Fired All Of Its Staff
Even serial sloppers
After the Web Becomes Slopped to Death
A lot of people are rightly fed up with the "modern" Web
Gemini Protocol Turns 6 on Friday
Active (online) Gemini capsules are estimated by Lupa at over 3,000
Like Most Social Control Media, Microsoft LinkedIn is Collapsing
One reason for Microsoft acquisitions is debt-loading, i.e. offloading and burying its debt
Microsoft is Losing Its Richest Clients
Unlike some very poor countries, Germany and the EU are a considerable source of income to Microsoft
Proprietary Means Not Secure
Proprietary software tends to rely on secrecy, not good design
Slop in 'AI' Clothing is a Passing Fad, We'll Get Past It (Like Blockchain Before That)
Many people cheat in exams using slop and there are professionals that try using slop as a "shortcut"
GNOME Does Not Campaign Against Microsoft, KDE Does
It's good to see that KDE is still active in promotion of Free software - a term that it uses
Slopwatch: BetaNews, Linuxsecurity, and Other Prolific Slopfarms
name and shame the sites that establish such proliferation of slop
Gemini Links 18/06/2025: Birch Lake and Loon Pond
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Tuesday, June 17, 2025
IRC logs for Tuesday, June 17, 2025
Links 17/06/2025: "The Grift Economy" and Kubernetes Does Proprietary
Links for the day
Microsoft's "FUD-as-a-Service" (Against Linux) Not Functioning Well
This is the kind of contribution companies like Microsoft and Google have to offer to society
Betanews Becoming a Slopfarm is "Betanews Growing Alongside You", According to Betanews
Their first 'article' in over two weeks is 52% "AI-generated" (slop), 33% mixed (edited slop), 18% human-written, says an advanced scanner.
Coffee Day and LLM Sloppers
The LLM slop "bros" are a lot like fake-money bros; they lie to people, they boast that they lie to people, and they're generally bad people, BS artists in colloquial terms
Double-Dipping the Docket for Microsoft Glory and Censorship of Microsoft Critics
same lawyer, same barrister, all US, all Microsoft
TheLayoff Censorship of IBM Threads Has Gone Truly Ludicrous
we do not argue that TheLayoff should not cull LLM slop
More Stallmanites Added to FSF Board and Summer Fundraiser Commences
There's some good news from the FSF
Gemini Links 17/06/2025: Consistency and Notes About NixOS
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Monday, June 16, 2025
IRC logs for Monday, June 16, 2025