Bonum Certa Men Certa

Nobody But Patent Trolls and Litigators Will Benefit From the Corruption of the European Patent Office

They profit from the chaos they are creating, abusing the authority given to them

EPO on a plane



Summary: IAM, EPO leadership, Iancu and the rest of these raiders are enabling corruption and facilitating or supporting a racket; that money they collect comes at the expense of future victims of their "clients" or "customers" (that's what they call applicants, to whom they grant dubious monopolies as a matter of urgency)

THE DIRECTION the European Patent Office (EPO) has taken since António Campinos inherited Office is no different from Battistelli's. One Frenchman just inherited another's task. He inherited a policy that he has no problems with; he has also inherited all the worst elements of the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO), notably software patents which we will deal with separately in our next post.

"The EFF, as it turns out, belatedly realises Iancu was all along trouble."About a week ago the management of the EPO made it obvious that it works for overseas patent trolls; European businesses aren't a priority. As patent maximalists have just put it : "The EPO and the Licensing Executives Society International have signed a memorandum of understanding with the intention of enabling innovators to make better use of the EPO system [...] The president of the EPO, António Campinos, and the president of the Licensing Executives Society International (LESI), François Painchaud, have signed a memorandum of understanding on bilateral cooperation at LESI’s Winter Planning Meeting in Miami."

"Licensing" just means taxing and those who are doing this represent patent mills rather than innovators. On that same trip there were other revealing activities attributed to Campinos; he also met Andrei Iancu on that visit. Aseet Patel wrote in Watchtroll 2 days ago that "Andrei Iancu has led the charge to improve predictability of patent-eligible subject matter." Rather the opposite; he promotes granting fake patents that are predictably bunk, reducing the legal certainty associated with US patents.

Over the weekend we've surveyed some of the latest software patents to be thrown out by US courts or get wrongly granted by the Office. This gross disparity shows that the USPTO departed from the rule of law (like EPO under Battistelli). The EFF, as it turns out, belatedly realises Iancu was all along trouble.

"The patent trolls' lobby (IAM) responded to the EFF by speaking for trolls, heckling trolls' exposers, and generally being strident as usual."Authored by Joe Mullin under "Patent Trolls" (after had spent nearly a decade covering the subject) was this article ("Entrepreneurs Tell USPTO Director Iancu: Patent Trolls Aren’t Just 'Monster Stories'") on which he later expanded: "For 10 years as a journalist, I listened to entrepreneurs, big & small, complain of patent troll extortion. @uspto director Iancu is wrong to deny the harms that PAEs (trolls) cause. Proud to publish this letter from 24 biz owners who wouldn't stay quiet..."

The EFF said: "The director of the @uspto has said patent trolls are nothing more than "monster stories." Today, we're publishing a letter signed by 24 small businesses that makes clear patent trolls are all too real."

From the corresponding post:

Patent trolls aren’t a myth. They aren’t a bedtime story. Ask a software developer—they’re likely to know someone who has been sued or otherwise threatened by one, if they haven’t been themselves.

Unfortunately, the new director of the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) is in a serious state of denial about patent trolls and the hurt they cause to technologists everywhere. Today a number of small business owners and start-up founders have submitted a letter [PDF] to USPTO Director Andre Iancu telling him that patent trolls remain a real threat to U.S. businesses. Signatories range from mid-sized companies like Foursquare and Life360 to one-person software enterprises like Ken Cooper's. The letter explains the harm, cost, and stress that patent trolls cause businesses.

Patent trolls aren’t a thing that happens once in a while or an exception to the rule. Over the past two decades, troll litigation has become the rule. There are different ways to measure exactly what a “troll” is, but by one recent measurement, a staggering 85 percent of recently filed patent lawsuits in the tech sector were filed by trolls.

That’s almost 9 out of 10 lawsuits being filed by an entity with no real product or service. Because the Patent Office issues so many low-quality software patents, the vast majority of these suits are brought by entities that played no role in the development of the real-world technology they attack. Instead, trolls use vague and overbroad patents to sue the innovators who create products and services. This is how we end up with patent trolls suing people for running an online contest or making a podcast.


This is unfortunately what also happened at the EPO.

The patent trolls lobby (IAM) responded to the EFF by speaking for trolls, heckling trolls' exposers, and generally being strident as usual. It wrote a bunch of tweets like this: "The @unifiedpatents report the EFF links to states that 60% of high-tech litigation was instituted by PAEs last year. The EFF chooses to claim that 85% was instituted by Trolls, which is actually the percentage Unified allocated to all NPEs. Maybe @joemullin could explain why."

IAM is literally funded by patent trolls and also by the EPO's PR firm. IAM is almost literally an extension of the EPO's PR department and it's also lobbying Iancu, who spoke alongside Battistelli at IAM events.

"The EPO's President and Iancu really don't seem to get it. They're consciously aiding trolls."Josh from CCIA ended up feeding the troll (or the patent trolls' lobby) [1, 2, 3] by stating: "But a number of individual inventors operate as trolls. (Eg, Landmark Technology, which Unified classes as an NPE - individual inventors and which accounts for a significant chunk of that category all by itself.) [...] And the individual trolls tend to be far more prolific than actual individual inventors when it comes to lawsuits. So, while some portion of that 25% may be the kind of inventors you describe, the clear likelihood is that the majority are trolls. To me, Joe’s piece holds. [...] If an individual inventor doesn’t practice their patent and seeks to enforce it, aren’t they definitionally an NPE?" (they are, by definition)

The EPO's President and Iancu really don't seem to get it. They're consciously aiding trolls. A day ago the EPO wrote (linking to its "SME" nonsense, pretending to exist in the name/interests of the "small guy"): Negotiation is the preferred way to solve potential infringement issues; litigation is regarded as a last resort."

"Negotiation" is sometimes merely a euphemism for blackmail and extortion, I've told them -- something that the EPO facilitates with low-quality and incorrect grants for patent trolls. These prey the most (or most effectively) on SMEs that aren't able to afford a legal fight (day in court), so they end up settling over patents they know to be bogus.

There's meanwhile this new article by Toby Hopkin and Mark Roberts (J A Kemp) in which they speak of PCT. They say that "granted EP patent may be used to streamline prosecution before other national patent offices of interest," but what if this European Patent is a fake one? Only blackmailing patent trolls benefit. This goes back to Battistelli with his notorious "Early Certainty" (preliminary decisions before facts are even known). To quote:

In 2014, the EPO launched the Early Certainty initiative to speed up the patent granting process. This initiative has resulted in speedier establishment of search reports and a shorter examination procedure. As can be seen from the chart, the result is that the number of EP patents granted since the launch of the initiative has increased far more quickly than the number of patent applications filed. This is confirmed by our experience, in which a quicker turnaround time has been noticeable, with an increasing number of applications proceeding to grant directly after a response to the search report is filed.

While options exist to slow down prosecution if desired, this increased prosecution speed opens up a new possibility for an international filing strategy. The strategy proposed below shows that a granted EP patent can be secured before the 30/31m deadline for further PCT national phasing, especially where a positive WO-ISA is issued by the EPO.

The granted EP patent may be used to streamline prosecution before other national patent offices of interest, especially if a national patent office is part of a Patent Prosecution Highway (PPH) agreement. For example, the IP5 PPH covers the five biggest patent offices, namely China, Japan, Korea, the United States and the EPO.


We've already written a great deal about the problems associated with "Early Certainty" and PPH. They're basically rushed 'judgments' or leap towards conclusions before facts are even assessed. We've already seen how that's misused for raids and embargoes, including at the EPO. Later it turns out that the underlying EPs are bogus.

Recent Techrights' Posts

IBM Has Taken Control of GNOME
Don't expect a successor to be found any time soon
IRC Proceedings: Saturday, August 30, 2025
IRC logs for Saturday, August 30, 2025
 
Autumn Has Come
Autumn should be exciting in all sorts of ways; it'll also mark our anniversary
The UEFI 9/11 - Part IV - External Interference
They all seem to be playing a role in crushing Software Freedom and self-determination for users
Writing and Coding Isn't Always Enough
Last year we had to assume a role we didn't have before: litigants
Links 31/08/2025: Baggage Claim Scams, an Insurrectionist’s War on Culture, and a Sudden Robotics Hype
Links for the day
Gemini Links 31/08/2025: Reviewing Netsurf and Slightly Less Historic Ada Design
Links for the day
Links 31/08/2025: Google Gmail Data Breach and LF Puff Pieces for Pay
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
This is What Google News Has Become
Moments ago
The Slopfarm WebProNews Has Turned Google News Into a Laughing Stock Full of Plagiarism by Slop
If Google News dies of neglect, that's one thing. It's starting to seem like active neglect by Google is a form of participation.
Do What is Moral, as What's Legal Isn't Always Moral
Do what's objectively moral, no matter the costs and the risks
Slopwatch: Google News Assisting Plagiarism and Anti-Linux FUD, Serial Slopper Rips Off Linux-Centric Journalists
This makes the Web a much worse place and lessens the incentive to do journalism
Links 30/08/2025: NVIDIA Fakes Results to Hide a Bubble Already in Implosion Phase, Data Breaches Galore, Important Win for Workers' Union in Canada
Links for the day
Representing and Speaking for Animals
If I ever choose to take this matter to tribunal with animals-centric NGOs on my side, it'll get some press coverage for sure
The UEFI 9/11 - Part II - Campaign of Censorship and Defamation Against Critics
In dictatorships, humour serves an important role. It's tragic.
In Kazakhstan, Yandex Estimated to be 20 Times Bigger Than Microsoft
Bing is measured as down this month
Shutterstock Not Enough? The Register MS Uses Slop Images in Articles (Seemingly More and More Over Time)
Cost-saving trajectory amid office shutdown?
Gemini Links 30/08/2025: Games, PostmarketOS, and Slop
Links for the day
Links 30/08/2025: Imgur Uproar and Many Ukraine Updates (Mediazona Reports Over 200,000 Russians Died for Putin)
Links for the day
How Not to Build Software
code forges that need a Web browser perhaps fill some 'niche' demand
GAFAM and "MATA"
The use of dark humour there hopefully helps illuminate what a lot of "modern" technology became like and how it interacts with human civilisation (to what ends and whose gain)
Birds Are Not "Pests and Vermin", Privacy is Not a Crime, and GNU/Linux is Not 'Hacking Platform'
I could not help but think of Free software analogies
The Sites Should Be Very Fast Again
That issue is now resolved
Flying in 2025
worse than ever before
Activists, Including Technical Activists, Need Not Pursue Affirmation
Techrights doesn't play or participate in a "popularity contest"
The UEFI 9/11 - Part III - Chaos is Scheduled to Happen Second Thursday of September (No Matter What the Microsofters Tell You)
The clock is ticking
Downplaying the Impact of "UEFI 9/11" is a Losing Strategy
we won't publish much whilst on holiday
Government Sites Should Run Free Software
Not proprietary bloatware with buzzwords
LLM Slopfarms Take No Breaks
When people run sites by bots they don't need to worry about "breaks"
GNOME Having a Meltdown Again
Thanks and farewell to Steven Deobald
Gemini Links 30/08/2025: Low Tech and Hunchbin 1.0.6
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Friday, August 29, 2025
IRC logs for Friday, August 29, 2025