Bonum Certa Men Certa

Europe Will Pay a High Price for Software Patents Advocacy by António Campinos in Europe's Patent-Granting Authority

A fish rots from the head down(wards)

High price



Summary: EPO President António Campinos -- like Iancu at the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) -- is still promoting software patents in Europe even though such patents are clearly detrimental to Europe's interests

THE LAW (or the rule of law) and the interests of Europe do not matter to the EPO. All the EPO cares about is making money (for itself). That money is in turn being misused, e.g. 'smuggled' to the bank accounts of EPO officials and their relatives, colleagues elsewhere, friends...



"Remember that today's EPO is all about money. Just money."The EPO, suffice to say, is often acting more like a crime syndicate than a patent office. It's a nice "cover" though.

Remember that today's EPO is all about money. Just money. Management of the European Patent Office/Organisation (EPO) is pressuring examiners not to do their job properly but only fast, with particular numbers of "products" reached (otherwise it's "incompetence" and may lead to unemployment).

What do lawyers and attorneys have to say? Not much. They can't complain much. More patents mean more money for them, too. Unless this whole system collapses at a later stage (which is the only thing that sometimes worries them). They keep selling us the lie that under Campinos everything is back to normal and everything is fine. They strive for stability in patent maximalism, human rights be damned.

“It’s basically a lawyers‘ lobbying entity and obviously they love Iancu.”
      --Patent blogger
In "Mission Impossible? How to Effectively Draft the Background Section of a Patent Specification in Compliance with Both USPTO and EPO Practice" Enrica Bruno now gives tips for tricking examiners. Watchtroll is a toxic site, so such articles are a perfect fit. "Enrica Bruno is the founder and managing partner of Steinfl + Bruno LLP," the bio says. "Enrica is an EPO-qualified U.S. Patent Attorney..."

Moreover, yesterday morning Patent Docs published yet more ads (which make up the majority of the blog nowadays), including Strafford's "Webinar on Drafting Software Patents" that says:

Strafford will be offering a webinar entitled "Drafting Software Patents to Survive Section 101 and AIA Challenges -- Anticipating and Minimizing the Risk of 101, 103 Rejections, Recent Court Guidance" on March 20, 2019 from 1:00 to 2:30 pm (EDT).


Rather than accept the stance of SCOTUS, which is repeatedly 'affirmed' from the bottom at the Federal Circuit and the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB), the patent maximalists are looking for yet more workarounds. Are they pursuing honest legal conduct or just trickery? The same question can be asked about the EPO's (mis)interpretation of the EPC.

We see that Watchtroll's latest article is promoting patents on life or patent monopolies on human genetics in "Post-Myriad Legal and Policy Considerations for Patenting Genetic Inventions" (Myriad is related to Alice and Mayo in €§ 101, more so the latter).

A reader has meanwhile sent us this headsup on "Licensing Executives Society's take on Alice," which can be found here. Like others in the patent microcosm they are trying to solicit more letters and calling every single letter which opposes software patents "EFF" (as if only the EFF opposes these!).

"It’s basically a lawyers‘ lobbying entity and obviously they love Iancu," someone has told me, stating that he would spend more time covering this issue. LES and LESI are mates with Campinos, who met with them on the same journey undertaken to meet Iancu just weeks ago. As reported last month:

The European Patent Office has signed a bilateral cooperation agreement with the Licensing Executives Society International (LESI).


We already wrote (at the time) why this should be interpreted as Campinos being 'in bed' with the patent trolls' lobby rather than science and technology -- a worrying but consistent trend from him. Europe's future will suffer greatly from this man and the person who gave him the job (Battistelli) in another grotesque act of nepotism.

Recent Techrights' Posts

Where Microsoft's Bing Cannot Even Reach 1% "Market Share"
Looking at "I" countries
Links 16/02/2026: Barack Obama Responds to Racist Cheeto and Benjamin Mako Hill Studies Online Communities
Links for the day
IBM Reduces the Thresholds for Acceptance (and the Salaries)
Are chatbots good enough as IBM staff?
When It Comes to Rust, Keep All the Eyes on the Ball (Technical and Legal Perils, Sustainability Questions)
It's not about security or politics
 
Only One in 50 Saudis Would Use Microsoft for Search, Almost Same as Would Use Russia's Yandex
If statCounter is to be trusted
Microsoft's "AI" Concerns Are All Indian (or Low-Paid Workers Who Work Extra Hours Unpaid)
portraying charlatans and frauds like they're some kind of visionaries and luminaries
Microsoft Turned Bing Into Censorship Machine of China, But Bing Is Pegged at a Mere 2% in Asia, Yandex is Bigger
Expect many Bing layoffs some time soon (like in past years)
Just Like The Register MS, Conde Nast's Ars Technica Has Just Publicly Admitted That It Published Fake Articles (Slop) Made by LLMs About Serious Subjects
Conde Nast might shut Ars Technica down to escape the bad publicity/association
Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA) Way Too Slow to Respond to Financial Fraud at Law Firms, in Effect Helping Those Law Firms Defraud Many More People (Fleecing Clients)
Who will hold the SRA accountable for this?
Techrights Became a Hub for News That IBM/Red Hat Doesn't Want You to See (and Pays Mainstream Media to Distract From)
the more viciously the notorious organisation attacks the reporter, the greater the interest in what the reporter has to say
EPO's Central Staff Committee on Fourth Technical Meeting, Two Days Before First of (At Least) 4 Winter Strikes at the Second-Largest European Institution
“future orientations on the salary adjustment procedure”
IBM's Collapse Continues, Half of EU Countries to Have Mass Layoffs, "IBM Clearly Disinvests From Europe" Says IBM European Works Council
Recent publication
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Monday, February 16, 2026
IRC logs for Monday, February 16, 2026
Gemini Links 17/02/2026: Alpenglow Industries' Closure and Gemini Server Issues
Links for the day
The Southern California Linux Expo (“SCALE”) or SCALE 23x Becomes Microsoft
It's not supporting the event, it is buying it.
Microsoft to Focus on Name-Dropping Buzzwords to Distract From Declining Business, IBM RAs (Layoffs) With Staff Stack-Ranked
Calling everything cloud or reclassifying as "AI"
Another EPO Strike One Week From Now, Local Staff Committee Munich to Discuss It This Week
Campinos MIA while Office staff goes on strike at least 4 times
Gemini Links 16/02/2026: Task Completed by Avoidance and "Playing Again With Akkoma"
Links for the day
Happy Birthday (or Anniversary) to SoylentNews
"Happy Birthday SoylentNews"
Techrights' Architecture
Stability is the main goal
Linux Foundation Continues Falling Off a Cliff in Geminispace
Gemini Protocol will turn 7 this summer
Links 16/02/2026: cURL’s Daniel Stenberg Asserts That Slop is DDoSing Free Software, But Still Uses a Plagiarism and GPL-Violating Blender (Microsoft GitHub)
Links for the day
The Techrights Community Never Needed Money, Only Goodwill
We accomplish things by a track record of suppressed facts
"AboutCode" is a Microsoft Proxy and Microsoft's Acquisition of the OSI Advances Via OSI Moles
presenting direct evidence anybody can verify
Social Control Media is Just a Digital Weapon
Social control media is not social and not media
They Will Call Smart People "Luddites"
Is society "seeing the light"?
Microsoft Amutable Already Reveals That Its Focus Is Not Linux, It'll Promote "Remote Attestation"
This is basically an attack on Software Freedom, even if they toss around the brand "Linux"
More People in Chad Move to GNU/Linux
Last year we began to see GNU/Linux rising there - a trend which continues this year
Dr. Andy Farnell on How Universities and Culture of Education Got Crushed by "Technofascist Nightmare"
Farnell says he "already soft-quit in [his] mind"
Debt of Broadcom Grew by More Than 50%, Broadcom is Deeper in Debt Than Google
Expect many more cuts
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Sunday, February 15, 2026
IRC logs for Sunday, February 15, 2026
Links 15/02/2026: Slop, Politics, and Gemini
Links for the day
Small is Beautiful (in Cascading Style Sheets/Inheritance Rules)
If done correctly, pages can take a tenth of a second to fully load
Microsoft Has Fallen to New Lows in Hong Kong This Year
That Windows "market share" falls there is perhaps expected
Free Software Foundation (FSF) Raised About 1.5 Million Dollars This Winter, Almost 50% More Than in All of 2024 Combined
Verbal advocacy goes a long way
Spread the Word About EPO Strikes and Patent Injustices in Europe
Corruption in Europe is a real thing
The Register MS is Promoting Slop, Promotion Connected to Microsoft (Trying to Replace Judges With Microsoft)
marketing spun as "science"
He Did Not Have Enough Souls
A lot of the subjects we cover here no other site dares touch
"Mix Vale" is a Slopfarm
3 "articles" about "ubuntu"
Links 15/02/2026: Roy Medvedev Dead at 100, Rise of "YouTube Politicians"
Links for the day
Links 15/02/2026: How Alexey Navalny Was Executed by Putin, Erdogan Helping Iran
Links for the day
IBM Fedora Keeps Promoting Slop, Red Hat Has Been Turned Into Chaff and Trash to Help IBM's Stock (With "AI" Storytelling)
Red Hat's Fedora is an old brand (20+ years). It no longer stands for what it meant to people in the Fedora Core days (I was a Fedora user back then).
What IBM Said About 2026 Layoffs and What's Happening in Practice
t'll leave IBM at the very bottom, in due course (customers will notice something profound has changed)
Gemini Links 15/02/2026: "Already Midway February" and Loadbars Remembered
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Saturday, February 14, 2026
IRC logs for Saturday, February 14, 2026