Bonum Certa Men Certa

Corporate Media Will Never Cover the EPO's Violations of the Law With Respect to Patent Scope

EPO management is giving out patents it knows to be bunk, invalid

Special water
They would patent 'special' water and air too (if it wouldn't have caused backlash)



Summary: The greed-driven gold rush for patents has resulted in a large pool of European Patents that have no legitimacy and are nowadays associated with low legal certainty; the media isn't interested in covering such a monumental disaster that poses a threat to the whole of Europe

THE domain of patents rarely receives media coverage; it's certainly uncommon in Europe. There are some ads (for law firms) disguised as 'news', but lawyers and attorneys aren't journalists and their 'coverage' or 'columns' are just shameless self-promotion and lobbying. It's all about money.



"They continue to spam Scottish media, marketing European Patents under the guise of Brexit 'news'."Here's a new example from yesterday. HeraldScotland published this fake 'article' from "Graham Murnane [who] is a qualified UK and European Patent Attorney based in Murgitroyd’s Glasgow office."

So a Scottish patent law firm is at it again. They continue to spam Scottish media, marketing European Patents under the guise of Brexit 'news'. Remember last week's example from Marks & Clerk, which used another Scottish paper to insult Scotland and urge people to pursue patents at Marks & Clerk? It was far from the first time. They had done it before in Scottish media -- a fact that we documented in articles such as:

  1. Marks & Clerk is Still Pushing Patent Maximalism Agenda in Europe and Britain, Including UPC/UPCA/Unitary Patent (UP)
  2. Marks & Clerk Blames Battistelli's Victims, the Boards of Appeal, Whose Job Guarded Patent Quality
  3. Software Patents Are a Dying Breed, So Marks & Clerk and Other Legal Monoliths Promote the EPO's Buzzwords (Loopholes)
  4. UPC Puff Piece in the Scottish Media is Just an Advertisement by Marks & Clerk


The latest puff piece says this:

In these times of change in relation to many things European, one thing that won’t change is how businesses protect their innovations.

A lot of people are surprised when I tell them that the UK is, and will continue to be, part of the European Patent Office (EPO).

The EPO is not an EU institution, so whatever happens to our relationship with the EU, the UK will continue to be an EPO member state.


Well, duh. How is that even news? But how valid would the patents be in the UK? They aim for quantity now, not quality.

Yesterday the EPO wrote: "The Maltese and Moroccan #patent registers are now available via deep links from the European Patent Register."

As if there's much of value (in the patents sense) to be found there. The EPO just wants to add all countries to its group/syndication, much like NATO, rendering nobody safe from litigation with fake European Patents (or attacks from Russia in NATO's case).

"They aim for quantity now, not quality."When we speak of fake European Patents we mean European Patents that would not survive a court's scrutiny and must therefore not be granted in the first place. Even SUEPO (Staff Union of the European Patent Office) recently complained about these.

The EPO is again boasting about software patents and applications ("Europe has witnessed a marked upturn in blockchain patent filing since 2015, with more than two thirds of applications being filed at the EPO," the EPO wrote yesterday). European software patents called "blockchain" are not valid and that's what these are; they're just software patents, by the EPO's own admission. António Campinos promotes this nonsense in his "blog", so he too is personally culpable. Will all these patents fall in an avalanche some time soon? Maybe.

"Will all these patents fall in an avalanche some time soon? Maybe."A firm that mentioned it before (as we noted at the time regarding judges' lack of impartiality) had posted about it in its own site, perhaps realising just how realistic the prospect is (that software patents would all be invalidated). Haven't we learned from what happened a few weeks ago in the UK Supreme Court?

Mondaq has this fresh copy of an article by Gordon Harris and Paul Inman (Gowling WLG) on fake European Patents i.e. patents EPO granted only to be found invalid by British courts. In their own words:

On the other hand, Lord Hodge considered it well established that although not bound to do so, the courts in the UK "should normally follow the settled jurisprudence for the EPO (especially decisions of its Enlarged Board of Appeal) on the interpretation of the European Patent Convention in the interests of uniformity, especially when the question is one of principle".


Today's European Patents are very dubious and even EPO staff complains about these. SUEPO estimates that tens of thousands of fake European Patents are being granted every year (non-compliant w.r.t. EPC).

Recent Techrights' Posts

Get Ready for Increase in PIPs and RAs at IBM, Red Hat, and Other Companies Devoured by IBM
IBM's "market cap" has just fallen to 199 billion dollars and it has about 70 billion dollars in debt
Like Kyndryl, Multiple Securities Fraud Investigations Into IBM
Remember what happened to Kyndryl
Who Next After IBM? (Bubbles Don't Last Forever)
the demise of companies with "ai" in their name/domain
GNU/Linux Estimated at 8% "Market Share" Today (in statCounter)
Days ago it said 7.1%, then 7.3% or 7.4%
 
IBM Down to $211.20, the Market in General is Up
No recovery for IBM today
UEFI 'Secure Boot' Still Not Secure in 2026, New Holes (or Bypasses) Still Being Found
In 2026 there are still many people who call it "secure" and pretend to themselves that it is about security. It's not. It never was.
Gemini Links 15/07/2026: Lab 6, Retrospective 2, and "Getting Back Into Gemini"
Links for the day
Links 15/07/2026: "Gianni Infantino Under Fire" and "Todd Blanche's Record Raises Alarming Questions About the Future of the US DOJ"
Links for the day
Allegedly More IBM RAs (Mass Layoffs) Same Day the Stock Crashed
No paper trail, so it never happened, right?
Techrights Was Right: Microsoft's Layoffs Tally Was False, Far More People Are Being Sacked
"The Xbox Bloodbath Is Actually Way Bigger Than It Seems"
IBM Sinking to Lowest Levels Since 2024, But Will Any Executives Be Arrested for Securities Fraud?
52-week high of $332.46 and now down to $212.94
Microsoft Whistleblowers Say "The Entire Thing is Going to Fall Apart" and There Are "No Benefits" to Being Part of Microsoft
"Multiple sources, who chose to remain anonymous for fear of reprisal"
IBM's Crash Continues Today
Stocks go up and down, but they don't typically go down by over 25% in a single day
How Long Before GNU/Linux is Measured at 20% in Chad?
The main way to get people to adopt Vista 11 is to sell them a new PCs and in poor countries it happens a lot less
Making Techrights Faster Down Under (Australia and New Zealand)
there's more to life than speed
Strikes at the EPO Approved for the Rest of the Year, "€1,3 Billion Taken From Staff Income"
Intensity can be revised and increased over time
Focusing on What We Really Ought to Focus on
Today we'll focus mostly on EPO affairs
Violence is Not a Joke
"Police say Widdecombe killing was targeted but motive remains unclear"
How to Properly Measure the Performance of a Patent Office
A "contribution from staff [which] is published by SUEPO Munich."
EPO "Cocaine Communication Manager" - Part XIV - "Not One of Us" (How the Group Dubbed by EPO Insiders "Alicante Mafia" Pushes Out Talent, Replacing It With Friends)
misuses the EPO's budget like it is a fountain of money for his friends
LibreTech Collective Abandons Microsoft GitHub and All Other Proprietary Software
Each time a project eliminates control by a hostile party it stands to gain
Links 15/07/2026: US Regime "Cuts Two Utah National Monuments by More Than 90%", "Hormuz is Less Crucial Than It Was"
Links for the day
Gemini Links 15/07/2026: Old Computer Challenge, "Trial by Fire", LLM Slop Destroying Companies
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Tuesday, July 14, 2026
IRC logs for Tuesday, July 14, 2026
Heshan de Silva-Weeramuni Becomes Program Manager at the Free Software Foundation (FSF)
Heshan's addition means that the FSF is growing after a solid financial year (best in years)
Michael McMahon Explains Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) Attacks on the Free Software Foundation (FSF)
The real solution is a curb on botnets. A mitigation strategy, however, would involve going static.
Matters of Public Safety
"Police say Ann Widdecombe killed in 'targeted attack' as motive investigated"
The Register MS and Its Promotional Microsoft Content
It's not too hard to see what the business model of The Register MS is
IBM: From $306 to $212 in 7 Days, IBM Won't Go Up More Than 50% to Where It Was at 'Peak Vapourware'
There's a limit to how much or how long a company can fake its performance and its potential [...] Early this morning a few insiders ("traders") cashed in on their "pump-n-dump"
Red Hat Staff Needs to Start Looking for the Next Job
Workers can conveniently lie or deny it to themselves, but waves of PIPs ("silent layoffs") will sweep over more and more units or teams as the company runs out of money to play with
IBM the Next Bear Stearns
IBM cannot recover if all it has to show is vapourware
IBM Stock Collapses and It's Only the Beginning
Will GAFAM soon follow and will any executives be arrested for the accounting fraud insiders have long cautioned about?
I'll Be Extremely Difficult for Microsoft to Sell Any XBox Consoles Now
Microsoft understands this
How Software Freedom Would Benefit Everybody
A society that denies control by greedy companies would do a disservice to monopolies and improve all services to citizens
Links 14/07/2026: Harsh But Also Fair Criticism of Hey Hi (AI) Slop, 'Open' AI Shuts Down Its Own Products as Funds Run Out
Links for the day
Gemini Links 14/07/2026: Old CD Binder and AWK
Links for the day
In Defence of Physical Tickets
Tickets are not some "app" and not some "code" on some "screen"
Microsoft Layoffs Not Limited to XBox (False Narrative in the Mainstream Media)
Microsoft is becoming less relevant and workforce reductions won't end any time soon
Links 14/07/2026: Plagiarism Spun as "Training", Zelensky Announces Leadership Shuffle
Links for the day
The Register MS Has Just Published "AI" Webspam That Mentions "AI" 54 Times. It Was Paid to Do This.
Who pays for all this "AI" hype or "buzz"?
Gemini Links 14/07/2026: Self-Advocacy Online; "The Internet Is Dead: How the Web Lost Its Human Soul"
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Monday, July 13, 2026
IRC logs for Monday, July 13, 2026
Modern Technology Harms Women More Than Men (Because the 'Tech Bros' Who Dominate STEM Have a Poor View of Women)
“Privacy protects us from abuses by those in power, even if we're doing nothing wrong at the time of surveillance.”
Internet Relay Chat Trolls Are Not Expressing Opinions, They Are Saboteurs
For the record
Links 14/07/2026: "The Freedom of Information Act Is in Serious Trouble"; Irish Datacenters Use Up Almost 25% of Total Energy
Links for the day
The Register MS: "AI" Puff Pieces for Sale, Not Journalism at All, Just "Webspam"
The Register MS isn't the sole culprit
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Sunday, July 12, 2026
IRC logs for Sunday, July 12, 2026
How We Do Techrights (and What's Changing Next Week)
Many former news sites no longer yield much non-meaningless news (not anymore); there's a gap to be filled