Published Sunday:

Summary: The mainstream media has been calling just about everything "HEY HI!" (AI), but what it typically refers to is a family of old algorithms being applied in possibly new areas; patent maximalists in eastern Asia and the West hope that this mainstream media's obsession can be leveraged to justify new kinds of patents on code

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e have recently published several articles about how the European Patent Office (EPO) and U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) leveraged a bunch of meaningless buzzwords and misnomers to bypass whatever barriers exist to software patenting. It happened again in Korea last week [1, 2]. António Campinos still promotes software patents in Europe using the "AI" hype like Battistelli did and sometimes the nonsense that is "4IR" or "Industry 4.0" or whatever the media fancies (or paid to fancy; the EPO paid some publishers to promote these terms and the money was disguised with the veneer of "study" or "research").

"The EPO facilitates such patents mostly through buzzwords; it doesn’t care what European courts say."Earlier this week D Young & Co LLP's Arun Roy and Jonathan Jackson wrote about misusing the "blockchain" hype wave to get illegal software patents (that actual courts would throw out). Other law firms have just mentioned that ludicrous "AI taskforce" -- a Trojan horse by which to enable software patents worldwide, in clear defiance of courts, using the "HEY HI!" hype wave (see the new paper from Prof. Clark D. Asay, entitled "Artificial Stupidity").

To quote:

On June 13th 2019, the heads of the five largest patent offices in the world held their annual meeting in Incheon, Korea. The five patent offices, commonly known as the IP5 consist of the Korean Intellectual Property Office (KIPO), European Patent Office (EPO), Japan Patent Office (JPO), China National Intellectual Property Administration (CNIPA) and United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO). These offices are said to handle over 85% of the world’s patent applications. Apart from the five heads of the IP5, the meeting was attended by the Director of WIPO, Francis Gurry and chaired by KIPO Commissioner, Park Wonjoo. Representatives of the IP5 held discussions on various subjects including classification of emerging technologies, enhanced work sharing and harmonization of patent practices between the Office’s. Talks were also held in order to bring improvement to the Global Dossier services. The highlight of the event was the decision to collaborate with each other in order to launch a New Emerging Technologies and AI Taskforce that’s aims to establish initiatives to harness global technological developments. The next Annual meeting of the IP5 will take place in 2020 at CNIPA.

So the low-quality (patent quality) Chinese patent office will be next to lead? It's the only patent office (among the large ones) that explicitly permits software patents, right? The EPO facilitates such patents mostly through buzzwords; it doesn't care what European courts say. EPO officials don't even appear in court when summoned to participate (over allegations of their corruption in Zagreb). It's worth noting that Topić IP, Željko Topić's private outfit, is still marked as "under construction" (the English page). He left half a year ago, so now he's 'monetising' a career of abuse in Croatia and the EPO (Munich, Germany). Above the law? Certainly. Would anyone look for legal advice from such people? Asking such people to advise on law is like asking pedophiles for child daycare recommendations. ⬆