No wonder experienced patent examiners (scientists) are fleeing
European Patent Office (EPO) President António Campinos has managed to fool a lot of people, at least in the media. Those who berated Battistelli do not even mention Campinos, who is doing no better than Battistelli (same policies and worse).
"What have they ever done to represent their states? They represent the NPOs, not the states."What about the Administrative Council? It has done nothing to revert or undo illegal policies. Nothing! It's composed mostly of just heads of national patent offices (NPOs), i.e. it's merely a virtual structure that represents patent maximalists. The EPO has just mentioned "representatives of the member states on the Administrative Council" because contact details have changed. What have they ever done to represent their states? They represent the NPOs, not the states.
"These aren't the sorts of people the EPO is supposed to help. It's like law firms staged a coup and won."The EPO is itself like a giant NPO (multinational with immunity) whose main objective is serving trolls and law firms. The EPO is working with LESI, a front group for patent trolls and patent extortion operations. Yesterday it mentioned André Clerix, Sandrine Guillermin and Alison Orr. Check their bios. These aren't the sorts of people the EPO is supposed to help. It's like law firms staged a coup and won.
Two weeks later the EUIPO/EPO are still not tired of pushing these paid-for lies that are laughable. Yesterday the EPO tweeted: "Intellectual property rights-intensive industries generate 45% of total economic activity (GDP) in the EU, amounting to some €6.6 trillion a year."
"That says a lot about the state of 'journalism' these days..."What ridiculous numbers! And companies that have toilet facilities generate close to €20 trillion a year. So what? This sort of propaganda line was parroted in some EPO-connected media, including WIPR. That says a lot about the state of 'journalism' these days... (side story: when WIPR wrote a story about the EPO threatening to sue me the writer got reprimanded and the story was quickly pulled down)
Mitscherlich PartmbB's Sebastian Roth has also just commented on software patents in Europe disguised as something else; "Computer-implemented inventions have recently moved into focus at the European Patent Office (EPO)," he wrote through Lexology. To quote:
Technical Character of Data Structures
[...]
The recent EPO Board of Appeal decision T 2049/12 is concerned with the technical character of data structures, and thus their patentability. The Board establishes in the decision that a data structure has itself a technical character, if it maps to technical features in a technical system: (https://www.epo.org/law-practice/case-law-appeals/recent/t122049eu1.html).
Computer-implemented inventions have recently moved into focus at the European Patent Office (EPO). For instance, the 2018 edition of the Guidelines of Examination has been substantially revised, with computer-implemented inventions a major focus. One important revision concerned data retrieval, data formats and data structures (Part G, Chapter II, 3.6.3 of the guidelines).
To patent a data structure – like for software inventions – the claimed subject matter has to clear two crucial hurdles: patent eligibility (Art. 52(1) EPC) and inventive step (Art. 56 EPC). To overcome the eligibility hurdle, the claimed subject matter needs to have a technical character, i.e., it has to include at least one technical feature. To overcome the inventive step hurdle, the claimed subject matter has to include at least one non-obvious technical feature (only technical features are taken into account for assessing inventive step, e.g., T 0641/00).