Bonum Certa Men Certa

The EPO Cannot Guard Fake European Patents From Scrutiny (in the Long Run)



Put It Somewhere Else Patrick: You take all these fake patents. Then make sure independent counts don't touch them.



Summary: Legal certainty associated with newly-granted European Patents is already pretty low and as long as the EPO refuses to acknowledge that its courts (or boards) lack autonomy the EPO merely brushes a growing problem under the rug

ANY TIME European Patent Office (EPO) presidents promote software patents and demote/punish judges who can put an end to these illegal patents they merely reinforce the idea or the "perception" -- a word they habitually use -- of institutional lawlessness. President António Campinos is happy to crush perfectly legitimate challenges to President Battistelli's illegal attacks on judges, which likely render years of rulings legally invalid (remember what ILO-AT said about hundreds of cases involving disciplinary actions against EPO staff as well).



Jane Evenson and Ella Wells (CMS Cameron McKenna Nabarro Olswang LLP) have put in Lexology their new article about the "Revised Rules of Procedure of the European Patent Office Boards of Appeal, which are due to come into effect from 1 January 2020."

It's quite long, there's nothing new or exciting in there (we wrote about that countless/dozens of times before, stressing that nothing was done to restore independence), and it says:

The Rules of Procedure of the Boards of Appeal are the rules that govern the way appeals are conducted at the European Patent Office (EPO). The EPO has recently approved changes to these rules, which are due to come into effect from 1 January 2020. The new rules (known as "RPBA 2020") can be found here. The EPO has said that the aims of the revisions are to increase (i) efficiency, by reducing the number of issues to be treated, (ii) predictability for the parties, and (iii) harmonisation.

[...]

In addition to the changes listed below, a list of appeal hearings expected to be heard by each Board will now be published at the beginning of every working year, allowing parties to more effectively budget and plan for hearings.


How many hearings? With a backlog of 10,000+ cases (appeals) justice itself is clearly not a priority at the EPO, only mass-granting operations. And speaking of such operations, Bart van Wezenbeek has just highlighted this case of Bayer, highlighting the limits of oppositions as well (under pressure to hurriedly decide):

Bayer was not granted an injunction in preliminary proceedings because the Court found that there was a serious chance that Bayer’s patent would be held invalid. The fact that the patent had survived opposition before the EPO was of no influence since new, closer prior art had subsequently been found.


So an actual court found a patent that even EPO oppositions had upheld to be likely invalid. Regardless of it, embargoes were attempted by Monsanto's owner with its notorious past. This is the kind of problem caused by EPO injustice -- a problem that isn't at all being addressed by EPO management. The avalanche will come one day.

Recent Techrights' Posts

The Word About the Upcoming Talk by Richard Stallman - Scheduled for Friday This Week - Has Spread ("The Cost of Freedom," Lausanne, Switzerland)
So the word is spreading
Microsoft Front Group Starts the Year by Championing Underage (or Child) Labour
the fake 'FSF'
Chatbots Are Not Data-Driven, They're Human-Censored and Rely on Wage Slaves (and Sometimes Unpaid Volunteers)
This is the Microsoft wage slavery
 
Links 13/01/2025: Conflicts, Prisoner Exchange, and Homes on Fire
Links for the day
Angola: Microsoft Windows Falls Below 10%
Microsoft has a really bad 2024 in Africa
[Meme] Twitter ("X") Has Been Grooming Radicals Since 2022
Musk's very own "grooming gang"
[Meme] What Free Speech Ought to Mean
It does not sound like RMS suggests anything other than quitting social control media
Gemini Links 13/01/2025: RestFest, Yule, and Deedum
Links for the day
Modern Web Browsers as Web Censorship Software
We continue to recommend Geminispace
Two Weeks From Now Dr. Richard Stallman Speaks at The Summit of Future 2025 (India)
he will be giving a "Keynote Address" in India
Microsoft is Tight With Money: It's About the Salaries ('Cost' of the Workers)
a question of cost, not skill
Google Got People Sort of Addicted to Android So It Can Cash in (Services, App Store, Advertising) Decades Later
This is not software freedom
The Free Software Foundation Reaches 370k Dollars in Funding, Due Date is January 17th When Richard Stallman is Guest of Honour in Lausanne (Switzerland)
Even fellow board members seem unaware of it
Record Lows for Windows (Microsoft) in Botswana
The market share of Vista 11 is seen as going down
Preserving Deleted Articles About Bill Gates Talking Like a Drug Dealer About Computer Users
Now it's 2025. Different challenge.
Links 13/01/2025: Disinformation, Social Control Media Actively Promoting Nazism, and Catchup With Ukraine
Links for the day
TPM Boosters Inside Debian (TPM Isn't About Security, It is About Control Over Users and Their Machines)
We're not rushing to any conclusions
Aaron Swartz Died 12 Years Ago After a Vicious Government Campaign to Stop Him
The Aaron Swartz story is a reminder of the importance of having verifiable/verified information out there for the general public to see
Links 13/01/2025: GitLab Enshittification and Minimalism and Efficiency with Gemini Protocol
Links for the day
Links 13/01/2025: Hardware, Health, and Conflicts
Links for the day
Microsoft Appears to Have Fallen to Only 15% in Maldives
This is a problem for Microsoft
Rumours of IBM Canada Layoffs
We'll keep a vigilant eye on this
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Sunday, January 12, 2025
IRC logs for Sunday, January 12, 2025
Bots Covering Debian Releases
It would be quite safe to guess that chatbots were at least partly leveraged for that text
Gemini Links 12/01/2025: No Country For Old Men, Burned Homes, and "Planet P is Clean"
Links for the day
Slopwatch: Brittany Day and Brian Fagioli Are Still at It, Googlebombing "Linux" With LLM Slop (Taking Away Traffic From the Articles They're Plagiarising)
Some more sites that used to cover GNU/Linux have turned into slopfarms
Links 12/01/2025: Microsoft Admits It's Laying Off Staff Only Where Staff is "Expensive" (Race to the Bottom)
Links for the day
[Meme] Being High on Drugs Isn't Happiness (Likewise, Being a "Star" in Social Control Media is Temporary)
Many entities - or people - will regret telling everybody "follow me on Twitter"
[Meme] They Say That RMS Says the "F" Word (Freedom) Too Much...
About 32.7k US dollars are now left for the FSF to raise (in 6 days)
Links 12/01/2025: More Sanctions Against Russia, SCOTUS Signals Fentanylware (TikTok) Ban Will Stay
Links for the day
[Meme] A Jihad Against Servers the User Controls
We need to strive for and work towards greater control by users over "their" servers
Microsoft Azure-Only Bugs in "Linux" Can "Compromise the System."
From ubuntu.com and linux.org a few days ago
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Saturday, January 11, 2025
IRC logs for Saturday, January 11, 2025
Gemini Links 12/01/2025: DHL Express Does Not Deliver, Oddmuse Update
Links for the day
Links 11/01/2025: Social Control Media Facing Sanctions, Carter Respected at Funeral
Links for the day
If TikTok (China) Has the Rights of American Persons, Then ByteDance Can be Sentenced to Death
TikTok - like Julian Assange - does not enjoy any protections of the First Amendment and since it's not a person it would lack these protections as an American company, too
After a Year of Layoffs in Microsoft Nigeria (and Microsoft in Africa at Large) Windows Falls to New Lows and Bing Falls to 0.46% "Market Share"
Of course Microsoft gave bribes in Nigeria to suppress GNU/Linux adoption
An Important Lesson About Patents and Patent Maximalism (They Drive People and Companies Away)
This previously happened in Texas, where companies perceived their presence (in any form) to be a liability as patent trolls could drag them to friendly courts and win "damages"
When It Comes to Fentanylware (TikTok), a Digital Weapon of a Hostile Entity, Common Dreams is Jumping the Shark Again (Years After It Ran Out of Steam or Money)
Or maybe it likes the agenda promoted (curated) by Fentanylware (TikTok) and its parent company, Bytedance or Chinese Community Party (CPP)
BetaNews is Now Officially a Spamfarm With Phantom Authors and Fake Text (SPAM and Linkspam Made With LLM Slop)
That's it, the site is virtually dead now (maybe that was the plan all along)
Hazem Abbas of medevel is Ruining His Site With LLM Slop
Some of his articles are original, but now everything is suspect
[Meme] Real and Fake (or "several influential "open source" organizations [which] have come to be dominated by large companies")
The Free Software Foundation has not sold out
Free Software Foundation: Anchoring the FSF in its values
Original by Free Software Foundation
GNU/Linux Surges to All-Time Highs in Greenland, Windows Sinks to All-Time Lows
a lot of GNU/Linux gets detected there lately
Microsoft's "Donald Trump First" Doctrine
national deficits growing
Microsoft in Trouble as Azure Breaks and Only Days After Promising Investment in "Datacentres" Construction of Actual Datacentres Paused (Expect More Azure Layoffs Very Soon)
No wonder many people who got trapped inside Azure quit Azure, which keeps bleeding (losses and layoffs)
Gemini Links 11/01/2025: Wildfire, Militia and the Mole, IRC vs Social Control Media
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Friday, January 10, 2025
IRC logs for Friday, January 10, 2025