THE European Patent Office's (EPO) scandals interest us because they are connected to other scandals. If they weren't, how would we be able to publish over 3,000 articles on the matter? António Campinos and Benoît Battistelli are, in our view, a bit like players or actors in a broader game. They're given instructions regarding policies and together with the Council they implement corrosive policies, which include more than just software patents (which actual software professionals in Europe reject). ILO, WIPO, and various political establishments are willing to play along, turn a blind eye, and occasionally signal to the public -- for a mere impression -- that they're getting abuses under control. Nobody is being held accountable for anything while hard-working people have their lives destroyed; some are driven to suicide. If that's a rather depressing panorama, then tough luck; reality can be hard to digest sometimes. This is not the fault of the EU by the way; the US has similar and almost identical issues. This is part of a global trend.
"This is not the fault of the EU by the way; the US has similar and almost identical issues. This is part of a global trend."This problem is not unique to the EPO either. We've seen that before, e.g. in France Télécom. We'll have published another part about France Télécom by tomorrow morning. Part 3 of the series is now published and Parts 4-7 are ready to go, probably one per day. We might increase pace of publication, based on ongoing events. We have the capacity to speed up a bit. But we do not want to overwhelm the readers (information overload) and some of the research is still ongoing. At the same time attention is paid to current events, such as yesterday's hearing. We are constantly watching, and shall report on, the Breton hearings etc. People send us pointers, so there are many eyes and brains included. Many sources of use are limited to the French language (which I personally cannot read), but we are helped by people to whom French is a mother's tongue. We work really hard on the Breton series. It takes a lot of energy out of us. But anything we publish, especially in the English language, will hopefully help spread information, together with much-needed citations. A lot of that stuff isn't secret, it's just not properly disseminated, especially not in English.
Without further ado, let's discuss what happens in Europe's patent system, which over time gets tilted more and more to favour rich people rather than inventors. Many of these rich people aren't even European and the "small players" tend to be patent trolls, not scientists. We believe that to be an understood consensus among EPO examiners as well, judging by publications put forth by staff representatives. The concern they have is a very legitimate one. An examiner's pride is derived from advancing science, not protecting some foreign monopoly that spies on billions of people.
"An examiner's pride is derived from advancing science, not protecting some foreign monopoly that spies on billions of people."Sadly, we're nowadays witnessing a certain betrayal from our politicians, both national and pan-national. It is becoming increasingly apparent who they really work for or whose agenda they advance (or who they represent). All that we, the public, can do about it is expose them using words. The pen is mightier than the sword and verbal response is a lot more effective than violence or -- God forbid! -- assassinations. As long as we stick to facts and can support the allegations, we are exposing bad actors. Those aren't character assassinations if they're based on truth.
Earlier this week Benjamin Henrion highlighted this report in our IRC channels. The title is "Fractus at the European Parliament promoting respect for IP" [sic]
What does the European Parliament hope to accomplish by this? Reaffirm accusations it serves only the rich and the powerful while misusing terms like "SMEs"?
We'll come back to it in a moment.
Henrion brought up -- both here and in Twitter -- these responses from Breton on this matter [PDF]. "Breton's answers are here," he said, adding that "the one on patents still does not address on how SMEs are supposed to defend themselves [...] Breton for patent inflation, SMEs still cannot defend themselves: "So far, only nine percent of our SMEs use IP and as a result, their inventions risk not being commercialised in Europe.""
"The so-called 'SMEs' they chose (cherry-picked) have come under scrutiny online, but on they go with their propaganda."This is consistent with some EPO propaganda. EPO managers do not care about SMEs; they actively discriminate against them and then emit face-saving tweets like this new one: "Continuous innovation supported by patents allows technology-based SMEs to compete with large companies. That's one of the conclusions of our SME case studies."
Whose cases? The so-called 'SMEs' they chose (cherry-picked) have come under scrutiny online, but on they go with their propaganda. Another new tweet: "This study shows how European SMEs with diverse profiles leverage European patents to sustain growth in Europe & cites concrete case studies..."
They keep posting that stock photography with links to their so-called 'study', which is basically a Big Lie. They then retweeted another nonsensical claim, citing the EPO itself: "European start-ups and other SMEs rely heavily on patents to protect their innovations and grow their business, and account for one out of every five European patents filed. Key findings: https://bit.ly/2NXUNYB ."
"To understand how they crafted this propaganda look at what 'businesses' they chose to 'assess'."This is misleading nonsense. It's false. This 'study' is a lie designed and funded to distract from the simple reality that EPO harms SMEs. The EPO soon emitted more SME 'spam', this time with #IPforSMEs (they do this every day or every other day; it has gone on for about 2 years so far).
To understand how they crafted this propaganda look at what 'businesses' they chose to 'assess'.
This brings us back to the European Parliament, which together with the EPO and EUIPO habitually amplifies the Big Lie. "No respect for patent troll," Henrion responded to the above ("respect for IP").
Does the European Parliament think respecting patent trolls would make the EU more popular? This is patently dumb. And look at the logos in this page: IP Europe (litigation fanatics), US CoC, GIPC, and the EU. Why does the EU associate itself with US imperialists and front groups of American robber barons? Massive shot in its own foot! Patent despots like these being displayed alongside the EU's logo would only reaffirm allegations that the EU works for the US. To be more specific, in this particular case the EU advances the agenda of few but very large American corporations.
"One might joke that those law firms are like "agents of occupation" (or corporate colonialism)."In some people's eyes, this is something to be championed and treated as desirable. After all, there are some law firms in Europe whose biggest clients are those American corporations. Nothing for them to lose, only to gain, right? One might joke that those law firms are like "agents of occupation" (or corporate colonialism).
This concept of "corporate colonialism" isn't a novel one; there are all sorts of terms one can ascribe to the concept (sometimes with words like "imperialism" or "domination"). That's one of the reasons Thierry Breton is a dangerous man; look at his career history to better understand his view on "the market"; he's dangerously reckless and it seems clear that Team UPC 'champions' him. They want this kind of person in charge, based on their blog posts and articles. Supremacy of corporations over human rights is what UPC is all about. They can even raid people based on mere accusations. Due process barely exists.
Breton has meanwhile become somewhat 'camera-shy', knowing the piles of skulls in his basement or the skeletons in his closet. He's even ashamed of what he himself (Breton) said. The personal site of Thierry Breton (https://thierry-breton.com/) is down; intentional? Maybe because of the hearing? Afraid that people might 'cherry-pick' his own words to highlight hypocrisy, conflicts and so on?
"Supremacy of corporations over human rights is what UPC is all about.""Let’s build European Internet champions," Thierry Breton's blog said (the Internet Archive does not forget). Here's what he wrote: "When I took over the reins of Atos seven years ago the company had 45,000 engineers and was a medium sized participant in our sector. I wanted to build a leader in information technology to accompany European businesses along their digital revolution. In my eyes this was a major challenge for Europe. We acquired 30,000 engineers and employees from Siemens, creating the basis for a solid Franco-German company which is the second most important behind Airbus. Today Atos has two headquarters, one in Paris and the other in Munich. In six years the Atos management team has been able to double sales revenue and workforce to currently include 100,000 engineers, and also multiply our market capitalisation by six whilst quadrupling operational margin. All this has been financed by our own resources without creating any debt. I daresay that during this period none of the other important international actors in our sector have achieved the same level of performance. Therefore this is proof that, in the area of information technology, we are capable of outperforming our American or Asian competitors even as Europeans."
The Atos scandals are astounding and we shall cover them next week and the week after that (unless we speed up the publication).
"The Atos scandals are astounding and we shall cover them next week and the week after that (unless we speed up the publication)."Hiding something, Mr. Breton? It's not a case of too much Web traffic ahead of hearing. So why take the site offline?
Henrion has assessed some of the things he wrote in French, dubbing himself "Champion" (signs of unbridled megalomania). Here are the sorts of things he doesn't want the 'pesky' European public to see:
"They raid/plunder what's public (privatisation), rendering services worse and more expensive."'Champion' Thierry Breton's blog explains, citing Milton Friedman. Do we want these dangerous (repeatedly proven to fail) ideologies of Milton Friedman to rule over Europe? More importantly, is this the man we want in charge of the European market?
Who would be best served by that? Well, as always, at least with these methods, only the rich will get richer. They raid/plunder what's public (privatisation), rendering services worse and more expensive.
We wish Henrion much luck and a lot of support if he wishes to go ahead and restore the site/blog of Breton. As a wannabe public figure (again) his thoughts are of public interest and belong in the public domain.
Henrion, 3 years my senior, has long observed these affairs. He and I are both engineers. We're not politicians; we don't try to cling onto power as instead we wish to expose power. We want justice.
"We're not politicians; we don't try to cling onto power as instead we wish to expose power. We want justice."UPC, which the EPO and Breton 'champion', is all about injustice, just like the EPO in recent years (both inwards and outwards, i.e. both towards staff and towards stakeholders). The reason the UPC was stopped isn't Brexit but a solicitor who 'defected' and fought the UPC, eventually with a detailed, formal constitutional complaint. That complaint was aided by further court challenges (on constitutional grounds) and studies commissioned by small European economies. So there's a lot of resistance to the UPC; the public may not understand the issues at stake (lawyers made it intentionally harder and lied 'on behalf' of SMEs), but people are catching up and they don't like what they see. Team UPC is hugely demoralised and barely active anymore. The other day Edward Nodder (Bristows) revealed that his colleague Alan Johnson had left Bristows. Even worse -- he apparently retired! Will he still lie for Team UPC? That depends on the kind of retirement. To quote Nodder: "Before retiring from Bristows on 31 October 2019, partner Alan Johnson authored this article "A seat at the table" , in which he looks at the scenarios for the Unified Patent Court (UPC) and the UK’s departure from the EU. The article was first published in Intellectual Property Magazine, November 2019. (As reported here, the European Parliament last week published a research paper on how Brexit may affect UPC.)"
"In our next post we'll turn our attention to the effect on and relevance to Free/Open Source software (FOSS)."That so-called 'research' paper has been condemned online and it harms the image of the European Parliament as it contains lies, it was outsourced, and it had been commissioned more or less with the goal of aiding Team UPC, not informing the European public (see IP Kat getting slammed for its lies about the UPC because of a blog post from Big Pharma solicitors (it's AstraZeneca in this case); they use the blog for monopoly lobbying). If the European Parliament wishes to prevents more 'brexits' or EU exits, then this patronising attitude (lobbying disguised as information or 'research') will need to end. As Henrion put it the other day: "UPC rules of procedure also mention proportionality. Like bifurcation, rules of procedure should be made by legislators under art6 ECHR"
In our next post we'll turn our attention to the effect on and relevance to Free/Open Source software (FOSS). ⬆