HALF a decade ago I had an online dispute with the head honcho of IAM (Joff). He alleged that I was against EPO staff by demanding that software patents go away (which is actually what the law says should happen). It's all in public, as the dispute was in Twitter. He was defending Benoît Battistelli (he's still a fanboy of António Campinos and purveyor of lies) and his oppressive policy, arguing that my advocacy to abolish abstract patents would render some staff redundant. But nothing could be further from the truth; at the moment, patent examiners at the EPO are pressured to rush the process, not properly assessing all available prior art (instead approximating based on ludicrous notions like "closest prior art" based on 'Google'). Employment is not a function of number of granted patents but of patents/patent applications done/handled right. Good patent examiners openly complain about this, as they rightly should; patent examination shouldn't be some binary switch based on Google indexing a bunch of garbage that Google cannot even make sense of (there are many synonyms and subtleties in languages which only specialists can properly grasp and analyse, not to mention multiple languages that only polyglots can master).

"Good patent examiners openly complain about this, as they rightly should; patent examination shouldn't be some binary switch based on Google indexing a bunch of garbage that Google cannot even make sense of..."To put it very crudely, IAM is a bunch of very disgusting assholes. I can't think of a way to put it more politely. Yes, disgusting assholes. Maybe dishonest assholes would be more polite, but "dishonest" is an understatement. They once upon a time asked me to pass along evidence of EPO abuse. I told them repeatedly that they must not publish the evidence itself (it would put our source at risk of getting caught). But guess what IAM did. What a bunch of disgusting assholes.

Yes. Again. They're disgusting assholes. Nobody who works at the EPO should take these charlatans seriously. Look where they raise money from. Literally from some of the world's worst patent trolls; they also advocate illegal things on the EPO's payroll. This is the kind of thing that causes many people to no longer trust the press (or anything they read/find online). These disgusting assholes who run IAM are lying to everyone every day; that's just their business model.

Who does IAM praise and value? Look no further than this new page, basically more of an ad than anything. Shame on these IAM propagadists for giving a fake “award” to a software patents lobbyist whose career mostly involved never-ending attacks on software developers -- i.e. people whom he can never understand (because he is not a coder). He has a dedicated blog regarding software patents, urging to legalise, spread and celebrate them. Does he (Mr. Lundberg) write any software? Of course not. He makes money from suing those who do. Mr. Lundberg is everything that's wrong with that lobby and IAM now calls Steven Lundberg "software patents thought leader"; that's like calling Raytheon a "peace thought leader".

IAM is not alone in this; Managing IP does the same thing; those are fake "endorsements" (in effect just crude marketing) disguised as "news" and "awards". The business model is misleading potential clients.

And if that's not bad enough, only days ago IAM ended up reprinting a piece entitled "Securing software patents through the EPO" (basically, IAM also pushing illegal patents such as these because lawyers love law-breaking rather than obeying the law). Kuhnen & Wacker's Rainer K Kuhnen wrote a bunch of buzzwords salad (count the buzzwords!): "There is no doubt that in recent decades the patent system has turned from almost exclusively patenting hardware to progressively patenting software. This long-time trend is gathering momentum thanks to increasingly powerful smart devices and communication technologies enabling new technology trends such as the Internet of Things or the fourth industrial revolution. AI methods have increasingly been used in image processing to recognise objects (eg, in robotics, autonomous vehicles and medical diagnostics), while AI systems using natural language processing have made virtual assistant systems such as Siri and Alexa possible."

Oh, yes, let's celebrate listening devices of Apple and Amazon (who also give access to all these recordings to states, cops, maybe even marketers).

Here's some more "HEY HI" (AI) buzzwords salad: "These developments are also reflected in patent statistics. At the EPO, the proportion of computer-implemented inventions [cheeky phrase for "software patents"] in AI-related inventions rose rapidly between 1998 and 2014, especially in the automotive sector (from 36% to 63%) and medical technology sector (from 31% to 49%) and is still growing in each sector."

Say "HEY HI" to more software patents in "computer-implemented inventions" clothing (or, to use the buzzwords above, "smart" "Internet of Things" "fourth industrial revolution" "virtual assistants" etc.), based on committees like SACEPO WPG, stacked by absolutely clueless people who never wrote a single line of code, as we noted as recently as yesterday. SACEPO WPG, not unlike IAM, is just a litigation-motivated bucket of pseudo-experts, assembled for photo ops rather than for knowledge or relevant skills. ⬆