Re: [Patents] EPO and swpatents

[Hartmut Pilch <phm@a2e.de>]

> > What is the real motivation that EPO has illegally been providing
> > software patents despite its rule about software as such not being
> > patentable?
>
> > ...
>
> > EPO should also be a public service organ and should as such also
> > follow the law.
>
>
> I was not aware that the EPO was actually breaking the law.  So I have
> one more question: Cannot - and should not - the EPO be sued for
> disrespecting the law?

The EPO has created its own caselaw through its Technical Boards of
Appeal, and it is following that caselaw.  This caselaw is incompatible
with the written law.    See

        http://swpat.ffii.org/analysis/invention/
        http://swpat.ffii.org/analysis/epc52/

One can try to invoke the Enlarged Board of Appeal (also an EPO-dependent
court, but perhaps more open).

Or one can try to make sure that national courts do not follow the EPO.
However national patent jurisdiction is often in the hands of patent
courts which are eager to expand the scope of patentability and love it
when some international institution takes the responsibility for breaking
the law and they can justify their activity that way.

> If it is possible, who could sue the EPO?

The normal responsible organ would be the European Patent Organisation,
i.e. the board of the EPO, in which national patent administrators sit.
They are acting under the same "industry" pressures and professional
ideologies as the EPO, and their governments usually let them do what they
want.

The patent system is out of control, in Europe as elswhere.  Art 52 EPC
has made this particularly visible in Europe, but the patent lobby's
disregard for anything that stands in its way, including laws and
constitutions, is the same everywhere.

-- 
Hartmut Pilch, FFII & Eurolinux Alliance              tel. +49-89-12789608
Protecting Innovation against Patent Inflation       http://swpat.ffii.org/
145,000 votes 400 firms against software patents     http://noepatents.org/