The Register slams the Financial Times over patents: "Maybe the FT's editor needs to get his story straight."

From the post at The Register


In a separate piece last week ("Brexit vote would harm EU unitary patent plans"), the FT reported that: "The long-awaited single European patent, protecting inventions through out the EU, is set to arrive next year - unless Britain votes to leave" the EU.

Everyone quoted in this pro-EU piece was an IP lawyer, yet according to the paper, these same IP lawyers represent a serious existential threat to innovation in the US and Europe. Maybe the FT's editor needs to get his story straight. The paper is living up to the jibe that it has become "the Daily Mail of the Europhile elite".

You're probably reading this thinking, "Oh no, not more anti-EU scare stories. Besides, it probably won't affect me."

Believe me, if you work for (or intend to found) an innovative startup developing some kind of e-business, web-service, AI, app, IoT service, analytics, or electronics this WILL affect you. It will also affect you if you intend to purchase any products or services that contain these technologies. The reason I am writing this piece is because - even under the current European regime - I have been personally affected on a number of occasions by the EPO (European Patent Office) failing to scrutinise illegitimate US patents. US-based entities have tried to assert patent rights in Europe for technologies that I pioneered here in the UK, when details (and even videos) of these technologies had been available in the public domain.



link: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2016/06/15/patent_trolls_innovation_and_brexit/

But The Register relies on James Bessen!


Although patent trolling is now increasing rapidly in Germany, Professor James Bessen of Boston University School of Law says that it is not currently a major problem in the UK – where fewer software patents and a "loser pays" litigation costs regime are real disincentives for that sort of “opportunistic behaviour".