[SpamCop-List] patent-fr

[Philippe Verdy (n.o-s.p.a.m+abuse)]

This is a new type of spam that I did not see before : now targetting the sales of patents on software/hardware (note that software patents are still not legal in France, and the EUDC european directive on copyright is still not applicable too, because there is no associated French law enforcing it).

This spam author is targetting the patents registered in France, whose text and ownership is not freely available and details requires payment or subscription to get access the official French registry(free consultation of the registry is only possible, without copying it, in the local INPI offices; certified copies require payment, and there's no right to even get free photocopies of original documents).

I can't even verify if the proposed patent is effectively owned by the sender of this email, but anyway, this owner seems to be located in South Korea, and sent its email (written in French) using the Korean standard character set (very unlikely from a french source).

The text of the patent, if it is valid, has no real originality and is probably not valued the price indicated (it's just a keyboard with some multimedia functions, nothing very original there).

Anyway, the sender is especially targetting those that have written specifications for keyboards (for example me), but also famous french research laboratories or people working for them. It clear that the sender has used some "professional directory" or some web search engine trying to reachthose that have written contents on the Internet related to keyboard designs.

And then he has sent his email without prior consent, using basic mailing lists, which does not even try to keep the privacy of each targeted recipient (I can see the other recipients in the email I received,alld of them with email addresses in various subdomains of .fr). This is clear spam i.e. unsollicitated business email (UBE) and unsollicitated commercial email (UCE). The way it is sent without prior personnal contact and without even trying to protect the privacy of the recipient makes it unsollicitated. And the fact that I diud not ever know the sender, when he was doing that makes that this "business" has violated the French andEuropean laws that protects my privacy.

Given that the patent business is now growing internationally with the new WIPO rules and EUDC and DMCA rules, I think this is a new form similar to other "get rich quick" scheme, with pyramidal sales of patents registered with no real new invention and no effective application by the registrant, and lots of invalid claims for prior arts, making the patent nearly void in value.

See an email sample in spamcop.spam (same date, same title, sent by me).

Should I seek advice at the French registry (the INPI, Institut National de la Propriété Intellectuelle) ? I fear that it is also illegal business, or that the patent claims are all invalid (so the value given is false, because there's no service for the payed value, and this email also constitutes false advertizing), all of them being criminalized in France.