03.17.16
Gemini version available ♊︎In the Mainstream Media, the European Patent Office is Already Becoming Another FIFA, Lies Aplenty as Last Remaining ‘Damage Control’ Strategy
The only thing left for the EPO to do is lie to the media as a media strategy…
Summary: Parallels or similarities between the FIFA scandal and the EPO scandal are becoming ever more evident as the EPO resorts to fictitious versions of reality, where all the problems basically boil down to some violent vocal minority and management is merely the victim of a smear campaign
THE ENGLISH-SPEAKING media cannot ignore this for much longer (we’re not speaking about patents-centric niche sites). The EPO scandals are mainstream news in central Europe and it’s not looking good for the management of the EPO, which is consistently being blamed.
“Ms. Hardon’s lawyer, who also represents the unnamed Irish judge, denies the accusations against both, calling them “invented allegations.””
–HandelsblattThere are at least 4 articles about it in German (mentioned yesterday), plus several more today in the German media (some behind paywalls) and Dutch media [1, 2] (same here and here). Surely there is a lot more, but we’re not able to detect it (instead we see press releases about the EPO in English).
One German newspaper, Handelsblatt, has just published this article in English. “Daggers Drawn at European Patent Office” is a somewhat odd title (article’s headline), implying a two-sided battle. Only the EPO’s PR team portrays staff as violent and it’s a fictitious narrative. The article says that “In some cases people were even threatened with violence.” Battistelli et al uses defamatory innuendo against Hardon, as if she's some violent, aggressive person. They try to ruin her good reputation while at the same time frame themselves as the victims (a rather Orwellian reversal, that's for sure).
“Hardon’s lawyer,” according to the article below, “also represents the unnamed Irish judge” and “denies the accusations against both, calling them “invented allegations.””
“Battistelli et al uses defamatory innuendo against Hardon, as if she’s some violent, aggressive person.”Battistelli lives in his own fantasy world where whistleblowers and representatives/judges are basically just Nazis and criminals. For those who are baffled by what Battistelli keeps telling the media about EPO, consider the possibility that an alternate reality was chosen and he is now self-deluding, surrounded by an echo chamber that only ever tells him what he wishes to hear, irrespective of the harsh reality. This Napoleonic President of the EPO won’t go away without a fight and definitely not without lying to the media (we wrote about this last night). To quote the publicly-accessible text from Handelsblatt:
The European Patent Office is wracked with conflicts, as its tough-minded French chief executive looks to put down union unrest and bizarre plots.
[...]
The European Patent Office, also known as the EPO, is witnessing a power struggle between its tough-minded French president, Benoît Battistelli, and the employee organization SUEPO. The battle of wills is escalating in the run-up to Wednesday’s crisis session of the organization’s administrative council.
In an interview with Handelsblatt, Mr. Battistelli accused a senior SUEPO figure, Elizabeth Hardon, of running a campaign of defamation. “She intimidated elected staff representatives,” he said. “In some cases people were even threatened with violence.”
At the beginning of the year, Ms. Hardon, an EPO patent examiner, was fired at Mr. Battistelli’s insistence. Internal investigations, he said, had revealed severe breaches of EPO staff regulations. As part of the investigations, an Irish patent judge was also suspended from his position after two truncheons were discovered in his office, in addition to Nazi propaganda pamphlets. Ms. Hardon’s lawyer, who also represents the unnamed Irish judge, denies the accusations against both, calling them “invented allegations.”
The administrative council had asked Mr. Battistelli to defuse the conflict at the Patent Office, one of Europe’s most lavishly funded administrative organizations. But the president, who has been restructuring the office to cut runaway costs and speed up patent processing times, has refused to allow the trade union SUEPO to exercise a veto over his decisions. He insisted Ms. Hardon’s dismissal must stand.
SUEPO has responded by calling for a protest demonstration outside Wednesday’s council meeting in Munich.
The rest of this article is behind a paywall. We have some translations on the way, but we need more help with that. █
ᶃ Gemini Space
This post is also available in 
Content is available under CC-BY-SA
Anton_P said,
March 17, 2016 at 10:24 am
I see Mr. Battistelli has signed an agreement to subsidize searches carried out for Lithuanians as for “Cyprus and other member states”. Only a cynic would suggest that this is a mechanism to encourage these states to support him in the AC.
EPO link: http://www.epo.org/news-issues/news/2016/20160317.html