Bonum Certa Men Certa

Staff of the EPO is Going Out in Protest (Munich and The Hague) While EPO Management Buys European Media to Control This Media, Promote UPC

The latest increase in the FTI Consulting deal/contract targets German and Dutch media specifically

Sheldon Adelson’s Purchase of Las Vegas Paper Seen as a Power Play
Full article: Sheldon Adelson’s Purchase of Las Vegas Paper Seen as a Power Play
Remember who attacked a judge in the German and Dutch media very shortly (a few weeks) after signing the FTI Consulting deal



Summary: The staff union of the EPO (SUEPO) is planning another couple of demonstrations next week and the EPO's payments to European media bear fruit, serving to demonstrate the corrupting influence of Battistelli's bizarre budget choices and mind-boggling priorities (managing perceptions, not changing behaviour)

THERE IS PLENTY to be angry about at the EPO and SUEPO will lead a march next week, having just announced that the next demonstrations are to take place on the 11th and 13th of October, coinciding with the meeting of the Administrative Council. To quote the full announcement:



On 11 October Mr Battistelli will hold his much publicised (yet another “first in the history of the Office”) Social Conference where he will be trumpeting his achievements just before the meeting of the Administrative Council on 12/13 October. Meanwhile, the attacks against SUEPO officials are continuing in The Hague with three investigations/disciplinary proceedings. SUEPO organises a demonstration on Tuesday 11 October in Munich in front of the EPO Isar building starting at 12.30h, and on Thursday 13 October in The Hague.


No doubt the media will hardly cover it, having been given a lethal injection by the EPO. The EPO is paying to control the media in the Netherlands and in Germany. It is also PAYING some French publishers like Les Echos (for self-censorship and habitual propaganda), which Battistelli later cites in his private letters as 'proof' of his dubious claims. Here in the UK the EPO pays FT (Financial Times) for UPC propaganda (as recently as last week) and one EPO insider found some new UPC material in relation to Brexit. It comes from Les Echos (EPO-funded) and the insider called it "Pro UPC Propaganda as expected - Le €« paquet brevet €» suspendu au Brexit" (published and mentioned earlier today).

Expect more of the media manipulation from the EPO's top-level management. It's their spiel now. They have no compelling story to tell, so instead they're trying to sell. They literally pay the media, which in turn publishes puff pieces and even fields social media accounts to spread the EPO's talking points (FT did this some months ago).

"Expect more of the media manipulation from the EPO's top-level management. It's their spiel now."Remember the time IAM attempted to distance itself from the EPO after the EPO's foreign PR agency had paid IAM for UPC propaganda? Well, IAM has just published a new issue of its totally completely honestly objective 'magazine' and in it appears to be the big lie about EPO patent quality. It is paywalled, so it's hard to say exactly what's in it. They do, however, help the EPO and Battistelli lie about patent quality (they are the only citation the EPO and Battistelli use for such a claim, with Battistelli repeatedly mentioning IAM privately and publicly). It is really that bad and it's verging the pathetic. Does the Administrative Council not mind that Battistelli is wasting millions of Euros buying (one might say "corrupting") European media? And all this to mislead the public and mislead the Council's delegates? If not, then it makes these delegates complicit.

To be sure, the UPC propaganda will end pretty soon, at least as far as its relevance to the UK and Brexit is concerned. IP Kat wrote so much on the subject (usually in favour of the UPC) and here we have a new article about EU-wide injunctions. Well, EU-wide injunctions (even beyond the EU) would be a standard occurrence if UPC (litigation chaos) was ever to sneak into Europe.

"We hope that EPO staff will join us in opposing the UPC."One new comment, among other such comments (a thread initiated by the UPC proponents, like most others), said today: "Of course, a solution would be for the UK to enact legislation to the effect that any judgement of the UPC in respect of an EP patent for which there is a GB part to be automatically enforceable in the UK. Maybe not so good for UK litigators but good for industry."

The self-serving Team UPC is mostly a litigation industry, hence it's craving for the UPC (more money for them at the expense of plaintiffs and defendants in Europe). We hope that EPO staff will join us in opposing the UPC. All it does is (and we've been writing about this for nearly a decade*), it threatens to eliminate EPO jobs and reduce Europe into litigious chaos that's enriching the litigation industry. The very fact that Battistelli has been pushing for the UPC for many years (previous incarnation) raises questions as well; who does this man work for? _____ * Techrights is turning 10 next month and the early efforts to unify patent litigation in Europe go even further back than that.

Recent Techrights' Posts

Slop Nihilism is Funded by Big Oil
Eventually human civilisation will destroy itself
Professor Eben Moglen Recovering From Open Heart Surgery
From his public pages (this is not secret)
There Are Red Hat (IBM) Layoffs, But Google News is Infested With Slopfarms
It contributes a lot to misinformation and it encourages plagiarism
USA Not a Place for Free Speech
In America, as in the US, the attacks seem more enhanced or advanced these days
 
Slopwatch: Fake Articles, Fake Text, Fake Images, Negative Slant on "Linux"
Google News has lost its value; the signal-to-noise ratio has fallen off a cliff
Gemini Links 17/09/2025: Relax-and-Recover on Proxmox and New Smolweb File Transfer Service
Links for the day
Fact: EFF Got Corrupted by Corporate Money. Microsoft Lunduke (Political Noise): The Issue With EFF is, It Kills Babies.
Microsoft Lunduke - as usual - finds a way to make it about abortions
Pacing Publication Up a Bit
The news cycles have gotten rather light and slow
Links 17/09/2025: Power Outages, Digital Controls, and Attacks on the Mainstream Media (by Insecure and Corrupt Dictators)
Links for the day
Gemini Links 17/09/2025: Flashing LineageOS and ROOPHLOCH
Links for the day
Links 17/09/2025: Long COVID Study, "Exposing Pegasus", and Chatbots Exposing Sensitive Data
Links for the day
Links 17/09/2025: Secret Settlement for Internet Archive and Google’s LLM Slop Summaries Attracting Lawsuits
Links for the day
The True Cost of 'Generative Models'
Funded and promoted by the companies that profit from the waste
'Big Slop' Attacks Contemporary Information/Knowledge and Creative Works, 'Big Copyright' (Cartel) Attacks the Old
Someone at IA will hopefully "blow the whistle" on what they actually agreed
Why We Find It Difficult to Trust Rust
A comparison between C/C++ and Rust
Watching the OSI: Our Series Will Carry on Irrespective of the Chief's 'Resignation'
the OSI isn't even the real guardian of the term "Open Source"
Just What LibreOffice Needs? Another Language? (Rust)
what's all this concern about memory safety?
Many Microsoft Managers Are Leaving
"Hey hi" chaff or chaff about "hey hi" cannot eternally distract from the difficulties inside the company
Tomorrow, Microsoft's Tim Anderson's 'The Register MS' Offshoot Will Have Been Inactive for 2 Months (There's Also a Slop Problem)
We've already caught The Register MS using LLM slop for articles
Microsoft's Chief Legal Officer Leaves Microsoft After Nearly 30 Years
And not retiring
Even Windows Users Are Having Problems With "Secure Boot"
When it comes to security - Microsoft strives for the very opposite
Another Competition Crime of Microsoft, Long Facilitated and Advocated by a Bad Actor, Who is Funded by a Third Party to Commit Extortion Against People Who Have Correctly and Repeatedly Warned About It for Over 13 Year
We must always go back to the core issues
3 More Reasons to Replace Mozilla Firefox With LibreWolf
Thankfully there are de-enshittified versions of Firefox
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Tuesday, September 16, 2025
IRC logs for Tuesday, September 16, 2025
Links 17/09/2025: Google Layoffs in "Hey Hi" (AI), Perplexity Hit With More "Hey Hi" (Plagiarism) Lawsuits
Links for the day
Gemini Links 17/09/2025: Reclaiming Things in a Digital Age and Moon Phases in CGI
Links for the day
Slopwatch: Google News is Slop, Google News is Plagiarism, Google News is Dying
Google is off the rails
Links 16/09/2025: "The Censorship Alarm Is Ringing in the Wrong Direction" and ASRock Does Microsoft E.E.E. on GNU/Linux
Links for the day
Serious "Breach of Confidentiality of Personal Data" in Europe's Second-Largest Institution, the EPO
Yes, the same EPO that routinely uses "data protection" and "GDPR" as a pretext for hiding or covering up its corruption and white-collar crimes (it even uses that as an excuse for refusing to obey courts' orders)
Adrienne Rockenhaus Says Her Husband Was Arrested for Running Tor and Denied Basic Rights in the United States
the US seems to be getting "russified" in its approach towards Tor
This is What Happens When Microsoft Canonical Lets Decisions on Ubuntu be Made by a Youngster From the British Army (Where He Did Mass Surveillance)
"Is Ubuntu Compromised?"
Back Doored Windows Giving GNU/Linux a Hard Time (Under the Guise of 'Security')
Is this complication intentional? Most likely, yes
Links 16/09/2025: Science, Security, and Conflicts
Links for the day
Gemini Links 16/09/2025: Command-line Options in POSIX Shell and Introducing Acre 0.9
Links for the day
Microsoft 'Secure' Boot Versus Dual Boot With GNU/Linux
they're meant to assume everything is OK
Links 16/09/2025: While Oracle Pretends to be Rich It's Firing About 70 MySQL Workers, "Oracle's Revenge" (Faking Demand With "AI")
Links for the day
Microsoft Has Just Published a New Web Page About "Secure Boot Update Process" (Microsoft Also Admits Issues; PCs Can Stop Booting)
Why was this page issued and published only hours ago?
Microsoft Lunduke: I Spread Hate and Then I Receive Hate
Cry us a river, Microsoft Lunduke
"Use Wayland" Isn't a Bugfix for X (X11 is Still Necessary)
They tell us X is "dead" and we must all be herded into Wayland ASAP
"Disable Secure Boot and Fast Boot. Wipe and Start Over."
At least they didn't say, buy a new computer...
The Oracle Ponzi Scheme
Oracle isn't doing well, but it's nowadays fashionable to say "clown" and "hey hi" to prop up one's stock, even based on nothing at all
The New Head of OSI is an "Hey Hi" (AI) Obsessed Person
when Bryant says "AI" that doesn't mean AI
Taking Out the Battery, Opening Up Your Computer, Just Like a "Normie" Would
At this stage, any person who still says "enable Secure Boot" is misguided or persuaded by companies that sell rootkits
Slopwatch: Serial Sloppers and Slopfarms Still Infesting Google News (Fake 'Articles' About "Linux" Spreading FUD)
searching for "Linux" today yields a lot of FUD
"Governments, local authorities, schools and hospitals can lead by example by procuring only Free Software"
Crossposted from Tux Machines
Cindy Cohn Leaving the Electronic Frontier Foundation While Its Co-founder John Gilmore, Whom She Apparently Helped Oust, Will Celebrate 40 Years of the Free Software Foundation, Inc.
EFF has been busy hoarding GAFAM money, whereas the latter is where all the real activism is done
The Reach of Techrights Has Broadened
We nowadays cover a broader range of issues
"Google is Googlebombing KDE's Project Banana"
So is Google googlebombing KDE's Project Banana? You decide.
Complicating Things for No Actual Benefit, Just Added Risk and More Difficulties Adding GNU/Linux and BSDs
Watch what it's like for people who wish to use BSDs
Some Very Large IRC Networks Are Growing
IRC will turn 38 next year
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Monday, September 15, 2025
IRC logs for Monday, September 15, 2025
Links 16/09/2025: Autumn Party, RPG Planet, and Optical ROOPHLOCH
Links for the day
Geminispace Growing at Pace of Over 10% Per Year
Contrary to what some pessimists try to claim
Linux Mint Forums Today: Disable 'Secure Boot', It Doesn't Improve Security, It's Just a Microsoft Obstacle to GNU/Linux Users
They also mention MOK
What Ruben Amorim and Stefano Maffulli Have in Common
Censors Wikipedia and Social Control Media
Microsoft Won't Cooperate in Trying to Tackle EPO Corruption (Microsoft Profits From This Corruption)
Use something like BigBlueButton, Jami, Ring, and Jitsi instead
Solved Less Than an Hour Ago: Trying to Escape Windows, 'Secure Boot' Gets in the Way
'Secure Boot' wasn't meant to even exist in the first place
Stefano Maffulli, Executive Director of the Open Source Initiative, Resigns or Gets Removed (We'll Continue Covering OSI Scandals)
A dozen mentions of "AI", not much about "Open Source"
Andy Has Just Nailed It (Regarding Complexity and Failure, a la UEFI)
The users no longer own or control what they buy
Compatibility Support Module (CSM) Versus GNU/Linux Simplicity
what Andy recently called "solutionism"
Links 15/09/2025: "Postal Traffic to US Down by Over 80%" and 'Smart' Spinozacampus Laundry Room Goes AWOL
Links for the day
Gemini Links 15/09/2025: Dungeon Hustle and Deleting Oneself From the Net
Links for the day
Breach of EPO's Duty of Care or Cigna Reimbursement Issues
This is the sort of thing that motivated Luigi Mangione to assassinate a CEO
Ask Ubuntu About "Secure Boot" Violation and Laptops That Don't Boot GNU/Linux
Does anyone still believe that "Secure Boot" has anything at all to do with security?
We Are Sad to Hear the Story of Jonathan Riddell, Champion of KDE and GNU/Linux on Desktops/Laptops
I have enormous respect for Jonathan and everything he has done
Talking About the Problem vs Talking to the Problem
Wanting an audience is never a good excuse for compromising one's values and principles
Focusing on Patents
The reason we cover the EPO so much is that it's close to home
"Secure Boot Violation": The 'Joys' of Fake Security Gone Wrong
Not everyone reboots every day
Links 15/09/2025: Russia Invades Romanian Airspace, Penske Media Sues Google Over LLM Slop
Links for the day
Links 15/09/2025: Bitcoin ATMs Scam and "Conservative Cryptography" (Backdoors Fantasies)
Links for the day
EPO Imitates Microsoft: "Three Days or More Per Week" Inside the Office to Get a Desk to Work on; "the Office Breaches Its Promise Towards Staff and Acts in Breach of Its Duty of Care"
The EPO serves no actual function in Europe
Links 15/09/2025: Political Affairs, Censorship, and Copyrights
Links for the day
Gemini Links 15/09/2025: Music Genres, Invisible Networks, and Akademy 2025
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Sunday, September 14, 2025
IRC logs for Sunday, September 14, 2025