Bonum Certa Men Certa

Negative Publicity (Personal or by Association With the EPO) is Devouring the Institution

The precious snowflakes of EPO management cannot handle criticism from the public

Snowflakes



Summary: Willy Minnoye, Ciarán McGinley, Lionel Baranès, Theano Evangelou and others near the top of the EPO pyramid recalled in light of old news about them

THE EPO is about to have an exceptionally tough year that's agonising to Battistelli's circle (or "Team Battistelli"), which already falls apart (Minnoye will be leaving before his term ends and so will Ciarán McGinley).



"I very much liked what you published in this article, which I second," one reader told us, regarding the article that led to the following E-mail being sent to me in March:

Dear Sir,

I would like to refer to the Article/post on the EPO published on the Techrights webpage on the 15.3.2016 which quotes an anonymous reader who inter Alia makes reference to my name Theano Evangelou.

I would like to note that I do not wish to be mentioned neither by name nor would I like to be identifiable. I would thus kindly ask you to withdraw my name or any such information from the blog and not to spread it further. I must further note that I feel personally impacted by such mention.

Yours faithfully,

Theano Evangelou


Some people at the EPO's management foolishly think we'll self-censor just because they don't want to be held accountable for their behaviour. Some even resort to legal threats. These precious snowflakes think that as heads of an international public institution they deserve to live in a cocoon with privacy levels greater than those of the CIA? They want not only immunity from the law but also invisibility (from the public which they purport to be 'serving')?

"They want not only immunity from the law but also invisibility (from the public which they purport to be 'serving')?"I shared the above letter with someone, who later said to me: "if you want to have a bit of fun with it.... You may ask back if being mentioned as "head of legal department, lawyer" of such an ethically challenging (and challenged) organization is of any bother: If you search in Google for "theano evangelou legal patent", the first result is her LinkedIn profile in all its pretentious pride. I mean, not just a lawyer, but the Head of the Legal Department! Of EPO! And she feels "impacted" by seeing her name? ... give me a break. What a laugh..."

"I think Ciarán McGinley also belongs in the list of rogues," another person added. "He's a former SUEPO official turned manager. (This phenomenon isn't unique to the EPO.)"

Well, McGinley is leaving soon. Maybe seeing SUEPO under attack, combined with a morsel of consciousness, was enough to compel him to withdraw from his "Career Climber" tendencies.

"Remember the PR head that left the EPO almost as soon as he had joined?""My memories of Lionel Baranès are about as faint as his tenure was brief (2002-2004, IIRC)," told us another person. Well, maybe he didn't 'fit in', so to speak. Remember the PR head that left the EPO almost as soon as he had joined? Not just Vincent Bénard...

Baranès' open letter of resignation is quite revealing, but few people even care to remember it. If anyone has a copy of that letter, please get in touch with us.

Recent Techrights' Posts

Hopping From One Set of Buzzwords to the Next
Rotating hype and vapourware
Currys PCWorld Hates GNU/Linux Even Though It Runs the World
If more and more people choose to remove Windows, then Currys PCWorld will feel the financial impact of its dumb policies
The Register MS Takes More Money to Boost Slop Hype, This Time From Snyk, a Notorious FUD Source
At some stage or at some point they might even decide to stop doing so
"AI" Hype or LLM Slop is Not About Efficiency, It's About Lowering Standards
It does not seem like IBM is genuinely committed to the same goals (or commitments) as the original Red Hat
If Free/Libre Software is Adding Trillions in Value to the European Economy, Then the European Commission Must Crush Software Patents
Further to what we wrote yesterday
 
FSF Infrastructure Under Constant Attack
The disconnect (literally) has had an effect on credibility
Feels Like The Register MS is Trying to Diversify a Bit
If The Register MS goes back to being The Register US (or UK), that will be a nice improvement
Gemini Links 14/08/2025: Reading Journal and LLM Fatigue Revisited
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Wednesday, August 13, 2025
IRC logs for Wednesday, August 13, 2025
Internet Relay Chat and Gemini Protocol Help Us Relive the Net of the Dial-Up Era
The kids were alright
"GPT-5" is Another Microsoft Dead Cat Trying to Bounce
The hype, the momentum (or the inertia) is wearing off
Microsoft Windows Losing Its Grip Near Turkey and Russia
The 'corridor' nations connecting Iran to Europe
Slopwatch: LinuxSecurity, Google News, and Serial Slopper (SS)
The slop, the bad, and the ugly
Links 13/08/2025: The “Incriminating Video” Scam and Corruption in South Korea
Links for the day
Gemini Links 13/08/2025: Movie Memories and Mystery Machine Bus
Links for the day
Links 13/08/2025: GitHub Trouble and Openwashing by Microsoft OSI With the Typical Buzzwords
Links for the day
Microsoft Swallows GitHub Losses
Only Microsoft knows how much money it has already lost on GitHub
Gemini Links 13/08/2025: Climate, Coffee, and Deploying Troops in Washington DC After Pardoning 1,000+ Insurrectionists in Washington DC
Links for the day
The Register MS Lowered MS Focus This Week
We hope The Register recognises its errors and tries to make up for them
Learning Ethics From Jeffrey Epstein's Enabler/Client/Ally, Coca-Cola, and Microsoft Accenture
Whatever merits vocabulary changes initially had are being tainted or obscured by later iterations, which tell us to avoid word like "normal", which apparently offend some people (so they argue)
Personal Attacks From Rust People Serve to Confirm They Have Lost the Argument
"The discussion I find around the net so far has no technical merit and centers around ad hominem"
Physical Meters and Purely Mechanical Meters Aren't Dumb; It's Dumb to Mock or Dismiss Them as Antiquated
I've learned a lot this week, both online and over the telephone
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Tuesday, August 12, 2025
IRC logs for Tuesday, August 12, 2025
GitHub Will End Up like XBox and Skype
It is not likely that the XBox franchise will survive the next 5 years
Stones Thrown in Glass Houses
Projecting? You bet!
As Europe Gets Increasingly Serious About Software Freedom and Digital Sovereignty It Needs to Enforce a Ban on Software Patents ASAP
many councils in Europe move to Free software and US policy/companies cannot be trusted
Windows 12 in Bahrain (Microsoft "Market Share" Down to 12%, an All-Time Low)
They really ought to get away from Windows even faster
The Web Needs 'Pest Control' When It Comes to LLM Slopfarms
The goal is to discourage more sites becoming slopfarms
Microsoft Can Now Stop Reporting the GitHub Layoffs (Even When They Happen)
GitHub's original staff will see the true cost of becoming "b0rged" - something that Microsoft earned a bad reputation for
How to Get Very Bad or Even Malicious Code Into Linux? Write it in a Language That Linus Torvalds and Most Other Linux Developers Don't Understand.
One point nobody brings up is, what if code gets committed while evading audits and scrutiny?
Links 12/08/2025: Wikipedia Fails at UK High Court, Perlmutter Still Fights to Squash the Slop Lobby
Links for the day
Gemini Links 12/08/2025: Field Recording and Digital Legacy
Links for the day
Links 12/08/2025: WinRAR Zero-Day, SonicWall Does More Harm Than Good
Links for the day
Links 12/08/2025: More Sabotage of Underwater Cable Ahead of Russian Alaska Summit
Links for the day
Richard Stallman Will Not Miss Microsoft GitHub, It Was Only Good at Harvesting a Lot of Code for Plagiarism-as-a-Service
investors are apparently willing to lose money for buzzwords
Slopfarms Slopping Away at "Linux" and Spreading Microsoft Misinformation
Slopfarms don't comprehend this as they lack actual comprehension, they're just parrots
Links 12/08/2025: Science, Hardware, and Ukraine Excluded From Negotiations About Its Future
Links for the day
GitHub the Company Has, in Effect, Just Died (Time to Look for Alternatives)
To Microsoft, what's left of GitHub after dismantling/folding it is some "training set" (people's code, without permission to "train" i.e. misuse under the guise of "GenAI" plagiarism)
Linux Foundation Says "Housekeeping", "Hung", "Normal", "Native Feature/Support" and "Girl/Girls" Are Offensive Words
Bombing people is OK, just use the right "terms"
It Looks More Like Microsoft GitHub Layoffs
GitHub is just losing loads of money
Gemini Links 12/08/2025: Meditation, OpenStreetMap, Smolweb, and More
Links for the day
Google News is Dying: Most of Its Top Stories Now Are LLM Slop With Slop Images (i.e. 100% Fake 'Content')
Google News has been drowning in this sort of stuff for quite some time
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Monday, August 11, 2025
IRC logs for Monday, August 11, 2025
Our Predictions Were Right: GitHub Dying as Losses Pile Up (as a Company It Cannot Continue to Exist, It's Not 'Free Hosting')
GitHub always lost money