Now it's the Dutch people's turn to be omitted from the map of Europe (in order to hide -3.6%)

Summary: The unscientific (if not antiscientific) attitude of the EPO is showing again, and this time this is done in order to pretend that the EPO cares about European SMEs and that patent application numbers are on the rise (they are not)

THE EPO does its reputation a great disservice. It inherited the same nasty tendencies which Battistelli is so renowned or notorious for. Every day we catch the EPO in a lie or two (sometimes even more) and it's not even funny. It has become rather obnoxious because even when the EPO gets caught in a lie and people point it out the EPO will simply continue to tell that same lie.

"It has become rather obnoxious because even when the EPO gets caught in a lie and people point it out the EPO will simply continue to tell that same lie."Yesterday, as usual, the EPO offered "retweets" only for Philips (to its fake "followers"), e.g. this one on Thursday, but not for SMEs. The EPO is working for large corporations, at the expense of SMEs, but has to pretend otherwise. Those large corporations typically use their patents against SMEs (either deterrent or actual legal action).

"Small entities accounted 34% of all patent applicants at the EPO in 2016," the EPO wrote the other day. "See the numbers http://buzz.mw/b1wsf_l cc @EU_Growth"

"The EPO is working for large corporations, at the expense of SMEs, but has to pretend otherwise. Those large corporations typically use their patents against SMEs (either deterrent or actual legal action)."We have already rebutted this tweet some days ago by pointing out that the EPO lobbies for the SME-hostile UPC and actively discriminates against patent applications from SMEs.

Thankfully, not only us have challenged the EPO on the above claim. The EPO has been caught lying so much that one has to be sceptical and ask followup questions, as this account did:

1. What is your methodology,sample? 2. How is this % found? 3. How did you examine the 3 criteria of #SME definition?

This kind of sceptical approach is especially required when dealing with an Office with a terrible track record (a lot of lying as of late).

"As we all know by now, the EPO tends to cherry-pick data in order to suit the desired Big Lie du jour."The EPO's response came in three parts [1, 2, 3] and said: "We took a statistically representative random sample of patent applications treated by the EPO in 2016. This analysis bases on the definition of SMEs of the European Commission: http://ec.europa.eu/growth/smes/ We verify information on the SMEs criteria using government and commercial databases combined with web research."

I then asked them: "How big a sample?" (notice that their original tweet clearly said "34% of all patent applicants")

Obviously they did not reply, but mind the fact that in the above claim they didn't mention it was a stochastic sample which was partial (given that they had to resort to "web research" -- based on their own admission -- it would be infeasible to deal with a very large sample). As we all know by now, the EPO tends to cherry-pick data in order to suit the desired Big Lie du jour. Here is a recent reminder of it (from earlier this week):

• Incredibly Unscientific: EPO is Making up Excuses for Decline in Patent Applications
• Unscientific and Offensive: EPO Deletes From the Map Countries Where Number of Applications at the EPO Has Declined!

So, dear readers, has the EPO refrained from further lies to that effect? Hell no. The Dodgy Patent Office, where no truths are tolerated, made up another excuse yesterday by writing: "European patent applications from the Netherlands down by 3.6 after 4% growth in 2015 http://buzz.mw/b1wwv_l cc @BOIPnews"

"See what kind of "science" one gets from the EPO these days? This does no favours to an institution which is supposed to represent the interests of European scientists."It's that same spin again (as with Poland), and Holland is missing from the map! (again as in the case of Poland, this map was altogether omitted)

See what kind of "science" one gets from the EPO these days? This does no favours to an institution which is supposed to represent the interests of European scientists. It's a pariah organisation, akin to a think tank. ⬆