07.04.17
EPO Silent About EPO Strikes and Battistelli Leaving
Anything to distract from the real news…
Summary: The staff has not been at work since Thursday (due to a strike) and Battistelli’s job is being offered to someone else, but the EPO says nothing about it (in fact, it actively distracts from it)
TECHRIGHTS has covered the EPO for about a decade and covered it very closely for the past three years (based on leaks from the inside). We generally know the EPO’s antics and tactics, including the milking of terror attacks, the distraction strategy, and the subversive (not to mention expensive) media strategy.
Not too long ago we mentioned Angola and Cambodia (with zero patents) being used by Battistelli for diversion from real news. Today it’s Malaysia, with 24 patents last year, and the Philippines with just 5 (for the sake of comparison, it’s 18,728 for Germany and 15,395 for Japan).
What does that help distract from? Battistelli is going. The vacancy for Battistelli's job was finally advertised as scheduled. The EPO says nothing about it; nothing even in the Twitter account or the announcements section (e.g. from the AC). Instead, the post was almost silently put online (the same is true for Kongstad when it became official he will have left by the end of September). The EPO keeps promoting just the puff piece/distraction from yesterday and then, instead of the important opening, there’s this new puff piece in the EPO’s own site (screenshot above so readers need not risk the tracking). Countries with almost no European Patents (EPs) are mentioned; anything to distract from a multi-day EPO strike? The page was filed under the “news” section, but it’s more like a press release with Battistelli’s name all over it, e.g.:
“We are pleased to launch these programmes with Malaysia and the Philippines, two important markets in the dynamic ASEAN region,” said EPO President Battistelli.
Don’t be misled by it. That’s not important news at all. It’s hardly even news. Deep inside a comments section from 4 months ago there’s the real news:
Praise The Lord, finally !
You seek a professional challenge ? you want to work to restore social peace in a toxic atmosphere, to bring back trust in management and foster team work over individual rat race, to restore product quality and the reputation of a damaged international organisation ? you respect in Fundamental Rights and negotiated solutions ? You respect the Rule of Law and social partners ? You want to make EPO staff proud again ?
This job is for you ! apply now
Another reaction to this:
O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!
IAM took note of the news yesterday, but only in its Twitter account; not a word in IAM’s site. At all! Not a single publication other than Techrights appears to have covered it. Why?
Battistelli will be gone in less than a year (staff is jubilant [1, 2, 3, 4]), but he leaves a legacy of patent trolls in Europe, which is reportedly a fast-growing problem if not an epidemic*. We wrote a great deal about it and gave some examples. Moreover, it’s not clear what kind of future the EPO will have after all the damage caused by Battistelli (likely irreversible). Some staff will never get their lives or their jobs back; some staff and former staff is literally dead (not just due to suicide) and ILO is incapable of handling its responsibilities — a subject to be covered in greater depth soon.
Many people have gone on holiday, so we expect to have more time for researching. Today, for example, we intend to focus a bit (and catch up with) the situation in the US patent office. █
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* The other day IAM helped Carpmaels & Ransford LLP help patent trolls in the UK, by noting that “Birss’s detailed judgment has many implications for UK standard-essential patent litigation, and there are significant ways in which the guidance will affect future UK FRAND disputes.” We wrote about this case about half a dozen times before. Bristows repeatedly celebrated this and "brown-nosed" the judge.
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