The name "Merpel" is another person now

Summary: IP Kat has just deleted nearly 40 comments (some of them very detailed); we bring these back to life for the sake of history and preservation

"Something weird at IPKat," one reader of ours has called it. Another asked: "Where are all the IPKat comments?"

People are noticing this. They're telling us. IP Kat silences the most popular topic in that blog.

"All of the comments on the Campinos thread appear to have been deleted," we got told. "Attempts to post a new comment give this result: "No comments yet. New comments have been disabled for this post by a blog administrator.""

"Seems like some high-level censorship is at work," a reader explained.

Coming from IP Kat, this does not exactly shock us.

Here's a response I sent to one reader:

It's a good thing we copy and repost almost all of them. Exactly because of expectation of such stuff happening (censorship).

It's quite likely that someone "up high" like EPO or Stephen (CIPA/IP Kat) did not like where this was going.

They also recently deleted comments in a commenting thread about the UPC complaint in Germany, after the filer's name had been revealed.

IP Kat is a blog of spineless cowards or supine "pussies" who are trying to appease Power to advance their own careers (Bristows coming to mind).

Remember that "Merpel" was supposed to have a "last post". But the name showed up again, with an entirely different tone and almost certainly another person narrating (Merpel was always several people, it's just a mask).

It has only been a couple of months since the last IP Kat censorship incident (that we know of); there's a long tradition to it.

As usual, we can retrieve everything from Google cache, missing only some of the latest comments, such as the last comment (that we could see). It said that the EPO's national delegates are "38 other adults who are supposed to be exercising oversight on the actions" (but don't). To quote in full:

The pathetically human and cheap human behavior of one individual is nothing extraordinary.

However when such behavior is tolerated, indulged and even encouraged by 38 other adults who are supposed to be exercising oversight on the actions of that individual then it would seem that something deeper and more sinister is involved.

It may be just a coincidence but it is difficult to believe.

Grabbed on Sunday around 4AM was this snapshot of the page as it appeared (on 22 Oct 2017 04:20:13 GMT) [PDF], so if someone -- some time in the future -- wants to revisit these comments he or she can. It's important that history doesn't just get 'wiped' out of existence. Will that blog ever delete older posts about the EPO? Or comments? It might be hard to detect such deletions. Seeing that similar things have happened (in the very distant past even, including an article about the EPO threatening yours truly), we have adopted a pessimistic approach and make copies of things. It isn't quite paranoia when it comes handy quite so often. SUEPO too has been censored by threats on occasions.

Here is a recent important article about Campinos [PDF] while we're at it. Here is Gabi Schmidt's letter to the EPO's President [PDF], which we've also turned into an image:

A long history of deletionism when it comes in the EPO can generally help secure another Battistelli-like era. We want to prevent that from happening. SUEPO has described the above as "[l]etter dated 17 October 2017 from Ms Gabi Schmidt, member of the Bavarian State Parliament to Mr Benoît Battistelli, President of the European Patent Office." It was published today. ⬆