06.02.18

Gemini version available ♊︎

The European Patent Office Dominates Media Coverage in the Form of Paid-For Puff Pieces, Suppresses Coverage About Corruption

Posted in Deception, Europe, Patents at 10:31 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

It’s all about money (or using Office money to distract from clear misuse of this money)

Recep Tayyip Erdoğan at EPO

Summary: The European Patent Office (EPO) continues to bribe the media in order to manipulate this media while threatening if not outright blocking (censorship) true information about the Office; it doesn’t look like anyone — let alone AT-ILO — even cares about EPO corruption

“European Patent Office Discusses Patenting Artificial Intelligence,” reads this new headline from IP Watch‘s Monika Ermert.

The headline should have said “European Patent Office Discusses Patenting Software Using the Buzzword ‘Artificial Intelligence’,” as we explained some days ago. The Office is corrupt, rogue, and it even controls the media using threats and bribes. We have covered many examples of it over the years. Over the past week, the EPO promoted the “Inventor Award” about half a dozen times a day, even in the weekends. Another puff piece for “Inventor Award” (we guess EPO may have ghostwritten it via PR agencies, as before) could be found here a few days ago. Still no press coverage of this very obvious abuse of EPO budget by Battistelli, eh? How much more obvious does it need to be?

“Still no press coverage of this very obvious abuse of EPO budget by Battistelli, eh? How much more obvious does it need to be?”IP Watch wrote that the “United States and Chinese patent practitioners this week called for considerations to change patent legislation and allow patenting algorithms in the future. They spoke at a 30 May conference of the European Patent Office in Munich on “Patenting Artificial Intelligence.””

Ermert says “patenting algorithms”, but the headline says something else. Just before the weekend the EPO did it again, promoting software patents while barely even hiding it. When the "4IR" buzzword is brought up by EPO they mean software patents. Will the media call them out on it? The EPO is in violation of the EPC again.

Having paid to spread a puff piece of theirs, Ladas & Parry LLP now “celebrates” the “European Patent Convention (EPO)” [sic] (EPC), which is being violated by the EPO in an obvious fashion. This was published yesterday in lawyers’ media:

We salute the originators and implementers of the Patent Cooperation Treaty (PCT) and the European Patent Convention (EPO) on their fortieth anniversary and look forward to continued use of both long into the future.

[...]

Similarly, the use of the European Patent Convention by providing for a single examination in the European Patent Office that can apply to patents in all member countries is now the norm for securing patent protection in Europe (regardless of whether the countries of interest are in the European Union or not). To some extent, this is accidental as the original plan was to have a central patent office and harmonized European patent law for the member countries of what was then the European Common Market. At that time, this consisted of Germany, France, Italy, The Netherlands, Belgium and Luxembourg. And the United Kingdom was negotiating to join (and was expected to become a member) before the patent plan was adopted. However, France then vetoed the United Kingdom’s application for membership of the Common Market and the idea developed that perhaps it would be better to have a common patent examination authority for any European country that wished to join and not just members of the Common Market. And so the European Patent Convention was born. Today, the Convention has 37 full members and agreements with a further six countries (not all in Europe) in which patent applications approved by the European Patent Office may be validated or to which they may be extended. Adoption of the European Patent Convention not only provided a means for reducing the costs of securing patent protection in Europe but also resulted in substantial, although still not perfect, harmonization of substantive patent law between the member countries as it was impracticable to have one law apply to patents granted by the European Patent Office and a national patent office.

As usual, not a word or even a remote mention of the EPO scandals. The same goes for IP Kat, which is still doing EPO marketing rather than watch-dogging. Here is what it wrote yesterday: “The second webinar in J A Kemp’ssix-part Pharmaceutical IP webinar series, ‘Patenting Antibodies at the EPO’, is now available on-demand. The webinar overviews antibody cases of the European Patent Office, as well as discussions with EPO examiners, highlighting recent trends in examination and strategies for addressing objections.”

“AT-ILO is not independent. AT-ILO does not respect the most basic principles of justice: it does not hear the parties, it does not reconsider the facts presented by the investigation unit which is partial to the EPO by its very nature…”
      –Märpel
RIP Kat — created in response to IP Kat‘s unwillingness to cover EPO scandals any longer — has this new and rather long post about EPO abuse. “Why,” it inquired, “as a Frenchman, did he [Germond] chose to leave Paris to do the same job at about the same salary in Munich? The EPO and the ESA are both international organisations and have similar pay scales. Rumours say that some promises were made, but Märpel would advise Mr. Germond not to trust rumours. President Battistelli rarely holds his promises and, in any case, time is running short.”

It also said that “AT-ILO is not independent. AT-ILO does not respect the most basic principles of justice: it does not hear the parties, it does not reconsider the facts presented by the investigation unit which is partial to the EPO by its very nature…”

It sadly feels like nobody but us and Märpel is willing to mention EPO scandals any longer. IP Kat went to extreme lengths and nuked an entire comments thread (about 40 comments) about the controversial fashion in which António Campinos got elected selected by Battistelli, a fellow Frenchman. All those same abuses persist to this date. To quote Märpel:

The simple answer is that staff cannot. That is a feature. The internal “justice” system finds staff guilty in all the cases. When it still found staff innocent (before 2016), President Battistelli could simply disregard their opinion. After that time, President Battistelli changed the members to ones more “loyal” to his person and exercised retribution on the others to make sure the ones of his choosing stayed “loyal”. AT-ILO not only agrees with this practice but went out of their way to move publications of key decisions like the one concerning Mr. Corcoran to a date better suiting President Battistelli plans.

[...]

AT-ILO is not independent. AT-ILO does not respect the most basic principles of justice: it does not hear the parties, it does not reconsider the facts presented by the investigation unit which is partial to the EPO by its very nature, it hides facts as it sees fit. AT-ILO is a tribunal only by name and a shame to anyone with a legal background.

[...]

At the end of 2013 something else also happened, this time at the EPO. President Battistelli hired a new person to be head of department employment law in Munich. Department employment law is the department of jurists doing the work of preparing the submissions of the EPO in AT-ILO cases. That department is only a few people in the 7th floor of the Isar building, most of whom are on fixed term contracts. The head of that department is Laurent Germond.

How President Battistelli managed to recruit Mr Germond is a mystery. Before the EPO, Mr. Germond had the same work at the European Space Agency in Paris. Why, as a Frenchman, did he chose to leave Paris to do the same job at about the same salary in Munich? The EPO and the ESA are both international organisations and have similar pay scales. Rumours say that some promises were made, but Märpel would advise Mr. Germond not to trust rumours. President Battistelli rarely holds his promises and, in any case, time is running short.

But, in 2013, President Battistelli wanted Mr. Germond so badly that the recruitment procedure took months, in complete disregard of applicable regulations.

Why was President Battistelli so eager to hire Mr. Germond? Märpel believed that the reason is that Mr Germond and Mr. Petrović are personal friends. The world of international organisations is tiny, the world of international administrative justice even more so. Mr Germond and Mr. Petrović have worked in that circle for a long time and have come to appreciate each other. And maybe a bit more than that, but Märpel cannot tell without revealing her sources.

When he entered his functions, President Battistelli knew the EPO very well from his work in the administrative council. He knew, from the experiences of previous presidents, that the main card of the staff was AT-ILO. The tribunal overturned several key decisions in favour of staff. President Battistelli wanted none of that. President Battistelli knew that it was absolutely vital to his plans that AT-ILO would be in is favour. He needed a way. The new registrar offered him one.

Last year we showed that ahead of the “Inventor Award” ceremony the EPO offered 'gifts' to so-called 'journalists' in exchange for shallow coverage (same thing as the prior year). Can we call that “bribery”? How much bribery can the EPO get away with it before authorities actually bother intervening? And if they refuse to ever intervene, does that mean that the EPO remains above the law and AT-ILO is merely its protector (giving only the illusion of external oversight)?

Share in other sites/networks: These icons link to social bookmarking sites where readers can share and discover new web pages.
  • Reddit
  • email

Decor ᶃ Gemini Space

Below is a Web proxy. We recommend getting a Gemini client/browser.

Black/white/grey bullet button This post is also available in Gemini over at this address (requires a Gemini client/browser to open).

Decor ✐ Cross-references

Black/white/grey bullet button Pages that cross-reference this one, if any exist, are listed below or will be listed below over time.

Decor ▢ Respond and Discuss

Black/white/grey bullet button If you liked this post, consider subscribing to the RSS feed or join us now at the IRC channels.

DecorWhat Else is New


  1. Links 06/06/2023: OpenSUSE Plans for Leap

    Links for the day



  2. Gemini Links 06/06/2023: Bubble 4.0, Neutral News, and Older Bits

    Links for the day



  3. IBM's War on Open (Look at the Pattern of Layoffs at Red Hat)

    By abandoning OpenSource.com and OpenOffice.org/LibreOffice IBM sends out a clear signal that it doesn’t understand or simply does not care about the community of Free software users; its siege against the FSF and other institutions never ended and today we look at who’s being laid off or shown the door (the work environment is intentionally being made worse)



  4. Links 06/06/2023: IceWM 3.4.0 and Liveslak 1.7.0

    Links for the day



  5. Gemini Links 06/06/2023: Apple Might Kill VR, Tea Tea Deluxe 1.2.7 and Tea Land

    Links for the day



  6. IRC Proceedings: Monday, June 05, 2023

    IRC logs for Monday, June 05, 2023



  7. Links 05/06/2023: Debian 12 Almost Ready, Hong Kong 'Cannot' Remember Tiananmen Massacre

    Links for the day



  8. Gemini Links 05/06/2023: New Ship in Cosmic Voyage, Stack Overflow Moderator Strike

    Links for the day



  9. IRC Proceedings: Sunday, June 04, 2023

    IRC logs for Sunday, June 04, 2023



  10. Links 04/06/2023: Unifont 15.0.05 and PCLinuxOS Stuff

    Links for the day



  11. Gemini Links 04/06/2023: Wayland and the Old Computer Challenge

    Links for the day



  12. StatCounter: GNU/Linux (Including ChromeOS) Grows to 8% Market Share Worldwide

    This month’s numbers from StatCounter are good for GNU/Linux (including ChromeOS, which technically has both GNU and Linux); the firm assesses logs from 3 million sites and shows Windows down to 66% in desktops/laptops (a decade ago it was above 90%) with modest growth for GNU/Linux, which is at an all-time high, even if one does not count ChromeOS that isn’t freedom- or privacy-respecting



  13. Journalism Cannot and Quite Likely Won't Survive on the World Wide Web

    We’re reaching the point where the overwhelming majority of new pages on the Web (the World Wide Web) are basically junk, sometimes crafted not by humans; how to cope with this rapid deterioration is still an unknown — an enigma that demands hard answers or technical workarounds



  14. Do Not Assume Pensions Are Safe, Especially When Managed by Mr. EPOTIF Benoît Battistelli and António Campinos

    With the "hoax" that is the financial assessment by António Campinos (who is deliriously celebrating the inauguration of illegal and unconstitutional kangaroo courts) we urge EPO workers to check carefully the integrity of their pensions, seeing that pension promises have been broken for years already



  15. Links 04/06/2023: Why Flatpak and Wealth of Devices With GNU/Linux

    Links for the day



  16. Gemini Links 04/06/2023: Rosy Crow 1.1.3 and NearlyFreeSpeech.NET

    Links for the day



  17. IRC Proceedings: Saturday, June 03, 2023

    IRC logs for Saturday, June 03, 2023



  18. Links 04/06/2023: Azure Outage Again (So Many!) and Tiananmen Massacre Censored

    Links for the day



  19. Links 03/06/2023: Qubes OS 4.2.0 RC1 and elementaryOS Updates for May

    Links for the day



  20. Gemini Links 03/06/2023: Hidden Communities and Exam Prep is Not Education

    Links for the day



  21. Links 03/06/2023: IBM Betraying LibreOffice Some More (After Laying off LibreOffice Developers)

    Links for the day



  22. Gemini Links 03/06/2023: Bubble Woes and Zond Updates

    Links for the day



  23. Links 03/06/2023: Apache NetBeans 18 and ArcaOS 5.0.8

    Links for the day



  24. IRC Proceedings: Friday, June 02, 2023

    IRC logs for Friday, June 02, 2023



  25. The Developing World Abandons Microsoft Windows, GNU/Linux at All-Time Highs on Desktops/Laptops

    Microsoft, with 80 billion dollars in longterm debt and endless layoffs, is losing the monopolies; the media doesn’t mention this, but some publicly-accessible data helps demonstrate that



  26. Links 02/06/2023: Elive ‘Retrowave’ Stable and Microsoft's Half a Billion Dollar Fine for LinkeIn Surveillance in Europe

    Links for the day



  27. Linux Foundation 'Research' Has a New Report and Of Course It Uses Only Proprietary Software

    The Linux Foundation has a new report, promoted by Clickfraud Spamnil and others; of course they’re rejecting Free software, they’re just riding the “Linux” brand and speak of “Open Source” (which they reject themselves)



  28. Links 02/06/2023: Arti 1.1.5 and SQL:2023

    Links for the day



  29. Gemini Links 02/06/2023: Vimwiki Revisited, SGGS Revisited

    Links for the day



  30. Geminispace/GemText/Gemini Protocol Turn 4 on June 20th

    Gemini is turning 4 this month (on the 20th, according to the founder) and I thought I’d do a spontaneous video about how I use Gemini, why it's so good, and why it’s still growing (Stéphane Bortzmeyer fixed the broken cron job — or equivalent of it — a day or two after I had mentioned the issue)


RSS 64x64RSS Feed: subscribe to the RSS feed for regular updates

Home iconSite Wiki: You can improve this site by helping the extension of the site's content

Home iconSite Home: Background about the site and some key features in the front page

Chat iconIRC Channel: Come and chat with us in real time

Recent Posts