These should have been front page/cover stories; Europe's second-largest institution is profoundly corrupt, but media doesn't wish to say that

Summary: The EPO continues to lie, to break the law, to abuse staff and to grant fake patents with complete impunity; not even the media in Europe is scrutinising what the EPO does in direct violation of many laws

THE month of August is a very quiet one, almost universally, but that doesn't mean that António Campinos and the European Patent Office (EPO) will keep quiet and quit lying.

Their Web page "Data protection & privacy" (warning: epo.org link) was updated about two weeks ago (updated 25.07.19 08:00; Google News picked up that change only last night) and it says: "The European Patent Office (EPO) is committed to protecting privacy and the personal data users provide when using our website."

"The EPO bribed and threatened European media."WWW/HTML geeks can easily dispute that. We always warn people when we post epo.org links (as we did above); their visitors' IP addresses can be 'leaked' to Microsoft, Facebook and Twitter for de-anonymisation (through cookies, ISPs and so on), e.g. in the "Share" button on all pages. Just see the page source; it's JS code. They say they value privacy, but they're liars. They're very serious violators of privacy; they habitually break privacy laws in Germany, but they know they're above the law, e.g. earlier this year (we leaked information about this, but European media pretended not to see it, even when approached to cover that). What's with the media complicity? Is real journalism not only dead but corrupt? Does it turn a blind eye based on sponsorships? The EPO bribed and threatened European media. The media is therefore silent. It intentionally refuses to cover leaks, even if and when these are published. Theory? No. We published evidence. This is pure corruption of journalism in Europe (by its second-largest institution). Disturbing? Sure. But not even news... the news sites won't cover the corruption of news sites. Obviously.

The EPO keeps lying every day, even if we don't bother rebutting everything as many of these lies are repetitive. Hours ago the EPO tweeted: "How long does the #patent grant procedure take?"

"The European Patent Office (EPO) told lies to the media back in March when it spoke about CQI; months later we rebutted with EPO leaks. Did anyone in the media pay attention? Of course not.""Depends," I responded. "As you no longer do actual, real examination, might as well grant within 10 seconds (of application being received)..."

I cited past coverage of this (leaks). The European Patent Office (EPO) told lies to the media back in March when it spoke about CQI; months later we rebutted with EPO leaks. Did anyone in the media pay attention? Of course not. To be a little sarcastic, maybe they wish to preserve our 'exclusivity'...

A day ago the EPO also linked to this bizarre page (warning: epo.org link) we did not see before. It's named "ict.html" (ICT), but it is titled "Digital technologies" (very vague).

The EPO's page was cited in this tweet and introduced as follows: "Digital technologies are finding their way into every aspect of our modern lives. Have a look here to learn more about the #patenting landscape in this field..."

"So a year after Campinos came from the EUIPO nothing has improved. The EPO lies every single day, several times per day; the main difference is, having bribed much of the press there's little coverage of these EPO issues."Now watch that utterly ridiculous page. The EPO nowadays says "Hardware and software" (to mean algorithms disguised as "running on a machine"), "HEY HI" (AI), and more meaningless buzzwords like "4IR" to grant illegal software patents in Europe. On the same day we also saw this tweet about Battistelli-styled 'studies'. Once again the EPO funds a 'study' that EPO itself manufactures (how very objective), then cites. The EUIPO too participates in this.

So a year after Campinos came from the EUIPO nothing has improved. The EPO lies every single day, several times per day; the main difference is, having bribed much of the press there's little coverage of these EPO issues. Is it because the media in general is dying? We don't think so. It's true that many blogs about patents are dying^*. But can they never even mention EPO scandals? Watch what happened to IP Kat. An astounding reversal. They've moved from blasting the EPO's President to protecting him. ⬆ ____ ^* Bejin Bieneman's software patents advocacy blog is the latest casualty. From about one post a day it moved to one per week. Now it posts about once per month. Software patents are buried so deep in the ground (in the US at least, owing to 35 U.S.C. €§ 101) that almost nobody bothers promoting them anymore.