11.07.19
PR ‘Innovation’: Bombarding the Media With Puff Pieces to Distract From EPO Staff Actions Against Corrupt Management
Distracted cats won’t cover the real story
Summary: The media is not touching — not even remotely — stories regarding unrest at the EPO (even if SUEPO puts such stories out there for the public to see); instead it’s all just Public Relations (PR) of the EPO’s dictatorship
THE European Patent Office (EPO) appears to have issued 'damage-controlling' puff pieces as EPO staff marches to the Portuguese embassy to protest the policies of António Campinos — at times even worse policies than Battistelli‘s. He’s faking a crisis to destroy staff whilst outsourcing jobs. He’s also blocking legal challenges to Battistelli’s illegal policies.
“The EPO is a shrine of Campinos now, as is the Twitter account.”Let’s look at what the EPO is doing today and has done so far this week (as the protest in The Hague became imminent). On Tuesday the EPO was promoting invalid patents (IPs) under the guise of “digital fields!” See who’s talking there! See what the EPO did for the ‘hero’ Campinos [1, 2, 3, 4]. The EPO is a shrine of Campinos now, as is the Twitter account. Here he is talking about “AI” (computer-generated applications) [1, 2] and then about patents as “technical problem” (often codeword/s for software patents in Europe). To quote the tweet: “We assess inventions based on whether they solve a technical problem. It’s not up to us to decode on prices of final products, says EPO President António Campinos at #websummit”
Yes, so-called ‘Web’ Summit, where software patents’ boosters were presented as ‘experts’. Why does the EPO even grant such patents? As of last Friday, examiners are now virtually forced to grant these if it says “AI”. Here’s a new example involving European Patents: “Philips and Wiko compete over mobile phone patents” by Konstanze Richter. The number of the patents are in the article and Benjamin Henrion said “Philips is a troll, enforcing patent over “method for priority-based queuing and assembling of packets in mobile communication”…”
Well, these are algorithms that should not be granted any patents (monopolies on them). From the article: “The judges in Karlsruhe recognised a violation of the slightly restricted version of the SEP by Wiko’s German subsidiary. They therefore sentenced the defendant to information and accounting. However, the court rejected the claim of the plaintiff Philips for injunctive relief (case ID: 6 U 183/16). The judges thus agreed with Wiko’s objection that the Dutch licence offer was not FRAND-compliant.”
“Well, these are algorithms that should not be granted any patents (monopolies on them).”The site’s editor wrote: “There’s been another setback for @Philips in Germany. In the ongoing battle over mobile phone patent, the Dutch company lost one #implementation #patent. It also failed to obtain an injunction against Wiko in infringement proceedings…”
So-called ‘implementation’ patent. Welcome to the world of nonsensical semantics. Did they try “hey hi” (AI)?
“And they announced this only a week later, a day or so before a big protest — the first such protest in a year and a half?”Going back to the EPO, here it is publishing another “news” item (warning: epo.org link); they’ve published at least 5 press releases in just 2 days — more than they typically do in a whole month! Based on our research, this ‘fluff’ has resulted in news ‘saturation’ with more noise (PR) than signal. The Azerbaijan-based “Trend News Agency” prepared puff pieces like this one regarding Georgia and there’s another one from Khmer Times in Cambodia. That’s just copy-paste ‘journalism’ from the EPO’s own mouth and with the EPO’s photo ops! “Cambodia and the European Patent Office last week bolstered ties with the signing of a new cooperation agreement to increase awareness of patents and intellectual property in the Kingdom.”
And they announced this only a week later, a day or so before a big protest — the first such protest in a year and a half?
This is what the EPO has just published:
An EPO delegation including António Campinos, EPO President, Nellie Simon, Vice-President Corporate Services, and several expert examiners took part in Web Summit in Lisbon between 4 and 6 November. The summit is the world’s largest technology event, drawing 70 000 visitors from 160 countries. This year is the first in which the Office was invited to lead a panel discussion and host an exhibition area.
President Campinos was joined by Dr Keigham J. Gabriel, President and CEO at Draper Lab, and Carmela Troncoso, Head of Security & Privacy Engineering at École polytechnique fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL), for a panel discussion on the topic “Patenting the future: The next big invention”. The panel noted that intellectual property and in particular patents have played a major role in innovation, and that without this protection, scientific advancement is stifled.
There are quite a bunch of lies in there; Henrion might assess the whole video from the event for further scrutiny of the claims/assertions.
The EPO is meanwhile also retweeting this self-promotional stuff about its event with patent trolls’ front groups. Joe Doyle from EI is their megaphone of choice, revealing that the EPO has a ‘taste’ for litigation, not innovation. But we all knew that already, right? The EPO then published its fifth puff piece in two days (warning: epo.org link) to say: “On 4 and 5 November 2019 the European Patent Office (EPO) and the Licensing Executives Society International (LESI) held their first-ever joint conference focussed on the importance of IP to high-growth firms. The top-level hybrid conference and training event was attended by around 300 participants from 34 nations and organised in Dublin by the EPO’s European Patent Academy with the support of the government agency Enterprise Ireland. The event provided a platform for decision makers and IP managers at high-growth tech companies (namely start-ups and more classical SMEs) as well as their stakeholders in the innovation ecosystem to learn about business strategy and IP management.”
“…there’s plenty printed based on the EPO’s own words with its own promotional material such as photos.”Obviously, as expected, nobody in the media (not even blogs!) covered the EPO protest from a fortnight ago (in Munich). Nobody even mentions what happens today in The Hague. But there’s plenty printed based on the EPO’s own words with its own promotional material such as photos. █
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