01.14.20
Gemini version available ♊︎The Media’s Obligation is Not to Repeat the Lies of EPO Management, But Money Changes Things
“There is no kind of dishonesty into which otherwise good people more easily and frequently fall than that of defrauding the government.” –Benjamin Franklin
Summary: The ridiculous lies about prospects of the Unified Patent Court are now spreading to EPO-friendly publishers — few powerful people to whom truth isn’t valued as much as the customers (their subscribers and sponsors are law firms)
THE European Patent Office (EPO) wants us to think that it’s imperative to believe anything it says.
António Campinos is a ‘master class’ deceiver — more so than Battistelli, a brute whose general discourse serves to alienate a lot of listeners (his English is also relatively weak).
Quite late on Friday (the latter part of the day) the EPO issued another bundle of lies [1, 2]. All the comments we’ve seen about it are negative. All of them. When I called them out on it — as I dud — my tweets were even “liked” by Team UPC people; yes, even they must have been bemused by what the EPO said.
“Quite late on Friday (the latter part of the day) the EPO issued another bundle of lies.”But the media?
Haha, the media…
That’s another story altogether.
World Intellectual Property Review (WIPR) is relaying EPO propaganda again. WIPR used to have some decent writers who checked facts (the same thing that happened to IP Kat, which we’ll deal with separately in our next post). World Intellectual Property Review (WIPR) has ‘rebranded’ the headline “EPO hopeful that Unified Patent Court will be operational this year”; now it is just “EPO ‘confident’ of 2020 UPC resolution” (still misleading propaganda amplified, not fact-checked). Over in the ‘corporate’ media, IAM is pushing jingoistic EPO talking points, which have been relayed or spread in more sites (having received money to do this; Lexology is connected to that same money now).
“World Intellectual Property Review (WIPR) is relaying EPO propaganda again.”It has become super hard to find proper journalism on patent matters (as opposed to lobbying by litigation thugs, trolls and lawyers). The ‘Banana’ blog is still just copy-pasting everything the EPO publishes, passing it on as fact under the heading “IP News Center” in Google News (“EPO and other representatives hold meeting to implement Unitary Patent package”).
Where are the actual investigations? Where is the balanced journalism that used to exist?
As an anonymous commenter (EPO insider by the sound of it) put it 3 days ago: “One way to – temporarily – survive at this disaster is to avoid getting into contact with anything published from EPO management” (and Team UPC).
Here’s the full comment:
You see, your problem is that you keep reading such announcements and taking them seriously, genuinely believing that the ones who made them have at least a faint idea of what they are talking about. Guys, this is not the case anymore.
One way to – temporarily – survive at this disaster is to avoid getting into contact with anything published from EPO management. It is a pity that posting screenshots is not allowed here. 90% of the announcements appearing in our Intranet – and forwarded to hundreds of displays installed everywhere in the office – are:
– condolences to colleagues who suddenly died. Every single time using exactly the same identical words.
– congratulations to new EPO directors who keep arriving, at a pace of one per week, directly from the EUIPO,
– advertisements from our pres and his hispanportofrench friends smiling, visiting places and helping the world.
If it was not a disgrace it would almost be funny.Yes, 10% or the announcements are still useful and related to patents, but “we are confident that the necessary steps can be accomplished in time for the Useless Posts package to become operational at the end of 2020”.
The article it’s attached to is not 100% bad, albeit it does relay many of the EPO’s lies without bothering to refute these. Benjamin Henrion quoted some bits, especially replies as they’re miles better than puff pieces from these UPC advocates. Among them [1, 2, 3, 4]: “UPC lies: “As 2/3 of the applications stem from outside the EU, the big beneficiaries are US, Japanese and other Asian countries, and not Europe. How stupid to give those countries the possibility to have one point of attack when starting litigation in EU” [...] When Downing Street makes clear that the CJEU will not have any influence in UK, it looks bad for the London Section of the Central Division [...] Why has the basic fee for infringement be set at 11 000EUR, and the basic fee for a nullity action or a counterclaim for nullity set at 20 000EUR? There is a clear advantage for the patent proprietor. Why this disproportion? To help SMEs? [...] Why have countries like Poland and the Czech Republic decided not to join the UPC? If the perspective for their industry would be as rosy as is pretended by those people, they should have jumped at the possibility to join the UPC…”
“When we leaked these documents or at least published for those who had leaked these documents the media in Germany and elsewhere in Europe did cover the underlying issues. But since then the EPO has systematically paid some of the critical publishers, whereupon they self-censored and quit covering EPO leaks.”Yesterday the EPO tweeted a bunch of stuff about SMEs and “startups”. Their own leaked documents show discrimination against them. When we leaked these documents or at least published for those who had leaked these documents the media in Germany and elsewhere in Europe did cover the underlying issues. But since then the EPO has systematically paid some of the critical publishers, whereupon they self-censored and quit covering EPO leaks.
Back in 2014 we started receiving leaks about the EPO, way back when the European Patent Office had a relatively good reputation (still). People were eager to make it publicly known that things weren’t as rosy as it might seem. We still cover the subject a lot. 6 years later we still watch these matters very closely and we still receive a lot of information. The work/output speaks for itself, we believe, but one aspect relevant to the above is that the media got threatened and bribed (they tried this several times on us too). Nowadays, nobody covers these issues but us.
“People were eager to make it publicly known that things weren’t as rosy as it might seem.”Most EPO workers (about 7,000) read Techrights for real understanding or EPO affairs, for verified information, not ‘waffle’ and PR.
We’re the only site the EPO blocked (they temporarily blocked IP Kat and things have never been the same since). But workers can read the site outside work.
The EPO has not sent us any kind of threat since 2016. Maybe their lawyers realised that their intimidation tactics would merely backfire. Here we are about 3,000 articles later. We still report on these issues. With the collapse of 3 or 4 other blogs that used to frequently cover EPO abuses (their staff changed or the sites ceased operating), we’re likely the only ones left to cover these issues without repeating all the self-serving lies of litigation professionals. █
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