Bonum Certa Men Certa

Inside the EPO During Corona: More Microsoft and More Corruption/Nepotism From António Campinos (Loyal Friends Get Top Jobs to Cover Up/Perpetuate Scandals)

EUIPO and EPO - narrow

EUIPO and EPO



Summary: The corrupt EPO continues to violate the privacy of staff -- even right inside their own homes -- exploiting a public health crisis to justify these illegal practices while hiring some more friends to cover up crimes

THE EPO's Central Staff Committee is seeing all the same crimes and abuses of Benoît Battistelli mirrored by the regime of António Campinos. Just like Battistelli brought in ('imported') lots of former colleagues from INPI, Campinos brings his colleagues from EUIPO and the list of these colleagues is getting too long to keep abreast of. What is this, Mafia Family? Even Donald Trump didn't appoint that many personal confidants in spite of no/lacking qualifications.



"Notice how much of the Office is being outsourced to an American mass surveillance company (Microsoft), best known for crimes including bribery (notorious examples in Munich).""With the COVID-19 crisis," the Central Staff Committee wrote 7 months ago, "Mr Campinos pushed a number of decisions that surprised staff and that many of us do not understand. In an open letter to Mr Campinos, the Central Staff Committee (CSC) questions: the mandatory registration of teleworking in MyFIPS, the obligation to provide the Office with private mobile phone numbers in the context of using MIR3 for emergency messaging, the use of iLearn on LinkedIn and the paperless dossier treatment. To this effect, the CSC has also addressed the new Data Protection Officer (DPO) freshly arrived through the talent pipeline from the EUIPO in Alicante."

Notice how much of the Office is being outsourced to an American mass surveillance company (Microsoft), best known for crimes including bribery (notorious examples in Munich). Nothing has changed since the 1990s, but the EPO acts like a business partner of those thugs; we suppose criminals attract other criminals.

What's referred to as "talent pipeline from the EUIPO in Alicante" is Ms Mariya Koleva. Here's the full letter.

Reference: sc20066cl-0.3.1/5.3 Date: 16.04.2020

European Patent Office | 80298 MUNICH | GERMANY

Mr António Campinos President of the EPO

ISAR - R.1081

Changes may be necessary, but there’s a proper way for doing it

Dear Mr President,

We would like to follow up some points raised under any other business during last week’s virtual GCC-meeting.

COVID-19 brought with it a need to act, which the Office duly did. We are experiencing changes that we would not have thought possible. Some of the decisions you took surprised staff and many of us do not understand why they were taken.

We briefly touched the wavetops during the GCC-meeting.

Registration of teleworking in MyFIPS

With your instruction, given in the absence of any consultation, you compel staff to register teleworking in MyFIPS and to provide full contact details including their private mobile phone number.

As already argued in the GCC, managers know from where their staff is working and how they can be contacted, so there is no need for registering teleworking in the system. Staff working from home logs into VPN as teleworking and Security knows from the use of the badges who is in the building. But you did not limit yourself to that. You also requested the distinction between teleworking and mandatory teleworking. The sense of that distinction and the use of any data gathered with such registration does not reveal itself to staff. In brief, there is a lot of explaining, convincing and formal consulting to be done.

Providing private mobile phone numbers in the context of using MIR3 for emergency messaging

Since the GCC meeting it transpired that apparently no corners are being cut on data protection and data storage issues and that the Office’s checks reliably kick in. We also understand better why the Office wants such an emergency messaging system, but compelling staff to give a private mobile phone number is a bridge too far. In the recent past there has been too much abuse of staff’s trust, so a certain reticence in providing private numbers is to be understood. From what we have gleaned since the GCC-meeting, the arguments for providing that private phone number appear to be convincing. Here, too, transparency and involvement would get most of staff to volunteer their number. It cannot be anything but voluntary, based on an informed decision, if trust isn’t going to be eroded any further. Case law in Germany has confirmed the voluntary nature of divulging private phone numbers to the employer.

iLearn on LinkedIn (not mentioned during the GCC-meeting)

The recent initiative of launching e-learning opportunities on LinkedIn appears to provide full EPO user data to LinkedIn and colleagues who registered are confronted with LinkedIn services they do not appreciate, such as networking suggestions. We see a need for consultation on data protection issues here. As it stands, if asked by a staff member, we at present would not be able to recommend registering for this new opportunity.

Paperless dossier treatment – Signing out production

Here, too, as pointed out, we have data protection concerns regarding the access to production data of a directorate to staff other than directors.

The way forward

Consultation is overdue, which may imply GCC consultation or, in some cases, transparent information from the Office’s experts to the Staff Committee experts. In view of the recent appointment of Ms Koleva as DPO a good start could be for her to meet a CSC-delegation to get to know each other and to address the data protection aspects of the above issues in preparation of further consultation. We have separately addressed Ms Koleva to that end.

We look forward to your positive response to our request.

Yours sincerely,

Joachim Michels

Chairman of the Central Staff Committee cc.: Ms Mariya Koleva; Data Protection Office



Does anyone seriously think Koleva is there to protect privacy rather than protect Campinos and his corrupt regime? It's a coverup rather than effort at compliance.

This is 'third-world country' standards right before our eyes. With staff being forced to give tons of personal data to Microsoft. Yes, not even a European company. A company that breaches GDPR (EU law) routinely...

The EPO, as well as EUIPO (lots of cross-pollination), rapidly gets a "rogue" status -- a great source of shame and embarrassment to Europe. The EU covers up for them, so it is not helping the EU either. Those of us who like the concept of the EU are increasingly concerned. This kind of corruption will lead to collapse.

Recent Techrights' Posts

Throwing Away "Old" Computers (Mozilla and Other Climate Deniers)
Mozilla is not leftist
Further Media Cut-downs
media reporting about the media being cut
Gemini Links 09/09/2025: Moon Eclipse and ROOPHLOCH Reports
Links for the day
 
Links 10/09/2025: Microsoft Layoffs in "RTO" Clothing and Windows TCO, GitHub TCO
Links for the day
Blaming Everything on China
TikTok works for China. GAFAM works for fascists.
People Get Tired of "Hey Hi" (AI), Unlike the Subservient Money-Obsessed Media That Gets Paid to Pretend This Bubble Still Matters
"crash will be way bigger than dot.com burst in 90s. and that was Internet, actually transformative technology, not this expensive AI toy with direct dependency on the energy input which is not scalable"
Brett Wilson LLP Accepts That the Serial Strangler From Microsoft Filed a Case That Also Implicates My Wife (Everything is Connected)
They used to pretend that there were two separate cases
10 Reasons to Disable (or Enable) UEFI Secure Boot
Tomorrow the "trusted corporation" Microsoft will see a certificate expire
Gemini Links 10/09/2025: Hospital and Large Feeds
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Tuesday, September 09, 2025
IRC logs for Tuesday, September 09, 2025
The Bluewashing of Red Hat is Being Completed, Many Staff Understand They'll be Made Redundant
Jim AllowHurst (Whitehurst) is meanwhile promoting Microsoft's agenda from within other companies
statCounter Sees GNU/Linux Exceeding 10% in Bulgaria This Month
What can Microsoft still do to stop GNU/Linux?
Dark Patterns
Microsoft saying "security" is like a Convicted Felon in the White House saying "law and order".
It's Almost Fall (Autumn)
To "Facebook prison" you are bound
Bruce Schneier About "Secure Boot"
Bruce Schneier isn't a fan of "Secure Boot"
Links 09/09/2025: Microsoft Mass Layoffs Again and "RTO" (Timed Like It Serves as a Distraction From the Mass Layoffs)
Links for the day
RMS Told Microsoft to Stop 'Secure Boot' (He Even Went There to Say That), But They Didn't Listen
Dr. Stallman (RMS) assumed that speaking to sociopaths would work
What Richard Stallman Told Me About 'Secure' Boot in 2012
"if the user doesn't control the keys, then it's a kind of shackle"
Those Who Helped Microsoft Weaponise "Secure Boot" Against GNU/Linux and BSDs Are Fleeing
Microsofters doing what they do best: they evade accountability
Simple is Better, Simplicity is Power
That is "the advantage of having commodity GNU/Linux systems," an associate notes
Much Ado About Nonsense
Microsoft Lunduke is still all dramatisation and sensationalism
Current Events in France
It needs to dump Microsoft and other GAFAM (US) giants, move to Free software
Links 09/09/2025: US-Korea Tensions and Meta Whistleblowers
Links for the day
Links 09/09/2025: “Torrents of Hate” and Political Crisis in France
Links for the day
Gemini Links 09/09/2025: "Dedigitizing" and Forgejo on FreeBSD
Links for the day
Google News (Not Just Google Search) Lets Itself by Gamed by One Slopfarm - to the Point Almost Half of "Linux" News is Bot-Produced Plagiarism (LLM Slop With Slop Images)
That says a lot about what Google thinks of quality, even in Google News
Bill Gates-Funded Media Inadvertently Refutes the Microsoft Lie That in 2025 Microsoft Had Just Two Waves of Layoffs
There were about 12 rounds of layoffs so far in 2025
Official SUSE Blog Still Uses LLM Slop (Bots) to Make Fake Articles (Marketing)
The company is all about sound bites
Companies Realise That Slop Doesn't Work as Advertised, Accordingly Dump It
"Hype dims as a country-wide survey of US corporations shows a sudden drop-off in AI use among firms with more than 250 employees."
Microsoft-Funded Lawsuits Against Critics of UEFI 'Secure Boot'
Remember that no company (or law firm) ever survives collaborations with Microsoft
From theregister.co.uk to theregister.com (US) to The Register MS (Run by Microsoft Operatives) and theregister.ai
The best way to break this racket (or cycle of hype and harm) is to break the chains of funding
Open Source Initiative (OSI) Culture of Censorship Necessitates More Speech
The OSI bans dissent or people who merely point out that the OSI is abusive
How to Reach Us Discreetly (Other Than Encrypted E-mail)
We're still managing to maintain a 100% source protection record. We soon turn 19.
LLMs Are Vastly Worse Than a Waste of Energy and the Externalities Are Huge
Worse than just higher power bills for everybody
LLMs Versus Search (Not Replacing Search But Engaging in DDoS Attacks Against Web Sites That Permit Searching)
The state of the Web isn't just bad; it's utterly terrible
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Monday, September 08, 2025
IRC logs for Monday, September 08, 2025
It's Only the Second Week of September and Already Two Waves of Layoffs at Microsoft, Slopfarms and Microsoft-Funded Sites Spin It as "AI Investments" Rather Than Commercial Failure
A very large third one expected next week
The UEFI 9/11 - Part IX - Shunning Old Computers (in 2023 the Certificate Was Updated/Overridden, Underlying Aim May Be Herding/Forcing People to Get TPM and Other 'Novel' Restrictions)
the "upgrade treadmill"
Rumour: Second Wave of Microsoft Mass Layoffs in September to Commence Third Week of September
That basically answers questions like, "Any specific date or time of the month?"
If Your Machine Still Has "Secure Boot" Enabled, Then Microsoft Has a de Facto Kill Switch (Even If Your Machine Doesn't Have Windows and Never Had Windows)
It is not incorrect to call UEFI 'secure boot' a "kill switch"
Gemini Links 08/09/2025: Reality, ROOPHLOCH 2025, and Writing Another Gemini Client
Links for the day
Updating Firmware is Not the Solution But Only Additional Risk, Disable "Secure Boot" Today
firmware blobs are buggy, secret, impossible to audit, and barely tested
Microsoft Tim's DevClass (Part of The Register MS/Situation Publishing) is Full of Slop
Looking at many sites that are full of slop images is becoming an eye sore and hallmark of text too likely generated by LLMs or 'assisted' (tainted) by them
Microsoft Trying to Fake Demand for Slop. At What Cost?
That's a giant demotion and broken promises
Reddit is Corporate Propaganda
To make matters worse, Reddit ousted many original moderators
Jeff Geerling Shocked to Discover Many Metrics in YouTube Are Fake (His Audience Turns Out to be Much Smaller)
Maybe self-host all videos, don't rely on Google's "FOMO" cheating (addiction based on false assumptions)
Sunlight is the Best Disinfectant and Kryptonite/Garlic to Vampires
Transparency (sometimes described by words like "Sunlight" or "Truth") is paramount
The Register MS Uses Slop in Articles About Slop
we are fairly certain it's slop or CG based on other people's work
Visiting a Web Page or a Public URL Should be Safe, Predictable, and Benign
It's probably too late to "fix" the Web
The Register MS (Situation Publishing) is Paid to Spread Mindless Hype for the "Hey Hi" Ponzi Scheme and That's a Serious Problem
"Sponsored by Zoom."
Links 08/09/2025: Burger King Cracked, Cox v. Sony Analysed
Links for the day
Gemini Links 08/09/2025: Socialist Computer Museum and GAFAM/ByteDance/TikTok-Dominated Net
Links for the day
Links 08/09/2025: Tim Crook Disappoints Apple Faithfuls and Zuckerberg Lies (Financial Fraud) for Cheeto King
Links for the day
EPO Workers Point Out that the EPO is Destroying the Planet Under the Guise of "Hey Hi" (It Also Grants Many Invalid Patents Illegally
On 12 March and 16 June 2025, staff representation met with the administration in the Local Occupational Health, Safety and Ergonomics Committee (LOHSEC) in Munich
Turn Off Microsoft's Restricted Boot ("Secure Boot")
We're still running a series on this issue
Social Control Media Sites Have Become Bot Farms (Not Limited to LLMs and Automation)
linkedin.com was nothing but trouble and losses for Microsoft
Deep in Debt With the Magnitude of Losses Quickly Growing, Microsoft "Open" "Hey Hi" Now Uses Broadcom for Vapourware, Pretending It'll Do OK Next Year
At some stage it'll collapse
You Can Tell Microsoft is in Trouble When Its Own Fans and Staff Blast it
"Microsoft sinks billions into chasing artificial intelligence fads to hype up its share price."
Multiple Undersea Cable Cuts and We're Still OK
Microsoft customers experience problems
Lawyers Who Think They Are Online Assassins Don't Deserve a Licence to Operate
they've become a laughing stock in their "sector"
Microsoft Windows Fell to 3.9% "Market Share" in Bahamas
Based on statCounter
How the European Union (EU) Fell Out of Love With Free/Libre Software
Lots of bribery
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Sunday, September 07, 2025
IRC logs for Sunday, September 07, 2025