Bonum Certa Men Certa

European Patent Office (EPO) Reduced to 'Justice Over the Telephone' and Decree by E-mail

Chinese labour "standards" (from the back door)

The EPO's threatening language



Being behind bars



Summary: The EPO is trashing the EPC and everything that the Office was supposed to stand for, as it wrongly assumes demand for monopolies (typically from foreign corporations) comes before the rule of law and Europe's public interest

WE are gratified to see responses to the EPO regime of António Campinos; after Benoît Battistelli 'kidnapped' judges from their offices ("house ban") Campinos places staff on "house arrest". Because "innovation" or something...



"People's general mood/spirit is already lowered by inability to travel (and see loved ones, exercise, meet friends); treat them with respect and dignity, at the very least."What has EPOnia turned into? We've shown threatening if not menacing E-mails sent from management to examiners. Are they trying to shock people? Is the goal to induce stress and depression? People's general mood/spirit is already lowered by inability to travel (and see loved ones, exercise, meet friends); treat them with respect and dignity, at the very least.

The problem is, today's EPO isn't run by qualified managers but a Praetorian Guard of Campinos. They bully anyone who dares to challenge their agenda, not their authority. Even if that agenda is outright illegal. In other words, people are given unlawful instructions and defiance of such unlawful instructions begets unwarranted bollocking.

Bars and dogOne might expect this sort of autocracy in Red China, not the red (logo) EPO. And speaking of China, this morning the EPO spoke about (warning: epo.org link) the latest "discussion rounds" with China (and its smaller albeit patent-savvy neighbours to the east). When the EPO says "discussion" it means webchats rather than a roundtable discussions. And this one also misuses laughable buzzwords like "Artificial intelligence (AI)." (Or Hey Hi)

From this morning's EPO so-called 'news': "Several important topics and issues were discussed over the course of three days including amendments to law, cross-lingual search possibilities and the opportunities presented by Artificial intelligence (AI)."

Notice the part about "amendments to law"; those "discussion rounds" aren't permitted to change underlying legislation; that's another branch, but at the EPO there's no notion of separation of powers. If there was, a lot of that "new normal" would be blocked. Many things that the EPO did in the wake of the pandemic are completely illegal. Who's going to be held accountable for it? Probably nobody.

The 'discussions' (webchats) weren't supposed to tackle underlying law but instead focus on this: "The discussion rounds provided a platform for direct interaction between users and experts on topics such as Asian data in Espacenet and keyword searches in Chinese, Japanese and Korean full texts."

Those are not affected by the pandemic because they're less formal, almost informal. In fact, texts produced by automatic (machine) translation are technically and legally invalid.

We can recommend to our readers this one new comment on the latest article from Dr. Bausch, a European patent attorney. This one of many comments (over a dozen, with the original post now cited by SUEPO as well) correctly notes: "A reasonable interpretation of the term “oral proceedings” can only mean the physical presence of the parties before the EPO’s decision-making body. The terms “oral proceedings” are far from being ambiguous or obscure, let alone that their interpretation in good faith leads to a result that is manifestly absurd or unreasonable. [...] A videoconference is nothing more than a telephone conversation during which the parties can see each other."

Here's the full comment reproduced:

The Boards of Appeal regularly invoke the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties (VCLT) when it comes to deciding on how to interpret the EPC.

The interpretation of Art 116 given in the explanatory note for the proposal of Art 15a RPBA is in manifest contradiction with the VCLT in its Art 31 and 32. According to the VCLT, a treaty has to be interpreted in good faith and if this interpretation should not lead to a result that is manifestly absurd or unreasonable.

The mere assertion that “neither Art 116 nor any other article of the EPC or RPCR 2020 stipulates that the parties to the proceedings, their representatives or the members of the board must be physically present in the room”, amounts to ignoring the philosophy underlying Art 116.

A reasonable interpretation of the term “oral proceedings” can only mean the physical presence of the parties before the EPO’s decision-making body.

The terms “oral proceedings” are far from being ambiguous or obscure, let alone that their interpretation in good faith leads to a result that is manifestly absurd or unreasonable.

Nowhere in the “travaux préparatoires” to Art. 116 it has ever been envisaged that the parties are not physically present before the deciding body, and that for instance it could be held by phone. A videoconference is nothing more than a telephone conversation during which the parties can see each other.

What is said here applies mutatis mutandis to oral proceedings before examining and opposition divisions.

Neither the Chairman of Boards, nor the Chairman of the BOAC, and even less the president of the EPO, have the power to amend the EPC in the way they are attempting to do. They simply lack the legitimacy to do so. The same applies to the AC.

That in a period like the pandemic solutions have to be envisaged is not at stake. In exceptional situations, exceptional solutions can be envisaged, but as soon as the exceptional situation is over, then the exception should be stopped and the normal situation be re-established.

In any case, the possibility of holding oral proceedings by videoconference should be left to the parties and not decided ex-officio, even in exceptional circumstances. As explained by Mr Bausch, the parties also have an interest to come to decisions and not unduly keep their files open. Once a party is opponent, once it is proprietor so that a fair balance can be stricken between contradictory requirements.

Whilst I can have some understanding of Max Drei’s plea about representatives sitting at a distance from The Hague or Munich, I cannot fundamentally agree with him. When he speaks about the three members of divisions of first instance, I have to take away his illusions. See below.

It is not for the Office and its Boards of Appeal to decide what is good for the parties. After all, the income of the Office stems from the contributions of the parties, so that the parties must have a say about the way they are treated. Presently it is with morgue and disdain.

Under the pretext of the pandemic situation, both the EPO and the Boards want manifestly to dematerialise the EPO. This would in the long term allow to transfer its duties to national patent offices and get read of staff which is not as docile as the management would like to.

If you think that there are discussions within examining or opposition divisions, please abandon this idyllic vision. In vast areas of the EPO the three men divisions of first instance are long time gone and only exist on paper. In some areas there have even been oral instructions that if the first member has signed, the two other have to sign as well. Consulting the register recently, I even came across a Form 2035 in which only the first member had signed! If you take on top the difficulties imposed by videoconferencing among members of divisions, this trend has rather increased.

By isolating its staff, the EPO gains even more influence on it and concerted actions would be made more or less impossible. What a perspective for the head of (anti)personnel!

That by dematerialising the office it would then be possible to even sell some buildings has been clearly envisaged by the management.

The role of the EPO and its Boards is not to play Monopoly۩ but to offer an acceptable service to its users. Why was it then necessary to invest in rented accommodation for the boards when other buildings of the EPO are allegedly empty and can be sold?

By the way, the EPO wanted to sell the latest buildings of the EPO (BT8) on the other side of Grasserstraße, but the city of Munich refused as it had a contractual say in the matter.

For a while the EPO has become the playground of would be managers only having in mind juicy bonuses and relying on management methods from the 19th century. The EPO plays a big role in European IP, and it should not be left to the incompetent amateurs presently at its helm. If anything goes wrong, they can always rely on their immunity…..

The fathers of the EPC must be turning over at high speed in their graves.


If the EPO has no (real) physical location and it's reduced to a bunch of workers across Europe (mostly based around two locations) granting monopolies from home and discussing those patents over E-mail/phone (serious data protection violations, including outsourcing to the United States), then what has it become? What "access to justice" is there, really? Those are the sorts of "hard questions" the EPO can only even attempt to distract the public from, sometimes with the veil of diversity (which it lacks).

There's a severe crisis of (il)legitimacy when those who proclaim to stand for the law so routinely break the law themselves.

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