Bonum Certa Men Certa

EPO and Microsoft Collude to Break the Law -- Part XIV: When is a Conflict of Interest Not a Conflict of Interest?

Previous parts:



Bill Gates and Campinos



Summary: Could the EPO's increasing reliance on Microsoft involve a conflict of interest?

If Lewis Carroll's Humpty Dumpty had ever managed to visit the bizarre "Wonderland" of the EPO he might have been tempted to formulate a new riddle along the lines of: "When is a conflict of interest not a conflict of interest?"



"To begin with there is Microsoft's chequered history of data protection infractions, anti-trust violations and US FCPA investigations."The answer, it seems, is: "When it involves the EPO".

At any rate, this kind of paradoxical "logic" fits the bill when it comes to the EPO's increasing reliance on Microsoft as a provider of IT products and services.

The casual observer looking at the situation from the outside might reasonably conclude that there are a whole host of legitimate concerns including strong indications of an irreconcilable conflict of interest.

To begin with there is Microsoft's chequered history of data protection infractions, anti-trust violations and US FCPA investigations.

But even if one were inclined to ignore all that, there is a more fundamental problem.

To put it in a nutshell: due to the company's position as a significant player in the global IP arena, Microsoft's role as a key IT provider to the EPO seems to be tainted by an inherent conflict of interest.

The situation might not be so precarious if Microsoft was simply a purveyor of computing hardware or a vendor of client-end data processing software for on-site data processing under the control of the EPO.

But the company's role at the EPO has now expanded far beyond that to the provision of cloud-based data processing services, including the processing of much if not all of the EPO's internal communications via Outlook, Microsoft Teams and Skype for Business.

What we have here could be described in simple terms as the large-scale export of operational data, including internal e-mail and video-conferencing communications, from the EPO to an external data processing infrastructure owned by and operated under the control of Microsoft.

It doesn't need an MBA from the Harvard Business School to realise that placing such sensitive internal operational data directly into the hands of a significant player in the global IP arena is a highly questionable undertaking.

Based on its track record to date, EPO management will undoubtedly defend its actions by arguing that Microsoft can be trusted to "do the right thing".

Microsoft will undoubtedly "do the right thing". The only question here is "the right thing for whom?"

Remember that we are talking here about a private for-profit business corporation with a well-documented track record of engaging in anti-competitive practices and other ethically dubious activities. Can any sane person be realistically expected to trust a company with such an egregious track record of data protection infractions, anti-trust violations and US FCPA investigations?

There should be more than enough warning signs here to set off alarm bells in the competent centres of oversight and governance. However, going by Steve Rowan's recent communiqué, nobody in the upper echelons of EPO management seems to be particularly worried.

Unfortunately, past experience over the last decade and a half has shown that the EPO doesn't deal with conflict-of-interest situations very well.

The rot seems to have really set in (for good) back in 2009 when the Administrative Council voted to appoint its then Chairman, Battistelli, as the executive head of the Office. At the time in question, Battistelli was an elected representative for a political party in France, which should have automatically disqualified him from holding such a position in an international organisation. But the Administrative Council remained oblivious to this glaring conflict of interest.

According to the internal EPO rumour mill, Battistelli had his successor as Chair of the Administrative Council, the Danish delegate Jesper Kongstad, quite literally "in his pocket". Kongstad reportedly received a secret "emolument" from Battsitelli's HR department in the form of the equivalent of an EPO principal director's salary -- a generous monthly tax-free sum of five-figure proportions.

One of Battistelli's first moves as President of the Office was to procure the abolition of the independent Audit Committee which reported directly to the Administrative Council.

It's highly ironic that one of the intended functions of the Audit Committee was to advise the Administrative Council about potential conflicts of interest. Now that it has been disbanded, there is no longer anybody around to warn the Council.

Given this background, it's not really surprising that the increasing reliance of the EPO on Microsoft as an IT provider hasn't generated any visible concern in the ranks of the organisation's senior management and governance bodies.

Microsoft bribe
Did "foreign corrupt practices" play a role in the award of EPO contracts to Microsoft? The opacity of the tendering process makes it difficult to give an answer to such questions.



Another remarkable aspect of the present case is the total opacity of the process that led to the award of the contract or contracts for cloud computing services to Microsoft.

It's not clear how much these contracts are worth and whether they were put out to public tender, or whether they were allocated by "direct award".

We also don't know who exactly was responsible for the internal vetting of these procurement decisions, although it seems fair to assume that they were ultimately approved and signed off by the President of the Office, António Campinos.

Whether or not Campinos was properly advised in the matter is of course a completely different question.

Readers of Techrights may recall that back in 2015, reports were circulating ([1] and [2]) about a programme of "closer cooperation" between the EPO's senior management and some of its leading corporate applicants, in particular Microsoft.

This arrangement attracted a lot of criticism at the time and many people quite rightly questioned whether it was appropriate for the EPO to be engaging in what amounted to a favourable treatment of large multinational corporations like Microsoft.

The recent expansion of Microsoft's business relationship with the EPO has caused some people to speculate about whether the latest developments might not have been influenced by a further programme of "enhanced cooperation" involving "foreign corrupt practices".

It is important to emphasise that there is currently no hard evidence of any "kickbacks" or "slush funds" operated by Microsoft at the EPO. For the moment, any such suggestions are based purely on speculation.

On the other hand, Microsoft's well-documented track record in other jurisdictions means that such speculation cannot be dismissed as completely off the wall.

Cxcel issue
The EPO is plagued by an entrenched culture of opacity and non-accountability which makes a credible investigation into suspected irregularities almost impossible



However, the problem here is that the EPO is plagued by such a deeply entrenched culture of opacity and non-accountability that if these procurement decisions had in fact been tainted by corruption, it is highly unlikely that this would ever be investigated and exposed, especially if any members of the senior management were involved.

It is doubtful whether the EPO's internal investigative procedures are really fit for purpose in such cases, and there is no external anti-corruption agency which would be competent to take appropriate action.

To sum up, we are left with a situation in which procurement decisions have been made at the EPO which effectively place sensitive internal operational data directly into the hands of an external IT service provider based in the US and subject to the laws of that jurisdiction -- including the US CLOUD Act of 2018.

In addition to this, the IT service provider in question happens to be a significant player in the global IP game.

At the same time, none of those who bear the ultimate responsibility for these procurement decisions seem to have the slightest concern about what appears to be a clear-cut case of a conflict of interest.

As Lewis Carrol's Alice might have said, "curiouser and curiouser!"

In the final part of the series we will consider whether the EPO's increasing reliance on cloud computing services hosted by Microsoft has effectively led to a sell-out of the organisation's "digital sovereignty".

Recent Techrights' Posts

Always Check Your Inputs
Garbage in, garbage out. Or wrong assumptions, wrong corollary.
 
Slopwatch: webpronews.com, linuxsecurity.com, linuxjournal.com
a pile of trash disguised as 'articles'
Links 10/07/2025: Linda Yaccarino Divorces MElonazi Site, Wildfires Hit Syria
Links for the day
The History and the Policy of the EPO's Stance on Breastfeeding (Corporate Monopolies Versus Babies' Health)
"The Case for Introducing a Breastfeeding Policy at the EPO"
Gemini Links 10/07/2025: Inventing Chords and "Nightmare Boss"
Links for the day
Igor Ljubuncic Once Again Shows That for Technical Reasons Wayland Still Sucks, Performs Considerably Worse Than What Existed for Decades
That is aside from compatibility factors and other crucial factors
Links 10/07/2025: "Apple Vs The Law" and Twitter Became Full Nazi Bar
Links for the day
Unable to Find Anyone to Work as Their Media Lawyer, Brett Wilson LLP Will Continue Losing Female Staff
What sort of sick person would wish to join Brett Wilson LLP to carry this baton?
Microsoft-Sponsored Propaganda Site Has Removed False 'Hit Piece' About Dr. Stallman (With Fake and Misrepresented Imagery) But Only After 4 Years
So they only removed that page some time around 2025, i.e. about 4 years after it had been published
Dan Neidle Said That Tax Evasion Facilitator Mr Zahawi (Working to Silence Bloggers Through Brett Wilson LLP) Targeted Not Only Him (But The Others Kept Quiet)
"Mr Neidle said after repelling Mr Zahawi he was contacted by bloggers and tweeters who had received similar threats. They deleted their work “and in most cases never commented publicly on anything again”."
SLAPP Funding Transparency Urgently Needed in the UK and Elsewhere (in Practice, Not Just in Theory)
Writing about crime - including Microsoft crime - is not a crime
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Wednesday, July 09, 2025
IRC logs for Wednesday, July 09, 2025
Elodie Bergot Still Doing Illegal Things at the EPO, Based on the Local Staff Committee Munich
They keep taking away from the staff while compelling the staff to do illegal things
Gemini Links 09/07/2025: Extreme Testing and Golang Documentation in Geminispace
Links for the day
Vice President of the European Patent Office (EPO) Complains That Techrights Gives Visibility to Legal and Technical Issues at the EPO
"Follow-up on enquiries relating to Dir. 1218 and 1001"
Slopwatch: linuxsecurity.com and Various Slopfarms That Lie About "Linux" and Are Promoted by Google News
Google does not seem interested in tackling this problem
Links 09/07/2025: War Updates and Microsoft Moving to India to Cut Costs
Links for the day
GNU/Linux Was Always a 'Movement' of Inclusion of Tolerance
Even the licences themselves remove access barriers
Links 09/07/2025: "Subprime AI Crisis" and "OpenAI May Be in Major Trouble Financially"
Links for the day
Huge Piles of Legal Papers ('Paper DDoS') Do Not Impress Judges and Regulators
they just make judges and regulators even more suspicious of the eagerness to resort to 'paper DDoS'
Brett Wilson LLP Sent Over 5 Kilograms (or Over 12 Pounds) of Legal Papers! Because Writing About Microsoft Abuses is 'Illegal'.
How do you guys sleep at night? On a big pile of Microsoft money?
Extremism as a Weapon Against GNU/Linux (Microsoft Lunduke)
He ought to know the Halloween Documents. Wasn't he a Microsoft employee when these came out?
Lunduke Isn't Even Hiding His Anti-Linux Agenda (From "Linux Sucks" to "Linux is Pedophiles")
just trying to make a lot of trouble
Some People Use Computers to Get Actual Work Done
Tolerance and inclusion must extend to acceptance that some people don't agree with you, might never agree with you, and imposing what allegedly works for you on them is unreasonable
Example of "Old" Things That Still Work
The notion that something being "old" implies it must be discarded is typically advanced by those looking to sell more of something
Some Scheduled Maintenance Later Today
Typically the most vulnerable service during short interruptions is IRC
Computers Are Just a Tool
People don't get married because they love weddings, folks don't join the army because they love war, and most drivers don't drive to work because they love cars
Apple Way Past Its Prime
Apple deserves a decline
The FSF's SysOps Team Recovered From Serious Hardware Issue Within Hours
About half a day ago I noticed that all/most GNU/FSF sites were not reachable and thus reached out to a contact for any details
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Tuesday, July 08, 2025
IRC logs for Tuesday, July 08, 2025
Slopwatch: Turning Bugs Into FUD About "Linux", Getting Basic Facts Wrong
all the screenshots are of fake articles; we don't want to link to any
Technical Reasons, Not Politics: With Wayland "it feels a lot like Linux from 20-25 years ago, which is horrendously frustrating, because it feels like we wasted one or two decades of progress and stability"
Lately, quite a few benchmarks were published to show Wayland compares poorly compared to what we had
PCLinuxOS Recovering From Fire
It looks like a nightmare scenario, where even backups onsite get destroyed
Links 09/07/2025: More Heatwaves, Officials Culled in Russia
Links for the day
Gemini Links 09/07/2025: XScreensaver and Resurrection
Links for the day
Links 08/07/2025: "Cyberattack Deals Blow to Russian Firmware" and "Cash Remains King"
Links for the day
FSF40 T-shirt message
by Alex Oliva
Gemini Links 08/07/2025: Creativity, Gotify with NUT Server, and Sudo Bugs
Links for the day
More on "Lunduke is Actually Sending His Audience to Attack People"
"pepe the frogs"
Links 08/07/2025: Sabotage of Networking Infrastructure, Microsoft XBox Game Pass Deemed “Unsustainable”
Links for the day
Dalai Lama Succession as Evidence That Determined, Motivated People Can Reach Their Nineties
And we need to quit talking about their death all the time
Many Lawyers (for Microsoft) and 1,316 Pages to Pick on a Litigant in Person Who Exposed Serious Microsoft Abuses
Answers must be given
Gemini Links 08/07/2025: Ancillary Justice and Small Web July
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Monday, July 07, 2025
IRC logs for Monday, July 07, 2025