Bonum Certa Men Certa

An EPO Administrative Council Exposé -- Part I: A New EPO Balkan Affair?

Series index:

  1. You are here ☞ A New EPO Balkan Affair?


A New EPO Balkan Affair?



Summary: Recent research has provided indications of a fresh "Balkan Affair" affecting the EPO Administrative Council

Someone with a sensitive nose recently detected a curious odour coming from the tightly sealed closet of the EPO's Administrative Council.



In the meantime olefactory experts have confirmed that it is most probably the smell of a fresh "corpse" and well-informed insiders are whispering about a new "Balkan Affair".

This time, the focus of attention is not Croatia but North Macedonia.

"Almost two decades after it first applied for membership of the EU, North Macedonia is still awaiting admission."For readers who are unfamiliar with the Balkan region, North Macedonia is one of the successor states of the former Federal Republic of Yugoslavia which gained its independence in 1991. In those days it was known as "the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia" (FYROM).

It is a landlocked country bordering with Serbia to the north, Bulgaria to the east, Greece to the south, Albania to the west and Kosovo to the northwest. Skopje, the capital and largest city, is home to a quarter of the country's 2.08 million population. The majority of the residents are ethnic Macedonians, a Slavic people, with Albanians forming a significant minority at around 25%.

Almost two decades after it first applied for membership of the EU, North Macedonia is still awaiting admission. For many years, progress in negotiations with the EU was obstructed by a long-running name dispute with its southern neighbour Greece. This eventually resulted in a compromise according which the former Yugoslav state officially known as FYROM agreed to rebrand itself as "North Macedonia".

"But if North Macedonia has been left languishing in the waiting room of the EU, the European Patent Organisation showed itself to be more accommodating."In 2019, the EU accession negotiations encountered a further obstacle when France complained about deficiencies in the accession process and requested a thorough review before any new members were accepted.

More recently, Bulgaria has been blocking North Macedonia's EU entry with demands that it acknowledge that the language spoken by the country's Slav majority is not a separate "Macedonian" language but rather Bulgarian - or a regional dialect thereof.

Appointment of Safet EmruliBut if North Macedonia has been left languishing in the waiting room of the EU, the European Patent Organisation showed itself to be more accommodating.

North Macedonia was permitted to become a member of the EPO on 1 January 2009.

The President of the European Patent Office at that time was the former UKIPO boss Alison Brimelow and the Chairman of the Administrative Council during the negotiations was the Swiss delegate Roland Grossenbacher.

At the first Administrative Council meeting attended by the North Macedonian delegation in March 2009, the representatives of the new contracting state were formally welcomed by the Council Chairman - this time Grossenbacher's successor, a certain Benoît Battistelli who needs no introduction to readers of Techrights.

Back in 2009 the North Macedonian delegation was headed by a gentleman called Safet Emruli, who had been appointed as Director of the State Office of Industrial Property (SOIP) in 2008 [PDF] and was destined to remain in this position until October 2020.

Goran Gerasimovski, General Director of the (SOIP) of North MacedoniaOn 15 and 16 December 2020, at the 165th meeting of the EPO's Administrative Council - which in keeping with the times was held as an "e-Meeting" - a fresh face representing North Macedonia suddenly appeared.

The newcomer was Mr Goran Gerasimovski, the freshly appointed General Director of the (SOIP) of North Macedonia, who had mysteriously replaced the longtime incumbent, Safet Emruli.

For some unknown reason, Gerasimovski's début at the December 2020 meeting doesn't seem to have attracted as much as a fleeting mention from the Council Chairman, Josef Kratochvíl.

It's normal for the Chairman to greet new arrivals as a matter of courtesy but in this case, the sudden appearance of the new kid on the block seems to have been overlooked.

As for Emruli, he departed just as precipitously and without any advance warning.

EPO Council Chairman, Josef KratochvílThe last Administrative Council meeting which Emruli attended was the 164th meeting, held as an e-meeting on 13 October 2020.

Normally when a long-serving Council delegate leaves there are some words of leave-taking from the Chairman to wish them well, be it in retirement or in the course of whatever new duties they might be about to take up. But on this occasion Emruli seems to have slipped out through the back door without anybody noticing.

So what exactly was going on here?

Stay tuned as we delve behind the scenes and try to get to the bottom of the latest EPO "Balkan Affair"...

Recent Techrights' Posts

Slopwatch: Brian Fagioli, Google News, and Other LLM Slopfarms
Why does Google News keep promoting these fake articles?
Links 29/10/2025: Amazon Kept "Data Center Water Use Secret", "Abuse of Power" Against Media
Links for the day
Gemini Links 29/10/2025: "My Hardware Specs" and "Goodbye Debian…"
Links for the day
EPO Cocainegate: Feedback and Clarifications
Part III will come out soon
Links 29/10/2025: "US Military Is Destroying the Planet Beyond Imagination" and Boat Strikes Deemed Unlawful
Links for the day
Quality Comes First (Techrights Search)
It's generally working already, but we wish to polish it some more
Techrights Party Countdown
Late next week we'll be holding a party near our home
European Parliament and Council Directive on Privacy is Vanishing
"edited / censored some time more recently"
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Tuesday, October 28, 2025
IRC logs for Tuesday, October 28, 2025
Slopwatch: The March of Slopfarms, From UbuntuPIT to Linux Journal and to Various Fake Sites Still Promoted by Google News
It's so worrying to see what the Web has become
Links 29/10/2025: CISA, Ukraine, and Amazon Problems
Links for the day
[Teaser] The EPO's Spokesperson, a Cocaine User, Fancies Young Women
How's that for "optics" in the EU and Europe's second-largest institution?
How Will António Campinos Respond to the EPO's 'Cocainegate'?
That's the same thing we saw and still see when the press deals with enablers and partners of Jeffrey Epstein
Join Us Now and Share the News - Part IV: There Cannot be Free Software Without Free Press and Free Information
One day, one can hope, more people will recognise that for Software Freedom we need free press and free thinkers
Join Us Now and Share the News - Part III: Principled Stance Is Never Cheap
Protecting the truth and insisting that the general public is made aware of things that really happened isn't cheap
Join Us Now and Share the News - Part II: Because Scarcity of Accurate Information Breeds Collective Ignorance
we too will strive to share information that's aggressively suppressed
Gemini Links 28/10/2025: More New Arrivals at Geminispace, xkcd on "Document Forgery"
Links for the day
Join Us Now and Share the News - Part I: Defence of the Truth
This year we make a very strong, firm statement for truth, even if that means explaining our work to the top media judge in the country
Links 28/10/2025: Meta and Fentanylware (CheeTok) Age-Restricted Down Under, "Britain Needs China’s Money"
Links for the day
Links 28/10/2025: Mass Layoffs at Amazon and Charter to Cut 1,200 Jobs
Links for the day
The Cocaine Patent Office - Part II: The Person Who Planted Paid-for Fake News for the European Patent Office (EPO) is a Cocaine User, Friend of António Campinos, Now on Record as Having Been Arrested
Background: High-level manager at the European Patent Office caught in public with cocaine, arrested
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Monday, October 27, 2025
IRC logs for Monday, October 27, 2025
Google News Drowning in Slop (and Slopfarms That Hijack About Half the Results)
Google News seems to be drowning in this stuff
Gemini Links 28/10/2025: "How to Maximize Your Positive Impact" and ASCII Art and Artist Attribution
Links for the day
PETA and Activism
Being staff or volunteer in PETA isn't easy
Big Blue, Huge Debt
debt will soar again
Links 27/10/2025: Mass Surveillance Sold as "AI", People Reluctant to Lose Physical Media
Links for the day
Parties and Milestones Again
we've begun putting up about 40 balloons
Techrights' 19th Anniversary: Bronze
Time to go back to preparing for this anniversary
Our Latest European Patent Office (EPO) Series Will Last Several Weeks, Will Ask the EPO Management and the European Union (EU) Very Difficult Questions
If nobody loses a job (or jobs) over this, then the EU basically became no better than Colombia or Nicaragua
Slopwatch: LinuxSecurity, UbuntuPIT, Brian Fagioli, and Google News
We focus on stories that are fake or LLM slop that disguises itself as "news" about Linux
Links 27/10/2025: Wikipedia Vandalism, Bruce Perens Opens up on Childhood
Links for the day
This Site Could Not be Done by LLMs Even If It Wanted to (Because It's Not a Parrot of What Other Sites Say)
LLMs have no knowledge or deep understanding
Microsoft is Disloyal Towards Its Most Loyal Employees
Against its most faithful enablers
19 Years, No Censorship
No factual information is ever going to be removed, more so if it is in the public interest
We Are Not a Conventional Site, That's Why They Hate (or Love) Us
Throughout the week this week we'll be focusing on the EPO
Following the Line of Cocaine All the Way to the Top
Even a million denials and spin-doctoring won't distract from the core issue
The Cocaine Patent Office - Part I: António Campinos Brought Corruption and Nepotism to the EPO, Then Came the Cocaine
High-level manager at the European Patent Office (EPO) caught in public with cocaine, the Office has some answering to do
Purchasing/Possessing Computers Isn't the Same as Controlling Computers
Let's strive to put computers back under the control of their users, no matter who purchased these (usually the users)
Gemini Links 27/10/2025: Alhena 5.4.3 and Fixing Bash
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Sunday, October 26, 2025
IRC logs for Sunday, October 26, 2025
Thankfully We've Made Copies of More Interesting Data From statCounter
If statCounter (the Web site or the 'webapp') vanished overnight, we'd still have something left of it
More Silent Layoffs at IBM/Red Hat
when the media counts such layoffs or presents tallies the numbers are very incomplete