Bonum Certa Men Certa

EPO as a Combat Zone, Governed by Separatists Who Take Bribes

Video download link | md5sum bcffc6c5e590c014c0491324c89ac559



Summary: When countries without European Patents get to vote on important issues (and are easy to sway/bribe) it's hardly surprising that the EPO became a defunct institution, run partly by despots

THE governance of the EPO has elements inside it that even the EU rejects. To make matters worse, those elements have as much voting power as that of countries like France and Germany. Imagine a 30-year-old ethnic Albanian (barely any European Patents there) having as much of a say on Benoît Battistelli's proposals as the German representatives. Does that make sense? Whether it makes sense of not, this means that António Campinos and his court-rigging maniacs can do almost anything they please; maybe they'll just need to drop a bribe here and there...



Where's North Macedonia in this image from the EPO?

top-50-countries-for-patent-applications

It is very difficult to find reports or past "results" (quality-agnostic statistics). We've tried hard (both navigation and search), so those got buried away if not altogether removed (only press releases remain fully in tact and discoverable). The EPO appears to no longer make it possible to look up number of patents per nation (except for top filers), unlike past years. Are they trying to spare them the embarrassment? Or to spare EPO dictators the embarrassment? Like EPO signing lots of deals and MoU stuff with countries that have zero European Patents? North Macedonia isn't even mentioned in the latest report [PDF] (at all).

Looking at archives, which are very difficult to find anymore (not in navigation menus any longer), we have this:

Macedonia's zero patents

That's right, zero patents in 2017. Back when it was possible to look up such information...

"Expect part 5 some time tonight. There’s lots more in the pipeline, running well into the month of September."As a side note, this sordid status quo helps explain why the EPO somehow managed to still justify European software patents, no matter if the law is sternly against these. A bribe here and there...

The video above concerns an ongoing series (see part 1, part 2, part 3, and part 4) with focus on the latest part that's political in nature. Expect part 5 some time tonight. There's lots more in the pipeline, running well into the month of September. Buying the media has its limits; some people out there are impossible to bribe.

Recent Techrights' Posts

Where Microsoft's Bing Cannot Even Reach 1% "Market Share"
Looking at "I" countries
Links 16/02/2026: Barack Obama Responds to Racist Cheeto and Benjamin Mako Hill Studies Online Communities
Links for the day
IBM Reduces the Thresholds for Acceptance (and the Salaries)
Are chatbots good enough as IBM staff?
When It Comes to Rust, Keep All the Eyes on the Ball (Technical and Legal Perils, Sustainability Questions)
It's not about security or politics
 
Just Like The Register MS, Conde Nast's Ars Technica Has Just Publicly Admitted That It Published Fake Articles (Slop) Made by LLMs About Serious Subjects
Conde Nast might shut Ars Technica down to escape the bad publicity/association
Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA) Way Too Slow to Respond to Financial Fraud at Law Firms, in Effect Helping Those Law Firms Defraud Many More People (Fleecing Clients)
Who will hold the SRA accountable for this?
Techrights Became a Hub for News That IBM/Red Hat Doesn't Want You to See (and Pays Mainstream Media to Distract From)
the more viciously the notorious organisation attacks the reporter, the greater the interest in what the reporter has to say
EPO's Central Staff Committee on Fourth Technical Meeting, Two Days Before First of (At Least) 4 Winter Strikes at the Second-Largest European Institution
“future orientations on the salary adjustment procedure”
IBM's Collapse Continues, Half of EU Countries to Have Mass Layoffs, "IBM Clearly Disinvests From Europe" Says IBM European Works Council
Recent publication
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Monday, February 16, 2026
IRC logs for Monday, February 16, 2026
Gemini Links 17/02/2026: Alpenglow Industries' Closure and Gemini Server Issues
Links for the day
The Southern California Linux Expo (“SCALE”) or SCALE 23x Becomes Microsoft
It's not supporting the event, it is buying it.
Microsoft to Focus on Name-Dropping Buzzwords to Distract From Declining Business, IBM RAs (Layoffs) With Staff Stack-Ranked
Calling everything cloud or reclassifying as "AI"
Another EPO Strike One Week From Now, Local Staff Committee Munich to Discuss It This Week
Campinos MIA while Office staff goes on strike at least 4 times
Gemini Links 16/02/2026: Task Completed by Avoidance and "Playing Again With Akkoma"
Links for the day
Happy Birthday (or Anniversary) to SoylentNews
"Happy Birthday SoylentNews"
Techrights' Architecture
Stability is the main goal
Linux Foundation Continues Falling Off a Cliff in Geminispace
Gemini Protocol will turn 7 this summer
Links 16/02/2026: cURL’s Daniel Stenberg Asserts That Slop is DDoSing Free Software, But Still Uses a Plagiarism and GPL-Violating Blender (Microsoft GitHub)
Links for the day
The Techrights Community Never Needed Money, Only Goodwill
We accomplish things by a track record of suppressed facts
"AboutCode" is a Microsoft Proxy and Microsoft's Acquisition of the OSI Advances Via OSI Moles
presenting direct evidence anybody can verify
Social Control Media is Just a Digital Weapon
Social control media is not social and not media
They Will Call Smart People "Luddites"
Is society "seeing the light"?
Microsoft Amutable Already Reveals That Its Focus Is Not Linux, It'll Promote "Remote Attestation"
This is basically an attack on Software Freedom, even if they toss around the brand "Linux"
More People in Chad Move to GNU/Linux
Last year we began to see GNU/Linux rising there - a trend which continues this year
Dr. Andy Farnell on How Universities and Culture of Education Got Crushed by "Technofascist Nightmare"
Farnell says he "already soft-quit in [his] mind"
Debt of Broadcom Grew by More Than 50%, Broadcom is Deeper in Debt Than Google
Expect many more cuts
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Sunday, February 15, 2026
IRC logs for Sunday, February 15, 2026
Links 15/02/2026: Slop, Politics, and Gemini
Links for the day
Small is Beautiful (in Cascading Style Sheets/Inheritance Rules)
If done correctly, pages can take a tenth of a second to fully load
Microsoft Has Fallen to New Lows in Hong Kong This Year
That Windows "market share" falls there is perhaps expected
Free Software Foundation (FSF) Raised About 1.5 Million Dollars This Winter, Almost 50% More Than in All of 2024 Combined
Verbal advocacy goes a long way
Spread the Word About EPO Strikes and Patent Injustices in Europe
Corruption in Europe is a real thing
The Register MS is Promoting Slop, Promotion Connected to Microsoft (Trying to Replace Judges With Microsoft)
marketing spun as "science"
He Did Not Have Enough Souls
A lot of the subjects we cover here no other site dares touch
"Mix Vale" is a Slopfarm
3 "articles" about "ubuntu"
Links 15/02/2026: Roy Medvedev Dead at 100, Rise of "YouTube Politicians"
Links for the day
Links 15/02/2026: How Alexey Navalny Was Executed by Putin, Erdogan Helping Iran
Links for the day
IBM Fedora Keeps Promoting Slop, Red Hat Has Been Turned Into Chaff and Trash to Help IBM's Stock (With "AI" Storytelling)
Red Hat's Fedora is an old brand (20+ years). It no longer stands for what it meant to people in the Fedora Core days (I was a Fedora user back then).
What IBM Said About 2026 Layoffs and What's Happening in Practice
t'll leave IBM at the very bottom, in due course (customers will notice something profound has changed)
Gemini Links 15/02/2026: "Already Midway February" and Loadbars Remembered
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Saturday, February 14, 2026
IRC logs for Saturday, February 14, 2026