Summary: "European Inventor Award" is little but a graft opportunity and a way to bribe nations (money in exchange for special favours); it's also a way to reward questionable people, dismantle the notion of patent neutrality, and pass bribes to a lot of European publishers that might otherwise expose EPO corruption

Months ago we covered what the EPO's Frenchmen Benoît Battistelli and António Campinos had done in Monaco to buy its vote in the Administrative Council.

So the EPO's PR event again took place in France/Monaco. What's wrong's with it? See what we wrote when they chose Monaco and notice this new puff piece (warning: epo.org link) saying: "With a message from His Serene Highness Albert II, Sovereign Prince of Monaco, a tie for first place in the Young Inventors prize and the revelation of Katalin Karikó as the Lifetime achievement laureate, the 2022 edition offered several surprises for viewers."

How does the graft allocation stack up? Something like this:

2015: France 2016: Portugal (connected to Campinos) 2017: Italy (Battistelli is an Italian name) 2018: France 2019: Austria 2020: (COVID-19) 2021: (COVID-19) 2022: Monaco France

Each such ceremony, rewarding or glorifying the occasional crooks, frauds and sexual predators by bribing a lot of media (it costs almost $10,000,000 for just a couple of hours of this 'festival'), involves the passage of a lot of money to host countries or, as in 2018, the hall managed by Battistelli himself (overt corruption). Sometimes the EPO uses these people posthumously for PR; it helps them portray a corrupt, greedy, unhinged institution as some sort of ally of science. ⬆