EPO Scandals 'For Dummies'
IN the summer of 2014 we started a fresh new EPO series. There was no wiki page about the EPO at the time (as we had not written more than 100 articles about the EPO) and it would take another year for Benoît Battistelli to hire several law firms to harass me and spy on me. António Campinos continues that very same legacy/tradition and he is reportedly shouting to staff about Techrights (which we're told almost all EPO staff reads).
So who are those Battistelli and Campinos anyway?
Let's go back in time to properly recall what they actually did and where we are today. Why are these people so desperate to silence and suppress Techrights?
Let's go back a couple of decades or more. The EPO was lobbying to allow software patents and it failed at it. In subsequent years the EPO would attempt to undermine Parliament and grant such patents anyway. At the same time the EPO kept attacking judges who 'stood in the way'... or were simply perceived as not sufficiently obedient to the powers that be.
The union of EPO staff complained that teams of examiners were assigned handlers who knew nothing about the field and in subsequent years the union leaders would be targeted. They, along with judges, were subjected to witch-hunts, which further intensified after the mass litigation 'industry' (law firms) managed to put a bunch of corruption officials in charge of the Office.
Merely pointing out the corruption would be spun as a "crime", using the EPO's own notorious "Code of Conduct" (yes, they devised that term). Here we are a decade after starting the series (about 4,000-5,000 articles later) and the core issues remain unaddressed, in turn exposing a deep political crisis that threatens the legitimacy of the EU and of patent courts controlled by the EU and EPO. The scandals have, in effect, 'spilled over' from examination to enforcement.
I, as a strong EU proponent, am perturbed and disturbed by what EPO corruption is doing to Europe. Need it be said that the EPO paid Putin's people, who currently engage in a war against Europe?
Techrights has prioritised this series for over a decade already (especially after 2015 attempts to censor Techrights) and it will continue to prioritise it. Free expression is neither compromisable nor negotiable when there's so much at stake. Europe is not Putin's Russia. The "EPO Mafia" (that's what staff calls it) must go. █
