Recognizing invalid legal judgments: rogue Debianists sought to deceive one of Europe's most neglected regions, Midlands-North-West
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock.
When the Software Freedom Institute was established in April 2021, we stated that Our mission is to put humans like you in charge of technology and We reject the false sense of empowerment cultivated by the cloud.
These simple statements brought a furious response from larger rivals in the technology industry.
IBM Red Hat used a dispute in the UDRP to try and seize a domain name from the Institute and publicly denounce the Institute’s founder, Daniel Pocock. The UDRP verdict confirmed that Mr Pocock was a victim of harassment by these competitors
Copy-cat attacks from other organizations quickly followed.
In April 2023, Mr Pocock was informed that the Swiss law office providing a legal expenses insurance to the Institute had been placed in liquidiation (the JuristGate affair, which we come back to later).
As the lawyers were no longer available to handle disputes about the trademark, Mr Pocock unilaterally canceled the trademark registration in Switzerland.
More significantly, the legal insurance office was being liquidated by the Swiss law firm Walder Wyss. Walder Wyss was also representing the rogue Debianists in the trademark dispute. Therefore, it appears that Walder Wyss would gain access to privileged information that Software Freedom Institute had shared with the legal expenses insurer. Mr Pocock informed Mathieu Elias Parreaux, the disqualified director of the legal expenses company and this was the response:
Subject: RE: Fermeture de Justicia SA - Organisation de notre nouvelle structure
Date: Fri, 14 Apr 2023 17:16:47 +0200
From: m.parreaux@justiva.ch
To: 'Daniel Pocock' <daniel@softwarefreedom.institute>
Cher Monsieur,
Tout à fait. Il vous suffit de leur écrire pour les aviser que vous avez
constaté qu'ils sont liquidateurs de la société et que comme il y a un
conflit d'intérêt clair, vous souhaitez qu'ils suppriment vos données. Ils
devront le faire.
Je constate que vous devez normalement avoir un renouvellement chez Justicia
SA le 8 juin prochain. Afin que cela n'arrive pas, et si vous souhaitez
rester avec nous, je vous soumet un nouveau contrat à me renvoyer signé.
Nous pouvons en parler au téléphone dès lundi si vous le souhaitez, avec
grand plaisir. Cordialement,
Mathieu Parreaux
Associé www.justiva.ch
Translated to English:
You only have to write to them and tell them (Walder Wyss) in their capacity as liquidators of the company and that as there is a very clear conflict of interest, you would like them to delete all the privileged information. They must do so. I notice that you would normally have to renew your legal expenses insurance with Justicia SA on 8 June. As that is not possible and if you wish to remain insured with us, I will send you a new contract for you to sign and return to me. We can discuss it by telephone Monday if you like, with pleasure.
The Institute did not purchase the alternative legal expenses insurance proposed by Mathieu Parreaux and his new scheme Justiva SA.
Mr Pocock completed the trademark cancelation form in August 2023.
A copy of the cancelation form was given to the tribunal on 21 August 2023. There is no record of the Swiss Intellectual Property Office acting on this cancelation request and it is not clear if they received it at all.
Moreover, Mr Pocock told the tribunal that he had no confidence in their procedure. He had already informed the tribunal that his lawyers were in liquidation but the judges did not listen. We can see it in the invalid judgment document, Mr Pocock told the Swiss judges he doesn’t trust them:
As the trademark was canceled, there was no basis for any tribunal to make any judgment about a transfer of the trademark. It would be impossible to do so.
On 5 September 2023 the unprotected Swiss entity was renamed from Software Freedom Institute SA to a new name Open Source Developer Freedoms SA
On 19 September 2023 Gaelle Jeanmonod at FINMA published a summary of the FINMA judgment that closed down the legal expenses insurance scheme, leaving the Software Freedom Institute and 20,000 other clients without a lawyer
FINMA went to great lengths to redact the names of the lawyers in the judgment.
Mr Pocock was concerned that FINMA’s handling of the legal expenses scandal was a factor in not having the resources to defend attacks against the Institute. Many people have asked questions about why the Institute was under attack like this. To respond to these questions, Mr Pocock analyzed the legal expenses scandal and on 7 October 2023 published a detailed report with all the names and dates that FINMA had obfuscated
Mr Pocock’s attempt to bring transparency to the Swiss legal expenses insurance crisis was resented by Swiss jurists and this is the type of thing that provokes a fierce reprisal in Switzerland.
Yet rather than an immediate reprisal, Mr Pocock was granted Swiss citizenship in the Canton of Vaud.
Despite the fact Mr Pocock had sent multiple letters canceling the trademark, it appears that the judges did not read them and were unaware of the procedures relating to trademarks. They may have accidentally created a judgment that was invalid before they even put their stamp on it. This happens sometimes, for example, the 1616 verdict against Copernicanism says a lot about the mentality of making judgments.
Thus, on February 26, the Inquisition’s most authoritative cardinal, Robert Bellarmine (1542-1621), met with Galileo in private and gave him the following warning: the Church was going to declare the idea of the earth’s motion false and contrary to Scripture, and so this theory could not be held or defended. Galileo agreed to comply.
The Swiss Intellectual Property Office has confirmed that the judgment document being circulated by rogue Debianists is not legally valid.
The judge sent two more letters acknowledging the opinion of the Swiss Intellectual Property Office and confirming that they will not issue any other judgment to replace the invalid judgment.
As the judgment has effectively been withdrawn, Mr Pocock believed that was the end of the matter.
On 7 March 2024 Mr Pocock began publishing the JuristGate.com web site exploring the operation of the rogue Swiss legal expenses scheme in more detail. This web site complements the original blog post Mr Pocock wrote about the scandal
In April 2024, Mr Pocock nominated as a candidate in the European Parliament election for the district of Ireland, Midlands-North-West.
Mr Pocock has done voluntary work with amateur radio and open source software since he was fourteen years old. Political rivals from the open source “community” spent much of May 2024 denouncing Mr Pocock and his family to undermine his election campaign.
Finally, a few hours before the news moratorium for the voting day one of the rogue Debianists, Jean-Pierre Giraud, an archaeologist from Toulouse, France, published the invalid judgment documents and falsely claimed that the invalidated document is a complete and correct account of the dispute.
The timing of Mr Giraud’s actions give us the impression that this was a deliberate and possibly pre-meditated attack on the Irish democratic process.
Follow the money
At the time the state of hostility began in 2018, the former Debian leader wrote a report mentioning a large donation from Google. Google’s identity as the donor is obfuscated:
* Acted a central contact point connecting the various parties
involved in receiving a significant donation to Debian from their
Open Source office [14].
...
[14] https://opensource.google.com/
Some months later, an email hinted that the amount was $300,000.
So, there were two $300k donations in the last year.
One of these was earmarked for a DSA equipment upgrade.
DSA has a couple of options to pursue, but it's possible they may
actually spend $400k on an equipment refresh.
The manner in which rogue Debianists obfuscate their employment and the source of these funds demonstrates that some people don’t want to admit the organization has become a soft target for social engineering exploits by large corporate sponsors.
Any root cause analysis of the dispute needs to consider the role of this money and the people who left their fingerprints on it.
Exploring the evidence
The invalid judgment document has a date stamp on the final page, 27 Nov. 2023.
It is purportedly signed by two parties: Caroline Kuhnlein, president of the civil bench in the tribunal and Melanie Bron, “greffière”, a jurist who assists a judge or tribunal. Their names are listed on the web site of the tribunal
Judge Kuhnlein has a LinkedIn profile but it doesn’t reveal anything about her employment or relevant experience prior to becoming a judge.
The Wayback Machine has old copies of the membership lists for the bar association in the Canton of Vaud. We can see the name of her husband, Vivian Kuhnlein in the lists but we can not see any evidence that Caroline Kuhnlein was admitted to the bar in Canton Vaud or Canton Geneva.
It is also noteworthy that the Debianist judge Caroline Kuhnlein-Hofmann is listed on the Swiss Corruption Info index. It is alleged there that she was a participant in the controversial Légeret scandal. Mr Légeret is of Indian origin and there is a perception of wrongful persecution.
The Swiss Info news web site explains
In some countries, judges are not allowed to be members of political parties. Not the case in Switzerland, however, where party membership is in practice a prerequisite. Elected judges even pay a part of their income to their affiliated party.
…
There is no specific training for judges in Switzerland. Usually (but not necessarily) aspiring judges study law
Judge Kuhnlein was appointed by a meeting of the Cantonal parliament. The minutes of the meeting are concerning. They are available online, in French
Fonctionnement de la Commission de présentation
La Commission de présentation s’est réunie les 24 et 25 février ainsi que le 1er mars 2010 pour traiter de ce préavis. Elle était composée des députés suivants : Mmes Fabienne Freymond Cantone (présidente), Fabienne Despot, Béatrice Métraux, MM.Régis Courdesse, Jean-Michel Dolivo, Claude-André Fardel, Olivier Feller (viceprésident), Jacques Haldy et Nicolas Mattenberger. La commission a aussi eu le privilège d’être accompagnée dans ses auditions et réflexions par ses quatre experts indépendants, MM. Philippe Richard, Jean-Jacques Schwaab ; Bertil Cottier (excusé le 24.02.10) et Philippe Reymond (excusé le 01.03.10).
Translated to English, the paragraph explains that a committee has already reviewed the details of some political party members who want to be judges.
How the advisory committee functions
The committee met on 24 and 25 February and also 1 March 2010 to prepare advice for the parliament. The committee was composed of these members of the parliament: Fabienne Freymond Cantone (president), Fabienne Despot, Béatrice Métraux, Régis Courdesse, Jean-Michel Dolivo, Claude-André Fardel, Olivier Feller (Vice president), Jacques Haldy and Nicolas Mattenberger.
The committee had the privilege of being assisted in their interviews and deliberations by four independent experts, Philippe Richard, Jean-Jacques Schwaab ; Bertil Cottier (excused 24.02.10) and Philippe Reymond (excused 01.03.10).
The committee members are from political parties and the people they interview are also from political parties.
The minutes describe the way the interviews were conducted and then they give the results of the committee stage evaluation:
Préavis de la Commission de présentation
A l’issue des auditions, les experts ont rendu, à l’unanimité, les préavis suivants: Préavis positif pour les candidats Mihaela Amoos (moins une abstention d’un des experts pour cette dernière en raison du fait qu’il était son maître 110 Bulletin du Grand Conseil du canton de Vaud / 2007-2012 9 mars 2010 de stage), Yasmina Bendani, Dina Charif Feller, Caroline Kuhnlein (moins une abstention pour cette dernière, l’un des experts s’étant récusé pour des raisons de lien de parenté)
The above states that one of the experts abstained on the selection of candidate Amoos because the expert had previously supervised Amoos’ internship. On the evaluation of Kuhnlein, one of the experts had to be recused because of a family relationship with Kuhnlein.
En outre, la commission a été sensible à la recherche d’équilibres politiques. A noter que la commission a finalement préavisé favorablement sur une candidature appréciée négativement par les experts.
This tells us that the committee was keen to have a balance of political affiliations, in other words, each party is entitled to have one judge. It goes on to say that the committee decided to override a negative report that the experts had given for one candidate and they gave the candidate a net positive report instead.
The entire parliament was asked to vote. The parliament decided to appoint Judge Kuhnlein as a part-time (50%) judge.
In January 2017, Judge Kuhnlein applied to move from a part-time to a full-time appointment, from 50% to 100%. The committee and expert panel was reconvened. A report was produced.
This time, the same four experts participate in the panel. It notes that one of the experts, Philippe Richard, was excused from the meeting but it does not mention the reason he was excused so we can not determine if he is the same expert who had a conflict of interest in the 2010 meeting.
La durée de l’entretien a avoisiné trente minutes.
The judge was interviewed for thirty minutes.
À l’issue de l’audition, les experts, après délibérations, ont souligné l’investissement marqué de cette juge dans l’exercice de son mandat à 50%, en particulier son sens pratique de sa fonction et de son souci de la bonne gestion de sa juridiction. Sur la base de ces considérations, les experts approuvent à l’unanimité sa candidature au poste de juge à 100% au Tribunal cantonal.
This paragraphs summarises the unanimous opinion of the experts that they feel judge Kuhnlein has performed her duties well as a part-time judge and they approve her for a full time role.
The name of her political party is not mentioned.
On 4 December 2023 the Swiss Intellectual Property Office sent the following letter to the judges:
Translated:
However, it turns out that at the request of Software Freedom Institute SA on 6 November 2023, the trademark registration was already deleted from the register on 13 November 2023 (see attachment). We consider that in these circumstances it is difficult for us to execute the judgment you sent us.
Please explain to us how you want us to implement the judgment.
The judge Richard Oulevey and his family are members of the PLR, Political party Liberal-Radical. More evidence.
On 22 December 2023, Judge Oulevey sends a very short letter stating:
The tribunal takes note of the fact that the Swiss Intellectual Property Office finds itself in an impossible position executing a judgment.
On 27 December 2023, Judge Oulevey sends the letter again, adding another sentence:
The tribunal takes of of the fact that the Swiss Intellectual Property Office finds itself in an impossible position executing a judgment. The tribunal does not give any replacement judgment.
On the letter from 27 December 2023, there is a handwritten note to the effect that it annuls and replaces the previous communications.
After these exchanges, as the judgment was impossible and as the tribunal had decided not to make any replacement judgment, the judgment had completely unravelled. There was no reason to appeal a judgment that had already been annulled.
When fresh character attacks were made using the WIPO UDRP procedure, the rogue Debianists did not make any reference to any judgments from Switzerland. If such a judgment was valid, they certainly would have mentioned it very loudly in their UDRP demands.
The rogue Debianists have made multiple rumors about harassment. Mr Pocock belatedly published the harassment judgment demonstrating that Carla and his cats were victims of harassment from a far-right Swiss landlady. Mr Pocock’s detailed analysis includes recordings from the trial in Zurich.
Finally, if we make a search in the Swiss trademark database today, using their online form to search for the registration number 782335 we can see that the trademark was canceled (radié). The cancelation date (radiation) is 13.11.2023. There has never been any subsequent transfer to the rogue Debianists.
When Software in the Public Interest, Inc, completed their financial reports, they disclosed $119,000 in professional fees. This appears to coincide with the monthly reports which have been added up to $120,000 in legal expenses.
If the rogue Debianists had simply apologized to Mr Pocock’s family and withdrawn the character attacks that began when his father died, he may well have been willing to transfer the trademark voluntarily and for no cost more than the registration fees. In other words, rogue Debianists spent over $120,000 to fight a dispute that could have been resolved for less than $1,000.
Software in the Public Interest, Inc proudly claims to be a non-profit organization. Being a non-profit organization does not mean you have to deliberately lose all your money on expenses that are entirely avoidable.
On 27 May 2024 the tribunal realized the documents cited in their invalid judgment had never been signed in the first place. This further emphasizes the fact that these legal documents have no credibility.
In October 2024, the judges delivered a new verdict, a verdict against themselves. According to a report in the Swissinfo news site:
Swiss judges want to dissolve the traditional link between parties and court members, including mandatory contributions to a political party. A majority would like to see a reform of the current system.
Summary
Software in the Public Interest, Inc is a tax-deductible non-profit established in the United States. The organization was established around a belief in American values of freedom and transparency.
In 2018, the organization received what appears to be an obfuscated donation of $300,000 from Google.
Ever since the payment, there has been a heightened state of conflict between co-authors in the open source community.
A wide range of international observers and even the Swiss judges themselves agree that the Swiss judicial system is corrupt and politicized.
Nonetheless, the US non-profit organization has pumped over $120,000 in legal fees into that system in the pursuit of Mr Pocock, a volunteer who resigned from mentoring in Google Summer of Code (GSoC) at the time his father died.
The use of an unreliable, corrupt and opaque legal system to harass a volunteer and censor communications appears to go against the very principles that Debian was founded on.
The judgment obtained with this money was determined to be invalid due to the fact the trademark was already canceled and some of the documents submitted to the tribunal had never been signed.
Despite multiple letters confirming the impossibility and invalidity of a judgment to transfer the former trademark, the rogue Debianists decided to distribute the document hours before the news moratorium on the day before Ireland voted in the European elections.
The invalid document distributed at that moment was presented in a foreign language and with a deceptive interpretation of its contents.
There was a real possibility that the Irish news media may have been suckered to publish references to this document. Nonetheless, it does not appear that any media outlet published any reference to it.
Had any media outlet published reference to it on the day of the moratorium, it is unlikely that Mr Pocock would have had time to respond and present the evidence to prove this document is actually invalid.
Midlands-North-West is one of the most disadvantaged regions in Europe on certain metrics. The attempt to deceive voters in such a region is especially outrageous. █