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
There have long been unsubstantiated rumours about António Campinos being an addict and heavy drug user. We mentioned that casually in the past. This is what his staff keeps claiming. We also covered stories about him allegedly getting kicked out of a plane for not being sober and there are substantiated reports about his son being arrested for drunk-driving (and then crashing the car), which means his own family belongs in prison (if not for immunity, selective enforcement, and "connections").
There seems to be a pattern there.
No doubt the EPO is a hub of corruption, which has already gripped the EU and even tainted patent courts, which are nowadays both unconstitutional and illegal, just like the EPO, which routinely violates its own charter.
These are not "soft words" and it's not an easy matter to deal with. The EPO has a long past of SLAPPing, even when we publish correct leaks that just happen to be highly embarrassing for top managers who earn tens of thousands of euros each month.
Over the next few days we'll run the series about the EPO - one that we began in the weekend and had spoken about since last week.
Will António Campinos sleep well at night throughout this week? Stay tuned. █