The "Alicante Mafia" - Part XIV - The EPO Vice-President Steve Rowan and the Hidden Alicante Connection is a Big Deal
(Previously [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13])
An article about EPO Vice-President Steve Rowan and his little-known connections to the EUIPO in Alicante was published yesterday.
As explained in the article, Rowan was the head of the UK delegation on the EUIPO Management Board in 2018.
At that time Campinos was executive head of the EUIPO and was busy campaigning for the position as EPO President.
There is currently no concrete information as to whether or not Rowan played any role in lobbying for the UKIPO to support Campinos as the successor to Battistelli or what role if any Campinos might have played in Rowan's subsequent selection and appointment as EPO Vice-President.
But it is clear that Rowan and Campinos would have had professional dealings with each other at the EUIPO prior to Campinos moving from the EUIPO to the EPO.
On that basis, it's legitimate to speculate that Rowan may have further unrevealed connections to the "Alicante Mafia".
It's worth noting that Rowan's domain of expertise at the UKIPO was in the area of trademarks and registered designs. He had no identifiable involvement with patents and was never on the UK delegation to the Administrative Council of the EPO. So it is somewhat surprising that he was appointed as Vice-President in charge of the "patent granting process" at the EPO in 2019.
It's not just him, either. The President and Vice-Presidents all lack background in the job they're meant to do.
The EPO is a den of corruption, nepotism, and even cocaine. Nobody wants to even talk about it. They try to hide it. They censor the staff.
We'll soon take a closer look at Ernst. The EPO has guidance on age of appointees; but the "Mafia" is of course exempted.
Next month we'll deal with people who met Campinos are convinced he does (or did) cocaine. We'll also discuss antisemitism in the "Alicante Mafia". █