Bonum Certa Men Certa

The EPO's Paid Propaganda Campaign in the Media

Who needs facts, editorial discretion, and scientific peer review anyway?

Book



Summary: EPO buys (using public money) coverage that is favourable to its rogue management's agenda, demonstrating utter disregard for scientific processes

THE EPO faces difficult times because the management is corrupt. Everyone suffers from this. There have been puff pieces and placements from Kongstad and his friend the 'President' (Benoît Battistelli), notably from patent lawyers' sites, and there has generally been very shallow coverage from press that is associated with patents. It's all about the money; services to European citizens are, in hindsight, not even an afterthought.



Watch Benoît Battistelli bragging about lowering patents' standards (compromising quality) to increase output. They are operating like a production line rather than an examination centre and based on this recent post from IP Kat, people are now encouraged to "take on extra work". To quote the relevant part: "DG1 is facing challenging production plans."

Yes, production. It's a factory's mentality. "Examiner capacity for search, examination and opposition," says the post, "is being maximised to achieve these goals."

Production. Of what? Paper and pen marks? Printouts?

"Besides other initiatives to increase core time," says the post, "all investments where examiners are involved in so-called "section Ill" activities, for support of projects or other DG plans, were revisited and rationalised. The "section lll" envelope covers the time budgets for projects and activities outside our normal operational business in DG1."

This very well illustrates what the EPO has become. Battistelli runs it like a factory and then brags about production volume, not quality of the product. It's a sham and it is a sham that benefits from ever-broadening patent scope (i.e. harm to many fields due to excessive protectionism). It is all about money now, not scientists. Will Europeans tolerate these? Patents on pigs, on algorithms, on human genetics?

The New Scientist recently sold out by publishing paid placements, even for the widely-maligned EPO that is desperate for some positive press. As Merpel put it: "Fresh from publishing the thoughts of a former member of the Boards of Appeal of the European Patent Office, Merpel just noticed this article: A day in the life of a patent examiner appearing in the New Scientist.

"Merpel was immediately struck by the byline "The interview was produced by New Scientist in conjunction with the European Patent Office, which paid for it to be produced." Need the EPO be paying for publication about the career path of an Examiner in order to attract suitable candidates?

"Merpel wonders what readers think about the article itself, and whether the EPO should be paying for placement of such pieces."

The blog later wrote that the post "recorded, without criticism or comment, the fact that the European Patent Office had paid a highly respected journal to carry an interview with someone who, it now seems, may not actually be an examiner on life as an EPO examiner. This blogpost encouraged many of our contributors to fire off their salvos against or in defence of the beleaguered body."

The EPO is a complete sham. The management resorts to what seems like the notorious fake testimonies strategy, having produced some softball 'interviews' in an effort to cleanse its reputation. Don't let this spin go on unchallenged.

Comments

Recent Techrights' Posts

“Twibel” Actions Against Comedians (and Why It's a Truly Low Blow)
they try to make up in quantities for a lack of merit or quality
Rewriting Things in Rust
How far would you go?
What Microsoft Reputation Laundering (With a Weaponised Law Degree) Looks Like in a Foreign Continent
You would expect this in uncivilised and primitive countries
Slopwatch: LLMs 'Write' Fake or Distorted 'News' About "Linux"
LLM slop disguised as news
 
The Mainstream Media Took 4 Days to Realise Microsoft Shut Down Its Operations in Pakistan and Fired Everybody
We estimate that Microsoft has had about 29,000 layoffs since January
Leadership in Free Software
Don't let IBM lead. It's a terrible flag bearer.
Linux Foundation Apparently Flirting With Slop (Marketing by LLM-Generated SPAM)
The Web is in a really bad state!
COVID-19 Sped Up Site Improvements in Techrights
A few months later we created our very own IRC network
Gemini Links 05/07/2025: Negative Questions and 'Touching Grass' (Going Outside)
Links for the day
Links 05/07/2025: Dalai Lama Succession as 90th Birthday Approaches, 40 deg C in China
Links for the day
Links 05/07/2025: Hungary and US Defecting to Russia, "Google's Hotseat Hypocrisy"
Links for the day
Gemini Links 05/07/2025: 4th of July 2025 and "Zig Roadmap 2026"
Links for the day
How to Combat the Exploitation and Abuse by Microsoft GitHub
Not to mention corruption and crimes against women
Bryan Lunduke is Actually Sending His Audience to Attack People
"[Lunduke] is actually sending his audience to attack people."
Even The Right Wing is Rejecting Bryan Lunduke
no wonder he became so irrelevant and marginal
Microsoft's MSN Helps Microsoft Spread Lies About the Layoffs' Scale (Well Over 25,000 People Laid Off This Year)
There seem to be monopolies on lies and on truth
The Death of X Has Been Greatly Exaggerated (by Compromised Media)
X.Org Server is alive and well
In 2025 Everything is "AI". Remember Blockchains?
Talk about what companies and things (services, products, software) actually do, not the labels they use
Julian Assange Has Been Free for a Year
Julian Assange and I disagreed on some things
Monopolies and Scalping
Monopolies gravitate towards price hikes
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Friday, July 04, 2025
IRC logs for Friday, July 04, 2025
Microsoft's August Layoffs Wave: "August is Confirmed for Additional Performance Based Cuts"
"August is confirmed for additional performance based cuts from the recent connects along with additional organizational cuts."
Links 04/07/2025: Google Replaces the Web With Slop, "AI Might Kill Us All"
Links for the day
Gemini Links 04/07/2025: Mindfulness and F1
Links for the day
Weeks After Microsoft Bankruptcy in Russia the Company Shuts Down in Pakistan, Too
Last month Windows' share in Pakistan fell to an all-time low
Rob Musial's June 2025 Additions of Malware in Proprietary Software
Via the GNU Web site this week
Links 04/07/2025: Microsoft's H-1B Visa Applications Show Another Crisis Unfolding, Many More Deep Cuts and Shutdowns Revealed, Complete Microsoft Exits
Links for the day
Gemini Links 04/07/2025: A Day To Remember and "Stop Killing Games"
Links for the day
Crime and Corruption at Microsoft GitHub Cannot be Covered Up by SLAPPs in Another Continent
We'll write about this for a long time to come
Slop Videos Are Disappointing Garbage, Nothing New, Just Brute Force up on Display or a Pedestal of Slop
Slop videos aren't a new thing
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Thursday, July 03, 2025
IRC logs for Thursday, July 03, 2025
The War on Local Storage (People Hosting Their Files Locally and Privately)
There's nothing wrong with controlling one's computing
What Digital Independence Means
Independence in the digital realms means abandoning platforms like GitHub, not just rejecting proprietary software
NVidia is a Bubble
they temporarily see fortunes and wrongly assume perpetuity thereof
Fedora Does Not Care About Diversity and Inclusion, It's About Optics (Corporate Image)
any notion of inclusion is superficial and misleading
Don't Buy the Excuses for Microsoft's Mass Layoffs
Back in the 90s, Microsoft bought a lot of companies to get and stay ahead