Bonum Certa Men Certa

The EPO's Dutch Scandal Leaves Battistelli and His Cronies on the Run

The management is now afraid of the staff, not vice versa

Game over



Summary: EPO management is making concessions and issues statements which admit defeat, allowing the staff union to continue its activities

LEAKS ABOUT EPO misconduct have shaken the Office (patents establishment of Europe, seeking to substitute members states' establishments) and put its management at peril. Managers now realise that there is serious risk to their career. It's a permanent threat to mischievous and/or corrupt folks, so they are backtracking on assaults on the staff, or at least so they claim (publicly, to save face). "While nothing is promised other than a kick-off meeting," writes IP Kat, "the intention would appear to be to formally recognise the staff union, SUEPO. It remains to be seen if such formal recognition will include the actions that the Hague Court of Appeal ordered the EPO to undertake, including unblocking SUEPO's emails to staff members, abolishing the President's power to dictate the terms of industrial action, and allowing for collective bargaining. We shall see what develops and as always expect that our readers will have strong views to express in the comments below (bearing in mind the rules at the bottom of this post)."



EPO management has also been attacking the Enlarged Board, which IP Kat writes about today [1, 2].

Let's be clear again about the track record of EPO management. It has been spying on its staff like Microsoft spies on its so-called 'customers' and it has consistently been ignoring laws, even when these laws were upheld by a Court. Last month while I was away in Singapore IP Kat published "The EPO: privileged and immune says the President"; the so-called 'president' is the the arrogant Benoît Battistelli, who tried hard to derail the protests of staff, despite a Court's ruling in favour of the staff.

IP Kat also published the article "Dutch Minister trumps Court of Appeal ruling, reasserts EPO immunity". This Dutch minister is corrupt and in later parts of this series about the Dutch affair we shall show why. "The gist of the article in de Volkskrant," according to a source, "is that the Dutch Minister of Justice Ivo Opstelten has made a decision on the basis of the EPO's immunity from execution of court orders under international law, an immunity which the Court had previously lifted. Whether the minister is correct, either in terms of law or in terms of policy, appears to be open to question."

Well, the minister is corrupt, as we found out just days after this source spoke about it. He is no longer even a minister. We'll cover this in the future. Spoiler alert: He quit over payment to a drug-trafficker a few weeks ago. "The Dutch Minister of Justice," said to us one source, "the guy who said that the court ruling is not to be executed, resigned." There is a lot of corruption here (more of it is being leaked to us every week). Responding to what he or she called "Techrights publications over Balkan standards," this source wrote: "After having succeeded to "convince" the Croatian journalist to withdraw his article in December, the next step would be to try to get it off your web site as well. I am sure they at least thought about it. Possibly legal steps? In any such case, would it be possible to share the data you have, in order to make them available somewhere else?"

As always, since all the stories here are licensed very liberally, we encourage everyone to copy and spread them (in forums, other news sites, and so on). The more copies of the information in existence, the harder it will become to censor. Attribution helps but is not a priority. By all means, publishing Techrights articles in more places, e.g. anonymous blogs, would discourage these censorship attempts (intended to purge evidence of crime) and make veiled threats obsolete. In a way, the more this information spreads, the better the collective protection becomes.

We are going to write more on what happened in the Netherlands in the coming days. We will also comment on other corruption which emanates from the EPO affairs (extending well beyond Croatia).

Recent Techrights' Posts

People's Understanding of the History of GNU/Linux is Changing
RMS is not a radical, he's just clever enough to see and foresee what's going on
Microsofters Were Scheming to Take Over This Entire Web Site (in Their Own Words!)
Money gets spent censoring/deplatforming people who speak about real issues; no money gets spent actually tackling those underlying issues
Bicycles for the Minds and the Story Harrison Bergeron
"The goal of having people in charge of the tools they use and that the tools should amplify ability" has long been abandoned
[Video] Cory Doctorow Explains DMCA: DRM in the Browser (or Webapp) Will "Make It a Felony to Protect Your Privacy While You Use It."
Pycon US Keynote Speaker Cory Doctorow
 
Gemini Links 30/05/2025: Fighting Against the Bad News, and Slop is Dehumanisation Disguised as "Intelligence"
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Thursday, May 29, 2025
IRC logs for Thursday, May 29, 2025
Links 29/05/2025: Chinese Cracking Against EU Institutions (Prague), More Assaults on Media and Its Funding Sources
Links for the day
EPO Workers Caution That the Officials Are Still Illegally Trying to Replace Staff With Slop (to Lower Quality and Validity of European Patents)
Nobody in Europe voted for any of this
Links 29/05/2025: US Health Deficit and Malware Disguised as Slop Generator
Links for the day
Links 29/05/2025: Turtle Roadkill, Modern 'Tech' as a Sting
Links for the day
Thanks for All the Fish, Linux Format
people who once wrote for it (or for other magazines) comment on the importance of this news
Links 29/05/2025: YouTube Problem and Giant Privacy Hole in Microsoft OneDrive
Links for the day
United States Courts With Sworn Testimonies Are on Our Side, We'll Present the Same Here
Chronicling what happened is a moral imperative
Serial Sloppers Ruin and Lessen the Incentive to Cover "Linux"
The Serial Sloppers (SSs) ought to be named and shamed, but almost nobody does this
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Wednesday, May 28, 2025
IRC logs for Wednesday, May 28, 2025
Links 28/05/2025: 'Emulation Layers' (Measurements and Linguistics), Libraries, and Discomfort
Links for the day
Links 28/05/2025: More Arrests for Bitcoin-Connected Torture and Prosecutions for Dieselgate-Linked Executives
Links for the day
Even Microsoft (MSN) Covers Richard Stallman's Public Talk in Milan 2 Days Ago
He spoke in Spanish earlier this month (Alicante)
Gemini Links 28/05/2025: Techo-authoritarianism With Slop Plagiarism and "No Online June" (Going Offline)
Links for the day
Links 28/05/2025: GitHub MCP Exploited and MathWorks Discovers Huge Windows TCO
Links for the day
Very High Attendance Level at Richard Stallman's Talk Shows People Can Relate to His Message
Smear campaigns have their limits
Gemini Links 28/05/2025: Celsius-Fahrenheit, Endless Scrolling/Infinite Scrolling, and Trapping LLM Slop Bots
Links for the day
Prison gate backdrop to baptism by Fr Sean O'Connell, St Paul's, Coburg
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
More Photos From This Week's Milan Talk by Richard Stallman
The posts are in Italian, not English
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Tuesday, May 27, 2025
IRC logs for Tuesday, May 27, 2025