Bonum Certa Men Certa

The EPO’s Investigative Unit Exposed: Part III

"Investigative" is an understatement, maybe even a euphemism

Florian Andres



Summary: A closer look at what has become known as the 'gestapo' of the EPO, starting with the founder of the Investigative Unit (I.U.), Florian Andres

PARTS I and II examined the roots of the EPO's Investigative Unit, known internally as the 'gestapo'. Starting today, our plan is to explain what makes up the notorious Investigative Unit and who is doing what.



Our series is likely to upset some managers at the EPO, but we can assure the management that our new sources don't have a personal grudge. They just want to inform the world what is happening inside the EPO. The EPO's management likes to brag about "transparency", so we are basically trying to help. Seeing that the EPO sure does struggle when it comes to transparency, we believe that transparency can also come from below.

"The EPO's management likes to brag about "transparency", so we are basically trying to help."We begin our in-depth series with Florian Andres, former PD 0.6 and founder of the Investigative Unit. "Mr. Andres was appointed by Battistelli," explained a source to us, "as the Principal Director of Internal Audit and Oversight (PDIAO or PD 0.6) sometime in 2010 or 2011 and he held this position until his retirement in December 2014.

"Mr. Andres oversaw the establishment of the EPO Investigative Unit in 2012.

"In the article entitled "Staat im Staate" ("A state within a state") published in the weekend edition of the Süddeutsche Zeitung on 20/21 December 2014, he was described as "a friendly, bearded man from Switzerland" who was responsible for writing the EPO Investigation Guidelines."

"His most notable achievement during his time as PD 0.6 seems to have been the "whitewashing" of Željko Topić by means of a sham internal investigation."

This was reported on by Techrights earlier this year.

Some time ago an anonymous person sent us a photograph of Mr. Andres being confronted by protesting EPO staff in front of the EPO headquarters in Munich. That was on the 17th of October, 2013. It was on the rare occasion of the 40th Anniversary celebrations of the signing of the EPC (we strongly advise readers who work for the EPO not to click on this link as it can facilitate tracking by the Investigative Unit and its peripheral goons). To just quote what's on the page, it's self-glorifying hogwash which goes as follows:

Hundreds of people joined our celebrations for the 40th anniversary of the signature of the European Patent Convention (EPC) in Munich on 17 October 2013. They heard our keynote speaker Herman van Rompuy, President of the European Council, and leading experts including Tian Lipu, Commissioner of the Chinese State Intellectual Property Office, Ferdinando Beccalli-Falco, CEO of GE Europe, and Harold Goddijn, CEO of TomTom. These panellists, moderated by Nina Dos Santos of CNN, debated the role of innovation in driving the European economy and how the EPC can continue to ensure that Europe maintains its place amongst the leaders in technological innovation.


It's interesting to see the CEO of TomTom in there. Remember what Microsoft did to TomTom in Europe using its now-maligned software patents (which probably should never have been granted in the first place).

In the next part we are going to look at other key (high-profile) members of the I.U. We won't delve into their personal lives; that's what the I.U. does to its victims and we won't descend down to its rather shameful levels.

The photo of Florian Andres was taken at demonstrations in a public space in front of the main EPO building in Munich and has been pixellated in order to obscure other persons present.

Recent Techrights' Posts

Open Source Initiative (OSI) Resists Software Freedom, Even by Attacking Its Own
The OSI is compromised
 
Links 28/08/2025: Chatbots Distorting/Fabricating History and Also Driving Suicide
Links for the day
Gemini Links 28/08/2025: Back in Japan and Why "Hacker News" Sucks
Links for the day
A Much-Needed Wake-up Call to Users of Wordpress.com, Blogspot, Substack and All Those Other Outsourced (and Centralised) Platforms
There are several lessons in there
The UEFI 9/11 - Part II - Campaign of Censorship and Defamation Against Critics
In dictatorships, humour serves an important role. It's tragic.
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Wednesday, August 27, 2025
IRC logs for Wednesday, August 27, 2025
Slopwatch: linuxsecurity.com, Slopfarms in Google News, and More
Some readers of ours end up sending us links that are from slopfarms, not realising those are slopfarms
Gemini Links 27/08/2025: Katrina Memories and Google Versus Software Freedom
Links for the day
Links 27/08/2025: Police Against Media Freedom in the UK, Energy-Hungry Countries Targeted by China
Links for the day
Microsoft Windows Fell to All-Time Lows in Egypt This Summer, Vista 11 Adoption Decreases While GNU/Linux Increases
Vista 11 is going down rather than up
Links 27/08/2025: Microsoft Demoralises Staff With Slop Demands, Leaving Mastodon Explained
Links for the day
12 Hours Ago The Register MS Published a Fake (Paid-for) Article, But This One for a Change Did Not Promote a Ponzi Scheme
There are also Free software alternatives, but they don't pay The Register MS for "synthetic" so-called 'journalism'
More People Need to Call Out and Put a Stop to Serial Sloppers
Unless slopfarms are stopped, people will read and share Microsoft propaganda made by chatbots
Gemini Links 27/08/2025: Headphones and Tartarus
Links for the day
Morale at Microsoft is Terrible (Proprietary Plagiarism Machines Have No Future, LLM Slop is a Bubble)
The slop sceptics/critics are going to have lots of "told you so" moments
GNOME "governance issues, staff reduction, etc." amidst Albanian whistleblowing and women trafficking
Notice the connection to Software Freedom Conservancy (SFC) and GNOME
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Tuesday, August 26, 2025
IRC logs for Tuesday, August 26, 2025
Richard Stallman (RMS) Was Right About "Sideloading" in 1996
We now have computers that treat booting GNU/Linux like an act of "Sideloading"
Panama: Windows Down From 97% "Market Share" to Less Than 30%
In 2009, Windows was measured at 97.24% (compared to 62.32% right now or less than 30% if one also counts Android)
The UEFI 9/11 - Part I - Introduction to Impending Catastrophe (Microsoft Preventing People From Booting Non-Windows Systems)
eight-part series
Why Techrights is Slow Today (Bot Floods)
We don't know if those bots are connected to LLMs (we have not checked), but that is a possibility
Slopwatch: DDoS Slop, LinuxBSDos.com Spam, and Slopfarms in Google News, Including webpronews.com
Among the news we also found fakes, albeit not so much today
Links 26/08/2025: "Ballooning Debt" in France and "Transnational Repression in the UK"
Links for the day
Gemini Links 26/08/2025: Listening to Alcest and Google Doing Evil (Users Installing Software is "Sideloading" and Prohibited)
Links for the day
Links 26/08/2025: DNS Tampering and TikTok Layoffs
Links for the day
Microsoft's Windows "Market Share" Overestimated
Microsoft's income sources are shrinking
We Shall See...
My wife and I are hardly the first victims of Brett Wilson LLP
This New Determination on a Case Echoes the Modus Operandi of Microsoft's Serial Strangler vs Techrights (Its Online Decision/Judgment Says Truth and Public Interest Defend the Publisher)
Noel Anthony Clarke hopefully has enough money left to pay his victims, which include the publishers
Going Offline
There was life before the Net
The Register MS Has Apparently Shut Down Its Office
It is basically a fake address on the face of it
There Are Also Expectations of IBM Layoffs Very Soon With "Narrative Control."
Some of them mention Red Hat and how IBM failed to achieve anything substantial with that acquisition
After at Least Two Rounds of Mass Layoffs in August Microsoft Said to Have "September Layoff Confirmed - Performance Based"
Those "M5 level meetings" sound plausible
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Monday, August 25, 2025
IRC logs for Monday, August 25, 2025