Bonum Certa Men Certa

The EPO’s Investigative Unit Exposed: Part VII

Gestapomen following the white buses
Gestapomen following the white buses (a Swedish photograph in the public domain)



Summary: Military connections in the Investigative Unit (I.U.) of the European Patent Office makes one wonder what this whole organisation has really turned into

THIS will be the last part of this series, which lasted about a week and included [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6].



Today we will take a deeper look at the military connections that the EPO quietly boasts. Currently, "gestapo" is what some people call the Investigative Unit internally and they are not being overly dramatic. Techniques which even resemble torture are now being covertly used. They are of course being justified using the same old ways/excuses/pretexts. As this article from a few days ago (by an Associate Dean and author specialising in this area) put it: "In both the Nazi and American examples, the experiments were carried out in the name of "national security." A Nazi doctor whom I (Lifton) interviewed had at first opposed the harmful "research" but changed his mind and participated in typhus experiments with prisoners after being told by a Nazi medical bureaucrat that they were necessary for finding ways to prevent epidemics in German troops."

In the case of the EPO, human rights violations are being justified as "necessary" for the integrity or stability of the Office. This is not acceptable and one day, if justice is to ever be served, the Office (or the Organisation) can face criminal charges over it (like some people in the US last month).

Nadja Merdaci-LefèvreLooking at some 'lower level' staff at the Investigative Unit, it seems apparent that they brought in some truly aggressive or shady people.

Nadja Merdaci-Lefèvre (image on the left extracted from this 2010 publication [PDF]), for example, comes from the French secret services and served in Afghanistan. She is Head of the Conflict Resolution Unit which works in close cooperation with the Investigative Unit. Ms Lefèvre is also Head of Internal Communication.

"Our sources told us that Mr Kinch is actually an investigator from Control Risks (CRG), which we dubbed "British Blackwater" because of its dubious past activities."Simona Barbieri, also reportedly in this unit, is a good friend of Nadja Merdaci-Lefèvre (perhaps another case of "friend brings a friend") and then there is Matthew Kinch. To quote a somewhat sanitised biography, "Matthew Kinch is a linguist and specialist in global media monitoring, who headed BBC Monitoring’s operations in Eastern Europe and, most recently, Afghanistan. He now works as a media consultant. Matthew speaks English, German, Spanish, Russian, Serbian, Bosnian, Croatian and Catalan."

Our sources told us that Mr Kinch is actually an investigator from Control Risks (CRG), which we dubbed "British Blackwater" because of its dubious past activities. "He speaks at least 8 languages," we were told, "and worked as a journalist for the BBC in Afghanistan. He has the perfect spy profile. Some say that he met Nadja Merdaci-Lefèvre while she was serving in Afghanistan and that’s how he later got his contract with the EPO." Perhaps not only INPI gets 'reunited' inside the EPO, if true...

For our newer readers, who may not have seen our previous articles about CRG, here are some places to start:



"This is what is happening behind the glassed windows and the immunity of the EPO," told us a source. "And nobody cares."

Recent Techrights' Posts

IBM Layoff Rumours, Large-Scale Implementations Weeks Ahead (in March 2025)
There are some people corroborating
Microsoft Blasted for Adding Insult to Injury: Workers Laid Off Without Prior Notice, Without Severance Payment and Basic Coverage (Like Health), Then Stigmatised as Bad Performers So They Cannot Find a Job Elsewhere
Such stereotypes end entire careers
BetaNews is Still Publishing LLM Slop/SPAM About "Linux"
Assuming it is indeed LLM slop, it seems clear BetaNews has no intention of improving or is simply unable/unwilling to improve
 
Morale at Microsoft Ruined by the Company Labelling Thousands of Workers 'Low Performers', Sacking Them on the Spot and Denying Them Basic Benefits
people laid off as "low performers" go to social control media to bemoan the label
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Tuesday, February 11, 2025
IRC logs for Tuesday, February 11, 2025
Links 11/02/2025: Current state of the Internet and Smallnet Information Services (SIS)
Links for the day
Conservative Estimate: Over 10,000 IBM Workers to Be Laid Off in the Next Two Waves
The morale is low and layoffs are expected soon, with mass layoffs likely happening next month and then again later
Links 11/02/2025: Trade Wars and "Crisis for American Universities"
Links for the day
Parasitic LLM Slop Sites Destroy the Ability to Find "Linux" News in Google News
Remember that Google News laid off lots of its workers
Richard Stallman's English Talk in Italy Less Than 24 Hours Away (Torino) and Then Another Talk in Italy Scheduled (University of Bozen-Bolzano)
He's active and he travels a lot in spite of his medical condition
Links 11/02/2025: Nutritional Poverty, Closure of USAID, More Fictional 'Valuations' Around Buzzwords
Links for the day
Perl Programming Leftovers
recently in perl.org
Microsoft in Africa: From 98% to Less Than 10% in Just 16 Years
Microsoft being on less than 1 in 10 Web-connected devices in Africa is a very big deal
Almost as If MElon Reads Techrights
The joke we started appears to be spreading
Gemini Links 11/02/2025: NeoVim and Deploying Other People's Code
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Monday, February 10, 2025
IRC logs for Monday, February 10, 2025
Scheduled Maintenance Tomorrow and on Valentines
If the site (or Gemini capsule) is offline for a bit, the maintenance windows are likely the root cause
If Matthias Kirschner Loves Free Software, He'll Change the Name of the Microsoft-Sponsored Organisation He Governs (in Order to Avoid Confusion)
The FSF-EEE does not really like Software Freedom, it just loves money (including Microsoft's)
Soylent News Lessens the Scope of Discussion Due to Persistent Trolling and Online Abuse
if they make it a lot harder for new people to participate, then they limit the "general appeal" and reach
EPO's Local Occupational Health, Safety and Ergonomics Committee (LOHSEC) in The Hague: Workers Are Getting Sicker, Conditions in Which to Assess Patent Applications Deteriorate
"According to the Office statistics the total number of days of absence has gone up from 12.4 to 13.1 total number of sick days per Full Time Equivalent (FTE) from 2023 to 2024."
The Standard Needs to Improve Its Standards for Fact-Checking, Aaron Swartz Had Nothing to Do With Reddit and He Detested the Company That Created It
The Web is already bad enough as it is
When the Livestream of Richard Stallman is Apparently Bury-Brigaded Offline You Finally Learn to Avoid Google/YouTube for Streaming
Please, people, stop uploading to Google/YouTube
New Paper From the EPO Highlights Large-Scale Discrimination at the Office, Where People Are Rewarded for Granting More and More Illegal Patents
Even the Kremlin is probably more competent than this
Links 10/02/2025: Ban on D.E.I. Language, Listeria Risk/Outbreak
Links for the day
Links 10/02/2025: Announcing "Stringless" and Mental Health Improvement
Links for the day
Links 10/02/2025: Facebook Mass Layoffs, "Meta" Did What Aaron Swartz Had Done But to the Tune of 81.7 Terabytes
Links for the day
Microsoft Tarnishing the Brand of Arch
Of course Arch can do whatever it wants, but being associated with Microsoft is a badge of shame
The Ultimate and Inevitable Fall of OpenAI (Even Brave is 'Bigger' Now)
"When you advertise at the Super Bowl, you’ve reached just about every consumer in America. It’s the last stop. If you’re not profitable yet, you never will be."
Adding Slop to Your Blog Only Makes One Assume All the Text is LLM Slop
Simon Coter from Oracle has turned to slop
Macao is Leaving Microsoft Behind
Windows is falling to new all-time lows
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Sunday, February 09, 2025
IRC logs for Sunday, February 09, 2025
Microsoft's WSL (LSW) Shows That It Can Never Love Linux, Only Windows
that's just how Microsoft rolls
Activism in Times of War and a Coup
'Linux' Foundation works for fascism
What the Silencing of Neatnik Tells Us About Linus Torvalds Inside a Microsoft-Dominated 'Linux' Foundation
Is Linus Torvalds free to express his mind as he wishes about every topic, even just any technical topic?
Windows Down to 11.35% in Senegal, as Measured by statCounter
Another all-time low (Windows was at 99% in 2009)
"Latest Technology News" in BetaNews is LLM Slop Promoting OOXML and Proprietary Software at the Expense of LibreOffice and OpenDocument Format (ODF)
Remember that "open-source" and Open Source aren't the same; the former is fake