Bonum Certa Men Certa

Battistelli and His Bodyguards: Paranoia, Megalomania, or Both? Are China-Style 'Suicide Nets' Next on the EPO's Agenda?

Battistelli's vision of the EPO is extremely grim

Foxconn suicide nets
Photo credit: Gizmodo



Summary: A look back (about a dozen years) to the days of Benoît Battistelli walking around with bodyguards whilst only a French officer at INPI

THERE are a lot of things that EPO staff does not know. The flow of information is impeded by an atmosphere of terror, which is a top-down thing (imposed from the above, i.e. from the management).



"I noticed some references to Battistelli's bodyguards in your articles on TechRights," one reader told us. "It seems that Battistelli's penchant for bodyguards pre-dates his current job at the EPO."

Battistelli had every window frame in EPO buildings screwed shut.”
      --Anonymous
Our reader continued: "I recently came across a humourous French blog post from 2004 which reports on Battistelli's public debut as Director-General of the French Institut Nationale de la Propriété Industrielle (INPI) at the "Enjeux Press Preview" which took place on Monday, July 5, 2004. At the end of the report, it is mentioned that on that occasion Battistelli was accompanied by two bodyguards.

"The French blog post by Jean-Bernard Condat [from Paris] can be found here. I add an English translation [PDF] which attempts to capture the whimsical humour of the original. Feel free to share it with your readers!"

Under Battistelli, the EPO looks rather reminiscent of a war zone. He even uses war-type language to keep the staff under control, as if he is fighting a large legion of terrorists with weapons of mass destruction. His staff's representatives he simply called "Mafia". Well, it sure seems like if there's a combative element inside the EPO, this is something that Battistelli brought into the EPO rather than inherited from Brimelow, his predecessor. This isn't leadership; it's monarchy; it's repressive. To quote parts of the PDF (which incorporates pictures and more):

Benoît Battistelli, the new Director-General of the INPI, makes his public debut



[...]

BATTISTELLI remains unperturbed and replies that "he is not personally an ayatollah of IP rights for SMEs".

[...]

BATTISTELLI rises to depart and his two bodyguards follow him. The concert is over.


"Battistelli had every window frame in EPO buildings screwed shut," one person told us recently. "That is how he "prevents" further on-site suicides. No more jumping out of windows. But colleagues mutilate themselves in their offices now. Battistelli dislikes the bloody mess they leave behind. He decided to silence them by starting an investigation procedure against them. Once the procedure started, employees do not have the right to talk about any detail. He must know better - this is a time bomb."

It's like those anti-suicide nets in Foxconn (China). "They are not actually solving the issue," as my wife put it when I asked her about it, they're just "implementing a workaround."

“Never murder a man who is committing suicide.”

--Woodrow Wilson



Recent Techrights' Posts

KillerStartups.com is an LLM Spam Site That Sometimes Covers 'Linux' (Spams the Term)
It only serves to distract from real articles
Did Microsoft 'Buy' Red Hat Without Paying for It? Does It Tell Canonical What to Do Now?
This is what Linus Torvalds once dubbed a "dick-sucking" competition or contest (alluding to Red Hat's promotion of UEFI 'secure boot')
 
Links 21/11/2024: TikTok Fighting Bans, Bluesky Failing Users
Links for the day
Links 21/11/2024: SpaceX Repeatedly Failing (Taxpayers Fund Failure), Russian Disinformation Spreading
Links for the day
Richard Stallman Earned Two More Honorary Doctorates Last Month
Two more doctorate degrees
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Wednesday, November 20, 2024
IRC logs for Wednesday, November 20, 2024
Gemini Links 20/11/2024: Game Recommendations, Schizo Language
Links for the day
Growing Older and Signs of the Site's Maturity
The EPO material remains our top priority
Links 20/11/2024: Politics, Toolkits, and Gemini Journals
Links for the day
Links 20/11/2024: 'The Open Source Definition' and Further Escalations in Ukraine/Russia Battles
Links for the day
[Meme] Many Old Gemini Capsules Go Offline, But So Do Entire Web Sites
Problems cannot be addressed and resolved if merely talking about these problems isn't allowed
Links 20/11/2024: Standing Desks, Broken Cables, and Journalists Attacked Some More
Links for the day
Links 20/11/2024: Debt Issues and Fentanylware (TikTok) Ban
Links for the day
Jérémy Bobbio (Lunar), Magna Carta and Debian Freedoms: RIP
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
Jérémy Bobbio (Lunar) & Debian: from Frans Pop to Euthanasia
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
This Article About "AI-Powered" is Itself LLM-Generated Junk
Trying to meet quotas by making fake 'articles' that are - in effect - based on plagiarism?
Recognizing invalid legal judgments: rogue Debianists sought to deceive one of Europe's most neglected regions, Midlands-North-West
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
Google-funded group distributed invalid Swiss judgment to deceive Midlands-North-West
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
Gemini Links 20/11/2024: BeagleBone Black and Suicide Rates in Switzerland
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Tuesday, November 19, 2024
IRC logs for Tuesday, November 19, 2024
Links 19/11/2024: War on Cables?
Links for the day
Gemini Links 19/11/2024: Private Journals Online and Spirituality
Links for the day
Drew's Development Mailing Lists and Patches to 'Refine' His Attack Pieces Against the FSF's Founder
Way to bury oneself in one's own grave...
The Free Software Foundation is Looking to Raise Nearly Half a Million Dollars by Year's End
And it really needs the money, unlike the EFF which sits on a humongous pile of oligarchs' and GAFAM cash
What IBMers Say About IBM Causing IBMers to Resign (by Making Life Hard/Impossible) and Why Red Hat Was a Waste of Money to Buy
partnering with GAFAM
In Some Countries, Desktop/Laptop Usage Has Fallen to the Point Where Microsoft and Windows (and Intel) Barely Matter Anymore
Microsoft is the next Intel basically
[Meme] The Web Wasn't Always Proprietary Computer Programs Disguised as 'Web Pages'
The Web is getting worse each year
Re-de-centralisation Should Be Our Goal
Put the users in charge, not governments and corporations in charge of users
Gemini Links 19/11/2024: Rain Music, ClockworkPi DevTerm, and More
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Monday, November 18, 2024
IRC logs for Monday, November 18, 2024