Bonum Certa Men Certa

New EPO Protests Amid Nervous Breakdowns of Spanish EPO Employee (After Institutional Bullying by Battistelli's Goons), Spain Rejects the Unitary Patent (UPC)

In spite of FTI Consulting's (EPO-funded to the tune of almost $1,000,000 per year) pro-UPC propaganda

EPO scandal in Spain



Summary: In the face of enormous pressure from non-technical Eurocrats like Battistelli, Spain remains strong and resists the Unitary Patent Court (UPC), which puts more power in the hands of an abusive body that grossly discriminates against Spaniards

MONTHS after we covered the Spanish scandals [1, 2, 3] which implicate an EPO Vice-President all we find in Spanish-speaking media is puff pieces about the EPO, generated after Battistelli had visited Latin America, shook some hands, signed some papers, then left back to his castle in Munich (a castle from which workers escape through the windows to their death, due to improper management, based on the staff union).



"Tell them more about how the EPO's 'gestapo' treats a Spanish union leader, causing him to have nervous breakdowns and actively forbidding him from saying anything about what's happening."Another action (a protest in this case, not yet a strike) against the EPO's management is going to take place less than a week from now. Details in SUEPO's public site were published yesterday as follows: "On 17 February the so-called Board 28 (officially: "Board of the Administrative Council") will have its second meeting of the year. The Board 28 is the ultra-secretive think-tank of the Administrative Council. SUEPO invites all staff to demonstrate in front of the Isar building, starting from 12.30h.

"With the demonstration we want to appeal to the members of the Board 28 to reflect on the reforms unilaterally imposed on staff by Mr Battistelli, almost all of which breach European legal and democratic norms, and in many cases violate fundamental rights."

"Ask delegates who are at the Council to dig into the salary of Battistelli, which oddly enough remains a closely-guarded secret (his predecessor did disclose hers)."They seem to be targeting delegates which any of our readers in Europe (not just EPO staff) can contact. Tell them more about how the EPO's 'gestapo' [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7] treats a Spanish union leader, causing him to have nervous breakdowns and actively forbidding him from saying anything about what's happening. Ask delegates who are at the Council to dig into the salary of Battistelli, which oddly enough remains a closely-guarded secret (his predecessor did disclose hers).

One important development that we noticed yesterday is that Spain may be increasingly giving EPO management the finger, even at a national level. This is important because Spain is a big country. There are many patent applicants coming from Spain, not to mention patent examiners. Spain does not need the UPC regime. It openly opposed it even half a decade ago when it was referred to as EU Patent, not UPC (the name of the unwanted 'reform' keeps changing over time, maybe in an effort to dodge negative publicity). Things are fine as they are. Spain has the resources to manage a patent office and patent courts, so Spain has antagonised the UPC several times in the past. The EU/EPO tried blackmailing Spain into the UPC, but such moves are more likely to alienate, not accomplish anything. Spain did not change its position after such blackmail and based on this new interview with WIPR, Spain’s IPO head remains consistent and strong. To quote the article: "The director general of Spain’s Patent and Trademark Office has supported the government’s decision to opt out of the unitary patent and said that EU member states will be forced to reflect on the importance of the Spanish language and technology.

"One important development that we noticed yesterday is that Spain may be increasingly giving EPO management the finger, even at a national level.""Speaking to WIPR, Patricia Garcia-Escudero said she stood by the government’s decision to not participate in the patent and the concurrent Unified Patent Court (UPC).

"Last year, the Court of Justice of the European Union ended Spain’s legal challenge to the UPC Agreement.

"The bone of contention was the exclusion of Spanish as an official language of the UPC, which Spain described as discriminatory. The official languages are English, French and German.

"“Spanish is one of the most spoken languages in the world, and it is widely used on the internet. So we wanted them to consider Spanish as an official language of the UPC,” Garcia-Escudero said."

"More countries should follow Spain's lead and defend Europe from patent trolls, software patents, and massive foreign corporations that wish to sue a lot of European SMEs (in many countries) in one fell swoop."For the Spanish people and for Spain’s IPO head this is the right thing to do given the mistreatment of Spain and Spanish people at the EPO (see in Spanish: "A La Oficina Europea de Patentes (OEP) no le gusta el Español, Así que PorQué los EspaÅ„oles la Toleran?"), not to mention the snubbing of the Spanish language -- a subject that we repeatedly covered here before.

More countries should follow Spain's lead and defend Europe from patent trolls, software patents, and massive foreign corporations that wish to sue a lot of European SMEs (in many countries) in one fell swoop. That's what the UPC is practically for (ignore the EPO's publicity stunts and misleading UPC marketing from patent lawyers who profit from patent feuds).

"The day that the software sector forms a clear front against software patents, as pharma does for a unitary patent system… will be the day our cause comes close to winning." —Pieter Hintjens (former FFII President), Fosdem07 Interview



Recent Techrights' Posts

Techrights Does Not Compete With LLM Slop, It Exposes the Bastards, Plagiarists and Scammers Who Do That
People like Scam Altman, still facing a lawsuit from his own sister for sexual abuse against her
Slopwatch: Planet Ubuntu Became LLM Slop and Some People Fail to See the Immorality of Plagiarism
it lessens the incentive for people to publish real articles
Microsoft Layoffs Again in Bay Area
Microsoft relies on people's false belief that being "in LinkedIn" will get you a job; well, seems like even working inside LinkedIn really sucks and you lose the job
 
The "AI" (Slop) Bubble Already Popped, But It's Not an Overnight Collapse
where Microsoft put its money
No More Steven Astorino at IBM, Chatter About Weekly/Nonstop Layoffs at IBM
What happened? Good luck guessing.
Looking at Corruption in Europe, Going Beyond the EPO
Expect a new series to kick off very soon
Slopwatch: Security SPAM and LLM Slop for SEO and FUD Purposes, Perpetually Tarnishing the Perception of Linux and (Open)SSH Security
A lot of this Fear, Uncertainty, Doubt (FUD) comes from Microsoft and its LLMs
Links 30/05/2025: Google's LLM Slop Pushers Are Killing Journalism and Shira Perlmutter Fails to Stop Bribed Regime From Legalising Plagiarism (in "AI" Clothing)
Links for the day
Links 30/05/2025: Offline Arts and "Threshold of Patience"
Links for the day
Signing Off Serious Lies With a Statement of Truth is No Joking Matter
It's not hard to see what's happening here
Links 30/05/2025: LLM Slop Already Ingests and Vomits Its Own Garbage, Facebook Exec Admits Copyrights a Concern Too
Links for the day
Mass Layoffs at Microsoft Result in More Whistleblowers From Microsoft
Microsoft's predatory pricing is further
EPO Poll: 68% Dissatisfied With Quality of Slop (Wrongly Framed as "AI") for Patent Classification
Slop does not work, it's just falsely advertised with extra hype (funded by slop pushers that sponsor the major media)
Big Crowds Gather to Learn About Software Freedom From the Man Who Started GNU/Linux in 1983
"It was a great success"
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
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
Links 29/05/2025: YouTube Problem and Giant Privacy Hole in Microsoft OneDrive
Links for the day
[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
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