Bonum Certa Men Certa

Battistelli is Destroying the European Patent Office and Wasting a Lot of Money Hiding This Fact

EPO Frame Breaking



Summary: Too busy paying journalists, PR firms, so-called 'research' firms (funded by EPO budget to the tune of millions per year) and other actors that help distort the reality (a rapid EPO decline), Mr. Battistelli has now become a huge liability to the entire Organisation and EPO staff should fight to save the EPO

SOME big stories about the EPO are coming next week and they're nothing to do with the charade that's now known (at least internally) for promoting frauds, not just those which the EPO falls for (yesterday it laughably enough warned others about fraud). The EPO keeps promoting the charade which wastes millions of euros of EPO budget and does not want the public to know that it pays the media for puff pieces relating to this charade, amongst others. The latest ‘survey’ of the EPO’s BFF, which the EPO now inevitably brags about, is one such example of paid media.



The EPO would like to make examiners at the EPO redundant (replaced by algorithms) and pretend there’s still potent examination, not just patent filing/registration. That's the 'ENA way'. Yesterday the EPO promoted a prelude to this. We are already seeing a reduction in patent examination quality and Battistelli is demolishing the Boards of Appeal little by little (understaffing and now fee hikes). The EPO is collapsing and while this collapse is happening Battistelli spends millions of euros on PR agencies and media companies, as well as commissioned 'studies' which attempt to distort this reality (that's their job).

Looking at recent IP Kat comments, we come to realise that more and more people inside and outside the EPO (those who interact with examiners) come to grips with the above reality. It's pretty grim. As one person put it:

What is kind of shocking about the proposal to have a self-financed DG3 because of self-financed UPC-courts is that it shows an utter lack of understanding of the function of DG3 and the UPC-courts by BB [Battistelli] and his freaks. DG3 is a judicial instance, there to correct/review 1st instance decisions ... such a correction mustn't cost a lot of money for the appelant(in particular SMEs). DG3 should be regarded as a futher liability of the EPO(rg) ... similar to the AC - I do not think that they are self-financing.

... but well, what could one expect from BB ...


Battistelli's latest puff piece and masterpiece (warning: epo.org link) does not show him with violent tyrants, for a change. Why not show him with the people whom he habitually hangs out with rather than pseudo-royalty from Britain?

"An appeal fee of 7.350 Euro is insulting," one person noted. "I am surprised that nobody so far mentioned that such a fee is a clear disincentive to file with the EPO in the first place." Here is the full comment:

An appeal fee of 7.350 Euro is insulting. I am surprised that nobody so far mentioned that such a fee is a clear disincentive to file with the EPO in the first place.

For that amount of money, you can get your application translated into French/Dutch, file it as national application, and you get the search report together with an opinion from the EPO. After that, you pick just the two or three countries you are interested in and go there directly. Go for Germany - biggest market, no translation needed for filing and search, France/Netherlands - you already have the application, and Great Britain. That will secure two additional search reports (DE, GB). With some luck you will have a good overview of the relevant prior art. Infringement in Düsseldorf (DE), period. No hassle with EPO appeal fee, UPC, etc. All things considered, you are likely cheaper even without an appeal.

Sure, that strategy is not fit for everybody. As alternative, go EPO for the search, either with an EP or a PCT, and then proceed on national level, again completely sidestepping EPO examination and appeal. Going PCT will also avoid the nasty exchange of search results, making sure that the EPO does a proper search instead of considering mainly the national search report. The EPO did not lower the search fee when that exchange was introduced, although it is supposed to save time.

Poor guys who want 4 or more countries:)

reply to the above


The goal is to destroy/eliminate if not just marginalise the appeals process. Goodbye to EPO quality!

As another person put it:



Be careful with France. A direct French regional phase from a PCT filing isn't possible; the application will have to go through the EPO. So you will need a FR either a FR first or second filing. As a bonus, a first filing will give you an EPO Search and opinion. Mais pour ça, il faut rédiger la demande en français.

Let's not talk about the utter idiocy of the "PCTdirect" thing currently peddled by the EPO, where applicants are encouraged to amend their second filing in order to overcome objections of the authority who handled the first filing. If you like endangering your Paris priority and finding new reasons to go all the way to the EBoA, this one's for you...

My suspicion is that through impossibly high work quotas, the EPO examiner will have no other practical option but to rubber stamp whatever is filed, without looking at it too closely, unless he feels suicidal and/or wants to end up a homeless wino sleeping under the bridge. But everything is fine, since the EPO is ISO 9001 certified.


Here is a reference to neoliberalism in relation to this:



As Lord Darlington observed, more than a century ago, a cynic is a person who knows the price of everything but the value of nothing.

Do we have more cynics in the world today? I think so. Everywhere one looks (as a patent attorney) one sees Administrative Council members, business people, economists and politicians monetarizing everything, as fast as they can, putting a price on everything, with nary a thought about the value that they are destroying.

But there are a few straws in the wind (politicians take note). In particular, the economists heading up research at the IMF have started to put out Papers that argue that neoliberalism is routinely destroying more value than it creates. It is easy to price everything, very hard to quantify "value". Measuring what you can measure and dismissing any thought about anything else might be excusable in a professor of economics but not for a politician or business person.

So perhaps it's not too late for the AC, first to see the error of BB's Master of Business Administration ways, and second to do their F-ing job, namely exercise some control over their attack dog, and curb the beast. In 40 years since the creation of the European Patent Convention, it has come to be the world's premier (go to) corpus of rational patent law, thanks to DG3 at the EPO. Europe has precious little "soft power" in the world today, but here is a jewel in its soft power crown.

Meanwhile BB, in what seems to be a bizarre and ever-more emotional fit of pique, is bent on wiping it out, regardless of the cost. In my opinion, a disgrace, a tragedy, and deeply lamentable.


The following last comment on this subject is referring to the attack dog of Battistelli, who faces criminal charges in Croatia:



Just two quick points.

As far as I was aware, it's not BB who claims to be an MBA but the one who signed off on this. http://www.dziv.hr/files/File/go-izvjesca/godisnje_izvjesce_2010.pdf

Apropos exercising control over the attack dog, haven't you ever heard the old adage "Don't bite the hand that feeds you". The guys to exercise control are the ones in the ministeries. Refer to Article 4a EPC. Long overdue by now.


Our goal is not to destroy the EPO but to save it. The one destroying the EPO right now is Battistelli, along with his team which has blind loyalty to him. Battistelli ought to be sacked this month in order to save the EPO.

Comments

Recent Techrights' Posts

Brett Wilson LLP Sent Over 5 Kilograms (or Over 12 Pounds) of Legal Papers! Because Writing About Microsoft Abuses is 'Illegal'.
How do you guys sleep at night? On a big pile of Microsoft money?
Extremism as a Weapon Against GNU/Linux (Microsoft Lunduke)
He ought to know the Halloween Documents. Wasn't he a Microsoft employee when these came out?
 
Gemini Links 09/07/2025: Extreme Testing and Golang Documentation in Geminispace
Links for the day
Vice President of the European Patent Office (EPO) Complains That Techrights Gives Visibility to Legal and Technical Issues at the EPO
"Follow-up on enquiries relating to Dir. 1218 and 1001"
Slopwatch: linuxsecurity.com and Various Slopfarms That Lie About "Linux" and Are Promoted by Google News
Google does not seem interested in tackling this problem
Links 09/07/2025: War Updates and Microsoft Moving to India to Cut Costs
Links for the day
GNU/Linux Was Always a 'Movement' of Inclusion of Tolerance
Even the licences themselves remove access barriers
Links 09/07/2025: "Subprime AI Crisis" and "OpenAI May Be in Major Trouble Financially"
Links for the day
Huge Piles of Legal Papers ('Paper DDoS') Do Not Impress Judges and Regulators
they just make judges and regulators even more suspicious of the eagerness to resort to 'paper DDoS'
Lunduke Isn't Even Hiding His Anti-Linux Agenda (From "Linux Sucks" to "Linux is Pedophiles")
just trying to make a lot of trouble
Some People Use Computers to Get Actual Work Done
Tolerance and inclusion must extend to acceptance that some people don't agree with you, might never agree with you, and imposing what allegedly works for you on them is unreasonable
Example of "Old" Things That Still Work
The notion that something being "old" implies it must be discarded is typically advanced by those looking to sell more of something
Some Scheduled Maintenance Later Today
Typically the most vulnerable service during short interruptions is IRC
Computers Are Just a Tool
People don't get married because they love weddings, folks don't join the army because they love war, and most drivers don't drive to work because they love cars
Apple Way Past Its Prime
Apple deserves a decline
The FSF's SysOps Team Recovered From Serious Hardware Issue Within Hours
About half a day ago I noticed that all/most GNU/FSF sites were not reachable and thus reached out to a contact for any details
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Tuesday, July 08, 2025
IRC logs for Tuesday, July 08, 2025
Slopwatch: Turning Bugs Into FUD About "Linux", Getting Basic Facts Wrong
all the screenshots are of fake articles; we don't want to link to any
Technical Reasons, Not Politics: With Wayland "it feels a lot like Linux from 20-25 years ago, which is horrendously frustrating, because it feels like we wasted one or two decades of progress and stability"
Lately, quite a few benchmarks were published to show Wayland compares poorly compared to what we had
PCLinuxOS Recovering From Fire
It looks like a nightmare scenario, where even backups onsite get destroyed
Links 09/07/2025: More Heatwaves, Officials Culled in Russia
Links for the day
Gemini Links 09/07/2025: XScreensaver and Resurrection
Links for the day
Links 08/07/2025: "Cyberattack Deals Blow to Russian Firmware" and "Cash Remains King"
Links for the day
FSF40 T-shirt message
by Alex Oliva
Gemini Links 08/07/2025: Creativity, Gotify with NUT Server, and Sudo Bugs
Links for the day
More on "Lunduke is Actually Sending His Audience to Attack People"
"pepe the frogs"
Links 08/07/2025: Sabotage of Networking Infrastructure, Microsoft XBox Game Pass Deemed “Unsustainable”
Links for the day
Dalai Lama Succession as Evidence That Determined, Motivated People Can Reach Their Nineties
And we need to quit talking about their death all the time
Many Lawyers (for Microsoft) and 1,316 Pages to Pick on a Litigant in Person Who Exposed Serious Microsoft Abuses
Answers must be given
Gemini Links 08/07/2025: Ancillary Justice and Small Web July
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Monday, July 07, 2025
IRC logs for Monday, July 07, 2025
Layoffs and Shutdowns at IBM, Not Just Microsoft
Same as Microsoft
The FSF's (Free Software Foundation, Inc.) 2025 Summer Fundraiser Already Past Halfway Line
This is where GNU/Linux actually started
With Workers Back From a Holiday Weekend, Microsoft Layoffs Carry on, More Waves to Come
Now it's Monday and people are bad to work, even some journalists
Mozilla Had No Good Reason to Outsource Firefox Development to Microsoft
What does Mozilla plan to do when GitHub shuts down?
Mozilla Firefox Did Not Die, It Got Killed
To me it'll always look like Mozilla got killed by its sponsors, especially Google, which had a conflict of interest as a sponsor
You Need Not Wave a Rainbow Flag This Month to Basically Oppose Arseholes Looking to Disrupt and Divide the Community
Don't fall for it
Dan Neidle, Whom Brett Wilson LLP SLAPPed (on Behalf of Corrupt Rich Tax Evaders), Still Fighting the Good Fight
Neidle fights for the poor people
What Miguel de Icaza and Microsoft Lunduke Have in Common
Similar aims, different methods
Wayland Should Start by Dumping Its Very Ugly Logo
Wayland wins the "ugliest logo" award every year
Stop Focusing on Hair Colours, Focus on Corporate Agenda
If someone commits a crime, it does not matter if his or her hair was mostly white or there was no hair or a wig or whatever
Links 07/07/2025: Science, Conflicts, and a Fictional K-pop Group
Links for the day
Gemini Links 07/07/2025: Being a Luddite and Announcement of Gotify
Links for the day
Links 07/07/2025: XBox Effectively 'Dead', DMCA Subpoena Versus Registrar
Links for the day
The 'Corporate Neckbeard' is Not the "Good Guy"
Works for IBM
The Nasty Smear (and Stereotype) of "Neckbeard" or "Greybeard" is Ageism
This is the sort of stuff they might try to volley at critics of Wayland
Why Many of Us Use X Server and Will Continue to Use It For Many Years to Come
Don't make this about politics
Microsoft's Nat Friedman Became Unemployed the Same Time the SLAPPs Against Techrights Started Coming From His Friends (Weeks After We Had Exposed Scandals About Him and the Serial Strangler, His Best Friend, Who Got Arrested a Few Days Later)
Nat Friedman is not "Investor, entrepreneur"
Brett Wilson LLP Uses Threats to Demand Changes to Pages or Removal of Pages Without Even Revealing Which Staff Member Does That (Sometimes People From Another Firm!)
This has been in the public for years
Dan Neidle Said "It Really Then Became a Job of Tormenting" Lawyers Like Brett Wilson LLP (Who Threatened Him for Exposing Crimes, Just Like They Threatened My Wife a Few Months Later)
he and his wife decided to take on the evil people and their evil lawyers
Large Language Models (LLMs) Externalise Their Cost to the Free Software Foundation (FSF)
"The forty-sixth Free Software Bulletin is now available online!"
Weeding Out Extremism in Our Community
To me it seems like Microsoft Lunduke is rapidly becoming like a "hate preacher" who operates online, breeding an extremist ideology or trying to soften its image
Censorship Versus Fact-Checking and Quality Control
It's not censorship but a matter of quality control
Reinforcing the Allegations Some More, Bryan Lunduke Digs His Own Grave
In his latest episodes he merely repeats his own lies, which I debunked using evidence right from his own mouth
Global Warming and Free Software as a Force of Mitigation
we'll need to think about Software Freedom, not just brands like "Linux"
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Sunday, July 06, 2025
IRC logs for Sunday, July 06, 2025
Gemini Links 07/07/2025: BaseLibre Numerical System and TUI Rant
Links for the day