Bonum Certa Men Certa

New Essay: EPO “president and Council are morally corrupt”

New essay about the EPO

Moral compass and management’s loss of it

The loss of moral compass of the higher management is nothing short of stomach-churning.

Unbridled craving for media exposure, unashamed cronyism in the pursuit of power concentration at the expense of checks and balance, abuse of our common assets for personal and exclusive benefit, vengeful oppression of dissenting opinions and immunity-bragging are now the norm. Coupled to a questionable taste for 1990s pseudo-corporate glamour, such trends have brought the mood in the organisation on par with that of Zamyatin's dystopia1.

Some leaders are inspirational, some are not. Inspirational leaders always lead by example. Inspirational leaders place all their emphasis on the duties they have, not the privileges they could claim, and certainly not on any immunity they may have. Immunity is the trump card of the irresponsible.

Current higher management’s taste for behind-the-scenes dealings, secrecy and information control is more than a warning sign; it presages the disintegration of the organisation. The collapse of moral values is always a prelude to disintegration.

'Science flourishes where art and free speech flourish' once wrote N. Stephenson. Given the current atmosphere, our organisation is not on course to flourish.

German/American political theorist Hannah Arendt has taught us that blindly obeying 'end-justifies-the-means' policies is a sure path to moral ruin. This has happened to us in a mere four years. The oligarchic drift of the higher management has now gone too far.

And what of the Administrative Council, whose members come to Munich and endorse policies which would be illegal – and immoral – in their home country? Policies should first and foremost be judged on their moral implications.

The idea that anything that can be made legal is always morally acceptable has been discredited in Europe for decades.

Maybe tough decisions on the course of action of our organisation are necessary, but no one – and certainly not the EPO’s higher management – has shown that yet. If changes were necessary, it would surely be possible to put the arguments convincingly to staff, which is an intelligent body of people, and they, in turn, would surely understand the need, and be ready to make sacrifices.

However the policies embodying this course of action can only be accepted from a leader who has moral authority, deriving from his core personal values and transparency.

It is our observation that scientists and engineers are always more efficiently led by scientists and engineers, as do and did Charles Bolden (head of NASA) and Anne Lauvergeon (on the board of companies such as Total and Vodafone).

Austrian thinker Karl Polanyi warned us more than 60 years ago that there is great danger in deciding economic and industrial policies without having defined first the values of the society one wants to live in.

'We used to have the spirit of the M.I.T, now we have that of Lehman Brothers' summarised a former member of our organisation.

The above text was proposed for publication by one of our colleagues two years ago. We publish it now since we think that it is even more valid than ever before.

EPO staff, national members of parliament, interested circles and the European public must publicly deplore the current system where



in order to provide an incentive to reinstate a moral authority in the supervisory body and at the higher management levels of the European Patent Office.

____________



1Yevgeny Zamyatin’s book “We”, published in English in 1924, is a novel about life in a future world which has become a single state in which all citizens are permanently under surveillance, and potential dissenters are forcibly subjected to surgery to “correct” their psyche.



Recent Techrights' Posts

GNU/Linux Grows at Windows' Expense and Microsoft Trolls Infest and Maliciously Target Articles About It
Microsoft is - and has long been - organised crime
They Say I'm Mr. Bombastic
They didn't take good lawyers
Linux Foundation is a Mediator for Microsoft et al, Not for Small Companies That Support Rather Than Attack the GPL
Many people still wrongly assume that because it is called "Linux Foundation", then it is pro-Linux and represents the same mindset
 
BetaNews is a Plagiarism and LLM Slop Hub, the Chief Editor Isn't Addressing This Problem Anymore
SS Fagioli is basically a parasite leeching off or exploiting other people's work
Links 09/06/2025: Chaos in Los Angeles and Hurricane Season
Links for the day
Links 09/06/2025: Windows TCO and Many Data Breaches
Links for the day
Abuse Inside the Polish Patent Office (UPRP) - Part VI: Political Stunts by Former President Edyta Demby-Siwek and the Connection to Profound Corruption at EUIPO
it's like a money-laundering operation where one politician rewards another at taxpayers' expense
Gemini Links 09/06/2025: Pipelines and Splitgate
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Sunday, June 08, 2025
IRC logs for Sunday, June 08, 2025
Links 08/06/2025: Tiananmen Carnage Censorship Persists, North Korean Goes Offline
Links for the day
Gemini Links 08/06/2025: Love as an Ethnographic Method and Monitorix Gemini-Frontend v0.1
Links for the day
Links 08/06/2025: Exposure of More GAFAM Surveillance and Social Security Records Compromised
Links for the day
This Past Friday, Confirming What We Said All Along About Brett Wilson LLP: It's Shrinking, Has Considerable Debt, Loss of Net Assets Despite the Microsoft SLAPP Money
The documents only became publicly available less than 2 days ago
Some of the Many Reasons We Sued Microsofters for Harassment
perpetrators of harassment
For 20 Years Many People Were Sharecropping for Canonical's Oligarch, Now He's Deleting All Their Contributions
"Ubuntu has erased instead of archiving the trove of material at Ubuntu Forums"
There Was Always Too Much 'Crazy Stuff' Going on Around Freenode
What many IRC users lost sight of
Exposing Crime is Not a Crime (It Never Was)
In the eyes of rich and powerful people, those who speak about their crimes are the "criminals"
GNU/Linux Distros Abandoning Microsoft GitHub
Will curl be next to leave Microsoft GitHub?
Expect More XBox Mass Layoffs Soon If the Rumours Are True
From a Microsoft media operative
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Saturday, June 07, 2025
IRC logs for Saturday, June 07, 2025
Europe Needs to Move Away From GAFAM; The Sooner, the Better
Europe - not just the EU - must abandon GAFAM as soon as possible
The Issue Isn't GNOME's Promotion of Diversity But GNOME Corruption, Abuse, Censorship, and Worse
So-called "Conservative" (republican, pro-Trump, bigoted) people want you to think the problem with GNOME is politics
When the News Sources Become Scarce and Increasingly Full of Polluted/Contaminated 'Content' (With LLM Slop and Slop Images)
Integrity matters
"Linux" Sites That Spew Out LLM Slop
We're lacking enough material for another "Slopwatch"
Abuse Inside the Polish Patent Office (UPRP) - Part V: Breaking the Law, Just Like EPO
We'll hopefully cover some of the pertinent details later this year
Links 08/06/2025: Security Lapses, CISA Cuts, and More
Links for the day
Gemini Links 07/06/2025: Mime Types and Geminisphere Introduction
Links for the day
Links 07/06/2025: Slop Companies Retain All Private Data, More Books Banned in the US
Links for the day
Gemini Links 07/06/2025: "A Monk's Guide to Happiness" and "Wireless Earbuds"
Links for the day
Links 07/06/2025: More Rumours of Mass Layoffs in Microsoft's XBox Division, New COVID Variant
Links for the day
Drug Addiction is a Real Problem, It Destroys Families
a rather sensitive matter
Abuse Inside the Polish Patent Office (UPRP) - Part IV: Political Scrutiny and Errors/Inconsistencies in Official Documents
When such organisations receive scrutiny they start focusing on cover-up and muzzling of facts (or crushing people who say the truth)
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Friday, June 06, 2025
IRC logs for Friday, June 06, 2025