Bonum Certa Men Certa

Amid Scapegoating, Union-Shaming and Gagging by Battistelli, SUEPO's Prunier Provides More Details on Union Busting at the EPO

The naked emperor continues to show his true colours

Naked Trump



Summary: The authoritarian boss of the EPO, who tried to prevent his victims from speaking out about how they had been abused by him (using revocation of their pension as a threat), causes even greater anger within the Office, stirring up fresh conversations about how to remove him

THE EPO has gotten so bad that we've lost sight of the USPTO. The EPO is now an international scandal and we have begun approaching the world's leading media, which ought to cover it like it covered FIFA, VW (Dieselgate), and so on.

In response to defamatory union-shaming by Battistelli (echoing/mirroring what he so stridently did to a judge) and some utterly tasteless comment from an anonymous coward, Prunier has just published another comment to clarify the following points:

As the person directly concerned, I am responding to anonymous who posted on Sunday, 13 November 2016 at 07:30:00 GMT

1) I deny having ever harassed or defamed anyone (nor have my other fellow staff reps or SUEPO officials unfairly sanctioned or to be sanctioned, since several are still targeted).

2) The alleged victim did NOT file a complaint against me. The person who filed it was a very close associate (and protégée) of Mr Battistelli.

3) The staff representatives in the Disciplinary Committee have not found that I was guilty of harassment. That finding was 3:2, only by management side.

It is therefore quite inappropriate for you to hide behind anonymity to give credit to Battistelli’s smear campaign without being in possession of any relevant information.

The easiest solution for the public to assess the truth vs. story-telling, is for Mr Battistelli to lift the confidentiality he imposes on me and I will gladly publish all the documents.


Other new comments rightly express worry that nothing can stop Battistelli because the system is broken, partly because he himself broke it. One person wrote:

How does a "President of the Boards of Appeal" fit this paragraph of Article 10 EPC?

Uneasily I would say.

The fact is that the position of the "President of the Boards of Appeal" doesn't exist under the terms of the primary law of the EPC.

It has been created under secondary legislation at the level of the Implementing Regulations.

In CA/D 6/16 the Admin Council decreed that Rule 12 should be replaced by the following new Rules 12a, b, c and d: Rule 12a - Organisation and management of the Boards of Appeal Unit and President of the Boards of Appeal Rule 12b - Presidium of the Boards of Appeal and business distribution scheme for the Boards of Appeal Rule 12c - Boards of Appeal Committee and procedure for adoption of the Rules of Procedure of the Boards of Appeal and of the Enlarged Board of Appeal Rule 12d - Appointment and re-appointment of the members, including the Chairmen, of the Boards of Appeal and of the Enlarged Board of Appeal

These new Rules entered into force on 1 July 2016. They still don't appear to have been published in the official online version of the Implementing Regulations.

But who cares about such fine points of detail nowadays ... ????


Another person wrote:



"Battistelli is not doing what the Council wants. I asked what the Council can do and apparently the Council cannot do much because of the 3/4 of the votes clause. I said Battistelli just needs 10 countries to stay forever and follow his plans and nobody raised a credible objection. ... So let us imagine that Battistelli stays another few years to continue his plans. The Council cannot do much because of this blocking minority. What would the effect be? What would the European Patent system look like in, say, 2 to 4 years?"

Not so simple.

Without a 3/4 majority Batty cannot be replaced and can sit tight.

However, as shown in October a simple majority (i.e. 50%+) would suffice to prevent him from "following his plans". Thus, if a simple majority of the states decided to oppose him they could block any further action on his part.

Such a scenario would result in a stalemate situation rather than BB simply continuing his plans.

He would continue to sit on his throne but wouldn't be able to enact any further "reforms".

Not sure if we are heading in that direction but it is one possibility.


"I guess that the money the the European Patent Office funnels into the National Patent Offices is enough a reason to keep the ministers shut," the following comment said; it resembles the hypothesis that delegates have their votes 'bought' by Battistelli. Here is what the comment said:



"He would continue to sit on his throne but wouldn't be able to enact any further "reforms".

No further "reforms" certainly, but he still would be able to fire people at will to put the AC under pressure and in an embarrassing situation - as it did with Prunier when the AC denied him the last "reforms" he had submitted.

It's absolutely incomprehensible that no single European minister responsible for IP is intervening in a situation like this when the president of an international organization that is supposed to be under their control is totally going rogue ...

I guess that the money the the European Patent Office funnels into the National Patent Offices is enough a reason to keep the ministers shut ...

Disgusting.


In the coming days or weeks we are going to leak yet more documents and we are going to share some of them with leading journalists. It's time for the whole world to see what happened to the EPO under the leadership of this naked emperor. As always, more leaks are very much welcome and encouraged, at the very least to help Battistelli with his goal of "transparency" (with which comes accountability).

Recent Techrights' Posts

Throwing Away "Old" Computers (Mozilla and Other Climate Deniers)
Mozilla is not leftist
Further Media Cut-downs
media reporting about the media being cut
Gemini Links 09/09/2025: Moon Eclipse and ROOPHLOCH Reports
Links for the day
Official SUSE Blog Still Uses LLM Slop (Bots) to Make Fake Articles (Marketing)
The company is all about sound bites
Companies Realise That Slop Doesn't Work as Advertised, Accordingly Dump It
"Hype dims as a country-wide survey of US corporations shows a sudden drop-off in AI use among firms with more than 250 employees."
Microsoft-Funded Lawsuits Against Critics of UEFI 'Secure Boot'
Remember that no company (or law firm) ever survives collaborations with Microsoft
 
Brett Wilson LLP Accepts That the Serial Strangler From Microsoft Filed a Case That Also Implicates My Wife (Everything is Connected)
They used to pretend that there were two separate cases
10 Reasons to Disable (or Enable) UEFI Secure Boot
Tomorrow the "trusted corporation" Microsoft will see a certificate expire
Gemini Links 10/09/2025: Hospital and Large Feeds
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Tuesday, September 09, 2025
IRC logs for Tuesday, September 09, 2025
The Bluewashing of Red Hat is Being Completed, Many Staff Understand They'll be Made Redundant
Jim AllowHurst (Whitehurst) is meanwhile promoting Microsoft's agenda from within other companies
statCounter Sees GNU/Linux Exceeding 10% in Bulgaria This Month
What can Microsoft still do to stop GNU/Linux?
Dark Patterns
Microsoft saying "security" is like a Convicted Felon in the White House saying "law and order".
It's Almost Fall (Autumn)
To "Facebook prison" you are bound
Bruce Schneier About "Secure Boot"
Bruce Schneier isn't a fan of "Secure Boot"
Links 09/09/2025: Microsoft Mass Layoffs Again and "RTO" (Timed Like It Serves as a Distraction From the Mass Layoffs)
Links for the day
RMS Told Microsoft to Stop 'Secure Boot' (He Even Went There to Say That), But They Didn't Listen
Dr. Stallman (RMS) assumed that speaking to sociopaths would work
What Richard Stallman Told Me About 'Secure' Boot in 2012
"if the user doesn't control the keys, then it's a kind of shackle"
Those Who Helped Microsoft Weaponise "Secure Boot" Against GNU/Linux and BSDs Are Fleeing
Microsofters doing what they do best: they evade accountability
Simple is Better, Simplicity is Power
That is "the advantage of having commodity GNU/Linux systems," an associate notes
Much Ado About Nonsense
Microsoft Lunduke is still all dramatisation and sensationalism
Current Events in France
It needs to dump Microsoft and other GAFAM (US) giants, move to Free software
Links 09/09/2025: US-Korea Tensions and Meta Whistleblowers
Links for the day
Links 09/09/2025: “Torrents of Hate” and Political Crisis in France
Links for the day
Gemini Links 09/09/2025: "Dedigitizing" and Forgejo on FreeBSD
Links for the day
Google News (Not Just Google Search) Lets Itself by Gamed by One Slopfarm - to the Point Almost Half of "Linux" News is Bot-Produced Plagiarism (LLM Slop With Slop Images)
That says a lot about what Google thinks of quality, even in Google News
Bill Gates-Funded Media Inadvertently Refutes the Microsoft Lie That in 2025 Microsoft Had Just Two Waves of Layoffs
There were about 12 rounds of layoffs so far in 2025
From theregister.co.uk to theregister.com (US) to The Register MS (Run by Microsoft Operatives) and theregister.ai
The best way to break this racket (or cycle of hype and harm) is to break the chains of funding
Open Source Initiative (OSI) Culture of Censorship Necessitates More Speech
The OSI bans dissent or people who merely point out that the OSI is abusive
How to Reach Us Discreetly (Other Than Encrypted E-mail)
We're still managing to maintain a 100% source protection record. We soon turn 19.
LLMs Are Vastly Worse Than a Waste of Energy and the Externalities Are Huge
Worse than just higher power bills for everybody
LLMs Versus Search (Not Replacing Search But Engaging in DDoS Attacks Against Web Sites That Permit Searching)
The state of the Web isn't just bad; it's utterly terrible
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Monday, September 08, 2025
IRC logs for Monday, September 08, 2025
It's Only the Second Week of September and Already Two Waves of Layoffs at Microsoft, Slopfarms and Microsoft-Funded Sites Spin It as "AI Investments" Rather Than Commercial Failure
A very large third one expected next week
The UEFI 9/11 - Part IX - Shunning Old Computers (in 2023 the Certificate Was Updated/Overridden, Underlying Aim May Be Herding/Forcing People to Get TPM and Other 'Novel' Restrictions)
the "upgrade treadmill"
Rumour: Second Wave of Microsoft Mass Layoffs in September to Commence Third Week of September
That basically answers questions like, "Any specific date or time of the month?"
If Your Machine Still Has "Secure Boot" Enabled, Then Microsoft Has a de Facto Kill Switch (Even If Your Machine Doesn't Have Windows and Never Had Windows)
It is not incorrect to call UEFI 'secure boot' a "kill switch"
Gemini Links 08/09/2025: Reality, ROOPHLOCH 2025, and Writing Another Gemini Client
Links for the day
Updating Firmware is Not the Solution But Only Additional Risk, Disable "Secure Boot" Today
firmware blobs are buggy, secret, impossible to audit, and barely tested
Microsoft Tim's DevClass (Part of The Register MS/Situation Publishing) is Full of Slop
Looking at many sites that are full of slop images is becoming an eye sore and hallmark of text too likely generated by LLMs or 'assisted' (tainted) by them
Microsoft Trying to Fake Demand for Slop. At What Cost?
That's a giant demotion and broken promises
Reddit is Corporate Propaganda
To make matters worse, Reddit ousted many original moderators
Jeff Geerling Shocked to Discover Many Metrics in YouTube Are Fake (His Audience Turns Out to be Much Smaller)
Maybe self-host all videos, don't rely on Google's "FOMO" cheating (addiction based on false assumptions)
Sunlight is the Best Disinfectant and Kryptonite/Garlic to Vampires
Transparency (sometimes described by words like "Sunlight" or "Truth") is paramount
The Register MS Uses Slop in Articles About Slop
we are fairly certain it's slop or CG based on other people's work
Visiting a Web Page or a Public URL Should be Safe, Predictable, and Benign
It's probably too late to "fix" the Web
The Register MS (Situation Publishing) is Paid to Spread Mindless Hype for the "Hey Hi" Ponzi Scheme and That's a Serious Problem
"Sponsored by Zoom."
Links 08/09/2025: Burger King Cracked, Cox v. Sony Analysed
Links for the day
Gemini Links 08/09/2025: Socialist Computer Museum and GAFAM/ByteDance/TikTok-Dominated Net
Links for the day
Links 08/09/2025: Tim Crook Disappoints Apple Faithfuls and Zuckerberg Lies (Financial Fraud) for Cheeto King
Links for the day
EPO Workers Point Out that the EPO is Destroying the Planet Under the Guise of "Hey Hi" (It Also Grants Many Invalid Patents Illegally
On 12 March and 16 June 2025, staff representation met with the administration in the Local Occupational Health, Safety and Ergonomics Committee (LOHSEC) in Munich
Turn Off Microsoft's Restricted Boot ("Secure Boot")
We're still running a series on this issue
Social Control Media Sites Have Become Bot Farms (Not Limited to LLMs and Automation)
linkedin.com was nothing but trouble and losses for Microsoft
Deep in Debt With the Magnitude of Losses Quickly Growing, Microsoft "Open" "Hey Hi" Now Uses Broadcom for Vapourware, Pretending It'll Do OK Next Year
At some stage it'll collapse
You Can Tell Microsoft is in Trouble When Its Own Fans and Staff Blast it
"Microsoft sinks billions into chasing artificial intelligence fads to hype up its share price."
Multiple Undersea Cable Cuts and We're Still OK
Microsoft customers experience problems
Lawyers Who Think They Are Online Assassins Don't Deserve a Licence to Operate
they've become a laughing stock in their "sector"
Microsoft Windows Fell to 3.9% "Market Share" in Bahamas
Based on statCounter
How the European Union (EU) Fell Out of Love With Free/Libre Software
Lots of bribery
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Sunday, September 07, 2025
IRC logs for Sunday, September 07, 2025