Bonum Certa Men Certa

Nepotism at the EPO Has Reached Truly Toxic Levels

One last 'gift' from Battistelli?

French EPO



Summary: President Benoît Battistelli's coup d'état at the EPO has left the institution looking like a sultanate or monarchy rife with corruption and immune from prosecution

THERE'S no level too low for the EPO to sink to. After many scandals and virtually no intervention from the outside Battistelli must be feeling invincible. He's willing to even destroy the entire office, after about half a century of operation, just to promote UPC in Paris. Battistelli seems to be working to ensure that the next EPO President is also French and no doubt much of the management will remain French regardless. It's quite a comprehensive coup. It's imperialism with kangaroo courts and mafia tactics, not with swords and armour.



"Battistelli seems to be working to ensure that the next EPO President is also French and no doubt much of the management will remain French regardless."The EPO's validation agreement with Tunisia, a former French colony, is a Battistelli project. We mentioned it last month because after Tunisia we expect the same from Angola and the EPO has just published this "news" titled "Brevets européens en Tunisie : L’accord de validation entre l’OEB et la Tunisie entrera en vigueur le 1er décembre" with the obligatory photo op. "Sorry," it says, "this page is currently not available in English." So one needs to understand French to know what Battistelli is up to at the EPO.

"Is the EPO just a French institution now?""EPO," one reader joked to us about it, "a world IP player among his pairs."

Well, even the tweet is not in English. Is the EPO just a French institution now? Well, not far from it. We may soon find out if 3 out of 4 consecutive EPO Presidents are French.

Today we also received the following message:



EUROPEAN INVENTOR AWARD 2018

According to some sources:

THE EUROPEAN INVENTOR AWARD 2018 LOCATION IS TO BE ANNOUNCED ANY MOMENT NOW

Guess which city in France (yes FR again after Paris in 2015) is now awaiting to be confirmed as the likely host of the 2018 edition of the EIA (big waste of applicants' money) :

SAINT-GERMAIN-EN-LAYE

Le hasard fait vraiment bien les choses: this is the city of which Battistelli was during years an elected City Council member (Maire Adjoint à la Culture).



Why are we not surprised?

Wait until we continue our series about Portugal and Angola. The EPO wrote today that "Portugal joins the Federated European Patent Register" and mentioned another former Portugese colony in this tweet. It said: "Register for the "Patent information from BRICS countries: Brazil" webinar. It's free of charge & starts in 2 hrs..." (right about now)

"Anyone who looks at all this evidence will quickly realise that the EPO has been reduced to a laughing stock. It's corrupt."They have also just called for nominations. What for? Battistelli's last lobbying event in his home town.

Anyone who looks at all this evidence will quickly realise that the EPO has been reduced to a laughing stock. It's corrupt. The management is mostly French, many are former colleagues of Battistelli, some are even relatives. Battistelli holds professional EPO meetings in his home town in France while building himself quite an expensive 'wine cellar' at the top floors of the EPO (using secret budget, causing massive losses for Dutch contractors). Professional investigators are denied access to the EPO and bailiffs turned away by Battistelli's goons.

Recent Techrights' Posts

Slopwatch: Brian Fagioli, Google News, and Other LLM Slopfarms
Why does Google News keep promoting these fake articles?
Links 29/10/2025: Amazon Kept "Data Center Water Use Secret", "Abuse of Power" Against Media
Links for the day
Gemini Links 29/10/2025: "My Hardware Specs" and "Goodbye Debian…"
Links for the day
EPO Cocainegate: Feedback and Clarifications
Part III will come out soon
Links 29/10/2025: "US Military Is Destroying the Planet Beyond Imagination" and Boat Strikes Deemed Unlawful
Links for the day
Quality Comes First (Techrights Search)
It's generally working already, but we wish to polish it some more
Techrights Party Countdown
Late next week we'll be holding a party near our home
European Parliament and Council Directive on Privacy is Vanishing
"edited / censored some time more recently"
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Tuesday, October 28, 2025
IRC logs for Tuesday, October 28, 2025
Slopwatch: The March of Slopfarms, From UbuntuPIT to Linux Journal and to Various Fake Sites Still Promoted by Google News
It's so worrying to see what the Web has become
Links 29/10/2025: CISA, Ukraine, and Amazon Problems
Links for the day
[Teaser] The EPO's Spokesperson, a Cocaine User, Fancies Young Women
How's that for "optics" in the EU and Europe's second-largest institution?
How Will António Campinos Respond to the EPO's 'Cocainegate'?
That's the same thing we saw and still see when the press deals with enablers and partners of Jeffrey Epstein
Join Us Now and Share the News - Part IV: There Cannot be Free Software Without Free Press and Free Information
One day, one can hope, more people will recognise that for Software Freedom we need free press and free thinkers
Join Us Now and Share the News - Part III: Principled Stance Is Never Cheap
Protecting the truth and insisting that the general public is made aware of things that really happened isn't cheap
Join Us Now and Share the News - Part II: Because Scarcity of Accurate Information Breeds Collective Ignorance
we too will strive to share information that's aggressively suppressed
Gemini Links 28/10/2025: More New Arrivals at Geminispace, xkcd on "Document Forgery"
Links for the day
Join Us Now and Share the News - Part I: Defence of the Truth
This year we make a very strong, firm statement for truth, even if that means explaining our work to the top media judge in the country
Links 28/10/2025: Meta and Fentanylware (CheeTok) Age-Restricted Down Under, "Britain Needs China’s Money"
Links for the day
Links 28/10/2025: Mass Layoffs at Amazon and Charter to Cut 1,200 Jobs
Links for the day
The Cocaine Patent Office - Part II: The Person Who Planted Paid-for Fake News for the European Patent Office (EPO) is a Cocaine User, Friend of António Campinos, Now on Record as Having Been Arrested
Background: High-level manager at the European Patent Office caught in public with cocaine, arrested
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Monday, October 27, 2025
IRC logs for Monday, October 27, 2025
Google News Drowning in Slop (and Slopfarms That Hijack About Half the Results)
Google News seems to be drowning in this stuff
Gemini Links 28/10/2025: "How to Maximize Your Positive Impact" and ASCII Art and Artist Attribution
Links for the day
PETA and Activism
Being staff or volunteer in PETA isn't easy
Big Blue, Huge Debt
debt will soar again
Links 27/10/2025: Mass Surveillance Sold as "AI", People Reluctant to Lose Physical Media
Links for the day
Parties and Milestones Again
we've begun putting up about 40 balloons
Techrights' 19th Anniversary: Bronze
Time to go back to preparing for this anniversary
Our Latest European Patent Office (EPO) Series Will Last Several Weeks, Will Ask the EPO Management and the European Union (EU) Very Difficult Questions
If nobody loses a job (or jobs) over this, then the EU basically became no better than Colombia or Nicaragua
Slopwatch: LinuxSecurity, UbuntuPIT, Brian Fagioli, and Google News
We focus on stories that are fake or LLM slop that disguises itself as "news" about Linux
Links 27/10/2025: Wikipedia Vandalism, Bruce Perens Opens up on Childhood
Links for the day
This Site Could Not be Done by LLMs Even If It Wanted to (Because It's Not a Parrot of What Other Sites Say)
LLMs have no knowledge or deep understanding
Microsoft is Disloyal Towards Its Most Loyal Employees
Against its most faithful enablers
19 Years, No Censorship
No factual information is ever going to be removed, more so if it is in the public interest
We Are Not a Conventional Site, That's Why They Hate (or Love) Us
Throughout the week this week we'll be focusing on the EPO
Following the Line of Cocaine All the Way to the Top
Even a million denials and spin-doctoring won't distract from the core issue
The Cocaine Patent Office - Part I: António Campinos Brought Corruption and Nepotism to the EPO, Then Came the Cocaine
High-level manager at the European Patent Office (EPO) caught in public with cocaine, the Office has some answering to do
Purchasing/Possessing Computers Isn't the Same as Controlling Computers
Let's strive to put computers back under the control of their users, no matter who purchased these (usually the users)
Gemini Links 27/10/2025: Alhena 5.4.3 and Fixing Bash
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Sunday, October 26, 2025
IRC logs for Sunday, October 26, 2025
Thankfully We've Made Copies of More Interesting Data From statCounter
If statCounter (the Web site or the 'webapp') vanished overnight, we'd still have something left of it
More Silent Layoffs at IBM/Red Hat
when the media counts such layoffs or presents tallies the numbers are very incomplete