Bonum Certa Men Certa

The EPO is Now Corrupting Academia, Wasting Stakeholders' Money Lying to Stakeholders About the Unitary Patent (UPC)

UPC boat



Summary: The Unified Patent Court/Unitary Patent (UPC) is a dying project and the EPO, seeing that it is going nowhere fast, has resorted to new tactics and these tactics cost a lot of money (at the expense of those who are being lied to)

NOT a day goes by without some EPO scandal (large or small). It's like watching the 'action' on the deck of the Titanic while worrying for the fate of helpless passengers aboard.



“Those so-called ‘studies’ published by the EPO are mendacious speak totally worthless...”
      --Anonymous
Yesterday, as noted by Benjamin Henrion (FFII), the EPO wrote: "New report finds that the #UnitaryPatent could significantly enhance technology transfer in the EU. Other findings here..."

I've asked them: "New report or new lies?"

Henrion responded by saying "enhance "patent litigation" in the EU."

Because it has nothing to do with "technology transfer" -- whatever exactly that means (it usually gets used as a euphemism for "licensing", amicable of coerced for).

“they actually do the opposite by suppressing permanent employment for new recruits from 1st January 2018 at the EPO. The impact on patent quality will be huge. But still, Battistelli prefers burning money by producing pro-UPC lies!”
      --Anonymous
Funnily enough, the EPO has once again linked to localhost:8080 in its official news feed (RSS) -- an issue which they only fixed later in the day and several days too late. Are any competent workers left at the EPO? They appear to have misconfigured their software. Did some key IT staff leave? Either way, the 'news' at hand (warning: epo.org link) says the report was "carried out by a team of economists from the EPO, the University of Colorado Boulder and the London School of Economics..."

They did that for a fee, or with direct support from the EPO. The chief economist of the EPO seems like an old French mate of Battistelli and we have repeatedly caught him lying about the UPC.

What we see here is the EPO basically wasting a lot of money. It's paying to produce pro-UPC lies and frame these as scholarly. Stakeholders' money well spent? Of course not! And worse -- it corrupts academia just like the EPO corrupts European media.

"Those so-called ‘studies’ published by the EPO are mendacious speak totally worthless," one insider wrote. The "EPO should invest in patent quality," s/he continued, "but they actually do the opposite by suppressing permanent employment for new recruits from 1st January 2018 at the EPO. The impact on patent quality will be huge. But still, Battistelli prefers burning money by producing pro-UPC lies!"

"What we see here is the EPO basically wasting a lot of money."Shame on WIPR for being a mouthpiece for the EPO on this. As far as we can tell, it's the only publication (so far) that amplified the above. Knowing a little about WIPR inside affairs, I am not at all surprised by this. The publisher actively tried to suppress if not spike some articles that revealed the ugly truths about the EPO.

See the comments on the corresponding tweet. EPO insiders have beaten me to it, seeing that WIPR is even quoting Benoît Battistelli directly from the press release (it can be found here). It's almost as though journalism is dead and investigation/fact-checking is actively discouraged. Money (income) is in lying for the EPO now that Battistelli feeds some 'parrots' off his palm. He does not use his own money but EPO budget. He scatters it to the wind while lowering everyone's salary but his own (and his cronies'). If Eponia was really a country, Battistelli would be accused of treason.

"If Eponia was really a country, Battistelli would be accused of treason."Yesterday the EPO also wrote: "Negotiation is the preferred way to solve potential infringement issues; litigation is regarded as a last resort."

Not if the UPC ever got its way and brought patent trolls to Europe. It would be totally chaotic and chaos of the kind that prosecutors earn a lot of money from (at technologists' expense).

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