Summary: Speculation about the new management team that will surround António Campinos and will quite possibly be announced in less than 10 days

Yesterday we wrote about António Campinos giving or leaving his job to Archambeau, who had worked for the EPO.

"As we reported," wrote one among a couple of related sites that covered it yesterday, "Archambeau has been the acting executive director of the office since July 1, and began his tenure as permanent executive director yesterday. He was previously the EUIPO’s deputy executive director under António Campinos, who joined the European Patent Office (EPO) as president back in July. In all, he’s been worked at the EUIPO’s Alicante office since 2010. Given the significance of the leadership position, we sought out reaction from those across the community. We reached out to key associations, national IP offices in the European Union and some of the leading trademark filing law firms in the EU for their response to the move. We present the responses we received in full below (we'll add any more we receive to the end of this article)..."

"Why does the media of trademark/copyright/patent maximalists hail Campinos as some sort of heroic manager?"In his later days at EUIPO Campinos made a lot of people redundant, even needlessly so. Why does the media of trademark/copyright/patent maximalists hail Campinos as some sort of heroic manager? Based on what substantial accomplishment?

Referring to our article from last night, one reader wrote to say this:

Today's post about Mr Archambeau's EUIPO appointment has prompted this response to let you know that some interesting information has been discovered recently about the EPO's Club Med and its internal intrigues and favourite games of "musical chairs" and "revolving doors".

To jog your reader's memories, "Club Med" refers to the Franco-Iberian clique which is suspected to have masterminded a secret behind-the-scenes "takeover" of key European IP institutions.

The kingpins of this Club are reported to be a "triumvirate" comprising or consisting of the Corsican "padrone" Battistelli, his faithful Galician squire Alberto "Sancho Panza" Casado and the Franco-Lusitanian chameleon Antonio Campinos, former crown prince of EUIPOtania who was recently enthroned as the new king of EPOnia. "Club Med" is also rumoured to have close links with the "Le Grande Cirque du Balkan" directed by the infamous Bosnian-Croatian ringmaster Željko Topić.

Research into these matters is still ongoing so it is probably best not to say too much at this point. But as they say "Watch this space ..." because some interesting revelations are likely to follow over the next couple of weeks.

In the meantime, don't be surprised if some key EUIPO staff follow Ms Nellie Simon from Alicante to Munich. For those who may have missed it Ms. Simon "coincidentally" appeared alongside Campinos at the 2018 IP Executive Week held in July in Munich and is tipped by EPO insiders to become Topić's successor as the new Vice-President in charge of "human resources".

The appointment of the new Vice Presidents (Christoph Ernst, Nellie Simon and Philip Cadre) which has already been agreed "behind-the-scenes" is expected to be announced following the upcoming Administrative Council meeting on 10 and 11 of this month.

Ms. Simon was mentioned by EUIPO and EPO (in passing) back in July and the source/context of the photo (there's very little public information about her) makes one wonder to what degress she is qualified, e.g. experienced, for the said job. EPO workers have already seen the impact of the grossly improper appointment of Ms. Bergot -- a subject we wrote a great deal about three years ago. ⬆