Bonum Certa Men Certa

It Feels Like EPO Management is Trying to Distract the Media and the Staff From Today's Big Protest

First Hague/Dutch protest in about a year and a half! (when Battistelli inaugurated an unfinished building)

Rick and Carl: Your authority lacks credibility. I don't care. I'm immune. You don't think the stakeholders are taking notice? Production is at record levels. Look. I could set up a patent office at home to generate millions of bogus patent grants. That would be just another WIPO.



Summary: It certainly feels like something we've seen before (and journalists told us about); the EPO strategically releases puff pieces about events that are about a week apart, possibly as means of distracting the media from what is about to happen (protest later today at The Hague)

THE European Patent Office's (EPO) President António Campinos has been an utter failure. It may not seem so to the 'outside world' because the media is not at all reporting his failures, his lies, and the growing unrest among EPO staff. It also doesn't report the constant violations of the law, which yield software patents under the guise of "hey hi" -- an issue now celebrated by Watchtroll in an article entitled: "What to Know About the 2019 European Patent Office Guidelines for Examination".



For one thing, they're illegal. They compel examiners to break the law. We wrote many articles about this and last Friday examiners saw themselves facing a new dilemma: follow illegal orders or lose one's job. "The European Patent Office (EPO) recently published its Guidelines for Examination 2019, which came into force on November 1," Watchtroll wrote yesterday. They're pleased to see the new loopholes for software patents or monopolies on maths and stats. Truly appalling! This is the kind of thing we've campaigned against for nearly 13 years (today we turn 13).

"They're pleased to see the new loopholes for software patents or monopolies on maths and stats."Anyway, there's a protest today. We don't know how many people will attend, but there's a good reason for all staff on Dutch territories to attend. Things at the EPO will get yet worse before anything gets better; the writings are on the wall (or phony 'studies') as staff is further marginalised based on lies (or "false assumptions" as the union politely puts it).

We've noticed something irksome today and yesterday. Sometimes the EPO issues no "news" for weeks; but when this thing happens -- like a protest coming -- it can issue 3 in one day! We saw something similar when was G 2/19 (Enlarged Board of Appeal) was decided, as we noted several times that week. The last thing the EPO wanted back then was media coverage about how the EPO had violated its own law for a number of years*.

So what's the 'decoy' or the media 'bait'? Well, it's a bunch of things that did not even happen at the same time. It's almost as though those 'puff pieces' ('fluff') were amassed in 'the queue' for a while and then suddenly unleashed yesterday -- the day some EPO staff may decide whether to march to the Portuguese embassy to demand action against Campinos.

"So what's the 'decoy' or the media 'bait'? Well, it's a bunch of things that did not even happen at the same times."We don't wish to amplify this 'fluff' but merely to explain or rebut what we're seeing. The first puff piece concerns Mexico (warning: epo.org link). There's nothing wrong with Mexico (many headlines this week because of mass murder), but it's not a strategic country to the EPO. But management of the EPO, knowing that staff is protesting today (and may soon go on strike as well), is desperate to make some puff pieces to distract from reality. This one says: "The EPO has signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) on Reinforced Partnership with the Mexican Institute of Industrial Property (IMPI), further strengthening the longstanding co-operation between Europe and Mexico in the area of patents. The MoU was signed on Monday in Mexico City by EPO President António Campinos and IMPI Director General Juan Lozano."

On Monday. That's several days before the EPO wrote about it. Why the wait?

On the same day (warning: epo.org link) the EPO wrote that "[t]he EPO has signed a validation agreement with the government of Georgia..."

Never mind if these countries have European Patents; some more photo ops from EPO shared nonetheless, bombarding the site with puff pieces ahead of today's EPO protest. Based on the timestamps in the URL, those pieces were likely prepared a day in advance. This third puff piece, also stamped with the same date (warning: epo.org link), is a familiar stunt from the Battistelli days. The EPO's management does photo ops with country that has no European Patents at all (and it's not just there that this is done). This is laughable, pathetic even. "A delegation from Cambodia led by Senior Minister of Industry and Handicraft Cham Prasidh visited the EPO on 31 October to meet with a team from the EPO headed by President António Campinos," it says. And it took them one week to write about it? How curious!

No wonder SUEPO announces actions just a day or two in advance, depriving the EPO's management the 'intelligence' it may leverage for 'damage control' purposes. We don't think it's unreasonable to assume or theorise or hypothesise that timing of these puff pieces was very much deliberate and had a purpose. We're quite certain that the EPO's PR staff is already bombarding so-called 'journalists' in so-called 'IP' 'news' sites, trying to convince them to write about this 'fluff' instead of the important action at The Hague (this coming afternoon)**. More on that soon. ____ * Also in the news yesterday, Iain Robertson (Haseltine Lake Kempner LLP) was, quite frankly as usual, neglecting to say that the Board of Appeal totally lacks independence and is being pressured by the Office (granting authority) to embrace patent maximalism and violate the law, or the EPC. Mondaq and other patent maximalists' platforms never even mention the EPO scandals anymore. They hope that the public won't pay attention to corruption at the EPO. Robertson wrote the following (like IP Kat last week):

Two recent decisions from the Boards of Appeal of the European Patent Office have highlighted the difficulties applicants and opponents can face when trying to reply on new experimental data to support their arguments.

[...]

In T 1422/12, the Board of Appeal decided that the technical problem could be formulated to include the further technical effect of increased stability, despite this not being disclosed in the application in relation to the invention, because the background section of the patent application underlying T 1422/12 related to improving the performance characteristics of pharmaceutical products, and thus the new technical problem did fall "within the framework of the invention as disclosed in the application in suit".

The Board of Appeal decided that T 1422/12 and T 440/91 did not apply in this case, because the application did not indicate any improvement to a therapy, let alone improved bioavailability of CNP-53 in comparison to CNP-22, and so this further effect, shown by the post-published evidence, did change the character of the invention. Therefore this further effect cannot be taken into consideration when considering inventive step. Consequently, the Board of Appeal found the application lacked an inventive step, and the appeal was dismissed.


** I once met for coffee someone who had been constantly subjected to this and explained to me how the EPO's PR people handle 'the media' when they issue these puff pieces. I also know the names of the people who do this and how they do this. It's corrosive and offensive to honest journalists. They're pressured to become 'parrots' of obvious -- even to them -- lies. That's the business model!

Recent Techrights' Posts

Confirmed in the Mainstream Media: A Lot of Microsoft "Workloads" Were Just LLM Slop (Helping to Fake Growth for Years, as Microsoft Had Paid "Open" "AI" to Become a "Client") and Demand is Rapidly Waning, Datacentres Canceled and/or Shut Down
Anything to facilitate further accounting fraud
Taiwan's Media Covers Closure of Microsoft's "AI" Lab, It's Time to Talk About the Gradual Death of Windows and Implosion of the "AI" Bubble
Earlier this week we showed that mostly Asian media had the 'nerve' to mention Microsoft silently shutting down its 'AI' lab
More Gains for GNU/Linux, Based on Web Surveys
the Steam site shows rapid growth for "Linux" this month
 
Microsoft's Trouble in Africa and Asia
A new all-time high for GNU/Linux
Brett Wilson LLP Reported to the Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA)
The saddest thing in all this is that law firms can maintain high standards shall they wish to
Links 03/04/2025: Tariff Pains and C.D.C. Cuts
Links for the day
StatCounter: Microsoft is Masking a Disaster, It's Way Behind DeepSeek Already and Interest in LLMs Has Waned
it turns out the money "raised" for "Open" "AI" may not even exist at all
Links 03/04/2025: SoftBank Money for Microsoft "Open" "AI" Probably Doesn't Even Exist, Wikimedia Foundation Blasts LLM Nuisance While Microsoft Admits Demand Has Shrunk
Links for the day
Gemini Links 03/04/2025: Patch Panel and Pictures
Links for the day
Islamic Republic of Iran: GNU/Linux at All-time High This Month, Windows Falls to 12%
Vista 10 is up this month despite being "end of life" (EoL) soon
Indonesia: All-Time Highs for GNU/Linux
What's noteworthy right now is the growth of GNU/Linux
statCounter Says GNU/Linux Usage is Up Again (Internationally)
some preliminary April data
Only on April 1st Can the Free Software Foundation Associate With Microsoft's Open Source Initiative (OSI)
We saw some pranks that day linking the FSF to Microsoft (e.g. "endorsing" Windows)
IBM Gets Rid of Kelly Chambliss as Mass Layoffs Reported in IBM Consulting, IBM Loses Key Contracts/Graft
IBM Consulting has been in disarray lately
Slopwatch: Anti-Linux Articles, Not Even Written by Humans
Why aren't Web sites more vocal about this problem?
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Wednesday, April 02, 2025
IRC logs for Wednesday, April 02, 2025
Links 03/04/2025: Apple Fined Over Secret Surveillance, "Elegant Writer For A More Civilized Age"
Links for the day
Gemini Links 02/04/2025: Books and Cold Tea
Links for the day
Links 02/04/2025: More Layoffs, Nokia Again Takes Advantage of Illegal and Unconstitutional Patent Court With Nokia Staff as 'Judges'
Links for the day
Links 02/04/2025: Seizures and Returns to Windows of 24 Years Ago
Links for the day
LLM Slop Helps Obscure and Distort News About Layoffs (IBM, GAFAM)
It's hard to find accurate information
Links 02/04/2025: Microsoft Developers Are Threatening to Go on Strike, World Backup Day Noted
Links for the day
Gemini Protocol Has Growing Appeal (the Web Got Too Bloated and Full of LLM Slop)
For any "data plan" with bandwidth limits or "tiers" it would be cheaper to use/browse Geminispace
The Web Can Survive LLM Slop, But Only If We Collectively Shun and Discourage Serial Sloppers
Doing nothing ought not be a possibility
Amid Secret Shut-downs and Mass Layoffs at Microsoft (4 Waves of Layoffs in 3 Months of 2025) Some Microsoft Staff Expected to Go On Strike
workers going on strike
Gemini Links 02/04/2025: No more on Mastodon and Gemini Mention Script in Go
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Tuesday, April 01, 2025
IRC logs for Tuesday, April 01, 2025
My Motion Disbarring or “Striking Off” Brett Wilson LLP for Enabling Violent Americans Who Try to Crush Microsoft Critics in the United Kingdom by Multiple SLAPPs
"Guns for hire" (for Microsoft people who received Microsoft salaries)
The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office Hijacked Again by Patent Litigation Industry, as President Cheeto Prioritises Aggressors
The "mafia" has taken over the "industry" and the Federal system (justice and constitutions trampled upon)
Ubuntu Slop and FUD Manufactured With LLMs and Funded (by Oneself) 'Studies'
Slop and FUD are ruining the Web
Gemini Links 01/04/2025: Games and More
Links for the day
Links 01/04/2025: Apple Fined $162M for Privacy Abuses, Disinformation Online a Growing Concern
Links for the day
Why We're Reporting Brett Wilson LLP for Apparently Misusing Their Licence to Protect American Microsofters Who Attack Women
For those who have not been keeping abreast
Newer Press Reports Confirm That Microsoft Shuts Down 'Hey Hi' (AI) Labs Despite All the Hype
The "hey hi" (AI) bubble is not sustainable
Links 01/04/2025: Mass Layoffs at Eidos and "Microsoft Pulls Back on Data Centers" (Demand Lacking); "Racist and Sexist" Slop From Microsoft
Links for the day
Stefano Maffulli and His Microsoft-Funded OSI Staff Are Killing the OSI and Killing "Open Source" (All for Money!)
This is far from over
Gemini Links 01/04/2025: XKCDpunk and worldclock.py
Links for the day
50 Years of Sabotage and a Gut Punch to Computer Science (and Science in General)
Will we get back to science-based computing rather than cult-like following?
Techrights Headlines as Semaphore
"If you are hearing this, thank you"
3 Months in 2025, 4 Waves of Mass Layoffs at Microsoft, Now Offices Shut Down Permanently
"A recent visit by the South China Morning Post confirmed that the office was dark, unoccupied, and had its logo removed."
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Monday, March 31, 2025
IRC logs for Monday, March 31, 2025