Bonum Certa Men Certa

EPO Corruption Under António Campinos: Epilogue

Topic IP EPO
Extract from the EPO Official Journal for March 2019



Summary: Corruption prevails at the European Patent Office, Europe's second-largest institution, and named here are those liable or capable of clarification/rectification

IN the latest EPO mini-series we have looked at how not long after he departed from his job as EPO Vice-President in December 2018, Željko Topić "MBA", the self-styled "doyen of Intellectual Property in the region", suddenly and mysteriously resurfaced on the EPO's list of professional representatives in March 2019.



How exactly Topić achieved a place on this list is something of a riddle because there is no record that he ever passed the EQE which is a mandatory prerequisite for entry on the list.

So far nobody has been able to come up with a credible explanation as to how this could have happened.

The really interesting question here is whether it was all just a simple clerical error or whether "Team Campinos" actively colluded with Topić to facilitate his inclusion on the list despite the fact that he lacks the requisite formal qualifications.

"How exactly Topić achieved a place on this list is something of a riddle because there is no record that he ever passed the EQE which is a mandatory prerequisite for entry on the list."It is worth pointing out here that it is not within the gift of the EPO President to make such an exemption for any individual.

Under the terms of Article 134 (7) EPC, the President may grant exemption from "the requirement of paragraphs 2(a) or 3(a) in special circumstances" and from "the requirement of paragraph 3(c), second sentence, if the applicant furnishes proof that he has acquired the requisite qualification in another way".

In plain English, the first of these "exemptions" relates to the requirement that the candidate for inclusion on the list should be a national of an EPO contracting state. So for example if a US citizen passes the EQE, he can be included on the list of professional representatives if the President grants an exemption.

"So the buck stops with Mr Ernst to clarify the matter."The second of the "exemptions" relates to the application of the "grandfather clause" in the case of persons in a new contracting state who are normally required to have acted as a professional representative in that state for at least five years if entitlement to represent before the national office is not conditional upon special professional qualifications.

The bottom line here is that none of the "exemptions" listed under Article 134 (7) EPC have any relevance to the case of Željko Topić because the EPO President has no discernible authority to grant any individual an exemption in respect of the EQE requirement of Article 134 (2) (c).

The only thing that we can be reasonably sure about here is that Topić's application for entry on the list must have passed through the hands of EPO Directorate 5.2.3 which falls under the responsibility of Christoph Ernst as the Vice President of International and Legal Affairs.

So the buck stops with Mr Ernst to clarify the matter.

Of course it should not be forgotten that there are other people out there who could be expected to take an interest in a suspected irregularity in the list of professional representatives.

"This means that as of March 2019, Željko Topić has officially been a member of epi."Article 134a EPC (warning: epo.org link) establishes an "Institute of Professional Representatives before the European Patent Office" which generally operates under the moniker of epi.

According to pargraph (2) of Article 134a EPC, any person entered on the list of professional representatives "shall be a member of the Institute".

This means that as of March 2019, Željko Topić has officially been a member of epi.

One would have thought that the epi might have had some concerns about this mysterious addition to its membership and that it would be interested in clarifying Mr Topić's entitlement to be entered onto the list of professional representatives.

However, when we recall the role played by Tony Tangena of the epi in covering the controversy surrounding Topić's appointment as EPO Vice-President and his close collaboration with Raimund Lutz in that affair, we advise our readers not to hold their breath on that one…

In the meantime some cynical EPO insiders have been heard to remark that if Battistelli was still in charge at the EPO he would quickly respond by organising an official whitewash using the EPO's investigative unit.

"...according to inside sources the investigative unit has become a pale shadow of its former self."But Battistelli is long gone at the helm of the EPO and according to inside sources the investigative unit has become a pale shadow of its former self.

This time the ball is in the court of António the Unsteady. So let's wait and see how he deals with it – just as soon as he has had time to sober up, that is…

Recent Techrights' Posts

Links 28/08/2025: Chatbots Distorting/Fabricating History and Also Driving Suicide
Links for the day
Open Source Initiative (OSI) Resists Software Freedom, Even by Attacking Its Own
The OSI is compromised
 
Richard Stallman (RMS) Talk in Ethereum Cypherpunk Congress Will be Remote
This past week RMS received lots of accolades online
The Register MS (Run by Microsoft Operatives): Free Software is Putin, Hence Evil and Dangerous
The current editor in chief is an American Microsofter, the previous one went to work for Google (US)
Gemini Links 28/08/2025: Back in Japan and Why "Hacker News" Sucks
Links for the day
A Much-Needed Wake-up Call to Users of Wordpress.com, Blogspot, Substack and All Those Other Outsourced (and Centralised) Platforms
There are several lessons in there
The UEFI 9/11 - Part II - Campaign of Censorship and Defamation Against Critics
In dictatorships, humour serves an important role. It's tragic.
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Wednesday, August 27, 2025
IRC logs for Wednesday, August 27, 2025
Slopwatch: linuxsecurity.com, Slopfarms in Google News, and More
Some readers of ours end up sending us links that are from slopfarms, not realising those are slopfarms
Gemini Links 27/08/2025: Katrina Memories and Google Versus Software Freedom
Links for the day
Links 27/08/2025: Police Against Media Freedom in the UK, Energy-Hungry Countries Targeted by China
Links for the day
Microsoft Windows Fell to All-Time Lows in Egypt This Summer, Vista 11 Adoption Decreases While GNU/Linux Increases
Vista 11 is going down rather than up
Links 27/08/2025: Microsoft Demoralises Staff With Slop Demands, Leaving Mastodon Explained
Links for the day
12 Hours Ago The Register MS Published a Fake (Paid-for) Article, But This One for a Change Did Not Promote a Ponzi Scheme
There are also Free software alternatives, but they don't pay The Register MS for "synthetic" so-called 'journalism'
More People Need to Call Out and Put a Stop to Serial Sloppers
Unless slopfarms are stopped, people will read and share Microsoft propaganda made by chatbots
Gemini Links 27/08/2025: Headphones and Tartarus
Links for the day
Morale at Microsoft is Terrible (Proprietary Plagiarism Machines Have No Future, LLM Slop is a Bubble)
The slop sceptics/critics are going to have lots of "told you so" moments
GNOME "governance issues, staff reduction, etc." amidst Albanian whistleblowing and women trafficking
Notice the connection to Software Freedom Conservancy (SFC) and GNOME
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Tuesday, August 26, 2025
IRC logs for Tuesday, August 26, 2025
Richard Stallman (RMS) Was Right About "Sideloading" in 1996
We now have computers that treat booting GNU/Linux like an act of "Sideloading"
Panama: Windows Down From 97% "Market Share" to Less Than 30%
In 2009, Windows was measured at 97.24% (compared to 62.32% right now or less than 30% if one also counts Android)
The UEFI 9/11 - Part I - Introduction to Impending Catastrophe (Microsoft Preventing People From Booting Non-Windows Systems)
eight-part series
Why Techrights is Slow Today (Bot Floods)
We don't know if those bots are connected to LLMs (we have not checked), but that is a possibility
Slopwatch: DDoS Slop, LinuxBSDos.com Spam, and Slopfarms in Google News, Including webpronews.com
Among the news we also found fakes, albeit not so much today
Links 26/08/2025: "Ballooning Debt" in France and "Transnational Repression in the UK"
Links for the day
Gemini Links 26/08/2025: Listening to Alcest and Google Doing Evil (Users Installing Software is "Sideloading" and Prohibited)
Links for the day
Links 26/08/2025: DNS Tampering and TikTok Layoffs
Links for the day
Microsoft's Windows "Market Share" Overestimated
Microsoft's income sources are shrinking
We Shall See...
My wife and I are hardly the first victims of Brett Wilson LLP
This New Determination on a Case Echoes the Modus Operandi of Microsoft's Serial Strangler vs Techrights (Its Online Decision/Judgment Says Truth and Public Interest Defend the Publisher)
Noel Anthony Clarke hopefully has enough money left to pay his victims, which include the publishers
Going Offline
There was life before the Net
The Register MS Has Apparently Shut Down Its Office
It is basically a fake address on the face of it
There Are Also Expectations of IBM Layoffs Very Soon With "Narrative Control."
Some of them mention Red Hat and how IBM failed to achieve anything substantial with that acquisition
After at Least Two Rounds of Mass Layoffs in August Microsoft Said to Have "September Layoff Confirmed - Performance Based"
Those "M5 level meetings" sound plausible
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Monday, August 25, 2025
IRC logs for Monday, August 25, 2025