Bonum Certa Men Certa

When You Know the EPO Distracts the Media (and Thus the Public) From Something

Video download link



Summary: There have been a lot more EPO press releases for puff pieces lately and that typically happens when they attempt to distract from something like the controversial Haar decision or lots of EPO staff going on strike

THE EPO's management is doing it again. It's bombarding its "news" page with pure nonsense or shallow fluff, basically saying nothing new or nothing of actual significance. We saw that in the days of Benoît Battistelli and António Campinos is just continuation of the same.



"The judges at the EPO never regained their independence and nobody in the media talks about it anymore."As noted in the video above and also mentioned this morning in a video, this is the kind of thing we saw when the EPO was desperate for media not to cover its Haar scandal, which remains relevant to this day. The judges at the EPO never regained their independence and nobody in the media talks about it anymore. To make matters worse, yesterday afternoon IP Kat distorted what had actually happened, claiming very falsely that the judges determined Haar is part of Munich (no such thing ever happened). As of hours ago, AstraZenecaKat acknowledged her mistake and said: "Thanks Proof of the pudding - duly corrected!"

So the article was corrected. Over a day late. No wonder people should prefer reading comments, seeing that articles in such blogs are typically published for personal gain by legal departments and law firms.

The video mentions how whenever the EPO bombards its "news" page and then mass-mails publishers (like WIPR this week) for puff pieces it's trying to distract from actual events like the Haar question being debated or staff going on strike. Today's latter puff piece is hours-old (warning: epo.org link) and almost "content-free". It's a bunch of Campinos quotes with "CII" mentioned (software patents) along with the obligatory buzzwords salad. Notice the lack of actual news here:

EPO President António Campinos and the Director General of the Mexican Institute of Industrial Property (IMPI), Juan Lozano, met virtually today to take stock of joint efforts to improve patent services and support innovators since the signing of an advanced co-operation agreement between the two offices last year.

"We are very pleased to see the positive results of our strategic co-operation with Mexico, which is a key partner for Europe in terms of trade, investment and technology transfer," said EPO President António Campinos. "Aligning our approaches and practices can bring tangible benefits to both our offices and patent applicants alike. Not only does it benefit local inventors by making the process more efficient and user-friendly; it also provides improved conditions for applicants filing patents internationally via the EPO and the Patent Cooperation Treaty, thus further strengthening the global patent system."

IMPI Director General Juan Lozano said: "Effective public policies that put the citizen first make it possible to promote investment and technology transfer and promote the generation of wealth, income distribution and well-being of the general population. And not only that: Applying common sense and giving space to creative thinking has also allowed us to free up time and resources that can now be dedicated to meeting the national requests of Mexican inventors. There is no doubt that the most important lever for development can be found in those policies that prioritize innovation."


So two men "met virtually" (i.e. had a webchat) to speak about actual news (agreement) from last year. Then they sat down and wrote a paragraph each (or had the PR people do this for them).

How does that even qualify as "news"?

EPO insiders can guess or speculate what EPO management is so eager to distract from this time around.

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