Bonum Certa Men Certa

What the EPO Has 'Normalised' in Europe...

Video download link



Summary: Under the cover of 'new normal', Europe's second-largest institution crushes the law and crushes its own staff

THE patents granted by the EPO are very troublesome. This past week we spotted a number of European software patents in the headlines. In some cases they're used to hunt down companies for "protection money"; sometimes those patents get tossed out. No doubt a lot of today's European Patents are of dubious quality and questionable validity. Two political figures, Benoît Battistelli and António Campinos, are largely responsible for this. They replaced science and substance with litigation and buzzwords/pseudoscience.



"The real innovation is exploiting a biological hazard to justify canning the principles of due process and the right to appear before judges/juries."They do plenty of greenwashing (e.g. "greentech" as the EPO likes to say), "white coat" PR (de facto costumes other than suits; Bill Gates loves doing that, strutting around like he's some famous scientist even though he never even graduated from college, where he didn't even study science), and stunts associated with mere proximity, e.g. status by association or inherited status in EIA, where career-climbing politicians and lying opportunistic autocrats pose for photo ops, even posthumously taking credit for the work of dead scientists because they attended their festival for some award (a PR stunt for the "innovation" posturing).

Some of those points are brought up in the above video, which mostly discusses the latest article from Dr. Thorsten Bausch (Hoffmann Eitle). He, unlike many who write about the EPO, is an actual scientist and he cares about what is true, he's examining the underlying facts, unlike his government.

So-called 'Production'Sadly, many people who become the public faces of science aren't scientists themselves but a bunch of businessmen and plutocrats. Take for example Al Gore. Contrary to what some people say, he never claimed that he invented the Internet (providing money or laying infrastructural foundations isn't the same thing). Contrary to what Campinos wants people to think, he didn't bring any innovation to the EPO. He took that away. He's outsourcing everything to Microsoft, in effect leaving no actual innovation 'in-house'. He sold the institution to a military contractor from America. As for misleading claims he makes about "ViCo", historically the connection speeds were the main barrier to teleconferencing, bringing rise to the need for compression, packet sequencing/re-ordering, image/video interpolation, and real-time streaming methods that are robust to disruption and varying speeds, among other unforeseen conditions. Nowadays those are mostly tackled/mitigated/solved by brute force and fibre-optics etc. No real innovation in "ViCo" itself, but who cares about facts...

The real innovation is exploiting a biological hazard to justify canning the principles of due process and the right to appear before judges/juries. Is this innovation or a hack? It certainly does not seem lawful. This is what we get in Europe because professional liars seized positions of power -- positions they now grossly misuse to corrupt the media, distort the scientific fields and so on (e.g. scholars being given bribes; this isn't science but business exploitation of the perception of science, like claims of evidence- or fact(s)-based "research" that's commissioned/sponsored just to justify a business objective centered around patent litigation).

Workload & stressAs usual, the article from Dr. Bausch is decent (he's very concerned about what's happening in his country) and comments too are mostly insightful. As one person put it: “Staff representatives are “consulted” after the decisions have been taken and are invited to shut up if they dare not give their blessing to all the measures concocted by the president and its minions.”

Prior to that it says: “I find it therefore more important to send amicus curiae briefs in G 1/21 than to comment on the “New Normal”. The whole “consultation” on the “New Normal” is simply farcical...”

As someone else noted, “will those savings instead be distributed to senior management and the member states (at the same time as imagined, future shortfalls are used as an excuse to further drive down staff benefits and to pursue yet more “efficiency” savings)?”

Rhetorical question. Ask EPO staff. There's heated discussion in some recent comments in IP Kat as well. Dr. Bausch takes note of that.

Recent Techrights' Posts

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
Stefano Maffulli and His Microsoft-Funded OSI Staff Are Killing the OSI and Killing "Open Source" (All for Money!)
This is far from over
Techrights Headlines as Semaphore
"If you are hearing this, thank you"
 
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
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
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?
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
Links 31/03/2025: China Tensions, Bombs Falling in Myanmar After Earthquake
Links for the day
Gemini Links 31/03/2025: Falling Out of Love With Tech, Sunsetting openSNP
Links for the day
R.T.O. at IBM in Texas and Atlanta (State of Georgia) Expected as "Soft Layoffs" Catalyst This Coming Year
It also sounds like more IBM layoffs are in the making
Law Firms Can Also Lose Their Licence for Clearly Misusing It
The bottom line is, never made the false assumption that because you can pile up SLAPPs in a docket you will not suffer from bad reputation or even get disbarred
Link between institutional abuse, Swiss jurists, Debianism and FSFE
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
LLM Slop Piggybacking News About GNU/Linux and Distorting It
new examples
Links 31/03/2025: Press and Democracy Under Further Attacks in the US, Attitudes Towards Slop Sour
Links for the day
Open Source Initiative (OSI) Privacy Fiasco in Detail: The OSI Does Not Respect Anybody's Privacy
The surveillance mafia that bans dissent or key people (even co-founders) with dissenting views
Gemini Links 31/03/2025: More X-Filesposting and Dreaming in Emacs
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Sunday, March 30, 2025
IRC logs for Sunday, March 30, 2025
Links 30/03/2025: Security Breaches, Crackdowns on Dissent/Rival Politicians
Links for the day
Gemini Links 30/03/2025: London Soundtrack Festival, Superbloom, gmiCAPTCHA
Links for the day
Phasing Out Vista 10 in Nations Where ~90% of Windows Users Still Rely on It
Recipe for another Microsoft disaster
The Cost of Pursuing the Much-Needed Reform/Shield Against Strategic Lawsuits Against Public Participation (SLAPPs)
“It is curious that physical courage should be so common in the world and moral courage so rare.”
The LLM Bubble is About to Implode, Gimmicks and Financial Shell Games Cannot Prevent That, Only Delay It
To inflate the bubble MElon is now doing the classic trick of buying from oneself for a fictional value
Links 30/03/2025: Contagious Ideas, Signal Leak, and Squashing Lousy Patents
Links for the day
Links 30/03/2025: "Quantum Randomness" and "F-1 Visa Revoked" in US
Links for the day
Gemini Links 30/03/2025: US as a Threat, Returning to the WWW
Links for the day
Links 30/03/2025: Judge Blocks Dismantling Of VOA, Turkey Arrested Many Journalists
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Saturday, March 29, 2025
IRC logs for Saturday, March 29, 2025