Bonum Certa Men Certa

The EPO’s Overseer/Overseen Collusion — Part XXXI: The Abstentionists

Series parts:

  1. The EPO's Overseer/Overseen Collusion — Part I: Let the Sunshine In!
  2. endorsed "unanimously"
  3. The EPO’s Overseer/Overseen Collusion — Part III: Three Missing Votes
  4. The EPO’s Overseer/Overseen Collusion — Part IV: The Founding States
  5. The EPO’s Overseer/Overseen Collusion — Part V: Germany Says “Ja”
  6. The EPO’s Overseer/Overseen Collusion — Part VI: A Distinct Lack of Dutch Courage
  7. The EPO’s Overseer/Overseen Collusion — Part VII: Luxembourgish Laxity
  8. The EPO’s Overseer/Overseen Collusion — Part VIII: Perfidious Albion and Pusillanimous Hibernia
  9. The EPO’s Overseer/Overseen Collusion — Part IX: More Holes Than Swiss Cheese
  10. The EPO’s Overseer/Overseen Collusion — Part X: Introducing the Controversial Christian Bock
  11. The EPO’s Overseer/Overseen Collusion — Part XI: “General Bock” - Battistelli's Swiss Apprentice?
  12. The EPO’s Overseer/Overseen Collusion — Part XII: The French Connection
  13. The EPO’s Overseer/Overseen Collusion — Part XIII: Battistelli's Iberian Facilitators - Spain
  14. The EPO’s Overseer/Overseen Collusion — Part XIV: Battistelli's Iberian Facilitators - Portugal
  15. The EPO’s Overseer/Overseen Collusion — Part XV: Et Tu Felix Austria…
  16. The EPO’s Overseer/Overseen Collusion — Part XVI: The Demise of the Austrian Double-Dipper
  17. The EPO’s Overseer/Overseen Collusion — Part XVII: The Non-Monolithic Nordic Bloc
  18. The EPO’s Overseer/Overseen Collusion — Part XVIII: Helsinki's Accord
  19. The EPO’s Overseer/Overseen Collusion — Part IXX: The Baltic States
  20. The EPO’s Overseer/Overseen Collusion — Part XX: The Visegrád Group
  21. The EPO’s Overseer/Overseen Collusion — Part XXI: The Balkan League – The Doyen and His “Protégée”
  22. The EPO’s Overseer/Overseen Collusion — Part XXII: The Balkan League - North Macedonia and Albania
  23. The EPO’s Overseer/Overseen Collusion — Part XXIII: The Balkan League - Bulgaria
  24. The EPO’s Overseer/Overseen Collusion — Part XXIV: The Balkan League - Romania
  25. The EPO’s Overseer/Overseen Collusion — Part XXV: The Balkan League - Fresh Blood or Same Old, Same Old?
  26. The EPO’s Overseer/Overseen Collusion — Part XXVI: A Trojan Horse on the Budget and Finance Committee
  27. The EPO’s Overseer/Overseen Collusion — Part XXVII: Cypriot Complicity
  28. The EPO’s Overseer/Overseen Collusion — Part XXVIII: Benoît and António's Loyal “Habibi”
  29. The EPO’s Overseer/Overseen Collusion — Part IXXX: The EPOnian Micro-States - Monaco and Malta
  30. The EPO’s Overseer/Overseen Collusion — Part XXX: San Marino and the Perfidious Betrayal of Liberty
  31. YOU ARE HERE ☞ The Abstentionists


EPO Abstentionists
Record of the Administrative Council vote on the adoption of Battistelli's "Strike Regulations".



Summary: Today -- or tonight -- we finally resume our long series which investigates National Patent Offices (NPOs) that voted on illegal proposals over the past decade or so

In the earlier parts of this series the focus was on the 28 delegations that voted in favour of Battistelli's "Strike Regulations".



In this part, we turn our attention to the small number of delegations that withheld their support from the manifestly unlawful proposal submitted to the Administrative Council by the EPO President for adoption in June 2013.

"It does happen on occasions that votes are cast against a proposal from the Office President but it's a relatively rare occurrence. The more usual course of action for delegates who have reservations about a proposal is to abstain."In the "Bizarro" world of EPOnia, the national delegates on the organisation's governing body are remarkably slow to vote against measures proposed by the EPO President, no matter how flawed and misguided these may be. This is apparently due to the obscure unwritten rules of "diplomatic protocol" which determine how business is conducted in international intergovernmental organisations like the EPO.

"...not a single delegation actually had sufficient integrity and moral courage to vote against Battistelli's "Strike Regulations"."It does happen on occasions that votes are cast against a proposal from the Office President but it's a relatively rare occurrence. The more usual course of action for delegates who have reservations about a proposal is to abstain.

An abstention is a mild expression of disapproval. Basically, it's intended to signal that a delegation is unhappy with a proposal but doesn't want to rock the boat too much.

As we already noted, not a single delegation actually had sufficient integrity and moral courage to vote against Battistelli's "Strike Regulations".

However, a total of seven delegations withheld their support by abstaining, namely: Belgium, Italy, Norway, Serbia, Slovakia, Slovenia and Sweden.

"In the next part we will begin with the delegation representing Belgium, the only one of the Benelux states that refrained from endorsing Battistelli's liberticidal proposal."Because Article 35 (4) of the European Patent Convention specifies that abstentions "shall not be considered as votes", Battistelli could claim quite truthfully that his patently unlawful "Strike Regulations" had been endorsed "unanimously" by the Administrative Council.

In the upcoming parts we will take a closer look at the delegations that withheld their support from Battistelli's "Strike Regulations". In the next part we will begin with the delegation representing Belgium, the only one of the Benelux states that refrained from endorsing Battistelli's liberticidal proposal.

Recent Techrights' Posts

Google News is Rewarding Slopfarms, Not Journalism
Don't read junk from chatbots
Richard Stallman, Whose Site is Trusted by Greater Manchester, Has Come to the United Kingdom
He doesn't suck up to the Crown, so he'll never be "knighted"
On Desktops/Laptops in Singapore Does a Fifth of Users Run GNU/Linux?
Probably not, but it's growing fast there
Links 21/04/2025: Fake Ceasefire and Software Patents (Fake Patents) Thrown Out
Links for the day
4 Years Ago Freenode Crumbled From Within
there are still hundreds of thousands of users online at any given time
Microsoft Has Tainted GNOME, Which Has Key People Acting as a SLAPP Front Against Techrights (Trying to Censor the Site by Extortion and Many Threats)
One common denominator (other than Microsoft salaries) is GNOME, which was led by an actual professional crank until she quit so suddenly months ago
Homeland of Linux Kernel Turning to GNU/Linux?
Adoption of Vista 11 has been relatively low
 
Gemini Links 21/04/2025: Remembering Pope Francis, Crystal Simulation
Links for the day
Doing Microsoft's Job. On IBM's Payroll.
today's Red Hat cannot recognise threats even after a head-on collision
Teaching GAFAM in Schools is Like Teaching Children to Smoke Tobacco
So suggests an FSF presentation
Companies With Fake Values and a Fake Economic/Financial State (Phony Valuations)
It'll all go up in smoke, eventually
Links 21/04/2025: Microsoft LLM Slop (Plagiarism) Going Out of Control, CT Scans' Cancer Problems Was Underrated
Links for the day
GNOME Has a Long History (Over a Decade) Misusing the Code of Conduct (CoC) to Censor (Cull) Legitimate Technical Criticism
This has nothing to do with manners, it's about control (by cover-up)
According to StatCounter, This is What Linux Adoption Looks Like (Based on Web Requests Visible to StatCounter)
How much worse will it get for Microsoft?
Gemini Capsules Still Outsourcing to Certificate Authority Let's Encrypt Now Measured at Less Than 10 (or Less Than 0.3%)
In Geminispace, Let's Encrypt is not commonly used
Twisting Microsoft's Failure (Transmitting Malware) as "SSH Backdoors" and a Linux Problem
Somehow we almost always find that those FUD pieces about "Linux" are based on obvious falsehoods
Vista 11 Has Burned OEMs and Some Move to GNU/Linux
When people can finally avoid Windows (there's no reason to attach it to new PCs) there will be a lot more GNU/Linux users out there
Remember That Microsoft Mass Layoffs Are Imminent Because Its 'Empire' is Falling Apart
European politicians take a long, hard look a Free software
Richard Stallman in the UK This Week, Scheduled to Give Two Public Talks (London and Oxford)
Those talks do not cover the same topics
Gemini Links 21/04/2025: April, Autism, and ASN
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Sunday, April 20, 2025
IRC logs for Sunday, April 20, 2025
Links 20/04/2025: Partly Assorted Scientific and Political Leftovers
Links for the day
Links 20/04/2025: Many Data Breaches and Growing Censorship Wave
Links for the day
Gemini Links 20/04/2025: Canadian Elections and "Use the Best Tools You Have for the Current Environment"
Links for the day
Deja vu: Hitler's Birthday, Andreas Tille elected Debian Project Leader again
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
Links 20/04/2025: Bleeding Constitution and ChatGPT Infuriates Users Some More
Links for the day
Chinese OEMs (and World's Largest) Pave a Path Out of Microsoft Windows
So Microsoft now values (or prices) Vista 11 at just $140?
Gemini Links 20/04/2025: Contradictions of Mark Carney and Blog Questions Challenge
Links for the day
Microsoft's 'Lawsuit Diplomacy' (SLAPPs Riding UK Libel Law and Piggybacking UK GDPR, Inapplicable!) Will Only Give a Worse Image to Microsofters (and Microsoft), Give Exposure to Even More Suppressed Facts and Scandals
Microsoft came to dominate some sectors because of (or owing to) crimes; Microsoft won't just go away without some more crimes.
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Saturday, April 19, 2025
IRC logs for Saturday, April 19, 2025
Five (or Three) Years Without Social Control Media
Glyn Moody quit X (Twitter)
Electronics in People's Bedrooms
Modern technology not only blurred the gap between "functions" of rooms
Why GNU/Linux is Growing
There's growing interest in GNU/Linux right now because people do not fancy buying a new PC just to 'upgrade' (more spying) Windows
Gemini Links 19/04/2025: Contingencies, GTD, and Old Computers
Links for the day
Links 19/04/2025: Economic Races, Charm Offensives, and USB-C Rants
Links for the day
Links 19/04/2025: "Infantilization at Big Tech" and LLM Slop Abused in Defiance of Workplace Rules/Policies
Links for the day
Gemini Links 19/04/2025: Palm Addiction and Real Experts
Links for the day
Egypt is Controlled by Google, Not Microsoft
Moving from Microsoft to Google is not the answer
Microsofters Say They Cannot Find a Job (That They Want) Because of Techrights, But Techrights Merely Reported on Their Behaviour
Quit pointing the finger at people who are recipients of abuse or merely mention the abuse
Free Software and Standards - Not Marketing Blitz - Needed Amid Growing Severity of Dependency on Hostile Suppliers (or Another Country's Sovereignty)
ZenDiS can be described as the "Center for Digital Sovereignty of Public Administration"
When It Comes to the Web, Google is Evil and It Destroys the Web's Integrity With LLM Slop
Even academia, which is meant to keep standards high, is being lured into LLM slop
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Friday, April 18, 2025
IRC logs for Friday, April 18, 2025