06.08.16
Leaks Required: EPO’s Plan to Crush the Appeal Boards and Media Contracts for Puff Pieces
They just keep repeating the “SME” line…
Summary: A call for transparency in this age of bought press coverage and an attempt to crush quality control at the EPO, i.e. expand the number of patents without any regard to public interests
EARLIER today we covered this year’s effort to subvert the media, or the EPO‘s paid puff pieces. We can expect more of that tomorrow and perhaps well into the weekend if not beyond. Will any attention be paid to staff protests in multiple sites tomorrow? SUEPO does not buy media organisations.
EPO management buying the media is not exactly news. Literally millions of Euros were spent buying the media last year. This is where EPO budget goes; even celebrity endorsements more or less. There’s a bunch of hashtags being used to carry such paid coverage and if somebody knows how much the EPO paid the Financial Times for this publicity stunt, please get in touch. We want the facts. Tweets like this one are a disgrace not just to the EPO but also to the media. “FT Special Reports” perhaps means purchased ‘reports’. Their Twitter account says: “Our customer service team is @FTcare.”
“EPO management buying the media is not exactly news. Literally millions of Euros were spent buying the media last year.”Right now, judging by the output so far, the EPO spreads “SME” propaganda (see the image the top, taken from this tweet) while giving a priority to large corporations, in effect attacking SMEs’ interests. The UPC, which the EPO promotes, harms SME and they say so themselves while complaining about those who misrepresent them.
Earlier today we showed how IAM was again pushing the "SME" angle for UPC. It was soon thereafter that IAM started pushing for software patents with sponsored ‘articles’ (marketing). Bought ‘articles’ go a long way. In addition to this, the EPO apparently got someone from the Guardian to do the whitewashing exercise. It’s the same ‘news’ paper which also took lots of money (effectively bribes) from Bill Gates to create entire sections for him and promote his for-profit ventures/investments for years (purchased pseudo-journalism). What on Earth is going on and who exactly is being paid? The invoicing is pretty secretive and we can only make an appeal for information. This kind of information needs to be out there for Europeans to see. This in itself is an EPO scandal.
“The invoicing is pretty secretive and we can only make an appeal for information.”In the mean time, the IP Kat ban was removed (at what cost? Will IP Kat self-censor after this kind of warning shot?), making available again articles like that which SUEPO called: “Analysis of the increase in appeal fees on the number of appeals filed before the Boards of Appeal.”
Merpel has got access to a leaked document, but she almost certainly won’t publish it after the EPO banned the site for a day (maybe unrelated to this), so if anyone has a copy, please send it our way for publication. To quote Merpel:
Yes, Merpel has seen a copy, but it is not publicly available and Merpel is not in a position to post it. She hopes that there is enough information in this post (and in the precursor proposal CA/16/15 which is public and linked above) for you to raise concerns as appropriate.
We need more information out there as the EPO is far too secretive. Transparency is what would lead to justice at the EPO. █
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