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01.17.16

Anti-Competitive and Anti-Choice: the ‘New’ Microsoft Reveals New Abusive Policies

Posted in GNU/Linux, Hardware, Microsoft, Vista 10, Windows at 6:28 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Can’t compete? Then cheat…

“I’m thinking of hitting the OEMs harder than in the past with anti-Linux. … they should do a delicate dance”

–Joachim Kempin, Microsoft OEM Chief

Two locks

Summary: After scheming to make new hardware incapable of booting GNU/Linux (in the name of UEFI ‘security) the company now attempts to tie up hardware (processors) with malicious new malware called Windows 10 (more like Vista 10, with the user-hostile ‘features’ of Vista)

“Want Freedom To Choose Your Hardware? Choose GNU/Linux.”

That’s the message from Robert Pogson. Some days ago we became aware of a nasty little scheme from Microsoft. The abusive monopolist, Microsoft, is calling monopoly abuse “innovation”. In additional to more DRM and antifeatures, including mass surveillance in real time, the company goes further as “Upcoming Intel And AMD CPUs Will ONLY Support Windows 10,” to quote FOSS Bytes. “In the latest change to its update policy,” wrote the author, “Microsoft has announced that older versions of Windows like Windows 7 and Windows 8.1 will lose support on the Intel 6th generation Core processors, also known as Intel Skylake. So, if you have just bought a new PC, you should consider upgrading to Windows 10 within the next 18 months.”

“Does anyone really think there is a ‘new’ Microsoft which is benevolent?”And Microsoft later expresses shock that people generally dislike it, some more than others.

Microsoft Peter shows how, after UEFI lockout of GNU/Linux (which he wrote about last year, arguably breaking the news), the historically abusive Intel helps Microsoft impose NSA-friendly spyware on everyone. “Microsoft Will Not Support Upcoming Processors Except On Windows 10,” says another report and “New hardware must have the latest Windows,” wrote a Microsoft booster. Microsoft’s influence over OEMs may be diminishing, the development teams may be shrinking (based on our confidential sources they are!), so the company is now limiting the scope of its operating system using hardware manufacturers/chipmakers, i.e. doing exactly the opposite of Linux (whose hardware support is always broadening).

Moreover, as revealed by this new report from The Register, Microsoft is really trying to piss people off and make Vista 10 synonymous with malware. Watch what they are doing right now:

Microsoft’s relentless campaign to push Windows 10 onto every PC on the planet knows no bounds: now business desktops will be nagged to upgrade.

When Redmond started quietly installing Windows 10 on computers via Windows Update, it was aimed at getting home users off Windows 7 and 8. If you were using Windows Pro or Enterprise, or managed your machines using a domain, you weren’t supposed to be pestered with dialog boxes offering the free upgrade.

[...]

Microsoft claims it’s doing this because many small businesses – the sort of organizations that run Windows Pro, use a domain, but leave automatic updates on – want an easy way to install the new operating system. If companies really want this software, you’d think they’d install it themselves – or opt in for it, rather than having to opt out repeatedly.

You can try your luck following these instructions to halt the upgrade – until Microsoft changes the rules again. Windows Enterprise edition in large corporations will avoid the automatic, virtually mandatory, upgrade.

Does anyone really think there is a ‘new’ Microsoft which is benevolent? iophk has been writing to us for a number of days about this kind of topic. He said quite a lot of things about what Microsoft plans to do to R right now (or some time in the near future).

“Attacks against R continue with “Microsoft R Open {sic}”,” he said, “with the announcement of vaporware” (we wrote about this some days ago). █

“Stewart Alsop, industry gadfly, presented Gates with the “Golden Vaporware” award, saying, “The delay of Windows was all part of a secret plan to have Bill turn thirty before it shipped.”

–Barbarians Led by Bill Gates, a book composed
by the daughter of Microsoft’s PR mogul

Links 17/1/2016: 4MLinux 16.0 Beta, Black Lab Linux 8 Alpha

Posted in News Roundup at 5:45 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNOME bluefish

Contents

GNU/Linux

Free Software/Open Source

  • git outta here, GitHub

    What a relief! I just deleted my GitHub account. Life is already looking brighter. ’cause you know, GitHub is Facebook. And you don’t want a Facebook account.

  • Nobody is using your software project. Now what?

    Working with open source software is an amazing experience. The collaborative process around creation, refinement, and even maintenance, drives more developers to work on open source software more often. However, every developer finds themselves writing code that very few people actually use.

  • How I Stumbled Upon The Internet’s Biggest Blind Spot

    Open source infrastructure refers to all the tools that help developers build software. On a deep level, it includes physical things like servers, but closer to the surface, it also includes things like programming languages, frameworks, and libraries.

    If you’ve ever built an app before, maybe you used Rails, Django or Node.js. Maybe your app was written in Ruby or Python. Maybe it made use of something like jQuery or React. All of these projects are open source.

    There is no question that these developer tools are vital to startups and technology: we couldn’t build anything without them. There is also no business model in many cases. You couldn’t charge people to use Python, for example, any more than you could charge someone to speak English.

  • AI research lab releases code to help with speech recognition

    Yesterday, Baidu Research’s Silicon Valley AI Lab (SVAIL) released open-source code called Warp-CTC to GitHub. The goal is for this code to be used in the machine learning community.

    Warp-CTC is a tool that can plug into existing machine learning frameworks to speed up the development of artificial intelligence, and according to SVAIL, it will speed up development by 400x compared to previous versions.

  • Events

  • Web Browsers

    • Mozilla

      • Thunderbird 38.5.1 Brings Fixes Only

        As you may know, Thunderbird is an open-source e-mail client and chat client developed by Mozilla. Among others, it has support for email addresses, newsgroup, news feed and chat (XMPP, IRC, Twitter) Client, managing multiple accounts. Also, it has support for different themes and its power can be extended by plugins.

      • Firefox to convert old YouTube Flash code to HTML5 Video

        Mozilla has added a feature to Firefox 46 that will convert old YouTube Flash code to HTML5 Video automatically under certain circumstances.

        When YouTube started out, Flash was the dominating technology used to stream video on the Internet, and the first player that YouTube made available to webmasters to embed videos on third-party sites used Flash exclusively.

        YouTube changed the code later on to reflect changes in streaming technologies. From a technical perspective, YouTube started to offer embed codes as iframes instead of objects.

  • SaaS/Big Data

    • Startup takes on Dropbox, Box, using cloud and local storage

      Right now, access to Infinit Drive and Infinit Cloud, the small-business and enterprise versions of the product, are restricted to invitations only, but it’s possible to sign up for early access. The open source pieces haven’t all been released yet, but the first of them have started to show up on Infinit’s GitHub site.

    • An introduction to OpenStack clouds for beginners

      This year, SCaLE 14x attendees will have the opportunity to hear Anthony Chow speak on how to get started contributing to OpenStack.

      Anthony is network engineer with a passion for sharing and promoting technologies that enable community growth. He’s currently working on Docker and OpenStack Magnum.

      In this interview, Anthony explains what OpenStack is, how it works with containers, and how an enterprise might want to use it.

    • OpenStack Foundation 2016 Directors Announced

      The OpenStack Foundation election of Individual Directors to the Board of Directors has now completed and the winning candidates have been announced.

    • Lessons learned (the hard way) doing DevOps at scale

      I had the chance to talk to Ticketmaster’s Victor Gajendran who will be attending (and speaking) for the first time at SCaLE 14x this year, which is taking place on January 21 and 22 in Pasadena, California. He’ll speak to attendees about how his company uses open source and how to empower your small teams to be part of a large, effective whole.

  • BSD

  • FSF/FSFE/GNU/SFLC

  • Openness/Sharing

    • Kiev tests open budget process

      Through this new initiative SocialBoost partnered with Open North, a Canadian company, which has developed a ready-to-use portal called Citizen Budget. This portal was adapted for the Kiev project.

    • Civil society plays a key role in policy shaping in Europe

      The main theme of this debate, organised by the NGO Support Centre, under the European U-Impact project (From Citizen Involvement to Policy Impact) was “Civil Society and the EU”. The U-Impact project basically gathers citizens’ views on EU policies and explores the relationship and engagement between civil society and EU.

    • Open Hardware

Leftovers

  • Mr Cameron, the renegotiation and evidence-based policy making

    The outcome of the British government’s attempt to renegotiate the UK’s terms of membership of the European Union and the referendum that will follow are highly uncertain but the renegotiation reveals quite a lot about David Cameron.

  • Celine Dion’s brother Daniel dies two days after her husband

    The older brother of Canadian singer Celine Dion has died of cancer, two days after her husband also died.

    Daniel Dion, 59, died on Saturday near Montreal, a statement by the singer’s spokeswoman said.

    Ms Dion’s family paid tribute to the father-of-two, calling him “a gentle and reserved man of many talents”.

  • Health/Nutrition

    • In 1993 Meeting, Hillary Clinton Acknowledged “Convincing Case” for Single-Payer

      Two doctors who met privately with Hillary Clinton during the 1993 health reform debate say she agreed that single-payer healthcare would be good for Americans. Their recollections raise questions about both the motive and the sincerity of Clinton’s recent assault on Democratic presidential rival Bernie Sanders for supporting such a system.

      Until Clinton’s pivot, the accepted Democratic view was that single-payer was the best solution in theory, but that it was politically unrealistic. Clinton’s new critiques, by contrast, are an attempt to make Sanders’s single-payer proposals sound costly and destructive.

    • Sanders’ Courageous Stand for Universal Coverage

      The Clinton campaign just made a serious mistake.

      They sent Hillary and Bill Clinton’s daughter Chelsea out on behalf of her mother to bash Senator Bernie Sanders on the issue of health care.

      What’s so wrong with that? Don’t all candidates use family surrogates when and where they can? The Kennedys, for example, deployed a horde of kinfolk for Jack’s campaign for president, then Bobby’s, then Teddy’s.

    • This is how toxic Flint’s water really is

      The city of Flint, Mich., is in the midst of a water crisis several years in the making. The city opted out of Detroit’s water supply and began drawing water from the Flint River in April 2014, part of a cost-saving move. Eighteen months later, in the fall of 2015, researchers discovered that the proportion of children with above-average lead levels in their blood had doubled.

    • This Bee-Killing Pesticide Is Terrible at Protecting Crops

      In 2011, agrichemical giants Monsanto and Bayer CropScience joined forces to sell soybean seeds coated with (among other things) an insecticide of the neonicotinoid family. Neonics are so-called systematic pesticides—when the coated seeds sprout and grow, the resulting plants take up the bug-killing chemical, making them poisonous to crop-chomping pests like aphids. Monsanto rivals Syngenta and DuPont also market neonic-treated soybean seeds.

      These products—buoyed by claims that the chemical protects soybean crops from early-season insect pests—have enjoyed great success in the marketplace. Soybeans are the second-most-planted US crop, covering about a quarter of US farmland—and at least a third of US soybean acres are grown with neonic-treated seeds. But two problems haunt this highly lucrative market: 1) The neonic soybean seeds might not do much at all to fight off pests, and 2) they appear to be harming bees and may also hurt other pollinators, birds, butterflies, and water-borne invertebrates.

      Doubts about neonic-treated soybean seeds’ effectiveness aren’t new. In 2014, the Environmental Protection Agency released a blunt preliminary report finding that “neonicotinoid seed treatments likely provide $0 in benefits” to soybean growers. But the agrichemical industry likes to portray the EPA as an overzealous regulator that relies on questionable data, and it quickly issued a report vigorously disagreeing with the EPA’s assessment.

    • All Flint’s children must be treated as exposed to lead

      In order to address the public health crisis in Flint, every Flint child under 6 years of age — 8,657 children, based on an analysis of Census data — should be considered exposed to lead.

      The direction came earlier this week from the doctor who forced the state to acknowledge Flint’s lead problem and the state itself.

      The exposure began in April 2014 after the city switched from using Detroit’s water system, which pumps water out of Lake Huron, to its own treatment plant, which drew water from the Flint River.

    • ‘Ludicrous’ as Flint Tells Residents: Pay for Poisoned Water or We’ll Cut You Off

      Amid a crisis that has poisoned the water supply of an entire city, authorities in Flint, Michigan are under renewed fire on Friday for sending out shut-off notices to residents who are behind on paying their water bills.

      Slammed as “ludicrous, the move comes as Republican Governor Rick Snyder finally asked President Obama to step in and declare a federal state of emergency.

      Following a short holiday reprieve, Finance Director Jody Lundquist announced Wednesday that officials will resume sending an unspecified amount of shut-off notices to past-due accounts. According to Lundquist, the city already sent out 1,800 notices in November.

    • Bernie Sanders Calls For Michigan Governor To Resign Over Poisoned Water Scandal

      Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders urged Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder to step down in light of his state’s ongoing and fatal water crisis that has sickened thousands of residents and left more than 30,000 Flint, Michigan households with undrinkable tap water.

      “There are no excuses. The governor long ago knew about the lead in Flint’s water. He did nothing. As a result, hundreds of children were poisoned. Thousands may have been exposed to potential brain damage from lead. Gov. Snyder should resign,” Sanders said in a statement Saturday.

    • Russia’s ‘state sponsored doping’ endangered athletes lives

      Sessions also focused on organizational issues that are necessary to quickly consider doping cases, investigating problems mentioned in the report by the World Anti-Doping Agency’s (WADA) Independent Commission, collecting information about the location of athletes and comprehensive testing of Russian athletes before WADA restores the Russian Anti-Doping Agency (RUSADA), as well as educational and other measures necessary for introducing zero tolerance policy for doping in Russian athletics.

      Part one revealed state-sponsored doping in the country which resulted in them being suspended by the IAAF.

      Being generous, it seems officials weren’t ignoring Russian doping but rather were seeking expedient ways of dealing with the large number of cases thrown up by the IAAF’s “blood passport” anti-doping program before the 2012 London Games.

  • Security

    • Hacking Team’s Leak Helped Researchers Hunt Down a Zero-Day

      The vulnerability, which Microsoft called “critical” in a patch released to customers on Tuesday, would allow an attacker to infect your system after getting you to visit a malicious website where the exploit resides—usually through a phishing email that tricks you into clicking on a malicious link. The attack works with all of the top browsers except Chrome—but only because Google removed support for the Silverlight plug-in in its Chrome browser in 2014.

      [...]

      In July 2015, a hacker known only as “Phineas Fisher” targeted the Italian surveillance firm Hacking Team and stole some 400 GB of the company’s data, including internal emails, which he dumped online. The hack exposed the company’s business practices, but it also revealed the business of zero-day sellers who were trying to market their exploits to Hacking Team. The controversial surveillance firm, which sells its software to law enforcement and intelligence agencies around the world—including to oppressive regimes like Sudan, Bahrain, and Saudi Arabia—uses zero-day exploits to help sneak its surveillance tools onto targeted systems.

    • Flexible, secure SSH with DNSSEC

      With version 6.2 of OpenSSH came a feature that allows the remote host to retrieve a public key in a customised way, instead of the typical authorized_keys file in the ~/.ssh/ directory. For example, you can gather the keys of a group of users that require access to a number of machines on a single server (for example, an LDAP server), and have all the hosts query that server when they need the public key of the user attempting to log in. This saves a lot of editing of authorized_keys files on each and every host. The downside is that it’s necessary to trust the source these hosts retrieve public keys from. An LDAP server on a private network is probably trustworthy (when looked after properly) but for hosts running in the cloud, that’s not really practical.

  • Defence/Police/Secrecy/Aggression

    • They Make Cheney Look Like Chomsky: Cruz, Trump, Rubio and the Frightening Bellicosity of Today’s GOP

      They want to “carpet bomb,” “bomb the shit” out of them and make “sand glow.” The GOP field somehow makes Cheney seem moderate.

    • U.S. Radically Changes Its Story of the Boats in Iranian Waters: to an Even More Suspicious Version

      When news first broke of the detention of two U.S. ships in Iranian territorial waters, the U.S. media — aside from depicting it as an act of Iranian aggression — uncritically cited the U.S. government’s explanation for what happened. One of the boats, we were told, experienced “mechanical failure” and thus “inadvertently drifted” into Iranian waters. On CBS News, Joe Biden told Charlie Rose, “One of the boats had engine failure, drifted into Iranian waters.”

    • After Me, the Jihad

      The West was then gearing up to use unrest in Libya as a pretext for military intervention and regime change. Gaddafi desperately tried to convey through Blair the folly of such a war, pleading that he was trying to defend Libya from Al Qaeda, which had set up base in the country.

    • US Foreign Policy Discussions Need a Colossal Dose of Humility

      According to an apocryphal Russian proverb, it’s easy to turn an aquarium into fish soup, but much harder to turn fish soup into an aquarium. The US political class has served up plenty of fish soup over the past decade, and much of it was created in the belief that each aquarium just wasn’t good enough without our help.

      A prime example of US-created fish soup would be Iraq. It’s a steaming bowl of it, and no amount of firepower is going to change that. Societal cohesion was destroyed, it’s not something that can be put back together through force of arms.

    • Thanks to Donald Trump, Police Brutality and Guns, the United States’ Reputation Is Plummeting

      Donald Trump’s bewildering popularity in the presidential race has been exceedingly hard to bear for many Americans, particularly those who belong to one or more of the communities that he openly disparages, like African-Americans and Muslim Americans.

      Yet if even some citizens wrestle to make sense of Trump’s rise to power, how do non-Americans view the strange state of politics in the world’s most powerful nation?

      While on a recent visit to Dubai, United Arab Emirates—where I was born and raised and where my parents still live—Trump’s name cropped up as a topic of conversation within the first few minutes of nearly every interaction I had, so I decided to gather a group of my friends together to answer that question.

      Dubai is home to myriad immigrant communities, and while the city of more than 2.4 million struggles with its own unique social problems, the United States remains hugely influential there when it comes to both pop culture and politics.

    • Implementation Day: Full Description From JCPOA Text

      As can be seen from the incredibly long and detailed list of actions Iran has taken to dismantle much of its nuclear technology, Implementation Day represents a remarkable movement away from any capability to produce a nuclear weapon. A devastating array of economic sanctions has been put into place by the West, and many of these are dropped on this historic occasion.

      Diplomacy has won.

    • GOP Debates Are Pure Hawk Without a Paul

      Former Texas Congressman Ron Paul was not the perfect antiwar candidate sent down from above, but you would be forgiven for thinking so if you compare the 2008 and 2012 presidential races to the 2016 one.

      Ron Paul was not without fault (early immigration fearmongering, the vote for the Afghanistan Authorization for Use of Military Force) but he was the rare politician who got better and more interested in peace and freedom the longer he stayed in office. The 2012 election was basically a victory lap for him, but one that involved the vital message of peace and nonintervention. There’s a reason that he’s so beloved, and that YouTube videos with titles that call Paul a seer for predicting more terrorist attacks on the US back in 1998 are amusingly common.

  • Environment/Energy/Wildlife

    • Why is the Guardian letting Shell fill its pages with dubious spin?

      Oil sponsorship is pretty controversial. Where companies like BP and Shell have paid to have their logos displayed in museums, art galleries and theatres, they have been met with a torrent of protest performances and artistic antipathy.

      Groups like BP or not BP, Liberate Tate, BP out of Opera and Art Not Oil have found numerous high profile and creative ways to challenge oil company sponsorship of institutions including the Royal Shakespeare Company, The British Museum, the Tate and Tate Modern, the Science Museum, the Royal Opera House, the National Portrait Gallery, the Edinburgh Festival and the Louvre.

    • Things Just Got Even Worse For Coal

      About 40 percent of all US coal extraction takes place on federal land, much of that in Wyoming, the nation’s top coal producer. For years, environmentalists have complained that the coal industry enjoys royalty rates much lower than offshore oil or other publicly owned fossil fuels. Those low rates make it cheaper for coal companies to operate and may also be a raw deal for the public that has to deal with the impacts, from local environmental degradation to global climate change. While offshore oil companies typically pay a royalty rate of about 18 percent, Jewell said, the rate for coal is only 8-10 percent. A Government Accountability Office report in 2014 found that undervalued coal leases cost the US Treasury nearly $1 billion per year in lost revenue.

    • Coal Ash Wastewater Will Be Dumped Into Virginia Rivers

      Millions of gallons of treated wastewater from coal ash ponds can be disposed in two major Virginia rivers — one a tributary of the Potomac River — the Virginia Water Control Board ruled Thursday.

      The decision comes as some residents and environmentalists questioned the stringency of permits that allow Dominion Virginia Power to release wastewater with some levels of arsenic, lead, copper, and other substances into nearby waterways rich in wildlife. Wastewater will come from the Possum Point Power Plant located by Quantico Creek, and the Bremo Power Plant located by the James River.

    • 22 Mind-Blowing Catastrophes That Are Just A Matter Of Time
    • Asia is imperiled by COP21’s climate cop-out

      The nations of the world gathered at the Paris Climate Conference (COP21) last month to come to an agreement on the urgent mission of reducing greenhouse gas emissions. However, all they produced was an attractive vision statement that is more sham than solution.

      It is imperative that the world invests significantly and quickly in climate mitigation strategies to reduce the human and economic cost of climate change, which is where COP21 fell short. The vague wording of the final declaration gives too much wiggle room for nations to avoid painful choices.

      “This agreement is a great escape for the big polluters, and a poisoned chalice for the poor,” concludes Asad Rehman from the Global Campaign to Demand Climate Justice. “We’ve got some warm words about temperature levels, but no concrete action.”

      [...]

      Indonesia is also in the process of increasing harmful emissions and pollutants as it develops. Anyone visiting the main cities on the island of Java will come away convinced that Indonesia is zooming toward environmental disaster, while its destruction of rainforest through the deliberate setting of fires to clear land in Sumatra and Kalimantan for palm oil plantations is devastating the environment and subjecting citizens of Singapore and Malaysia to high levels of unhealthy smoke. Indonesia already emits more carbon dioxide per capita than India.

  • Finance

    • Whiny Ragequitting

      I characterized Mike Hearn’s farewell essay as a ‘whiny ragequit’. I did this because it is, well, a whiny ragequit. He attempted a hostile takeover of Bitcoin with Bitcoin-XT, and now that he’s predictably been made to feel like persona non grata in Bitcoin development he’s throwing a tantrum on his way out.

      There are of course real howlers in Hearn’s essay which I can explain, although truth be known I shouldn’t have to. There is overwhelming alignment among people doing Bitcoin development on the path forward. The popular perception of internal division is caused by having a camp consisting of Mike Hearn, Jeff Garzik, and Gavin Andresen who are doing a good job of whipping up popular support and talking to the press. They have a simplistic plan which appeals to people who don’t know any better or want to be told that technical problems can be made to magically go away with a simple fix. On the other side are the people doing actual development, who aren’t particularly good at talking to the press or whipping up support on reddit and have a plan which requires real engineering work moving forwards.

    • ‘Bitcoin Has Failed’, Says Lead Developer Who Just Quit

      Once again Bitcoin has been declared dead. This time, the announcement has come from a prominent developer Mike Hearn who just quit the project. In a long blog post on Medium, he called Bitcoin an ‘experiment’ that has now failed.

    • BTC dev: ‘Strangling’ the blockchain will kill Bitcoin

      The destiny of Bitcoin, like that of Apollo 13, shall never be realised, at least according to one of the cryptocurrency’s most well-known developers, who has announced that “the experiment has failed”.

      Mike Hearn was a senior software engineer at Google up until 2014, when he left to focus his full-time attention on Bitcoin development. In a blog post on Thursday, Hearn announced he would longer be taking part in Bitcoin development and had sold all of his coins.

    • Walmart to Close 269 Stores, Most of Them in the United States
    • Walmart to shutter 269 stores, with most located in the US

      The retail giant announced it is working to transfer 10,000 US employees to nearby stores, as CEO said closings are ‘necessary to keep the company strong’

  • PR/AstroTurf/Lobbying

    • Hillary Clinton: Israel First

      Although the United States is still ten months from its next exercise in electoral futility, most polls do not indicate what former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is most anxious to see: a runaway victory for her candidacy. It is a good sign that, despite the fact that she has no real contrasting opponent on the Democratic side, the coronation she expected isn’t going to happen.

    • The Good, Bad and Ugly in Oregon Standoff Coverage

      Unraveling the Gordian knot of media issues in the Oregon standoff between federal authorities and a Patriot/Militia alliance of building occupiers is a daunting task. Some journalists have written excellent, thoughtful articles, and some have wasted wood pulp and bandwidth. Most early reporting sat between those extremes.

    • Trump’s Muslim Ban is a Vile Joke That GOP Condenders Don’t Have the Guts to Take On

      You obviously can’t try and explain such intricacies to a nasty hare-brain who trucks in inflammatory bromides. So what do you do? Condemn him? Ignore him? The first would be the most honorable course and the second understandable. But what the GOP luminaries actually did – i.e. sing and dance to Trump’s tune – was neither. The only exception was Jeb Bush.

    • Review: Michael Bay’s 13 Hours Is A Coded Message To Benghazi Conspiracy Theorists

      Shortly before Michael Bay’s latest movie, 13 Hours: The Secret Soldiers of Benghazi, hit theaters, The Hollywood Reporter published a long report on how the film had been carefully marketed to conservative pundits. In return, the film was praised as “riveting” and “extraordinary” by people the studio could use to validate the movie to their hoped-for audience.

    • How Corporations and Politicians Use Numbers to Lie — and How Not to Be Fooled

      Americans, as P.T. Barnum once noted, are not all that difficult to fool, and our nation’s somewhat weak math skills don’t help. A Pew Research Center report issued last year, which studied test results of 15-year-olds, ranked the United States 35th in the world in math. Not only has this weakness in understanding numbers created opportunities for mass exploitation by Big Pharma and other industries, it has led to needless and mostly unwarranted fear. While Americans don’t understand math, be assured that corporations do, and they happily use it to mislead and obfuscate in the name of selling their products.

  • Censorship

    • Letter: Censorship can deny all opinion

      Tears flow down my cheeks as I read of the torture some readers go through when they read Thomas Sowell’s weekly column. Their pleading for The Columbian to stop carrying his column tears at my heart. The anguish the writers go through detailing point by point of where they disagree with him is almost too much to bear.

    • Is The Internet Evolving Away From Freedom of Speech?

      Yesterday Motherboard published a fascinating look back at how Twitter’s rules have evolved over the past decade and how its own experiences as flag bearer of the social media revolution have influenced and changed the accepted wisdom of the juxtaposition of freedom of speech and commercial reality. From its founding principles that guided the site through the end of last year that enshrined “because of these principles, we do not actively monitor and will not censor user content except in limited circumstances” to its new rules, published last month that clarify “there are some limitations on the type of content and behavior that we allow,” Twitter has evolved along with the web itself.

    • How Twitter quietly banned hate speech last year

      But that wasn’t all. More links to outside documents appeared in the company rules. In August, Twitter clarified that it would include “indirect threats” under its definition of “hateful conduct.” It would also censor people who “incited” harassment, for example by urging their followers to send harassing messages to another user.

    • My Experience With the Great Firewall of China

      When I recently visited China for the first time, as an InfoSec professional I was very curious to finally be able to poke at the Great Firewall of China with my own hands to see how it works and how easy it is evade. In short I was surprised by:

      Its high level of sophistication such as its ability to exploit side-channel leaks in TLS (I have evidence it can detect the “TLS within TLS” characteristic of secure web proxies)

      How poorly simple Unix computer security tools fared to evade it

      1 of the top 3 commercial VPN providers uses RSA keys so short (1024 bits!) that the Chinese government could factor them

    • Censorship still works — just not the way you think

      But top-down approaches don’t work so well when anyone can get online and fight back. Then-Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan was widely ridiculed for the heavy-handed YouTube ban. Similar backfires occurred in 2010 when WordPress was blocked in Venezuela, and in China the same year when a man with political connections tried to censor news of his hit-and-run killing of a college student. Egyptian authorities turned off the whole country’s internet during 2011 protests there, but it didn’t save President Mubarak. The old ways do not work as well anymore. Effective censorship is done not by deletion, but by confusion.

  • Privacy

    • Apple has patented a way to track your digital ‘skeleton’ using a camera

      Apple has been granted a patent for software that can work out information about a person’s “skeleton” by looking at it through Microsoft Kinect-style hardware.

      Microsoft Kinect is a hardware accessory for the Xbox that uses cameras to the track movements of people in the room, helping control a video game.

    • Why is Apple starting to patent light fittings?

      Apple has been granted a patent for the ceiling lighting system it has developed for its new-look stores in a move that has again raised the issue of the company’s intentions in the lighting market.

    • Theresa May’s snooping defence remains inherently contradictory

      The UK government doesn’t want backdoors to encrypted messages. But it wants companies to decrypt messages on demand anyway.

      That apparently contradictory policy remains at the heart of the Investigatory Powers Bill, Home Secretary Theresa May has told MPs.

      May, who is overseeing the creation of the IP Bill and saw similar plans blocked in 2012, told a group of MPs and Lords that companies will be required to remove electronic protection on messages and information when a warrant is issued.

    • No, the European Court of Human Rights did NOT just greenlight spying on employees

      Reports that say the European Court of Human Rights ruled bosses can peek into their employees’ personal communications are hogwash.

    • German data surveillance includes Finland

      According to leaked German intelligence documents, German intelligence agency BND monitored phone calls and possibly Internet traffic to and from Finland in the 2000s — possibly at the behest of the American security agency, the NSA.

    • FISC Still Sitting on Government Proposal for EFF Data

      When last we checked in with the new-and-improved post USA Freedom Act FISA Court, amicus Preston Burton had helped the Court finish off the Section 215 dragnet with a strong hand, in part by asking a bunch of questions that should have been asked 9 years earlier. And in a reply to the government (the reply was released belatedly), Burton made an argument that led first to a hearing on the issue and then a briefing order for ways the government might stipulate to something in the EFF lawsuits so as to permit the FISC to lift the protection order requiring all Americans’ phone records to be kept indefinitely.

  • Civil Rights

    • Laura Carlsen on the Arrest of ‘El Chapo,’ Omar Shakir on Closing Guantanamo
    • What’s Your Threat Score?

      Police have found a new way to legally incorporate surveillance and profiling into everyday life. Just when you thought we were making progress raising awareness surrounding police brutality, we have something new to contend with. The Police Threat Score isn’t calculated by a racist police officer or a barrel-rolling cop who thinks he’s on a TV drama; it’s a computer algorithm that steals your data and calculates your likelihood of risk and threat for the fuzz.

    • First Member Of Bundy Militia Arrested

      The first members of the militia illegally occupying a federal building in Oregon have been arrested. The occupation has gone on for nearly two weeks, costing the state more than $133,000 per day.

      Two members of the militia were finally arrested when they took federal vehicles stolen from the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge and drove them to a local Safeway.

    • America Is a Dystopian Hellhole and Don’t You Forget It

      And the surprise? There’s nothing on this list from Ted Cruz. He had plenty of criticisms of Obama, but I looked at everything he said last night and there was really no hint of America going to hell in a handbasket. I didn’t expect that, but I’ll bet it’s deliberate. Maybe he knows something the rest of field doesn’t?

    • Poor and Seeking Justice in Louisiana? Get in Line.

      Taking aim at Louisiana’s “chronic underfunding” of its public defender system—which has forced at least four parishes in the state to create “waiting lists” for appointed counsel—the American Civil Liberties Union and the ACLU of Louisiana filed a class-action lawsuit Thursday evening on behalf of criminal defendants in Orleans Parish who are unable to afford an attorney.

      “So long as you’re on the public defender waiting list in New Orleans, you’re helpless,” said Brandon Buskey, staff attorney with the ACLU’s Criminal Law Reform Project. “Your legal defense erodes along with your constitutional rights.”

      What’s more, he added in an op-ed published Friday, “The people the public defender is making wait in line are most at risk in our justice system: usually poor, often a person of color, and facing severe sentences. [T]hese are the people who most need the public defender’s help investigating the state’s case against them and quickly uncovering favorable evidence before it is lost.”

    • Justice Has a Waiting List in New Orleans
    • Terrorism In Europe is Less Common and Less Deadly Than in the Recent Past — And Doesn’t Justify Expanded Repressive Surveillance

      International security researcher: “Western Europe is safer now than it has been for decades and is far safer than most other parts of the world.”

    • Dr. King’s legacy still relevant
    • Cock.li server seized again by German prosecutor, service moves to Romania

      cock.li’s Vincent Canfield said that he had initially chosen a German data host because the country has a reputation for “good data privacy laws.”

      “Of course, though the facts of the case are yet to be seen since no one in Germany is talking to us, I will definitely never host anything in Germany ever again,” he told Ars in an encrypted chat.

      The same Zwickau authorities previously seized one of cock.li’s hard drives in late December 2015. That first seizure came shortly after cock.li was reportedly used to send a bogus bomb threat e-mail from “madbomber@cock.li” to several school districts in the United States, which led to the closure of all schools in the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD). The New York City Department of Education, however, dismissed the e-mail as an obvious hoax. (The LAUSD has refused to provide Ars a copy of this original message under the California Public Records Act, a decision that we have appealed.)

      “We live in an age where anonymous messages can be sent with extreme ease.”
      Because the novelty e-mail host was configured as a RAID1 (mirrored) setup, the e-mail service continued operating until Friday. It is unclear why there was a weeks-long delay between the first and second seizure.

    • The report which could destroy Britain’s immigration prisons

      Entrance to healthcare, The Verne Immigration Removal Centre (HMIP)

      The Home Office never wanted this report. It was only after a string of stories about abusive guards and sexual attacks that Stephen Shaw’s inquiry into Britain’s immigration detention centres was even commissioned.

      Even then, they tried to narrow its remit. It was limited to assessing detainees’ welfare and there was to be no discussion about the principle of detention itself.

      As if that weren’t restrictive enough, officials also didn’t want Shaw, a former prisons ombudsman, addressing the issue of how long detainees are held. Under the current system, they never know how long they’ll be imprisoned. It could be hours or it could be years. That uncertainty can sometimes drive them mad. It is a uniquely bureaucratic form of mental torture.

    • What Accounts for the Saudi Regime’s Hysterical Belligerence? The Agony of Death

      The Saudi rulers find themselves in a losing race against time, or history. Although in denial, they cannot but realize the historical reality that the days of ruling by birthright are long past, and that the House of Saud as the ruler of the kingdom by inheritance is obsolete.

      This is the main reason for the Saudi’s frantically belligerent behavior. The hysteria is tantamount to the frenzy of the proverbial agony of a prolonged death. It explains why they react so harshly to any social or geopolitical development at home or in the region that they perceive as a threat to their rule.

      It explains why, for example, they have been so intensely hostile to the Iranian revolution that terminated the rule of their dictatorial counterpart, the Shah of Iran, in that country. In the demise of the Shah they saw their own downfall.

    • 12-year-old girl suspended because she lent her inhaler to a gasping classmate

      A 12-year-old honor student from Texas got suspended from school for giving her asthama inhaler to another girl who was wheezing and gasping in gym class. She could also be tranferred to an “alternative school” for up to 30 days. The girl told Fox 4 News she feels the punishment is not fair. “I was just trying to save her life. I didn’t think I was trying to do anything bad,” she said.

    • Garland girl suspended, potential alternative school time for sharing inhaler
    • Apple Shrugs Off Diversity Push, Calling It ‘Unduly Burdensome’

      Apple’s board and senior management teams are dominated by white men. But its leadership still feels that speeding up efforts to change that makeup are “unduly burdensome and not necessary.”

      Antonio Avian Maldonado, II, one of the company’s shareholders, has put forward a proposal that would force the company’s board to adopt an “accelerated recruitment policy” for diverse senior management and board seat positions, “bodies that presently fails [sic] to adequately represent diversity (particularly Hispanic, African-American, Native-American and other people of colour).” By Apple’s own count, the company’s leadership team is 72 percent male and 63 percent white, while it’s just 6 percent Hispanic and 3 percent black. Of the eight people on its board, just two are women and only two are people of color.

    • The FBI’s Two-Pronged Investigation of Hillary Clinton

      Later, as a member of a secret Presidential committee to investigate the CIA’s view of the Soviet Union’s ability to withstand an arms race, I had very high clearances as the committee had subpoena power over the CIA. If the Kremlin had had access to the top secret documents, all the Kremlin would have learned is that the CIA had a much higher opinion of the capability of the Soviet economy than did the Kremlin.

      Distinguished law professors have concluded that the US government classifies documents primarily in order to hide its own mistakes and crimes. We see this over and over. The US government can escape accountability for the most incredible mistakes and the worse crimes against the US Constitution and humanity simply by saying “national security.”

    • Saudi Arabia’s foreign affairs minister Adel al-Jubeir urges Britain to ‘respect’ the kingdom’s use of the death penalty

      Saudi Arabia’s foreign minister has urged Britain to “respect” his country’s use of the death penalty, two weeks after the oil-rich kingdom executed 47 people in one day.

      Adel al-Jubeir, responding to a question over the kingdom’s “terrible image problem”, put to him by Channel 4 News’ Jonathan Rugman, said: “Well on this issue we have a fundamental difference. In your country, you do no execute people, we respect it. In our country the death penalty is part of our laws and you have to respect this as it is the law, part of the law, in the United States and other countries.”

    • A Few Keystrokes Could Solve the Crime. Would You Press Enter?

      The discovery would surely help in the prosecution of the laptop’s owner, tying him to the crime. But a junior prosecutor has a further idea. The private document was likely shared among other conspirators, some of whom are still on the run or unknown entirely. Surely Google has the ability to run a search of all Gmail inboxes, outboxes, and message drafts folders, plus Google Drive cloud storage, to see if any of its 900 million users are currently in possession of that exact document. If Google could be persuaded or ordered to run the search, it could generate a list of only those Google accounts possessing the precise file — and all other Google users would remain undisturbed, except for the briefest of computerized “touches” on their accounts to see if the file reposed there.

  • Internet/Net Neutrality

    • Why Americans Should Pay Attention to What Facebook Is Doing in India

      If you live in India, or happen to have visited in the past month, you probably noticed the seemingly-ubiquitous advertising for something called Free Basics. It’s what you might call a full-court press: full-page ads in newspapers, billboards, and movie theater trailers. Also, if you were to log into Facebook, you’d be presented with an ad (and possibly if you were in the US, too).

      The first thing to understand is that Free Basics is Facebook, and Facebook is Free Basics, and they’re both basically Internet.org. Perhaps more accurately, if expressed in matryoshka dolls, Free Basics is inside Internet.org which is inside Facebook. First, Facebook launched the Internet.org initiative, which covers various projects aimed at spreading internet access to developing countries. One of the first projects was a free service that offers limited access to the internet, including ad-free Facebook and other sites. Then, in September, Facebook rebranded that service from Internet.org to Free Basics.

    • outrageous roaming fees

      Unexpected roaming fees are the worst. You’re just cruising along, having a jolly old time, and then boom. $20 per megabyte??? Should have read the fine print. Of course, if you had known to read the fine print, you probably would have already known about the roaming fees, and therefore not needed to read the fine print. And so it goes, in life and in ssh.

      What, ssh has roaming??? Should have read the fine print. The Qualys Security Advisory is more than thorough. Now that we’ve read the fine print, what can we do differently?

    • ‘Poor internet for poor people’: India’s activists fight Facebook connection plan

      India is having its internet uprising, and many western activists can’t figure out what to do about it.

      Since the spring of 2015, Indian activists have built ferocious momentum against Facebook’s bid to take charge of the nation’s internet through a program called Free Basics.

      Formerly called “Internet Zero,” Free Basics’s pitch has been: we’ll get “the next billion internet users” (that is, poor people in developing nations) connected by cutting deals with local phone companies. Under these deals, there will be no charge for accessing the services we hand-pick. We will define the internet experience for these technologically unsophisticated people, with our products at the centre and no competition. It’s philanthropy!

  • DRM

  • Intellectual Monopolies

    • Trademarks

      • Yosemite to Rename Several Iconic Places

        Can a private company trademark public property? That’s the question the feds are scrambling to answer after a longtime concessionaire in Yosemite claimed rights to the names of some of the park’s most iconic locations.

    • Copyrights

      • Summary of ‘Cinematic Bricoleurs’ Remix Conference, King’s College, London (Jan.2016)

        After tea, a panel was assembled for a Q&A session, featuring Prof. Charlotte Wealde, Julia Reda (Pirate Party MEP), Elizabeth Gibson (BBC), Richard Misek, Dan Herbert and myself, chaired by Helen Kennedy. The focus of the panel was ‘the currently shifting sands of territory specific intellectual property legislation, set against the wider backdrop of the global digital economy.’ Each panelist discussed their own position in relation to this issue, as well as suggesting where the leading edge is in terms of influencing changes to current IP legislation and what needs to happen to make those changes. From the floor, questions were fielded in relation to the identity and personality of the author with regard to moral rights and individual self-expression, as well as the challenge of identifying the most important issues and problems in this debate. Some of the answers yielded genuine insights, such as when Julia Reda described how recent attempts to change the EUCD to allow greater freedoms for transformative works were met with great resistance, on the grounds that such exemptions would only serve to benefit large US tech companies. It was suggested that the gathering of evidence and lots of different examples of remix should be prioritized to assist with the changing of copyright legislation and to support the case for such changes. A number of times during the discussion, reference was made to Christian Marclay and especially his found footage work ‘The Clock’ (2010), which was hailed as a superb example of the form.

      • Croatian cake pirates threatened with lawsuits

        As Harlan Ellison once said about Disney, “Nobody fucks with The Mouse.” Even if you live in Zagreb, Croatia, the long hand of The Mouse can reach in and change your birthday party plans. That’s what several bakers in Zagreb discovered when they received cease-and-desist letters warning them to stop making cakes featuring popular Disney characters from Star Wars, Frozen, and more.

        According to Croatian paper Jutarnji, the letters came from a law firm representing the Zagreb chain Fun Cake Factory, which has an exclusive license to make Disney-themed cakes via its partnership with British confectioner Finsbury Food Group. Ana Marcelić, a local Zagreb confectioner who received one of the cease-and-desist letters, told the paper it would be a “huge loss” for her financially and difficult to explain to customers requesting Disney-themed cakes.

      • Pastry Shops Targeted Over Copyright Infringing “Star Wars” and “Minion” Cakes

        Pastry shops in Croatia are receiving legal threats over their use of popular cartoon and movie characters on children’s birthday cakes. Baking cakes with a Star Wars or Minions theme is off-limits, as a local pastry chain has secured the rights from copyright owners.

      • Don’t Terrorize The Public Over Piracy, Putin’s Adviser Says

        The man just appointed as Vladimir Putin’s key adviser on Internet related affairs has suggested that copyright holders should consider the state of the economy before being aggressive with the public. Speaking on local TV, Herman Klimenko says the time is not right for “terrorizing” citizens over piracy.

01.16.16

Masivas Protestas en la OEP Después que el Equipo Battistelli Despide a Críticos y Representates de su Unión (Incluso aquellos con Niños)

Posted in Europe, Patents at 8:10 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

English/Original

Publicado in Europe, Patents at 3:46 pm por el Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Despidiendo a los mensajeros/testigos en vez que a la parte culpable

Sepp Blatterstelli

Sumario: El equipo Battistelli (o Blatterstelli como Florian Müller lo llama) termina de botar del trabajo a aquellos que hablaron acerca de ABUSOS en la cumbre (Equipo Battistelli), en vez de desmantelarse a sí mismo.

Los MALEANTES que gobiernan la OEP (comparado a famosos criminales en televisión, incluyendo el Chapo Guzmán quien recientemente ha sido arrestado) han hecho todo lo que preveíamos. Despidieron a representantes de sus empleados. Esto viniendo de sociópatas cuyo régimen ha llevado a un incremento en el número de suicidios. La gerencia de hoy esta causando depresión, dañando la salud/bienestar de los empleados, crisis nerviosas, suicidios son inevitables. Periodistas deberían mirar en la vigilancia telefónica, keyloggers e camaras escondidas dentro de la OEP (vigilando incluso a los visitantes no sólo empleados) ¿Qué clase de atmósfera es esta? ¿Cuánta gente más tiene que morir antes de que el cambio se haga efectivo? La OEP está PODRIDA hasta el fondo en la gerencia quienes se estan deshaciendo de aquellos quienes lo dicen, obviamente para preservar sus propios trabajos. Esto no es la FIFA. Es algo mucho peor. Gente esta muerta. Pero por que sus objetivos son patentes (concepto que no mucha gente entiende correctamente) en vez de futbol no hay suficiente interes por los medios de comunicación principales, para bienestar de Pinocho Battistelli y compañía.

“Esto no es la FIFA es mucho peor. La gente esta muriendo.”Hay mucho que decir acerca de lo que la gerencia de la OEP hizo hoy. No alcanzará en un simple artículo, como no es una simple historia corta y no ha finalizado. Esperaran que despidiendo empleados lo terminaría todo, pero vamos a probarle lo contrario. El efecto Streisand (silenciar a los mensajeros) significa que el efecto imprevisible hizo la acción (despedir) menos digna y mas que inversamente proporcional en fuerza. Mucha información esta en camino, así que no se vayan.

Como muchos sitios importantes han cubierto estas noticias (Viernes es una oportunidad para leer las malas noticias del día) vamos a confíar en más voces anonimas. La corta historia es, la gerencia de la OEP confirmó lo que era obvio desde hace mucho. Sólo puede hacer simulación de juicios. Para hacerlo peor, la OEP esta tratando de abiertamente defenderlos.

“Bienvenidos a Eponia. Es mucho peor que la Rusia de Putin en términos de derechos humanos.”La SUEPO escribió esta tarde que ¨IPKAT reportó el resultado de las procedimientos disciplinarios contra tres de los representantes de empleados/representantes en su unión.¨ Aquí esta lo que Merpel escribió: ¨Con mucho pesar, Merpel reporta que se han enterado que Mr. Battistelli, Presidente del la OEP, ha despedido ala presente presidante de comité Elizabeth Hardon, y a un ex-presidente de representantes, Ion Brumme. El tesorero de la SUEPO Malik Weaver ha sido bajada de grado. Los cargos en contra de los que Merpel ha sabido (vealo aquí []) parecían tenuos al punto de ser desechados, y en los tres casos había una sanción impuesta en la pensión no sugerida por el Comité Disciplinario, en el caso de Ion Brummen bajar de grado era recomendado en vez de despedirlo, y en el caso de Malika Weaver suspensión de avanze no bajarla de grado.¨

Muchos comentarios estan publicados allí ahora mismo. Si alguien pudiera enviarnos Battistelli comunicaciones (acerca de los despidos de personas que se ´atrevierón´ a hablar des su ABUSO), sería asombroso. Tenemos nuevos documentes acerca de esto. OEP fuentes están advertidos no usar Gmail al menos lo hagan sobre Tor. No hemos comprometido nuestras fuentes en cerca de una décado y deseamos mantenerlo de esa manera.

Debería notarse que basado en nuestras fuente, el personal de la OEP despedido antes de fecha (haciendo una imitación de juicio una farsa/verguenza), en un esfuerzo de reducir la habilidad de responder (tarde/temprano los Viernes es tiempo perfecto).

“Debería notarse que basado en nuestras fuente, el personal de la OEP despedido antes de fecha (haciendo una imitación de juicio una farsa/verguenza), en un esfuerzo de reducir la habilidad de responder (tarde/temprano los Viernes es tiempo perfecto).”Navegando a través de algunos comentarios en IP Kat, encontramos una voz pro-OEP (anonima por supuesto) y el resto esta muy enojado. Una persona escribió: ¨Un comunicado del presidente ha sido circulado internamente. En el fuimos informados que ¨ninguno de los [despedidos o suspendidos representantes] reconocierón sus ´errores´, tampoco expresaron su intención de no repetirlos¨. Son culpables, y ni siquiera lo admiten. Esta gente es incorregible. Que bonita pieza de PROPAGANDA STALINISTA.¨

Si, esto sigue mucho a lo que vimos antes. No hay gobierno de ley dentro de la OEP. Asumir lo contrario es necio.

Otra persona preguntó: ¿Hay alguna manera de deshacerse de Pinocho Battistelli? Es una VERGUENZA para toda la comunidad de patentes [...] una VERGUENZA para la OEP y una VERGUENZA para el pueblo Francés. Deberíamos comenzar a circular una ¨petición¨ para su despido de la OEP. Estamos en una democracia, ¿no es cierto? (excepto en al OEP aparentemente).

Acerca de Pinocho Battistelli una persona remarcó: ¨Si, me gustó la cara hinchada del presidente. Que tal farsa, y que INCORREGIBLE MENTIROSO ES. Día muy triste para la Oficina, de la que estaba orgulloso de trabajar, pero no más. Simplemente orando que mi director no me haga ¨voluntario¨ para reunirme con el en su último esfuerzo propagándistico.¨

Una persona aludió a oficiales británicos preguntando: ¨¿Señores Aly y Denehey, cuándo van a despertar y hacer algo? Por favor!¨

Contacte John Alty y a sus colegas acerca del abuso de Battistelli y sus maleantes en contra mía. Estos COBARDES ni siquiera respondieron.

Otra persona preguntó: ¨¿Dónde esta la voz de los delegados del Reino Unido? Aqui esta el comentarion entero:

Ha sido reportado que los delegados alemanes, franceses y holandeses hablaron en el último meeting para expresar su preocupación acerca de la ¨situación social¨ y las acciones de la OEP contra los representantes de la SUEPO. ¿Dónde estaba la voz de los delegados del Reino Unido? ¿Porqué no alzaron su voz de preocupación? No pueden clamar no haber sido conscientes de lo serios fundamentos de preocupación.

Como Brítanico mismo, estoy AVERGONZADO por la aparente complicidad de la delegacion del Reino Unido al haber permitido que esto pase. Mientras que no delegación por sí misma tiene poder de vencer la voluntad de la mayoría, seguramente incluso Pinocho Battistelli podría resistir oposición concertada de los delegados de los 4 países cumbre.

Mientras que los representantes de la SUEPO puedan o no puedan ser más blanqueados, no es difícil ver que los cargos en contra de ellos no hubieran pasado ante una competente corte. Encuentro irónicao que parte (si no el núcleo de) los cargos en contra se basaban un un referencia a provisiones de la ley alemana. No sólo no había nadie en el comite disciplianrio competente para decretar en puntos de leyes nacionales alemans, pero los representantes de la SUEP fueron incapaces de basarse en las protecciones que la ley nacional les ofrecería!

Francamente, estoy disgustado que el dinero de los aplicantes se desperdicie en este mamarraco – y no sólo el desperdicio empeora por la realidad que el presidente ni siquiera siguió las recomendaciones del DC!

Predijo que la ausencia de respeto por la democracia y el gobierno de ley es tan evidente por los recientes eventes en la OEP van a tener desagradables consequencias. Sin embargo, mi temor es quen ninguna de ellas alcazará a aquellos que se escudan detrás de la inmunidad. ¿Tal vez sea tiemp que la AC levante esa inmunidad?

Aquí viene la comparación con la FIFA de nuevo. Esta persona escribio: ¨La barra a la que el presidente se reporta tiene que hacer algo. Este sujeto esta fuera de control. La FIFa estará buscando por nuevo lider pronto, talvez pueda asumir este rol donde hará menos daño a la reputación de la profesión de patentes en Europa. Mientras tanto aplicantes y examinadores sufren.¨

Si la gerencia de la OEP o equipo Battistelli piensa que acallará a sus críticos al despedir representantes, están muy equivocados. Abrió la caja de Pandora y la dejó abierta. ¨Parece qu la reputación de la OEP y de la AC esta arrastrada en el barro,¨ este comentario dijo. Urgimos a la gente a contactar sus delegados y hemos publicados sus detalles para hacerlo.

Un crítico que no respondio anonimamente (tuvo huevos) es George Brock-Nannested, quien ha escrito reportes my detallados acerca de los abusos de la OEP. Hoy el escribio:

Espere que la administración de Battistelli hubiera salvado su cara al hacer que los cargos caigan.

No puedo entender como una educación francesa pueda traer tal escándalosa manera de manejar un juicio justo.

Verguenza para los pequeños servidores públicos en los estados miembros que tienen que sentarse en sus manos. Directores en general, la mayoría pero con moral estamina de lombrices.

En completo disgusto,

Stefan Krempl, a Heise esritor (Germany’s biggest online IT newspaper), escribió acerca de los despidos pero necesitamos una traducción al Ingles/Español (voluntarios muchas gracias).

“En más de una década escribiendo acerca de estas materias nunca he encontrado maleantes que puedan salirse con la suy de esta manera.”Consideren este comentario que dijo: “Necesitamos una más coordinada estrategia europea para deshacernos de este PERNICIOSO presidente, que esta dañanado a la OEP, sus empleados y la industria european. Estoy ansioso de saber que puedo hacer on my país miembro para alcazar esto. Una cosa que me asombra es que al leer en algun lugar en una publicación de la SUEPO pueda ser que enjuicie a mi gobierno directamente por complicidad en negarme mis derechos, ejemplo el derecho de ser representado por una Unión, el derecho de un juicio justo, etc, entre las lines del caso holándes. Si casos así fuesen comenzados en cada país miembro, entonces nuestro miembros de AC despertarían.¨

Esto es un REYNO DE TERROR y como alguien comentó: ¨Deberían explicar que Pinocho Battistelli demandó que cada directorado envié 5 examinadores a una presentación del mismo a ser transmitida a través de la oficina el 4 de Febrero en The Hague (una para seguir en Munich). Preguntas pueden ser permitidas pero ¿Quién se atreverá si arriesgan su empleo?

Miren cuan ridículas e hipócritas acusaciones de la OEP contra los representantes de sus empleados. El juicio de imitación contra el señor Hardon muestra que ni siquiera bajo la ley – o reglas los empleados están a salvo. Recuerden como la OEP torció la ley británica de difamacion en un fallido esfuerzo de silenciar Techrights, habiendo hecho cosas similares anteriormente. La OEP tiene un larga historia de usar mal or representar mal para atacar a sus críticos. Estas personas son MALEANTES. Repetimos eso para asegurarno que se entiende. ESTA GENTE SON MALEANTES. En más de una década escribiendo acerca de estas materias nunca he encontrado MALEANTES quienes se salgan con la suya por mucho tiempo como estos.

“¿Entonces en qué clase de trampa la gente se a dejado atrapar cuándo se unieron a la OEP?”¨Soy un simple observador a estos eventes,¨ escribió esta persona, ¨pero me apostaría que todo esto ba a salirles por la culata a Pinocho Battistelli y sus chacales. SUEPO tiene ahora más de una causa que nunca para tener empleados amargados o asustados pare rodearse de. Sus números atendiendo las demostraciones y tomando parte de futuras huelgas crecerá de ahora en adelante.

¨Entonces de nuevo talvez esto era el plan de Pinocho Battistelli. En sus ojos, la SUEPO no será un socio negociador en vista de estas demostraciones. Hey presto! Una excusa para finalmente acabar el ¨diálogo social¨ en el que la gerencia esta (presupuestamente) comprometida, a pesar de todas las acciones y anuncios hasta ahora muestra tal ´compromiso´ es FALSO.¨

Otro comentario decia: ¨Pudieron lso SerRegs (o alguién más) haber prevenido a el ahora ex-empleados que hablen la verdad? Como ya no són empleados de la oficina, talvez es tiempo para que los detalles de su lado de la historia salga a la luz. La OEP no tiene ningún poder sobre ellos. Disclosura completa de toda evidencia documentaria pueda mover más de los complacientes delegados AC en acción.¨

¨La oficina paga sus pensiones,¨ un persona añadió, ¨y pienso puede forzar más de un 20% de penalización si es tan maligno. Y PB quiere el derecho de vetar futuro trabajo. Temo que su voluntar de hacer daño no ha sido llevada por completo.¨

¿Entonces en qué clase de trampa la gente se a dejado atrapar cuándo se unieron a la OEP? Hay necesidad de que haya una advertencia en la lata. Uno de los últimos comentarios (hasta ahora) pregunta: ¿Por favor algún franco-hablante pueda informar lo que esta pasando aquí al señor Pierre-Yves Le Borgn?¨

Un montón de este reporte de Merpel puede ser trackeado a estos dos comentarios [1, 2] que dicen ¨Hardon también pierde 20% de su pensión. Empleados protestando a 12:30 (y en The Hague tambien aparentemente). Triste día.¨

“Pinocho Battistelli y sus chacales deberían recordarnos que la FIFA es NADA or a nimiedad comparado con la OEP. pero hay ENCUBRIMIENTE de parte de los medios de comunicación.”¨La señorita Elizabeth Hardon ha sido despedida,¨ dice el segundo comentario. ¨De los otros dos representantes de empleados suspendidos, uno con tres niños, uno de ellos todavía bebe) han sido despedidos también, los otros severamente bajados de cargo.¨

Pinocho Battistelli y sus chacales deberían recordarnos que la FIFA es NADA or a nimiedad comparado con la OEP. pero hay ENCUBRIMIENTE de parte de los medios de comunicación. Como una persona lo puso, un estreno en el mundo internacional bajo ¨liderazgo¨ fránces¨…

Hay muchos asuntos en la OEP otros que la destrucción de su unión. Regresaremos a ellos otro día. Otra OEP patente, por ejemplo, ha sido otorgada para AYUDAR A CONSERVAR UN MONOPOLIO EN EL TRATAMIENTO DEL CANCER, basado en comunicados de prensa [1, 2].

“Vale notar que la OEP es tan ABUSIVA que no sólo despide a sus empleados pero también reduce pensiones (ganadas con tanto esfuerzo).”Estas burlas de juicio contra sus empleados son preocupantes por que suceden en Europa (con gran impunidad), entonces Europa pierde su autoridad moral, ejemplo sobre Rusia. Vale notar que la OEP es tan ABUSIVA que no sólo despide a sus empleados pero también reduce pensiones (ganadas con tanto esfuerzo). Estan robando dinero despues de causar serias perdidas personales en términos de honorarios legales. ¿Europa o China? Difícil de adivinar… y miren donde Battistelli viaja estos días.

Hubo una protesta hoy (espotánea/inesperada) en la OEP en Munich y otros lugares, con detalles a ser publicados pronto (siguiente parte ojalá). ¨Oficina Europea de Patentes Munich,¨ una persona escribió iba a tener una demostracion en frente de ella hoy, dentro de 2 horas. Vocero de la policía confirma hubieron 1,800 manifestantes!¨

Dos horas es buen tiempo de respuesta. Es espontáneo. Muy corto tiempo para 1,800 examinadores/participanes (es la mitad de ellos) para organizar en frente de estas alarmantes noticias [1, 2].

La OEP no ha dicho nada acerca de esto publicamente. La OEP Twitter account invita a hacer preguntas hoy, así que les pregunté: ¿Why Pinocho Battistelli despidió a sus críticos hoy?¨ La gerencia de la OEP nunca habla conmigo excepto a traves de sus agresivos abogados. Mientras apróximadamente 2000 de los empleados de la OEP protestaban en su contra (figurativamente asqueados de su directiva) la última campaña de relaciones públicas comienza. ¿Es parte del arreglo con FTI Consultants?. AVERGUENZATE OEP. Esto no ha acabado Pinocho Battistelli simplemente se esta haciendo de más enemigos. █

La OEP Está Manufacturando Propaganda de Nuevo Publicando Engañosas Figuras a los Medios de Comunicación

Posted in Europe, Patents at 2:24 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Original/English

Publicado en Europe, Patents at 5:45 am por el Dr. Roy Schestowitz

“La última cosa un partido político deja es su vocabulario.”

–Alexis de Tocqueville

Battistelli with Scud

Sumario: La OEP, ahora ayudada por agentes de relaciónes públicas de FTI Consulting (con un presupuesto de cerca $100,000 dolares por mes), continúa engañado a los medios de comunicación y pretendiendo que todo esta bien, e incluso mejorando.

La Oficina ¨Europea¨ de Patentes (no realmente europea pero basada en Europa y manejada desde los Estados Unidos) no tiene nada bueno que decir excepto ¨piensa en los niños¨ (si son los niños europeos sin futuro) [1, 2] y más maquillaje verde (publicado en promedio una vez cada dos días todavía, la última vez hace dos horas, junto a otros temas recurrentes en Twitter).

Los forums de la SUEPO son (o fuerón, antes del colapso de su unión) mucho más activos que los forums de la propia OEP, los cuales la gerencia de la EPO quiere que la gente use (soporte de masas). Más adelante en el mes o el próxim mostraremos cuan ridículo ¨soporte¨ la OEP realmente tiene (todavía tenemos muchas historias en camino.)

“Algúnos de los números usados en el anuncio fueron expuestos aquí anteriormente.”Ayer la OEP hizo una declaración que tiene muchas fallas. Fue escrita por la OEP o la FTI Consulting (trato oscuro) ayudó a escribir esta tontería?

Benoît Battistelli es citado diciendo: ¨Las reformas internas que hemos iniciado para incrementar la eficiencia de la organización estan dando resultado.¨ Se está refiriendo a sus esfuerzos por DESMANTELAR su unión y aterrar a sus empleados?

Algúnos de los números usados en el anuncio fueron expuestos aquí anteriormente. Grotesco abuso de las estadísticas es una forma de arte. Como una persona familiar con estos números nos dijo hace algunos meses: ¨Este truco estúpido fue tratado vez tras vez el año pasado en diferentes blogs. El número es casi la mitad de ese. No quiero ir en un curso de leyes de patentes, pero en pocas palabras una larga parte de esas aplicaciones nunca llega a la puerta de la OEP.¨

“Basado en lo que hemos escuchado, ningún abogado de patentes o aplicantes de patentes está feliz con la OEP.”No hay duda, dado lo que sabemos y hemos escuchado, la OEP esta arrimándonos esta tontería a un montón de periodistas, esperando por repetición libre de criticismo o libre de facts.

Basado en lo que hemos escuchado, ningún abogado de patentes o aplicantes de patentes está feliz con la OEP. Se están quejando.Algunos abogados de patentes, aquellos que han estado promoviendo patentes de software en Europa (por que están teniéndo GANANCIAS por ello) pueden sentir como que las cosas han mejorado ahora que Alemania ignora la EPC y defiende las patentes de software, pero ellos están en minoría. En este caso particular, el autor ha estado haciendo esto hace tiempo (promoviendo patentes de software) y esta visitando la OEP en Munich estos días. █

Transparencia es Luz del Sol en el Reino de los Vampiros de la OEP

Posted in Europe, Patents at 1:55 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

English/Original

Publicado en Europe, Patents at 12:30 pm por el Dr. Roy Schestowitz

La Justicia requiere transparencia, not oscuridad

EPO Dracula

Sumario: Derramando luz en la manera que los gerentes de los cuárteles de la OEP en Munich tratan de SILENCIAR sus críticos, disparar a los mensajeros, evitando cualquier revelación de sus malévolos actos y potencialmente disparándo (despido potencial).

El macábro Benoit Battisteli orgullosamente proclamó hoy (mencionó hace una hora por la OEP en Twitter) que hay ¨niveles de transparencia unprecedentes¨. Uno tiene que estar completamente desinfomado para creer a Pinocho Battisteli.

La gerencia de la OEP no ha cesado de ATACAR LAS UNIONES, como hicimos muy claro al principio de esta semana. Simplemente hay más ENCUBRIMIENTO. La gerencia o el Equipo de Pinocho Battistelli en Munich, muestra extremada HIPOCRECÍA ya que aperentemente es OK para la gerencia ´gotear´ información acerca de ´investigaciones´ a miembros de la barra (jueces) per no por miembros ordinarios de sus empleados hacer lo mismo. La OEP simplemente trata de controlar la narrativa (mecer al público) y sólo los ad hominem ataques de la OEP contra los acusados son considerados aceptables. Comentarios reaccionarios acerca de los acusadores son considerados traidores. ¿Qué clase de institución la OEP se ha convertido y cómo puede esperar ganarse el respeto de la gente que alguna vez tuvo?

“¿Qué clase de institución la OEP se ha convertido y cómo puede esperar ganarse el respeto de la gente que alguna vez tuvo?”Hace muchas semanas escribimos acerca del cubrimiento de los medios de comunicacion que era muy crítico del tratamiento de la OEP hacia los jueces (vean la traducción de JUVE de Techrights acerca de la gerencia de la OEP y Pinocho Battistelli) SUEPO tiene un nueva traducción (no la misma) en Inglés [PDF] y otros lenguajes. Para citar al sitio público, ¨los comenterios de JUVE en la falla del presidente de la OEP Benoit ¨Pinocho¨ Battistelli para promover su proposal de reforma al Jurado de Apelaciones. Traducciones del artículo están al alcanze en Inglés, Frances y Holandes.¨

Como hemos explicado aquí en cerca de una docena de artículos anteriormente, ¨reforma del Jurado de Apelaciones¨ es un EUFEMISMO o está mal llamado por que el objetivo real – dada la reluctancia a llenar posiciones vacantes y la ansiedad de alejarlos (entre otros factores) – es APLASTARLOS. Es acerca de ¨reforma¨ al mismo grado que destruccion de uniones es ¨investigación¨.

En orden de demostral la cacería de brujas de la OEP contra los representantes de la unión de empleados, hemos decidido compartir pedazos de texto y repelirlos con sentido común y entendimiento general de la situación total. Acompañando cada pedazo de texto (o pedazos de texto similares de cartas enviadas a personas diferentes) – mis disculpas a nuestros lectores por no traducirlas por falta de tiempo – están nuestros pensamientos, no los pensamientos de los acusados (a quienes nunca conversamos en alguna manera).

within-less-than-a-week

Tres ejemplos están alineados horizontalmente por motivo de comparación mostrando como tres representantes de la OEP fueron blanco de cartas dentro menos de una semana desde la primera (sólo unos días aparte).

request-of-secrecy

¨Confidencial es suficientemente vergonzoso como si la naturaleza de las alegaciones abajo, ¨Personal¨ es algo engañoso porque, como mostraremos muchas de las mismas cartas fueron enviadas a diferentes personas. No hay nada tan personal acerca de esto. Es casi impersonal. El intento original aqui fue dividir y conquistar, i.e, evitar que la gente se comunique unos con otros, despues aplastarlos una vez que estén aislados. Una vez aíslados están débiles y hace la defensa legal más onerosa sino totalmente prohibitiba, fuera de alcanze, y su efectividad es limitada. Toda solicitud de secretividad necesita justificarse; simplemente poniendo la palabra ¨Confidencial¨ en todo no caberíá ya que muestra paranoia y dá al público razones de sospechas, preoucación y desconfianza. Típicamente crea mala conducta.

Parecen estar usando equipo de oficina antiguo para estampar estas cartas, así que sueños de ir completamente digital/electrónico todavía parece elusivo en los pisos altos de la oficina principal de la OEP.

opening-template

¨Este modelo introductorio (3 cartas) muestra falta de creatividad, ¿no és cierto? Muchas de estas cartas probablemente pueden ser ¨dobladas¨ en una con extra frases especiales, especificas para recipientes individuales. La persona que las hizo era muy floja o perezosa que una señora fue referida en una carta como ¨Señor¨.

suepo-signup

Enrolarse en la SUEPO es un blanco, ¿porqué? ¿Será porqué un masivo número de nuevos empleados ha decido unirse? ¿Alguién se está sintiendo amenazado? ¿Cómo todo este tiempo la gerencia de la OEP no tuvo problemas con enrolamientos en la SUEPO? ¿Se nécesita tomar ejemplos de 3 años atrás para repéntinamente decir que está mal unirse a la SUEPO? Esta clase de retroceso de 2 años (e incluso más atrás) muestra que la OEP está completamente DESESPERADA por TIRAR BARRO a convenientemente CHIVOS EXPIATORIOS que – simplemente como la Stasi en Alemania Oriental – esta ahora ´disparando´ los archivos (vigilancia masiva) y escaneando los estantes por pretextos y justificaciones retroactivas. Incluso busca informantes con algo de carácter-asesino, ´embarrar´ que pueda reconstruirse de varios años atrás. Es lo que algunos llaman ¨raspar el fondo del barril.¨

repetition-of-allegation

Aqui tenemos repetición de un alegato y el apelamiento a ¨legalidad¨, la que viniendo de la boca de la OEP (despues de desconsiderar lo que es legal o ilegal) – es reíble.

threatening-staff-and-redefining-or-reframing-rules

Aqui estan AMENAZANDO a los empleados y redefiniendo la reglas para dar pie a las acusaciones.

epo-pretends-that-it-finally-cares-about-EU-law-and-host-states

Ahora la OEP pretende – de nuevo! – que finalmente le importa las leyes de la Unión Europe y los estados asociados. Esto es cómico. Es como si la OEP torciera la ley del Reino Unido para SILENCIAR A LOS CRÍTICOS. La OEP gusta de las leyes de los estados asociados sólo cuando sirve a los objetivos de sus perversa gerencia.

lutz-et-al-appealing-to-German-law

Aqui tenemos a Lutz y otros (probablemente apelando a las leyes alemanas, lo que es divertido dado a lo que todo se ha estado diciendo acerca de Lutz con su bizarra interpretación de las leyes alemanas (que se supone entiende). Fue Lutz quien puso su nombre en los notories ¨derechos¨ frase – controversial memorandum interno que sirvió como preludio a suspensiones afectando a la SUEPO.

hypocritcal-EPO-says-it-cares-for-freedom-of-communication

Aqui podemos ver una muy hipocrítica OEP. Dice que le importa la libertad de communicación. Bueno, todos debemos preguntar por que amenaza a bloggers y amordaza a sus empleados, empujando a muchas personas al anonimato y uso de seudónimos (para su propia protección). Esta no es la primera vez que la OEP pretende que le importa al libertad de expresión, privacidad y lo demás. Estos son disparos en el pie por que la gente que dice estas cosas a favor de la OEP se expone al rídiculo por su hipocresía infinita.

hypocritcal-EPO-nitpciking-on-secrecy-while-ignoring-risk-of-reprisal-from-aggressive-EPO

La hipocrítica OEP está ahora minimizando encubiertamente mientras ignorantemente arriesga las represalias de un infame agresiva OEP.

EPO-pretends-to-care-for-national-law

La OEP pretende importarle las leyes nacionales de nuevo? Selectivo a lo mejor, patético por lo menos.

EPO-which-disregards-courts-orders-and-abuses-a-lot-of-staff-pretends-to-speak-for-justice

Así que la OEP, una institución que le importa un bledo las órdenes de la corte y abusa de sus empleados (con continuos ILO casos), pretende hablar por justicia. Es como si BP hable por el medio ambiente y clima y Microsoft hable de Linux.

EPO-refuses-to-tolerate-lawsuits-against-EPO

La OEP rechaza tolerar jucios en contra de ellos. Gran sorpresa aquí. Habiendo eliminado lo que quedaba de supervisión. Pinocho Battistelli aplasta cualquiera que desafíe su tiranía. Esa es la marca especial de los imperios. Sólo desobediencia civil o interferencia de afuera puede poner un fin a eso.

hypocritcal-EPO-talks-about-standards-and-accuses-legitimate-critics

La hipocrítica OEP habla acerca de estádares y acusa críticos legítimos. Tiene ellos espejos el el edificio de la OEP en Munich? (especialmente en los pisos altos)? Mejor todavía, consigan estacas y ajo también. Esta gente en la cumbre falla objetivamente evaluar que estan haciendo por años.

hypocritcal-EPO-on-basic-human-rights-respect-principles-of-law-common-sense-accontability-integrity

La hipocrítica OEP resalta básicos derechos humanos, respete, principios de ley, sentido común, acountabilidad, integridad etc. Incluso un oficial borracho sería capaz de darse cuenta de la hipocrecía cuando tipean estas cosas.

vague-accusation-of-negligence

Aquí están las vagas acusaciones de negligencia, como si no importaran que explicación es dada, la OEP acusador (juez etc.) lo rechazará. Esto NO ES JUSTICIA, es un hoja de rechazo.

epic-hypocrisy-on-secrecy-gag-orders

Esto es hipocresía épica en encubrimiento. Mordazas son correctas para la gerencia de la OEP, pero no para los empleados, incluso para su propia protección contra un creciente gerencia ABUSIVA.

EPO-hypocrisy-on-leaking-details-of-ongoing-investigation

La hipocresía de la OEP en gotear detalles de una presente investigación. No los managers de la OEP usaron los medios de comunicación para personalmente atacar a un juez semana después de pagar un millón de dolares a una firma de relaciones públicas? Pinocho Battistelli se esta convirtiendo Sheldon Adelson.

confidential-by-EPO-definition

Esto es sólo confidencial para la gerencia de la OEP. Su motivacion por confidencialidad is para hacerse favores a sí mismos. Cualquiera con sentido común se da cuenta de eso.

declaring-opposing-views-invalid-and-disregarding-them-completely

Miren como ellos arrogántemente rechazan la existencia de más de una parte en este ´juicio de imitación´, declarando puntos de vistas opuestos inválidos e ignorandolos completamente. Eso es ARROGANCIA y DECLARARSE SANTOS.

EPO-talks-about-intergrity-and-ignores-its-own-sins-of-compromising-an-investigation-with-Dutch-and-German-media

La OEP habla de integridad e ignora sus propios pecados de comprometerse a una investigación con los medios de Holanda y Alemania. Es un recurrente tema de hipocresía y dobles estándares.

painting-bullyish-investigators-as-the-victims

Reláciones Públicas empleadas, pintando a investigadores abusivos [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7] presentados como víctimas.

representation-is-incorrect-because-we-say-so

La arrogancia se muestra de nuevo. La representación está incorrecta por que nosotros los decimos? Qué clase de justicia es esta?

EPO-management-pretends-to-guard-privacy-of-low-level-workers-rather-than-protect-itself-from-accountability

La gerencia de la OEP pretende guardar encubrir a trabajadores de bajo nivel que protegerse a sí mismo de fiscalización (y potencialmente de un juicio).

EPO-guards-secrecy-of-in-house-Stasi-and-pretends-blowing-this-cover-exposes-identity-of-poor-victims

La OEP guarda la clándestinidad de su interna Stasi y pretende que soplando esta cubiérta expondría la identidad de sus pobres victimas. ¨Piensen en los niños…¨

Panicking-that-other-offices-become-aware-of-antics-of-EPO-Munich-management

¿Asústados de que las otras oficinas se enteren de las andánzas de la gerencia de OEP en Munich? ¿Es eso todo? Seguro que suena como información saliendo a la luz, es el enemigo, no la gente.

EPO-Munich-management-panics-that-the-public-knows-what-is-happening-and-things-got-out-of-hand

La gerencia de la OEP evidentemente esta paranóica de que el pueblo conozca lo que esta pasando y las cosas terminen fuera de control.

We-hereby-declare-a-gag-order-because-what-we-do-here-is-embarassing

Esto nuevamente es el modus operandi de la OEP, mantener al público, sus empleados y sus representantes en tinieblas. HE AQUÍ DECLARAMOS LA LEY DE LA MORDAZA POR QUE LO QUE HACEMOS ES VERGONZOSO…

Así que aquí lo tenemos. Is más fácil para la gente ver la verdadera naturaleza de las alegaciones. Viéndolo en contexto, hay suficiente hipocresía, un bajo estandard y mucha manipulación por una cada vez más paranóica gerencia de OEP. █

“La verdad nunca causa daño a una causa que es justa.”

–Mahatma Gandhi

PS – La verdad nunca causa daño a causas justas, pero la verdad le importa un bledo a Pinocho Battistelli. Sus únicos intereses son mantener su tiranía para servir mejor a los intereses de las corporaciones multinacionales. La próxima semana va a Colombia a diseminar su maraña de mentiras para asi someter otro continente a los intereses de una oligarquía multinacional y joder a las próximas generaciones de este hermoso continente.

Summarising the Latest Attacks by the European Patent Office (EPO) on European Society, With Complicity of Corporate Media

Posted in Europe at 12:15 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

FocusSummary: Another extensive analysis of recent events and criticism of puff pieces from corporate media such as Focus, which now acts more like a ‘media partner’ of the EPO

THE EPO attacks not only staff, applicants, politicians, delegates, lawyers, bloggers and so on. It attacks the whole of Europe. It doesn’t act like a European body at all. It just acts like a clique of figurines whose goal is to best serve multinational corporations, no matter the means, just the goals (even if European laws have to be broken along the way). The figurehead, Battistelli, is very well connected [1, 2, 3, 4, 5], so he can get away with quite a lot of abuses, especially if these abuses cement the power of the powerful. This is why Belgian TV called him "sloeber".

Inside and outside the EPO Battistelli became somewhat of a laughing stock, but nonetheless a dangerous stock. People who are above the law or think they’re above the law (e.g. the CIA) tend to behave erratically, habitually causing people to commit suicide or just resorting to extrajudicial killings (metaphorically or literally).

Battistelli “has brought the EPO in disrepute and has totally ruined the atmosphere,” wrote this person a few hours ago. The full message also mentions Bergot, who is connected to Battistelli [1, 2, 3, 4]:

What is awful is the fact that BB can claim that all his actions are perfectly legal.
That the harassment has not been queried by a member of staff being allegedly harassed, but by Mrs Bergot, the “best” candidate for Head of personal according to her mentor BB, is legal. It is however a blatant misuse of the legal framework.
The disciplinary committee proposes, but the president disposes. He can take any decision he thinks fit. Thus his decision in the matter is legal.
The same goes with the joint/advisory committees. They can propose and the president disposes. In the past the, the General Advisory Committee (GAC) was composed from members of the management (Directors and PD), but when BB came, he put all the VP as members in the GAC.
It was anyway rare that they management representatives gave an opinion which was not along the line wished by the upper management, but it could happen, when the administration went too far. With the present manning, what else can the VP do than rubber stamp the decisions they have agreed to take in the Presidential Committee (That was actually the source of problems with R 19/12 as VP3 was sitting in those 2 instances). This is all perfectly legal, but there again a misuse of the law.
All what BB has done in that respect can only be qualified as misuse of power and of the law. What is done here is not to respect the deep meaning of the law, but to take advantage of it and crush others.
It is high time that this maleficent person and his minions leave the EPO. He has brought the EPO in disrepute and has totally ruined the atmosphere.
In his eyes, he might think to be a good manager, what is even to be doubted. Even as a good manager you do not need to rule by fear.
He is certainly not a leader, making a good case and trying to commit his people to follow him in his visions. BBs vision are limited to reigning as a king, enjoying life and having a court of crawlers and minions sustaining his immoderate ego.
Rumours has it that BB will tour South America at the end of the month, and even go to Cuba. We might thus have even more “validation” states the Morocco and the Republic of Moldova, whereby Tunisia is still to come.

We heard the same rumours. Will there be more UPC lobbying?

“2015 has been a positive year for EPO staff,” Battistelli is quoted as saying (what a ridiculous lie). President Battistelli wrote this in December. A month later he wrote: “In 2015 our Office proved to be more efficient than ever.”

Well, “let’s be honest,” said one person from the EPO. “It is safe to say that this perspective is not shared by many staff. My personal feeling is that, just like for the rest of our poor world, albeit a few promising highlights and shiny figures, 2015 has been a miserable year for the EPO. [...] December finished on a promising note, with the AC giving clear signals to the EPO management that things had to change. Unfortunately, as the quotes [from Battistelli] indicate, the first signs are not optimistic. Here are the reasons why.”

1- At least, the Communication department worked over Xmas

Despite the compulsory closure of the EPO over Christmas, the communication department was active on social media publishing trivia (see for instance 16 (!) posts on the twitter account during said period). It seems they have also been successful in placing an article in a large German national Magazine: the title summarises it all: “This boss pays 7,500 euros per month and has won nothing but trouble”, Focus, 02.01.15.

Let’s simply hope that in 2016 more journalists will actually investigate instead of publishing sanitized one-sided leaflets. As a welcome example see “Nice surprise: President loses support of the Board for Judicial Reform” JUVE, 23.12.15.

We already mentioned the bizarre thing which is EPO PR being active on the holiest of days (for Christians or for people who celebrate the new year, which is practically everyone in Europe). Regarding the puff piece, remember that the EPO spends almost 75,000 euros per month (that's like ten salaries for senior EPO staff) on some dubious reputation laundering campaigns. Examples are given from this puff piece as follows:

selected passages of the Focus article:

1. “Evil Boss harass employees – that is the story that is spread now by the SUEPO people. The story has only one problem: not true.”

2. “However, the biggest problem is the ongoing conflict with the SUEPO UNION. In an internal document from the Internal Audit reports of “defamatory mafia methods against the Office and the President”

The Mafia does not report crimes, it engages in crimes. It’s funny that a 'Mafioso' like Battistelli calls those who report his abuses "Mafia". Criminal charges against Željko Topić serve to defend the narrative of SUEPO, not Battistelli’s. Shame on Focus magazine for publishing such rubbish. Did FTI Consulting make it financially worthwhile? What is the full story here (if any) and what role did the PR team with its secret dirty tricks play this time around? Will this article be hereon cited as ‘proof’ that the EPO’s management (Battistelli and Topić for instance) are just the victims?

To quote further:

Spicy details:

1. The article fails to ask clarification from the mentioned union, let alone report upon its position.

2. The mentioned Internal Audit document is not known to the staff, its representation nor any Staff representative. It cannot be excluded that such document may be part of an confidential procedure. Neither can it be excluded that such leak stem from the highest levels of this organisation.

So once again, as before, the EPO's management shows its sheer hypocrisy by showing what's supposed to remain confidential to the press (as long as the press promises to issue puff pieces, i.e. be the EPO’s courier). It ought to make one wonder what Focus adopted as its business model. This is not journalism, it’s corporate activism (also known as lobbying).

What EPO has been doing so far resembles in many ways what happened in FIFA. To quote this new comment from IP Kat:

Why are the individual members of the AC so supine? Here some thoughts.

Recall the scandals at FIFA. Everybody knew what was wrong, but nobody did anything. It was because Mr Blatter managed the flow of dividends to individual members in such a way that most of them thought Blatter a hero. I wager that most EPC Member States see BB as a hero, for much the same reason. A few days ago I heard somebody say that the flow of money from the EPO is what funds (almost entirely) the entire Justice Ministry of Germany. Think on how such money flows might affect voting at meetings of the EPO’s AC.

Recall that the only thing that disturbed the steady state at FIFA was when the Americans decided to put their boots on. But the USA has no seat on the AC at the EPO. Don’t expect the 5th cavalry riding to the rescue any time soon. Europe has to sort this out on its own.

Why do AC member countries who should know better, and care more, do nothing? Perhaps because thgey cannot get a majority on the AC and so do not want to start a fight with BB that they cannot finish. Read the book on the Dreyfuss Scandal in Paris and see what it took to win against the Establishment in Paris. Seems to me that very little of the French mindset has changed in the intervening 120 years.

Fine words though (about not laying a finger on the SUEPO officers); they don’t cost anything at all. They salve the consciences of the AC members who utter these bold words, allowing them to say to themselves that they did everything possible to defend basic human rights and the Rule of Law.

Misgovernment, mismanagement. Troubles like at the EPO seem to be, these days, in international bodies, endemic, even inevitable. No wonder England wants to get out of the EU. What a pity it lacks today the confidence it used to have, that its legal system, founded on equity (fairness), is a model that ought to commend itself to everywhere else in the world. If it still had such confidence, it would have more “soft power” round the world. In the past, it would have been in permanent intensive dialogue with the other AC Member States, to build a consensus, and then would have spoken up more, at meetings of the AC.

Middle England has been brain-washed by its foreign-owned media, over decades, to be xenophobic. The English press barons want an offshore tax haven that includes London, England. They have most of the English politicians in their pocket (which is why the UK member of the AC says and does nothing). It’s all very sad.

Returning to the aforementioned analysis, we now have this:

2- Almost like father Christmas

In his Communiqué dated 12th of January, the President announces the exceptional bonus promised for achievement of the 2015 targets and production increase of 14%. No doubt will this news be broadcasted to the press as yet another proof of the above mentioned “boss” generousness.

The fact that this communiqué fails to men on the following details is maybe unintentional?:

· The corresponding budgets are financed through much larger savings made by the introduced new EPO career (in particular replacing pension-valid elements with one-off bonuses). So, instead of a “present”, it is at best a redistribution with substantial savings for the EPO.

· The EPO staff is against a bonus system in general and in particular one that divides staff, in particular between alphas vs. betas. Wasn’t the new career supposed to get rid of the division between A vs. B&C? Why should a collective reward for a collective performance distributed differently to staff? And why should an examiner get a larger bonus than a support staff?

· Hearing the almost magic numbers cited (14% production increase, quality over 98%, with a partial decrease of backlog of 66%), one could gain the impression that many still believe in father Christmas…

We have already responded to these figures (last week). We also expressed our certainty that the EPO’s aggressive PR team was trying to compel publishers to repost these claims without any fact-checking, investigation, etc.

Remember one thing: EPO management lies. It lies a lot. It gets caught lying. Why would anyone still believe it? It’s too risky a thing to do.

The last part of the above speaks about the attacks on staff representation. The following was composed before the firings were confirmed:

3- The Union is kindly invited while… its officials are getting tracked, disciplined and most probably fired!

The EPO administration has invited the UnionS to a meeting on the 20th of January. Yes, plural. Both SUEPO, with over 50% of the EPO staff and FFPE, a union whose last election took place in 2011 and unfortunately does not reveal its membership level, (rumoured to be between 10 and 50 members exclusively in the Hague at its creation – but a clarification from FFPE would be welcomed – let alone its election results). In this meeting it is suggested to discuss a Memorandum of Understanding, supposedly leading to the recognition of the UnionS in the EPO.

Such an invitation was already turned down twice by SUEPO in June 2015 as the conditions for such a talk were not given at the me due to the threats and investigation running on its officials. Today, with three officials suspended in Munich and at least one targeted in The Hague, it is hard to believe that such an invitation is genuine. We are eager to find out whether the rumour according to which FFPE would a end the meeting is true.

FFPE made a statement in support of SUEPO once before, but some believe it's a trap. Fracturing and dividing a community (‘divide and rule’ tactics) is a common union-busting or movement-crushing strategy. It’s used a lot against the success of Free/Open Source software (e.g. BSD versus GPL or distro/DE flamewars).

Going back to the text, we have this:

Last but not least, the fact that this meeting is being (invitation came in January the 8th) organised on the very day where a demonstration , the 20th of January in Munich, in support of the suspended SUEPO officials (planned December the 16th) speaks volumes about the EPO administration effective willingness to discuss with this EPO key social partner.

It should be also noted that an Accord Cadre was proposed to the President by SUEPO two years ago. This framework agreement proposal, which is basically the EU agreement adapted to the EPO structure, was proposed again last year. However, it was never commented upon nor could be discussed in substance at any stage of the broadly advertised “Union Recognition Working group”. The same can be said about the recurrent suggestion to ask the help of an independent external Mediators.

Last but not least, while the decision in the disciplinary procedure of the Munich Local Union and Staff Committee Chairman has been postponed by one month, a final showdown of Ms Hardon’s “trial” [...] The decision related to Malika Weaver and Ion Brumme should fall in a similar timeframe.

We know how it ended up and we wrote about this in the following articles (so far):

Comments about these firings are inviting some angry voices (rightly angry), even from stakeholders such as patent lawyers. One person wrote this afternoon that:

And still no meeting under Article 4aEPC.

If the reputations of the EPO, it’s President, and the AC sinking into the mire is not a matter affecting the European patent system and the Organisation, then what is?

If the hoped for launch of the unitary patent is not a matter affecting the European patent system and the Organisation, then what is?

The delay in meeting is God’s gift to the conspiracy nuts, and shows a singular lack of management by, or management of, the managers. A bloody mess like this is the last thing needed before the UK goes into a referendum (I know the EPO is not the EU, but shit sticks to those that throw it, those that receive it, and even those just standing close by).

The principal role of fonctonnaires is to make things function, not spread disfunction. No one is covered in glory by this affair.

Another person wrote:

It occurs to me that the departure of the UK from the EU might suit La Grande Nation very nicely. No more unpleasantness with Germany and the UK seeing issues similarly, and different from France. Instead, France can resume its former role, of lording it over the rest of the EU, spending the EU budget largely harvested from the taxpayer in Germany. BB is working in the national interest, that’s for sure.

The rest of the EU should mull over whether that would be the optimal outcome for their citizens. And then get stuck in, at the EPO-AC (amongst other places).

Regarding the attitude and role of the AC:

So, this is how the President responds to the AC’s provocative rejection of his BoA reforms. It’s the spiteful, vindictive reaction of a playground bully who has been ticked off by a teacher.

The EPO really needs someone who can provide positive leadership.

Contact delegates (i.e. the AC) and urge them to get more actively involved.

About “Battistelli and his cronies” this one comment said:

The EPO staff representatives have been a thorn in the side of Battistelli and his cronies. They have performed sterling work in criticising the various ill-concieved reforms with logical and irrefutable arguments exposing the incompetency of the upper management at the EPO, in particular VP5 Raimund Lutz. The vicious and disproportionate punishment dished out by Battistelli shows how well the staff representatives have done their jobs in exposing him and his inner circle for what they are.

The FFII’s President said a couple of hours ago that the “EPO does not follow the rule of law principle, it has to be abolished” (maybe restructured would be better). Financial strings to assure immunity/impunity have been noted by him when he wrote: “the flow of money from the EPO is what funds (almost entirely) the entire Justice Ministry of Germany” (he said that Germany “could gain my respect back if, in retaliation for the EPO dictatorship, they will refuse to ratify the UPC,” which Battistelli loves more than anybody else).

Anyone who can’t see that the EPO is in a state of crisis (Battistelli’s announcements pretend that everything is great and has never been better) is either brainwashed or self-deluding. Publications and journalists who pretend that this whole scandal is made up should have their integrity scrutinised. They deserve it. These sometimes turn out to have been paid by the EPO (Les Échos for example [1, 2, 3, 4]). █

The EPO “Hearing Was a Mockery.”

Posted in Europe, Patents at 8:58 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Making up only the impression of justice or an appearance of fair trial (where Power always wins)

Sterling and wife

Summary: A closer look at how ‘justice’ is being done inside the European Patent Office (EPO), which is rapidly becoming synonymous with something like lynch mobs or Night of the Long Knives

HAVING just published Hardon's dismissal letter, shown a response from her lawyer, and explained the ludicrous case, we truly hope that readers see just what kind of an intolerable autocracy the EPO really is. No wonder its very own employees protest against it and sign petitions against its decisions. The European Patent Office is a Pariah for a reason. It spends a huge amount of money on PR (manipulating the media) because if more people knew what was going on at the EPO, the general German (and Dutch) public would march with pitchforks towards the Office.

On Friday morning one union leader was dismissed with a 20% cut in pension; another was dismissed and the last one downgraded (8 steps). The allegations are hypocritical and laughable. All with immediate effect, staff representatives are abruptly fired (having been suspended for two months) and if they can get fired, then everyone can. The allegations are rubbish, they are poorly supported (putting a London varnish/veneer on them by hiring CRG isn’t cutting it), and laws were probably broken by the investigator, not the investigated (e.g. illegal spying). Looking closer to what happened in recent days we have the following message, which is rather revealing:

The hearing in my disciplinary procedure took place on 10 December 2015. I was supported by a lawyer. The deadline for submitting our position was 9 December, i.e. the day before the hearing. Our request for postponement of the hearing was refused. Due to the mass of documents (some 800 pages) and the complexity of the case (three disciplinary procedures crammed in one) we were not able to respond any earlier. This left the Disciplinary Committee hardly a day to consider our arguments.

As I informed you in my previous mail, the hearing was a mockery. Although originally foreseen for two half days it was pushed through in just one afternoon. The opinion of the Disciplinary Committee was apparently finalised the day after the hearing, as it is dated 11 December.

I received the opinion on 17 December. I was informed that the opinion had been sent to the President on the same day. Not surprisingly, the Disciplinary Committee recommends my dismissal.

Art. 102 (3) ServRegs foresees that the employee be given an opportunity to be heard before a final decision is taken. After we reminded the administration of the applicable regulations, I was invited to respond to the opinion on 5 January at the latest. [...]

The same Article requires the President to take his decision within a month after receipt of the opinion, i.e. the final decision is due on 16 January at the latest.

Elizabeth Hardon

We still have a lot more to say and we shall soon revisit the case which relates to criminal charges against Željko Topić, the President’s right-hand man. The EPO’s management has opened a jar of warms. So will we. █

“Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.”

–Martin Luther King Jr.

The Witch-hunt Against Elizabeth Hardon Leads Back to Battistelli

Posted in Europe, Patents at 8:17 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

What’s the point appealing inside an autocratic mock trialling system?

Battistelli against Elizabeth Hardon

Summary: A look at who’s behind the dismissal letter sent to Elizabeth Hardon, who repeatedly warned that Battistelli had a vendetta against her

THE CALM which we spoke about some days ago ended with a storm, which puts the EPO under incredible stress right now.

As George Brock-Nannestad put it today, “is a person who is proven to be in blatant disrespect of fundamental human rights still worthy of a public office, such as a “conseiller municipal”?”

“The next batches of disciplinary cases are under preparation in BB’s [Battistelli] shadow,” wrote another person, “almost ready to see the daylight! Instigate, orchestrate and keep on provoking … is the flavour of the day in the EPO!”

There are other cases against staff, but they’re not publicly known yet. SUEPO is just the first in the firing line, as we noted several weeks ago.

“Today was the darkest day in the history of the EPO,” this person wrote today. “The firing of two of the staff representatives and the downgrading of the third are punishments which are in now way commensurate with the alleged misdeeds of the accused. It´s very much like shooting somebody for not having a valid bus ticket.

“To take away somebody´s livelihood because he made public a letter addressed to himself is a sign of a particularly mean and vengeful character.

“The legal proceedings the three staff representatives have been subjected to are cases of institutional harassment that should lead to a strong intervention by the delegates of the AC, an overturning of the decisions and finally, the dismissal of the main culprit, B. Batistelli, who after yesterday´s decision has lost the right to be called a manager (ruthless dictator is now the proper definition). The same applies to Elodie Bergot, his stooge.

“If there is somebody who brought the EPO into disrepute it is Batistelli and his minions. At this stage they cannot even claim a golden handshake. Everyone involded in this travesty of justice should be removed as soon as possible.

“AC, do your job!”

As we have said time after time, they’ll do their job better if people actually contact them.

Today we present the dismissal letter, signed by nobody other than Battistelli himself. Elizabeth Hardon is probably vindicated (proven right) after she said he had been on a personal vendetta against her. It’s overzealous institutional harassment — the very same thing which the I.U. was in principle supposed to combat (it now does the very opposite, in the service and the interests of power [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7]).

We decided to share the letter in HTML/text only, with a rebuttal to follow some time in the future. Elizabeth Hardon’s letter of dismissal is full of hypocrisy and zeal.

D812015 – Final decision under Article 102 (3) ServRegs

Dear Ms Hardon,

I. Introduction

I refer to the disciplinary proceedings initiated against you under Article 93 et seq. ServRegs. In summary, the charges made against you are that you breached:
(i) your obligation not to disclose to unauthorised third persons confidential and personal material internal to the EPO;
(ii) your obligation to abstain from any inappropriate, threatening and harassing statements or conduct towards your colleagues;
(iii) your obligation to co-operate with your employer in the context of an investigative and administrative process, and in particular your obligation to preserve the confidentiality which forms a necessary part of this process.

The Disciplinary Committee held a hearing with your participation on 10.12.2015 and delivered its opinion on 17.12.2015.

Your further comments were submitted to the Office through your legal counsel and received on 05.01.2016.

On the same day you also informed the Office that you did not wish to avail yourself of an oral hearing with Vice-President DG5 and Principal Director 4.3 scheduled for 08.12.2016 designed to give you the opportunity to develop your defence and/or make further representations or submissions under Article 102 (3) ServRegs.

The Disciplinary Committee has found unanimously:

(i) There was substantial evidence on file that you behaved in ways which were incompatible with your duties as a staff member and an elected staff representative by reason of your participation in systematic, destructive attacks upon your employer’s reputation and position in the public’s eye. Of six individual allegations considered separately, four were found valid (paras 46-53).

(ii) There was substantial evidence on file that you behaved in ways which were incompatible with your duties as a staff member and as an elected representative. What you had said and done at meetings of elected staff representatives was highly threatening and was intended to be so (para 69). You further aggravated the original act by subsequent actions during a second such meeting. The DC also noted that the behaviour at the hearing of the Disciplinary Committee was consistent with this assessment (paragraphs 67-69).

(iii) There had been a clear, systematic and deliberate breach of your duties under Circular 342 (Investigation Guidelines) and the rules of confidentiality brought to your attention specifically in the current disciplinary procedure.

The Office notes, therefore, that the majority of the allegations raised against you were found proven.

The Committee concluded, again unanimously, that the breaches evidenced are of such seriousness that dismissal from service according to Article 93 (2) (f) ServRegs can be the only appropriate and proportionate disciplinary measure.

All aspects of the case and all documents available on the file have been carefully and comprehensively considered, including your aforementioned last comments and your submission dated 15.12.2015. The following conclusions have been reached.

II. Procedural considerations

As regards the procedural aspects of the case and your specific formal requests filed during the disciplinary proceedings, the Disciplinary Committee has carefully explained its position. For the lengthy reasons it has provided, its unanimous position is that the procedure bears no formal flaws whatsoever (cf. §§ 11-38 of the opinion).

In this regard, the Office endorses the Committee’s conclusions and wishes to emphasise especially the following:

(i) The participation of Mr McGinley in the Disciplinary Committee does not convey any reasonable impression of bias nor of a conflict of interest. As a long serving member of the EPO management, it is inevitable that Mr McGinley, like

other senior managers, has participated in several meetings with members of the staff representation. In this capacity, he has been called upon to take positions on various matters concerning the Office and its staff. However, this clearly cannot render him unfit, without more, to sit on a Disciplinary Committee convened for the personal case of a staff representative.

(ii) Ms E. Bergot, Principal Director HR, participated during the proceedings and was present during the hearing of the Disciplinary Committee as a representative of the Office. By her very function as Head of Personnel in the EPO, acting on the basis of a written, direct delegation from the President to her, she is fully authorised to represent the Office in the course of disciplinary proceedings. The final decision on the present disciplinary case is taken by the appointing authority. No conflict of interest has been established in this regard such as to support, let alone necessitate, the exclusion of Ms Bergot.

(iii) You have been invited on numerous occasions by the Disciplinary Committee to access your copy of the witness transcripts pertaining to investigation report C-71. A copy of the report was made available to you for your use and/or your representative’s use at the EPO’s offices. Neither you nor your legal counsel has, however, made use of these facilities to inspect these documents in order to prepare your defence. The decision to allow you access to your own copy of the report, but to permit you to do so solely in the premises of the Office was fully justified by the Office’s interest in the protection of the integrity of the procedure and of the witnesses. The Office has respected at all times your statutory right to access the file and to be heard. No formal flaw has been established under these circumstances.

(iv) As regards the defendant’s request concerning the DPO authorisation, the Office’s explained both the technical and the legal aspects. It has explained the exact circumstances under which the investigation took place. For the avoidance of any doubt, the Office did not intercept your correspondence to Mr XX, nor access your private email account. Rather, it collected evidence in the context of an investigation against unknown persons within the premises of the Office and more specifically at one of the Office’s public PC kiosks. Screen shots of email correspondence and activities of Mr XX were obtained in that context. These included screen shots of two-way correspondence between Mr XX and you. It was in that way that your involvement came to light. It was demonstrated to the Committee that the Office had not relied upon intercepting your private email at all, and you were mistaken to think so. These reasons and details were considered carefully by the Disciplinary Committee who fully understood and accepted them. They do not require further elaboration.

III. Legal analysis

The Disciplinary Committee has found, unanimously, that the three charges alleged have been proven. In this regard, the Office endorses the Committee’s conclusions and wishes to emphasise the following:

(i) As regards the first charge, the Disciplinary Committee concluded that there is “substantial evidence in the file that you behaved in ways which are incompatible with [your] duties as a staff member and as an elected staff representative”. Although the Committee dismissed sub-charges at § 49-50, the rest of the incidents were considered sufficient to prove “a clear working relationship” between you and Mr XX whereby you were even observed “giving him instructions”.

It was in this framework of active co-operation that several means of disseminating confidential and defamatory material were discussed and then in fact widely used. By your course of conduct you put at risk and in fact harmed the Office’s public image, office morale and the harmony of staff-employer relations. Your actions severely damaged the interests of the EPO, its operations and its staff. As the Committee pointed out, these acts not only damaged the EPO’s reputation but detracted also the staff representation, and thereby a key institution of the EPO.

In view of the above and of your long experience as a staff representative, I consider your behaviour particularly disgraceful. You showed disrespect not merely towards your employer but also towards those colleagues who elected you with a mandate to promote the interests of the Office and its staff. In view of the intentional and systematic nature of your breaches of your duty of trust and loyalty, your conduct is considered as impossible to overlook, and irremediable.

(ii) As regards the second charge, the Disciplinary Committee concluded that you “behaved in ways which are incompatible with [your] duties as a staff member and as an elected staff representative”. The evidence brought before the Committee showed beyond any doubt that you did indeed use the term “sniper” during the first meeting of the Munich LSC. You repeated the term, adding a threatening gesture with your hand during a second meeting with some members of the LSC who had sought clarification.

In the specific context of the Office and the then very recent incidents concerning Mr N., the term used by you was “a deliberate, repeated and considered remark” and conveyed a clear and threatening meaning to at least one of the addressees, calculated to impact upon his/her decision to volunteer for the IAC. As the Committee notes (§ 65) correctly, you admitted you were aware of the fact that “snipers” had targeted Mr N. previously, and of the events leading to his political “assassination”. It is noted that you further failed to exercise your duty of care towards your colleagues in your professional and representative capacity by informing the Office.

On the contrary, you deliberately used the paradigm of Mr N.’s mistreatment to influence your colleagues’ decision on a sensitive issue of staff-employer relations. Your subsequent failure to mitigate the effect of your statements, and your behaviour during the investigation and the disciplinary hearing was further inconsistent with your duty of trust and loyalty towards your employer and your obligation to conduct yourself according to the standards expected of an international civil servant. You thereby further aggravated your misconduct.

(iii) As regards the third charge, the Disciplinary Committee found it proven that you breached your duty to co-operate with the Investigative Unit and to protect the confidentiality of the present proceedings. Reference is made in this regard especially to the incidents mentioned in §§ 2, 75-77 and 80 of the Disciplinary Committee’s opinion, It is noted that even your further comments to the Office dated 05.01.2016 were, it appears, copied to unauthorised third parties e.g. national delegations to the Administrative Council.

You confirmed during the oral hearing not merely that you were responsible for the matters alleged under Charge 3, but you sought to justify your actions as correct and defensible. You showed no contrition for the specific incidents when you breached the confidentiality obligations fundamental to a staff disciplinary procedure, but furthermore indicated a deliberate intention to persist with the breach of your employment duties in the future, despite your employer’s instructions and reminders of your obligations. Your lack of any understanding or acceptance of your obligations in this respect is noted. These can only be considered as an additional aggravating fact in these circumstances.

The aforementioned actions (i) – (iii) amount to clear, serious and repeated breaches of Art. 5, 14 (1), 20 ServRegs and of Art 4 of Circulars No. 341 and 342.

As set out in its report under Art. 100 ServRegs, the Office maintains that each one of these charges, individually, without more, fully suffices to justify the most serious of the disciplinary sanctions within the ServRegs, namely, dismissal.

In view of the above, the Disciplinary Committee is unanimously of the opinion that the appropriate sanction is dismissal (§ 87 of the opinion).

IV. Further considerations

The Disciplinary Committee states in its opinion (§ 9) that your previous disciplinary sanction (downgrading) cannot be taken into account again, in accordance with the principle of double jeopardy. The Office wishes to point out that it accepts that the previous misconduct cannot serve anew for a second sanction.

Nevertheless, it is considered relevant that the fact that the Office’s trust in you had already suffered a previous severe blow. The very similar pattern of that previous misconduct is also noted. A harmful statement was made, to the detriment of another staff member, and circulated by you without regard for the damage liable to result from this. This is considered an aggravating circumstance which cannot be ignored when assessing the proportionality of the final sanction in the present case.

V. Decision

Your behaviour amounts to serious and gross misconduct, violating the standards of integrity and conduct expected of an international servant and/or

required under Article 5 (1) ServRegs as well as your fundamental obligation of trust and loyalty towards your employer and to carry out your duties and conduct yourself solely with the interests of the Office in mind under Article 14(1) ServRegs.

The EPO is as an international public institution with a significant profile. It is critical to its interests that both the institution and its staff are seen to conduct themselves with the highest standards of professionalism. The repeated and various violations of your obligations described above and the aggravating circumstances outlined, far offset any possible mitigation. The Office considers that the relationship of mutual trust and confidence necessary for the continuance of the employment relationship has irretrievably and permanently broken down. Further, the very serious nature of these offences, their extent and their repeated nature regrettably justify the disciplinary measure of dismissal with an additional 20% reduction of your pension rights under Article 93 (2) (f) ServRegs.

For the avoidance of doubt, this disciplinary measure is considered appropriate even were one to disregard, contrary to section IV above, your previous disciplinary sanction.

Please note that this decision will take effect immediately. Pursuant to Article 53 (2) (3) ServRegs you will however receive a compensation corresponding to the statutory period of notice.

In view of the specific nature of your misconduct, you remain at all times excluded from entering the EPO premises. Authorisation of entry may be granted solely upon justified request. The Office also draws your attention to your obligations under Article 19 and 20 ServRegs which continue to be applicable beyond the termination of your employment relationship.

VI. Legal means of redress

You are informed that you may file a request for review in accordance with Article 109 ServRegs within a period of three months from the date of notification of the decision. Such a request may be filed with the Conflict Resolution Unit either by e-mail or by post.

Yours sincerely,

Benoit Battistelli

Cc: RAin S. Okyay

“Almost unbelievable,” one person wrote. “that one of Ms Hardon’s alleged crimes was to reveal details of ongoing investigations (about her) and to have thus allegedly caused an offence to those involved. In the meantime the EPO higher mgt have gone to the press to reveal personal details about the DG3 member but that has gone without any action although seemingly contrary to any concept of sub judice and impartiality. Clearly it is seen as a war and the end result defines the means.”

“Interesting but disgraceful case,” another person wrote about 3297. “ILOAT seems to ignore all standards of principle law here! Very odd and imminent for future cases. Moreover keep in mind that the defendant in that case was acquitted by 2 Dutch criminal courts! Proves that the staff is unprotected in such cases and moreover proves also that ILOAT is obsolete.”

“Nowadays there is no internal appeal against disciplinary decisions, so the dismissals (and the downgrading) are appealable directly to the ILOAT,” wrote another anonymous commenter. “One could hope for accelerated treatment of dismissal cases by the ILOAT. That also seems to be its practice, at least until recently. Many older dismissal cases were decided within 1.5 years with most of that time being spent on two rounds of submissions. But the more recent case of Judgment No. 3297, for example, took about 3.5 years from the filing of the complaint.”

Appealing in the Battistelli-controlled system is probably a waste of money and time. Contact the delegations and demand action. Do it now before Battistelli makes this system so messed up that merely contacting one’s national representatives becomes a ‘crime’. █

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