12.31.16
Posted in Europe, Patents at 12:12 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Bodyguards at nearly 100,000 Euros each?! (mysterious contract with private firm)
Summary: Even the EPO’s Central Staff Committee (not SUEPO) understands that Battistelli brings waste and disgrace to the Office
A document published internally by the Central Staff Committee was recently leaked to us [PDF]. Part of this document is in German, but the majority is in English and it deals primarily with financial aspects although staff representatives correctly point out that patent quality has been compromised to temporarily — while unsuspecting applicants are unaware of this compromise — artificially boost some figures.
“Look what Battistelli has turned the EPO into.”The part shown above vindicates us as we previously wrote about both aspects of the Paranoid in Chief, who is buying positive media because all he otherwise receives is negative press. The subject was more recently covered in light of highly misleading puff pieces about the UPC, courtesy of papers that the EPO had paid for propaganda.
The figure above, 880,000 Euros, is already out of date and is estimated at over a million Euros per year — basically budget thrown at a highly notorious firm that manipulates the media for truly unethical firms.
Look what Battistelli has turned the EPO into. It’s not just a corrupt institution itself; it now corrupts the media too. It misinforms the public, not just employees. █
Permalink
Send this to a friend
Posted in Europe, Patents at 11:13 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Autocracy so powerful that it destroys the whole Office, rather than ensure control and stability
Reference: Omnipotence paradox
Summary: The paradigm of totalitarian control, inability to admit mistakes and tendency to lie all the time is backfiring on the EPO rather than making it stronger
Anonymously posted over a year ago was a long piece in French which compared Battistelli to Napoleon in a not-so-flattering way, putting aside corporate angles. Earlier this year we published a partial translation, but that leaves out some other bits that are worth highlighting.
For example, as one reader put it to us, with additional bits from the original (the only such article posted there from this author):
Ses maréchaux et ministres connurent des sorts divers : de l’exécution capitale jusqu’au service servile de la monarchie restaurée, alors qu’ils devaient leurs carrières à la Révolution et leur fortune à Napoléon. Rares furent ceux qui surent se tenir.
In English: “His marshals and ministers experienced various fates, ranging from capital punishment to the groveling service of the restored monarchy, even though they owed their careers to the French revolution and their fortunes to Napoleon. Few were those who knew how to behave.”
This also aptly describes Mr. Battistelli and his confederates.
Lui, intégra l’École Nationale d’Administration, l’ENA, créée en 1945, qui ne dispense pas de formation à l’autoritarisme. Mais, si elle fournit à la France des administrateurs pétris du sens de l’intérêt général ou de l’État, elle en produit aussi qui imbus d’eux-mêmes ont seuls foi en leur omniscience : il convient donc de dire qu’elle nourrit assez bien l’aspiration à l’omnipotence de certains de ses élèves.
In English: “He was admitted to ÉNA, the National School of Administration, an institution which doesn’t offer training in authoritarianism. But if she provides France administrators steeped in a sense for the common interest or of the State, she also produces self-imbued others who are believe in their personal omniscience; one must admit that she feeds the yearning for omnipotence of a few of her students.”
National School of Administration.
His portrait is thus mostly complete, with the exception of that neo Carlovingian empire bit. I’m coming to that.
Le voici donc décrit, à ceci près qu’il y manque ce néo-Empire Carolingien. J’y arrive.
Let us look at the facts in a broad sense.
Changement dans le régime des pensions à partir de 2009 et passage d’un régime de répartition à un régime par capitalisation : cela a et ne cessera mécaniquement d’avoir pour effet de réduire considérablement la responsabilité financière future de l’OEB au titre des pensions, et cet effet ira toujours en s’accroissant au fur et à mesure que partiront les anciens et arriveront les nouveaux impétrants.
Change in the pension regime beginning 2009, and transition from a pay-as-you-go system to a funded one: this has, and will, automatically reduce the EPO’s future financial liabilities for pensions, and this effect will become increasingly important as new recruits will replace leaving older staff members.
Suppression de facto du droit de grève auquel on substitua une hypothétique autorisation – car fait du prince – de prendre des jours de congés sans solde : ceci était le préalable pour donner naissance aux forceps à un nouvel Office.
De facto abolition of the right to strike, against which was substituted a theoretical permission of taking unpaid holidays, dependent of the monarch’s good will: this was the prerequisite for permitting the forceps delivery of a new Office.
Introduction de la CPC, classification technique commune entre l’office états-unien des brevets, USPTO, et l’OEB, sur la base de la Classification Européenne (EC) que l’Office, qui la développa et la maintint à ses frais, fit don à l’USPTO, à ses dépens, car perdant par là même ce qu’il avait seul construit pour atteindre l’excellence jusqu’à peu reconnue internationalement.
Introduction of the CPC, a common classification scheme for the USPTO and the EPO, which is based…
Fast-forwarding a bit we have:
Alors, que faire ?
English: “Then, what is to be done?”
Over a year has passed and quite a lot has changed. Since then, for example, Battistelli got reprimanded and his team is falling apart, with imminent top-level departures. Even French politicians are lashing out at Battistelli; several of them openly call him an embarrassment to France.
The point about ENA and omnipotence is familiar to us. To repeat a text about ENA, which we translated a year ago, the first sentence in the introduction says “In 2007, for France to survive, we need to free us from the omnipotence of the ENA.” █
Permalink
Send this to a friend
12.30.16
Posted in America, Asia, Patents at 2:42 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
South Korea typically finds a healthy balance on patents, from which the country benefits (economy and innovation)
Seoul Plaza, South Korea
Summary: An outline of recent stories about patents, where patent quality is key, reflecting upon the population’s interests rather than the interests of few very powerful corporations
THE NEW YEAR IS ABOUT to start and we are eager to see governments all across the world recognising that patents have gone too far if examiners are granting millions of them. Techrights was never an anti-patent site; rather, it was pro-patent quality. We need to limit patent scope so as to ensure that the practical (or economic) impact of patents benefits society at large. The former Chief Economist of the EPO spoke about it earlier this winter.
“We need to limit patent scope so as to ensure that the practical (or economic) impact of patents benefits society at large.”Florian Müller has this new article about a Korean antitrust ruling. We have been writing about rulings of this kind for nearly a decade (going back to the Korean ruling on monopolistic Intel) and 3 months ago we wrote about Microsoft's latest patents controversy in Korea. We remind readers that Korea’s official position is that software is not patentable (different from Japan’s and China’s policy).
“I wish to point out,” Müller wrote, “that ACT is generally very IPR owner-friendly, but when it comes to FRAND licensing of standard-essential patents, its positions are pretty consistent with mine. An organization that takes similar positions on FRAND (and of which Google is a member) is the Brussels-based Fair Standards Alliance. Presumably the reason the FSA hasn’t spoken out on the Korean ruling yet is simply that people in Brussels tend to be on vacation this week (to a far greater extent than in the U.S.).”
“For the record, Florian Müller assured me he had been in no way associated with (or paid by) Microsoft for several years now.”As we noted earlier this year, the Fair Standards Alliance is rather mysterious, but the same cannot be said about ACT. I politely told Müller it’s worth pointing out that Association for Competitive Technology (ACT) is a Microsoft front group with decades of history (going back to the nineties, under another name and acronym). We have exchanged some messages about that [1, 2, 3, 4]. For the record, Florian Müller assured me he had been in no way associated with (or paid by) Microsoft for several years now. A lot of what we wrote about Florian Müller is no longer relevant/applicable as he left behind his Microsoft work and has no intention to do that again. Some people will never forgive him for that, but I have. I believe that he’s not “up for sale” now that he leads a team of “app” developers, hence not dependent on contracts from companies like Oracle, either.
“Just updated post on antitrust ruling against Qualcomm with link to unofficial translation of KFTC press release,” he added, after he mostly focused on ACT’s message. Here is a report we found about the news earlier this week:
A South Korean regulator said it would fine Qualcomm Inc. about $853 million for alleged antitrust violations, the highest such penalty handed to an individual company here, as the U.S. chip maker faces global scrutiny over its patent-licensing business.
A lot of people later discussed the relevance of this to the situation in China, where Qualcomm’s shakedown efforts have only met very limited success.
The Reinhold Cohn Group, writing this new article (“China may become more liberal towards business method and software related patents”), reminds us that China has gone bonkers with patent scope. SIPO now copies/emulates the mistakes of the USPTO and it already becomes a patent trolls’ heaven. It’s beneficial to nobody. “On 27 October 2016,” as the law firm put it, “the State Intellectual Property Office of China (SIPO) published, for comments by the public, proposed draft revisions to its current Examination Guidelines for examining software-related inventions. In the draft revised Guidelines SIPO goes one step further, as, in addition to granting patents on software-related inventions that solve a technical problem, is willing to allow patents for data carriers, and, in some cases, even for business methods.”
“SIPO now copies/emulates the mistakes of the USPTO and it already becomes a patent trolls’ heaven.”So basically they want to be the garbage dump of failed patent applications, or the equivalent of scholarly journals that almost blindly accept every submitted paper (and are hence worthless and have no following). We are gratified to see the USPTO departing from this lunacy left (having been accentuated) by David Kappos. Incidentally, some LLC (usually trolls) turns out to have sued the USPTO for last year’s long outage; it has just lost the case*.
Jasper L. Tran, writing in the Iowa Law Review, has just published “Abstracting About “Abstract Idea”” — a short paper in which he tackles the classification of some patents as “abstract”. Also today, an article titled “Software patent eligibility in Canada: IP year in review” was published but then deleted, maybe by accident. █
__________
* To quote Pharma Patents Blog: “On December 2, 2016, Judge O’Grady of the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia granted the USPTO’s motion to dismiss the complaint brought by Elm 3DS Innovations, LLC over the “holidays” declared December 22-24, 2015 when the USPTO experienced a power outage that impacted its electronic filing systems. The decision may leave other stakeholders wondering whether Elm was not the best party to challenge the USPTO’s action, or whether the action is simply unreviewable under the APA.”
Permalink
Send this to a friend
Posted in Europe, Patents at 1:42 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Summary: The role played by Heiko Maas in the UPC, which would harm businesses and people all across Europe, is becoming clearer and hence his motivation/desire to keep Team Battistelli in tact, in spite of endless abuses on German soil
IT wasn’t too long ago that we mentioned Heiko Maas in relation to his complicity, by inaction, in EPO scandals. He has received so many letters (and copies of letters) about the situation, yet he seems to be deaf in both ears and blind in both eyes. It’s like everything about the EPO goes right into his shredder as a matter of policy.
Suffice to say, Germany has plenty to gain from the UPC because it cements Germany’s near-monopoly on EU-wide patents. It does to prosecution what was already done examination- and appeals-wise.
“We are now starting to suspect that Germany’s Justice Minister Heiko Maas ignores EPO abuses (crimes by national laws) out of convenience.”Found today via Christine Robben from Team UPC is this blog post from her employer, which said just before Christmas that a “draft bill for the implementation of the UPCA was published on 9 December 2016 by Justice Minister Heiko Maas. Together with the UK, Germany is one of the two countries that still have to ratify the UPCA before the Unitary Patent system can start functioning.”
We are now starting to suspect that Germany’s Justice Minister Heiko Maas ignores EPO abuses (crimes by national laws) out of convenience. Moreover, he pushes Battistelli’s agenda forward with the UPC. Is he complicit then? Or just a bystander-type enabler? One who refuses to intervene because he has something to gain (or to fear)? How does that relate to Germany's media blackout regarding EPO abuses as of late? It’s almost as though large publishers/editors receive instructions not to ‘meddle’. The EPO wastes a lot of money trying to accomplish just that.
Let it be clear that for Germany to oppose the UPC would make no sense. “Entering into force of provisional [UPC] phase (early opt-outs) is still unclear,” Alexander Esslinger wrote about it, but Germany’s main barriers at the moment are Spain and the UK. WIPR gives a platform to those who promote the UPC in the UK, but the UPC has no future here; even Lucy has just been sacked (or resigned), only a few weeks after she promised the impossible.
The UPC would be utterly disastrous to European businesses. We wrote many articles about this in the past. The UPC would also be very damaging to EPO staff, notably judges. Things are already being pushed to the brink of planned failure, as Battistelli understaffs the boards of appeal (BoA) and limits access to them. Battistelli does to the appeal boards the same thing Tories do to the NHS, as a preparatory step preceding replacement.
Ricardo Ontañón of Clarke Modet & Co has just published this article about the weirdness of EPO oppositions in the Battistelli era. To quote the first paragraph:
Analysis of the lack of clarity in opposition proceedings before the EPO
The European Patent Office (EPO) confirmed in recently issued Decision G3/14 the practice highlighted in earlier decisions (T301/87), whereby establishing that during opposition proceedings of a European patent the Opposition Division of the EPO can only analyze the lack of clarity of the amended claims when the amendments made may introduce an alleged lack of clarity.
Ultimately, considering how eagerly Battistelli seems to be following China's footsteps, all these steps that helped assure patent quality may be phased out/deprecated, leaving both plaintiffs and defendants spending a fortune in ‘unitary’ courts that don’t speak their language and handle patents whose legitimacy ought to have been questioned/scrutinised at the European Patent Office/BoA, not in the courtroom (high costs associated with flights, lawyers, interpreters etc.).
Now that we know Heiko Maas is a wilful enabler of the UPC we are going to approach his utterly reckless attitude towards the EPO’s management as part of the problem. █
Permalink
Send this to a friend
12.29.16
Posted in America, Deception, IBM, Patents at 7:53 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
They even organise events to push their agenda
Summary: The latest facts and figures about software patents, compared to the spinmeisters’ creed which they profit from (because they are in the litigation business)
“L
atest [Section] 101 Statistics Show Improved Validity Prospects at Dist. Cts, Not CAFC or PTAB,” said a patent attorney the other day, reinforcing our response to Mullin's article (titled “These three 2016 [CAFC] cases gave new life to software patents”). The reality in the US right now is undeniably bad for software patents, which are being chopped at PTAB’s block and CAFC’s block. Patent maximalists are trying to pretend otherwise and we repeatedly rebut their arguments, only to see these arguments resurfacing over and over again, courtesy of the usual suspects. If the lies are repeated often enough, then maybe prospective applicants (or clients in need of legal representation) will actually believe them.
“The reality in the US right now is undeniably bad for software patents, which are being chopped at PTAB’s block and CAFC’s block.”The other day we saw this new article titled “Assessing USPTO’s Memo On Software Claim Patent Eligibility”; we keep wondering if USPTO officials will become as rational and realistic as US courts. Right now they just strive to rubberstamp whatever they can and those who pay the price for it are both plaintiffs and defendants; only patent law firms profit from it.
“This method of presentation involves storing and processing applications or parts of applications at a user’s local personal computer rather than at a remote server.”
–PatentDocsAs a side note — although an important note nonetheless — we can’t help but notice that IBM keeps trying to corrupt the system though its former Director, who had worked for IBM beforehand. IBM definitely used to be a (GNU/)Linux friend. Now it’s just an Apple promoter/pusher and a malicious patent aggressor. Yes, IBM has been rather busy going after small companies using software patents. Some of these companies, seeing what a menace IBM is becoming, belatedly turn to PTAB in an effort to invalidate these patents of IBM. Here is one report about IBM’s software patent that will quite likely be invalidated: “The ’967 patent relates to a method for presenting applications in an interactive service featuring steps for generating screen displays of the service applications at the reception systems of the respective users. This method of presentation involves storing and processing applications or parts of applications at a user’s local personal computer rather than at a remote server. This helps avoid possible server bandwidth issues that can be caused by the server being required to serve too much data to multiple users simultaneously. The ’967 patent lists many applications that can take advantage of this method of presentation, including games, news, weather, movie reviews, banking, investments, home shopping, messaging, and advertising.”
This is pretty trivial. It’s akin to caching.
Now watch what David Kappos is cited as saying again. “US is losing the innovation war,” he is quoted by IBM as saying, “to China” (where IBM finds buyers for its failing business units, notably Lenovo).
“Kappos is a paid lobbyist,” Benjamin Henrion noted, “working for patent trolls such as Microsoft or IBM.”
“IBM’s Schecter would know,” I replied, as “he’s IBM’s patent chief ^_^ so [he] has the ‘receipts’…”
What we have here is IBM citing as ‘proof’ a former IBM staff who is now an IBM-funded lobbyist for software patents. Look how dirty (as in dirty play) these people are…
And as if the greater the number of patents, the better… who would be foolish enough to actually believe this?!
“China pushing for software patents,” Henrion noted in relation to another Schecter tweet, “apparatus claims relating to software can contain both hardware and “program” components…” (links to “China Files A Million Patents In A Year, As Government Plans To Increase Patentability Of Software”)
“Kappos is a paid lobbyist working for patent trolls such as Microsoft or IBM…”
–Benjamin HenrionChina is their new bogeyman. One of these people added: “But USA keeps working on UN-patentability of software. What’s wrong with this picture?”
Nothing is wrong with this picture. It’s a good decision. End software patents, end patent trolls.
“China is plain wrong on this,” Henrion wrote, separately noting (to Marietje Schaake regarding software patents in Europe) that it’s “like the unitary patent lie that it won’t affect software development.”
On a final note, worth seeing is this rant from Watchtroll and 'gang' about end of software patenting (or demise thereof). “Stepping Back from the Cliff: The Year Congress Didn’t Cave to the Anti-Patent Lobby” says the title. They’re currently taking stock of a terrible year for them [1, 2] — a year which saw the demise of patent trolls. Watchtroll continues to attack PTAB for doing its job and we can’t help wondering why IBM’s Schecter treats this like some kind of ambassador for his cause. Does IBM really want to be so closely associated with Watchtroll, who even resorts to attacking judges?
For a more balanced summary of recent events, see “Year in Review: The Top-Five Legal Developments of 2016″ (posted days ago). It has a section about software patents.
“…anti patent trolling would be better, even if trolling is considered pejorative.”
–Benjamin HenrionThose who are against software patents, notably people who actually write software, are not “anti-patent” as Watchtroll tries to put it. In fact, as Henrion put it, “anti-patent is a gross and blunt exaggeration here. […] anti patent trolling would be better, even if trolling is considered pejorative.”
Patent trolls, in the majority of cases, rely on software patents. Take the latter away to get rid of the former. █
Permalink
Send this to a friend
Posted in America, Patents at 6:54 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Summary: The US Supreme Court (SCOTUS) is planning to weigh in on a case which will quite likely drive patent trolls out of the Eastern District of Texas, where all the courts that are notoriously friendly towards them reside
MANY patents granted by the USPTO have become the basis for ruinous lawsuits filed by patent trolls, which may soon be dealt an unprecedented and much-needed blow.
Patent trolls are not just a minor nuisance or some small random parasitic companies without products; some of them are gigantic and many are covers (or fronts) for large corporation seeking to shield themselves from counterclaims. Consider this new story about “Cayman Global”, yet another ‘IP’ proxy, this time for Faraday Future. “The Verge reports that Faraday Future does not own its intellectual property, and that it is instead owned by a separate entity called FF Cayman Global,” Business Insider wrote the other day. Microsoft too has created its own patent assertion entity — the one it uses to taunt Linux and Android all the time.
Florian Müller and LWN have both highlighted this good article published on December 27th by Daniel Nazer of the EFF. To quote: “Patent trolls were down but certainly not out in 2016. After a massive burst of litigation at the end of last year, we saw a noticeable drop in patent troll lawsuits at the start of this one. But trolls began returning to court as the year continued and 2016 will likely end with a relatively small overall decline. Consistent with recent trends, troll cases clustered in the Eastern District of Texas. Approximately one in three patent suits were filed in that remote, troll-friendly district, and these suits were almost all filed by companies with no business other than suing for patent infringement.”
“Microsoft too has created its own patent assertion entity — the one it uses to taunt Linux and Android all the time.”A lot of patent trolls lose their battles as software patents reach the wastebasket or never get used at all (due to low certainty of settlement/prosecution).
In 2017 we expect the case that will likely destroy trolls to be decided on by SCOTUS. This new article by Sasha Moss, Technology Policy Fellow at the R Street Institute, says that the “U.S. Supreme Court announced earlier this month it will hear the appeal of a patent infringement case brought by Kraft Foods Group Brands LLC against zero-calorie sweetener manufacturer TC Heartland LCC.”
Even lawyers’ sites wrote about this, e.g. “Will forum shopping days, like holiday shopping days, soon come to an end?”
“Only the more ‘extremist’ sites of (and for) patent lawyers, as we noted here before, prefer to say that nothing will change.”Professor Michael Risch wrote about this case that Patently-O, where he wrote/published his piece, predicts is going to kill patent trolls’ business model. To quote Risch, “I should note that the outset that I favor TC Heartland’s position from a policy point of view. I’ve long said in a variety of venues (including comment threads on this very blog) that there are significant problems with any system in which so much rides on where the case is filed. And I think that’s true whether you think they are doing a great or terrible job in the Eastern District of Texas.”
Only the more ‘extremist’ sites of (and for) patent lawyers, as we noted here before, prefer to say that nothing will change. We shall see next year, but the one newly-introduced factor will be the Republican government and perhaps several new appointments of Justices. █
Permalink
Send this to a friend
Posted in America, Courtroom, Patents at 5:42 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
What a total waste of money!
Summary: The scope of patents in the United States is rapidly tightening (meaning, fewer patents are deemed acceptable by the courts) and Fitbit’s patent case is the latest case to bite the dust
EARLIER this year we learned that the USPTO might have to reassess design patents, having already reassessed software patents. SCOTUS was poised to look into an Apple v Samsung case (one of several high-profile cases), which later turned out alright for Samsung.
Days ago we found a new article titled “US Supreme Court Sets The Bar Higher For Obtaining Damages For Design Patent Infringement” in the media of patent lawyers. At the same time patent law firms said that we all need more patents that fall inside/within a broader scope (i.e. more money paid for their ‘services’) , this time too in relation to design patents. Another patent law firm spoke in favour of design patents because it makes money out of patent maximalism. Shouldn’t we just ignore them all, knowing that they object to SCOTUS not because SCOTUS is wrong but because of greed? They want design patents, like those which are often applicable to gadgets, but such patents are being phased out, or defanged in the damages sense. The incentive too pursue such patents has just decreased and confidence in existing ones eroded.
Certainty surrounding software and design patents is declining and in fact just two days ago, regarding the Fitbit case that we covered here before, there was a major new development. The seminal lawsuit got dropped:
Fitbit drops patent infringement case against rival wearable tech company Jawbone
Fitbit Inc. has dropped one of its patent infringement cases against rival wearable tech maker AliphCom Inc.’s Jawbone, pointing to its belief that the company is already failing financially, reported The Wall Street Journal.
The two San Francisco-based companies both manufacture and market wearable fitness trackers and have been tied up in litigation with each other, alleging patent infringement and the stealing of trade secrets. Patents in the litigation dropped by Fitbit were related to heart-rate and physical activity monitor technology.
Fitbit’s case would have blocked Jawbone’s ability to bring their competing product into the U.S., however it seems as if financial issues have already hampered the company’s ability to do business. Jawbone no longer lists its products for sale on its website.
Fitbit’s implicit message here is that it was going to win but was merciful enough because of the defendant’s position, but that’s quite likely just spin. The legal battle soon became a two-edged sword because Jawbone fought back and now it looks increasingly expensive for Fitbit to fight on, especially relying on patents that high courts tend to invalidate at the end.
What we are seeing here is part of the trend of litigation declines (as noted by several sources so far this year). Bad news for patent lawyers, but excellent news to everybody else. █
Permalink
Send this to a friend
Posted in Europe, Patents, Rumour at 4:29 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
And Battistelli hypocritically compares the staff union to "Mafia"
Summary: Pretending there is a violent, physical threat that is imminent, Paranoid in Chief Benoît Battistelli is alleged to have pursued weapons on EPO premises
THE endless EPO scandals mean that the EPO is full of secrets but not full of surprises as nothing — however appalling — is surprising anymore. People from special services and the military are being recruited by Battistelli, making the EPO look like a warzone rather than something scientific.
“The EPO is becoming a madhouse by the day,” said a new comment from yesterday, as it’s rumoured that actual weapons on EPO premises were sought by Battistelli for his expensive goons (hired from the outside, i.e. hired externally at the EPO’s expense). To quote the comment:
wrt bodyguards the rumour has it that first they (Battistelli et al) expected them to carry their weapons IN the EPO before lawyers and infrastructures eventually convince them that this was perhaps a little overstrecht
The EPO is becoming a madhouse by the day. If you loved 2016 watch for 2017 since this is not yet the end of the circus
The internal “Gazette”, according to another new comment, is now being censored by the chronic liars at the top-level management of the EPO:
Your comment is certainly correct, but in the present instance, the contrary is true. An article was prepared, but not accepted by the editorial board of the Gazette.
It is not known whether the board received precise instructions from above or decided on its volition not to publish it. It might well be that the board asked for permission to publish it, but the result is the same in all three occurrences.
There is thus no coincidence.
This relates to a discussion which we previously covered in a couple of posts. These North Korea-like censures (strong criticism) and omissions by Team Battistelli — including Kongstad et al — have expanded their scope of media control to the whole Organisation, not just the Office, and they occasionally step on the toes of bloggers outside the EPO and manipulate the media worldwide (to the tune of over a million Euros of EPO budget… per year).
The Mafia never had this much control over the media. █
Permalink
Send this to a friend
« Previous Page — « Previous entries « Previous Page · Next Page » Next entries » — Next Page »
Content is available under CC-BY-SA