03.03.16
3/3 is EPO Propaganda Day: Techrights to Respond and Alert the Media About Misinformation
A few people who work for the EPO aren’t necessarily “staff union”
Summary: A quick overview of the EPO’s current PR strategy and some examples of misleading early coverage that it yields
A LOT of last night I spent writing to journalists about the latest lies from the EPO, which no doubt will try hard to mislead them today. We already know the modus operandi.
Today we are going to write a great deal of substantiative responses to the EPO. It’s not always enough to point out that the EPO is lying to journalists and warn about the EPO's spokespeople. The EPO, without a doubt, will try to distract the media from German TV coverage using two bits of propaganda which we already debunked in a hurry yesterday [1, 2]. Well, they speak about “results” (EPO link) and even pay for PRESS RELEASES about it. What a waste of money! Not to mention this secret contract with FTI Consulting…
“Well, they speak about “results” and even pay for PRESS RELEASES about it. What a waste of money!”“Filings & applications at the @EPOorg higher than ever in 2015,” EPO wrote in Twitter, but don’t ask them how they counted. Actually, the PR team would not even know…
Well, that’s just one of several patterns of propaganda. Another one we wrote about a short while ago (defaming and shooting of the messengers when it comes to their prominent critics) and the main one pertains to unions.
“EPO management signs recognition deal with trade union,” IAM wrote last night, “but not SUEPO – the principal one.”
That’s correct. By some estimates, SUEPO has more than 2 orders of magnitude more (if not 3 orders of magnitude more) members. Who does the EPO think it’s kidding?
As WIPR has just put it, after checking what FFPE-EPO really is:
The FFPE-EPO is a much smaller union compared to the Staff Union of the European Patent Office (SUEPO), which has yet to be recognised.
According to sources within the unions, the FFPE-EPO has around 70 members who all work in The Hague office, while SUEPO is estimated to have more than 3,000 members across all of the EPO’s offices.
We believe that it’s a lot less than 70 and we have publicly asked for leaks that prove it.
Remember when Siemens created fake unions after a MASSIVE bribery scandal? We are going to inform or remind readers of that in our next post.
“Remember when Siemens created fake unions after a MASSIVE bribery scandal?”We’re a little disappointed to see The Register being the first to swallow the bait and do an article about it (albeit tongue-in-cheek), noting: “Matters will now come to a head at a full meeting of the Administrative Council in Munich later this month, and the EPO executive team are clearly hoping to use the signing of an MoU with the FFPE-EPO to deflect criticism.”
“EPO signs deal with staff union it isn’t locked in death spiral with,” wrote The Register in Twitter.
As someone put it in IP Kat:
The Register published a later story with the memorable sub-headline “Olive branch may be more of a stunned snake”, suggesting that SUEPO may not be as keen to sign as they had previously reported. There’s now yet another story reporting (like the story here) that FFPE have signed.
A high-resolution picture of Bergot and other EPO tyrants (such as Battistelli and his right-hand bulldog) was included in this article.
The EPO is throwing in there the latest propaganda already; even into an article which deals with unions! To quote The Register‘s closing paragraph:
“The EPO has taken significant steps in the past few years to modernise its internal structures and increase efficiency, while further improving its patent quality,” it argues. “These cover such diverse areas as co-operation with the member states, the EPO’s IT infrastructure, and human resources policy. The 2015 annual results show that the reforms are paying off: the number of products (such as searches and examinations) delivered by EPO patent examiners grew by 14 per cent in 2015, to 365,000, and the EPO published more than 68,000 granted patents, an increase of nearly 6 per cent over 2014 and the highest number ever.”
“It’s just a distraction, akin to the talking points thrown at German television when asked to comment about human rights violations, abuses against staff, etc.”This is nonsense. Huge nonsense. It also has nothing whatsoever to do with the unions. It’s just a distraction, akin to the talking points thrown at German television when asked to comment about human rights violations, abuses against staff, etc.
There are two patterns of EPO propaganda today: “results” and “unions”. Good journalists will fact-check before repeating what the EPO asks them to repeat. Later today Techrights will publish a rebuttal to these several different arms of EPO propaganda — one about “results” (bogus) and another about FFPE (not the same thing). This post isn’t yet an in-depth rebuttal (which requires showing new material). Stay tuned for more… █
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