12.06.15
Posted in Europe, Patents at 5:13 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Summary: Translation of a recent article from Observador (Portugal) about the latest serious altercations at the European Patent Office (EPO)
MEDIA coverage about the EPO has been rather negative recently, putting aside puff pieces from so-called ‘media partners’ and EPO-friendly sites like IAM ‘magazine’.
One article which we mentioned here last week was this one in Portuguese. SUEPO has just supplied a public translation and it goes as follows:
The shadowy world of the European Patent Organization
27/11/2015, 16:14
Suicides, psychological pressures, violent interrogations, favouritism, and irregularities. The shadowy world of the European Patent Organization needs to have some light cast on it.
“Suicides, psychological pressures, violent interrogations, favouritism, and irregularities.”Benoît Battistelli says that the accusations are a “defamation campaign”, but his name is starting to be associated with nervous breakdowns, suicides, and an atmosphere of intimidation.
“The last dictatorship in Europe”, “out of control”, “a State within a State”; this is how some sources are using the international social media to refer to the European Patent Organization (EPO). The institution is beginning to be synonymous with psychological depressions, nervous breakdowns, and even suicides. And there is one man now under fire – Benoît Battistelli.
“The institution is beginning to be synonymous with psychological depressions, nervous breakdowns, and even suicides.”The European Patent Organization (EPO) came into being under the auspices of the Munich Patent Convention in 1973, with the mission of granting patents to the members of the European Union and a number of other European countries (Switzerland, Norway, Turkey, Albania, and Serbia), and since 2010 it has been presided over by Frenchman Benoît Battistelli.
The President, according to the statutes of the EPO, has wide-sweeping powers, and the sole legal supervision is the Administrative Council, represented by the 38 Member States.
Operating under its own laws and regulations, the EPO has main offices in Munich, The Hague, Berlin, and Vienna.
“According to the same Spanish journal, there are accusations, based on official documents, that tell of big corporations being given preference when it comes to patent examination procedures.”In Munich recently two thousand people gathered to protest against the presidency of Frenchman Battistelli over the organization. Such a shadowy arrangement is unique in this day and age. According to Florian Mueller, a specialist in this field, quoted by El Confidencial, the stories and information which are starting to come to light “are unthinkable anywhere in the civilized world – but the European Patent Organization simply is not part of the civilized world’. These harsh words by the German expert refer to the alleged atmosphere at work shared by the some 7 thousand employees at the EPO. The staff unions have condemned the situation, pointing out that in the past few years at least five people have committed suicide (in 2013, one official threw himself out of a window at the office in The Hague), and many others are suffering intense psychological pressure, with the result that patents are being granted without the technical quality being properly assessed.
And there’s more than just the atmosphere at work which is at issue. According to the same Spanish journal, there are accusations, based on official documents, that tell of big corporations being given preference when it comes to patent examination procedures. The staff themselves, on taking to the streets, accuse the President of favouritism and irregularities. Some sources also imply that what interests him is productivity, and invalidating the patents afterwards.
“One had suffered a major nervous collapse, and the other, for similar reasons, had to be admitted to the hospital.”But things may be closing in on Battistelli. SUEPO, which is the union which represents the employees of the Organization, claims that on 13 November last, Spaniard Jesús Areso and Frenchman Laurent Prunier, both employees of the institution, were forced by the President to give evidence at the office at The Hague before the EPO Investigations Unit. The union speaks of an atmosphere of intimidation, and has revealed that the two officials had to be taken to hospital. One had suffered a major nervous collapse, and the other, for similar reasons, had to be admitted to the hospital.
In the light of all this, some officials have resigned from their positions, and others have made claims before the courts that they are suffering persecution, according to El Confidencial. The situation has already led to a reaction on the part of Socialist Pierre-Yves Le Borgn’, parliamentary deputy for French citizens abroad since 2012, who is demanding explanations from the EPO President. Le Borgn’ has also sent an official communication to the French Minister of the Economy, Emmanuel, describing the repression and calling on him to take action. The communication condemns the harsh interrogation methods, which left the officials in a “state of shock”, requiring medical treatment, and he has called on the other Member States to join him in condemning the situation.
In defence of Benoît Battistelli
In response to such serious charges, the EPO boss has publicly rejected the accusations. The Minister of the Economy has received another letter, this time from Battistelli, accusing the staff of orchestrating a “campaign of defamation” against him personally. And the President has taken this opportunity to launch his own accusations. The Frenchman refers to one former official of the Organization who was suspended from duty for leaking confidential documents and having been found with weapons and Nazi propaganda in his office.
The truth is that the name of Benoît Battistelli has already begun to appear in the newspapers, and the matter is starting to create interests among a number of members of the European Parliament.
There is nothing particularly new in this article, but thanks to SUEPO we now have another detailed article in English. This helps raise awareness of the severity of this situation. █
“Children seldom misquote you. In fact, they usually repeat word for word what you shouldn`t have said.”
–Author Unknown
Permalink
Send this to a friend
Posted in Deception, Europe, Patents at 4:39 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
The increasingly-privatised EPO…
Summary: A closer look at FTI Consulting, the company which the EPO has just granted €880,000 for the purpose of reputation laundering
T
HE EPO decided to waste nearly a million dollars in an effort to “address the media presence of the EPO” (nice euphemism for reputation laundering). FTI, which is based on Washington, received a lot of money from the EPO. Not long beforehand the EPO also contracted Control Risks Group (CRG) for the crushing of EPO unions, having seen CRG doing this successfully in Europe and doing even worse things in battle zones (where people are literally killed for their resistance). We still hope that someone will send us the CRG contract (in the name of transparency inside a public body), but we already wrote a lot of what we know about CRG in posts such as:
Today we turn our attention to the EPO’s latest private liaison, which is a very expensive one. What exactly is FTI? Let’s find out some of its recent activities (recent years).
We are going to emphasise FTI (bold font/face) in order to make faster reading possible, based on textual patterns.
PR Watch‘s Lisa Graves (wonderful researcher by the way, and a follower of mine online) wrote about “Energy In Depth” 3 years ago. It’s a rather shady group, which Graves was able to connect to FTI Consulting. To quote the key part: “They have even had overlapping public relations staff, as with IPAA/EID’s Chris Tucker, a former GOP congressional staffer who has been described as a Senior Vice President at Financial Dynamics, as the “managing director of FTI Consulting and as team lead for Energy In Depth.” For a time, Tucker was publicly listed as handling communications for both IPAA/EID and IER, “using the same phone number for both,” according to DeSmogBlog’s research.”
These groups always cleverly disguise themselves. Recall for example what we discovered about Consumer Watchdog.
An article we found in Climate Investigations Center says more about FTI Consulting: “Energy in Depth (EID) is a “PR operation for the [energy] industry’s multi-billion dollar financial interests in ‘unconventional’ drilling for what is popularly known as ‘natural gas,’” according to an article by PR Watch. Although FTI is almost never associated with EID (instead presenting itself as a “research program of the Independent Petroleum Association of America”), they nonetheless share high-level employees.
“One such person is Steve Everley, FTI‘s senior director. He has published several articles on EID’s website and is called a “team leader for Energy in Depth,” but he does not disclose this position on his LinkedIn profile. However, there was an occasion when Everley used an FTI email in conducting EID business…”
There is even a screenshot there to show it. It seems like a livery fluke. He didn’t hide behind the right proxy.
Here is the FTI page of Chris Tucker and Steve Everley’s LinkedIn page, disclosing that he works for FTI and is “[p]ublic affairs specialist with advanced understanding of the energy industry, including oil and gas (“fracking”)…”
“Pay attention to intersecting dots,” says this older blog post, “FTI Consulting, IPAA, Institute for Energy Research, the revolving door of Congress and more.” There are many details in there. Other blogs point out similar connections.
“These groups always cleverly disguise themselves.”“The Energy-In-Depth Dots led me to delve deeper into FTI Consulting,” one blogger wrote. “The airwaves are already saturated with gas ads, and the endless EID budget is pulsing through various FTI departments as the Gas Industry tries to wrest control of the public conversation.” It’s no secret that FTI works in this area (as well as patents and litigation), but why is it hiding behind liveries and front groups?
A more recent article, published just 8 months ago, said: “Inside Climate News has revealed that a key leader of oil and gas industry front groups that oppose new fracking regulations may have been playing both sides of the issue. In an investigation into the funding of the Environmental Defense Fund’s (EDF) work on oil and gas regulation, Inside Climate News discovered that a key EDF funder had hired FTI Consulting’s David Blackmon to promote fracking regulations. Unbeknownst to his employer, Blackmon is a longtime oil industry consultant who is paid to oppose regulation of the fracking industry. [...] With its public relations efforts conducted by FTI Consulting, EID now serves as a key pro-industry front group promoting unfettered hydraulic fracturing (“fracking”) to the U.S. public.”
“The post proceeds to showing that FTI reaches into territories that one might expect Control Risks to dip its toes in.”Leaving the area of energy and climate (there is a lot about it implicating FTI), consider this post which says: “FTI Consulting deserves special mention. It is a public listed company, that deals in a number of things, among which PR management. This “PR management” company instructed one of its employees, Maria Jose Tobar, to call me, to find out where I worked, so, presumably, I could be served. When I exposed FTI‘s idiotic attempt, Maria Jose Tobar deleted her LinkedIn profile. But FTI Consulting has been offering similar “PR management” and consultancy services to some of the worse thugs to come out Chavez’s Venezuela: Rafael Sarria, Ricardo Fernandez Barrueco, Moris Beracha, Alejandro Andrade, David Osio and the two imbeciles running Derwick Associates, Alejandro Betancourt Lopez and Pedro Trebbau Lopez. The commonality between mentioned names appears to be FTI‘s Frank Holder.”
The post proceeds to showing that FTI reaches into territories that one might expect Control Risks to dip its toes in. To quote a strongly-worded part, “Holder, and FTI Consulting as a result, have been involved, at the very least, in money laundering, racketeering, and aiding and abetting wanted criminals.”
Is this really the type of company/firm EPO wishes to be associated with? █
Permalink
Send this to a friend
Posted in Deception, Europe, Patents at 3:21 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
“It still remains true that no justification of virtue will enable a man to be virtuous.”
–C.S. Lewis
Summary: The pattern of sick leave and sickness-related distortion of statistics serves to show that the EPO’s management is only concerned with making itself look good (and well paid), but not with the wellbeing of staff
Politicians love to game employment statistics in favour of their party or against the opposition. There are craftful tricks for achieving the spin they are all along after and then put out a misleading narrative that can seduce a loyal follower (or media aligned with their agenda, e.g. News Corp. for GOP), not a sceptical outsider. All they need to do is fling a lot of something at the wall and hope something will stick.
The EPO likes to make up all sorts of figures, some of which we debunked here before (e.g. regarding 'production'). These are the classic talking points which EPO managers like to vomit on ‘media partners’ such as Les Échos [1, 2, 3] (for immediate and obedient publication, later to be referenced as ‘proof’ in private letters from Benoît Battistelli to politicians like Pierre-Yves Le Borgn’ [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6]).
EPO sick leave figures are being made up and manipulated, says an analysis sent to us. Humorously titled “a miraculous recovery”, here is what it says about Battistelli’s poor treatment of the ill:
The DG1 dashboard is worth following. We recommend that you save or print whatever interesting material you find because data sometimes change or disappear at the EPO. In April the DG1 dashboard reported 14.553 days of sick leave for Jan–March 2015, which was 8% over the figure for the same period of last year and 3% above plan. Three months later the figure for Jan-June was 22.812 days, i.e. 5% below the same period in 2014, and 8% below plan. Improvement continues: at the end of September sickness was 13% below the same period in 2014 and 14% below plan. As always we are left wondering whether this is a result of a miraculous improvement in staff health or merely an example of creative statistics.
“Under the new regulations every absence for medical reasons, even of a single hour, counts as a full day sick leave…”There are hints that this apparent miracle may not be in the field of health but rather of accounting. After a few months of worsening figures, the improvement started when the new health regulations were put in place. We know that as from the 1st of April the rules no longer allow for the so-called “reduced productivity”, previously counted as ca. 4500 days of “sickness” in DG1. This alone would explain an “improvement” of 15%. Apart from this, the EPO has also unlocked a number of invalidity procedures. Putting a 100% ill colleague on invalidity (or “inactivity”, or now “incapacity”) removes 250 days of sick leave per year. Therefore the improved statistics do not necessarily mean that there has been an improvement in staff health and well-being.
One thing is certain: for individual staff members the sick-leave calculation applied by the Office has become incomprehensible. Under the new regulations every absence for medical reasons, even of a single hour, counts as a full day sick leave for the purpose of Art. 62(a) ServRegs (see point 7) and brings the person concerned closer to a salary reduction and obligatory medical examinations. This is typical of the double standards applied by the current EPO management. Please contact us when – or preferably before – you become “adversely affected” by the new rules and get a cut in salary for having reached the maximum of 125 “days”.
Given enough bang for the buck from US company FTI Consulting (the EPO pays it almost a million dollars to spread around this kind of nonsense), a lot of the public might actually believe the sordid claims from the EPO. Will they get away with it? █
Permalink
Send this to a friend
Posted in Deception, Europe, Patents at 2:34 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Mind the AstroTurfing parallels… and remember that it’s Guillaume Minnoye who is notably concerned about EPO leaks (whistleblowers)
Summary: An analysis of recent trends in EPO coverage and conversations, which seem to be artificially steered (or manipulated) so as to better project authority and disseminate the EPO’s misleading talking points
THE EPO‘s threats against critics (lawyers, national delegates, bloggers, staff representatives, judges etc.) have meant that many participants in the system have opted for self-censorship. But we believe that it goes further than this. There is censorship that we never even hear about, let alone can hear about (gag orders and demands of confidentiality contribute to this).
“There is censorship that we never even hear about, let alone can hear about (gag orders and demands of confidentiality contribute to this).”Now that the EPO pays a lot of money for fake media coverage and media distortion I have begun tracking — a lot more closely than before — anything which relates to the EPO. We ask others to report such things to us as well. EPO AstroTurfing already seems likely given what we saw earlier today. This is familiar to us because we already know Microsoft AstroTurfing and techniques of Microsoft PR agencies, having researched these for over a decade. One way to warp a debate is to inject positive (for the client) comments into typically hostile forums, thereby derailing the discussion.
Particular patent lawyers are weighing in, latching onto anonymous comments which seem likely to be AstroTurfing. They are of course supporting the almighty President Battistelli as if all the abuses can be magically swept aside and the examiners are merely spoiled and paranoid. The following new comment demonstrates what’s wrong (reversal of the forum’s momentum, putting staff on the defensive): “I was tired to read since more than two years only comments about suicides, human rights violated, non-respect of the law, abuses, nepotism, etc.”
“Particular patent lawyers are weighing in, latching onto anonymous comments which seem likely to be AstroTurfing.”Bear in mind that such comments aren’t from regular commenters; these are patent lawyers whose personal blogs attack the staff of the EPO and actively help the management’s relatively dubious narrative, even in recent posts such as this one from “Meldrew” (“Patent Attorney” from London) or this one from “TreatyNotifier” (Dutch male).
Seeing how quickly (especially today) the discussion in IP Kat got derailed, we must at least suspect a subversive hand, perhaps part of the €880,000 media campaign. As one regular pointed out, “lying to the AC and asking them to take an illegal decision would be dismissed by his supervising authority in the outside world.” (and if not above the law)
“The EPO is a truly sick organisation and more people need to get the real facts, not the fictional ‘facts’ which EPO managers paid €880,000 for FTI Consulting to spread around.”Another person, in a separate thread, wrote about PACE (which is being defended by some anonymous commenters) that “the directors can change the priorities of individual files and some are using it as a means to insure the directorate reach its global objectives. Some directors want their bonus as well (or fear to be sent to pension).
“Also: there are instructions not to allow examiners who have a large prio 1 stock to take Christmas leave. As one can only transfer so many days, they will lose their leave. That motivates some to work only on files with “top” priority, which may or may not be PACE files.”
We wrote about this last month. How is this even complying in any way with European laws?
In our next post we are going to focus on how the EPO abuses not just holiday leave but also sick leave. The EPO is a truly sick organisation and more people need to get the real facts, not the fictional ‘facts’ which EPO managers paid €880,000 for FTI Consulting to spread around. It’s like a lobbying campaign by very affluent people, trying to protect their astronomical (secret but very high) salaries. █
“Money is like a sixth sense without which you cannot make a complete use of the other five.”
–W. Somerset Maugham
Permalink
Send this to a friend
Posted in Europe, Patents at 1:48 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Source: Willy (Guillaume) Minnoye’s Speech
Summary: A reminder of the weird procedures for selecting and appointing highly paid staff at the EPO, courtesy of transparency in the form of meeting minutes
THE EXISTING state of affairs at the EPO is simply not sustainable. Nearly half of all employees are brave enough (in the face of systematic retaliation from management) to go out and protest in front of their employer, breaking if not smashing recent records. The staff has very legitimate reasons to be concerned and more so upset, even angry.
“Meeting in restricted composition, without the observers and the staff and Office representatives (apart from the President and the Vice-President DG 3), the Council unanimously decided to make the following appointments…”
–Summary of AC decisionsQuite a while back we showed how the EPO and the Administrative Council (AC) basically denied there was an issue when obviously there were many issues. Not only did they declare the Topić affair a non-issue two years before Topić lost a court case in Croatia but they also appointed people to positions of power without much transparency, and definitely not accountability. To quote their June 2013 report (Summary of Decisions) [PDF]: “16. Meeting in restricted composition, without the observers and the staff and Office representatives (apart from the President and the Vice-President DG 3), the Council unanimously decided to make the following appointments…
Notice how small a presence in the room. Things have not exactly improved since then. Two years later a similarly formatted (even similar wording, as if there’s a template/formula, or gross text reuse) shows that chairman Kongstad (of the AC) is acting more like a courier of Battistelli, not like a person who is supposed to oversee Battistelli. Here is extract from the draft minutes of the June 2015 Council concerning the extension of VP1′s and VP5′s contract until 31 December 2018: “Meeting in restricted composition, without the observers and the staff and Office representatives (apart from the President), the Council unanimously decided to extend the contract of Guillaume Minnoye (BE) as vice-president in charge of Directorate General 1 until 31 December 2018. The chairman was mandated to negotiate the terms of this extension, in co-ordination with the President, and to sign the new contract on behalf of the Administrative Council”
Got that? Kongstad is “mandated to negotiate” and then “sign the new contract on behalf of the Administrative Council”. In “co-ordination with” Battistelli, of course! No wonder people like Bergot rose to power so magically [1, 2, 3, 4] and with a supposed (without independent eyewitnesses) unanimous vote…
Welcome to the family business. █
“If they want peace, nations should avoid the pin-pricks that precede cannon shots.”
–Napoleon Bonaparte
Permalink
Send this to a friend
Posted in America, Europe, Patents at 11:32 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
EPO is trying to fit into the severely flawed US patent system and even hires a PR firm from Washington
Summary: The EPO’s obsession with following the footsteps of the USPTO (low patent quality, patent trolls aplenty, corporate sovereignty etc.) brings into question the whole direction of the EPO’s management, which now even hires a firm from Washington (FTI Consulting) for reputational risk and disaster/crisis management in Europe
THE EPO is becoming more like the USPTO. It’s not hypothetical or mere projection. It’s rapidly becoming a reality and that’s no compliment because the latter is renowned (or notorious) for low patent quality.
Watch Apple v. Samsung resulting in a massive payout (it’s all over the media). See the low quality of the patents involved. Battistelli may try to deny this, but the EPO too had granted some of these patents (analogous to US patents), which were invalidated only after Apple took them to the European courts. It caused a huge amount in losses to practicing technology companies like Samsung; only the patent lawyers gained from it.
“Battistelli may try to deny this, but the EPO too had granted some of these patents (analogous to US patents), which were invalidated only after Apple took them to the European courts.”Software patents and their triviality (or shallowness) are demonstrated in an article by Timothy Geigner at TechDirt, published in reference to the EFF’s statement that “The Loading Screen Game Patent Finally Expires”. The EFF explains the background to it (we covered this patent here several years ago): “In 1998, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office issued Patent 5,718,632, on a method for avoiding “unnecessary wastage of time” in video games. What’s transpired in the 17 years since then can best be described as an unnecessary wastage of time.
“Namco’s patent covers “auxiliary games” that a player can enjoy while the main game is loading. The patent expired on November 27, which has generated a lot of excitement in the gaming world, and even inspired a Loading Screen Jam where developers create their own loading screen games.”
According to a lawyers’ site, there is increasing overlap between the EPO and this other system which has a vast number of software patents (maybe approaching a million such patents, depending on definition of software).
“Are USPTO and EPO going to be somewhat of the same any time soon?”“In its effort to increase electronic sharing of information and documents among global IP offices,” the lawyers’ site says, “the USPTO currently participates in the priority document exchange (PDX) program and a program through which USPTO search results for a particular U.S. application are shared with the European Patent Office (EPO) (76 Fed. Reg. 82,279 (Dec. 30, 2011)).”
This is the kind of globalisation of patent systems (covered here extensively several years ago [1, 2, 3]) which mostly serves to expand the scope of patents, the scope of injunctions, etc. Are USPTO and EPO going to be somewhat of the same any time soon? In the name of “harmonisation” or “community”, as was previously done in Europe (in relation to what’s now called — after repeated renames — Unitary Patent)?
What comes after the Unitary Patent? More cross-Atlantic treaties? Remember who benefits from it: the big clients of EPO managers. They’ve always been fighting for it. █
“It requires more courage to suffer than to die.”
–Napoleon Bonaparte
Permalink
Send this to a friend
Posted in Europe, Patents at 10:50 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
This is how the EPO's management wants the press to perceive staff protests (violence and/or vandalism, anti-EU biases)
Summary: A look at the growing support for SUEPO and the likes of it; the EPO’s apparent response to it, which we increasingly believe involves military-grade AstroTurfing (the US-based FTI Consulting contract)
THE harder the staff pushes, the harder the management pushes too, resorting even to attack pieces in the press. We are now seeing anonymous comments in support of EPO management, repeating the EPO’s own talking points which we often find in the media (corporate press).
“We are now seeing anonymous comments in support of EPO management, repeating the EPO’s own talking points which we often find in the media (corporate press).”We already know that the EPO is actively distorting media coverage. In the face of protests in Munich (not to be mistaken for other Munich protests), as well as the Dutch protest (last Tuesday), the people who are in favour of the management, apathetic or too afraid to show up in protests will soon be in the minority! Despite the horrible threats and the grave dangers (to one’s career plus potential lawsuits), people are still defecting — publicly — to SUEPO et al.
We don’t typically write much on a Sunday, but we have decided that it’s time to write some more articles about the EPO, simply because the AstroTurfing (or what looks like it) has kicked into high gear today (on a Sunday!). FTI Consulting-coordinated propaganda (US-based) or something more innocent?
“Despite the horrible threats and the grave dangers (to one’s career plus potential lawsuits), people are still defecting — publicly — to SUEPO et al.”We can’t tell for sure, but we can make informed guesses. The claims of EPO staff are under an apparent AstroTurfing attack right now — one without ethical boundaries. We named some aspects of the current media strategy in previous posts of ours (the latest being accusing the whistleblowers of serious crimes).
Naming the “Investigation Unit (IU) or the ControlRisks people,” one person responds to anonymous provocation by saying: “If you do not know what that means, ask you friend. Ask him also if he knows why more than 2000 people inclusive directors were protesting in front of the Isar-building.”
We haven’t yet found any media report about this massive protest. Remember that one of the PR strategies is to actively suppress reports about particular events. We thoroughly checked all the English-speaking media on Friday, Saturday, and earlier today. We even checked some of Munich’s Sunday papers or sites. Assuming these numbers are correct, no doubt we’re seeing all-time highs here. There is no head count because if people in attendance identify themselves, they’ll risk losing their job.
“We haven’t yet found any media report about this massive protest.”Useful reminder to our readers: the EPO now spends, on average, €2444 per day on reputation laundering alone. Put another way, as this new comment put it, “the trolls are back ! 73000 EUR / months spent in whitewashing by the EPO thanks to applicants’ money…”
We have amassed nearly 40,000 comments at Techrights, but there are not many Internet trolls in Techrights (not so much spam, either) because a quick registration is needed. It helps weed out the noise and keep a higher signal.
“Suddenly a lot of comments pro-management are appearing at the IPKat,” told us one person a couple of hours ago. “The media strategy is working.”
“Having read all the comments in this thread (nearly 40 of them at the time of writing), we can reaffirm that there’s some kind of whitewash going on there.”As this one comment put it, “any attempts to do a staff survey are blocked by the management as well as any attempts to initiate an external audit or external investigations about what’s going on at the EPO (except spying on staff by companies such as “Control Risks”, of course).”
We don’t want to quote the provocation or AstroTurfing, so instead we’ll quote this one epic response to it.
A surfer in the President’s wash says…
@Sybella
“There will be no whitewash in the White House.”
Richard M. Nixon
Having read all the comments in this thread (nearly 40 of them at the time of writing), we can reaffirm that there’s some kind of whitewash going on there. Remember that the EPO spends €880,000 distorting the media in just one year. It also gives a fraction of that to refugees for cheap, opportunistic PR (considering the media focus at the time). Source: epo.org (think before you click)
“Remember that the EPO spends €880,000 distorting the media in just one year.”Also consider what looks like media back-rubbing between IAM and EPO, which pays some of IAM’s writers. Here is IAM congratulating EPO for the EPO to later cite IAM as ‘evidence’. Source: epo.org (think carefully before you click)
Does it mean that IAM is just a mouthpiece? No, it just means that IAM has little credibility on EPO-related matters, for reasons we explained here repeatedly in the past.
“That €880,000 budget does go somewhere and it gets spent achieving the objectives (reputation laundering) one way or another.”Yesterday we joked that it would be nice to have a leaked document template like “Dear Joff Wild … If… that would be great … Love, Benoit” (hypothetical joke of course).
Here in Techrights we have not asked for money and we have no conflicts of interest. There are still some decent news sites out there, such as WIPR and IP Watch (even though sometimes even IP Watch produces puff pieces for the EPO, piggybacking beer for PR).
“Reports of AstroTurfing help paralyse the AstroTurfing.”Last but not least, we kindly ask readers to inform us if they see evidence of likely EPO AstroTurfing, either in the media or in comments. That €880,000 budget does go somewhere and it gets spent achieving the objectives (reputation laundering) one way or another. Reports of AstroTurfing help paralyse the AstroTurfing. I know this based on experience covering Microsoft AstroTurfing for many years, having researched their many pertinent PR agencies (some of the prominent ones include comment AstroTurfing). █
“In the United States, for example, about one sixth of the gross national product, over a trillion dollars per year, is devoted to marketing. Marketing is manipulation and deceit.”
–Noam Chomsky
Permalink
Send this to a friend
12.05.15
Posted in Deception, Europe, Patents at 8:07 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Think along the lines of, EPO wrote attack pieces after suspending an independent (board) judge who had blown the whistle
Summary: A just-released New York Times report about JPMorgan (shown above) reminds us a great deal of the EPO’s media strategy against critics inside and outside the notorious European organisation
THE EPO is so out of control that the management is threatening bloggers who show embarrassing things (about the management). Recently, with help from the strangely cooperative media, right after a massive PR contract in Washington got signed (for external communication, i.e. press) the EPO’s management also produced defamatory [1, 2] attack pieces against a suspended judge. It happened around the same time that I received threatening legal letters. Shortly afterwards the EPO pushed/leaned on the Administrative Council (AC) and pressured a board to oust the suspended judge. Is this all just a coincidence? Seems like the latest media strategy. The timing suggests that it’s not improbable.
“Seems like the latest media strategy. The timing suggests that it’s not improbable.”There was an article on Thursday in the New York Times. It’s titled “JPMorgan Wrote Complaints After Firing a Whistle-Blower” and it speaks about how JPMorgan dealt with an ethical person who exposed institutional corruption. JPMorgan manufactured smears against him in order to demonise and get rid of him. One might expect this from the CIA or the NSA, but private companies too use these ugly tactics.
What are we trying to suggest here?
Well, it seems likely that the EPO is doing to the judge whom it suspended (for allegedly speaking about the management) the same thing JPMorgan did to its whistleblower.
“Well, it seems likely that the EPO is doing to the judge whom it suspended (for allegedly speaking about the management) the same thing JPMorgan did to its whistleblower.”Regarding the EPO’s attack on yours truly, the trigger was something I wrote about PACE, which is a nasty sham that destroyed the EPO’s reputation and threatened to drive a wedge between applicants and the EPO (loss of trust). We have already written many pieces which debunk the EPO’s talking points regarding PACE, but to recapitulate, consider how they keep PACE a ‘pilot’ (and low key) so that only large corporations are in it. What if everyone applied? A sham for sure. It doesn’t add up. To use the queuing analogy again, the EPO set up a fast lane for business/first class, then alleged that it would speed things up for everyone, not just for the rich (that’s the first lie). It then said that anyone could apply to use the business/first class lane. What then is the advantage really? The business/first class becomes just another de facto economy lane. The truth is, only if few (rich) people know the tricks for using the fast lane would it really remain a lane for business/first class.
Watch patent lawyers’ media trying to explain PACE. It’s nonsensical and it’s marketed as some kind of magic potion that can provide “accelerated prosecution of patent applications at the EPO” (only for few selected ‘partners’).
“You are only taking the risk of being sued for “defamation” by the “EPO”.”
–AnonymousThe point we are trying to make here, the EPO’s management is bonkers and it is already using crude personal attacks against perceived ‘enemies’ (we will give more examples later this month, in relation to staff representatives). Battistelli has gone ad hominem while claiming a personal campaign against him. The hypocrisy!
Watch this comment left earlier today in Merpel’s blog: “You are only taking the risk of being sued for “defamation” by the “EPO”.”
“EPO” is in inverted commas probably because the EPO lawyers don’t even know what “EPO” actually is.
Here is an even more serious comment from the same comments thread:
The Dutch Court established that the European Patent Organisation of which the AC is a part and the highest supervisory body breaches the Human Rights. It is a fact regardles of whether the order of the Dutch Court can be executed or not due to the immunity issue.
Til today the AC failed to change this sorry state of afairs and if any change has taken place it is to the wors.
The EBA which is, for all intents and purposes, an independent court decided that the AC has failed to substantiate properly the allegations of misconduct raised against a member of the Boards and therefore refused the request of the AC.
The AC decided to put the board member again before the court (EBA), by requesting a decision of the EBA, again, as far as it is known in the absence of any new and compeling evidenec. This means that the AC is prepared to “knock on the doors” of the EBA until the AC gets what it wants, regardless of the principles of the law.
The above shows that this AC is determined to proceed with its plans no matter what and is prepaired to take any kind of collateral damage.
Thus, I do doubt very much whether an opinion of who-ever it may be, which is not fully supportive of the plans of the AC can be seriously considered by this AC.
The EPO’s management is doing terrible things and it was found guilty (losing party) in The Hague. How convenient it must seem for those brutes inside the management to simply project and attempt to portray those who expose them as ‘guilty’, in the same way that the NSA tries to paint a whistleblower, Edward Snowden, as a guilty traitor who ‘defected’ to the enemy (much like JPMorgan treats its whistleblower right now).
Don’t believe a single word that comes out of the EPO’s mouth. After their attacks on my free speech they actually told the media that they respect freedom of the press and protect employees. Actual EPO employees can only hysterically laugh at both claims. █
“The best way to keep one`s word is not to give it.”
–Napoleon Bonaparte
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