12.12.15

EPO ‘Sweetener’ for Administrative Council National Delegates

Posted in Europe, Patents at 3:31 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Summary: A lot of money is spent keeping the national delegates, who have the power to challenge the EPO, smiling

YESTERDAY we published (and later updated with readers’ input) contact details for delegates, in order to make complaints about the EPO even simpler. We still urge citizens of member states to contact their delegates and put some burden of guilt on them, in order for them to at least consider doing something about the EPO’s abuses.

We have discovered something rather interesting and especially ironic given the way that the EPO games sickness figures.

By now, we have been urged repeatedly to write about this, as several people independently drew our attention to something new.

“We still urge citizens of member states to contact their delegates and put some burden of guilt on them, in order for them to at least consider doing something about the EPO’s abuses.”“Don’t know if you were already aware of that,” one said, “but someone finally pointed to the passage in the minutes of the Administrative Council of EPO in which – suddenly and magically – the delegates last year were given FREE dental treatment!

“And I can assure you that when in Munich you say “send the bill to the European Patent Office”, the dentist will ALWAYS find something …”

“So, a complete reworking of the smile in a top German practice (3000-10.000 EUR, if not more) how would it be not considered a bribe in any other European country? Not in the magical word of EPONIA! Where the President can count on the unwavering and smiling support of countries untouched by the progress of modern dentistry: Macedonia! Albania! Croatia! Bulgaria! San Marino!”

“So, a complete reworking of the smile in a top German practice (3000-10.000 EUR, if not more) how would it be not considered a bribe in any other European country?”
      –Anonymous“Have a look at the comments at the IPKat,” said one person with a pointer to this comment and further comments. Points 45 and 46 of the minutes are especially revealing. We wish to invite readers to send us the full document (meeting minutes) in order for us to show the original material relating to this free ‘gift’, unconventionality if not unconditionally given to Battistelli’s overseers. It’s not some negligible gift; dental care can be expensive, especially for people at the age group in which one would expect delegates to be. This becomes especially valuable for delegates from poorer countries. I have not even had a tooth filling myself (and I barely ever go to a dentist), but for some of these older people the proportional value of this gift is very high as they can take advantage of it without any limits.

“The medical insurance thing was reported in the official minutes of the Administrative Council CA/79/14,” one person wrote. “How come the delegates were able to survive for the last 40 years without this little “sweetener”?”

Here is the text in question:

12.1 Any other business

45. The Vice-President DG 4 informed on newly introduced medical insurance for delegates. Urgent medical treatment and dental treatment would be covered for delegates, deputies or experts when attending meetings of the Coucil [sic] and its sub-bodies or any event upon invitation by the Office. The insurance would cover all costs not taken over by the delegates’ insurance.

46. The Council noted this information on new medial insurance for delegates.

Can someone please send us the original document?

Another commenter noted: “I see that, as regards “dental” treatment for AC delegates coming to Meetings in Munich, reimbursement is not limited to “urgent” treatment, and is intended anyway to cover treatments for which the normal travel insurance for medical costs declines to pay out. I can speak from personal experience here in Munich. The city has a lot of top quality dental practices, accustomed to accommodating the wishes of visitors who jet in from other countries, many from the Gulf States, Russia etc. I now have a magnificent set of teeth, of which I am very proud. The cost was horrendous, even with full medical insurance, but my magnificent new smile makes it all worthwhile.

“So what is not completely apt, with the choice of word “sweetener”?”

Well, perhaps this shall be known now as the “sweetener” scandal, which isn’t a big scandal but nonetheless something to keep track of. We would like to publish the original. █

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New Private Eye Article Says EPO “Doesn’t Actually Deny That There’s a Fast-Track Project Allowing Big Firms to Queue-Jump”

Posted in Europe, Patents at 3:00 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Summary: The EPO’s favouritism-related issues are becoming mainstream news even in the UK’s most respected papers

YESTERDAY we got many photographs of the Private Eye article about the EPO. We even got a third photograph [PDF] and a fourth person supplied the text.

“I ran the photo through OCR software,” a regular reader told us. “After some contrast and trapezoid corrections the result was quite good, and needed only corrections for the part near the crease that couldn’t be corrected.”

“I should file a software patent for crease compensation software,” the reader added sarcastically.

Here is the text of the article:

PATENT-LY ABSURD

PATENT officers took to the streets of Europe again last week with protests in Munich and The Hague at the treatment of the elected staff union representatives who have been suspended by bosses.

Earlier this year a Dutch court ruled that the European Patent Office (EPO) was violating the fundamental rights of its own staff, but as a supra-national organisation (run by the European Patent Organisation, a separate-treaty organisation from the EU) the EPO claims immunity from national employment law.

Meanwhile, the EPO has exercised its bullying tactics on the UK-based blogger who uncovered the email detailing how the organisation planned to fast-track a backlog of patent applications by a small group of very large (and mainly non-European) companies, including Microsoft (see Eye 1404).

Dr Roy Schestowitz, a software engineer who writes the Techrights blog, said the EPO’s lawyers contacted him just before midnight on a Friday evening, threatening to issue legal proceedings unless he removed the post, apologised and agreed “to pay our clients damages (in a sum be agreed)”. They set a deadline of noon on the Monday for him to comply, leaving almost no time to find a lawyer but a whole weekend to worry.

Dr Schestowitz is now being represented bv David Allen Green of Preiskel & Co and has not apologised or paid out. He has taken down the specific post that caused the complaint, but he has posted lots more criticism of the EPO since, as have newspapers in several European countries.

While Dr Schestowitz’s blog was stridently critical of EPO. the patent office doesn’t actually deny that there’s a fast-track project allowing big firms to queue-jump. It insists this is the only way to avoid even worse delays for smaller players in the market, since Microsoft et al could take action to force the EPO to prioritise even more of the hundreds of applications they have queued up.

The EPO is clearly worried about blogs. Based on its own documents, it is afraid not only of Techrights (mentioned several times) but also of Florian Müller.

Florian Müller has just received recognition in “World’s Best IP Blogs”. According to this, “FOSS Patents is a blog that covers software Patent news and issues in general and focuses particularly on wireless, mobile devices like Smartphones and tablet computers.”

We are going to write a great deal about the EPO this weekend in order to cope with the growing backlog. We publish as fast as we receive new material and the frequency of publication depends on the frequency of input (which has only accelerated after the EPO attacked us). █

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