01.14.16
Gemini version available ♊︎The EPO is Manufacturing Propaganda Again, Releasing Misleading Figures to the Media
“The last thing a political party gives up is its vocabulary.”
–Alexis de Tocqueville
Summary: The EPO, now aided by PR agents from FTI Consulting (at a budget of nearly $100,000 per month), continues to mislead the media and pretend that everything is well, even improving
THE ‘European’ patent office (not really European but based in Europe) has nothing good to say except “think about the children” [1, 2] and some more greenwashing (posted on average once every two days, still, the last time being 2 hours ago, alongside other recurring themes in Twitter).
The SUEPO forums are (or were, before the union-busting) likely a lot more active than the EPO’s own forums, which the EPO management wants people to use (crowdsourcing support). Later this month or next month we shall show how ridiculous EPO ‘support’ really is (we still have many stories on their way).
“Some of the numbers used in the announcement were debunked here before.”Yesterday the EPO made a statement which is flawed in many ways. Did the EPO write it or did FTI Consulting (background deal) help write this nonsense?
Benoît Battistelli is quoted as saying: “The internal reforms we have undertaken to improve the efficiency of the organisation are paying off.” Is he referring to union-busting and making employees terrified?
Some of the numbers used in the announcement were debunked here before. Gross abuse of statistics is an art form. As one person who is familiar with these numbers told us some months ago: “This stupid trick was addressed repeatedly over the last few years in different blogs. The real number is about half of that. I don’t want to go in a course on patent law, but in a nutshell a large part of these applications never make it even to the doorstep of the EPO.”
“Based on what we have been hearing, neither patent lawyers nor patent applicants are happy with the EPO.”No doubt, given what we know and have heard, the EPO is now pushing this nonsense to a lot of journalists, hoping for criticism-free or fact checks-free parroting.
Based on what we have been hearing, neither patent lawyers nor patent applicants are happy with the EPO. They’re complaining. Some patent lawyers, those who have been promoting software patents in Europe (because they are profiting from it) may feel like things work for the better now that Germany ignores the EPC and defends patents on software, but they’re in the minority. In this particular case, the author has been doing this for a while (promoting software patents) and he is visiting the EPO in Munich these days. █
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