Bonum Certa Men Certa

Tough Day for the EPO's Media/Press/PR Team, Trying 'Damage Control' After Important Techrights Publications

EPO damage control



Summary: In an effort to save face and regain a sense of legitimacy the EPO publishes various things belatedly, and only after Techrights made these things publicly known and widely discussed

Poor Benoît...



The EPO is collapsing around him and simply going on mysterious money-sharing tours (an issue we've mentioned since 2014, in relation to Croatia) raises more questions than ever...

"The above is a great example of 'damage control'."The USPTO never in its entire history earned the same level of disgrace that Benoît managed to 'accomplish' in just a few years on the job. Tonight we have much planned for publication, as sources multiply and truth is becoming too much for Benoît to bear (most of the large European nations already want him ousted, only to be outmaneuvered by this Danish man who keeps Battistelli's salary secret).

The above is a great example of 'damage control'. It doesn't get any greater than that and it feels like they play catchup while we, thanks to our sources, are virtually running circles around the PR team of Team Battistelli whom it serves so diligently (nothing but 100% loyalty is tolerated by the 'king').

What we see here is responsive or reactionary publication. Earlier this year, for example, just hours after we had leaked these internal E-mails about patent quality the EPO came up with some recycled old news about "quality" in an apparent effort to distract and divert away from the leaks.

"What we see here is responsive or reactionary publication."This evening, less than 24 hours after our post about it (see what we posted earlier today, just after midnight), the EPO published this nonsense (warning: epo.org link). In it, the PR people conveniently do not mention the date, as it happened quite a while back (with strategic timing) and they chose not to report/mention anything about it (as it would raise the very questions we raised this morning -- causing internal rumours that are definitely damaging to Battistelli). Only after Techrights had reported on it the EPO felt like it needed to pretend to be transparent. In Twitter it wrote (a short while ago): "President Battistelli signed bilateral co-operation plans with heads of the patent offices of Latvia and Lithuania"

Why was the EPO silent for so long about it? The question is rhetorical.

"You know that Techrights exposed your crooked dealings," I told them in Twitter, "so again you manipulate history" (to make it seem like they were open about it all along).

"The EPO is just getting desperate and trying to appear more popular than it really is."Speaking of the EPO's Twitter account, compare these statistics that we shared earlier this year to the latest. In 2 months EPO gained just 22 fake "followers" and just 36 real followers. Is this SEO? SPAM farming? Whatever it is, for the sake of comparison, in the same period of time I gained ten times as many legitimate followers and there are hardly any "fakes" associated with me. The EPO is just getting desperate and trying to appear more popular than it really is. The rapid growth in "follower" count magically stalled when we pointed this out. Maybe they read what we write on a regular basis and respond accordingly. This comes to show that our sources have a real impact.

Earlier today in Twitter the EPO continued to mention nations where there was a decline in patent applications (it only started doing this after we had criticised it for omissions). One tweet said: "Norway is the only Nordic state to register growth in patent applications in 2016, up 1.8%"

That's one out of three if not one out of seven. "Aren't you going to add the map from which you removed Scandinavia?"

That's what I asked them. For those who missed it, the EPO decided it doesn't recognise Scandinavia because it didn't like the numbers from Scandinavia. We addressed the subject in the following previous posts:



The last among the above was published earlier today. They haven't shared that map since. Instead they said, more humbly than usual: "Finnish companies filed fewer patent applications at the EPO in 2016"

"Earlier today in Twitter the EPO continued to mention nations where there was a decline in patent applications (it only started doing this after we had criticised it for omissions)."No excuses!

Bravo!

That's the first time we've seen an honest tweet from the EPO about its results. Brutally honest. "Well done," I said to Finland, "people there seems to have realised that EPO is a rogue institution..."

"How can Battistelli and his cronies explain that, other than play dirty games with statistics and attempt to distort the figures for lobbying purposes?"It's not just Finland. The majority of Europe also saw decline in demand [sic] for EPs. How can Battistelli and his cronies explain that, other than play dirty games with statistics and attempt to distort the figures for lobbying purposes? Maybe Donald Trump and Benoît Battistelli can have alternative facts as a good "topic" for discussion some day, perhaps debating how to hide the fact that demand [sic] for EPs nosedived in the US last year.

Earlier today the EPO wrote: "The EPO will be at #LESI2017 http://www.lesi2017.org/ We look forward to seeing you all at our booth!"

"We encourage readers to send us material as it's evident that EPO management is squirming and grappling with the facts."I asked the EPO: "Do French applicants know that as supposed retaliation against French politicians Battisetlli got them demoted?" (in the patents examination pile)

Guess what happened to patent demand [sic] in France? It's down.

We encourage readers to send us material as it's evident that EPO management is squirming and grappling with the facts.

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