Bonum Certa Men Certa

PR 'Innovation': Bombarding the Media With Puff Pieces to Distract From EPO Staff Actions Against Corrupt Management

Distracted cats won't cover the real story

A distraction



Summary: The media is not touching -- not even remotely -- stories regarding unrest at the EPO (even if SUEPO puts such stories out there for the public to see); instead it's all just Public Relations (PR) of the EPO's dictatorship

THE European Patent Office (EPO) appears to have issued 'damage-controlling' puff pieces as EPO staff marches to the Portuguese embassy to protest the policies of António Campinos -- at times even worse policies than Battistelli's. He's faking a crisis to destroy staff whilst outsourcing jobs. He's also blocking legal challenges to Battistelli's illegal policies.



"The EPO is a shrine of Campinos now, as is the Twitter account."Let's look at what the EPO is doing today and has done so far this week (as the protest in The Hague became imminent). On Tuesday the EPO was promoting invalid patents (IPs) under the guise of "digital fields!" See who's talking there! See what the EPO did for the 'hero' Campinos [1, 2, 3, 4]. The EPO is a shrine of Campinos now, as is the Twitter account. Here he is talking about "AI" (computer-generated applications) [1, 2] and then about patents as "technical problem" (often codeword/s for software patents in Europe). To quote the tweet: "We assess inventions based on whether they solve a technical problem. It's not up to us to decode on prices of final products, says EPO President António Campinos at #websummit"

Yes, so-called 'Web' Summit, where software patents' boosters were presented as 'experts'. Why does the EPO even grant such patents? As of last Friday, examiners are now virtually forced to grant these if it says "AI". Here's a new example involving European Patents: "Philips and Wiko compete over mobile phone patents" by Konstanze Richter. The number of the patents are in the article and Benjamin Henrion said "Philips is a troll, enforcing patent over "method for priority-based queuing and assembling of packets in mobile communication"..."

Well, these are algorithms that should not be granted any patents (monopolies on them). From the article: "The judges in Karlsruhe recognised a violation of the slightly restricted version of the SEP by Wiko’s German subsidiary. They therefore sentenced the defendant to information and accounting. However, the court rejected the claim of the plaintiff Philips for injunctive relief (case ID: 6 U 183/16). The judges thus agreed with Wiko’s objection that the Dutch licence offer was not FRAND-compliant."

"Well, these are algorithms that should not be granted any patents (monopolies on them)."The site's editor wrote: "There’s been another setback for @Philips in Germany. In the ongoing battle over mobile phone patent, the Dutch company lost one #implementation #patent. It also failed to obtain an injunction against Wiko in infringement proceedings..."

So-called 'implementation' patent. Welcome to the world of nonsensical semantics. Did they try "hey hi" (AI)?

"And they announced this only a week later, a day or so before a big protest -- the first such protest in a year and a half?"Going back to the EPO, here it is publishing another "news" item (warning: epo.org link); they've published at least 5 press releases in just 2 days -- more than they typically do in a whole month! Based on our research, this 'fluff' has resulted in news 'saturation' with more noise (PR) than signal. The Azerbaijan-based "Trend News Agency" prepared puff pieces like this one regarding Georgia and there's another one from Khmer Times in Cambodia. That's just copy-paste 'journalism' from the EPO's own mouth and with the EPO's photo ops! "Cambodia and the European Patent Office last week bolstered ties with the signing of a new cooperation agreement to increase awareness of patents and intellectual property in the Kingdom."

And they announced this only a week later, a day or so before a big protest -- the first such protest in a year and a half?

This is what the EPO has just published:

An EPO delegation including António Campinos, EPO President, Nellie Simon, Vice-President Corporate Services, and several expert examiners took part in Web Summit in Lisbon between 4 and 6 November. The summit is the world’s largest technology event, drawing 70 000 visitors from 160 countries. This year is the first in which the Office was invited to lead a panel discussion and host an exhibition area.

President Campinos was joined by Dr Keigham J. Gabriel, President and CEO at Draper Lab, and Carmela Troncoso, Head of Security & Privacy Engineering at École polytechnique fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL), for a panel discussion on the topic “Patenting the future: The next big invention”. The panel noted that intellectual property and in particular patents have played a major role in innovation, and that without this protection, scientific advancement is stifled.


There are quite a bunch of lies in there; Henrion might assess the whole video from the event for further scrutiny of the claims/assertions.

The EPO is meanwhile also retweeting this self-promotional stuff about its event with patent trolls' front groups. Joe Doyle from EI is their megaphone of choice, revealing that the EPO has a 'taste' for litigation, not innovation. But we all knew that already, right? The EPO then published its fifth puff piece in two days (warning: epo.org link) to say: "On 4 and 5 November 2019 the European Patent Office (EPO) and the Licensing Executives Society International (LESI) held their first-ever joint conference focussed on the importance of IP to high-growth firms. The top-level hybrid conference and training event was attended by around 300 participants from 34 nations and organised in Dublin by the EPO’s European Patent Academy with the support of the government agency Enterprise Ireland. The event provided a platform for decision makers and IP managers at high-growth tech companies (namely start-ups and more classical SMEs) as well as their stakeholders in the innovation ecosystem to learn about business strategy and IP management."

"...there's plenty printed based on the EPO's own words with its own promotional material such as photos."Obviously, as expected, nobody in the media (not even blogs!) covered the EPO protest from a fortnight ago (in Munich). Nobody even mentions what happens today in The Hague. But there's plenty printed based on the EPO's own words with its own promotional material such as photos.

Recent Techrights' Posts

Ponzi Schemes Are Useful (to Corrupt CEOs)
Pathetic, corruptible so-called 'media' is bagging bribes to perpetuate the lies about "AI" (slop)
Body-Shaming Using Fakes
a lot of the people who casually claim "defamation" are themselves defaming loads of people every day
EPO People Power - Part XXIV - Today or Tomorrow You Should Write to National Representatives (Delegates) at the EPO in Your Country
Keep up the pressure!
Red Hat and IBM Layoffs, Staff Kept Quiet About it, WARN Act Skirted/WARN Notices Avoided
What a terrible company to be in
 
Gemini Links 04/01/2026: 64-bit Addressing and 39th Chaos Communication Congress
Links for the day
Windows Was Always the Punchline
What did we count to calculate taxes?
GNU/Linux Surges to About 4% in Peru This Year
one of the poorest counties in America
This Year Our Adoption of IRC Turns 18
We have used IRC for this site since 2008
The Doors Are Closing, Windows Closing Too
Microsoft wants more vendor lock-in, but at risk that this desire will simply alienate and drive away many users
The FSF's Program Manager, Dr. Miriam Sabrina Bastian, Left in October to Lead Climate School
We are not sure why Miriam Bastian decided to leave the Free Software Foundation (FSF)
Outline of Slop, LLMs, IBM, and Things to Come
This coming week and weekend will be very productive irrespective of how much "news" gets published by other sites
Links 04/01/2026: War Without Borders, "Large Hadron Collider Being Shut Down"
Links for the day
Links 04/01/2026: US Imperialism in Greenland and Venezuela, "Climate Protesters Face Greater Risk of Crackdown Amid Rising Authoritarianism"
Links for the day
2026 Should be the Year We All Stop Saying "AI" and Call Things What They Really Are
Don't give anyone the satisfaction of this misguided belief there's any intelligence there
GNU/Linux at All-Time High in Algeria
In 2026 it hit a new all-time high
Online Mobbing (and Worse) Disguised as 'Free Speech'
People who say they believe in "free speech" have been trying hard to silence RMS and squash the FSF
A 'Cancer That Attaches Itself' to Bulgaria?
"Cancer" is what Microsoft called GNU/Linux
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Saturday, January 03, 2026
IRC logs for Saturday, January 03, 2026
GNU/Linux "Market Share" in Switzerland More Than Doubled Last Year, Based on statCounter
GNU/Linux continues its considerable growth
XBox Layoffs Imminent, More Appalling Sales Figures Published
Expect many layoffs in the gaming division
Slop Still Rare
So far a good start for 2026
Gemini Links 03/01/2026: Climbing, Waking Up, and Social Control Media Woes
Links for the day
Links 03/01/2026: Growing Censorship, Another US Invasion, and Will Smith 'Cancelled'
Links for the day
Links 03/01/2026: Twitter Turns From Disinformation Powerhouse to Production and Dissemination of Child Pr0n, "New China Cybersecurity Law Becomes A Reality In 2026"
Links for the day
Gemini Links 03/01/2026: Formatting Text for Gopher and Text-only Websites
Links for the day
Unverified Claim: Mass Layoffs at Microsoft to Start Around Week 3 (or 4) of This Month
Let's wait and see if the claim above is from an insider who has inside knowledge
Firefox Fell Below 1% in Asia
less than 1 in 100 Web users is detected/assumed to be using Firefox
Links 03/01/2026: Ryanair Fines and Facebook Misleads Regulators
Links for the day
New Record High for GNU/Linux in Benelux in 2026
If the above trends stand (throughout the year), then we can begin talking more seriously about a post-GAFAM Europe
In the Search Engine Market, Microsoft is Falling Behind Russia's Yandex
The so-called 'AI industry' is a boy that cries wolf
A Year of Relaxation, But Also of Hardcore Whistleblowing
Expect industrial action some time soon
The More Influential Richard Stallman (RMS) Becomes, the More Aggressive Attacks on Him (and the FSF) Will Get
We've meanwhile noticed disinformation being spread in social control media
GNU/Linux Reaches All-Time High of 5% in Indonesia (Not Counting Chromebooks and Android)
There are also related events in Indonesia and SUSE in particular seems to have been popularised there
EPO People Power - Part XXIII - António Campinos Knows He's Extremely Vulnerable at This Time
Campinos should never have been put in charge
Gemini Links 03/01/2026: New Organisation System (Notebooks) and "2026 Already Off to an Amazing Start"
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Friday, January 02, 2026
IRC logs for Friday, January 02, 2026
The More Buzzwords a Corporation Resorts To...
buzzwords are a fool's way to compensate for or disguise a lack of knowledge
So You Should Definitely Call it "Slop" and Stop Saying "AI"
with more XBox/gaming layoffs being imminent the blowback will be fun to watch
Why Are We Still Using Voting Machines?
Voting machines still seem to me like an infantile cargo cult and an act of salesmanship (like various security theatre rituals at airports)
"Works for Me!"
Who knows best?
Why IBM Workers Like Techrights (Same Reason EPO Workers Do)
IBM will likely be a daily theme (high rate of recurrence)
Workers Fly Away From IBM's Red Hat (This Year a Lot of Red Hat Staff is "IBM")
The stock (share price) of IBM says nothing about what actually goes on
In 2025 We Contributed to the Headlessness of the OSI, But It's Not Over Yet
By airing some 'dirty laundry' about the OSI last year we contributed to its current state
Africa's Largest Population Sees Diminishing Impact of Windows
less than 1 in 10 Web requests in Nigeria comes from Windows
Russia Cuts Finnish Cables ("Hybrid War"), Finland Cuts Off Microsoft
the birthplace of Linux
Links 02/01/2026: Science, Patent Maximalism, and Public Domain Day
Links for the day
Gemini Links 02/02/2026: Books, Scams, and mkscript (a Script to Make Scripts)
Links for the day
Free Software is More Naturally Inclusive
large, intolerant, violent companies get painted as a glorious example of United Colours of Benetton
Strong Start for GNU/Linux This Year
based on statCounter
More Tools, Factorising Code
If some things in the site of Gemini capsules don't behave as expected, then that's likely due to a bug
Europe in 2026: Over 5% GNU/Linux, Not Counting Chromebooks
2026 has started strongly
State of Tech Journalism in 2026: Follow the Money
in order to understand what motivates an opinion piece one must follow the money
Slopfarm Says Microsoft's "Biggest Business" is the 'Business' Where It Loses Tens of Billions of Dollars
TOI still pretends to have a lot of output
At the Start of January 2025 Microsoft President Said Microsoft Would Spend 80 Billion Dollars on "AI" Data Centres. That Didn't Happen. Microsoft Laid Off 30,000 Workers, Debt Surged.
Maybe this coming Monday Microsoft will come up with more false promises and vapourware
Links 02/01/2026: Insurrectionist Attacks Musicians Critical of Him With Lawfare, Project Gutenberg Now Has Over 75,000 Books
Links for the day
Decline in LLM Slop About "Linux" is a Good Start for 2026
When the only remaining proponents of slop are slop, which is pretty much what's happening right now, the bubble is popping
EPO People Power - Part XXII - Contact Officials and Inform Your National Representatives (Delegates) of the EPO's Cocainegate
Europe's largest media intentionally covers up serious scandals in Europe's second-largest institution
Slopwatch Still Dead, Not Enough LLM Slop About "Linux"
this is the desirable thing
LibXML2 Will Carry on (Without or With the Name "LibXML2")
The proprietary software boosters are projecting
Gemini Links 02/01/2026: ThinkPad, SHARP Zaurus, Lagrange Handheld Support
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Thursday, January 01, 2026
IRC logs for Thursday, January 01, 2026