10.29.21

The EPO’s Overseer/Overseen Collusion — Part XXVI: A Trojan Horse on the Budget and Finance Committee

Posted in Deception, Europe, Finance, Patents at 2:22 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Series parts:

1. The EPO’s Overseer/Overseen Collusion — Part I: Let the Sunshine In!
2. The EPO’s Overseer/Overseen Collusion — Part II: A “Unanimous” Endorsement?
3. The EPO’s Overseer/Overseen Collusion — Part III: Three Missing Votes
4. The EPO’s Overseer/Overseen Collusion — Part IV: The Founding States
5. The EPO’s Overseer/Overseen Collusion — Part V: Germany Says “Ja”
6. The EPO’s Overseer/Overseen Collusion — Part VI: A Distinct Lack of Dutch Courage
7. The EPO’s Overseer/Overseen Collusion — Part VII: Luxembourgish Laxity
8. The EPO’s Overseer/Overseen Collusion — Part VIII: Perfidious Albion and Pusillanimous Hibernia
9. The EPO’s Overseer/Overseen Collusion — Part IX: More Holes Than Swiss Cheese
10. The EPO’s Overseer/Overseen Collusion — Part X: Introducing the Controversial Christian Bock
11. The EPO’s Overseer/Overseen Collusion — Part XI: “General Bock” – Battistelli’s Swiss Apprentice?
12. The EPO’s Overseer/Overseen Collusion — Part XII: The French Connection
13. The EPO’s Overseer/Overseen Collusion — Part XIII: Battistelli’s Iberian Facilitators – Spain
14. The EPO’s Overseer/Overseen Collusion — Part XIV: Battistelli’s Iberian Facilitators – Portugal
15. The EPO’s Overseer/Overseen Collusion — Part XV: Et Tu Felix Austria…
16. The EPO’s Overseer/Overseen Collusion — Part XVI: The Demise of the Austrian Double-Dipper
17. The EPO’s Overseer/Overseen Collusion — Part XVII: The Non-Monolithic Nordic Bloc
18. The EPO’s Overseer/Overseen Collusion — Part XVIII: Helsinki’s Accord
19. The EPO’s Overseer/Overseen Collusion — Part IXX: The Baltic States
20. The EPO’s Overseer/Overseen Collusion — Part XX: The Visegrád Group
21. The EPO’s Overseer/Overseen Collusion — Part XXI: The Balkan League – The Doyen and His “Protégée”
22. The EPO’s Overseer/Overseen Collusion — Part XXII: The Balkan League – North Macedonia and Albania
23. The EPO’s Overseer/Overseen Collusion — Part XXIII: The Balkan League – Bulgaria
24. The EPO’s Overseer/Overseen Collusion — Part XXIV: The Balkan League – Romania
25. The EPO’s Overseer/Overseen Collusion — Part XXV: The Balkan League – Fresh Blood or Same Old, Same Old?
26. YOU ARE HERE ☞ A Trojan Horse on the Budget and Finance Committee

Purported head of the Greek delegation: Serafeim Stasinos.

Summary: The Greek EPO delegation has a special relationship with the Benoît Battistelli and António Campinos regime

We now turn our attention to the delegations representing Greece and its Eastern Mediterranean neighbours, Cyprus and Turkey, and look at their role in the rubber-stamping of Battistelli’s infamous “Strike Regulations”.

“The problem here is that it is doubtful whether Stasinos really had a legitimate claim on this position.”In this part, we will focus on the Greek delegation which, in June 2013, was purportedly headed by Serafeim Stasinos.

The problem here is that it is doubtful whether Stasinos really had a legitimate claim on this position.

Stasinos was the Director-General of the Hellenic Industrial Property Organisation (OBI) from 1 February 2005 until 1 February 2013. From 4 March 2013 onwards, the new Director-General of OBI was Ioannis K. Zaragas (sometimes anglicised as “Zargakas”).

This is confirmed by OBI’s Annual Report for 2013. [PDF] (local copy )

OBI’s Annual Report confirms that Stasinos ceased to be Director-General on 1 February 2013.

Upon taking up his duties as Director-General of OBI, Zaragas also assumed the usual representative functions for Greece on the governing bodies of international organisations dealing with “IP” matters. For example, he represented Greece [PDF] at the General Assembly of the World Intellectual Property Organisation (WIPO) in Geneva.

But for some mysterious reason, Zaragas never appeared as head of the Greek delegation on the Administrative Council of the European Patent Organisation.

“But for some mysterious reason, Zaragas never appeared as head of the Greek delegation on the Administrative Council of the European Patent Organisation.”The EPO Official Journal for June 2013 contains an entry listing the composition of the Administrative Council as of May 2013.

According to this entry, Stasinos was still the head of the Greek delegation and he is designated as “Director-General of OBI”.

This is clearly incorrect because – as confirmed by official Greek records – Stasinos had relinquished that position three months earlier in February 2013.

So what exactly was going on here? Why did Zaragas not act as head of the Greek delegation at the 136^th meeting of the Administrative Council, given that he had been appointed as Director-General of OBI in March 2013?

Ioannis K. Zaragas, appointed as Director-General of OBI in March 2013 but never acted as head of delegation on the EPO’s Administrative Council.

The first clue to solving this riddle can be found in an EPO announcement (warning: epo.org link) made a year previously, in the summer of 2012.

“A further clue to solving the riddle, can be found in the Minutes of the 136^th Council meeting which also lists Stasinos as head of the Greek delegation – but this time designating him as “Chairman of the [EPO's] Budget and Finance Committee”.”According to this announcement, at its June 2012 meeting, the Administrative Council elected Stasinos as chairman of its Budget and Finance Committee (BFC) – which is responsible for supervising the EPO’s budgetary affairs. Stasinos took over this position from Guus Broesterhuizen, the Dutch delegate – and longtime "buddy" of Battistelli and Kongstad – whose term of office as BFC chairman had just ended.

A further clue to solving the riddle, can be found in the Minutes of the 136^th Council meeting which also lists Stasinos as head of the Greek delegation – but this time designating him as “Chairman of the [EPO's] Budget and Finance Committee”.

Minutes of the 136^th Council meeting listing Stasinos as “Chairman of the Budget and Finance Committee”.

Stasinos’s tenure as chairman of the BFC lasted until 26 June 2016 (warning: epo.org link). For the duration of that period, he continued to act as nominal head of the Greek delegation on the EPO’s Administrative Council.

“However, under Battistelli’s régime at the EPO, circumstances were typically far from “normal”.”Under normal circumstances, his departure as head of OBI in February 2013 should have terminated his representative duties on the EPO’s Administrative Council. However, under Battistelli’s régime at the EPO, circumstances were typically far from “normal”.

The irregular composition of the Greek delegation between March 2013 and June 2015 seems to have been the result of a backroom deal between the Greeks and the EPO President.

It would appear that the gist of this deal was that Battistelli’s “Trojan horse” on the BFC – namely, Stasinos – would be permitted to act as de facto head of the Greek delegation, despite the fact that he lacked any legitimate claim to this position following his dismissal as head of OBI in February 2013.

This GUBU situation has already been commented on by Techrights back in 2017:

“When the Greek representative left the Greek patent office,” an insider from the EPO told us, “Battistelli kept him as president of the finance and budget committee for another two years, illegally of course.”

It’s not clear what exactly the Greeks received in return for their collusion with Battistelli’s machinations. However, according to EPO folklore, when a Greek EPO staff member complained to the Greek delegation about the misconduct of the EPO President he was informed that the delegation was well aware that Battistelli was a tyrant but “we need the money”.

By a curious coincidence, the tenure of Ioannis Zaragas as OBI Director-General also ended in June 2015. He was replaced by Ioannis Kaplanis, “an experienced economist with degrees from the London School of Economics (PhD, BSc) and the University of Manchester (MSc)”.

Ioannis Kaplanis replaced Zaragas as head of OBI in June 2015.

At around the same time, there were some changes in the structure of the Greek delegation on the EPO’s Administrative Council. The new head of delegation was Kyriacos E. Makaronas, who had been appointed as the chairman of OBI’s oversight board (which is officially called its “Administrative Council”). Meanwhile, the newly appointed Director-General of OBI, Ioannis Kaplanis, was assigned the subordinate position of deputy head of delegation.

“The irregular composition of the Greek delegation between March 2013 and June 2015 seems to have been the result of a backroom deal between the Greeks and the EPO President.”These changes can be attributed to the formation of a new left-wing SYRIZIA government following the Greek general election in January 2015. It seems that the new government decided to push through a number of “personnel changes” in the upper echelons of the Greek civil service, including the top management of OBI.

This resulted in the “purge” of the pro-Battistelli Zaragas-Stasinos double-act and its replacement by SYRIZIA appointees, Makaronas and Kaplanis.

However, the new delegates appear to have been just as subservient to Battistelli as their predecessors. The likely explanation is that they soon discovered that, despite the change in government, Greece still “needed the money” and they could not afford to cross swords with the “Sun-King” of EPOnia.

“…the new delegates appear to have been just as subservient to Battistelli as their predecessors.”Fast forwarding to 2021, the Greek delegation is now headed by a fresh face, Panagiotis G. Kanellopoulos, who was appointed as Director-General of OBI in September 2019.

According to his official curriculum vitae published on the OBI website [PDF] (local copy), Kanellopoulos was born in Athens in 1979 and he holds a bachelor’s degree from the faculty of Philosophy, Pedagogy and Psychology of the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens and a law degree from the Democritus University of Thrace. He has been practicing Law for more than 10 years, with main areas of expertise the criminal, commercial, civil, and sports law.

New head of the Greek delegation since September 2019: Panagiotis Kanellopoulos.

Based on the track record of the Greek delegation over the last decade or so, only a blind optimist would be inclined to believe that it is likely to make any positive contribution to dealing with the fallout from the recent ILOAT judgments overturning Battistelli’s “Strike Regulations”.

In the next part we will look at the delegation representing Cyprus. █

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