New EPO Letter Expressing Concerns About EPO Violating Its Charter, Clearly Violating Rules (Possibly Bribing Siemens With Monopolies) and Granting Loads of Fake Patents to Make More Money
Why does the EU tolerate the EPO's crimes and how much longer will this go on for? (This corruption had already spread to the EU itself)
JUST over a week ago staff representatives at the EPO wrote to António Campinos and his faithful violators (career-climbing cheaters and opportunistic sociopaths) expressing concerns about a subject that had already become a subject of concern even in patent maximalists' rags (as noted by SUEPO the other day) - i.e. publications that stand to profit from lots of patent litigation and general legal chaos (which is what they're looking to monetise). The Benoît Battistelli boosters, who helped usher in illegal and unconstitutional patent courts, are probably concerned that a boycott of the EPO is now in the cards - a subject we'll tackle separately. The whole patent system - if not at risk of collapse - has already risked its reputation and credibility. Many of the fake patents being granted and litigated are illegal software patents and the following letter expresses concerns about quality and compliance (with the standards dictated by the EPC) as well as what seems like the EPO bribing critics to keep them quiet:
European Patent Office
80298 Munich
GermanyCentral Staff Committee
Comité central du personnel
Zentraler PersonalausschusscentralSTCOM@epo.org
Reference: sc24050cl
Date: 29/08/2024European Patent Office | 80298 MUNICH | GERMANY
To:
Mr António Campinos (President of the EPO)Cc:
Mr Steve Rowan (Vice-President of DG1)
Mr Razik Menidjel (Chief Operating Officer)By email:
To: president@epo.org
Cc: vp1office@epo.org; rmenidjel@epo.orgOPEN LETTER
High-level user meetings and special treatment of patent applications
Dear Mr President,
The Office is currently running a series of high-level user meetings under the title “customer journey user outreach”. The meetings are chaired by Mr Rowan (VP1) while Mr Menidjel (COO) remains in charge of the operational part. Around 14 applicants including Philip Morris, Thales, Boeing, etc have been selected and invited to participate in such meetings in 2024.
A meeting is planned in autumn with Siemens AG whose Chief IP Counsel and Group Senior Vice President, Mr Beat Weibel, is leading the Industry Patent Quality Charter (IPQC), which is publicly critical about the substantive quality of EPO patents.
We observed over the last weeks that DG1 Operations put in place a specific unit in charge of scrutinizing patent applications filed by Siemens AG. For a number of these patent applications, the Examining Divisions in charge had already sent summons to oral proceedings which had successfully passed all the EPO statutory “quality” checks. The specific unit nevertheless took the decision to allocate new Examining Divisions which cancelled the summons to oral proceedings that may have led to refusals but instead directly sent intentions to grant. The former Examining Divisions were never informed of the change undertaken during the holidays.
There is no legal basis for setting up a specific unit in charge of scrutinizing files of a specific applicant. There is also no legal basis for a specific unit to change the outcome of the work of the Examining Division originally in charge.
This course of action raises the question as to whether the examination procedure for patent applications of other users invited to high-level user meetings was also altered with the intervention of a specific unit or would be in the future. It can be considered to go against the principle of neutrality in the treatment of patent applications. Finally, such special treatment is impossible to reconcile with the actual claim of the IPQC, inter alia of Siemens AG, for an improvement of the EPO’s examination procedure to grant enforceable patents of substantive quality for all applicants.
We urge you to put an end to this situation.
Sincerely yours
Derek Kelly
Chairman of the Central Staff Committee
Notice that it seems like the EPO, which used several laws firms to blackmail me over the years and bribed countless publications, seems to be bribing critics now (with monopolies). Is this a repeat of what the EPO threatened me in an effort to hide? And then apparently meddled with the media to prevent it talking about how it had SLAPPed the journalists?
The corruption is so profound that it has spread to the media. Where does this end? Where does the criminality of the EPO end? How many causalities must there be? Political systems, court systems the press... what else? They're already killing SMEs in Europe and the person who promoted illegal patent courts has just become a head of state in France.
As a reminder, and as we wrote about this many times before, Siemens is a prolific booster for software patents in Europe for at least a decade.
In communication to the staff they said "DG1 Operations sets up special unit for scrutinizing files of specific applicant" - that is Siemens! - and stated (similarly but not identically to the above):
Dear Colleagues,
The Office is currently running a series of high-level user meetings under the title “customer journey user outreach”. The meetings are chaired by Mr Rowan (VP1) while Mr Menidjel (COO) remains in charge of the operational part. Around 14 applicants including Philip Morris, Thales, Boeing, etc have been selected and invited to participate in such meetings in 2024.
A meeting is planned in autumn with Siemens AG whose Chief IP Counsel and Group Senior Vice President, Mr Beat Weibel, is leading the Industry Patent Quality Charter (IPQC), which is publicly critical about the substantive quality of EPO patents.
We observed over the last weeks that DG1 Operations put in place a specific unit in charge of scrutinizing patent applications filed by Siemens AG. For a number of these patent applications, the Examining Divisions in charge had already sent summons to oral proceedings which had successfully passed all the EPO statutory “quality” checks. The specific unit nevertheless took the decision to allocate new Examining Divisions which cancelled the summons to oral proceedings that may have led to refusals but instead directly sent intentions to grant. The former Examining Divisions were never informed of the change undertaken during the holidays.
This course of action raises the question as to whether the examination procedure for patent applications of other users invited to high-level user meetings was also altered with the intervention of a specific unit or would be in the future. It can be considered to go against the principle of neutrality in the treatment of patent applications. Finally, such special treatment is impossible to reconcile with the actual claim of the IPQC, inter alia of Siemens AG, for an improvement of the EPO’s examination procedure to grant enforceable patents of substantive quality for all applicants.
In this open letter, we urge the President to put an end to this situation.
Sincerely yours,
The Central Staff Committee - CSC
Again we ask: how much crime must be committed by EPO management before European authorities intervene and hold accountable those responsible? You simply cannot say that the EPO exists to serve justice when the EPO itself is attacking justice, laws, constitutions etc. It's worse than absurd and it fast became a shame of Europe - possibly contributing a little bit to Brexit.
Political systems that reward rather than punish the corrupt cannot prevail in the long run. They're a ticking time bomb. █