Why We'll Continue Covering EPO Abuses (Other Patent Offices as Well, as the Need Arises) for Many Years to Come
Ten years ago, back in 2015, I promised myself not to forgive the EPO (European Patent Office) for its SLAPPing, which involved not one but several law firms with a conflict of interest (they sought to profit from the UPC, which Benoît Battistelli and António Campinos illegally promoted because the "judges" are corporations, the courts themselves are unconstitutional, and European software patents are considered desirable by the chief judge).
Here I am a decade later, still writing about these issues, still receiving many leaks (more to come later today). That ought to be a wake-up call for Microsofters as well (see what we published yesterday, two days ago, three days ago, and four days ago). SLAPPs are costly, not just in the "legal bills" sense. You're going to pay for it for many years to come. We'll illuminate what the SLAPPs were meant to try to hide.
The EPO is "close to home". I'm a multinational and I'm deeply concerned about what's happening in Europe. We're basically becoming "Russia". Europe is fast becoming like Russia through ever increasing corruption and cover-up of that corruption. When people blow the whistle and report wrongdoing one can expect not perpetrators of crime to get punished but reporters of the wrongdoing to get punished. So to be a "successful" worker or civil servant one must expect sociopathy, striving to participate or keep quiet about corruption. Complicity gets one rewarded, e.g. promoted.
It pains me to say this. We're going in the wrong direction and we're moving towards dictatorship. Our own corruption is "sound business" and our own lies are "white lies". Justice apparently means appeasing hostile, foreign corporations. What motivated the EPO to start SLAPPing me in 2015 was a leak focused on Microsoft. They didn't challenge its authenticity. They backed off only after I had gotten a good lawyer, who did all the work pro bono because he believed in me and still vouches for me, saying I'm a reliable person who is also writing pro bono on important issues.
The EPO (and Microsoft) will have to learn the hard way that trying to silence people will make you "another Putin". You might still have power, but you'll become exceptionally unpopular and suffer brain drain. The house of cards will, eventually (inevitably), collapse. You only need to rock it back and forth a little. If it's a giant company or a giant public institution, the rocking may take years, even decades. █