Fixing Patents in Europe, Little by Little (by Transparency and Reporting of Suppressed Facts)
Tomorrow and throughout the weekend we shall focus some more on the EPO. After writing about their affairs since July 2014 (i.e. 11 years this month!) we see that even if the Office has not changed much, the perception of it changed profoundly. See, the EPO is a monopoly. It's not like some company that must compete with other companies for its very existence.
The chances of the EPO collapsing entirely are slim short of a very erratic political climate (like a Russian invasion of the EU). Our goal is to highlight key problems and mitigate them through public awareness.
Does that work? Yes, it does.
The same is true for SLAPPs. It has gotten so ridiculous that the Microsofters are volleying over 5KG of legal papers at me and still lose. They seem to have pissed off all the judges already. If you volley almost 1,000 pages at them ahead of a short hearing, what do you expect will happen? If you repeatedly attack women victims (seems like a pattern there!), how will you retain female staff? You won't. It is doomed to fail [1, 2]. Today we were in contact with British officials (female also). They're hardly impressed, they're not happy to see what was done to my wife and I.
Going back to the EPO, the Office has managed to make the point that women can get promoted if they have sex with a friend of Benoît Battistelli and do illegal things with them. Hardly a motivational message to feminists. This week we learned that EPO management is very afraid of our publications about the EPO. We take that as a compliment, a badge of honour.
The EPO is a monopoly (the only pan-European patent office) with almost 7,000 staff. Law firms are not monopolies and workers will leave (finding suitably-qualified replacements won't be possible with a terrible reputation). A 7-person legal team is nothing compared to the EPO and it can - possible will soon - lose its licence. █