Why the EPO Never Managed to Silence Us (After Over a Decade of Trying)
From Private Eye (one of several articles about us):
Around the exact same time of the year in 2015 I was contacted by EPO lawyers at almost midnight at the end of the week. They contacted me after I had published very damaging material about Microsoft and EPO misconduct. They later sent me some more threats over further publications that I published on the matter. Those weren't false. But they wanted them removed.
It didn't go well. My lawyer, whose firm is also dealing with the 4Chan and Kiwi Farms trolls (they now troll our government, filing cases from the US against UK entities; sounds familiar, does it not? [1, 2, 3]), responded to them firmly. They escalated to an even larger and more aggressive law firm (more than 1,400 staff; they're Mishcon de Reya, an utterly nasty and disgusting firm, whose staff many people revile). They decided to heap dirt upon critics, sort of like Brett Wilson LLP (more than 100 times smaller), and the harder they pressed, the worse it became for their clients. The EPO would soon make itself a reputation of a monster and mobster; attacking people who merely talk about it was bound to backfire. Eventually they withdrew. I've published some but not all the letters received from them. The last one was a vague, veiled threat from Mishcon de Reya, which turned out to have a serious conflict of interest (just like the prior firm).
With the exception of people who assassinate a greedy CEO, assassins are no "folk heroes". Law firms that behave like assassins (they accidentally revealed that they had stalked me) merely reaffirm a bad stigma about their motivations.
If your law firm resorts to Mafia-like tactics, don't expect it to survive for much longer. Heck, the only cases it might get is defending itself... from its own clients.
Regarding the question of what went wrong for the EPO, let's put it in an itemised list:
- Its reputation was waning
- Attacking critics made the reason for the waning reputation more widely known
- Staff was extremely angry that the employer was attacking bloggers, not only staff
- Politicians were more receptive to criticism of the EPO in the media (knowing the EPO didn't refute the media but instead attacked the media)
- EPO managers realised we were not conventional targets and, unlike some other sites (e.g. WIPR - World IP Review), we would never retract or sanitise our publications just because of threats
Law firms need to properly study who they try to attack before starting regrettable attacks. But there's an issue with that too; when they start stalking people and their family members, they inadvertently make themselves more susceptible to lawsuits (against lawyers and Directors, even if they're LLPs). There are also laws associated with stalking and harassment. There are government agencies assigned to deal with these.
I never reported Mishcon de Reya to the SRA. But I probably could. Firms like Mishcon de Reya and Brett Wilson LLP contribute to a bad stigma, staining the entire occupation. █
"Not clear at this stage who they are acting for," my lawyer told me at the time. In the case of Brett Wilson LLP, we now know that they get paid not by who they call "Client" but some shady third party. This litigation industry is like an underworld. They would literally represent criminals and attack those who merely talk about the crimes.