Bonum Certa Men Certa

Introduction to Jesper Kongstad, EPO Chairman of the Administrative Council

Part of a series

Jesper Kongstad's mansion



Summary: A look at the professional life of the Chairman of the Administrative Council of the European Patent Organisation, including the lesser-known aspects of Jesper Kongstad's farmhouse/mansion in Denmark (shown above)

Jesper Kongstad is the current Director of the Danish Patent and Trademark Office and Chairman of the Administrative Council of the European Patent Organisation. He is also a member of the Board of the Nordic Patent Institute.



"Kongstad rejected this suggestion and claimed that the redundancies which he defended as "just sound management” were a justifiable reaction to the downturn in applications."In 2009, Kongstad put his name forward as a candidate for the position of President of the European Patent Office which was due to be filled on 1 July 2010. In December 2009, he withdrew his candidacy allegedly as the result of some kind of secret deal with Battistelli.

Kongstad was subsequently elected as Chairman of the Administrative Council of the European Patent Organisation on June 29, 2010. He took up office on 1 July 2010 for an initial period of three years, which was later extended to six years in March 2013. He was re-elected for a further period of three years in March 2016.

Kongstad has been the Director of the Danish Patent and Trademark Office (DKPTO) since 2003. In 2009 it was reported that the DKPTO had laid off 35 members of staff after seeing a slump in applications due to the global recession. This layoff amounted to somewhere around 15% of the total workforce of the DKPTO. It was criticised is some quarters as "a very drastic approach" and it was suggested that the DKPTO was using the crisis as an excuse to cut certain services. Kongstad rejected this suggestion and claimed that the redundancies which he defended as "just sound management” were a justifiable reaction to the downturn in applications.

"Despite the Scandinavian tradition for transparency and accountability, Kongstad is ironically an outspoken opponent of transparency rules for IP trading."It's also interesting to note that during 2009 and 2010 the DKPTO was involved in an EU twinning project with the Croatian State Intellectual property office (SIPO). This is where Željko Topić had worked before he started abusing EPO staff like he did at SIPO.

Despite the Scandinavian tradition for transparency and accountability, Kongstad is ironically an outspoken opponent of transparency rules for IP trading.

From his CV which appears on LinkedIn it can be seen that Kongstad began his professional career in Denmark as an administrative officer in the Ministry for Industry (1984-1990). In 1990 he began working at the Statens Serum Institute where he remained in various roles until 1999. Statens Serum Institute is a public enterprise under the Danish Ministry of Health. After that he switched to the private sector where he was CEO of a biopharmaceutical startup company called Astion A/S.

"He is rumored to have strong connections to the conservative-liberal Venstre party which was in government at that time. It has been speculated that his political connections might have assisted him in securing his position at the DKPTO but this cannot be confirmed."In 2003 Kongstad returned to the public sector when he was appointed as Director of the DKPTO. He is rumored to have strong connections to the conservative-liberal Venstre party which was in government at that time. It has been speculated that his political connections might have assisted him in securing his position at the DKPTO but this cannot be confirmed.

Some sources alleged that the Kongstad family used to live in a fashionable upmarket suburb of Copenhagen, but the Kongstads did not live directly in Copenhagen as originally believed but rather in Rungsted which is an affluent suburban neighborhood in Hørsholm Municipality on the Øresund coast, north of Copenhagen. In 2013 they suddenly relocated to a farmhouse in Valby, Helsinge in the Gribskov municipality which is situated about 80 km north-west of Copenhagen. The source for this is an article published in February 2014 in a Danish Farmer's Magazine called "LandbrugsAvisen". The article is entitled "Fra villa til chinchilla" - From the villa to chinchillas.

According to publicly available data on Danish real estate websites, the house in Valby boasts an impressive 240 square metres of floor space and the property includes around 22 hectares of agricultural land. One recent evaluation put the property value at 4.6 million DKR (about 620k Euros at current exchange rates).

"Whatever about that, the move to the farmhouse has given Kongstad's wife, Majbritt, the possibility to reinvent herself as a chinchilla-breeder and director of a fur farming operation which was reportedly inspired by a dinner table conversation with Torben Nielsen, the then Chief Executive of Kopenhagen Fur. "In Danish press articles which reported on the Kongstad family's move from Rungsted to a more pastoral setting in Valby, the move was said to be motivated by a desire for a change in life-style. But some people who have looked into the matter think that there may be more to it than just this. As far as can be determined, the purchase of the farmhouse was financed mostly by credit (mortgage). At the same time, it is unclear what exactly happened to the proceeds of the sale of the previous upmarket suburban house which could have been expected to yield some gains due to the rise in property prices in the Rungsted area over the years. It has been speculated that at least some of the proceeds from the Rungsted house sale might have been used to cover losses in one or more of the various private businesses operated by Mr. Kongstad and his family.

Whatever about that, the move to the farmhouse has given Kongstad's wife, Majbritt, the possibility to reinvent herself as a chinchilla-breeder and director of a fur farming operation which was reportedly inspired by a dinner table conversation with Torben Nielsen, the then Chief Executive of Kopenhagen Fur.

Note: For those unfamiliar with the fur industry, Kopenhagen Fur is the largest fur skin auction company in the world. Recent research has also uncovered some interesting connections between Kopenhagen Fur and allegations of attempts to buy influence in Danish politics including a donation to the Venstre party which we hope to look at in more detail later on.

In future articles we intend to take a closer look at Mr. Kongstad's political masters in Denmark and the rumoured connections to the Venstre party. We would also like to examine his various private business ventures and the questions which these raise about potential conflicts of interest.

Recent Techrights' Posts

Saving the Planet With Honesty, Transparency, and Sharing (Not Only of Computer Code)
GAFAM is destroying the only habitat humans and other animals have and it'll only get worse
Disinformation About Election Outcomes Even Before Any Election Outcomes (or Election/Voting!)
seeding doubt about election outcomes
Against Outsourcing of Sites and E-mail
Software Freedom is great, but it is not enough if you let someone else do it 'for you'
Drew DeVault: People Talking About My Attack Site (Against the Founder of GNU/Linux) is "Spam"
"Spam on sr.ht mailing lists"
"Oppose the Fascist"
what the founder of GNU/Linux said
Halloween, All Saints Day & Swiss citizenship
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
 
How Voting Does Not Work
You cannot vote from an "app"
Links 05/11/2024: Bluesky and Enshittification, Pugad Baboy, and Lots of Disinformation Flooding the Web
Links for the day
[Meme] Sweaty Under the Belly
"OK, my critics are 'spam'"
Microsoft Bribing Canonical (to Stop Competing) and Bribing Users to Shun the Competition
Canonical is worth shunning
[Meme] The 2024 'Info Bros'
And prehistoric googling
Computers Getting Worse (for the User) Over Time
This is like Windows-ism coming to "Linux" through the hardware
[Meme] How NOT to Vote
Another form of (mostly-unspoken-of) election interference
An LLM Inside a 'Search' Engine Means That Companies Tell You What They Want, Not What Web Pages to Visit
The future of 'googling' things might be as unreliable as using Social Control Media as a source of information
Google's Debt Has Increased and 'Cash on Hand' Fell by 22.27% This Past Year
These are the numbers that the corporate media intentionally leaves out
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Monday, November 04, 2024
IRC logs for Monday, November 04, 2024
There's a Reason Why Techrights is Turning 18 and Tux Machines Will Turn 20.5 Next Month
I started advocating GNU/Linux when I was a teenager
Techrights Has a Long History of Fighting to Expose 'Team Mono' or Microsofters Inside GNOME
Never downplay the malice of Microsoft and its operatives
Gemini Links 05/11/2024: Halloween Over, Intention and Implementation, Bookmark Syncing
Links for the day
Microsoft Lost Nearly Half of Its 'Cash Reserves' This Past Year
Is Microsoft (MSFT) the next Intel (INTC)?
The Year Isn't Over Yet, There Will be More Waves of Microsoft Layoffs
Nowadays Microsoft just tries to conflate/equate its energy waste with "value"
The Corporate Media Blasted Bitcoin for Destroying the Planet and Must Do the Same to Incite the Public Against the 'Great Rigging of Wall Street' (Under the Guise of "AI", the Latest Gold Rush)
"AI" is the next "metaverse" (trailing by a few months)
[Video] Richard Stallman is Back to Halo and Gown (in Peru) With 2+ Hours of a Public Talk
The globetrotting Richard Stallman gave many talks at the end of last month
Going Strong Against the Wind
the abuse serves to emphasise or affirm the importance of what we do
Links 04/11/2024: Squashing More Software Patents and Taiwan at Risk
Links for the day
Gemini Links 04/11/2024: Typing vs Writing and a Smol (Net) Pub
Links for the day
Links 04/11/2024: LibreOffice Had Adopted PeerTube, "Hey Hi" Hype is a Threat to the Energy Grids (Worse Than Fake-Coins)
Links for the day
[Meme] Social Control Telescreens With Microphone
Nineteen Eighty-Four
Shout-out to Christine From FOSSForce
Who noticed our short story
Not Boycotting Apple (Yet)?
"Apple Forces The Signing Of Applications In MacOS Sequoia 15.1"
statCounter This Month: Android Has Nearly Become Twice as Big as Windows
If it happened, it would be an unprecedented milestone
Why Technical Sites Need Not Make Political Recommendations or Endorsements
Except perhaps when it's for some purely technical role, e.g. FCC chief
[Meme] Apple Freedom
Freedom is... the ability to purchase as many 'i' things as you want
Apple's MacOS Shows Us the Vision of Computing That GAFAM Has for Us (Digital Prisons)
Freedom means "we the people" should be in control, not people being controlled by corporations (contemporary slaveowners)
"Active" as in One URL, One Emoji, and 4 Words in One Week
Diversity community in Fedora
Apple Vision Pro Has Failed, Just Like "Metaverse"
Vision Pro lacks software
Things That Can Improve Election Integrity
the first two relate to "tech"
Rigging Elections is Difficult, Cheating a Little is Not
Avoid social control media, it is the biggest rigger of all
"People who live in glass houses shouldn't throw stones"
On throwing stones in a glass house
Our Stance on Electronic (or Digital) Voting Machines
The simple activity of voting and counting ballots does not require thousands of complex machines with hundreds of millions of transistors and hundreds of millions of lines of code
Microsoft and "Retrospective Re-writing of History..."
in YouTube anyone can make stuff up (as one goes along)
This Coming Week
Go exercise your right to vote
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Sunday, November 03, 2024
IRC logs for Sunday, November 03, 2024
Reddit is (Still) Lying and Faking
Don't fall for this phony idea that the above sites are grassroots or edgy; they're not
GNU/Linux Users Are Not Cheaters
The bottom line is, most cheaters use Windows
Links 04/11/2024: FCC, Broadband Industry Spar Over Net Neutrality; Software Patent Squashed
Links for the day
Gemini Links 03/11/2024: Official MyGemini.Space Announcement
Links for the day
Gemini Links 03/11/2024: Election Thoughts, Plagiarism, and LLM Slop
Links for the day
Links 03/11/2024: Deere 'Right to Repair' (RoR) and "Threads Bans Anyone For Mentioning Hitler"
Links for the day
[Video] "El Movimiento del Software Libre y el Sistema Operativo GNU" by Richard M. Stallman
The footage is a bit jittery (taken with a phone apparently, and there's no tripod available), but the sound is OK and the words (in Spanish) are comprehensible
Android at New Highs (47%), Windows at New Lows (24%), Suggests Latest Data From statCounter
So the market share of Android is about double that of Windows
[Video] Richard Stallman's Talk in Spanish (in Peru Last Week)
Alternative URLs too
The Media Focuses on the Wrong Scandal
The real scandal at MIT was Gates
Gemini Links 03/11/2024: Fantasy Life Day and Worship
Links for the day
[Meme] Write Us Drivers and GTFO!
When you realise sanctioning BRICS devs goes against the community
Decommissioning Copper Lines Makes Us Less Safe
We've essentially degraded the robustness or reliability of critical systems
Life of an Addicted Lolicon Who Can Also Code
Personal blog as an open diary
[Meme] Reporting Crime is Not a Crime
Obviously!
Manchester Party for Techrights
If you choose to come, of course we'll cover the cost of the food and treats (but not travel)
Privacy is Not a Crime (in Places Where It is a Crime the Regime is Typically Very Rogue)
Also, criminals lack "privacy rights" to hide their crimes from the public
GNU/Linux "Market Share" in Lebanon More Than Doubled in a Few Months
Maybe it's a reaction to something? Assassination in Haret Hreik was in July.
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Saturday, November 02, 2024
IRC logs for Saturday, November 02, 2024
Nearly 40 Years Without Security Incidents
People who use Windows have come to sort of "accept" that security incidents are part of life or "normal"
[Meme] The Streisand Effect
Simon says, don't bother trying to suppress facts
Streisand Effect at IBM?
Trying to silence your workers isn't the best approach. It only makes colleagues even more curious.
Microsoft is a Gift That Keeps Giving (Future Stories to Techrights)
Microsoft has been trying to silence me using dirty tricks for nearly 20 years
Elon Musk Has Trashed Twitter for Ideological Reasons (and Propping Up Trump in Exchange for Financial and Political Favours Once in Public Office)
In case you didn't leave Twitter already, consider the fact that Twitter's (or "X"... whatever!) future is uncertain
Wall Street Has Demoted Intel, Seeing There May be No Future to Intel
Intel's loss isn't a loss to us
Free Software Licence Compliance is About Security Too
Linux as de facto proprietary off-the-shelf platform