Photo ops distract from the big story of the day (the protest)

Summary: A look at poor coverage (if any coverage) of the EPO protest that took place yesterday

THE previous post attempted to make a permanent visual record of yesterday's EPO protest, which a high proportion of EPO staff attended in the cold weather. To EPO management, however, the day marked another 'milestone' (if holding a piece of paper counts for that).

As usual, the EPO 'forgot' to mention yesterday's much bigger news (they even found time to promote trade deals on the face of it^*). It said nothing about the massive staff protest and instead 'manufactured' some news that it even posted under the "news" section (warning: epo.org links can be tracked). As we've repeatedly noted here before, Benoît Battistelli seems to be able to agree only with tiny countries and/or corrupt countries these days. When did we last see Benoît Battistelli posing with a reputable political leader of a large state? Think about it. The EPO's PR team is still living in an intoxicating fantasy world where staff on strike or in protest is not newsworthy but a Battistelli photo op (as above) is major news. It's not a major country (a tiny tax haven) and patent searches are not a big deal. It's almost like the whole 'report' was staged to distract.

Speaking of a fantasy world, check out this terrible new article from Dutch media. As Petra Kramer put it, "it's a watered down, untruthful story. It claims that Van Dam made EPO negotiate with FNV."

"I translated and commented on the sorry piece of yellow journalism," she added and later she said "I do believe they need a burn. They claim to by Rijswijk, for Rijswijk but they're clearly biased against SUEPO."

Here is the story in English, with corrections by Petra Kramer (PK):

European Patent Office workers take action against director

On Square 1813 in The Hague, employees of the European Patent Office in Rijswijk campaigned against their director Benoît Battistelli. The man allegedly causes a bad atmosphere within the company.

In a previous protest two employees were fired ["not true, the protest was a response to dismissals, not the cause of it" -PK]. It didn't stop some colleagues ["some colleagues means over 400 of them" -PK) to keep protesting against the "tyrant," as the director of the EPA is called internally. According to trade union FNV there is a culture of fear within the company. Even though the director denies this. Martijn van Dam State, the Secretary of Economic Affairs in April ensured that the leadership of the EPO is to engage in talks with the FNV. ["Bullshit, FNV stands up in solidarity with SUEPO, FNV has no direct relation with EPO and Martijn van Dam did not convince Batistelli to recognize SUEPO as a union, SUEPO fought hard for that" -PK] Those talks were difficult.

Currently the EPA one is engaged in a reorganization and expansion/renovation of the entire building.

Who benefits from such an inaccurate story?

Speaking of inaccuracies, IP Kat comments are full of them this week. In an effort to filter out the noise (to retrieve information) and reading of responses to such noise we found not much of the information we looked for, as it's also off topic. The EPO's President "BB rather prefers to continue to use the Inquisition!" one person wrote. Here is that comment:

In the AC the British and Danish, Chairman and delegates may propose, and this based on their state religions, to house the Investigation Unit in a chapel with some confession boxes where they can hear the SR’s confessions and offer in silence forgiveness. BB rather prefers to continue to use the Inquisition! ...the accused in the Inquisition was never allowed to see the face of his accuser, or of the witnesses against him, but every method is taken by threats and tortures, to oblige him to accuse himself, and by that means corroborate their evidence.

"In some complex fields, mine included, we now have less than 2 days per product," another person noted, reinforcing what we already know about quality issues at the EPO under Battistelli. ⬆ ______ ^* Found via EPO recommendation in Twitter was this article about "trade liberalisation," which has a section on "Using patents to measure innovation and country exposure". What next from the EPO? TPP and CETA advocacy? In addition to UPC?