Reference: Concentration of media ownership (also a problem in Germany, where the largest media keeps deliberately silent about the EPO scandals)

YESTERDAY, the EPO still tweeted plenty of links about 'European Inventor Award', as part of the latest expensive PR charade. This isn't something that ordinary patent offices do; they don't elevate one patent above another (violation of 'patent neutrality'), they don't waste millions of Euros of budget per year on silly, Eurovision-like ceremonies.

"This isn't something that ordinary patent offices do; they don't elevate one patent above another (violation of 'patent neutrality'), they don't waste millions of Euros of budget per year on silly, Eurovision-like ceremonies."One thing we noticed yesterday is that Les Échos, Battistelli's "media partner" in France, did this puff piece (and the EPO then linked to that). We already caught it censoring articles about the EPO and producing all sorts of puff pieces over the years (Battistelli later cites and quotes these puff pieces in letters that he sends). Well, such is the nature of today's EPO. The media has been corrupted; a lot of the media that Battistelli and/or the EPO are greasing up is covering the UPC, for example, with misleading puff pieces. It has become almost as bad as IP Kat under Bristows, which exploits what's left of this blog for marketing purposes.

Shouldn't there be disclosures from Les Échos?

"The EPO now seeds over a million Euros in an endeavour to 'plant' favourable coverage."Thankfully, we never accepted any corporate money (ever). We never will. Money corrupts coverage, even subconsciously. The other day we wrote about Brunel University London peddling snake oil that won't work for patents and days ago we saw another puff piece about it^*. This puff piece/PR is the type of corporate journalism we often condemn for being little more than marketing. It's paid for, directly or indirectly. The EPO now seeds over a million Euros in an endeavour to 'plant' favourable coverage. To think otherwise is to pretend that the media has no owners and is never sponsored. ⬆ ______ ^* In fact, the people behind it tried to contact me regarding my article (persuasion attempts), but I ignored them. I stand by my original assertions. At times, albeit not often, even EPO management sends me messages asking me to censor my articles, but these messages too I disregard as they ask for censorship and lack of accountability for what they do for Battistelli at the upper echelons (or higher floors) of EPO. The EPO is an enemy of the free press.