Whistleblowers exist not only at the EPO

Reference: Whistleblower

Summary: The culture of whistle-blowing, or conscientious insiders/whistleblowers willing to criticise their bosses, has spread to the United States' patent office

EARLIER this year we mentioned "USPTO CIO Watchdog" -- an account which several respected other accounts are citing as a USPTO insider (or similar). Taking stock of what it wrote this past month we have:

https://twitter.com/CIO_Watchdog/status/971062177900695552

https://twitter.com/CIO_Watchdog/status/973550883651964928

https://twitter.com/CIO_Watchdog/status/976099138977878016

https://twitter.com/CIO_Watchdog/status/976100597186400256

In case the account or the tweets vanish one day (that happens a lot with whistleblower accounts when they feel threatened, get unmasked, and sometimes sued), here's the full text (local, not embedded remotely): "Now that the new USPTO Director is on board, maybe he can fix the 10 year $2 bil tech crash left by CIO John Owens, Tony Chiles, Pam Isom and other ex-AOLers. Dir Iancu should ask CFO Scardino and CAO Steckler to explain these expenditures with no return on investments [...] PTO CIO is still on the path of destruction as Chiles and Isom try to save Owens’ legacy. CIO is a bloated organization plagued by excessive internal oversight and duplicate office functions, according to a recent org chart. Empire building at its best [...] The PTO CIO job is now closed and we hope the new director will not be swayed by the business in his selection, as the business was duped into selecting some of the idiots we have today. Remember David Chiles was made CTO because he failed to lead the Dev shop, 3 years ago. [...] Furthermore, David was moved because the business heads at that time asked Owens to move him. To save David Chiles, Owens elevated the CTO position, preselected David so he could hire preselected Tony Chiles. The DOC IG is supposedly looking into this. Business as usual at PTO."

There's now talk not only about the CIO (whose job is connected to a relative at the Office).

This is interesting to us because "USPTO CIO Watchdog" is aware of what's going on at the EPO (also a culture of gross nepotism and incompetence at the top). Techrights was in fact mentioned by him/her before.

Remarking on EPO management earlier today, a prolific commenter in IP Kat and elsewhere wrote about the role of the Administrative Council (AC), which not only protected Battistelli but also empowered him. "No wonder the AC is so good at covering the President’s back," wrote the commenter. "What else can one reasonably expect?"

His abuses implicate them too. They were often complicit and they have much to hide or cover up. The last thing they want is a former ICC judge in charge of the Office; instead they put an old friend of Battistelli (Campinos) in charge.

Here is the comment in full:

The louder EPO management shouts out about how much it values “trust”, the more I find myself thinking, with rising feelings of disgust, not about trust but about betrayal of trust.

In particular, I am reminded of that famous old quotation about the possibility of theft of silver spoons, by a guest invited for the week-end in an English country house. It originated with Johnson (definitely not Boris though) and was modernised by Ralph Waldo Emerson. It goes like this:

“The louder he talked of his honour, the faster we counted the spoons.”

Sadly, at the EPO though, it’s not just one shameless thief acting alone though, is it? Rather, it seems to be a wilfully blind AC quietly trousering the proceeds of management venality and treachery. Quite frankly, the less the EPO boasts about trust, the less queasy and embarrassed we will all feel.

These days, nobody should be surprised when an International Organisation, enjoying immunity from the Rule Of Law, and therefore acting with impunity, degenerates to institutional kleptocracy, whenever the opportunity arises. Who can hold the Organisation to account? Only the bulk users, the key customers, by which I mean the sociopathic, itinerant, global titan corporate giants.

These giants insist on paying no tax. They play one country off against another, threatening to pull out of any country that dares to tax them. What’s the alternative to taxing them then? System Battistelli of course. BB pulls in the cash, then dispenses it as dividends to those EPO Member States he likes most. At least for those favoured countries, Plan BB does at least deliver much-needed cash, that cannot be gathered otherwise, because any attempt to tax the corporations will be futile or, even worse, self-destructive.

No wonder the AC is so good at covering the President’s back. What else can one reasonably expect?

The problem is that even when/after Campinos comes the Council and the management remain largely in tact and identical. We expect nothing substantial to change; readers tell us the same thing. It's just another nontechnical Frenchman like Battistelli, albeit two decades his junior. It's all about connections, not about skills, and it's often said that Battistelli got his job at the EPO thanks to Nicolas Sarkozy (who has just been charged with corruption). ⬆