Bonum Certa Men Certa

The European Patent Office (EPO) Wastes a Lot of Money on External PR Agencies for Battistelli's 'Heist'

Saint-Germain-en-Laye event



Summary: The EPO's management is once again scattering/throwing EPO budget at PR agencies and media companies (publishers/broadcasters) to disseminate a bunch of puff pieces and virtually ignore the very obvious conflict of interest, which should be a scandal on par with that of FIFA (resulting in the arrest of its boss, Mr. Blatter)

THE staff of the EPO is really upset. We can see that. We hear about that. It's like no matter how abusive the boss is, nothing ever happens to him. He's above the law.

"The staff of the EPO is really upset.""I was surprised to see that the administrator of the Theatre Alexandre Dumas (TAD) in St Germain en Laye is not anyone else than the mayor, Arnaud Péricard, himself," told us one reader, "seconded by, you guess it, Benoît Battistelli . As such the TAD is a part of the administration in St Germain en Laye. Here a link with the TAD team (L’équipe du TAD | Théâtre Alexandre-Dumas de Saint-Germain-en-Laye) who are themselves getting involved in a scandal without being aware of it. With the inventor of the year show taking place in the town where Benoit Battistelli is deputy mayor, there is a MAJOR conflict of interest, and a MAJOR scandal in perspective for which M. Battistelli and the accomplices will be held accountable."

Here is the list of the people involved/implicated:

TAD team

Arnaud Péricard Maire-adjoint chargé de la Culture (deputy mayor in charge of culture)

Benoît Battistelli Conseiller municipal délégué au Théâtre (town counsellor in charge of the Thatre)

Guillaume Estienne Directeur général adjoint des Services (deputy general director for services)

Francine Chassepot Directrice de la Vie culturelle (director in charge of cultural life)

Theatre team

Directrice déléguée (deputy director) Sophie Bauer

Directeur artistique (artistic director) Benoît Dissaux

Directeur technique (technical director) Joël Haton

Gestionnaire administrative, accueil des équipes artistiques (administrative management, reception of artistic teams) Cathy Alexandre-Skrzypczak

Chargé de la billetterie et de l'accueil (in charge of ticketing and welcome) Jérémie Dufour

Régisseur des recettes (proceeds management) Mercedes Figuereo

Chargée de la communication et des relations publiques (public relations and communication) Johanna Julien

Régisseur général (stage manager) Emmanuel Monnet

Régisseur lumière (lighting designer) Franck Mérel

Régisseurs plateau (stage technicians) Christian Laurent David Costerg

Régisseur son et vidéo (sound and image technician) Thomas Weyant

Agent de sécurité - Affichage (security officer - display) Rudy Vasseur


We are hoping to have contact details soon. A day ago we (re)published contact details for various key people in the administration (not just of the threatre). We urge readers to write to these people, preferably but not necessarily in French (most of them are fluent in English, too). It's not a campaign of harassment but merely an act of accountability -- a concept that Battistelli seems incapable of grasping.

"It's like no matter how abusive the boss is, nothing ever happens to him. He's above the law.""The time has come! These are the European Inventor Award 2018 finalists," the EPO wrote some hours ago. They neglect to mention the likely corruption which everyone at the EPO seems to have whispered about for months. How can he get away with it? As we put it a few weeks ago, what we have here is "One Last Battistelli Heist: Millions of Euros for Saint-Germain-en-Laye" (his town where he works).

Here's today's fluff from the EPO: (warning: epo.org link)

The Award winners will be announced on 7 June in Paris, Saint-Germain-en-Laye...

[...]

"The 2018 Award finalists demonstrate that Europe continues to be a world leader in innovation," said EPO President Benoît Battistelli.


He makes it a world leader in corruption.

"It's not a campaign of harassment but merely an act of accountability -- a concept that Battistelli seems incapable of grasping.""EPO corruption continues," Benjamin Henrion wrote about it today, as "Saint-Germain-en-Laye is Batistelli's commune."

People are noticing this, but the media refuses to cover or even mention this in passing. The truth of the matter is, the EPO has been bribing the media for a long time (we are covering many examples) and EPO management has once again hired Echolot Public Relations (Barbara Geier) to spam British media about this event. Guess at whose expense...

"People are noticing this, but the media refuses to cover or even mention this in passing."We can see it based on this press release from today. How many PR agencies is the EPO hiring? We've lost count. In the UK alone it has got contracts with at least 3 PR agencies. Some contracts are 'weighed' at over a million euros! Talk about money down the drain. EPO management misuses stakeholders' money for puff pieces such as these in the Irish media [1, 2, 3]. Did they literally pay for these? Indirectly perhaps? Earlier today (and it's only the start of this week!) the EPO played the media, then linked to (retweeted) the outcome, e.g. [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9].

How many PR agencies in how many countries is the EPO hiring this time around? Maybe someone can leak to us documents that may shed light...

Our jaw was on the floor seeing how the EPO even retweeted extremists like Watchtroll and its "bucket of deplorables" several hours ago. Bad optics? No tact? Maybe they don't understand what they just did...

"Are there any major publishers/broadcasters that Battistelli has not yet corrupted using EPO budget? Or threatened for 'daring' to speak of EPO abuses?"Looking at the underlying 'article' with all the Battistelli quotes embedded throughout, it looks like a puff piece for the EPO; maybe it was partially ghostwritten by a PR agency. Gene Quinn certainly lacks ethics, so writing this rubbish could/might as well be an EPO partnership. Remember that the EPO already passed money to IAM through one of its PR agencies.

Roger Highfield, judging for Battistelli's very 'special' event (money passage), was retweeted by the EPO after he had posted this puff piece in the site of the Science Museum. It says this:

Roger Highfield, Director of External Affairs, Science Museum Group and judge of the European Inventor Award introduces this year’s finalists and explains how to vote for your favourite.


This isn't the first time we see Roger Highfield pushing the EPO's agenda and being retweeted by the EPO; as we showed last year, it's no longer a secret that the EPO pays travel expenses (flights) for so-called 'journalists' who cover these events. This, in our view, is a sort of bribery. But such is the moral level of the EPO these days. We still wait to see which large publisher -- if any -- will mention the huge scandal in Saint-Germain-en-Laye. Are there any major publishers/broadcasters that Battistelli has not yet corrupted using EPO budget? Or threatened for 'daring' to speak of EPO abuses?

Recent Techrights' Posts

Pushers of systemd Rewrite History (Richard Stallman Said UNIX "Was Portable and Seemed Fairly Clean")
Unlike systemd
Trajectory of The Register: From News Site/s Into "B2B"... and Into Microsoft Salespeople
Something isn't right at The Register
Doing My Share to Tackle Online Slop and SPAM
Trying my best to 'fix' the Web
 
Links 27/07/2025: FSF Hackathon and "Hulk Hogan Was a Very Bad Man"
Links for the day
Gemini Links 27/07/2025: DAW Mixer Chains and Simple Software
Links for the day
The Register MS is Inventing or Giving Air Time to New Conspiracy Theories so as to Distort the Narrative As High-Profile Agencies Fall Prey to Microsoft Holes
But the problem is holes, i.e. Microsoft making bad products; the problem is Microsoft
When You Tell You It's Free, Does That Mean No Charges (If So, Who's Paying and Why)?
there's "no free lunch"
Most Editors at The Register Are American, Including the Editor in Chief, a Decade-Long Microsoft Stenographer (Writing Prose to Sell Microsoft)
It's not easy to tell where the site is based (we tried) because it's hiding behind ClownFlare and CrimeFlare hasn't been well lately
"New Techrights" Soon Turns 2 (A Few Days Before the FSF Turns 40)
We have a lot more to say about LLM bots
When Silence Says So Much
Garrett, a 'secure' boot pusher, will need to defend himself in the UK High Court
The Register in Trouble
There is not much that can be done at this point
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Saturday, July 26, 2025
IRC logs for Saturday, July 26, 2025
Misinformation in Social Control Media
Social control media passes around all sorts of tropes
Slopwatch: Fake Linux 'Articles' and Slopfarms With "Linux" in Their Names/Domains
throwing bots at "Linux" to make some fake articles
Links 26/07/2025: Amazon Shutdown in China, Russian Economy Slows
Links for the day
Gemini Links 26/07/2025: History of Time (1988) and Gemini Games
Links for the day
Links 26/07/2025: 50 Percent Tariffs in Amazon, Dying Intel Offloads Network and Edge Group (NEX)
Links for the day
Blaming Programming Languages for Users' and Developers' Bad Practices
That's like blaming cars for drivers who crash into things
Slopwatch: Fakes, FUD, Duplicates, and Charlatans Galore
The Web as we once know it is collapsing. Some opportunists try to replace it with low-quality slop.
The Register UK Seems to Have Become American and Management is Changing (Microsofter as Editor in Chief)
The Register 'UK' is now controlled by the Directions on Microsoft guy
Many People Still Read Techrights Because It Says the Truth, Produces Evidence, and Does Not Self-Censor
Unlike so many other sites
The Register is Desperate for Money, According to The Register
I decided to check how they're doing as a business
Microsoft Finally Finds a Use Case for Slop?
Create low-quality chaff to shift the media's attention?
Microsoft Windows Lost 400 Million Users in a Few Years, Why Does The Register Double Down on Windows With New US Editor?
days ago they hired a new US editor
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Friday, July 25, 2025
IRC logs for Friday, July 25, 2025
For Libel Reform One Must First Bring (or Raise) Awareness to the Issues and Their Magnitude
I myself know, from personal experience
Links 26/07/2025: Rationed Meals in the US and TikTok Repels Investments (Too Toxic)
Links for the day
Gemini Links 26/07/2025: "Bloody Google" and New People in Geminispace
Links for the day
Response to Solderpunk (Father of Gemini Protocol) About the Gemini Community
Solderpunk responds to non-sequitur
HTML and the Web Used to be Something a Child Could Learn, "Modern" Web is a Puzzle of Frameworks, Bloat, and Worse
When the Web was more like Gemini Protocol
New US Editor in The Register is 84% Microsoft/Windows Booster
It'll be worrying if it carries on like this
Links 25/07/2025: Slop Blunders and China Has Code of Conduct for Lawmakers in HK
Links for the day
Gemini Links 25/07/2025: Some Books and Babies and Capital
Links for the day
Links 25/07/2025: NOAA Cuts Endanger Lives, "Europe's Self Inflicted Cloud Crisis"
Links for the day
They Try to Lecture Us on Ethics
They even removed "master" from Microsoft GitHub
The Future of the Web is One Rendering Engine or 'Flavours' of Chrome
The future of the Web does not look bright at all
Best Sites Are Not Optimised for Any Browser, They Work Equally Well With All of Them
Red Hat (IBM) is making rubbish sites
YouTube is a Spamfarm, Slopfarm, and Clickfarm (a Lot of Numbers There Are Fake)
Those who don't fake look unpopular and unimportant
We Don't Do JavaScript and Pages Are Small
Thankfully Gemini Protocol has nothing like JavaScript
'Tech' is Not Technology
Some people use terms like 'Old Tech'
IBM's Debt Rose by Almost 10 Billion Dollars in the Past 6 Months Alone
The "hey hi" circus is coming to an end
Yes, Master
Gaslighting by actual racists
Microsoft Bribes and Buys Politicians to Tell Europe What to Do About Free Software (Which It's Attacking)
Microsoft: we speak for the thing that we are attacking! Follow the money...
Making Backups Quickly and Reliably
Backups are imperative, more so in an age of uncertainty, unpredictable weather, and worsening standards (quality of products going down while prices go up)
Techrights Investigation: Estimating the Point in Time LinuxIac Turned Into LLM Slop (Part of the Time)
Bobby Borisov got lazy
10th Month, Ten Weeks From Now, at Ten AM
In Wentworth Institute of Technology in Boston
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Thursday, July 24, 2025
IRC logs for Thursday, July 24, 2025
A Nadella Memo Distracts From Microsoft's Cheapening Of the Workforce
Right now the "MSM" (mainstream media) is flooded/overwhelmed by garbage pieces that relay lies for Nadella
Vanishing Faces of GNU/Linux
Free software projects do not depend on any one person or company to still exist
Microsoft Says It Lost 400 Million Windows Users, Now It's Waiting for GNU/Linux to Stop Booting on 'Old' PCs
When it comes to Windows, Microsoft is fully aware of the issue and statements it made earlier this summer suggest it lost 400 million Windows users
Slopwatch: LinuxTechLab, linuxsecurity.com, LinuxIac, and More
Also: The Register's Microsoft agenda (new editor)
Gemini Links 25/07/2025: Gemtext Aware Titan Editor and Gemini Protocol Comeback
Links for the day