Bonum Certa Men Certa

Märpel Looks at Benoît Battistelli's Toxic Financial Affairs at the EPO

Recent: Benoît Battistelli the Latest Example of Massive Bonuses Given to People Who Destroyed Their Own Organisation

Financial image



Summary: More and more people/circles raise serious questions about Battistelli's financial dealings at the EPO

THE scandals at the EPO are greater in number and magnitude than it may seem. Some of them may take years to come to the surface. The USPTO, by contrast, has barely any scandals (we covered one yesterday, but those are rare). Recently, the 'gambling' with EPO funds was brought up again (it happened around Christmas time when almost nobody paid attention). Märpel has just published this long post about it:

Now President Battistelli has decided he needed a blank check to play with that money on the stock and derivatives market. Apparently he did not learn about the toxic loans of Saint-Germain. Or maybe he knows them too well, Märpel cannot say. Usually money lost in risky investments is not lost for everybody.

The Council, in its rubber-stamping majesty, decided to approve the new investment guidelines last December. Lately the budget and finances committee cleared the small details. Interested readers having access to the EPO intranet may look for document CA/F 10/18.

Märpel finds difficult to believe what that document says. Apparently, the EPO is going to set aside "around 250 millions Euros" every year in the next 20 years and expects that the total treasury will reach EUR 12 billions Euros after a period of 20 years, which is lots of money even for cats. The expected long term return on the modelled portfolio is 4,0% and the annual risk is 15,1% of the Net Assets Value, which Märpel understands to mean that the EPO will invest in relatively high risk assets to get that level of return. Märpel's compound interests calculator also notes that the figures do not match, even if the EPO would invest its complete cash reserve in that risky scheme (2.3 billions Euros) Märpel is short of some money. Märpel also notes that up to 75% can be invested in risk investments (equities, commodities, real estate and "alternatives"), which probably explains the 4% annual return in times when one is lucky to get 0.5%.

Nobody knows what the EPO is going to do with 12 billions Euros in 20 years. If the scheme succeeds (and that is a big "if"), the next-next-next-next President is going to have lots of money to play with. Or will he?


This subject was not too long ago tackled in a series of posts by Thorsten Bausch and recently by us as well. Bausch has just published this post about the Federal Court of Justice of Germany (not to be mistaken for FCC). He said:

The FCJ ordered that the petitioner must be granted access to the entire file wrapper. The objections raised by the plaintiff with regard to parts of the file which allow conclusions to be drawn on infringement proceedings conducted in parallel or which contain information on the designs challenged there were unfounded.


Bausch comes from a different world than yours truly because he works for a law firm, but judging by recent interactions he remains concerned about the financial dealings at the EPO. We're now just one week away from the massive passage of EPO's budget (i.e. stakeholders' money) to Battistelli's other employer in Saint-Germain. It remains to be seen what happens to all that money and whether Battistelli will be held belatedly accountable after his diplomatic immunity is voided (António Campinos had already enjoyed it under EU-IPO).

Recent Techrights' Posts

Windows Defender Flags Tor Browser as “Trojan Horse” Malware
Reprinted with permission from Ryan Farmer
Sensationalist Clickbait Called 'Looney Tunables' to Badmouth Linux (It's Not Even Linux)
FUD attack
Links 04/10/2023: Murena 2 with /e/OS and More
Links for the day
Links 04/10/2023: KDE Promo Sprint and More
Links for the day
Clown Computing Means Security/Data Breaches, Not Just the Outsourcing Itself (They Get Cracked, Too!)
Reprinted with permission from Ryan Farmer
Over at Tux Machines...
yesterday's posts
mp3HD: Another Patent Trolls' Patent Trap That Failed
Reprinted with permission from Ryan Farmer
IRC Proceedings: Tuesday, October 03, 2023
IRC logs for Tuesday, October 03, 2023
"Modern" Computing Sucks and Harms Computer Users
Reprinted with permission from Ryan Farmer
Red Windows
Red Hat is not into Free software
Richard Stallman Giving Talks in the Czech Republic and Germany This Week (Tomorrow's Talk is "Artificial Intelligence vs Language Models")
This past weekend he gave two talks in the Czech Republic
Companies Faking the True Number of Layoffs With Return-to-Office Mandates and Forced Relocation
we estimate that Microsoft cut about 30,000 so far this year, having cut many more jobs last year
Links 03/10/2023: Cellphones (Mobile Phones) Banned in Classrooms in England
Links for the day
Greener Pastures for Free Software Users
This coming week we'll publish many articles about GNU/Linux and technical means of/for user empowerment
IRC Proceedings: Monday, October 02, 2023
IRC logs for Monday, October 02, 2023
Google News, Which We Call Gulag Noise, is Following the New York Times Into the Digital Graveyard
It merely gives an illusion of volume and instead of giving readers more stuff to read it wastes people's time
Daily Bulletins Coming Soon (Hopefully as Early as Next Week)
Today we finish testing IRC logs and their upload to Gemini, not just to IPFS
Over at Tux Machines...
yesterday's posts
Software Freedom is the Future and Microsoft is the Biggest Obstacle
GNU/Linux, at its roots, was all about Software Freedom
Links 02/10/2023: NUC, GTK Themes, and More
Links for the day
New Union Syndicale Articles About the European Patent Office
We'll probably get back to regularly writing about the EPO in the near future
If WordPress Knows Well Enough to Self-Host Its Podcast, Why Can't GNU/Linux Shows Do the Same?
For those who want videos and podcasts, here are today's latest additions from other sites
Richard Stallman Can Outlive Many of His Prominent Haters
M.J.G. tried hard to take our Web site offline, based on lies and repeated threats
The GNU/Linux Revolution Ain't Here. Look at Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa (BRICS) Instead.
The revolution won't be televised
Chaffbot Effect: Microsoft Bing Falls to Lowest Share in Two Years (Amid Loads of Bing Layoffs This Year)
Press outlets mostly failed to report that Bing is collapsing
Forget VSCode (Microsoft's Proprietary Spyware), Use KATE Instead
KATE is great
Sometimes It's Time to Reboot
No, not Android. KDE.
GNU/Linux Distributions as "Appliances" and DRM Platforms (the Case of ChromeOS and SteamOS)
Is this what we envisioned in the 1980s and 90s?
Fulfilling the Site's Full Potential
We remain devoted to the aforementioned goal of posting more original material
Over at Tux Machines...
2 days' worth
Upcoming Talk by Dr. Richard Stallman: Large Language Models Are Not Artificial Intelligence
LLMs aren't truly intelligent and cannot quite grasp what they spew out
GulagTube is a Burning Platform (Exit YouTube, Invidious Won't Save Us From Google/Alphabet in the Long Run)
Alphabet Agency (Google) sees the future of video as a "skinnerbox" (running Android) that indoctrinates you like TikTok does
Microsoft's Demise in the Global News Cycle is Rather Telling
It should be noted that Microsoft is, in general, no longer prominent or dominant in news headlines
Gemini Migration and Backup Capsule (Archive)
At the end we'll end up with something a lot better than before and latency should be massively reduced
Links 01/10/2023: Science, Education, and pro-Russia Slovakia Leadership
Links for the day
IRC Proceedings: Sunday, October 01, 2023
IRC logs for Sunday, October 01, 2023