Bonum Certa Men Certa

EPO and Microsoft Collude to Break the Law -- Part XIV: When is a Conflict of Interest Not a Conflict of Interest?

Previous parts:



Bill Gates and Campinos



Summary: Could the EPO's increasing reliance on Microsoft involve a conflict of interest?

If Lewis Carroll's Humpty Dumpty had ever managed to visit the bizarre "Wonderland" of the EPO he might have been tempted to formulate a new riddle along the lines of: "When is a conflict of interest not a conflict of interest?"



"To begin with there is Microsoft's chequered history of data protection infractions, anti-trust violations and US FCPA investigations."The answer, it seems, is: "When it involves the EPO".

At any rate, this kind of paradoxical "logic" fits the bill when it comes to the EPO's increasing reliance on Microsoft as a provider of IT products and services.

The casual observer looking at the situation from the outside might reasonably conclude that there are a whole host of legitimate concerns including strong indications of an irreconcilable conflict of interest.

To begin with there is Microsoft's chequered history of data protection infractions, anti-trust violations and US FCPA investigations.

But even if one were inclined to ignore all that, there is a more fundamental problem.

To put it in a nutshell: due to the company's position as a significant player in the global IP arena, Microsoft's role as a key IT provider to the EPO seems to be tainted by an inherent conflict of interest.

The situation might not be so precarious if Microsoft was simply a purveyor of computing hardware or a vendor of client-end data processing software for on-site data processing under the control of the EPO.

But the company's role at the EPO has now expanded far beyond that to the provision of cloud-based data processing services, including the processing of much if not all of the EPO's internal communications via Outlook, Microsoft Teams and Skype for Business.

What we have here could be described in simple terms as the large-scale export of operational data, including internal e-mail and video-conferencing communications, from the EPO to an external data processing infrastructure owned by and operated under the control of Microsoft.

It doesn't need an MBA from the Harvard Business School to realise that placing such sensitive internal operational data directly into the hands of a significant player in the global IP arena is a highly questionable undertaking.

Based on its track record to date, EPO management will undoubtedly defend its actions by arguing that Microsoft can be trusted to "do the right thing".

Microsoft will undoubtedly "do the right thing". The only question here is "the right thing for whom?"

Remember that we are talking here about a private for-profit business corporation with a well-documented track record of engaging in anti-competitive practices and other ethically dubious activities. Can any sane person be realistically expected to trust a company with such an egregious track record of data protection infractions, anti-trust violations and US FCPA investigations?

There should be more than enough warning signs here to set off alarm bells in the competent centres of oversight and governance. However, going by Steve Rowan's recent communiqué, nobody in the upper echelons of EPO management seems to be particularly worried.

Unfortunately, past experience over the last decade and a half has shown that the EPO doesn't deal with conflict-of-interest situations very well.

The rot seems to have really set in (for good) back in 2009 when the Administrative Council voted to appoint its then Chairman, Battistelli, as the executive head of the Office. At the time in question, Battistelli was an elected representative for a political party in France, which should have automatically disqualified him from holding such a position in an international organisation. But the Administrative Council remained oblivious to this glaring conflict of interest.

According to the internal EPO rumour mill, Battistelli had his successor as Chair of the Administrative Council, the Danish delegate Jesper Kongstad, quite literally "in his pocket". Kongstad reportedly received a secret "emolument" from Battsitelli's HR department in the form of the equivalent of an EPO principal director's salary -- a generous monthly tax-free sum of five-figure proportions.

One of Battistelli's first moves as President of the Office was to procure the abolition of the independent Audit Committee which reported directly to the Administrative Council.

It's highly ironic that one of the intended functions of the Audit Committee was to advise the Administrative Council about potential conflicts of interest. Now that it has been disbanded, there is no longer anybody around to warn the Council.

Given this background, it's not really surprising that the increasing reliance of the EPO on Microsoft as an IT provider hasn't generated any visible concern in the ranks of the organisation's senior management and governance bodies.

Microsoft bribe
Did "foreign corrupt practices" play a role in the award of EPO contracts to Microsoft? The opacity of the tendering process makes it difficult to give an answer to such questions.



Another remarkable aspect of the present case is the total opacity of the process that led to the award of the contract or contracts for cloud computing services to Microsoft.

It's not clear how much these contracts are worth and whether they were put out to public tender, or whether they were allocated by "direct award".

We also don't know who exactly was responsible for the internal vetting of these procurement decisions, although it seems fair to assume that they were ultimately approved and signed off by the President of the Office, António Campinos.

Whether or not Campinos was properly advised in the matter is of course a completely different question.

Readers of Techrights may recall that back in 2015, reports were circulating ([1] and [2]) about a programme of "closer cooperation" between the EPO's senior management and some of its leading corporate applicants, in particular Microsoft.

This arrangement attracted a lot of criticism at the time and many people quite rightly questioned whether it was appropriate for the EPO to be engaging in what amounted to a favourable treatment of large multinational corporations like Microsoft.

The recent expansion of Microsoft's business relationship with the EPO has caused some people to speculate about whether the latest developments might not have been influenced by a further programme of "enhanced cooperation" involving "foreign corrupt practices".

It is important to emphasise that there is currently no hard evidence of any "kickbacks" or "slush funds" operated by Microsoft at the EPO. For the moment, any such suggestions are based purely on speculation.

On the other hand, Microsoft's well-documented track record in other jurisdictions means that such speculation cannot be dismissed as completely off the wall.

Cxcel issue
The EPO is plagued by an entrenched culture of opacity and non-accountability which makes a credible investigation into suspected irregularities almost impossible



However, the problem here is that the EPO is plagued by such a deeply entrenched culture of opacity and non-accountability that if these procurement decisions had in fact been tainted by corruption, it is highly unlikely that this would ever be investigated and exposed, especially if any members of the senior management were involved.

It is doubtful whether the EPO's internal investigative procedures are really fit for purpose in such cases, and there is no external anti-corruption agency which would be competent to take appropriate action.

To sum up, we are left with a situation in which procurement decisions have been made at the EPO which effectively place sensitive internal operational data directly into the hands of an external IT service provider based in the US and subject to the laws of that jurisdiction -- including the US CLOUD Act of 2018.

In addition to this, the IT service provider in question happens to be a significant player in the global IP game.

At the same time, none of those who bear the ultimate responsibility for these procurement decisions seem to have the slightest concern about what appears to be a clear-cut case of a conflict of interest.

As Lewis Carrol's Alice might have said, "curiouser and curiouser!"

In the final part of the series we will consider whether the EPO's increasing reliance on cloud computing services hosted by Microsoft has effectively led to a sell-out of the organisation's "digital sovereignty".

Recent Techrights' Posts

Microsoft XBox is Dying as More Retailers Stop Stocking It and Massive Layoffs Planned Again
Microsoft is circling down the drain
Linux and the Freedom Paradox
Linux is losing freedom if some external actors who only use Microsoft tools for development wrest control
Watch the FSF Party Live (via Livestream)
It's in WebM format, which is widely supported by now
Advocacy of Software Freedom Changed, LUGs Became Less Relevant
The way we see it, support groups like LUGs sort of outlived their usefulness when it became easier to install GNU/Linux
 
Links 05/10/2025: Slow News Day and Wondering About the Canada Post Walkout
Links for the day
Gemini Links 05/10/2025: Telnet Debugging and The Programmer’s Brain
Links for the day
More Than "Just a Rumour": XBox Seems to Have Just Died
At this point, why would any studio out there target or partner with XBox?
How to Tell Your Community, Project or Company is Being Infiltrated by Saboteurs
How to identify nefarious social engineering
The Fortieth Birthday of the FSF Made Us Extremely Happy
It feels like the 'hacker community' is regrouping to discuss things and prepare for the next Big Challenge
Chat Control 2 Them, Not 2 U
Follow the advice of Dr. Patrick Breyer
Mozilla: Throw Away Your "Old" PC and Enable "Digital Rights Management (DRM)"
This is heading in a bad direction
Controlling Our Computing for Another Forty Years
40 years of freedom
Motivational Small Place to Run Large Sites
We deem this scenery motivational and inspiring
Techrights' Text Version (Daily Bulletin) Turns Five This Month
our plain-text bulletins are turning 5 this month
We'll Continue Covering the Moribund OSI and Other Dysfunctional if Not Hostile Institutions
Stefano Maffulli's departure is due to his defection and due to him failing the mission in pursuit of money (his salary)
Links 05/10/2025: Lufthansa Layoffs (4,000) and More Spotify Woes (Aside From Massive Debt)
Links for the day
The Free Software Foundation's Livestream Has Ended, Video/s Might be Online Next
I've asked whether they'll upload video of some of the event; I still wait for an answer
The Register MS Does Not Know the Difference Between Microsoft GitHub and GitLab
At the time of writing (October 5) the article from "Thu 2 Oct 2025" remains uncorrected
"Bullshit Generators" (What RMS Calls LLMs) and Fake Images Already Target the FSF
Why does Google News promote fake articles about the FSF while omitting all the real ones?
Software Patents as a Bubble
Don't invest resources in hype; if you detect a bubble, run away from it
Links 05/10/2025: Political Leftovers, Climate Change, and Security Incidents
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Saturday, October 04, 2025
IRC logs for Saturday, October 04, 2025
For the Second Time in a Few Weeks Microsoft Lunduke Makes False Accusations Against Senior Red Hat Staff to Incite a Despicable 'Troll Army'
Nothing that Microsoft Lunduke claims or says can be trusted
When Microsoft "Integrates" Something With "AI" It Means It's Losing Money and Is Generally Hopeless
how did Bing fare after 36 months of LLM slop being hyped up as "replacement" for search?
Most Certificates Don't Improve Security, They Mostly Increase Downtime (for No Good Reason)
The 'Gemini sites' (capsules) are a growing force
The statCounter Site Has Data Integrity Problems
Maybe we'll get back to statCounter when its data becomes more "stable" again
10 Ways to Combat Software Patents
software patents are loathed also by proprietary software developers
"Just a Little Bit of Meat..."
Free software "absolutism" is not a radical stance, more so if the only "radical" belief the user possesses is that he or she must be in control of his or her software, and by extension his or her computer
Compromised by NVIDIA Proprietary Library
Meanwhile in Boston there are "[r]oundtable talk with FSF volunteers (both in-person and online)"
Red Hat is Ignoring the Free Software Community, It's a "Fortune 1000" Vendor
Red Hat's blog also participates a lot in promoting of Wall Street's latest pump-and-dump "AI" scheme
Free Software Foundation Party Has Begun
We shall be focusing a lot on software patents today
Former Head of the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) Lina Khan Knows Whatever Microsoft Touches Will Die
Just like Skype (as recently as months ago) [...] When Microsoft grabs things, or when it buys things, it almost never ends well
Slopwatch: Fake Articles About LibreOffice in Austria and Wine 10.16
very short
Links 04/10/2025: "attempted Coup" Noted in Facebook, Russia Kills Journalists via Drones
Links for the day
Gemini Links 04/10/2025: Anesthesia and Baudpunk
Links for the day
How Software Patents Were Viewed or Their General Status Changed Over Time
A rough summary
Links 04/10/2025: "Privacy Harm Is Harm", Criticism Outlawed in US
Links for the day
Garmin Uses Linux for Some of the Garmin Products, Now It's Sued by Strava Using Software Patents
Software patents should never have been granted in the first place
Richard Stallman Will Give a Talk in Sweden in 6 Days
Dr. Stallman, despite his battle with cancer is still alive and mentally sharp
FSF Turns 40
We'll be focusing on patent-related topics this weekend
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Friday, October 03, 2025
IRC logs for Friday, October 03, 2025
Gemini Links 04/10/2025: Distro Hopping and "Part Time"
Links for the day
We Are Turning 19 in One Month, FSF Turns 40 in 3 Hours (CET)
For our anniversary next month we still have no concrete plans
Patent Docs (or PatentDocs) Learned the Wrong Lessons From the Death of TypePad
Had they gone ahead with an SSG, they'd become a lot more future-proof
USPTO Patent Bubble Already Imploding, After Decades of Artificial Inflation, Entire Offices Close for Good
we can deduce that financial pressures (lack of "demand" for monopolies) play a role
TikTok is Not Harmless (Being CheeTok in the US Will Advance Orange Agenda)
Social control media isn't "fun and games"; it's a digital weapon that lets hostile groups or nations infiltrate others, then turn them against themselves
Andy Farnell and Helen Plews Explain What "Modern" Tech Does to Old People
Imposing terrible tech "religion" on people is not helping them
Tomorrow the Free Software Foundation (FSF) Turns 40 and Its Web Site is Still Slow Due to DDoS by LLM Slop Bots
For an advocacy group, uptime is important (for its message to remain accessible)
Slopwatch: Google News as a Firehose of LLM Slop About "Linux"
Google News is really bad
Datamation, Where I Used to Publish Articles, Appears to Have Been Sold to TechnologyAdvice Only to Become a Slopfarm
I'd prefer to not associate with that site anymore
Links 03/10/2025: "NPR’s Economics Lessons Come With Neoliberal Spin" and Canada Post at Risk
Links for the day
Gemini Links 03/10/2025: Panic Attacks and Food Adulteration
Links for the day
Links 03/10/2025: Lawyers Caught Using LLM Slop Explain Why They Did It, LibreSSL 4.1.1 and 4.0.1 Released
Links for the day
FSF Board Grew 50% Since Last Year, Has New President, Turns 40 in Two Days
It's a good move for the FSF and - by extension - for software freedom
Links 03/10/2025: Conflicts, Death of TypePad, and TikTok/CheeTok Gives a Boost to Far Right Groups in Europe
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Thursday, October 02, 2025
IRC logs for Thursday, October 02, 2025
Slopwatch: Linux Journal, Google News, and LinuxSecurity
They carry on polluting the Web with fake articles
Gemini Links 02/10/2025: Kubernetes With FreeBSD and robots.txt
Links for the day