![We're above the law... the staff... [...] ...is leaving](http://techrights.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/05/epo-exodus.jpg)
Europe's second-largest institution has become an utter disgrace, allege its very own workers
Summary: The G1/21 hearing/s commence tomorrow; that's a good time to take stock of recent scandals, which demonstrate the 'demonic' type of institution that we deal with (and workers have gotten sick of)
SEVEN years ago we began covering EPO affairs in a more in-depth fashion, empowered by sources that trust us to cover the issues properly without fear of the "Mafia" that runs the Office (employees of the Office call their own management "Mafia", based on this management's behaviour).
At this moment we prepare some primers in order to better introduce people to the issues at hand; the target audience will be people who aren't too familiar with how patents and patent offices work. It takes a lot of effort explaining things
without assumptions being made about what people
already know.
People who are more familiar with the concepts (e.g. EPO insiders who do this for a living, sometimes law firms too) are likely more interested in 'office politics'. The media almost never touches that, partly because it lacks access; people don't trust any random blogger or 'journalist'.
"At this moment we prepare some primers in order to better introduce people to the issues at hand; the target audience will be people who aren't too familiar with how patents and patent offices work."For starters, we urge readers who belatedly join in or tune in to understand that G1/21 was likely decided on already (months ago). The hearings which start tomorrow morning will be an exercise in theatrics. The courts of the EPO are barely functional; they're tribunals controlled by Benoît Battistelli and António Campinos -- the very same people they're supposed to decided on!
Below are essential readings.
Kangaroo Courts Series:
As was demonstrated in the past, European member states and their courts reject
European software patents. So why does the EPO keep granting those? Well, consider the completely unhinged nature of the EPO, which totally and completely lacks oversight.
Government Complicity Series:
Moreover, as it turns out, the EPO was outsourced to Microsoft this year. Somehow, however, nobody in the so-called 'news' media bothered mentioning this. Illegal practices well remain hidden below the radar.
Privacy violations and privatisation:
We hope to have more coverage of this scale. Those articles have reached millions of people and nowadays the wiki index for the EPO (the wiki page alone) receives about 3,000 visits per day. So it's rather clear that there's genuine interest in the substance.
As a side note, the EPO's exodus worsens as staff moves elsewhere or retires early. In a similar vein, top patent applicant IBM is expected (based on rumours that are
weeks old) to announce major rounds of layoffs, possibly later today, and the person who managed WSL at Canonical has meanwhile left the company. A blow for Microsoft, for sure...
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