Bonum Certa Men Certa

Etienne Schneider, Lex Kaufhold and Other Officials Empowered EPO's Tyranny of Lawlessness, But Will Iris Depoulain Put an End to That?

Video download link | md5sum 7b35c0cab750bdde0d5da19a1d99e3ce



Summary: There's a new face in Luxembourg's EPO delegation, a person who apparently lacks experience in the area of patents, but one can hope that next week she can put up resistance and undo the damage caused by her predecessors (the Administrative Council meets in 3 days, the Select Committee of the Administrative Council meets in 4 days, and the controversial [1, 2] Budget/Finance Committee meets in 16 days, according to this newly-updated (10 days ago) EPO calendar (warning: epo.org link), which suggests that "meets" means "has an online webchat")

WE HAVE JUST published part seven regarding the unlawful EPO (anti-strike) regulations passed with approval from Luxembourg for 'King' Battistelli (those same illegal regulations were exploited by António Campinos for more than 3 years; Campinos was happy not to reassess these).



Coat of arms of LuxembourgLike most people, I do not know a lot about Luxembourg (it's a very small country), but what I do know isn't entirely positive, especially because of tax-related issues, long associated with the jurisdiction (a bit like Monaco, Panama, and Singapore). There are also some patent trolls parked in Luxembourg. We wrote about those in the more distant past.

"Tomorrow we shall look at my home country, the UK, and British enablers of the Battistelli regime."The video above notes that the country had a whole day (of the year; every year) devoted to reaffirming the monopolies of rich people and corporations, reinforcing myths associated with "ownership" or "property" where such terms are technically and legally inapplicable. Luxembourg is less than 4 hours away from The Hague (driving distance), but we don't suppose Dutch politicians would truly scrutinise their close neighbour for any discrepancies (business, human rights, etc.); as we noted in the previous part, the Dutch also exempt their own from investigations into war crimes. It's a tail that wags a dog.

ICC logoThe video does not talk about the country as much as its actions in relation to the EPO. It also ends by noting that Campinos lacks experience with patents, just like Iris Depoulain lacks experience with patents (but she will represent her country in the EPO this month; EPO deals exclusively with patents). Although the nation of Luxembourg has a very small portion of the total population of Europe (only about 1 in 1,000 Europeans lives in Luxembourg) it has the same voting power as Germany with about 15% (~150 in 1,000 Europeans) of the EU population.

"They try to purchase for themselves a veneer of "ethics" whilst actively attacking the law, crushing staff, and harming the interests of ordinary (vulnerable) Europeans for the benefit of the powerful few."The video was unfortunately interrupted by an unexpected but important phone call, but it was already (nearly) over anyway, so I stopped it prematurely if not somewhat abruptly. When you do it all in one take, unscripted and unedited, that's a risk you take (the video being a tad rough at the edges).

Tomorrow we shall look at my home country, the UK, and British enablers of the Battistelli regime. It's never "too late" to name culprits, especially those who are still out there, dodging accountability after playing a role in authorising human rights abuses.

"What sane person would genuinely wish to be associated with those sociopaths who still run the EPO? "We might as well note that the EPO regime has just found the courage or had the audacity to post this fluff (warning: epo.org link) late on a Friday (i.e. the usual), exploiting for cheap PR stunts disabled people while they're causing disability in their own staff, e.g. upper limb disorder (ULD). They post this with their charade of "Diversity & Inclusion @ EPO" where neither diversity nor inclusion has been a real thing. In prior months they did pinkwashing several times. They try to purchase for themselves a veneer of "ethics" whilst actively attacking the law, crushing staff, and harming the interests of ordinary (vulnerable) Europeans for the benefit of the powerful few. "Equality" @ EPO means that they're attacking women and men equally, or crush the human rights of gays or blacks as much as the crush everybody else's rights. Is that ethics? Moral relativism with PR stunts might fool the shallow-minded, i.e. not well-educated patent examiners. They view this entire thing as a shallow PR charade that merely costs the Office a lot of money and helps silence the media.

While disability is a very seriously matter, we've already seen the EPO flirting with sick humour about it ('euthanising' the disabled without consent). What sane person would genuinely wish to be associated with those sociopaths who still run the EPO?

Iris Depoulain decorated with logos of EPO and EUIPO
Iris Depoulain decorated with logos of EPO and EUIPO 2 years ago, stating that "[m]any actors are involved in IP [sic] protection [sic] in Luxembourg"



Recent Techrights' Posts

Debian is Not a Community, Many Debian Developers Work for Large Companies Including GAFAM (US)
"Community" sounds like friendship and amicability
Links 08/09/2026: Slop Companies Attack Some More Sites, Nvidia Bribes 'Linux' Foundation for Some More Openwashing and for Saying Slop is "Secure"
Links for the day
Gemini Links 08/09/2026: Ultra Introverts, BlackBerry Bold in 2026, and Laughing at LLMs
Links for the day
Microsoft Layoffs in October 2026
Microsoft is a market leader. In NDAs.
Links 08/09/2026: "The Green Revolution Has Failed Africa" and Palantir/Microsoft Harming NHS
Links for the day
Microsoft's Silent Layoffs Are the New Normal at Microsoft
Microsoft has a ton of layoffs all the time, but the media isn't mentioning those as no WARN notices get issued
SLAPP Censorship - Part 175 Out of 200: Implicit and Explicit Coalition Against the UK's SLAPP Industry
SRA recognises the problem
Further Transparency Problems at the EPO
The EPO was never meant to be profitable
Gemini Links 08/09/2026: "Everything Must Go", Announcing Perigee, and Presentations in a Browser
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Monday, September 07, 2026
IRC logs for Monday, September 07, 2026
Alleged Manager at IBM Says "[t]here are likely to be a lot (and I meant, A LOT) of RAs before December."
"We’re getting pressure from above to put some team members on PIPs."
Links 07/09/2026: Amazon Cargo Plane Crash, .org/.net/.com Domains Considered Risky
Links for the day
Gemini Links 07/09/2026: Cheese, Text-based Life, and Icons in Swaybar
Links for the day
Freedom, Not Fame, is His Goal
pursuit of money can be not only tiring but also involve abandoning one's freedom
Links 07/09/2026: Slop Trashes Memory of Parton, Flock Surveillance Infuriates Everyone
Links for the day
Getting Better After 20 Years
Exactly two months from now this site is turning 20
EPO Hiding Cocainegate and Abandoning Transparency (Even Access to Very Basic Information is Denied)
The EPO isn't just becoming like a private for-profit corporation. It's also becoming more secretive.
Richard Stallman Has Resurrected Lost Updates
We didn't ask about it
SLAPP Censorship - Part 174 Out of 200: Cascading Scandals and a Path Towards Much-Needed, Long-Awaited Reform
Reform the UK's law, not "Reform UK"
EPO's Gema Requena Sempere (PD People) Contacted Regarding Children With Disabilities
In the coming week we may be in fruitful contact with some media regarding EPO scandals
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
Gemini Links 07/09/2026: Music Composition, Free Stuff, and Self-hosting Git Repos
Links for the day
IRC Proceedings: Sunday, September 06, 2026
IRC logs for Sunday, September 06, 2026
People Who Enforce the GPL Banned From Linux Foundation Board (After Bribes From Prolific GPL Violators), Now They're Banned From Giving Talks at Events
about the "LF" ('Linux' Foundation)
Gemini Links 06/09/2026: The Slop Plagiarism 'Holy War' (Hype, Scam, Scheme), Burning CD-Rs, and Hardcopy Mono
Links for the day
Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA) Inaction and Incompetence - Part IV - Insufficient Resources in the Face of Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) by Lawyers
it's about 120KG
OpenStreetMap is the Future, Dictatorship is the Past
OpenStreetMap helped us check maps for transport, various overlays with addresses, and there was 0% reliance on GAFAM or "Google" anything
Silent Layoffs, Cool-down, and Cool-off: How GAFAM and IBM Operate (the Law Doesn't Apply to Them)
Laws? What laws?
How Strikes at the European Patent Office Are Seen by Striking Staff in Berlin, Germany
We have some more EPO scandals to cover later this year and next year
Association for Computing Machinery Cites Techrights in Relation to GemText and Gemini Protocol
published yesterday, Open Access
Links 06/09/2026: More XBox Trouble (Microsoft Unrest, Many Silent Layoffs This Month), John Duffy as Next USPTO General Counsel
Links for the day
Gemini Links 06/09/2026: Avoiding 'Smart' 'Phones' and Setting up Gemini for the First Time
Links for the day
Links 06/09/2026: Sabotage by Slop and "What Happens If 'Open' 'AI' Dies?"
Links for the day
How Back Doors Became the 'Normal' or 'Norm'
"We also allowed a lethal monoculture to fester"
Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA) Inaction and Incompetence - Part III - The SRA is Vastly Worse Than Brits Realise, We Have a "Wild West" in London
In the next part we'll begin looking at correspondence with the SRA
SRA and Manslaughter: How the SRA Contributed to Agony in Proprietary Software Scandals With Clear Misuse of "Without Prejudice"
Trying to prevent the public from finding out the criminal stuff that went on, resulting in many deaths
Canonical (or Ubuntu) Rejecting IRC Isn't the Widespread Trend
Internet Relay Chat (IRC) adoption still growing by some yardsticks
SLAPP Censorship - Part 173 Out of 200: Two Years
It was exactly 2 years ago that we filed lawsuits against Garrett
Linux of America
We could not help but notice GNU/Linux in North America yesterday
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Saturday, September 05, 2026
IRC logs for Saturday, September 05, 2026
Gemini Links 06/09/2026: Internet Limiting (Limited Time Allotted) and Solar MiniServer
Links for the day
Eight Months of Strikes in EPO, Organised by the Staff Union (SUEPO) Also in Berlin
In Berlin, only one member of staff voted against the action plan