Video download link | md5sum 67a99048eae357b2cb70536271e9c4b5 EPO and the Ukraine PR Stunts Creative Commons Attribution-No Derivative Works 4.0



Summary: The cheap and low-grade political propaganda of Campinos has gotten rather tiresome; here he goes again for photo opportunities (or operations, PR operations) instead of tackling real issues, such as the need to comply with rulings from ILOAT (such as disabling of E-mail blocks -- a trivial task which should only take a few minutes)

THEY are doing it, again!

As shown above in the video's preview, only a couple of months since the "virtue-signalling on the Ukrainian front" we're meant to think that the EPO is a major ally of Ukraine. From yesterday's announcement: (warning: epo.org link) "The EPO and the State Enterprise Ukrainian Intellectual Property Institute (Ukrpatent) have signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) on a Reinforced Partnership (RP) agreement. EPO President António Campinos and Andrew Kudin, Ukrapatent Director General, concluded the agreement at the margin of the WIPO general assembly in Geneva on 19 July 2022. The MoU is a fixed term agreement that will run over a two-year period. With this signature, the EPO intensifies mobilisation of its resources to support Ukrpatent's staff and its functioning as an IP office." Like re-announcement of old news with a tiny "new" slant. So now it is "Memorandum of Understanding (MoU)", not just "Intent". The problem of course is that the EPO goes out of its way to hide its relationship -- a business relationship -- with Belarus. It also helps distract from many current scandals at the EPO, including several high-profile (impacting thousands of people) ILOAT judgments.

"Campinos is trying to imitate his father, albeit only to the cameras."The photo op is seen as strategic; it makes people who engage in a war against workers seem like peace activists. Campinos is trying to imitate his father, albeit only to the cameras. Several years ago António Campinos sent abroad a lot of EUIPO (EU-wide trademark office) jobs and then censored dissent. He now does the same in the EPO (partly Benoît Battistelli's fault) while pretending to be an actor of solidarity. Speaking of EUIPO, the EPO's staff union has just highlighted this new piece entitled "Why a unified EU IP office won’t happen" (from people who sparingly use the term "IP" though it doesn't actually mean anything).

It is a publisher that's constantly pushing illegal Unitary Patent/Unified Patent Court (UPC) agenda with scandalous UPC lies, a publisher that moreover does many puff pieces for EUIPO. Just follow the money. Max Walters must do this because his employer shamelessly takes money from Team UPC for such lobbying. They arranged for him to do a 'softball' interview with Campinos a few years ago.

"Campinos signing some piece of paper is political posturing, it is not as if Ukraine sends many patent applications to the EPO."Perhaps on the upside, the torrent of puff pieces may have slowed down somewhat after needing to distract from the blunder of António Campinos buying himself a reappointing. From one "news" (fluff) item per day, on average, it went down to twice per week.

We'll shortly continue our series about European software patents. Don't lose sight of the importance of this problem (a bubble and legitimacy crisis), which is relatively new and very concerning to a lot of people. Campinos signing some piece of paper is political posturing, it is not as if Ukraine sends many patent applications to the EPO. ⬆

Campinos was never pictured wearing a f***ing mask