Pleon: International lobbying firm hired by Microsoft to "represent SMEs" in EP on swpats
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Pleon is a merger of five European offices of Brodeur Worldwide and the Germany-based European Communications Consultants (ECC) Group (ECC Kohtes Klewes and ECC Publio) to form the second largest communications consultancies in Europe with more than 600 employees in nine key European markets.
News & Chronology
2005-06-23 software patent meeting organised on behalf of Microsoft proxy organisation BVMW in Berlin (mostly pro-patent speakers, but strong counter-arguments from Lycos representative)
2005-06-16 Mail sent to MEPs 2005
ECC Kohtes Klewes is doing PR for Microsoft since around 2002, after Microsoft's former PR agency Hunzinger was made responsible for losing Munich city desktop OS and German Bundestag server OS to Linux. Thus, since the merger, Microsoft must have become a Pleon customer.
Many Pleon employees are also part of the http://openbc.com/ network.
Their expertise is (of course):
- Lobbying
- Influencing- Communicating
They also have a "task force" for comunication crisis management. This certainly looks like a last-minute intervention paid by Microsoft to convince MEP of the "importance" of software patents for the !SMEs in europe.
Several lobbying meetings in the European Parliament have been arranged by Pleon. One of these appears to have been arranged on behalf of SAP.
People
- Christian Schnier (Germany ?)
