The European Patent Office (EPO) has reacted to criticism of its latest proposals – by blocking access to a blog that raised concerns.

The thin-skinned organization has placed a block on the popular IP Kat blog, seemingly in response to critical comments about proposed reform to its independent Boards of Appeal.

In a posting last week, IP Kat described as "completely outrageous" plans to make the boards in large part self-financing, and explained why it would further undermine their independence while giving yet more power to wildly unpopular EPO president Benoit Battistelli.

As of this morning, EPO staff who try to access the site from work have been met with the message: "Your request was denied because of its content categorization: 'Malicious Sources/Malnets'."

Usually "malicious source" would be used to refer to a website containing malware, but in this case, the EPO management appears to view anything critical of its plans as inherently malicious.

Another well-known IP blogger, Florian Mueller, called the decision "insane."

The EPO leadership urgently needs professional help... blocking the @Ipkat blog is just insane. https://t.co/xcsZlRVbzX — Florian Mueller (@FOSSpatents) June 7, 2016

The EPO has history with censoring critical websites: last year it both blocked and sent threatening legal letters to blog Techrights after it posted embarrassing internet documents that showed the organization was giving preferential treatment to Microsoft in its patent reviews.

As more than one person has pointed out, it might be The Reg that is next in line for censorship. We have written a number of critical articles about the EPO based on... documents from other arms of the EPO including its Boards of Appeal, Administrative Council and staff. ®