"The file against me contains so many demonstrably fabricated accusations that I have little doubt I can defend myself – or, rather I would be able to if, our internal system were not what it is currently, a kangaroo court."

--Laurent Prunier, EPO staff representative

Summary: The EPO's kangaroo courts and farcical notion of justice should serve as a warning sign to anyone seeking patent justice at the EPO, either as partners/employees or stakeholders/applicants

THE EPO is a horrible, horrible place to work at. The staff survey speaks for itself and people who work for the EPO constantly remind us of the nature of the workplace, comparing it to being in the trenches.

The kangaroo courts of the EPO are some of the most jaw-dropping aspects of the EPO. Anyone can be accused of anything and so-called 'evidence' even fabricated or 'sexed up' in order to do whatever the egoistic President wants, making up for his insecurities and cluelessness by merely bullying people. We covered several examples of that over the past year. It's not about one person. There are many victims and only few of them are courageous enough to go public.

President Battistelli believes he can be the accuser, the jury and a judge above the law (both national and international). He also acts a lot like an executioner, judging by the number of dismissal letters he sends out to people who represent staff (we might elaborate on this in some future series). Would EPO managers get away with murdering little girls because of the immunity they proudly claim inside Eponia? Read this new comment (posted today in relation to the EPO):

To: "Et sinon je reprendrais bien des croquettes"

When a drunken diplomat kills a little girl, immunity is upheld, but the diplomat is declared "persona non grata" and sent back to his or her country. The diplomat is then supposed to be judged there.

The Vienna convention was never designed so that diplomats can kill little girls with impunity. It was designed to protect, for example, USA diplomats to be judged for "anti-communist activities" in the former USSR.

In the case of International organisations, however, I am not really sure how the "persona non grata" concept is supposed to apply.

The above continues with more direct statements rather than hypothetical analogies:

Something else.

It has been 3 months since the Enlarged Board published that the EPO President violated judicial independence and nothing has happened. This is outrageous.

There is also the subject of the frivolity of the accusations. The board of appeal member who is the subject of the decision did, as far as I can tell from the available documents, nothing wrong. The accusations were downright ridiculous: having "objects which can be constructed as weapons" and "nazi memorabilia". The exact wording at the time fails me, but it really sounded as if they combed his office and found nothing but a pocket knife and an history book to frame him.

This is also absolutely outrageous. It looks like the so called "investigation team", even with major breaches of confidentiality (they bugged the computers used by the Council themselves, remember?) could not find anything serious and yet the board member is still guilty. Of what?

Next, we have had members of Suepo dismissed for, apparently, also nothing. Pure "coincidence", according to a vice-president. Apparently, a few more will be dismissed soon.

As it was said on German TV: this is "Gantanamo auf Deutschem Boden". How long will this scandal last?

From what we understand, it was sports equipment (a club), not a knife. It's amazing how far Battistelli would go to get his way... we can also envision Parallel Construction being used to entrap or perhaps wrongly/falsely accuse the person, who in principle enjoys complete independence from the Office of Battistelli (evidently not in practice, especially when the Council and the Board of Mr. Kongstad become lapdogs rather than watchdogs of Battistelli).

The comment above is interesting and it is new. It's a comment to which one person replied with a famous saying: "For evil to prevail it is only necessary that good men do nothing …"

I agree. There is a moral duty here. All my coverage regarding the EPO was done for zero financial gain. It's just the right thing to do.

Another person said this:

The original accusation was that the member of the board of appeal used the public computers of the Office to spread "defamatory" material on VP3 - the weapons and nazi memorabilia were conveniently found later in his office and used for a classical case of character assassination.

To further reinforce the narrative about defamation, VP3 sued the member of the board of appeal for in a German court - you may have read the outcome above (28/09): it appears that the Procurator dismissed the case recently.

How long will this scandal last?

Scandal? Who says this is a "scandal" - you? And what about Newspapers, Lawyers, Judges, the IP world? Did you see any reaction from them? Because I didn't. Therefore, it's not a scandal. The Administrative Council is acting like this is totally normal. No scandal here.

If you wanna a scandal read TMZ.

The corporate media -- and even so-called 'IP' media for that matter (we put IP in scare quotes because it's a vague term that can refer to a plethora of entirely different things, not necessarily patents) -- aids the EPO's abuses by a conspiracy of silence and indifference. We spoke to some people from within this media and we know how and why they are gagged regarding the EPO. We think that a lot of so-called 'IP' media wants to just receive prepared 'articles' or advertise in 'article' form for the EPO, not engage in actual journalism. We recently covered examples from two major 'IP' media sites. Don't expect them to cover the EPO scandals because they're not designed or equipped for that. It's just not their business model.

"Something is not just rotten at Eponia. Rotten is far too gentle a term and we intend to dig as deep as necessary to show what the EPO has truly become.""Isn't that just the point," asked another new commenter (clustered deep inside an article from June at IP Kat, as the site no longer covers the scandals, just promotes the UPC for Battistelli). "The EPO's immunity is designed to protect French Enarques from being pursued for "anti-union activities" on the territory of EPOnia. I see no incompatibility with the aims of the Vienna Convention ..."

Tomorrow we shall continues our series about Mr. Kongstad. There will be a total of (by our estimation) nearly 10 parts.

Something is not just rotten at Eponia. Rotten is far too gentle a term and we intend to dig as deep as necessary to show what the EPO has truly become. ⬆