TIRED AFTER a sleepless night (covering EPO news right after the historic meeting had ended), we have finally recovered and can now resume coverage of the topic. Here is a 5-part explanation of what happened on Wednesday and Thursday (behind closed doors and in the streets of The Hague):
In the discreet and civilized world of international organizations, the event is a very rare practice. The meetings scheduled Tuesday, 11 October, in Munich, and Thursday, 13 October, in The Hague, by the examiners of the European Patent Office (EPO) are yet just the latest in a long series [of meetings] started in 2013. The employees [of the EPO] have used this method to alert the 38 States meeting in the Council of Administration on 12 and 13 October about a workplace grievance which has remained unresolved for more than three years.
“This is not about money, money will not be the issue. We are not talking about remuneration to the “Board”. With more than EUR 5 000, the sum payable to employees on being hired, to which is added the payment of a premium based on being employed as an expatriate [that is, working in a country that is considered to be not the employees’ home country], and with children’s school-fees paid, and with a few other benefits, the employees will know that they are well paid. To attract scientists from all countries, the EPO Agency has had to indeed align on the best paid officials in Europe. Except that the money is not everything.
The EPO is one such international organization as its role is to identify a narrow field of /small handle/ intellectual property/ in the world, [and] the legal /status to share/ basis on which it can be made available to others/. The [EPO], whose headquarters is located in Munich and has branch offices in Berlin, The Hague and Vienna, employs 7 000 people to examine the applications of inventors, and issue in three languages the valuable patents of which it holds the monopoly for forty years.
In July 2010, the French Benoît Battistelli took over the reins. It is shortly after the arrival of this former Director General of the National Institute of Industrial Property (INPI) that the working conditions have deteriorated,…"
Staff at the European Patent Office (EPO) have asked its administrative council to adopt new guidelines to protect them from the organization's rampaging president.
The open letter [PDF] urges the council – which meets this week in Munich – to adopt the same rules for disciplinary proceedings and internal investigations that are being developed at another scandal-hit international organization, the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO).
The letter comes as EPO president Benoit Battistelli continues an extraordinary campaign of intimidation of union leaders at the organization that has led to repeated strikes at the EPO and a determined effort to push the president out at the administrative council's previous meeting in July.
Since that failed attempt to boot Battistelli out, he has continued efforts to eject a number of union officials who resisted wide-ranging reform efforts, despite having been formally rebuked by the council and instructed to stop with his investigations.
A number of union officials have been suspended on questionable charges and have been under constant pressure to quit the organization, including the threat of withdrawals of their pensions. The suspensions follow an extraordinary campaign of intimidation through a special investigation unit set up by Battistelli, which included tapping people's phones and sending investigators to their homes, as well as planting highly damaging allegations about specific individuals in the press.
Battistelli's efforts to rid himself of anyone who opposes his reform proposals have been stymied by the organization's structures, so the president has made repeated efforts to rewrite EPO rules to give himself increasing amounts of power over decisions – leading us to dub him "King Battistelli."
[...]
Despite the allegations and extremely strong criticism leveled at WIPO by the US Congress, in which it called WIPO "the FIFA of UN agencies," Gurry is still in his position and most recently attempted to get rid of its staff council in order to exert greater personal power over the organization.
The WIPO guidelines are designed to protect staff in future from a management team with its own agenda. EPO's staff hope that by pushing for them to be adopted by the EPO too, it will both protect them and flag the continued abuses of Battistelli and his team.
And yet, for largely political reasons, the Administrative Council – which consists of representatives from all the European countries that make up the EPO – refuses to fire the president.
It's stuff like this that means I'm beginning to warm up to the whole Brexit thing.