Bonum Certa Men Certa

Outline of Latest Press Coverage Regarding the European Patent Office (EPO)

EPO article in French:

EPO article in French



EPO article in Greek:

EPO article in Greek



EPO article in English:

EPO article in English



And lots more to come...

Summary: European media is beginning to cover scandals associated with the European Patent Office (EPO), in spite of Battistelli's attempt to silence and manipulate it, at the expense of millions of Euros per year

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):



  1. EPO Administrative Council Meeting Turning Point - Part I: Protest at The Hague and the Huge Things at Stake
  2. EPO Administrative Council Meeting Turning Point - Part II: More Photos From Today's Protest at The Hague
  3. EPO Administrative Council Meeting Turning Point - Part III: How Benoît Battistelli Planned to Expand His Attacks on EPO Staff (But Failed)
  4. EPO Administrative Council Meeting Turning Point - Part IV: When ~1,200 EPO Workers March in Protest and European Politicians Say “Battistelli Must Go”
  5. EPO Administrative Council Meeting Turning Point - Part V: “Siegfried Bross as President of the Boards of Appeal!”


Some more information about the The Hague demonstration was sent to us at the end of the week. The below message was posted by SUEPO The Hague on Facebook (late on Thursday or on Friday): "about 600 colleagues gathered today peacefully in The Hague to again and again request fairness and justice at EPO, this after another demo in Munich where also ca. 600 colleagues gathered to ask for the same.

"NL MP John Kerstens and FR MP Philip Cordery were again supportive of the demonstrants since they care for fundamental rights.

"THANKS TO YOU ALL"

We have meanwhile received a translation of an article in French, published just days before the above in one of the largest papers in France. In English (with our emphasis):

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,…"


The above is imperfect and in fact an improved and complete translation would be very useful. As it stands, however, it does help one get the gist of this story.

As of today, SUEPO links to this article in Greek, whose headline is translated as saying "EPO: Patented medieval working conditions" (manual translations would be desirable); in addition to this, published on a Friday morning by Kieren McCarthy of The Register was the following detailed article that describes Battistelli as "terrifying boss". It's based on an open letter that we mentioned here before and it says:

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.


The comments on this are few and rather short. No doubt the EPO harms the EU by giving it a bad name. As one person put it:

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.


"If only it were being run on the same lines as the IICSA," one person responded. "Except that the EPO is not an organ of the EU - at all," another person added. But a lot of people don't know this. To them, the EPO is like an arm of the EU or the very notion/philosophy that Europe should be united with its centre/heart in the main continent.

Another person remarked: "Reforms?

"As with those done in the UK, you need to indicate the possible reality by calling them "reforms".

"This quotation marks would indicate that someone had used the word but that they were not necessarily truly an advancement or improvement."

A person then responded with: "Perhaps the best reform is to bulldoze the EPO and WIPO management and start over? I recommend a Cat D10."

Regarding the name "King Battistelli" -- a term which McCarthy routinely repeats (not because of McCarthyism but because the staff of the EPO calls him that in a derogative fashion) -- another person wrote: "By the sound of all this - why 'King' when 'Duce' seems so much more appropriate?"

As far as we are aware, there are quite a few journalists and several publications that are going to write about the EPO in the coming week. Battistelli wasted a lot of money trying to prevent this, but he cannot just devour all the media all around the world. It would instantaneously bankrupt the whole Office.

Recent Techrights' Posts

Changing One's Name Won't Change One's Past
People who have earned a bad reputation are not magically "entitled" to reset
People Who Assault Women Are Not Victims of "Distress"
It seems like an American tradition. In a country with almost 50 presidents, not even one was a female.
Adoption of Gemini Protocol Still Growing
Gemini Protocol is being obscured by the media - it doesn't help that Google 'hijacked' the word "Gemini" - but people still manage to find out about it, download a client, and use it
Brett Wilson LLP "Takes it Personal" (Character Assassination, Not Professionalism). Everybody Can See That.
On behalf of violent men
 
Microsoft's Halloween Documents and systemd, Wayland, Etc.
Maybe one day Wayland will be widespread. Or maybe not.
Gemini Links 14/07/2025: BOFH Archive, Updating Old Palm PDAS, and Nginx vs Slop Bots
Links for the day
Ubuntu is Becoming GAFAM-Like
What does that say about Canonical and Ubuntu?
Slopfarms Which Take Real Articles About GNU/Linux and Turn Them Into Copycats Which Are False
Even before the LLM hype those were quite common
The Firm That Picks on Techrights is Accustomed to Working With Criminals
Techrights never did anything illegal. So why is it being picked on by people who work with criminals?
Microsoft Said the Mass Layoffs Were for "Investment" in "AI", But It's Also Laying Off the "AI" and "Copilot" Staff
Months ago we showed many so-called "AI" people were getting the boot and this time it's the same
DryDeadFish is Dead, Long Live DryDeadFish
We kept checking, hoping it can recover from some temporary technical issue
For Quite Some Time Already Microsoft Attracts Crackpots, Scams, and More
Occasionally we talk about the situation at IBM as there are many parallels
Links 14/07/2025: Chatbots Broken Again, McHire LLM Shows Limits of the Hype
Links for the day
Slashdot Media Turned Linux Journal Into a Slopfarm and Now Slashdot Actively Promotes Anti-Linux Slopfarms
Yes, "no-nonsense" apparently means actual nonsense
Links 14/07/2025: Arresting Photographers, Threats to Revoke US Citizenship Over Criticism
Links for the day
More EPO Leaks on the Way
We hope that Mr. Rowan will actually try to refute what we say and show, not merely point the finger at the messengers
Decommodification is a Corporate Strategy Against Communities
systemd is led by Microsoft and hosted by Microsoft
copyleft.org 'Hijacked' by the People Who Attack the Person Who Created Copyleft
So far there's nothing "tasteless" in copyleft.org, but that can change at any time in the future
Asking People to Take Down Articles and Videos Only Makes These More Popular and "Viral"
If you do something bad, one of the worst things you can possibly do it try to silence those who speak about it
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Sunday, July 13, 2025
IRC logs for Sunday, July 13, 2025
Two-Thirds Towards FSF Goal, Richard Stallman to Give Talks in Europe
There are 67 left before reaching the target
Gemini Links 14/07/2025: Politicised Tech and "Leaving GitHub"
Links for the day
Pissing Contests and Pissing Off Everyone
people who came from Microsoft are trying to vex and divide the community
Microsoft Repeats the Mistakes Made by the EPO After We Exposed a Major Microsoft/EPO Scandal 10 Years Ago
That scandal was all over the media, not just in English
The Demise of LLMs
We've just checked BetaNews again. They've dropped all the slop and went back to human authors.
Gemini Links 13/07/2025: Sonpo Museum of Art and FCEUX
Links for the day
Links 13/07/2025: UnitedHealth's Censorship Campaign, Australia Wary of China
Links for the day
Firing Away With Nonsense
Or fighting fire with fire
Links 13/07/2025: Climate Crisis, GAFAM Poisoning the Water
Links for the day
Turns Out LLMs for Code Don't Save Time and Don't Improve Quality
Neither legal nor useful
The Microsofters Will Have an Obligation to Compensate Us
This story isn't just about Microsoft. It's also about corruption, there are many women victims, there is abject "abuse of process", and many more scandals to be illuminated in years to come.
Reproducing at the EPO Instead of Producing Monopolies for Foreign Monopolies With Their Price-Fixing Cartels
Does the EPO recognise the need of well-educated Europeans to bear kids?
Valnet Inc. Dominates Real (Not LLM Slop) GNU/Linux Coverage in 2025
And likely in prior years, too
Free Software Foundation (FSF) Fund Raiser Goes on
Later this month we'll expose another OSI scandal
EPO Staff Representatives Issue a Warning About Staff's Health and Inadequate Care
Even the EPO's own stakeholders (money sources) are openly protesting against what the EPO became
Links 13/07/2025: Partly Assorted News From Deutsche Welle and CBC
Links for the day
Gemini Links 13/07/2025: Board Games and Battle Styles
Gemini Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Saturday, July 12, 2025
IRC logs for Saturday, July 12, 2025
Plunder at the Second-Largest Institution in Europe
cuts, neglect, health problems, even early deaths
Links 12/07/2025: Political Developments, Attack on Opposition, Climate Actions
Links for the day
Gemini Links 12/07/2025: Melodic Musings and Small Web July
Links for the day
Links 12/07/2025: Jail in China for Homoerotica, South Korea Discriminates Against Old Workers
Links for the day
If Only Everything Was Rewritten in Rust, We'd Have No More Security Issues?
Nope.
Links 12/07/2025: Birdwatching and Fake/Misleading Wall Street 'Valuation' Figures
Links for the day
Gemini Links 12/07/2025: How to Avoid Writing, Apps for Android
Links for the day
Using SLAPPs to Cover Up Sexual Abuse and Strangulation
The exact same legal team of the Serial Strangler from Microsoft and Garrett already has a history fighting against "metoo"
EPO Staff Committee on Harassment in the Workplace
slides
Adding the Voice of Writers to UK SLAPP Reform
The journey to repair antiquated (monarchy era) laws will likely be long
EPO Takes More Money From Staff for Speculation (Pensions), Actuarial Study Explains the Impact
"The key change in this year’s Actuarial Study, due to cascading the new “risk appetite” from the financial study, is a significant increase of the total pension contribution rate of 5.7 percentage points, up to a total of 37.8%. This is driven by an unprecedented decrease in the discount rate of 105 bps down to 2.2%."
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Friday, July 11, 2025
IRC logs for Friday, July 11, 2025