02.06.17
Gemini version available ♊︎The EPO’s President, Benoît Battistelli, May Have Become One of Europe’s Most Hated People
This damages the image of the EPO and the worth of its patents (even those which are decades old)
A countdown to Battistelli-Exit/Brexistelli
Summary: Benoît Battistelli is as unpopular as can be (0% approval rate from his own staff and stakeholders), but miraculously, thanks to political cowards who protect him, he still keeps his job and fills the swamp with yet more of his flunkies and cronies
IT HAS BECOME abundantly clear that not only EPO staff hates ‘their’ President. Stakeholders hate him too and he recently received a 0% approval rate in a survey — the same rating he got from his own staff. Even French politicians cannot stand him and they openly lash out at him. Battistelli’s so-called ‘boss’, who is busy slaughtering defenseless animals, doesn’t seem to realise that it’s more than a problem but an historic crisis. Everyone who lets it be shares the blame and is partly liable if not complicit, including the Dutch authorities.
Battistelli’s tenure is, at least on paper, to last for more than another year. But it could end much sooner; he definitely ought to have been sacked years ago. Right now it’s a political battle against Battistelli’s facilitators — those who shield him no matter how abusive he is and how enormous a damage he has done to the institute he claims to preside over.
How much more does the Dutch government want to tarnish its image? The Dutch “Supreme Court would gloss over this point [about lack of justice at the EPO] by using one of the most unconvincing excuses,” said this new comment. To quote:
The Appeal Court of the Hague certainly understood the point. Quoting directly from a translation of their decision:
“The circumstance that individual employees of EPOrg can at EPOrg and subsequently at ILOAT indeed contest any restriction of their right to strike, namely against any measures that might have been taken against them due to violation of the rules on strikes, is in this connection not decisive. Indeed, Art. 11 ECHR guarantees the right of collective action and of collective bargaining. It would be in contravention of the collective nature of these rights if only individual employees could afterwards contest the impairment of these rights. Such a judicial process cannot be considered as an effective legal remedy to enforce the collective rights that are at issue in this case. With regard to the right of collective bargaining it can be far less understood how this could be put up for discussion at ILOAT in the judicial process of an individual employee, or which other judicial process VEOB et al. could follow”.
Given that they will have read the lower court’s decision, the Supreme Court clearly was aware of this point. Also, it is hard to believe that SUEPO would not have raised the very same point in their arguments before the Supreme Court. However, the thing that I find hardest to believe is that the Supreme Court would gloss over this point by using one of the most unconvincing excuses I have ever seen.
Sadly, as attacks on staff have intensified again, particularly in the Netherlands (gestapo-style raids last week [1, 2]), people seem reluctant or afraid to speak out. SUEPO hardly makes a single statement these days (amid resignations), Merpel keeps totally quiet about it, and IP Kat in general gave up on the cause, more so after sanctions from the EPO. When it finally covers the EPO it just promotes Battistelli's UPC ambitions or amplifies EPO public relations (warning: epo.org link). In the EPO’s own words: “In its order for decision G1/15, related to the question of partial priorities and so-called toxic divisionals, the Enlarged Board of the EPO held that a generic claim encompassing alternative subject matter may not be refused partial priority, provided the alternative subject matter has been directly, at least implicitly, and unambiguously disclosed in the priority document. The reasoned decision will follow.”
There have been quite a few new comments about it, probably involving attorneys if not examiners too, but Battistelli is never even mentioned anymore because he terrorises his critics.
We don’t think there is much of a future to the EPO (not in its current form). The UPC too is collapsing, so what will Battistelli have to show for his ‘reforms’ (all the damage he has done)? █
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