Bonum Certa Men Certa

ILO Gives the European Patent Office Unfair Advantage in Disputes With Staff

When people start receiving envelopes such as these they know justice is unlikely to ever be served (waste of time and money, good only for lawyers)

ILO envelope
Institutional Laziness Organization?



Summary: Dispute resolution cannot be attained at ILO because ILO does not properly enforce labour law, does not give staff adequate opportunity to respond, rarely issues an actual judgment (deferrals instead), and lets the EPO dodge compliance with rulings

THE EPO is habitually abusing the law and nonchalantly abusing its own staff. Incredibly enough, time after time it somehow dodges justice; it keeps getting away with it. Staff is in shock, not in awe, as there seem to be no safeguards for them, not even ILO (whose sole job is to ensure justice from a peripheral, independent angle). Something is seriously wrong and truly dysfunctional here. See what happens in WIPO (Switzerland) for parallels. Is this civilised Europe or have international bodies, especially those residing on European soil, descended to standards of third world countries? How can this be? Whistleblowers from these bodies face incredible retribution. They live in police states, sheltered by a bubble of immunity and impunity. There are de facto monarchs. They are above the law.



Claude RouillerReaders have begun writing to us with additional feedback. A lot of them got severely abused by the EPO, but few have the courage to speak about it, or to air their ordeals publicly (it's like the EPO is blackmailing them). We have been hearing many complaints about Albert Koopman, for instance -- a doctor whom we last wrote about one week ago. Why does his name keep coming up? How many people feel victimised by this man?

We have begun learning not just about abuse of ill and/or disabled people at the EPO (we have plenty of material related to that). We gradually learn about ILO's apathy towards them, if not discrimination towards them. "ILO will only check whether the EPO follows their internal rules, but will not check the validity of these rules," one person wrote the other day, alluding to Claude Rouiller's ILOAT. Well, the problems were explained in a document from SUEPO quite recently. "There we go," told us another person. "Useless auditing process then."

Here is the full comment about it:

A new document about the tribunal of ILO was just published by SUEPO. It is worth reading.

2 things are worth mentioning. First, there has been a change in style in ILO decisions under Battistelli's time: the number of summary dismissals has increased considerably. Basically, there were none before Battistelli. Second, and I feel this is even more important, ILO will not exercise any normative control. In plain English: ILO will only check whether the EPO follows their internal rules, but will not check the validity of these rules.

What does this mean in practice? In practice, it means that the EPO staff has to follow their end of the contract (like not talking to the press under penalty of losing their pensions) while the EPO council is free to change the terms of the contract at their leisure.

I think that the people seeking employment at the EPO ought to know.


Some people go further and raise suspicion that ILO is just rubbing the EPO's back rather than policing it or enforcing labour law. See the following E-mail for example (redacted by us):

Date: ⬆⬆⬆⬆⬆⬆ From: ⬆⬆⬆⬆⬆⬆ To: trib@ilo.org Cc: Subject: URGENT procedural requests in re AT ⬆⬆⬆⬆⬆ and in re AT ⬆⬆⬆⬆⬆

In re AT ⬆⬆⬆⬆⬆ and in re AT ⬆⬆⬆⬆

Dear Mr. Butler, dear Sir or Madam,

With regard to your e-mail of ⬆⬆⬆⬆⬆ 2017 (last in the e-mail exchange as attached) and to the EPO's reply of ⬆⬆⬆⬆⬆ 2017 to this complaint which I received yesterday on ⬆⬆⬆⬆⬆⬆, I have the following comments, questions and requests:

1. Thank you very much for noting my request to join these two cases, yet I understand from you that they are not currently joint yet.

2. Given your earlier instruction (in some of my other cases, cf. your e-mail of ⬆⬆⬆⬆⬆⬆ 2015, among others) to remove cross-references to documents provided in other procedures it is unclear to me how I can "provide additional arguments and evidence" in reply to the EPO's new allegations in their latest submission in re AT ⬆⬆⬆⬆⬆⬆, for instance on my alleged additional meetings with Dr. Koopman within the medical committee procedure, without being allowed to refer to such new allegations by the EPO and refute them. Could you please clarify?

3. In view of my fundamental right to reply to the EPO's new allegations in re AT ⬆⬆⬆⬆⬆ I maintain my procedural request under 6. of my e-mail of ⬆⬆⬆⬆⬆ 2017 (as attached).

4. In view of the term of 30 days granted to me for my rejoinder in re AT ⬆⬆⬆⬆⬆⬆ in reply to the EPO's extensive reply of ⬆⬆⬆⬆ pages with ⬆⬆⬆⬆ Annexes [Editor's note: massive numbers!], this term having started from the day of receipt, i.e. from yesterday, and in view of the extremely generous extension of 60 days provided to the EPO's two specialised professional lawyers for their reply, I urgently request an extension of 90 days for my rejoinder in re AT ⬆⬆⬆⬆⬆ due to my chronic illness and to my personal obligations, my own administration, my social life, necessary repair works at my home, and the like.

Please confirm receipt for this e-mail.

Awaiting your prompt reply, Sincerely yours,

⬆⬆⬆⬆⬆⬆⬆⬆⬆⬆⬆⬆



What we are seeing above is a rather perversely disproportionate action; it's asymmetric legal warfare against discriminated, abused (and as usual, then maligned) EPO staff with a chronic illness. We have heard from (and written about) similar cases involving other people, so there is certainly a pattern here. The EPO uses deep pockets (stakeholders' money) to overwhelm and overburden the victim with legal fees, potentially bankrupting some. What kind of inhumane place has the EPO become and why does ILO shelter the EPO so much? Is ILO part of the problem? People are dying over this...

Recent Techrights' Posts

Michael “Monty” Widenius: It Started in 1983 With Richard Stallman (RMS)
The other co-founder of MySQL is a bit notorious for confronting RMS rather viciously
For the Second Time in a Few Weeks Microsoft Lunduke Makes False Accusations Against Senior Red Hat Staff to Incite a Despicable 'Troll Army'
Nothing that Microsoft Lunduke claims of says can be trusted
 
Links 03/10/2025: Lawyers Caught Using LLM Slop Explain Why They Did It, LibreSSL 4.1.1 and 4.0.1 Released
Links for the day
FSF Board Grew 50% Since Last Year, Has New President, Turns 40 in Two Days
It's a good move for the FSF and - by extension - for software freedom
Links 03/10/2025: Conflicts, Death of TypePad, and TikTok/CheeTok Gives a Boost to Far Right Groups in Europe
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Thursday, October 02, 2025
IRC logs for Thursday, October 02, 2025
Slopwatch: Linux Journal, Google News, and LinuxSecurity
They carry on polluting the Web with fake articles
Gemini Links 02/10/2025: Kubernetes With FreeBSD and robots.txt
Links for the day
Links 02/10/2025: 'Open' 'AI' Resorting to Gimmicks and Fake Funding, Europe’s ‘Drone Wall’ Discussed
Links for the day
Links 02/10/2025: Brave Passes 100M Users Milestone, Kodak Selling Its Own Film Again
Links for the day
su lisa && rm -rf /home/ibm/power
Novell was ruined by another person from IBM, Ronald Hovsepian
A Record Demand at Microsoft: Demand to Cancel
What we're witnessing is a very ungraceful destruction of XBox
Microsoft is Losing Europe
Hence all the "support" and "discount" offers that are limited to Europe
The Free Software Foundation Starts Fund-raising for 40th Anniversary
New pop-up 2-3 days ahead of the 40th anniversary event
Systemd Breaks Networking in Debian and Microsoft Staff Rushes to Make Face-Saving Excuses in LWN
Microsoft's bluca is already there in the comments, his Microsoft money pays for LWN to let him leave comments early
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Wednesday, October 01, 2025
IRC logs for Wednesday, October 01, 2025
What the End of XBox Will Look Like: a Fiery Crash
XBox is the next Skype. It won't last much longer. Expect many more layoffs.
Richard Stallman is Going to Finland to Give a Talk Next Thursday
A day later he speaks in Sweden
Gemini Links 02/10/2025: SMTP Pipelining and End of ROOPHLOCH 2025
Links for the day
Slopwatch: Plagiarism, Fake Articles, and FUD About Linux
not a day goes by without Google News feeding FUD from slopfarms
Gemini Links 01/10/2025: Chat Control and End of Life
Links for the day
Links 01/10/2025: Long Covid Risk Reiterated, "Bitcoin Queen" Caught
Links for the day
Links 01/10/2025: EA $55 Billion Deal is Debt and Slop "Raises Vishing Risks"
Links for the day
Bluewashing at Red Hat Means Redundancies
The man who sold Red Hat to IBM meanwhile became a Microsoft Mono booster
After Killing OpenSource.com, IBM ('Red Hat') and OSI Told Us OpenSource.net Would Replace It (But That Didn't Happen)
Now it's time to move on, perhaps tarnishing the "Open Source" label some more (for whatever sponsor wants this)
Linux is Not a Community Project, It's a Wall Street Product
The core goal should be freedom
Bad Actors Abusing the Free Software Community, Vandalising It Using Rogue Politics and Old Tactics
Oil giants have long attempted to do this; now, the digital equivalent of Big Oil does this in technology
Social Control Media Isn't the Future, The Federation or Fediverse Isn't Growing, People's Accounts Vanish for Good
users' accounts will get deleted, not just become inactive
IBM is Failing, This Helps Show Wall Street is Entirely Detached From Actual Commercial Performance
IBM is unable to grow, it's just constantly shrinking
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Tuesday, September 30, 2025
IRC logs for Tuesday, September 30, 2025
Clerical Aspects of Publishing and Development
In Free software, the management aspects are considerably reduced
Slopwatch: Fake Articles and Google News Promoting "Linux" Spam or Bot-Generated Fear, Uncertainty, Doubt (FUD)
These slopfarms help misplace blame
Third Wave of Microsoft Layoffs in September, This Time Many in Liverpool Affected
Be ready for more waves of layoffs ahead of the so-called "results" in late October