Translation Shows That Carl Josefsson and Christoph Ernst Refuse to Comment on EPO Injustice as It Might Embarrass Battistelli
- Dr. Roy Schestowitz
- 2018-01-03 20:10:48 UTC
- Modified: 2018-01-03 20:10:48 UTC
As if they too are subservient to Battistelli, who is supposed to have no authority over them...
Original/translation:
SUEPO's translation [PDF]
|
Original in German
“Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly.” ââ¬â¢
Martin Luther King Jr., Letter from the Birmingham Jail
Summary: An investigative article/journalism from Mathieu Klos and Christina Schulze, which contains few unknown details, did attempt to get a comment from heads of the Administrative Council and the Boards of Appeal, but both acted as though they are afraid of Benoît Battistelli and Željko Topić (Battistelli did play a role in appointment of a President at the Boards of Appeal, as well as his own successor's, Campinos)
Disciplinary incident at the European Patent Office: Pyrrhic victory for suspended judge
For years an Irish judge has not been allowed to get to his former place of work at the European Patent Office, because Office boss Benoît Battistelli had banned him from entering the building, but as of last week the man is once again back as a member of the Boards of Appeal at the European Patent Office (EPO). President of the Boards of Appeal, Carl Josefsson, has implemented two judgments by the Administrative Tribunal of the International Labour Organization (ILOAT). The Tribunal had ordered that the judge be reinstated. But he will only be able to exercise his duties as a judge for a few days, until the end of the year; the Administrative Council will not be extending his term of office.
So far the situation has not been confirmed by any official source. When asked, the President of the Administrative Council, Dr. Christoph Ernst, told JUVE that the gathering of the 38 EPO Member States would not voice an opinion in this confidential staff matter. The Administrative Council is the disciplinary supervisory body for members of the Boards of Appeal. Josefsson, too, who as President of the Boards of Appeal, is the hierarchy superior of the judge concerned, declined to make any comment.
According to an internal memo, however, which is in JUVE’s possession, on 11 December Josefsson did allow the judge the right to enter the building, and he thereupon resumed his work. The case of the judge had been a feature of the heated debate about the independence of the Boards of Appeal since December 2014. It was only in September that the Boards of Appeal moved out of the main building in Munich city centre to Haar on the outskirts, a consequence of the reform of the EPO court, which is intended to make it more independent of the Office and its President. The day after the decision in the case of the Irish judge the celebrations were held marking the move into the new service building.
The judge’s term of service concludes at the end of the year as part of a cycle of five years. The Administrative Council clearly could not agree to an extension. The Irishman’s name does not appear on the list of reappointed judges who are still in office. In the past, the reappointment of EPO judges has always been a formality, but because his term of office is not being extended the judge will revert to his former activity as a patent examiner. This will mean that for disciplinary matters he will no longer be subject to the Administrative Council but directly to the EPO President.
Accusations against the judge not clarified
The matter all started exactly three years ago. In December 2014, Office President Battistelli imposed a ban on the Irishman entering the building, and pushed through his suspension by way of the Administrative Council. The reason was the accusation that the man had passed on information which was not approved for the public domain, and had made critical comments about the Boards of Appeal and the controversial Director of the EPO, Željko Topić. The judge has always protested his innocence, and any infringement of EPO regulations has to the last always been denied.
It has already been six months since a decision by the Enlarged Board of Appeal with regard to bias on the part of its own chief executive due to his tasks in the management of the EPO triggered the discussion about the independence of the EPO Court. The ban on the Irish judge entering the building had been seized on by many critics as proof that Office President Battistelli was getting too involved with the dealings of the Court. The supervisory and disciplinary body responsible for the members of the Boards of Appeal is actually the Administrative Council of the EPO.
The case also heated up the discussion about how to deal with disciplinary proceedings. In formal terms, an EPO judge can only be suspended by the Administrative Council if the Enlarged Board of Appeal recommends this. But last year the court refused to do so, after Battistelli intervened in writing in the proceedings which were in hand. The Enlarged Board of Appeal regarded this as another massive exertion of influence, and ended to proceedings without a recommendation.
International Labour Tribunal awards suspended judge compensatory damages
The case reached its most recent climax at the beginning of December, when the ILOAT in Geneva decided, in two of four appeals by the judge, that he must be reinstated (File Refs. 3958 and 3960). The highest labour court for staff members of international organizations also awarded the EPO judge a total of 35,000 Euro as compensation for moral damages and for loss of service income, plus 5 percent interest on the missed remuneration.
Many observers then demanded his permanent reinstatement. “In view of the massive procedural errors, confirmed by the Enlarged Boards of Appeal and now also by the ILOAT, failure to reappoint him represents a further violation by the EPC”, the judge’s attorney, Senay Okyay, told JUVE: “We shall of course be pursuing to the full all legal recourses which are available to my client”.
Unlike the situation before the decision by the Administrative Council, in the first instance the judge no longer has the option of another approach to the ILOAT open to him. He must now first go through the wearisome internal appeal procedure. (Mathieu Klos, Christina Schulze)
Recent Techrights' Posts
- The Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA) Has a Policy on Racism and Sexism
- In then future we'll show the misogyny and racial slurs
- Links 22/09/2025: Murdochs Might Join Fentanylware (TikTok) 'Investors' (Masters), United Kingdom Recognises Palestinian Statehood
- Links for the day
- The 50-Pound Note Experiment and the "War on Cash"
- Britain is actually seeing a rebound in cash payments, and it's not a temporary phenomenon
-
- If You Don't Control Your Online Platform, Then Someone Else is Controlling You
- be (or become) independent
- Oracle Started This Year With Slop. Then It Stopped.
- Passing fads are like this
- Distros That Run on PCs Made 20 Years Ago and Don't Use Systemd
- Betas for now
- The Complaint About Brett Wilson LLP - Part I - Abusing British Women on Behalf of American Men Who Abuse American Women
- Transparency is important to us, so we've decided to make this series
- Slopwatch: Google News and the Evident Slopfarm Infestation
- This is what people get about Linux when they query Google for Linux
- Gemini Links 22/09/2025: Esperanto Music History and Apps For Android
- Links for the day
- Links 22/09/2025: More American 'Censorship' (Retaliation for Journalism), Cheeto "Might Be Losing His Race Against Time"
- Links for the day
- The Blob Slop
- Give me more words, give me some text
- Slopwatch: Blaming the Victims for Microsoft's Failures and Plagiarising Phoronix
- That's what Google has been reduced to: slop and slopfarms
- Links 22/09/2025: Breaches, Windows TCO, and Arrests
- Links for the day
- Gemini Links 22/09/2025: Rabbit Hole and DeGoogling Fairphone
- Links for the day
- Links 22/09/2025: Russian War Planes Invade NATO Airspace While Dihydroxyacetone Man Escalates Attack on Free Speech Because of Critics
- Links for the day
- Over at Tux Machines...
- GNU/Linux news for the past day
- IRC Proceedings: Sunday, September 21, 2025
- IRC logs for Sunday, September 21, 2025
- Links 21/09/2025: "Hey Hi" (Hype) Under Fire, Fakes Identified; Tesla Burns Family
- Links for the day
- Google's Software is Malware and Malware in Mobile Devices
- Originally posted by Rob Musial
- Links 20/09/2025: Hegemony Coming to a Close, Luigi Mangione Ruled Not Terrorist
- Links for the day
- Gemini Links 21/09/2025: "Charlie Kirk Was a Hateful Piece of Shit" and Slop Code Attempted by Microsofter
- Links for the day
- Over at Tux Machines...
- GNU/Linux news for the past day
- IRC Proceedings: Saturday, September 20, 2025
- IRC logs for Saturday, September 20, 2025
- Gemini Links 20/09/2025: Snowy Photos and utism is a Spectrum
- Links for the day
- Microsoft-Sponsored Xenophobia and Nationalism
- IBM is very similar in this regard
- Vintage is Sometimes Better
- Why can't we get back to "simple" if (or where) "simple" means better?
- Climate Breakdown Means We'll be Publishing More, Not Less
- Press freedom will be a common, recurring theme
- Our 5-Year Geminispace Anniversary is Coming Up
- I still remember when Gemini Protocol was quite new
- It's Right to Point Out Violence From the Right
- Violence is a recurring theme
- Tentative Summary of Things to Publish in Project 2030
- I'll still be in my forties by then
- Web Browsers That "Do Hey Hi" (AI)
- State-of-the-art plagiarism or "autocomplete on steroids" (not coined by us, nevertheless a nice description) don't have much/any prospect
- Links 20/09/2025: Hardware Projects in View, Some Independent Publishers About Russia Prosper After Cheeto Cuts Funding
- Links for the day
- Gemini Links 20/09/2025: Options and TV Time Machine
- Links for the day
- Links 20/09/2025: Retrocomputer, Antique Phone Experience, and More
- Links for the day
- Links 20/09/2025: Internet Shutdowns, Media Censorship, and Climate Worries
- Links for the day
- About 700 New Gemini Capsules in 13 Months (or 54 Per Month)
- 4.8K would represent a 20% increase
- Rust People: Drain the Swap, You're Holding It Wrong
- Does Rust make sense?
- Techrights the Name Turns 15
- About 6 weeks from now we turn 19
- Microsoft is Running Out of Time and Floating Fake Figures, Fake Projects, Fake Narratives, Fake Excuses
- Also, a lot of Microsoft's "revenue" claims are circular financing (i.e. Microsoft buying from itself, which means Ponzi-like fraud)
- Slopwatch: LinuxSecurity, linuxconfig.org, and Plagiarised Phoronix
- Many articles out there are nowadays fake
- Over at Tux Machines...
- GNU/Linux news for the past day
- IRC Proceedings: Friday, September 19, 2025
- IRC logs for Friday, September 19, 2025
- Gemini Links 20/09/2025: Navigating the Pressures of Modern Life and SpellBinding Accidentally Wrote Another Gemini Server
- Links for the day
Comments
Dr.Guinness
2018-01-04 12:18:31
Worlds best IP blog seems to be hacked? Nearly everywhere I get: ۬ Error establishing a database connection۬
I can imagin someone does not like some of the comments in this blog. This one? ۬
Please accept as new year gift one more Russian word for your list:
gulag.
This is how we feel. Emprisoned and powerless in our (golden?) cages. Blindly undergoing useless restructuring (for example, in the next 3 months everyone will be moving office room at the EPO), scared to speak out for fear of retaliation (every month a list of colleagues who “end service” for no reason is published on our intranet ). Everyone wanting to listen and possibly publish our incredible stories having been silenced anyway.
Counting the days left (180) until “le roi” is gone. Hoping that we don’t end up with an “o rei” at his place.