Bonum Certa Men Certa

António Campinos Already Implements a 'Shadow' Layoffs Method at the EPO

Not a novel trick

Microsoft’s contractor crackdown: ‘Shadow layoff’ could force big cultural changes inside company



Summary: Battistelli's French successor, whom he chose (António Campinos has long known Battistelli), carries on with the destruction of the EPO -- a destruction which was triggered by Battistelli's awful policies and incredibly bad strategy

THE INEVITABLE has begun; we saw that coming, as did SUEPO, the EPO's staff union. It wasn't even hard to see it coming, knowing that the Office is now run/governed/crushed under António Campinos, who long enjoyed if not exploited immunity; he quite likely breaks EU law when he fires many workers (even in his EU-IPO days).

"This means that the process of actual examination isn't valued/cherished anymore."Today's EPO does not value patent quality, only the speed (and volume) of granting. This means that the process of actual examination isn't valued/cherished anymore. As we have been pointing out many times since July, under António Campinos the EPO constantly promotes software patents (about 2-3 times per day!) -- a lot more than under Battistelli. Is this what the EPO foresees as its future? Granting a lot of bogus monopolies? Courts would not honour these. Watch what Jacobacci & Partners has just published; They're just calling software "AI" -- as the EPO now encourages (about twice a day, sometimes even more!) -- to patent code/algorithms.

"As we have been pointing out many times since July, under António Campinos the EPO constantly promotes software patents (about 2-3 times per day!) -- a lot more than under Battistelli."Citing this recent post, earlier this week I responded to the German FCC after it had posted a link to this new press release titled "Effective protection of fundamental rights must be guaranteed where sovereign powers are transferred to supranational organisations".

"The abuses associated with UPC have destroyed the EPO in Munich," I told them politely. "The EPO is not compatible with anything in the Western world," I said in relation to this remark from Benjamin Henrion (FFII): "EPO maladministration cannot be brought in front of a court, EPO has legal immunity "It guarantees the basic right to challenge measures of public authority before a court.""

To quote the FCC itself:

Laws that transfer sovereign powers to international organisations (Art. 24(1) of the Basic Law, Grundgesetz – GG) are, as acts of German state authority, bound by the fundamental rights. The core content (Wesensgehalt) of fundamental rights must be guaranteed also with regard to supranational powers. Where sovereign powers are transferred to international organisations, the legislature is obliged to ensure the minimum protection of fundamental rights required under the Basic Law. In addition, within the scope of their competences, all constitutional organs are obliged to take steps towards upholding the minimum standard of fundamental rights protection required under the Basic Law. This obligation applies to the establishment of an international organisation as well as its entire existence. The minimum standard of fundamental rights protection required under the Basic Law includes the guarantee of effective and comprehensive legal protection.

In an order published today, the Second Senate of the Federal Constitutional Court dismissed as inadmissible a constitutional complaint because violations of these requirements were not sufficiently substantiated. The constitutional complaint was directed against judgments of the Frankfurt am Main Higher Regional Court (Oberlandesgericht) and the Federal Court of Justice (Bundesgerichtshof), which held that there was no domestic legal protection against a decision of the Board of Governors of the European Schools, an international organisation, to increase school fees.

[...]

The complainants’ challenge of the German Act of Approval to the Convention defining the Statute of the European Schools does not satisfy the requirements to state reasons. They did not sufficiently substantiate why the Act might be essential or unconstitutional. It cannot be inferred from the complainants’ submission that the Act has become unconstitutional over time because the Board of Governors did not ensure effective legal protection, which led to structural shortcomings regarding implementation. In particular, the complainants did not set out that the report including reasons of the Chairman of the Complaints Board of 8 November 2004, in which he declared that the Complaints Board is not competent for the review of school fee increases, was not just an error of judgment in the individual case.


It is worrying to see that Germany's relative apathy towards EPO abuses now dooms the Office. As an insider explained a few hours ago, the EPO is in effect laying off a lot of workers:

But Märpel could find an excel program called "Early Certainty Timeliness Simulator". Do not ask for a download: it only works within the EPO intranet. It was not designed that way for security: more simply it keeps itself up to date on statistics by downloading new ones from the internal databases: new patents filed, patents already searched, grants and withdrawals, etc…

The "Early Certainty Timeliness Simulator" computes future workload per directorate, draws a set of nice curves, etc… Märpel took some time to play with it. In most directorates, stock will reach zero within one or 2 years.

Märpel can only hope for a serious bug in that software. But if the software is right, Märpel knows why President Campinos is not too worried about difficulties in recruiting. And he is not: projections distributed to managers show no recruitment until 2024: 6 years!


How many people will have left by then? Maybe a thousand of so (people are being pushed out). So that's their way of implementing gradual layoffs. They hope nobody will notice.

"There are even more pressing issues to discuss because the leadership of the EPO now puts at risk/peril Europe's patent regime."As mentioned by some Twitter accounts and by SUEPO, the "EPO staff committees reveal three pillars for dialogue with Campinos". It's about an article from yesterday which said:

The European Patent Office’s (EPO) Local Staff Committees of Munich and Berlin have outlined three key pillars as a starting point for dialogue with new EPO president António Campinos.

In a post by the committees, three pillars, covering work, social, and legal issues were discussed, with a view to bring “further topics” in the future.

On the first pillar, work, the committees said that “challenging people” represents one of the main strategies of the EPO management to increase productivity and motivate staff, but that this strategy “incited EPO managers to develop a broadly negative perception of their staff and vice-versa”.

“It contributed to a strong production increase at the cost of open collaboration, discussion culture, trust and patent quality.”

The committees said that current production targets were the “wrong incentives” and threaten patent quality.


There are even more pressing issues to discuss because the leadership of the EPO now puts at risk/peril Europe's patent regime. It's still Battistelli's and Michel Barnier's UPC strategy, which failed pretty badly because the FCC likely dealt the final blow to the UPC, which is simply unconstitutional and definitely fails to address the needs of Europe; it's about the needs of some law firms and their multinational clients, including patent trolls. We'll say more about the UPC in our next post.

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
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
 
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