Bonum Certa Men Certa

Response to Latest Call for EPO Strike Contains Lies From Campinos (and Another Warning That Quality of European Patents Has Collapsed)



Dogfooding
Choking on his own lies. Lies, lies, lies.



Summary: Before the unlawful "Strike Regulations" were thrown out by ILO-AT in Geneva Campinos tried to talk down a strike that would happen the following year. Today we look at the response to that talk...

THE EPO has long had illegal "Strike Regulations", made up by Benoît Battistelli with complicity of many states. We still have a couple more parts to publish in a series about this complicity.



In the meantime, consider the time Campinos (who had already enjoyed these unlawful "Strike Regulations" for 1.5 years) said: "I appreciate that for some of you, things may not be changing as quickly as you would like."

Another couple of years have passed since then. Nothing has improved. In the response below, published 25 months ago, we can clearly see the “Message from the President”, who lied to the staff while crushing the staff. As the union put it back then, "in response to the call for strike from SUEPO, President Campinos raised several points. We have now carried out a fact-checking exercise. Financial study, social dialogue, production pressure, disciplinary cases, career progression, ballot for a strike..."

Incredibly enough, all this time later many of the same points remain valid. We thus reproduce the publication below.

27.11.2019 su19028mp – 0.2.1/0.3.2

President: “I appreciate that for some of you, things may not be changing as quickly as you would like.”



In his recent “Message from the President”, in response to the call for strike from SUEPO, President Campinos raised several points. We have now carried out a fact-checking exercise. Our report is below.

President: “Financial Study, we want to assess which levers are most appropriate”

Fact: The President presented a heavily-biased Financial Study without the involvement of Staff Representation. His call for feedback, asking staff to choose between the Measures, is divisive and a psychological trick to feign respect, community and cooperation. The President has repeatedly stated that the most important conclusion, that we have to fill a €5.8 billion gap, is not open for discussion.

President: “There have been 89 meetings so far between the Office and Staff Representation”

Fact: The President’s delegates who participated in the various meetings were never given the mandate to properly negotiate. We must conclude that the purpose for most meetings was simply to buy time. Again and again, Staff Representatives and SUEPO filed both proposals and critical analysis. On their part, management never entered into any real dialogue. The high number of meetings is now being used for marketing purposes with the Administrative Council. So much has gone wrong at the Office: from a human perspective, from a patent quality perspective, from a perspective of fairness and openness. We are eager to renew the EPO and move away from the past. The President, however, sticks to the past and the same management.

President: “We decided to lower the original production target for 2018 and for 2019”

Fact: This is very true. Unfortunately, the production target is not the problem, it is the productivity target. And there they are again, the frequent half-truths of management. In fact, overall productivity and production pressure has increased in recent years. An Examiner has 20 minutes’ less time to complete a product in 2019 compared to 2018 (2 hours less than in 2014). The target for 2019 is 1.77 days per product. As of today, 1.79 days per product has been reached.

EPO productivity charts

President: “Disciplinary cases (...) One has been resolved and the other is pending. Seven cases have been settled”

Fact: The President has taken 14 months to settle just one urgent case concerning dismissal. Another similarly outrageous case in The Hague is still pending. But there are other Battistelli-era cases the President does not even want to speak about. And then, of course, all managers responsible for these years of unbearable pressure and false accusations are still in place. We still have a long way to go before being able to close the dark chapter of the past.

President: “Career progression (...) we are pursuing a policy of “no one should be left behind”

Fact: This is perhaps the most hypocritical statement of all. For years we have denounced the harmful consequences of the New Career System such as rewarding quantity over quality, and penalising staff members on parental leave and maternity leave. Newcomers have been systematically discriminated against during the Reward Exercise. Older colleagues have been put under extreme production pressure. In the meantime, patent quality has degraded dramatically, as has the reputation of the Office. An authoritarian management style blocks innovation and open discussion. Many colleagues are frustrated and demotivated. On his first day in the Office Staff Representation presented the new President with proposals for a new, fairer career system. After 15 months nothing has changed.

The growth in granted patents is accompanied by a drop in patent quality. Number of granted patents per year (blue) and quality of granted patents according to DQA (red).

President: “I personally don’t believe that we’re at the stage of last resort (...) strikes.”

Fact: Unsustainable production pressure. Falling patent quality. Outrageous legal fights. An increasingly arbitrary career system. Five-year contracts. Threats and pressure. Although it is true that the communication-style of management has become gentler and seemingly more understanding, this is merely marketing. Indeed, only the marketing has changed. The new President, after 18 months in the Office, remains surrounded by mostly the same faces as the old President. The autocratic management-style of President Battistelli clings on. And yet there is so much potential at the EPO. So many clever and highly-trained professionals eager to innovate, to involve themselves, to discuss, to try new things and produce the best patents with the highest quality. This potential just has to be unleashed. We are ready for real change! What are you still waiting for, Mr President?

SUEPO Munich



Things have only gotten worse since then. Where's the media coverage? Where's the journalism on these matters? The bribed operatives from IAM tell us that EPO "quality" is top-notch while bagging EPO money from the EPO's PR agency, FTI Consulting. Shouldn't the media be covering the bribery of the media? Maybe not, the media does not wish to discredit itself; the EPO is meanwhile hiring more people to manipulate the media.

Recent Techrights' Posts

Someone Expiring Certificates on the Day of the 9/11 Attacks is Not Someone I Would Want Controlling My PC (or Deciding What's Authorised for Booting)
"social justice warriors"
More Microsoft-Red Hat Cross-Pollination as the Company Loses a Managing Director
some people move from Microsoft to Red Hat and some do the opposite
 
The Complaint About Brett Wilson LLP - Part II - UK SLAPPs for Americans, SLAPPs for Profit
Brett Wilson LLP has a track record of this kind
Cloudflare Gives Us All Another Reason to Boycott Cloudflare
If Cloudflare wants to use its vast surveillance network (which is what it does as a CDN) to foist paywalls and maybe something worse (like DRM on top), then Cloudflare should be more widely rejected as a company
Links 24/09/2025: "NASA Moving Out of Entire Buildings as It's Gutted" and Purge of Online Critics (Opposing Fascism Becomes Unlawful)
Links for the day
Science is Under Attack
Oligarchy prefers a dumbed-down population
The Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA) Has Reportedly Failed People With Wrong Advice
At the moment the SRA has a PR blunder
The Man Suing Brett Wilson LLP and Gervase de Wilde (5RB)
Now he's probably using the (almost) 200,000 pounds he's supposed to receive to sue Brett Wilson LLP and former colleagues/partners
Slopwatch: A World Wide Web That's Rotting for Companies That Won't Even Exist in a Few Years
some of the junk Google News is promoting
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Tuesday, September 23, 2025
IRC logs for Tuesday, September 23, 2025
Links 24/09/2025: Qt Creator 18 Beta, Microsoft Cannot Bail Out "ChatGPT" Anymore, China and US Intensify Censorship
Links for the day
Gemini Links 24/09/2025: Gemlogs and Politics
Links for the day
Links 23/09/2025: Japan Limits Uses of Skinnerboxes ('Smartphones') With Toxic "Apps", Fentanylware (TikTok) Tapped by "MAGAts"
Links for the day
Brett Wilson LLP Has Just Been Sued (by Their Own Clients!)
Vladimir and Alla Yanpolsky sued Brett Wilson LLP in BL-2025-001167 at the end of last week
Mayday: Optus emergency calling crisis
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
Links 23/09/2025: Massive Data Breach, Slop Versus Productivity, and Vista 11 Update Breaks Things Again
Links for the day
Code of Censorship
Extortion is peace
The Free Software Foundation (FSF) Has Un-cancelled the Best People, Just in Time for the Big 4-0
Mr. Oliva should have been there all along (since 2019)
Most "Modern" Technology Makes You Slower and Dumber
Because proprietary software makes you worse off
"What Comes After Free Software?" Wrongly Insinuates We've Reached the Goal (Prison is Not the Goal)
The oil tycoons use similar tactics against environmentalists, giving them fake "wins"
Making More Work Space
I learned the hard way that less is more in circumstances where more means distraction
MAHA is a Lie, Public Officials Never Valued Citizens' Health (They Still Value Private Businesses, Their Sponsors)
Reject demagogues
Free Software Foundation (FSF) Has a New Press Kit for the Weekend After Next Weekend (40th Anniversary)
miles better than social [sic] media [sic] quips, moderated by narcissists and oil tycoons.
Microsoft Had Two Waves of Mass Layoffs This Month (That We Know of) and It'll Get Worse for Microsoft Soon
Will the axe fall again by month's end?
Gemini Links 23/09/2025: Happy Equinox, Photronic Arts, and Perception Cognition
Links for the day
Lessons We've Learned After 17 Years of American Hosting
GAFAM is "all-in" with the "Trump agenda"
Back to Normal Now, We Plan to Do More In-Depth Series (or Multi-part Stories)
Articles (or series thereof) that contain philosophy are important to us
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Monday, September 22, 2025
IRC logs for Monday, September 22, 2025
Microsoft Media is Panicking Amid Mass Layoffs Every Month, H-1B Fees, and "Seattle’s Tech Scene in Trouble"
In "late stage Microsoft", copyleft becomes proprietary
The Next Wave of IBM/Red Hat Layoffs Being Discussed Already
Red Hat is sort of disappearing the way Tivoli did
New Techrights Turns 2
Today starts the third year of the SSG-based Techrights
What Scares Them the Most is Independent News Sites That They Cannot Control and Censor
Wikileaks was a good example of this
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 Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA) Has a Policy on Racism and Sexism
In then future we'll show the misogyny and racial slurs
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
Links 22/09/2025: Murdochs Might Join Fentanylware (TikTok) 'Investors' (Masters), United Kingdom Recognises Palestinian Statehood
Links for the day
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
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
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