Bonum Certa Men Certa

EPO Management Plans to Further Accelerate Grants of Illegal, Invalid, Fake European Patents Next Year



Unsustainable productivity increase of +10% for 2023



Summary: The EPO has quit behaving like a patent office; it's just issuing a lot of bogus patents to meet pre-defined "targets" and then it bullies examiners into blind compliance

AS noted earlier this evening, the EPO's "f***king president" (that's what he calls himself) António Campinos plans to grant even more illegal patents. Why is this being tolerated?



Well, examiners aren't tolerating this. The Central Staff Committee (CSC) has just told staff that "historically low compliance rate of granted patents (73.3%) contrasts with the overall production plan for 2023" (those plans are just marketing and lies).

Here's the message to staff:

Unsustainable productivity increase of +10% for 2023



Dear colleagues,

In this open letter we urge the President to refrain from imposing yet another productivity increase of +10% on staff. A historically low compliance rate of granted patents (73.3%) contrasts with the overall production plan for 2023: more production, fewer staff, purely top-down planning.

We appeal for common sense, in view of the future of the European patent system, the reputation of the EPO and, of course, in the interest of the staff.


And here's the corresponding open letter:

Reference: sc22124cl Date: 22.09.2022

European Patent Office | 80298 MUNICH | GERMANY

Mr António Campinos President of the EPO

By email

OPEN LETTER

Unsustainable productivity increase of +10% for 2023



Dear Mr President, In a speech held on 13 September 2022 in front of Master students at the University of Alicante, you stressed the importance of delivering high-quality patents for entrepreneurs, inventors and investors. The EPO is, however, currently far from its own high-quality objectives: the audit compliance rate for granted patents is historically low at 73.7% (figures of end of June 2022), below the 2022 target of 85% and far below the target of 95% in the Strategic Plan 2023.

The DG 1 overall production plan for 2023 recently announced at operational level will further worsen the situation: more production is to be achieved from fewer staff, the planning will be purely top-down and a steep increase in productivity of around +10% is requested.

The steep increase in productivity is presented as justified by the need to catch-up with the current salary adjustment procedure – the result for the year 2022 will be around 10% because of the high Eurozone inflation. This argument is a misrepresentation of the financial bundle of measures (CA/18/20) approved by the Council on the basis of the Mercer Financial Study 2019 (CA/83/19). It is the biennial adjustment of the EPO fees (and not productivity) which shall be inflation based.

Digitization and IT tools are also said to help to achieve this increase in productivity. The Central Staff Committee sincerely doubts in view of recurring complaints from staff on the lack of ergonomics of many tools, repetitive outages and automation not developing as expected.

The Strategic Plan 2023 is coming to an end soon, which may tempt the Office to present positive results deriving from it to the Administrative Council. However, imposing yet another productivity increase of +10% is neither justified nor sustainable to improve the quality of EPO granted patents.

The Central Staff Committee urges you to refrain from continuing in this direction – in the interest of the European patent system, the reputation of the EPO and its staff.

Yours sincerely,

Michael Sampels Acting Chairman of the Central Staff Committee


He'll probably just ignore such letters; just like he ignores demands to comply with a court's ruling.

Recent Techrights' Posts

New XBox Leaks Probably Serve to Confirm XBox's Collapse (Many More Layoffs)
It's very much consistent with what many other sites have reported lately
 
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Thursday, October 09, 2025
IRC logs for Thursday, October 09, 2025
Links 09/10/2025: Farewell to Jane Goodall, California Bans Algorithmic Price-Fixing
Links for the day
Gemini Links 09/10/2025: Lost Wages and a Saga Of Continuing To Use Palm PDAs
Links for the day
Richard Stallman's Talk in Helsinki is Done. Tomorrow Göteborg.
There are scarce details in Finnish about Dr. Stallman's talk
The Slop Song
The train wreck marches on
LLM Slop/Advanced Plagiarism Flooding the Zone With Capital That Does Not Exist
Many publishers out there still participate in this bubble instead of calling it what it is
Links 09/10/2025: Sacked Microsoft Workers Make "Sackbird", IBM Taps CockroachDB for PostgreSQL
Links for the day
"Happy Hacking Day" Richard Stallman Talk This Afternoon (From 14:00 to 16:00) at Haaga-Helia University in Pasila
Richard Stallman in Helsinki, Finland
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Wednesday, October 08, 2025
IRC logs for Wednesday, October 08, 2025
Links 09/10/2025: Impact of Microsoft Layoffs, More Data Breaches
Links for the day
Gemini Links 09/10/2025: Autumn Blues and C IRC Bot
Links for the day
Slopwatch Appreciated by Real Authors of GNU/Linux Articles
We do try to keep on top of those things
Upgraded R.R.R.R.R.R. Today
The Web of 2025 is full of garbage, not limited to slopfarms
Freedom From Proprietary Prisons
Forking always an option
IBM's Watson Died in 1956, Now Watson Dies Again
IBM is becoming just a reseller of GAFAM and other stuff
Slopwatch: LinuxSecurity, UbuntuPIT, and Google News
We've also just noticed more slop from UbuntuPIT
Microsoft Says That Constant Mass Layoffs Are Success, the Media Isn't Buying This Microsoft Narrative Anymore
If people in the media feel an obligation to repeat whatever lies Microsoft tells, what point will there be to the media?
Links 08/10/2025: "Mali Puts Free Speech on Trial" And Apple Enforces Dictatorship
Links for the day
Links 08/10/2025: ‘Death to Spotify’ and Law to Ban Loud Commercials on Streaming (Dis)Services
Links for the day
Links 08/10/2025: Real Innovation and Nina.chat is Dead
Links for the day
Links 08/10/2025: Y2K38 Bug is a Vulnerability, Chat Control in Europe a Threat
Links for the day
Microsoft Windows is No Longer an Operating System, It's Surveillance Project
Why is this even legal to preload on PCs outside the US?
How and Why Once-Legitimate Sites Turn Into Slopfarms
Many sites will go offline and many social control networks will shut down once they realise or even openly admit they spend money and time gardening a bunch of bots and slop
UbuntuPIT Became a Slopfarm and Gnoppix Tarnishes Its Own Brand With Slop
It fits all the characteristics of mildly-edited (if at all) slop
Slopwatch: Linux Journal and Other Slopfarms
GAFAM needs to go the way of the dodo
Gemini Links 08/10/2025: "Seek Seek Revolution" and Gradient Backgrounds
Links for the day
Qualcomm Arduino Takes Aim at Raspberry Pi
Qualcomm is a Microsoft partner
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Tuesday, October 07, 2025
IRC logs for Tuesday, October 07, 2025
Stagnation of the Economy and What Free Software Can (or Could) Do For It
If your economic model is based on a pyramid of lies, it won't last very long
Social Control Media is Sinking
it would rightly seem like the era of centralised "social" sites (they're not social, they're about controlling the users) is ending, not overnight but gradually