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. ⬆