02.02.23
Gemini version available ♊︎European Patent Office Staff Votes in Favour of Freedom of Association (97% of Voters in Support)
Video download link | md5sum 8aaf46b4d4e705044ab8a73306f3ff6d
EPO Staff Wants Human Contact
Creative Commons Attribution-No Derivative Works 4.0
Summary: The Central Staff Committee (CSC) at the EPO makes a strong case for António Campinos to stop breaking and law and actually start obeying court orders (he’s no better than Benoît Battistelli and he uses worse language already)
THE CSC Chairman from Munich, along with the ones from The Hague, Vienna, and Berlin (the smaller EPO ‘branches’), asked the President to actually act like one. At the moment the EPO is governed by an under-qualified cabal of friends, whose role there is protected by corporate interest groups, which are happy to see the EPO operating in direct violation of its charter (like a regulatory agency that intentionally fails to regulate the industry).
For us in Techrights the main issue of interest is European software patents (and other patent monopolies, as covered in passing in the video above), but for EPO staff there are severe human rights violations to deal with. That’s how a bunch of corrupt “managers” (it’s all nepotism) keep examiners down and blackmail them into granting European Patents in violation of the EPC, i.e. in violation of the rules that govern the Office. The EPO’s Web sites has just published propaganda again, distracting from systematic violations of the EPC.
There’s an open letter circulating at the moment, stating:
[CSC] Resolution on freedom of association supported by EPO staff
Dear Colleagues,
All EPO staff was invited to gather in General Assemblies in all four places of employment. The attached resolutions were adopted and found office-wide support of 998 EPO staff members.
We would like to thank you very much for your strong support.
With the resolution EPO staff urges the President
- to quash Article 35(7) ServRegs so as not to prevent re-election of staff committee members,
- to restore freedom of communication in the Office by executing Judgment 4551 on mass-emails,
- to restore secretarial support to staff committees
and
- to take into account the requests from staff and to proceed to the relevant amendments to EPO service regulations.The resolutions have been submitted to the President by open letter.
Michael Kemény
Chairman LSC Munich City, Haar and BrusselsJorge Raposo
Chairman LSC The HagueMartin Schaller
Chairman LSC ViennaThomas Czogalla
Chairman LSC Berlin
The corresponding publication is mostly the same statement from 4 EPO sites.
European Patent Office | 80298 MUNICH | GERMANY
Mr António Campinos
President of the EPOBy email
OPEN LETTER
Local Staff Committees
Comités locaux du personnel
Lokale Personalausschüsse
centralSTCOM@epo.org
Reference: sc23001bp
Date: 27.01.2023Resolution supported by General Assemblies at all Places of Employment
Dear Mr President,
All EPO staff was invited to gather in General Assemblies in all four places of employment. The attached resolutions were adopted and found the support of 998 members of EPO staff in respective assemblies as follows:
On 19.01.2023 in Munich City, Haar and Brussels supported by 97% (420 votes in favour).
On 24.01.2023 in The Hague supported by 97% (485 votes in favour).
On 17.01.2023 in Berlin supported by 98% (58 votes in favour).
On 23.01.2023 in Vienna supported by 97% (35 votes in favour).Thereby EPO staff urges you
− to quash Article 35(7) ServRegs so as not to prevent re-election of staff
committee members,
− to restore freedom of communication in the Office by executing Judgment
4551 on mass-emails,
− to restore secretarial support to staff committees.We urge you to take into account the requests from staff and to proceed to the relevant amendments to EPO service regulations.
Sincerely yours,
[...]
]Annex: The four resolutions
These resolutions are almost identical. Here’s the one from Munich:
RESOLUTION
Staff of the EPO in Munich, gathered in a General Assembly,
Noting that:
• Since 2012, the EPO has been consistently testing the limits of employment law.
• The Tribunal already sanctioned the EPO for its illegal strike regulations (Judgments 4430 to 4435), for its “Social Democracy” interference into staff representation elections (Judgment 4482), for prohibiting nominations in the Appeals Committee among all staff (Judgment 4550) and for its unlawful ban on mass-emails (Judgment 4551).Further noting that:
• The EPO arbitrarily limits the term of office of staff committee members to three consecutive (re-)elections (Article 35(7) ServRegs) thus unduly limiting the right of staff to freely choose their representatives.
• The EPO has not honoured its obligations to restore freedom of communication and hence not executed Judgment 4551 on mass-emails since July 2022.
• The President has disbanded any secretarial support to staff committees.
Express their deep disappointment that the President of the Office has not settled any of his predecessor’s breaches of the fundamental right to freedom of association on his own motion and merely waited for the Tribunal’s judgments.
Urge the President:
− to quash Article 35(7) ServRegs so as not to prevent re-election of staff committee members,
− to restore freedom of communication in the Office by executing Judgment 4551 on mass-emails,
− to restore secretarial support to staff committees.
Request the Administrative Council and the President to put an end to breaches of the right to freedom of association and of the right to freedom of communication at the EPO.
Munich, 19.01.2023
Well, the Administrative Council and the President are closely connected. There’s no real governance or oversight there (don’t be misled by buzzwords like “Ombuds”; they scuttled the real one!). The Administrative Council receives bribes from the President to ‘re-elect’ this President, who in turn serves special interests of patent maximalists instead of following the charter of the Office. What would the founders of the EPO say if they knew it would sponsor Lukashenko and outsource to Belarus (and also to American spy firms like Microsoft)? █
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