Bonum Certa Men Certa

New Algemeen Dagblad Article About European Patent Office Abuses

posted by Roy Schestowitz on Oct 06, 2023

SO earlier today the staff union of the European Patent Office, also known as "SUEPO", published a translation of an article from Algemeen Dagblad, coinciding with PR nonsense that we alluded to hours ago when we said: "EPO is a den of corruption and crime, and moreover the EU officials helped it start an illegal, unconstitutional court, disgracing the EU as a whole" (I am pro-EU, but the EPO, which is not an EU institution, is a severe liability to the EU's stability).

SUEPO has released the following automated translation, among others. Here's the English:

One of the offices of the European Patent Office. © dpa/picture alliance via Getty I

Trade union: 'Culture of burnout and exhaustion' at European patent office in Rijswijk

There is cake and there are speeches by ministers and a president, but under the garlands things are brewing during the festive anniversary of the European Patent Office in Rijswijk, which is celebrating its 50th anniversary. Staff are calling attention to "a culture of burnout". It would also lead to bad patents and thus problems for companies.

At the offices of the European Patent Office, there is "a culture of burnout and exhaustion caused by excessive workload". It leads to staff making more mistakes in drafting patents for new inventions. And that, in turn, can lead to companies ending up more often in legal proceedings over those new inventions.

That is the summary of a cry of alarm recently posted online by the Patents Office's internal union. The European Patents Office (also known as the Patent Office) has 6300 employees, offices in Rijswijk, Munich, Berlin, Vienna and Brussels, a budget of 2.5 billion and handles all applications for new patents (aka patents) for 44 European countries.

The huge, European organisation celebrates its 50th anniversary on Thursday, with Dutch Economic Affairs Minister Micky Adriaansen speaking and video messages from German Chancellor Scholz and European Commission President Von der Leyen, among others.

Staff feel rushed, employees have to assess more and more patent applications in the same time

Employee European Patent Office

But things are brewing under the party garlands, according to the union's message. "Staff feel rushed, employees have to assess more and more applications for patents in the same time," one staff member, who wishes to remain anonymous, tells this site. It is no longer about quality, but about quantity, says the employee. This also jeopardises the four-eyes principle. "There is less and less time to check with your colleague whether an assessment is correct."

While quality is just so important. The Patent Office received almost 200,000 patent applications last year. These range from someone who has designed a bicycle tyre that cannot go flat, to a small, exclusive part of a highly specialised machine. If the inventor gets a patent, other companies are not allowed to simply copy the product.

Bad patents cause problems

And that, the employee argues, is where things risk going wrong. "Bad patents are being issued, causing companies to make things that someone else already has a patent on. That way, the patent system could be at risk."

That claim appears to be supported by Beat Weibel, vice president at electronics giant Siemens. He cites a group of companies, including Ericsson, Siemens, Nokia and Bayer, that complain about the Patent Office. 'Companies put more and more time into accurately describing a patent, while the office takes less and less time to review it,' he writes on LinkedIn. According to him, in 90 per cent of the appeals lodged with the office, the granted patent is (partially) reversed 'because of issues that should have already been apparent during the initial assessment'.

The atmosphere of anxiety that existed under the previous director has certainly changed, but a culture of burnout has taken its place

Trade union

The uproar at the Patents Office is remarkable. Only seven years ago, staff also raised the alarm. Back then, there was a culture of fear under the previous director, Frenchman Benoît Battistelli. The Frenchman was replaced in 2018 by Portuguese António Campinos, who started his second five-year term last summer. 'The atmosphere of fear that existed under the previous director has certainly changed, but a culture of burnout has taken its place,' the union writes.

A spokesman for the Patent Office said it would not respond to staff complaints before the anniversary celebrations. In reactions earlier this year, management members said they "do not recognise the image that quantity comes before quality".

António Campinos, director of the European Patent Office. © European Patent Office Cyril Rosman 04-10-23, 20:49 Last update: 21:38

While the translation leaves much to be desired, it's better than nothing. Where's the English language media, failing to cover the serious abuses at the EPO? The EPO bribed many such publications (we provided ample evidence of it); the rest were blackmailed for 'daring' to write facts.

Other Recent Techrights' Posts

Alyssa Rosenzweig's LibrePlanet Talk About Freeing the Apple GPU
Alyssa Rosenzweig is the graphics witch behind the reverse-engineered drivers for the Apple GPU. She previously led Panfrost, the free drivers for Arm Mali GPUs powering devices like the Pinebook Pro. She graduated in 2023 with a Computer Science degree from the University of Toronto and now writes free software full-time.
Links 30/06/2024: LLMs Under Fire and Dictatorship of the Old
Links for the day
[Meme] Walking Outside the Guardrails of the Walled Gardens Built by Monopolies
So-called "advertiser-unfriendly" material was never a problem for Wikileaks
This War Crime Footage, Nothing Political Per Se, Is What They Made Julian Assange Plead Guilty To (War Criminals Not Convicted, Only Those Who Expose Them)
Wikileaks' Julian Assange: Exposing the US Military Crimes
20 Years Passed, Let's Go Even Faster Now
We are hoping to bring more original stories
Windows Lost Almost 92% Market Share in Egypt
From over 99% to just over 7%
 
Getting Rid of Microsoft Does Not Go Far Enough
Microsoft already has many problems. One day Microsoft won't exist anymore. But that does not guarantee users' freedom.
Destination 'Five Percent'
We reckon GNU/Linux can break the 5% barrier some time by the end of this year, even without counting Chromebooks
A Crisis of Online Journalism
Almost a week ago a journalist was forced to plead guilty for an act of journalism
Germany One of Many Countries Where Microsoft's Bing Lost Market Share After All That LLM Nonsense (Bing Chat and Further Rebrands/Renames)
openai.com traffic plunged 60% last month
Microsoft’s Latest Antitrust Scrutiny
4 new stories
Microsoft Layoffs, Mass Plagiarism, and More
outrage included
GNU/Linux Climbed 0.25% This Month (in statCounter)
Around midday on Tuesday we'll start seeing preliminary data for July
Ilya Gulko Introduces Pollyanna
"Pollyanna is a web framework that makes it easy to create your own libre social space, such as a social network or blog."
'FSFE': Underage Labour, GAFAM Fronting, and Identity Theft to Undermine the FSF's Current Fundraiser
looking to raise funds at the same time as the FSF
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Saturday, June 29, 2024
IRC logs for Saturday, June 29, 2024
Links 29/06/2024: Astronauts at Risk, Ukraine Updates
Links for the day
Fedora and Red Hat Leftovers
mostly redhat.com
Microsoft is Now Googlebombing or Spamming 'Open Source' and 'Linux' to Promote Proprietary Surveillance, Azure
Notice the title and the image, what's being promoted etc.
Seychelles: GNU/Linux Doing OK
Seychelles cannot be considered poor
Gemini Protocol Isn't Even Remotely "Dead"
"Lupa knows of 505,000 (half a million!) working Gemini URLs at present, up from about 425,000 this time last year"
About 10 New Free Software Foundation (FSF) Members Per Day
The total changed from 46 to 47 while typing the article
Vista 11 Adoption Unusually Low in Germany and It's Going Down, Not Up
This is not happening only in Germany
Kevin Korte on Computers Being Allowed to Make Decisions Based on Cryptic Algorithms and Proprietary/Secret Data
It uses buzzwords where none are needed
[Meme] Garbage In, Garbage Out (linuxsecurity.com)
It is neither Linux nor security, just chatbot-generated slop
Microsoft-Invaded CISA Spreads Anti-Free Software FUD (as If Proprietary Software Has No Memory Safety Issues), Brittany Day Uses Chatbots to Amplify and Permutate the Microsoft FUD
linuxsecurity.com became an anti-Linux spam site
Microsoft Laying Off Staff in an Act of Retaliation and Union-Busting
retaliatory layoffs at Microsoft
Gemini Links 29/06/2024: Content Drowning in 'Goo' and LLM Slop
Links for the day
In Ecuador, GNU/Linux Adoption Surged From Under 1% to Over 4% in About 3 Years
Not even counting Chromebooks
LibrePlanet: Cultivating Backups (of Recordings)
an appeal to recover some of these talks
Microsoft/Windows Machines Are Turned Off (or Windows Deleted/Decommissioned) in Web Servers, as the "Market Share" Collapse Continues
Taking full history into account, this is a decrease of over 90% in some cases
Corwin Brust Hosting Freedom: A Behind-the-scenes Tour With the GNU Savannah Hackers
"the "smiling faces" behind it."
Android at 90% or More in Chad
Windows below 2%
David Wilson: Cultivating a Welcoming Free Software Community That Lasts
"a feeling of shared ownership for all users."
Julian Assange Might Continue Wikileaks, But Certainly Not Yet (Recovery Time Needed)
And probably at a symbolic capacity only
Bringing in 12 Santas and Taking 13 Out (Old Interview With Julian Assange)
Julian Assange's life inside the Ecuadorian embassy
Neil Plotnick on GNU/Linux in the High School Classroom
uploaded to the LibrePlanet instance of MediaGoblin
Asia Appears to be Fastest to Adopt GNU/Linux
the home of a considerable majority of the world's population
Alexandre Oliva's LibrePlanet 2024 Talk About "Software Enshittification"
in spite of technical difficulties encountered while recording
What They Used to Do With Mono They Now Do With Systemd (Lower and Deeper Down Than Userspace)
Now we have a project started primarily by Red Hat (and managed by Microsoft GitHub, which is proprietary) being managed by Microsoft and primarily serving Microsoft and IBM
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Friday, June 28, 2024
IRC logs for Friday, June 28, 2024
Links 28/06/2024: Kangaroo Courts and Patents Spam, EFF Still Fighting for CPC's TikTok (a Digital Weapon)
Links for the day
Links 28/06/2024: Overton window and Polarization
Links for the day
[Meme] In 50 Years...
Microsoft's Vista 11 will take 50 years to be fully adopted
Only About 1 in 8 Russian Windows Users is Using Vista 11
it looks like over the past 12 months Vista 11 hardly grew and it remains very low at around 12% of Windows usage in Russia
Links 28/06/2024: More Attacks on the Press, More Censorship in Russia
Links for the day
Gemini Links 28/06/2024: Christmas Prematurely, Self-hosting
Links for the day
IBM: So Long, Suckers. Your Free OS is Now Proprietary. Pay IBM or Else.
almost exactly a year after turning RHEL into proprietary software
Vista 11 is Doomed and Despite Lack of Adoption Microsoft Already Speaks of Vapourware ("12")
"Microsoft has pulled a Windows 11 update after users reported boot loops and startup failures."
ChromeOS Reaches Highest Share in Years at the World's Most Populous Nation, Windows Now at All-Time Low of 13%
We're talking about India today
[Video] "It Is Incredible That Julian Assange Survives"
There was a positive and mutual relationship between Wikileaks and Dr Jill Stein
Never Assume That Because the Law Exists the Powerful Will Follow the Law
Who's going to hold them accountable now?
Nearly a Month Has Passed and Nobody at the Debian Project Even Attempted to Explain What Seems Like Back-dooring of Debian (and Hundreds of Distros That Are Debian-Derived)
I can cynically guess that only matters when a user with a Chinese name does it
[Video] Julian Assange Explains Wikileaks' Logistics
predating indefinite detention
IBM Was Never the "Good Guy", Just a Self-Serving and Opportunistic Money- and Power-Hungry Monopolist, Living Off of Taxpayers' Money (Government Contracts)
The Nazi Party of Germany was its second-biggest client at one point and now it's looking to profit from the work of slaves
"I Hated Working at IBM. They Were the Most Unfriendly People."
Don't forget what Watson the son did to a poor woman on a plane
State of the News (and Depletion of Journalism Online, Not Just Offline)
Newspapers are not coming back and the Web is not coming back either
GNU/Linux Consolidates in North America
Android rising a lot this year, too
[Meme] More Monopolies Granted While Patent Examiners Die (Overworking for Less Compensation)
Work more; Get less
Staff Union of the EPO (SUEPO) is Taking the New Pension Scheme (NPS) to an International Tribunal (ILOAT)
SUEPO wants more EPO staff to participate in collective action
Stella Assange and the Legal Team Speak to the Media a Day After WikiLeaks Founder Julian Assange Arrives in Australia
Published yesterday by a number of mainstream publishers
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Thursday, June 27, 2024
IRC logs for Thursday, June 27, 2024
RIP Daniel Bristot de Oliveira, Red Hat death
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock