The European Patent Office (EPO) is Slowly Killing Its Own Staff; All It Cares About Is Money

posted by Roy Schestowitz on Mar 24, 2025

"The Office hasn't been run by a scientist for about 18 years already."

"Dear Colleagues," wrote the EPO's Central Staff Committee before the weekend. "The number of sickness days in the EPO increases over time (by almost 35% per head compared to the pre-pandemic years) but the Central Occupational Health, Safety and Ergonomics Committee (COHSEC) as statutory body tasked with following such trends is increasingly sidelined. The Staff Representation finds that the administration is not taking this trend seriously enough."

The Central Staff Committee's new paper isn't long and it serves to show how António Campinos carries on with Benoît Battistelli's failings, basically shattering staff's physical and mental health while illegal patents are granted in order to make more money.

Here's the full publication:

Zentraler Personalausschuss
Central Staff Committee
Le Comité Central du Personnel

Munich, 21-03-2025
sc25023cp

Staff well-being
Too low on the Social Agenda

The number of sickness days in the EPO increases over time (by almost 35% per head compared to the pre-pandemic years¹) but the Central Occupational Health, Safety and Ergonomics Committee (COHSEC) as statutory body tasked with following such trends is increasingly sidelined. The Staff Representation finds that the administration is not taking this trend seriously enough.

On 20 February 2025 the COHSEC - the Office’s most important organ concerned with staff’s health and wellbeing - met the first time this year again merely virtual via MS teams. Ten years ago, COHSEC meetings used to be constructive discussions in person where COHSEC members nominated by management and by the Central Staff Committee (CSC) got together for a whole day to genuinely discuss topics in the aim to agree on united recommendations. Recent COHSEC meetings are however scheduled to last only one hour, in spite of a full agenda.

These COHSEC meetings meanwhile also adopted a very formal character presenting agenda points mainly “for information”². The tight timeframe merely allows to formally accept staff representation’s interventions and brief counter arguments from management side³ - preventing any true discussions in the aim of an agreement. In this regard the COHSEC members’ importance and influence on both sides was devalued, resulting in COHSEC members nominated from management side for Vienna not participating in the most recent COHSEC meeting at all. In line with that observation, not even a Local Occupational Health, Safety and Ergonomics Committee (LOHSEC) meeting took place this year in Vienna, although urgently needed to inter alia discuss and evaluate the implications of the recent re-organisations and renovations. It appears that the formal requirement to hold LOHSEC and COHSEC meetings is aimed to be respected with the minimum of “resources being wasted”, or the maximum of “(live) time being saved” – as repeatedly expressed during COHSEC meetings.

Only the annually defined occupational health and safety objectives⁴ as part of the Occupational Health and Safety Management System (OHSMS) – an ISO 45001 requirement – are generally presented to the COHSEC members “for opinion”. The COHSEC members nominated by the CSC however were forced to repeatedly give a negative opinion on those objectives⁵.

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¹ COHSEC/DOC 01/2025

² Agenda of the COHSEC meeting of 20 February 2025

³ Minutes of the COHSEC meeting of 13 November 2024

⁴ COHSEC/DOC 14/2024

⁵ Contributions of COHSEC members nominated by the CSC annexed in COHSEC/DOC 15/2024

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A recurring agenda point in the COHSEC meetings is the presentation “for information” of the Office’s recent sick leave statistics6. These statistics show an increase in total absence days, especially in DG1 and Job group 4 (examiners) – explained by OHS with reference to similar observations outside the Office7 and the aged population of the EPO. In the recent COHSEC meeting the staff representation members’ question with regard to why higher management and Boards of Appeal members – from a comparable age group - show a significantly lower sick leave rate, was countered by management expressing that you are sicker if you feel less in control, and as women are often in less high positions, they thus have higher sick leave rates. In this regard the OHS practitioners also observed that even highly productive staff - like e.g. team managers - come to their limits. They start to suffer from work related stress causing them to contact OHS with health issues.

In view of these worrying observations the COHSEC members nominated by the CSC repeatedly warned of and opposed to the noticeable systematic decline in true health services, the reduction and outsourcing of medical advisors and practitioners and the reorganisation of the OHS department in a manner that HR is now in charge, not the doctors. All this is in clear contrast to the shiny advertisements and documents on the intranet.

On the positive side however, the “Enhancing Manager Awareness & OHS Support” is highly welcome by the COHSEC members nominated by the CSC. In view of the constant restructuring, the announced training for new managers on health & absence management is regarded very important. Considering the outsourcing and the raising sick leave numbers, especially with regard to long-term sick leave, staff representation welcomes the re-introduction of OH manager consultations & the HAT (health advisory team) meetings.

Sincerely yours,

The Central Staff Committee

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⁶ Sick leave statistics in COHSEC/DOC 01/2025

⁷ Sick leave statistics in COHSEC/DOC 04/2024

If only they had pride in the job. Many of the more experienced examiners leave or retire early, perhaps recognising - as their union has long shown - that many patents are granted in violation of the underlying laws. That includes European software patents - i.e. patents which are both illegal and undesirable.

All software patents need to go away, but in the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) under the Cheeto & MElon they're making it harder to squash these now.

We've meanwhile noticed this old Wikipedia page about "Software patents and free software". Having checked the history and content, there are unwarranted FSFE among other problems, one of us has pointed out. "This article has multiple issues," it says, yet it is still online and FSFE is still sponsored by Microsoft (it also published an ad about itself in the form of "Wikipedia article"!), which is fervently in favour of software patents and against free/libre software. It is just some very poor article/placement, i.e. more of the same crappy stuff that infests Wikipedia in recent years because it takes bribes from oligarchs like Bill Gates and corporations including Microsoft. What keeps Wikipedia going is rich people's money, not the audience.

Science is under attack; it's being replaced by junk, lobbying, and chronic lying. Over 15 years ago the EPO too ceased to care about science and technology; all it cared about at some junction along the road was money. The Office hasn't been run by a scientist for about 18 years already. █