Bonum Certa Men Certa

When Europe's Leading International Patent Litigators Get Fed Up With Benoît Battistelli and Want Him Sent to 'Exile'

Battistelli's disregard for the law takes its toll


Napoleon's retreat from Moscow by Adolph Northen (1828–1876)



Summary: Battistelli has drawn the ire not only of politicians, journalists, bloggers, EPO employees and lawyers of these employees but also lawyers who profit from Battistelli's EPO

Benoît Battistelli's EPO is a disaster zone. Patent lawyers now realise that large applicants (as in large corporations) get to jump queues and they can also recognise that the EPO attacks its critics (those who show the nepotism for instance). What kind of a regime is this and how come it managed to survive another year? For potential answer stay tuned for part II of "Battistelli's Furious Love Affair With French Power" (tomorrow).



"Based on what we are hearing from patent lawyers in Europe (some of them send us E-mails), they are definitely not happy. Some are so furious and fed up with Battistelli that they send us material about the EPO's management."The latest article from IP Kat speaks of the boards although it doesn't delve deep into any scandals. The writer (not Merpel) says that "Decision T 942/12 is a very important and welcome decision on liability and renewal practice management for European patent attorneys. It addresses the onerous responsibilities that previous Boards have held are applicable to EP attorneys in cases where an applicant uses a third party service to pay renewal fees, and defines an exception to those onerous responsibilities. [...] An interesting point from the case file is that an informal survey was carried out and submitted to the EPO, where the EP attorneys polled 20 firms across several European countries asking what their practice was with regard to overdue renewal reminders from the EPO: while all 20 firms confirmed they would send the official overdue reminder on to their client, only 7 out of the 20 firms indicated that they would follow up, overwhelmingly because they could neither charge for such activity or expect to be paid for it when they were not responsible for renewals."

Based on what we are hearing from patent lawyers in Europe (some of them send us E-mails), they are definitely not happy. Some are so furious and fed up with Battistelli that they send us material about the EPO's management. The EPO conveniently blames everything on the whipping boy SUEPO, but of course it wouldn't want to admit that the anger directed at EPO managers is very widespread. It would totally discredit the laughable narrative that the EPO is under attack by just one person with many pseudonyms or a small number of disgruntled workers.

"The EPO conveniently blamed everything on the whipping boy SUEPO, but of course it wouldn't want to admit that the anger directed at EPO managers is very widespread."The EPO is attacking not only staff representatives but also some of its own. Just see the utterly disrespectful treatment of a board's judge. Team Battistelli is now trying to make oversight and independence even harder by separating (or at least trying to separate) the boards from Munich. It's more about punishing and effectively firing staff (collectively changing job location), for merely 'daring' to stand up to abuse of power at the top floors of the EPO's building in Munich.

Thankfully, some leading patent lawyers in Europe now get the courage to stand up to Battistelli and defend the EPO’s Boards of Appeal. This one blogger wrote yesterday:

Having apparently experienced too much resistance from the German government against moving the EPO Boards of Appeal to Berlin, President Battistelli, who is French (but unfortunately neither Love nor in love with the Boards of Appeal), now tries to exile them to Vienna. Indeed he has recently put such a request before the Administrative Council.

It is time to push back such ideas swiftly and forcefully. What the EPO and Europe need are truly independent, well-staffed Boards of Appeal who do their important job impartially and efficiently. In contrast thereto, the last thing the EPO needs is a President who seems to be almost obsessed by the idea that the Boards of Appeal must be pushed to leave Munich to some other place where he no longer has to see them when entering or leaving His Office, and who even seems to go as far as to refuse staffing the Boards of Appeal appropriately.

[...]

May I make a modest counterproposal? The EPO is currently building a fancy new office tower in Rijswijk. Why not move the President to a nice and brand new luxury suite on the top floor of this building and allow the Boards of Appeal some more rooms and, above all, significantly more staff members in the Isar building? Thereby independence of the Boards of Appeal could be secured (if it is at all supported by some physical distance between them and the President, as he seems to believe) and, most importantly, they can at least begin to reduce their backlog of cases. And if that is not enough and the President still needs rooms in Munich after his move to Rijswijk to exercise whatever official function, the EPO could probably also afford renting a nice small palais in Munich for a few years. For example, I could very well imagine that a few representative rooms are still to be had in Nymphenburg Castle. I would go for them, Mr. President, if there is no more sensible way to restore piece within the EPO (which I strongly advocate in the first place). But please don’t bother the Boards of Appeal! We need them doing their job in Munich. And we need motivated rather than intimidated or irritated examiners as well!


As noted in one of the comments in IP Kat, "you will find one of Europe's leading international patent litigators giving (under his real name) his views on the way the EPO President is running the EPO (into the ground).

"It sure looks like, just ahead of Christmas (again!), the sloeber (Battistelli) comes under increased pressure to resign, as his buddies in the Administrative Council are too terrified (or in cahoots) to fire him.""I find such heart-felt, well-informed and expert utterances, in one's own real name) much more powerful than all the anonymous whingeing here on this blog. It takes a brave man to stick his head up above the parapet, even when his best career years are yet to come. Look. Read. He puts the interests of his clients (large and small, domestic and foreign, patent owners and accused infringers) above his own interests. Our clients need an EPO that works. If you think so too, say so."

It sure looks like, just ahead of Christmas (again!), the sloeber (Battistelli) comes under increased pressure to resign, as his buddies in the Administrative Council are too terrified (or in cahoots) to fire him. It's claimed that the sloeber was already close to resignation earlier this year.

Recent Techrights' Posts

Microsoft Windows Fell to All-Time Lows in Egypt This Summer, Vista 11 Adoption Decreases While GNU/Linux Increases
Vista 11 is going down rather than up
12 Hours Ago The Register MS Published a Fake (Paid-for) Article, But This One for a Change Did Not Promote a Ponzi Scheme
There are also Free software alternatives, but they don't pay The Register MS for "synthetic" so-called 'journalism'
 
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Wednesday, August 27, 2025
IRC logs for Wednesday, August 27, 2025
Slopwatch: linuxsecurity.com, Slopfarms in Google News, and More
Some readers of ours end up sending us links that are from slopfarms, not realising those are slopfarms
Gemini Links 27/08/2025: Katrina Memories and Google Versus Software Freedom
Links for the day
Links 27/08/2025: Police Against Media Freedom in the UK, Energy-Hungry Countries Targeted by China
Links for the day
Links 27/08/2025: Microsoft Demoralises Staff With Slop Demands, Leaving Mastodon Explained
Links for the day
More People Need to Call Out and Put a Stop to Serial Sloppers
Unless slopfarms are stopped, people will read and share Microsoft propaganda made by chatbots
Gemini Links 27/08/2025: Headphones and Tartarus
Links for the day
Morale at Microsoft is Terrible (Proprietary Plagiarism Machines Have No Future, LLM Slop is a Bubble)
The slop sceptics/critics are going to have lots of "told you so" moments
GNOME "governance issues, staff reduction, etc." amidst Albanian whistleblowing and women trafficking
Notice the connection to Software Freedom Conservancy (SFC) and GNOME
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Tuesday, August 26, 2025
IRC logs for Tuesday, August 26, 2025
Richard Stallman (RMS) Was Right About "Sideloading" in 1996
We now have computers that treat booting GNU/Linux like an act of "Sideloading"
Panama: Windows Down From 97% "Market Share" to Less Than 30%
In 2009, Windows was measured at 97.24% (compared to 62.32% right now or less than 30% if one also counts Android)
The UEFI 9/11 - Part I - Introduction to Impending Catastrophe (Microsoft Preventing People From Booting Non-Windows Systems)
eight-part series
Why Techrights is Slow Today (Bot Floods)
We don't know if those bots are connected to LLMs (we have not checked), but that is a possibility
Slopwatch: DDoS Slop, LinuxBSDos.com Spam, and Slopfarms in Google News, Including webpronews.com
Among the news we also found fakes, albeit not so much today
Links 26/08/2025: "Ballooning Debt" in France and "Transnational Repression in the UK"
Links for the day
Gemini Links 26/08/2025: Listening to Alcest and Google Doing Evil (Users Installing Software is "Sideloading" and Prohibited)
Links for the day
Links 26/08/2025: DNS Tampering and TikTok Layoffs
Links for the day
Microsoft's Windows "Market Share" Overestimated
Microsoft's income sources are shrinking
We Shall See...
My wife and I are hardly the first victims of Brett Wilson LLP
This New Determination on a Case Echoes the Modus Operandi of Microsoft's Serial Strangler vs Techrights (Its Online Decision/Judgment Says Truth and Public Interest Defend the Publisher)
Noel Anthony Clarke hopefully has enough money left to pay his victims, which include the publishers
Going Offline
There was life before the Net
The Register MS Has Apparently Shut Down Its Office
It is basically a fake address on the face of it
There Are Also Expectations of IBM Layoffs Very Soon With "Narrative Control."
Some of them mention Red Hat and how IBM failed to achieve anything substantial with that acquisition
After at Least Two Rounds of Mass Layoffs in August Microsoft Said to Have "September Layoff Confirmed - Performance Based"
Those "M5 level meetings" sound plausible
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Monday, August 25, 2025
IRC logs for Monday, August 25, 2025