Bonum Certa Men Certa

EPO Losing Time: Two Weeks Later, Benoît Battistelli Has Made Virtually No Progress to Save Himself From Sacking

Summary: The state of lawlessness and the perception of gross injustice persists at the EPO, with a general strike scheduled to take place next week

THE media has been rather quiet about the EPO as of late (two weeks after the latest storm), but that doesn't mean that anything at all is improving. SUEPO's new (or newly-aired) Web site now has a translation of a recent report from Thomas Magenheim (11 days old).



With staff strike apparently one week away (not just a protest), the following is worth reposting.

Crisis meeting in Munich

No peace at the European Patent Office



By Thomas Magenheim 19 March 2016 - 09:47

Frenchman Benoît Battistelli is out to reform the European Patent Office. But his hard-line methods and his relationship with the staff have caused massive upset in the Office. No talk, then, of a chance for peace to be restored.

Benoît Battistelli



EPO boss Benoît Battistelli takes a hard line with the staff. Photo: dpa

Munich – No major showdown, but social peace is still far from breaking out at the European Patent Office (EPO). That at least is the way things look after the results of the latest crisis meeting of the EPO Administrative Council in Munich. The meeting was needed due to Office President Benoît Battistelli having imposed reforms with an iron hand over the past five years, and, at least in the view of staff representatives, has infringed a whole range of fundamental rights. Most recently, two leading officers of the in-house staff union were dismissed, which led to the escalation of the long-running feud between parts of the workforce and Battistelli within the trans-national organization.

Speculations about resignation



Now the Administrative Council has presented the Frenchman with an array of demands aimed at bringing the social situation back under control. There has already been speculation in various media about the resignation or dismissal of the 68-year-old Office President, and rumours of the amount of his golden handshake and names of his successor have been bandied about.

However, the Administrative Council of the European Patent Office has in fact now confirmed Battistelli in office for a further three years, until mid-2019. At the same time, the Supervisory Board has also reined him in, even if this may not last very long. Essentially, Battistelli is required, within three months, to present a reform of the internal investigation guidelines, and in future to submit disciplinary measures, such as the sacking of employees, to the Administrative Council before implementing them. The Council is insisting on fair proceedings, which implies that they were not necessarily so in the past.

The controversial dismissal of two Suepo officials, among them the Munich-based Suepo chief executive Elizabeth Hardon, is ground where the Council would rather not tread, however. As a focus of the meeting, this demand caused sharp conflict between Battistelli and the Chair of the Council, Jesper Kongstad. The Council, as the supervisory body, are taking the line with regard to new cases that the “possibility of an external examination, conciliation, or mediation” should be provided for, according to one of its resolutions. Battistelli is apparently required “to take into consideration” matters such as this; and that does not amount to a strict order.

Personnel demonstrating every month



The response among personnel representatives of the some 7000 employees has been mixed. As a means of bringing peace to the Office, however, the requirements imposed on Battistelli are apparently not being seen as adequate, if only because the disputed sacking of Hardon and another Suepo official will not now in fact be investigated by an independent party. The Suepo representatives do not want to be named, for fear of being blacklisted. This too is something that runs deep. The tense relationship could change if there were to be formal recognition of the union as a staff representative body, but that it still not forthcoming, even though the Administrative Council apparently already called on Battistelli to do this last year.

This requirement is now back on the agenda of the supervisory body, “due to serious concern about the social unrest in the EPO”. The warning from the Council is clear: Disciplinary proceedings against personnel or union representatives would make the possibility of coming to an accord even more difficult. A structural reform of the EPO Boards of Appeal is also a matter of urgency. Personnel representatives are sceptical about Battistelli falling in line this time with the wishes of the Council, and therefore of the 38 EPO Member States. The word is that real peace will only be possible if the President ups and goes. Until then, the staff are going to continue with their resistance, expressed in particular by monthly demonstrations.

Battistelli, too, has his take on reality. “The Council is satisfied with my work”, he declared in an interview with the “Handelsblatt”. He claims that he still has their full backing. His Office, as a trans-national institution, should not be considered from a purely German perspective. This applies in particular to domestic employees’ rights, which do not apply in the EPO. Comments like that do not bode well for the situation easing any time soon.


What's noteworthy here is that a fortnight after the meeting of the Administrative Council there has been virtually no progress made by Battistelli. The arguably illegal pension cuts got canceled [EN | ES], but that's hardly enough to even save Battistelli's own job (let alone the staff representatives').

Recent Techrights' Posts

Compromised by NVIDIA Proprietary Library
Meanwhile in Boston there are "[r]oundtable talk with FSF volunteers (both in-person and online)"
How Software Patents Were Viewed or Their General Status Changed Over Time
A rough summary
 
Watch the FSF Party Live (via Livestream)
It's in WebM format, which is widely supported by now
Advocacy of Software Freedom Changed, LUGs Became Less Relevant
The way we see it, support groups like LUGs sort of outlived their usefulness when it became easier to install GNU/Linux
For the Second Time in a Few Weeks Microsoft Lunduke Makes False Accusations Against Senior Red Hat Staff to Incite a Despicable 'Troll Army'
Nothing that Microsoft Lunduke claims or says can be trusted
When Microsoft "Integrates" Something With "AI" It Means It's Losing Money and Is Generally Hopeless
how did Bing fare after 36 months of LLM slop being hyped up as "replacement" for search?
Most Certificates Don't Improve Security, They Mostly Increase Downtime (for No Good Reason)
The 'Gemini sites' (capsules) are a growing force
The statCounter Site Has Data Integrity Problems
Maybe we'll get back to statCounter when its data becomes more "stable" again
10 Ways to Combat Software Patents
software patents are loathed also by proprietary software developers
"Just a Little Bit of Meat..."
Free software "absolutism" is not a radical stance, more so if the only "radical" belief the user possesses is that he or she must be in control of his or her software, and by extension his or her computer
Red Hat is Ignoring the Free Software Community, It's a "Fortune 1000" Vendor
Red Hat's blog also participates a lot in promoting of Wall Street's latest pump-and-dump "AI" scheme
Free Software Foundation Party Has Begun
We shall be focusing a lot on software patents today
Former Head of the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) Lina Khan Knows Whatever Microsoft Touches Will Die
Just like Skype (as recently as months ago) [...] When Microsoft grabs things, or when it buys things, it almost never ends well
Slopwatch: Fake Articles About LibreOffice in Austria and Wine 10.16
very short
Links 04/10/2025: "attempted Coup" Noted in Facebook, Russia Kills Journalists via Drones
Links for the day
Gemini Links 04/10/2025: Anesthesia and Baudpunk
Links for the day
Links 04/10/2025: "Privacy Harm Is Harm", Criticism Outlawed in US
Links for the day
Garmin Uses Linux for Some of the Garmin Products, Now It's Sued by Strava Using Software Patents
Software patents should never have been granted in the first place
Richard Stallman Will Give a Talk in Sweden in 6 Days
Dr. Stallman, despite his battle with cancer is still alive and mentally sharp
FSF Turns 40
We'll be focusing on patent-related topics this weekend
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Friday, October 03, 2025
IRC logs for Friday, October 03, 2025
Gemini Links 04/10/2025: Distro Hopping and "Part Time"
Links for the day
We Are Turning 19 in One Month, FSF Turns 40 in 3 Hours (CET)
For our anniversary next month we still have no concrete plans
Patent Docs (or PatentDocs) Learned the Wrong Lessons From the Death of TypePad
Had they gone ahead with an SSG, they'd become a lot more future-proof
USPTO Patent Bubble Already Imploding, After Decades of Artificial Inflation, Entire Offices Close for Good
we can deduce that financial pressures (lack of "demand" for monopolies) play a role
TikTok is Not Harmless (Being CheeTok in the US Will Advance Orange Agenda)
Social control media isn't "fun and games"; it's a digital weapon that lets hostile groups or nations infiltrate others, then turn them against themselves
Andy Farnell and Helen Plews Explain What "Modern" Tech Does to Old People
Imposing terrible tech "religion" on people is not helping them
Tomorrow the Free Software Foundation (FSF) Turns 40 and Its Web Site is Still Slow Due to DDoS by LLM Slop Bots
For an advocacy group, uptime is important (for its message to remain accessible)
Slopwatch: Google News as a Firehose of LLM Slop About "Linux"
Google News is really bad
Datamation, Where I Used to Publish Articles, Appears to Have Been Sold to TechnologyAdvice Only to Become a Slopfarm
I'd prefer to not associate with that site anymore
Links 03/10/2025: "NPR’s Economics Lessons Come With Neoliberal Spin" and Canada Post at Risk
Links for the day
Gemini Links 03/10/2025: Panic Attacks and Food Adulteration
Links for the day
Links 03/10/2025: Lawyers Caught Using LLM Slop Explain Why They Did It, LibreSSL 4.1.1 and 4.0.1 Released
Links for the day
FSF Board Grew 50% Since Last Year, Has New President, Turns 40 in Two Days
It's a good move for the FSF and - by extension - for software freedom
Links 03/10/2025: Conflicts, Death of TypePad, and TikTok/CheeTok Gives a Boost to Far Right Groups in Europe
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Thursday, October 02, 2025
IRC logs for Thursday, October 02, 2025
Slopwatch: Linux Journal, Google News, and LinuxSecurity
They carry on polluting the Web with fake articles
Gemini Links 02/10/2025: Kubernetes With FreeBSD and robots.txt
Links for the day
Links 02/10/2025: 'Open' 'AI' Resorting to Gimmicks and Fake Funding, Europe’s ‘Drone Wall’ Discussed
Links for the day
Links 02/10/2025: Brave Passes 100M Users Milestone, Kodak Selling Its Own Film Again
Links for the day
Michael “Monty” Widenius: It Started in 1983 With Richard Stallman (RMS)
The other co-founder of MySQL is a bit notorious for confronting RMS rather viciously
su lisa && rm -rf /home/ibm/power
Novell was ruined by another person from IBM, Ronald Hovsepian
A Record Demand at Microsoft: Demand to Cancel
What we're witnessing is a very ungraceful destruction of XBox
Microsoft is Losing Europe
Hence all the "support" and "discount" offers that are limited to Europe
The Free Software Foundation Starts Fund-raising for 40th Anniversary
New pop-up 2-3 days ahead of the 40th anniversary event
Systemd Breaks Networking in Debian and Microsoft Staff Rushes to Make Face-Saving Excuses in LWN
Microsoft's bluca is already there in the comments, his Microsoft money pays for LWN to let him leave comments early
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Wednesday, October 01, 2025
IRC logs for Wednesday, October 01, 2025
What the End of XBox Will Look Like: a Fiery Crash
XBox is the next Skype. It won't last much longer. Expect many more layoffs.
Richard Stallman is Going to Finland to Give a Talk Next Thursday
A day later he speaks in Sweden
Gemini Links 02/10/2025: SMTP Pipelining and End of ROOPHLOCH 2025
Links for the day