Bonum Certa Men Certa

Church of EPO: How Team Battistelli Engineered the Dismissal of People Not Sufficiently Loyal to Them - Part IV

Battistelli and Minnoye have effectively placed themselves above the law, having created new instruments of coercion and unjust power over staff

EPO gods



Summary: Why EPO management perceives itself as exempted from its own rules and outside the law of host nations, and how it achieved or attained these God-like powers

In part one, part two, and part three we carefully looked -- more or less retroactively -- at how EPO management gave itself supreme powers with minimal or zero oversight. We moreover considered how it proceeded to sending to exile various members of staff who -- although perfectly competent -- were viewed as a danger to the leadership and thus terminated using bizarre pretexts, without the lawmaker/accuser/judge/executioner (the EPO's President) facing any consequences or even veto, except a hoard of protesting (and more recently striking) staff. The Administrative Council continues to be far too soft and thus complicit in all this. We heard that there are prospects of lawsuits against them (or their national offices) for this complicity, setting aside the imminent lawsuit against EPO management.



"This is like a monarchy at the very heart of an international organisation and it's designed to eliminate dissent or resistance, however legitimate it may be."Documents we showed in previous parts marked or at least signaled the beginning of the bizarre disciplinary procedures against staff representatives at the EPO. They were not punished and/or dismissed (even lost pension rights in one case) for their union roles; at least that's how EPO management tried to make it appear. In October 2014 we published Circular 342 [PDF]. These are the Investigation Guidelines at the EPO (11 pages in total). Not too long ago we learned that Battistelli considers the Code of Conduct, which he himself violates (see installment one of this series), part of this aforementioned legal framework, even though he wrote it entirely himself. This is like a monarchy at the very heart of an international organisation and it's designed to eliminate dissent or resistance, however legitimate it may be. "When you start reading it," told us the source of Battistelli's own Code of Conduct, "you'll get that the Code of Conduct is meant to apply to everyone except himself. Management by intimidation started with the publication of the Code of Conduct in 2012. The next step was the Investigation Guidelines together with the Guidelines on Harassment."

When the Administrative Council and Board 28 were finally going to do something about Battistelli's lawlessness guess who stepped in? It was Mr Minnoye and his now-infamous letter. Speaking of Minnoye, somebody sent us these amusing reminders of how he too ignores (or makes up) the law, and is proud of it!



Mr Minnoye’s respect for the judiciary...

Vraag: Dus U zult de uitspraak van de hoogste rechter in Nederland niet respecteren?

Minnoye: Ja.

Translation

Question: So you will not respect the decision of the highest judge in the Netherlands?

Minnoye: Yes (indeed).

Mr Minnoye is a repeat offender. Already on earlier occasions he has shown very little respect for the judiciary, see [IP Kat]


To quote Minnoye's letter from that time:

Dear all,

In relation to the letter sent by Professor Sir Robin Jacob to Mr. Kongstad, VP1 asked to share with you the following remarks:

Sir Jacob 1) is not aware of all facts 2) is not aware of what the decision of the president was (office ban) 3) does not understand that the AC took the decision based on facts! 4) does not understand that this case has nothing to do with the independence of the Boards! 5) and nevertheless writes this letter!

Best regards,


This, as someone put it, "is only matched by the Dutch government’s concern about human rights" (based on the same as the above link). To quote: "De regering maakt zich weliswaar zorgen over de sociale situatie bij het Octrooibureau, maar stelt: "voor de vraag of een internationale organisatie immuniteit toekomt (is) niet van belang of haar mensenrechtenschendingen of andere schendingen van internationaal recht verweten worden."

Translated into English: "The (Dutch) government is concerned about the social situation within the Patent Office, but considers that for the question whether or not an international organisation has immunity it is irrelevant whether it is accused of violations of human rights or other violations of international law."

What an utterly poor hand-waving gesture. As one Dutch article put it, "What If the European Patent Office Were to Torture?" Should Battistelli and Minnoye be allowed to get away with that, too? Gods in their own mind, they already psychologically torture people and then feel stunned that the German/Bavarian press highlights correlation to suicides.

Recent Techrights' Posts

Slopwatch: Plagiarism and "Linux" Articles by Bots
Sites that do this won't survive; many of them rely on slop services (suppliers) that will cease to exist after the bubble bursts
 
The Lawsuit by Clients of Brett Wilson LLP Against Brett Wilson LLP is Officially On, It is Progressing, The 'Experts' Pick Outside Law Firms (RPC and Mills & Reeve) to Spare Them From Litigants in Person
So it is probably quite potent
Staying Happy in Times of Crackdowns on Civil Society
Optimism in this sort of "new reality" or "new normal" seems like something for the irrational person
"Nobel" Exploited Posthumously for "AI" Hype, Now They Do the Same With "Quantum"
ere have been many jokes about "Nobel" for peace (often granted to pro-war people) and a fake one for "Economics" (establishment propaganda)
Distinguished Lecture by Richard Stallman This Coming Monday in Rome
After "Free software, Crucial for Freedom in a Digital World"
Links 10/10/2025: Putin Admits Russia Downed Azerbaijan Airlines Jet, More New Heat Records
Links for the day
Noteworthy Claim That IBM is Firing a Lot of Lawyers This Week (RAs in the Legal Department)
A lot of what they do is patent 'trolling' or lawyering up against their own staff (e.g. HR disputes)
Links 10/10/2025: US Judge Bars Attacks by ICE On Journalists and Protesters; “We Took The Freedom of Speech Away” Says the President
Links for the day
Slopwatch: Serial Sloppers, Google News Gifting Slopfarms, and Fake News/Plagiarism About "Linux"
Google itself is a slop pusher these days
Qualcomm, the New Owner of Arduino, Blasted for Its Software Patents Tax on 'Smartphones'
A lot of Qualcomm's patents are on software. We wrote about this in prior years.
XBox Layoffs Rumours, Downtime, and Criticism From XBox Co-Founder
"everyone is ditching the xbox."
Links 10/10/2025: Honoring The Legacy Of Robert Murray-Smith, Many Articles on the Hey Hi (AI) Bubble
Links for the day
Gemini Links 09/10/2025: October Gothic and Reading Middle Earth Role Playing; C and Ada
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Thursday, October 09, 2025
IRC logs for Thursday, October 09, 2025
Links 09/10/2025: Farewell to Jane Goodall, California Bans Algorithmic Price-Fixing
Links for the day
Gemini Links 09/10/2025: Lost Wages and a Saga Of Continuing To Use Palm PDAs
Links for the day
Richard Stallman's Talk in Helsinki is Done. Tomorrow Göteborg.
There are scarce details in Finnish about Dr. Stallman's talk
New XBox Leaks Probably Serve to Confirm XBox's Collapse (Many More Layoffs)
It's very much consistent with what many other sites have reported lately
The Slop Song
The train wreck marches on
LLM Slop/Advanced Plagiarism Flooding the Zone With Capital That Does Not Exist
Many publishers out there still participate in this bubble instead of calling it what it is
Links 09/10/2025: Sacked Microsoft Workers Make "Sackbird", IBM Taps CockroachDB for PostgreSQL
Links for the day
"Happy Hacking Day" Richard Stallman Talk This Afternoon (From 14:00 to 16:00) at Haaga-Helia University in Pasila
Richard Stallman in Helsinki, Finland
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Wednesday, October 08, 2025
IRC logs for Wednesday, October 08, 2025
Links 09/10/2025: Impact of Microsoft Layoffs, More Data Breaches
Links for the day
Gemini Links 09/10/2025: Autumn Blues and C IRC Bot
Links for the day
Slopwatch Appreciated by Real Authors of GNU/Linux Articles
We do try to keep on top of those things
Upgraded R.R.R.R.R.R. Today
The Web of 2025 is full of garbage, not limited to slopfarms
Freedom From Proprietary Prisons
Forking always an option
IBM's Watson Died in 1956, Now Watson Dies Again
IBM is becoming just a reseller of GAFAM and other stuff
Slopwatch: LinuxSecurity, UbuntuPIT, and Google News
We've also just noticed more slop from UbuntuPIT
Microsoft Says That Constant Mass Layoffs Are Success, the Media Isn't Buying This Microsoft Narrative Anymore
If people in the media feel an obligation to repeat whatever lies Microsoft tells, what point will there be to the media?
Links 08/10/2025: "Mali Puts Free Speech on Trial" And Apple Enforces Dictatorship
Links for the day
Links 08/10/2025: ‘Death to Spotify’ and Law to Ban Loud Commercials on Streaming (Dis)Services
Links for the day
Links 08/10/2025: Real Innovation and Nina.chat is Dead
Links for the day
Links 08/10/2025: Y2K38 Bug is a Vulnerability, Chat Control in Europe a Threat
Links for the day
Microsoft Windows is No Longer an Operating System, It's Surveillance Project
Why is this even legal to preload on PCs outside the US?
How and Why Once-Legitimate Sites Turn Into Slopfarms
Many sites will go offline and many social control networks will shut down once they realise or even openly admit they spend money and time gardening a bunch of bots and slop
UbuntuPIT Became a Slopfarm and Gnoppix Tarnishes Its Own Brand With Slop
It fits all the characteristics of mildly-edited (if at all) slop
Slopwatch: Linux Journal and Other Slopfarms
GAFAM needs to go the way of the dodo
Gemini Links 08/10/2025: "Seek Seek Revolution" and Gradient Backgrounds
Links for the day
Qualcomm Arduino Takes Aim at Raspberry Pi
Qualcomm is a Microsoft partner
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Tuesday, October 07, 2025
IRC logs for Tuesday, October 07, 2025
Stagnation of the Economy and What Free Software Can (or Could) Do For It
If your economic model is based on a pyramid of lies, it won't last very long
Social Control Media is Sinking
it would rightly seem like the era of centralised "social" sites (they're not social, they're about controlling the users) is ending, not overnight but gradually