Bonum Certa Men Certa

French Article About the EPO "Crisis"

From Le Monde. which already covered the subject in the past

EPO article in French



Summary: Le Monde, which covered EPO suicides and nervous breakdowns a year and a half ago, revisits the subject

SEVERAL months ago Board 28 admitted there was "a crisis" at the EPO, unequivocally refuting some of the nonsense from Battistelli -- nonsense which we last wrote about several hours ago.



We previously published a partial English translation of this article in French, not sure if SUEPO would at some point get around to translating it. Well, they just have. Here is the full thing with our highlights in yellow:

Crisis in the open at the European Patent Office



LE MONDE | 11.10.2016 at 11.17 ● Update at 11.10.2016 at 11.24 | By Emeline Cazi (/journaliste/emeline-cazi/)

In the discreet and urbane world of international organizations, demonstrations are a real rarity. But those scheduled for Tuesday, 11 October, in Munich, and Thursday 13 October in The Hague, by examiners at the European Patent Office (EPO) are simply the latest in a long line which started as far back as 2013. The staff have found this to be the only way to draw the attention of the 38 countries which are meeting on 12 and 13 October as the Administrative Council to a social situation which has been festering for more than three years.

Money is not an issue. One does not talk about vulgar things such as salaries at the “Office”. At a starting rate of more than 5 000 Euros, added to which are the expatriate allowance, schools for children paid for, and a range of other advantages as well, the staff know they are well off in that respect. To attract scientific expertise from all over the world, the Office has had to aim at making its employees the best paid in Europe. But money isn’t everything.

The EPO is one of those international organizations of which there are only a small handful in the world, with its own rules and regulations. This one, with headquarters in Munich and outposts in Berlin, The Hague and Vienna, employs 7,000 people to examine the applications by inventors and to issue in three languages the precious patents, a monopoly which it has held for forty years.

In July 2010, Frenchman Benoît Battistelli took up the reins. It was shortly after the arrival of this former Director General of the Institut national de la propriété industrielle (National Industrial Property Institute - INPI) that working conditions started to deteriorate, according to Suepo, the in-house trade union. The man, who has a very individualistic concept of what the right to strike means, who has imposed productivity criteria, and who has created an “investigation unit” to monitor the staff, has become the man they love to hate. And the feeling is obviously mutual.

The Office enjoys a kind of legal immunity

Things have come a long way for this community of technical experts – those who were top of the class are the ones who come knocking at the door of the EPO do so not so much to make a career but rather because they appreciate the togetherness of ten nationalities and the peace and quiet of the job – to start regarding their gilded cage as hell.

In the past five years, four of them have done themselves to death. A Belgian, a father with a family, threw himself out of his office window in The Hague. Another committed suicide on the last day of his holiday. After each of these dramas, the union demanded an independent enquiry. The management would not hear of it, insisting that these events had nothing to do with the work. For the unions, that was the last straw.

The problem is that, like all international organizations (the OECD, the European Space Agency, and others), the EPO enjoys a form of legal immunity: no national law can be imposed on it. Only the internal rules and regulations apply.

“It’s a problem with all these organizations. If things are going right, then everything’s fine. But the slightest grain of grit, and there’s nothing you can do about it”, says Parliamentary Deputy Philip Cordery, one of the representatives of French citizens abroad, who has been drawing the attention of successive governments and ministers of industry to the situation at the EPO.

“Three years ago something snapped”

There was a time when it was great working at the Office. Conditions were so pleasant that people were even postponing their retirement. Andreas, a biologist trainer, had envisaged going on until he was 63. He “threw in the towel” earlier, “like a lot of people recently”.

With a handful of others, he was prepared to confide in Le Monde, on the condition that his anonymity was protected, and that the meeting place was far away from The Hague. “You understand, if anyone found out that I’d been talking .... Even in retirement, I have to be careful about what I say.” He did not want to suffer the same fate as one of his colleagues, whose pension was slashed by 30%.

“Three years ago something snapped”, he says. “The work was still interesting, but the working environment became intolerable.” The autocratic and tactless methods adopted by the new President did not fit. As far as this particular technical expert is concerned, imposing production criteria on an organization with plenty to spare, with an annual budget of 2 billion, and of which the patents are reputed to be almost immune from attack in terms of law, is simply nonsensical.

By tradition, and because an examiner only becomes operational at the end of a three-year period, the old hands support the newcomers. “In that respect, I’ve seen colleagues refuse to help new arrivals for fear of losing time, and on the pretext that it won’t do anything for them, now that we’re being evaluated on reaching our targets...”

It was precisely to reject this policy of numbers that Sylvia agreed to talk.

“The management is not only destroying the working conditions, but also the European economic system. The patents which we issue are not so good. And a fall in quality will have consequences for industry”, she says despondently. “There’s money at stake.”

Since the union Suepo started criticising the climate of fear and tension in which the staff are working, a number of its representatives have been targeted for disciplinary procedures. France, Germany, and Great Britain have taken some action, and in March demanded that the Administrative Council suspend any proceedings until such time as an independent social audit has been carried out. At the end of September the audit had still not been undertaken, but the General Secretary of Suepo at The Hague was called before a disciplinary committee. Two other staff members are involved.

“Far from any common ground”

The staff representatives are calling it harassment of the union. The management see no connection:

“These proceedings are the result of a complaint about bullying, defamation, and threats, which have incurred the resignation of a staff representative” is their response. Ms. Amélie Lefebvre, from the law firm of Bourdon, and legal advisor to Suepo, deplores the fact that “Mr. Battistelli, who does not feel himself bound by his own Administrative Council or by national laws, is taking refuge behind his functional immunity to take such brutal measures of repression against those who call his social policy into question”.

“If, after two years, sanctions like this are being taken against the staff representatives, then we’re far from any common ground”, is the way Deputy Philip Cordery sees it. On 13 October he will be marching side by side with the staff.


In the coming few posts we'll show that the above isn't an isolated incident of concern from the European media, in spite of Battistelli's attempt to gag and control it at huge expense to the EPO.

Recent Techrights' Posts

Lovers and Haters
Always beware hate preachers and demagogues (or how they frame issues or whose fault they distract from)
 
Links 25/09/2025: More European Airports Shut Down Due to What Seems Like Russian Drones
Links for the day
Gemini Links 25/09/2025: Amiga Revived and Hackers (UTF-8)
Links for the day
Purchasing Concert Tickets in 2025 in Manchester: The "Modern" Experience
I recently spent a couple of days here testing the "terrain" in order to better understand how large public venues, for concerts rather than sporting events like football, currently "work"
Links 25/09/2025: French Unions Want Another Strike, Super Typhoon Ragasa Kills Many
Links for the day
Microsoft 'Secure Boot' and Shim as Barrier or Obstacle to New GNU/Linux Users Trying to Escape Microsoft
Just as intended all along
Focusing on What People Have in Common Instead of Killing and Cancelling One Another
Men and women of both "wings" stand to gain a lot by working together on common interests
'Cancel Culture' Isn't About Enforcing Ethics (and It's Done by People on the Right, Not "The Leftists")
Smarter folks would leave social control media
Russia's Attack on Europe (and NATO) Will Worsen Censorship and Corruption in Europe
Can we still debate issues that predate the invasion of Crimea?
Lawyers Should Permanently Lose Their Licence (and Worse) for Using Chatbots in Legal Work
They not only waste people's money and time. They pollute the literature with falsehoods. They commit perjury. [...] Brett Wilson LLP sent the Judge nearly 1,000 pages of material (mostly mine, copied without proper permission) shortly before a short Hearing, which lasted less than an hour
GAFAM and MATA (Mythical, Metaphor) as Explained by analognowhere.com
They're instruments of suppression that sponsor the oppressor
We've Already Mentioned Who Nowadays Funds Garrett's SLAPP Against Us (Not Garrett), Let's Examine Who Sponsored His Litigation Partner (Other Than Microsoft Salaries There's a Buddy of Bill Gates)
it's alleged that the Serial Strangler from Microsoft got money from him
Florian Müller: Using Software Patents to Attack Software Developers, Agitate Against Patent Reform
He also promotes attacks on the German Constitution and laws
Reliance on Typepad Seems to Have Doomed the Voice of Software Patents and Patent Maximalists in PatentDocs
Follow the money
UEFI 'Secure Boot' is Potential Mayhem to the Environment (Older and Leaner Distros Stop Working)
creating new problems, disguised as "solutions" to problems that do not exist
Sometimes 'Cancel Culture' Backfires Badly
There's no such thing as "too much" coverage
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Wednesday, September 24, 2025
IRC logs for Wednesday, September 24, 2025
Links 25/09/2025: Jimmy Kimmel Returns to Air (With Limitations) and London Stansted Airport Latest to Have Incident (Fire)
Links for the day
Slopwatch: Fake Articles, SPAM With Slop, and Google News Directs People to Read Slopfarms
why does Google News insist on still linking to prolific slopfarms?
Gemini Links 25/09/2025: New Game for Gemini Protocol, Eleven, and Network Solutions Woes
Links for the day
Punching People Doesn't Work
It makes nobody any safer
Look Ma, No "Cloud"
So far this year we've had an almost perfect uptime
Links 24/09/2025: Autism Blame-Shifting and Typhoon Ragasa Enters China
Links for the day
Buying From Oneself is Not Business Success
This isn't at all a joking matter even if you already laugh at the whole thing because your pension, savings etc. are tied to this scam at some level
This is How Microsoft's XBox and Entire Consoles (If Not Gaming) Ventures Will Ultimately Die
Ensure you can blame "Tariffs" (politics)? If not "hey hi", the fashionable go-to excuse when businesses fail?
What They Really Hate David Heinemeier Hansson (DHH) for
Nothing to do with code
Smart People Won't Buy 'Smart' Cars
Imagine trying to sell someone a house (proper home) while insisting that it'll need to be demolished 5 or 10 years later, then rebuilt again from scratch on the same vacant lot
The Relationship Between IBM Red Hat and Microsoft, Visualised
This metaphor goes a long way (projects, collaborations, and outsourcing
The Complaint About Brett Wilson LLP - Part III - Spying on Reporters' Families, Chaining Cases for Microsoft Employees Who Demand Censorship of Facts (Even Politely Expressed)
the time seems right to wrap up this introductory series
The Complaint About Brett Wilson LLP - Part II - UK SLAPPs for Americans, SLAPPs for Profit
Brett Wilson LLP has a track record of this kind
Cloudflare Gives Us All Another Reason to Boycott Cloudflare
If Cloudflare wants to use its vast surveillance network (which is what it does as a CDN) to foist paywalls and maybe something worse (like DRM on top), then Cloudflare should be more widely rejected as a company
Links 24/09/2025: "NASA Moving Out of Entire Buildings as It's Gutted" and Purge of Online Critics (Opposing Fascism Becomes Unlawful)
Links for the day
Science is Under Attack
Oligarchy prefers a dumbed-down population
Someone Expiring Certificates on the Day of the 9/11 Attacks is Not Someone I Would Want Controlling My PC (or Deciding What's Authorised for Booting)
"social justice warriors"
The Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA) Has Reportedly Failed People With Wrong Advice
At the moment the SRA has a PR blunder
The Man Suing Brett Wilson LLP and Gervase de Wilde (5RB)
Now he's probably using the (almost) 200,000 pounds he's supposed to receive to sue Brett Wilson LLP and former colleagues/partners
More Microsoft-Red Hat Cross-Pollination as the Company Loses a Managing Director
some people move from Microsoft to Red Hat and some do the opposite
Slopwatch: A World Wide Web That's Rotting for Companies That Won't Even Exist in a Few Years
some of the junk Google News is promoting
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Tuesday, September 23, 2025
IRC logs for Tuesday, September 23, 2025
Links 24/09/2025: Qt Creator 18 Beta, Microsoft Cannot Bail Out "ChatGPT" Anymore, China and US Intensify Censorship
Links for the day
Gemini Links 24/09/2025: Gemlogs and Politics
Links for the day
Links 23/09/2025: Japan Limits Uses of Skinnerboxes ('Smartphones') With Toxic "Apps", Fentanylware (TikTok) Tapped by "MAGAts"
Links for the day
Brett Wilson LLP Has Just Been Sued (by Their Own Clients!)
Vladimir and Alla Yanpolsky sued Brett Wilson LLP in BL-2025-001167 at the end of last week
Mayday: Optus emergency calling crisis
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
Links 23/09/2025: Massive Data Breach, Slop Versus Productivity, and Vista 11 Update Breaks Things Again
Links for the day
Code of Censorship
Extortion is peace
The Free Software Foundation (FSF) Has Un-cancelled the Best People, Just in Time for the Big 4-0
Mr. Oliva should have been there all along (since 2019)
Most "Modern" Technology Makes You Slower and Dumber
Because proprietary software makes you worse off
"What Comes After Free Software?" Wrongly Insinuates We've Reached the Goal (Prison is Not the Goal)
The oil tycoons use similar tactics against environmentalists, giving them fake "wins"
Making More Work Space
I learned the hard way that less is more in circumstances where more means distraction
MAHA is a Lie, Public Officials Never Valued Citizens' Health (They Still Value Private Businesses, Their Sponsors)
Reject demagogues
Free Software Foundation (FSF) Has a New Press Kit for the Weekend After Next Weekend (40th Anniversary)
miles better than social [sic] media [sic] quips, moderated by narcissists and oil tycoons.
Microsoft Had Two Waves of Mass Layoffs This Month (That We Know of) and It'll Get Worse for Microsoft Soon
Will the axe fall again by month's end?
Gemini Links 23/09/2025: Happy Equinox, Photronic Arts, and Perception Cognition
Links for the day
Lessons We've Learned After 17 Years of American Hosting
GAFAM is "all-in" with the "Trump agenda"
Back to Normal Now, We Plan to Do More In-Depth Series (or Multi-part Stories)
Articles (or series thereof) that contain philosophy are important to us
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Monday, September 22, 2025
IRC logs for Monday, September 22, 2025
Microsoft Media is Panicking Amid Mass Layoffs Every Month, H-1B Fees, and "Seattle’s Tech Scene in Trouble"
In "late stage Microsoft", copyleft becomes proprietary
The Next Wave of IBM/Red Hat Layoffs Being Discussed Already
Red Hat is sort of disappearing the way Tivoli did
New Techrights Turns 2
Today starts the third year of the SSG-based Techrights