Summary: Concerns expressed not only about the management style of Benoît Battistelli but also his disregard/disdain for science (or patent assessment)

YESTERDAY, somebody wrote to us regarding the EPO. It was about stress as measured among French workers. There are various but few French companies where the working conditions were reported to be notoriously toxic like at the EPO (including suicides).

Here is the message in question:

I have found this article in the morning news:

Un quart des salariés français sont dans un "état d'hyperstress

The title translates "one fourth of the French employees are in an hyperstress condition".

I hope you understand the French content. It is remarkable to see that it applies to 100% to the brave new EPO. Are these kinds of managerial skills taught at the ENA? This is an excellent perspective for the next employer of Monsieur Battistelli, his curriculum fits perfectly.

As we noted earlier this month, Battistelli and his colleagues in politics are notorious in their own town, too. There are press articles about it (in French). They're considered to be tyrannical.

In Battistelli's mind, based on the latest proposed 'reforms' (to be covered shortly), the goal it to make examiners obsolete (along with patent quality).

4 days late this comment was approved by IP Kat (only yesterday it appeared, but it was posted 5 days ago):

Well , it may help not to mix technologies, functionalities and examiner targets. Ansera uses off the shelf technologies for performing searches, nothing that Google has not been doing for ages or any modern data retreival system. Not sure the EPO can seriously pretend to be a reference in searches while keeping technology of the 80’s. What is different in Ansera from say Google, is that it supports the query language unique to the EPO and yes , surprise surprise, searching with classes. I think that by now everybody knows that ANYTHING is used as an excuse for higher targets.

SUEPO has been warning about this for years. These things do not work well. In fact, it's incredible that decisions on these matters are made without consulting examiners who understand the technicalities. Who knows how low a quality European Patents (EPs) from the past few years might be. It remains to be learned from statistics about litigation, and that may take years if not a decade to become visible. ⬆