Bonum Certa Men Certa

Battistelli Trashed 223 Millions (of Stakeholders' Euros) on a System That Destroyed the European Patent Office and Made Few Private Corporations a Lot Richer

...Before, on his final weeks on the job, passing millions of euros to his other employer

EPO’s IT - Yet another crack in Battistelli’s “excellence” bubble



Summary: A quarter of a billion euros later the EPO finally admits in private that this was a massive failure

READERS can find above "EPO’s IT - Yet another crack in Battistelli’s “excellence” bubble"." Sources tell us this appeared in SUEPO's site (non-public), having been published a fortnight ago, on 05/02/2019. As we showed yesterday, there's less than a fortnight left before key components of this system get abandoned. What a waste of money.



As SUEPO put it: "Will Mr Campinos hold the managers, appointed by Mr Battistelli, accountable for these disasters?"

Of course not. From the above:

The eDossier programme has not been fully realised and is largely delayed. This seems to be amongst others due to the fact that the two releases, stock management/annotation and search workflow, are developed in parallel, but are based on different architecture and technology stack. The parallel development of the two releases turns out to be highly inefficient and not long-term sustainable. The audit recommends an immediate stop of all effort on one release and the work on the other release should be temporarily suspended. As in all previous staff surveys, and the only positive statement in the audit, a strong individual commitment and team spirit among the IT staff is shown. Nevertheless, overall staff engagement is rather low. In particular, the pride, satisfaction and sense of purpose are relatively weak in comparison to benchmarks. Furthermore, the management style is perceived as too top-down and non-collaborative while appreciation of individual opinions is considered to be relatively low.

Conclusions:

- The audit clearly reveals that Mr Battistelli either lied to all the EPO stakeholders or was completely misinformed by his management about the state of affairs of the EPO’s IT. - Fact is that 223 million Euros are spent on an IT project and there seems to be no tangible results coming from it. Mr Campinos and Ms Simon await an enormous task to repair the EPO’s IT organisation, infrastructure and IT staff motivation. - The production rise of the last years can only be the result of the extreme hard work of the EPO staff and certainly not by the badly designed, wrongly developed or incomplete applications. - Losing 223 million Euros is clearly not in line with the sustainability mantra of the EPO administration. Sustainability is an “approach aiming to create long-term stakeholder value through the implementation of a business strategy that focuses on the ethical, social, environmental, cultural, and economic dimensions of doing business. The strategies created are intended to foster longevity, transparency and proper employee development within business organizations”. It definitely does not mean for EPO employees to produce more and work harder in order to cover losses made by EPO managers.

Are the next cracks in Battistelli’s “excellence” bubble going to be: the patent quality, the reformed EPO legal system, the reformed social democracy and/or the ill conceived HR policies ?

How will Mr Campinos deal with the fact that the EPO is not the “excellent” model organisation his predecessor always claimed it to be?

Will Mr Campinos hold the managers, appointed by Mr Battistelli, accountable for these disasters?

SUEPO


We now live in a Europe with lots of dubious European Patents. In Lexology, for instance, Weickmann & Weickmann's Stephan Jellbauer has just written about those fruity EPO patents that are laughable satires. See how Battistelli attempted to justify these. FRKelly has meanwhile written in the same site on "Patent enforcement through the courts in the European Union"; it should increasingly be accepted and broadly realised that many courts do not (not often anyway) tolerate patents granted by EPO. In order to fake numbers Battistelli allowed a lot of bogus patents to be granted; it may take decades before these go away (expiry). Who pays? The public.

Recent Techrights' Posts

Serial Sloppers Are Killing the Web (They Probably Don't Care, Either)
Slop is a disease on the Web
IBM's Debt Ballooned by 8.5 Billion Dollars in Just 3 Months!
Hallmark of a company in a state of disarray, trying to spend its way out of trouble
Big Trouble in GNOME
even GNOME people admit the CoC went wrong
New Article Explains How the GPL Came About and WordPress Having Copyleft Obligations
Having been involved in the WordPress development community since almost the beginning, I know why it chose the GPL and how it restricts abuse by Automattic
Dr Richard Stallman (RMS) Gives Talk in Oxford University in 4 Hours
If you live nearby, go there (it's free as in gratis)
 
Get Rid of Back Doors, Don't Obsess Over Bounties and Other Corporate PR Stunts (or Needless Reboot Rituals)
Security as a term has mostly lost its meaning due to repeated misuse for many years
Streaming Apps Are “Investor Fraud” That Kills the Planet
Reprinted with permission from Ryan Farmer
Things Get Increasingly Nasty at Microsoft Ahead of the Fake Results and May's Mass Layoffs Wave
They try to get people to 'resign' so that they won't count as layoffs and the company's 'wellbeing' will seem better
Slopping the Trough: Disney Plus Loses Billions and the Decline of Physical Media in America
Reprinted with permission from Ryan Farmer
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Thursday, April 24, 2025
IRC logs for Thursday, April 24, 2025
Links 24/04/2025: GAFAM Problems and No Peace (or Ceasefire) in Sight
Links for the day
Slopfarms on the Web Almost Always Generate Anti-Linux FUD When They Produce "Linux" Output
Welcome to the dying Web
Richard Stallman's Oxford Talk Has Just Ended, Here Are Some Photos
he might hop over to another European country
Gemini Links 24/04/2025: Birthday and Good Work of Academia in Esotericism
Links for the day
Links 24/04/2025: EU fines Apple and Facebook, Another Microsoft GitHub Security Blunder
Links for the day
IBM Gained Almost 6 Billion Dollars in "Goodwill" Value in Just 3 Months, According to IBM
Congrats to the management!
In Belarus, Yandex is Now Measured as 50 Times More 'Popular' (by Usage) Than Microsoft
Yandex continues to gain, whereas Bing cannot even register at 1%. Last month it was registered or measured at a measly 0.65%.
IBM Cannot Lie to Shareholders Anymore
"I would not be surprised if we see a layoff every quarter this year."
Using a Law Firm's Licence to Exercise Politics Through Frivolous SLAPPs and Nastygrams (to Silence People, Remove Pages, Demand Fake or Forced 'Apologies')
Things must be getting really bad when lawyers act for raving antisemites
We're Working to Make Full-Site Search Available
This site has over 1,000 'wiki' pages, many thousands of documents, several thousands of videos, and about 50,000 blog posts or articles. We need to make them easier to find/navigate.
Links 24/04/2025: IBM Loses Many Contracts, Intel to Lay Off Over 20% (Not Counting Those Who Leave 'Voluntarily')
Links for the day
Richard Stallman Can Explain to Oxford Artificial Intelligence Society Why LLM Slop is Not Artificial Intelligence and Why It Hurts Society
another 'crop' of LLM slop that damages GNU/Linux and facts
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Wednesday, April 23, 2025
IRC logs for Wednesday, April 23, 2025
Open Source Initiative (OSI) Promoting Microsoft and Proprietary Software Using Microsoft Operatives
Because nothing says "Open Source" like GPL violations facilitated by Microsoft
Another Site Bites the Dust: "Open Source For You" Becoming a Slopfarm (LLM Slop)
What a shame. Another dead site.
Links 23/04/2025: Crackdowns on Dissent, Palin Loses Libel Retrial Against New York Times
Links for the day
Links 23/04/2025: Hard Times and Digital Amnesia
Links for the day
The GNU/Linux Site Formerly Known as "linoxide.com" is Back... as an LLM Slopfarm!
Better for linoxide.com to go offline than to do this
Richard Stallman to Speak in Oxford University Exactly a Day From Now
outsourced to GAFAM
Links 23/04/2025: "Hiding Corruption" and "The Cost of Defunding Harvard"
Links for the day
Microsoft 'Studies' Again? Leon Musolff is Writing Papers With Microsoft.
Even if one can see/find a link to "the study" (in the Bezos-controlled publication), most people won't look any further and just take everything at face value.
Towards GNU World Domination
The FSF led by Geoffrey S. Knauth with his friend Richard Stallman in the FSF's Board [...] Let's encourage people to adopt GNU/Linux. There has never been a better time.
statCounter Helps Visualise Just How Deep in Trouble Microsoft is (Especially in Africa)
Microsoft sabotaged efforts to connect Africans and equip them with GNU/Linux laptops
The Register is Using Linux-Hostile Clickbait in Articles of Linux Proponents
Don't be a "whore" to advertisers, team El Reg
Microsoft Windows in Cyprus Lacking a Future
Most people access the Web there from mobile
Matrix Has a Severe Problem With Illegal Images
If Matrix cannot get the CP problem under control, many projects and people will dump Matrix
Never Try to Justify Strangulation of Women (Not in the US and Not in the UK)
Joint post by Mrs. Rianne Schestowitz and Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Links 23/04/2025: Tesla Profits Plunge 71%, Intel Ready to Lay Off 20% of Staff, Microsoft and IBM Layoffs
Links for the day
Microsoft's Most Profound Issue is That People Moved to 'Mobile' and "App Stores" (Microsoft's Presence There is Negligible)
Expect a wild ride for Microsoft this year
Google News is Amplifying FUD and Lies About Linux (and OpenSSH/SSH) by Promoting Slopfarms With Machine-Generated FUD and Slop Images
Google should know better
Gemini Links 23/04/2025: Librarians, Anubis, and Refactoring a Gemini Capsule
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Tuesday, April 22, 2025
IRC logs for Tuesday, April 22, 2025