"What some call health, if purchased by perpetual anxiety about diet, isn`t much better than tedious disease."

--George Dennison Prentice

Summary: Safety and welfare (or health) of EPO staff doesn't matter to EPO management; despite all the clever marketing and the endless euphemisms the examiners rightly feel exploited, repressed and unvalued (or undervalued)

WE recently published a number of things from SUEPO Observer, which bemoans the management style at the European Patent Office (EPO) and the illegal spying on staff inside their homes. As a home ('remote') worker myself for many years, I'm grateful to be subjected to no such surveillance; this oughtn't become a prerequisite and labour laws typically forbid those sorts of things. In Japan they even passed laws to limit communications with and from staff outside working hours, seeing that excessive work had caused/inflicted an excessive death toll there.

"It affects sleep too; many EPO examiners reportedly work into the night if not throughout the night."The mental health, which is connected to physical health in a number of ways, isn't good at the EPO; mental stress impacts diet and vice versa. It affects sleep too; many EPO examiners reportedly work into the night if not throughout the night. So to them, at this difficult time, 'remote' work is hardly a gift or a privilege. The EPO has enough cash in its coffers to keep paying salaries while staff just rests at home for a couple of months, home schooling, keeping safe, and maintaining spiritual calm. But no... the managers are too greedy to allow that to happen.

"Some readers are evidently eager for us to publish portions of SUEPO Observer, as it touches and covers some key points and usually sticks to a droll style."As if turns out, the approval rate of António Campinos is already lower than Benoît Battistelli's -- after not even two years in the Office! Campinos is all marketing, hype, deception and fake manners. EPO staff isn't gullible enough to fall for it! Judging by actions, Campinos is just Battistelli the Second (the Battistelli Second Wave?). Nothing less, maybe more (as in worse). He openly brags to IAM about software patents being granted in Europe (in defiance of the EPC), making European patent standards even lower than post-35 U.S.C. €§ 101 US.

Some readers are evidently eager for us to publish portions of SUEPO Observer, as it touches and covers some key points and usually sticks to a droll style. Nothing funny about oppression and corruption, but hey, it helps one get by...

We particularly liked the joke about "same boat" below:

The boat analogy goes a long way because the EPO may also be sinking like the UPC(A). You may be able to get away with irregularities and even corruption some of the time. But when infraction becomes the norm you're cruising on borrowed time. Brain drain, disgruntled applicants and so on are assured self-destruction. SUEPO is actually trying to save the EPO. Senior workers who join and lead the union have been in the EPO like ten times longer than Campinos, so they actually care. I know the feeling, having seen people at work who have been there less than a tenth the time I was; and they drove away my colleagues one by one until the CEO intervened and changed middle management. It's never too late to save an organisation or at least try to. ⬆