Bonum Certa Men Certa

The EPO's War on Justice and Assault on the Law -- Part 11: The Rapporteur Who Once Was Vice-President

Previously in this series:



Wim van der Eijk profile
Wim van der Eijk – the rapporteur in case no. G 1/21.



Summary: EPO's former Vice-President of DG3 will be the person to decide on the EPO's (mis)conduct

The rapporteur in case no. G€ 1/21 is the Dutchman Wim van der Eijk.



As previously explained, the rapporteur is the member of the Board tasked with analysing the underlying factual and legal issues and presenting a preliminary internal assessment of the case to the other members. At the conclusion of a hearing, the rapporteur is generally responsible for summarising the status of the debate and making a recommendation on the decision to be taken.

"At the conclusion of a hearing, the rapporteur is generally responsible for summarising the status of the debate and making a recommendation on the decision to be taken."According to his LinkedIn profile [PDF] (original here albeit subjected to heavy spying on readers), van der Eijk is a legally qualified member of the Boards of Appeal and of the Enlarged Board and he has held this position since December 2016.

But there is a curious omission in this profile. It is completely silent about the fact that between December 2011 and December 2016 [PDF], van der Eijk occupied the position of Vice-President of DG3 (warning: epo.org link) in charge of the EPO's Boards of Appeal.

Van der Eijk was appointed to this position as the successor of Peter Messerli of Switzerland who had been Vice-President of DG3 for 15 years at the time of his retirement in 2011.

During his tenure as Vice-President of DG3, van der Eijk was a regular VIP guest of honour at various events on the global IP legal circuit, including the annual European Patent Judges' Symposium. (Warning: epo.org link)

Wim van der Eijk as EPO vice-president
Vice-President van der Eijk with Kai Härmand of the Estonian Justice Ministry at the 17th European Judges' Symposium in Tallinn in September 2014.



"On the Internet as in real life, people often try to embellish their CVs as much as possible so this kind of false modesty seems rather unusual."Van der Eijk's LinkedIn profile gives the distinct impression that he is now trying to hide the fact that he was once the top dog at the EPO's Boards of Appeal.

On the Internet as in real life, people often try to embellish their CVs as much as possible so this kind of false modesty seems rather unusual.

In van der Eijk's case, there may be good reasons for such reticence about the former highpoint of his career because it seems that his stint as Vice-President of DG3 was not a particularly happy one.

EPO VP3 Wim van der Eijk
Wim van der Eijk's tenure as Vice-President of DG3 was not a happy one.



As a matter of fact his term of Office as Vice-President was severely blighted by his "failure" to deliver the results demanded of him by his despotic overlord, Benoît Battistelli.

Most notably, van der Eijk was unable to persuade his colleagues on the Enlarged Board of Appeal to agree to the removal from office of the Board member targeted by Battistelli.

In October 2015 it was reported that van der Eijk had gone on unlimited sick leave and he was said to be suffering from some kind of "burnout".

By a curious coincidence this was just about the same time as Battistelli was busy implementing his plans to use the Dutch daily newspaper Financieele Daagblad to launch "a disgusting smear campaign" against the suspended Board member.

According to well informed insiders, Battistelli's original battle plan had been to send van der Eijk on a special duty mission to his home country, the Netherlands, for the purpose of "briefing" the journalists from the Financieele Daagblad. SUEPO strongly condemned this. [PDF]

However, it seems that the Dutchman had qualms about allowing himself to be used in this manner and so he conveniently went on sick leave to avoid the ignominy of becoming an accessory to Battistelli's Machiavellian intrigues.

"According to well informed insiders, Battistelli's original battle plan had been to send van der Eijk on a special duty mission to his home country, the Netherlands, for the purpose of "briefing" the journalists from the Financieele Daagblad."In the end, Battistelli had to rely on another of his Vice-Presidents - his Belgian bulldog, Willy Minnoye - to do the dirty work with the journalists from the Financieele Daagblad.

As is generally known, Minnoye - dubbed the "uncouth Belgian peasant" by disgruntled EPO staff - had absolutely no sense of shame or self-respect so he was clearly the ideal man for the job.

As van der Eijk's tenure as Vice-President of DG3 was drawing to a close in 2016, Battistelli made it clear to him that he was most certainly not in the running for the new position of the "President of the Boards of Appeal".

However, in October 2016 van der Eijk was granted a "consolation prize" by the Administrative Council in the form of an appointment which allowed him to continue in service as a common or garden "legal member" of the Boards of Appeal as of 1 December 2016.

And so Wim van der Eijk's term of office as Vice-President of DG3 ended rather unceremoniously, with more of a whimper than a bang.

"However, in October 2016 van der Eijk was granted a "consolation prize" by the Administrative Council in the form of an appointment which allowed him to continue in service as a common or garden "legal member" of the Boards of Appeal as of 1 December 2016."From a professional perspective his new assignment amounted to a "downgrading" and was tantamount to a disciplinary sanction.

But van der Eijk obviously decided that he needed the money and so he swallowed his pride and took the best deal on offer.

The background to his current appointment as a legal member of the Boards of Appeal might explain why he is so keen to gloss over the preceding chapter of his career as Vice-President of DG3.

We shall return to van der Eijk in due course in connection with the mysterious affair of the "missing signatures" in December 2014.

But before examining that episode in more detail we will make the acquaintance of the remaining internal members of the Enlarged Board in case G 1/21.

11 - VP3 Submission G2310-15

Recent Techrights' Posts

People's Understanding of the History of GNU/Linux is Changing
RMS is not a radical, he's just clever enough to see and foresee what's going on
Microsofters Were Scheming to Take Over This Entire Web Site (in Their Own Words!)
Money gets spent censoring/deplatforming people who speak about real issues; no money gets spent actually tackling those underlying issues
Bicycles for the Minds and the Story Harrison Bergeron
"The goal of having people in charge of the tools they use and that the tools should amplify ability" has long been abandoned
[Video] Cory Doctorow Explains DMCA: DRM in the Browser (or Webapp) Will "Make It a Felony to Protect Your Privacy While You Use It."
Pycon US Keynote Speaker Cory Doctorow
 
Links 29/05/2025: US Health Deficit and Malware Disguised as Slop Generator
Links for the day
Links 29/05/2025: Turtle Roadkill, Modern 'Tech' as a Sting
Links for the day
Thanks for All the Fish, Linux Format
people who once wrote for it (or for other magazines) comment on the importance of this news
Links 29/05/2025: YouTube Problem and Giant Privacy Hole in Microsoft OneDrive
Links for the day
United States Courts With Sworn Testimonies Are on Our Side, We'll Present the Same Here
Chronicling what happened is a moral imperative
Serial Sloppers Ruin and Lessen the Incentive to Cover "Linux"
The Serial Sloppers (SSs) ought to be named and shamed, but almost nobody does this
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Wednesday, May 28, 2025
IRC logs for Wednesday, May 28, 2025
Links 28/05/2025: 'Emulation Layers' (Measurements and Linguistics), Libraries, and Discomfort
Links for the day
Links 28/05/2025: More Arrests for Bitcoin-Connected Torture and Prosecutions for Dieselgate-Linked Executives
Links for the day
Even Microsoft (MSN) Covers Richard Stallman's Public Talk in Milan 2 Days Ago
He spoke in Spanish earlier this month (Alicante)
Gemini Links 28/05/2025: Techo-authoritarianism With Slop Plagiarism and "No Online June" (Going Offline)
Links for the day
Links 28/05/2025: GitHub MCP Exploited and MathWorks Discovers Huge Windows TCO
Links for the day
Very High Attendance Level at Richard Stallman's Talk Shows People Can Relate to His Message
Smear campaigns have their limits
Gemini Links 28/05/2025: Celsius-Fahrenheit, Endless Scrolling/Infinite Scrolling, and Trapping LLM Slop Bots
Links for the day
Prison gate backdrop to baptism by Fr Sean O'Connell, St Paul's, Coburg
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
More Photos From This Week's Milan Talk by Richard Stallman
The posts are in Italian, not English
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Tuesday, May 27, 2025
IRC logs for Tuesday, May 27, 2025
Links 27/05/2025: Science Defunded, India Arrests an Academic
Links for the day
Gemini Links 27/05/2025: From Celsius to Fahrenheit and Deleting Social Control Media
Links for the day
Microsofters Have, in Effect, Attempted Extrajudicial Action Against Us
Courts and Judges (or Masters) don't exist to facilitate this kind of "bro" culture
UK High Court Masters Are Not Your Jesters, Microsoft
Judges aren't there for "funny" spectacles, they're there to act as arbiters in critical cases, not SLAPPs
Links 27/05/2025: Mass Layoffs at Volvo and More Evidence of 'AI' (Slop) Being a Passing Fad
Links for the day
The Code of Conduct (CoC) Gaslighting Phenomenon
There are still many people and projects foolish enough to outsource their labour to Microsoft via GitHub
They're Very Jealous of Richard Stallman and His Freedom (or Simple Lifestyle)
Jealousy is toxic because it can cause rational people to act irrationally and even severely harm themselves
Akira Urushibata on GNU coreutils
new message
Anouk Rozestraten (Deputy Director) Appears to Have Left the Free Software Foundation
Let's hope Rozestraten is still using and promoting Free software
There's Nothing Funny About Lawbreaking
There's plenty of room in society for humour, but "hacking" the state by breaking laws isn't cool or hip
More Mass Layoffs Coming Soon to Microsoft, Just a Question of When and How Many
Numbers from Washington were close to 5% and judging by prior rumours, it would be 5% + 5% (total 10%) at a later month
Links 27/05/2025: Bikes, Ideal Computers, and BYO
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Monday, May 26, 2025
IRC logs for Monday, May 26, 2025
Richard Stallman's Milan Talk (Public Presentation) Was Packed, Video Available Soon
Looks like they even ran out of seats