Bonum Certa Men Certa

EPO Management Will Exploit the Pandemic to Crush Patent Examiners Like It Crushed the Rule of Law (and Judges)

Work (or the boss) comes home to roost

You don't need to kidnap judges if you control all the judges' boss
Imagine home 'raids'; also remember that the EPO has already 'normalised' surprise visits to people's homes (to "verify" they were in fact ill and not "faking it")



Summary: EPO management pretends to "protect" the staff from an invisible enemy; people who have worked in the Office long enough are familiar with these antics (as if there are terrorists and "Nazis" and "snipers" on the premises) and should view very sceptically the real motivations behind sending staff to homes/apartments with growing workloads and more pervasive spying (such as illegal Microsoft spyware which has a covert keylogger and can access microphones, cameras etc. -- shades of a supposedly bygone EPO era)

THIS post isn't intended to provoke. It's an expression of an opinion. But this opinion is based on past experiences and a lot of reading, including some of the practices observed in technology companies such as IBM.



"The list of issues is endless and many aspects were covered here last year when lock-downs began at the end of March (UK)."Last week I did a 25-minute video expressing my personal thoughts on home-working or work-from-home arrangements, having done that (mostly full-time) since 2007. Don't call it "remote work" or "teleworking"; these misnomers manipulate semantics and twist the narratives so as to harm workers, making it seem like working from one's own residence is inadequate and thus merits additional deductions, surveillance, a lack of flexibility and so on. One example is, employers tend to wrongly assume that because one's office is at home they can phone the worker any time of the day. Other common examples are, they expect workers to be productive at any time of the day/week (for no additional or exceptional payment -- something most countries mandate), convert "commute time" into unpaid work time, and generally work very long hours under constant wiretapping/spying, impacting not only the workers but also other tenants, usually loved ones. The list of issues is endless and many aspects were covered here last year when lock-downs began at the end of March (UK). The title of last week's post was "EPO Home-Working (or ‘Remote’ Working or ‘Teleworking’) Isn’t an Act of Generosity But of Exploitation" and it seems like some workers have been bamboozled/conned into thinking that António Campinos buying them some ergonomic chair (a tiny fraction of the annual salary of EPO examiners) makes it acceptable for him to take away lots of benefitd. Don't be grateful for it; António has ideas and now that fewer people are in the Office they approach low-cost labourers further abroad (outside Austria, Germany, and the Netherlands). Like Greek mythology teaches us, the oversized wooden horse isn't quite the gift which it's disguised as. That ergonomic chair too is easily discardable.

"My advice to EPO staff representatives is, stay constantly vigilant."Earlier today the EPO's Central Staff Committee (CSC) circulated this document [PDF] and a member of staff 'leaked' it to us. The document isn't exceptionally interesting and it concerns a meeting that took place 13.5 days ago, i.e. nearly a fortnight ago. The gist (or the abstract) says: "On 18 October, the administration provided us with a copy of a draft Circular defining a mid-term teleworking policy for the Office (see CA/38/21, page 17) as of 1 February 2022 and to be reviewed in no later than 3 years after entry into force. This Circular would replace both the Emergency Teleworking Guidelines in place since March 2020 and the revised Part-Time Home Working (PTHW) Guidelines in place since May 2018. Management invited us ["the staff representation"] to a meeting which took place on 22 October."

Page 2 describes location limitations. In page 1 it gives the example of "EPO employee recruited in Munich or Berlin would be allowed to reside in Hamburg and to telework from there. In addition to the employee’s residence, an employee can telework from any location within the country of employment."

This is just Germany shielding its economic interests in the Office. Obviously most workers are based in Germany, so they're force to stay there and spend money there. For some, this means sending the kids to highly expensive international schools.

My reflex or my instinct about all this, having observed the tricks leveraged by Benoît Battistelli, isn't positive at all. They're trying to sell this 'reform' using "pandemic", even though it actually predates the pandemic, as noted in this document. They did the same with the SAP, based on a lie, and we've already seen how they misuse the pandemic to outsource 'courts' to American companies, not just to the outskirts (Haar). It's unconstitutional, it is in violation of the EPC (respectively), but what do these people care/worry about? It took ILO-AT nearly an entire decades to assess "Strike Regulations", which were unlawful all along.

I'm not being facetious and I'm not being negative for the sake of 'bashing' the EPO. I've been working from home for over 14 years (incidentally, this site turns 15 in a matter of days). I saw how such working conditions are exploited as a sort of pretext for paycuts (or a lack of pay increases, which as long as we have positive inflation rates means a paycut).

My advice to EPO staff representatives is, stay constantly vigilant. Try to envision the next step of the administration or the proposals floated behind closed doors; these people absolutely do not care about patent examiners and they do not even understand them (or their jobs)! Letting people work from home is just a matter of complying with the national laws -- to the most minimal extent in this case -- while squeezing out the most "production" out of workers... in a time of international emergency/crisis.

Recent Techrights' Posts

Slopwatch: Brian Fagioli, Google News, and Other LLM Slopfarms
Why does Google News keep promoting these fake articles?
Links 29/10/2025: Amazon Kept "Data Center Water Use Secret", "Abuse of Power" Against Media
Links for the day
Gemini Links 29/10/2025: "My Hardware Specs" and "Goodbye Debian…"
Links for the day
EPO Cocainegate: Feedback and Clarifications
Part III will come out soon
Links 29/10/2025: "US Military Is Destroying the Planet Beyond Imagination" and Boat Strikes Deemed Unlawful
Links for the day
Quality Comes First (Techrights Search)
It's generally working already, but we wish to polish it some more
Techrights Party Countdown
Late next week we'll be holding a party near our home
European Parliament and Council Directive on Privacy is Vanishing
"edited / censored some time more recently"
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Tuesday, October 28, 2025
IRC logs for Tuesday, October 28, 2025
Slopwatch: The March of Slopfarms, From UbuntuPIT to Linux Journal and to Various Fake Sites Still Promoted by Google News
It's so worrying to see what the Web has become
Links 29/10/2025: CISA, Ukraine, and Amazon Problems
Links for the day
[Teaser] The EPO's Spokesperson, a Cocaine User, Fancies Young Women
How's that for "optics" in the EU and Europe's second-largest institution?
How Will António Campinos Respond to the EPO's 'Cocainegate'?
That's the same thing we saw and still see when the press deals with enablers and partners of Jeffrey Epstein
Join Us Now and Share the News - Part IV: There Cannot be Free Software Without Free Press and Free Information
One day, one can hope, more people will recognise that for Software Freedom we need free press and free thinkers
Join Us Now and Share the News - Part III: Principled Stance Is Never Cheap
Protecting the truth and insisting that the general public is made aware of things that really happened isn't cheap
Join Us Now and Share the News - Part II: Because Scarcity of Accurate Information Breeds Collective Ignorance
we too will strive to share information that's aggressively suppressed
Gemini Links 28/10/2025: More New Arrivals at Geminispace, xkcd on "Document Forgery"
Links for the day
Join Us Now and Share the News - Part I: Defence of the Truth
This year we make a very strong, firm statement for truth, even if that means explaining our work to the top media judge in the country
Links 28/10/2025: Meta and Fentanylware (CheeTok) Age-Restricted Down Under, "Britain Needs China’s Money"
Links for the day
Links 28/10/2025: Mass Layoffs at Amazon and Charter to Cut 1,200 Jobs
Links for the day
The Cocaine Patent Office - Part II: The Person Who Planted Paid-for Fake News for the European Patent Office (EPO) is a Cocaine User, Friend of António Campinos, Now on Record as Having Been Arrested
Background: High-level manager at the European Patent Office caught in public with cocaine, arrested
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Monday, October 27, 2025
IRC logs for Monday, October 27, 2025
Google News Drowning in Slop (and Slopfarms That Hijack About Half the Results)
Google News seems to be drowning in this stuff
Gemini Links 28/10/2025: "How to Maximize Your Positive Impact" and ASCII Art and Artist Attribution
Links for the day
PETA and Activism
Being staff or volunteer in PETA isn't easy
Big Blue, Huge Debt
debt will soar again
Links 27/10/2025: Mass Surveillance Sold as "AI", People Reluctant to Lose Physical Media
Links for the day
Parties and Milestones Again
we've begun putting up about 40 balloons
Techrights' 19th Anniversary: Bronze
Time to go back to preparing for this anniversary
Our Latest European Patent Office (EPO) Series Will Last Several Weeks, Will Ask the EPO Management and the European Union (EU) Very Difficult Questions
If nobody loses a job (or jobs) over this, then the EU basically became no better than Colombia or Nicaragua
Slopwatch: LinuxSecurity, UbuntuPIT, Brian Fagioli, and Google News
We focus on stories that are fake or LLM slop that disguises itself as "news" about Linux
Links 27/10/2025: Wikipedia Vandalism, Bruce Perens Opens up on Childhood
Links for the day
This Site Could Not be Done by LLMs Even If It Wanted to (Because It's Not a Parrot of What Other Sites Say)
LLMs have no knowledge or deep understanding
Microsoft is Disloyal Towards Its Most Loyal Employees
Against its most faithful enablers
19 Years, No Censorship
No factual information is ever going to be removed, more so if it is in the public interest
We Are Not a Conventional Site, That's Why They Hate (or Love) Us
Throughout the week this week we'll be focusing on the EPO
Following the Line of Cocaine All the Way to the Top
Even a million denials and spin-doctoring won't distract from the core issue
The Cocaine Patent Office - Part I: António Campinos Brought Corruption and Nepotism to the EPO, Then Came the Cocaine
High-level manager at the European Patent Office (EPO) caught in public with cocaine, the Office has some answering to do
Purchasing/Possessing Computers Isn't the Same as Controlling Computers
Let's strive to put computers back under the control of their users, no matter who purchased these (usually the users)
Gemini Links 27/10/2025: Alhena 5.4.3 and Fixing Bash
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Sunday, October 26, 2025
IRC logs for Sunday, October 26, 2025
Thankfully We've Made Copies of More Interesting Data From statCounter
If statCounter (the Web site or the 'webapp') vanished overnight, we'd still have something left of it
More Silent Layoffs at IBM/Red Hat
when the media counts such layoffs or presents tallies the numbers are very incomplete