Video download link | md5sum 2535de7d501ffd5499ac131c79125954 EPO is Stable Like the Lukashenko Regime (by Force) Creative Commons Attribution-No Derivative Works 4.0



Summary: The management style in Europe's second-largest institution (and largest patent office) has already resulted in a mass exodus or brain drain; at this point the EPO cannot recruit highly-skilled staff which meets the standards set by the EPC and patents are being granted in violation of the EPC (the Office hopes to compensate for it by swapping patent courts with kangaroo courts that aren't even legal)

ATTACKING one's own staff and lying to staff is a very bad strategy, resulting in poor talent retention and inevitably a cycle of dissent. It imperils whole organisations for a false sense of control or temporary calm. Brainwash might work on labourers in factories, but the EPO is no factory. The people there are too well-educated to be perpetually lied to and they can speak to one another during or after work (it's not like a sweatshop with bunk beds, where groups reside "24/7" "day and night" under constant observation by supervisors). The Benoît Battistelli regime (which remained in power under his tandemocracy with António Campinos) has already driven away many of the experienced examiners and is nowadays busy rubber stamping patent applications (or invalid patents) like a madhouse. The staff, led by union actions, is already refusing to participate in this illegal agenda (there's longstanding industrial action, prioritising the law over demands from up above) and one can predict that it'll end no better than in Lukashenko's Belarus, which now experiences a mass exodus and brain drain. This hurts everybody. The EPO cannot survive like this; it's being delegitimised by its own awful management. It's not even management but mismanagement. It's dictatorship where even judges are being kidnapped and mentally tortured if the dictator dislikes them. ⬆

Next task: overthrow and the courts, replacing patent judges with more docile umpires?