Bonum Certa Men Certa

The European Patent Office, EPO, Has a Deep Crisis That Bribes Cannot Fully Hide



There are also skeletons in the closet

Thank you, EPO, for sponsoring my regime; Tactical nukes
Don't ever mention how the EPO sponsored Lukashenko (true story by the way!) or the President will have a tantrum and start SCREAMING, cursing at everybody in sight (even telling the F*** word to female professions)



Summary: The EPO never recovered from Benoît Battistelli; his French friend continues to vandalise the Office and, in the process, many invalid patents are being granted (which is probably what this vandalism was all along geared towards)

THIS is a roundup of a number of EPO issues, as explained in the words of EPO staff, i.e. insiders. We'll try to keep this concise.



Our goal here is (as always before!) to save the EPO from the dangerous cult of patent maximalists. One must respect the original purpose of patents, not turn patents into some kind of religion.

"In the EPO, low-paid scabs seem to be the "way to go" -- people too poor and financially stressed to form or join unions, let alone question demands from perceived authority."Earlier today the Staff Union of the EPO (SUEPO) linked to a new blog post entitled "Deteriorating patent quality: EPO under fire, management is not impressed". The way it was covered gave too much of a platform to lies from António Campinos and his Welsh mouthpiece, even some of the earlier comments smack of AstroTurfing (it's a blog of Team UPC after all!), but that's still better than not even a mere mention of the problem, which is bigger and broader than European software patents. A decision on the EPO’s NO-Career System is expected this Friday (less than a day from now) and we shall see if any patent-centric blog will bother to report the outcome. IP Kat suffered another blow recently and then it did a puff piece about the UPC, in effect celebrating something illegal. The International Labour Organisation's court (ILO's Administrative Tribunal) deals with labour issues, not constitutional issues, but it's expected that the UPC as a whole will be challenged in court some time later this year or next year.

In other news, LSCTH is urging colleagues at the EPO to pursue what they were promised and are legally entitled to. "Education allowance below threshold" is at stake, so they wrote: "Dear Colleagues, As you may know, the Education Allowance Reform contains many unfair aspects. Certainly, one of them is the threshold of 500€ set in the new regulations for receiving the reimbursement of the school fees within the provisions of the education allowance according to Article71.II.5 Serv.Regs: “The direct education costs, comprising enrolment, tuition and capital fees, incurred for pre-school, primary and secondary education that exceed EUR 500 per academic year will be reimbursed.” Therefore, while the main argument put forth by the administration for implementing the reform was fairness, those that were costing the least to the EPO were excluded. Moreover, while pretending to include nationals in the reform, the administration de facto and silently excluded most of them. This aspect, however, not only excludes most of the nationals but any colleague who chooses a national school for their child(ren), as these schools are generally below the threshold. [...] We will continue demanding that the Administration provides fairness and involves the Staff representation in revising the terms of the education allowance reform."

So basically parents who work for the EPO have long suffered hardship because EPO management did not honour basic obligations. Concerns were moreover raised about the schools themselves, as we noted here before.

Then they wonder why almost nobody wants to work for the EPO?

There are more issues discussed in the SUEPO TH [The Hague] digest for June 2023. Here's a slightly redacted version of it:

Staff committee TH elections Thank you for voting in the Staff committee elections! The participation rate was exceptionally high [...] We wish to warmly thank the Election Committee which carried out the whole process. After 9 years, the organisation of the elections has once again been entrusted entirely to an Election Committee nominated by the General Assembly of all staff. This stands in stark contrast to the previous two elections, which were organised by the EPO management and were deemed to violate the freedom of association by the ILOAT (see Judgment 4482) after a legal challenge led by SUEPO.

Bringing Teams Together The survey run by SUEPO TH relating to the “Bringing teams together” has been finalized [...] In a nutshell: colleagues feel that the “bringing teams together” project is reducing engagement and tearing apart the sense of belonging to the organisation. We wish to remind the EPO management that there is plenty of space in the SHELL building for our colleagues who need an allocated individual office space in order to work to the best of their abilities. And we would like to remind colleagues to put their needs in writing to their managers [...] if their workplace for a day does not comply with “the highest standards of cleanliness and hygiene” promised by management.

Spread the word, yes but transparently and honestly The EPO has been asking for your help to recruit new colleagues by calling to spread the word across our networks. We believe that for a successful and long-lasting working relationship, it is important to be transparent and honest from the very beginning. We therefore encourage you to help the Office in their endeavour by adding all the information the Office has omitted, for example how the EPO has the power to change the employment contract (i.e. codex service regulations) at will and does not hesitate to use that power to the detriment of staff while generally ignoring the input of social partners. [...]


The Staff Union of the EPO has helped show that unions can, in some cases, combat serious corruption. It's no wonder that the corrupt seek to abolish unions. In the EPO, low-paid scabs seem to be the "way to go" -- people too poor and financially stressed to form or join unions, let alone question demands from perceived authority.

[MEME] Putin and Lukashenko discuss the situation at the EPO

Recent Techrights' Posts

Debian GNU/Linux and Free Software Developer Daniel Pocock in Irish Elections This Month (Dublin Bay South)
Polling day in 15 days
Layoffs as Happy Stories in the Corporate Media
It's based on a longstanding pattern
 
Alexander Wirt (formorer), Wayward people & Debian censorship
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
Gemini Links 14/11/2024: Infocalypse and "Multiple Monitorings"
Links for the day
Links 14/11/2024: The Web We Lost Coming Back, X/Twitter Crashing
Links for the day
Links 14/11/2024: Politics, Climate, and Instability
Links for the day
Links 14/11/2024: EmacsConf and Flounder
Links for the day
Links 14/11/2024: Science and the Demise of Microsoft-Connected USPTO Director
Links for the day
For "X" to Die the Media and Politicians Will Need to Quit (Then, Advertisers Will Lose Interest, Even for Political Ads)
Fewer people are still there anyway
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Wednesday, November 13, 2024
IRC logs for Wednesday, November 13, 2024
Bob Should Tell Alice About What GitHub (Which Linux Foundation Outsources Code to) Does to Entire Nations, Following Donald Trump's Policies
"What's next, preventing access to Linux from non-NATO countries? Putting NSA backdoors in the kernel?"
It Took The Guardian More Than 2 Years of Musk to Realise What Twitter Was and It Took Twitter 4 Years of a President Trump to Realise What Trump Was
Trump was deplatformed only a fortnight before Biden became president anyway
[Meme] Google 80%, Windows 2%
"I'm going to f---ing bury that guy, I have done it before, and I will do it again. I'm going to f---ing kill Google."
Microsoft's Market Share Falls to 2% in Haiti
Throw in Android (now 80% of "the market") and Windows is down to 2%
Gemini Links 13/11/2024: Magic of Walking and Lest We Forget
Links for the day
Links 13/11/2024: USPTO Director Kathi Vidal ('Former' Microsoft Rep) Resigning, Censorship After Car Ramming Attack in China
Links for the day
Microsoft: Layoffs, Outsourcing, and R.T.O. as Cover for Mass Layoffs Without Severance Pay
Microsoft had mass layoffs pretty much every month this year
[Meme] The Addicted Lolicon Throwing Stones
"They've found my RMS attack site"
Jonathan Carter & Debian betrayed Joel Espy Klecker
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
Links 13/11/2024: Red Tape War and Programming Experiences
Links for the day
Links 13/11/2024: "Make Your Laptop Last FOREVER" With GNU/Linux, 23andMe Mass Layoffs, Intel 'Resignations' Layoffs Loophole
Links for the day
In Switzerland, GNU/Linux Reaches Record Highs, But What About the Corruption?
Pocock is a disappointed citizen of Switzerland
More Than 3 Years After Vista 11's Release More Chinese Computer Users Still Use Vista 7 (Than "11")
it was "officially" released October 5, 2021
At BetaNews, "Most Commented Story" Is Not a Story But LLM Slop! (Readers Talking to Bots)
They make fake stories with provocative headlines and then boast that these get many comments
[Meme] Swiss Lawyers/Attorneys Who Fake Qualifications and Rob People
Switzerland mostly guards its reputation by censorship of media
Just How Slow Has the News Industry Become?
We're drowning in garbage from fake publishers
Things That Still Work OK (But We're Being Shamed for Using)
Using old stuff is nothing to be shamed of (or afraid to do)
Free Software is About Collaboration
WordPress limits it
Even the Managing Editor of BetaNews is Doing Slop and Spam
A Fish Rots From The Head Down
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Tuesday, November 12, 2024
IRC logs for Tuesday, November 12, 2024
PERA Bill in US Senate Strives to Crush Caselaw, Making Patents on Mathematics and Algorithms 'Great Again'
Follow the money
BetaNews is Beta-Testing the Site as LLM Slop With Microsoft Propaganda Thrown In
Many of the people there are Microsoft boosters and they use slop as "filler" (for marketing)
Evolution of euthanasia & WIPO UDRP similarities exposed by W. Scott Blackmer
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
Gemini Links 13/11/2024: Phasing Out 3G, Brian Kernighan Books, Tcl/Tk, Time to Ditch x86
Links for the day
Links 12/11/2024: A Lot of Censorship and SWNS at 50
Links for the day
BetaNews, Inc. Became a Spam Operation/Web Site, LLM Spew (Slop) for SEO Disguised as "Articles"
Published 5 minutes ago by Brian Fagioli...
Gemini Links 12/11/2024: Invidious Down and YouTube Addiction
Links for the day
Links 12/11/2024: Hey Hi (AI) Failures and COP29 Fakers
Links for the day
Latest Rumours of Red Hat Layoffs
Rumours or gossip is how almost everything starts
WordPress is for the 'Old Web'; the New Web Necessitates Static Pages
There are purely practical reasons to move away from WordPress and the likes of it
Biggest Debt Leap in Years, More Than Half a Trillion Dollars in Just One Month
We remind people (almost every year) that it's also "buynothingday"
Windows Falling to All-Time Lows and Microsoft Has Nothing to Replace It With
It's mostly Android (Linux) replacing Windows
Cybershow Has a New 81-Minute Episode on Digital Sovereignty and International Cyber-Relations
it is a high-quality show
Activism in the Digital Realm Can Never (and Must Never) Rely on GAFAM
This simply means that tech activists must completely abandon any hopes of finding allies in Google or IBM or whatever...
Golden Dawn(ald) and What GAFAM Means to Liberal Techies
In one single screenshot
IBM CEO Says Donald Trump as President-Elect is Good for IBM in New Interview With CNBC
most unprincipled CEO ever?
GNU/Linux Up to 6.1% in Finland (Almost 9% If One Counts ChromeOS Too)
Home of Linux (the kernel)
BetaNews Has Become a SPAM/Slop Factory, Brian Fagioli Publishes Fake 'Articles'
everything is now suspect in BetaNews
It's Morbid to Talk About Living People as If They're Dead
What happens to LLM slop when Brian Fagioli dies?
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Monday, November 11, 2024
IRC logs for Monday, November 11, 2024
Free Software and Love of Nature
It's not a coincidence that many Free software activists are also lovers of nature
Silicon Valley and GAFAM Were Never Liberal
spineless CEOs and founders aren't against Trump
Windows and 'The Desktop' Floundering
Microsoft should be extremely worried
WordPress is Bad for the Planet (Even If Many Still Use It)
the costs nobody wishes to talk about