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09.22.15

Dutch Politician John Kerstens Says EPO Investigative Unit is Called ‘the Gestapo’

Posted in Audio/Video, Europe, Patents at 7:02 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Investigation Unit

Summary: The infamous Investigation Unit (I.U.), which secretly bullies staff of the EPO with notorious interrogation techniques under virtually no oversight, is described on Dutch radio

NPO Radio 1 covered the EPO scandals 12 days ago. Several people who are aware of what is happening spoke about the subject and several days later SUEPO covered it, as its lawyer too was on the show. To quote SUEPO, “Ms Liesbeth Zegveld, SUEPO lawyer and Mr John Kerstens, Member of the Dutch House of Parliament (Tweede Kamer PvdA) were interviewed on 10 September 2015 on the Dutch channel Radio 1 over the “unhealthy working environment” in the European Patent Office.

“The audio interview is hosted here (archive).”

To quote the English part of the transcript (local copy just in case of yet another censorship induced by threats):

English translation

NPO Radio 1

“Unhealthy working environment in the European Patent Office in Rijswijk”

Eric Corton:

But first: the European Patent Office in Rijswijk.

Jingle: De Nieuws BV

Willemijn Veenhoven: Once again, an employee of the European Patent Office has committed suicide. The 42-year-old man ended
his life on the last day of his summer holidays. The EPO staff union, SUEPO, blames the “unhealthy working environment” for contributing to the fifth EPO employee suicide in three years.

EC:

Liesbeth Zegveld, good afternoon. You are SUEPO’s lawyer.

Liesbeth Zegveld:

Good afternoon.

EC:

You represent the union’s members. Can you tell me about the EPO and what is happening in Rijswijk?

LZ:

EPO is an international organisation with offices in five countries, the largest of which are located in Munich, Germany and Rijswijk, The Netherlands. In total, EPO employs about 7,000 people, 50 percent of whom are represented by the staff union. Their job is to approve patent applications, which is a rather specific line of work. They have found themselves under the regime of Mr Battistelli, a Frenchman. The working conditions and the atmosphere at EPO have been extremely unpleasant for years now. Even after a considerable amount of legal action, they have not improved. What I am seeing, and what the union is seeing, is that things are actually getting worse.

EC:

So this is not a Dutch organisation. It is a European organisation, located in The Netherlands. Could you give me an example of the working conditions?

LZ:

One of the most important problems is that the staff is not involved in the making of changes that affect them directly. Take for instance decisions regarding pensions or sick leave: these are things that affect them personally. These people are bypassed, and that is a big problem. Another problem is the extremely heavy workload. As a result of cutbacks, the pressure caused by the daily amount of work to be done is only increasing. The staff suffer from this, and they do not have a way to speak up about it or discuss it with one another. Obviously, this is detrimental to the working environment.

EC:

SUEPO sees a direct correlation between the workload and the five staff suicides over the last three years. Is there any way this conclusion could be proved?

LZ:

So far, there have been two suicides at Rijswijk. One of these people committed suicide during working hours. I don’t know if there have been inquiries into whether these suicides were related to the working climate, including the latter one. The point the staff union is trying to make is that the atmosphere at work is so hostile and the number of suicides among staff so high that it’s time for EPO to find out whether there is a correlation. That is what the management has been repeatedly urged to do, which they have declined.

EC:

They aren’t about to do that. So the president… I’m sorry, go on.

LZ:

“So far, there have been two suicides at Rijswijk. One of these people committed suicide during working hours.”
      –Liesbeth ZegveldThe Labour Inspectorate will try to visit the office to have a look at the working environment, but they are kept out because the EPO is a European organisation. This way, any and all questions to the EPO are met with silence. Meanwhile, the question remains: Are the suicides and the working conditions related? I do stress that this relationship has not been proved.

WV:

What I am thinking right now is that people’s working conditions have to be dreadfully, but dreadfully hostile for them to resort to suicide. You are very familiar with this case: Can you imagine that the working environment really is that toxic?

EC:

For people to take such measures?

LZ:

I don’t know the case of the man who recently committed suicide. What I do know is that the atmosphere is unbearably hostile. I can confirm that. As lawyers, we try to aid and assist the staff and the workers in legal matters. This is the first time I am confronted with the limits of legal proceedings. Something has to happen right now, because the situation at these offices is getting out of hand. I’ve gotten an extremely clear sense of that. An example of this is that the EPO created an internal Investigative Unit to interrogate and investigate individual workers’ behaviour. This Unit was initially created in 2013 to have only five members and carry out investigations into severe cases of sexual harassment and fraud. So far, there have been 71 investigations in 2015. A considerable number of those were aimed at staff union members. People are put under investigation, which they are not allowed to discuss. A rather bizarre fact, as this type of confidentiality is mostly meant to protect the person under investigation, but they can’t even talk about it themselves. They cannot go public about this. These proceedings make people feel extremely intimidated. They run the risk of being fired, or if they have already retired, of getting a one-third cut off their pension. There are a lot of these investigations going on right now, a few of which I am involved in. They are baseless investigations that involve employees being asked for an interview without being told what they are being accused of and without being given any documents relevant to the investigation. These employees are confronted with all of this, a report is drawn up, and that report goes straight to Mr. Battistelli. The employee is left to await their fate, which may well be termination.

EC:

So the President, Mr. Battistelli, is deaf to any criticism. He considers complaints about the workload as nothing more than propaganda. But we have staff unions, we have the Labour Inspectorate, we have great lawyers like you. How does this organisation manage to keep you all locked out?

LZ:

Again, the EPO is an international organisation. Their offices are not just in Rijswijk, but also in Munich, Vienna and two other countries. This type of organisation’s physical premises are not part of the country they are in. The Netherlands office, for instance, is in Rijswijk, but is outside Dutch jurisdiction.

EC:

They’re not part of The Netherlands.

LZ:

“But wouldn’t that mean that a company from India or wherever could have an office in The Netherlands, abuse their employees and be exempt from Dutch law? Why are they immune?”
      –Eric CortonRight. That means Dutch law, Dutch judges and the Dutch Labour Inspectorate have no authority over this office.

EC:

But wouldn’t that mean that a company from India or wherever could have an office in The Netherlands, abuse their employees and be exempt from Dutch law? Why are they immune?

LZ:

These aren’t national organisations that were started in a different country but have foreign offices in several countries. These organisations are intergovernmental and have been founded by several states. So if The Netherlands, Germany, Austria and Belgium decide to found such an organisation, there is no judge that can have authority over it – only the organisation itself, or an international court of law. Of course, a self-governing organisation must govern itself correctly. And this is what we keep telling The Netherlands: every country washes its hands of it, and Battistelli is free to do as he pleases. But it’s an international organisation, so they have to take care of it themselves. Then when it gets out of hand, the International Court in The Hague, after a case that we won gloriously, rules on February 17 of this year: ‘Battistelli does
not have the right to monitor email communication, he does not have the right to decide on the duration of strikes, he does not have the right to exclude the union from negotiations with employees. Things have to change.’ At which The Netherlands as well as the organisation itself turned a deaf ear to the Court’s ruling and continued as normal. Sadly, that is the way the judicial system works.

WV:

I’m sorry to interrupt, but I would like to hear from Member of the Dutch House of Parliament John Kerstens
of the PvdA party. Good afternoon.

John Kerstens:

Good afternoon.

WV:

“The English term Investigative Unit has been put in German by the staff themselves as ‘the Gestapo’.”
      –John KerstensYou have previously voiced your concerns about this organisation’s working conditions to State Secretary Sharon Dijksma. What did she promise you at that point?

JK:

Really, we’ve knocked on the doors of everyone in the Cabinet by now, including Minister van der Steur and Minister Asscher. Things have been less than ideal for a while now at EPO, and that is just about the greatest understatement I could make. As Ms Zegveld said, people feel intimidated and unsafe. The English term Investigative Unit has been put in German by the staff themselves as ‘the Gestapo’.

EC:

Incidentally, we have tried to talk to people at the organisation, but no one wanted to talk to us.

JK:

That’s as I would have expected. We have contacts at the European Trade Union Confederation and we are in touch with the workers themselves: It’s not that they don’t want to talk, but they don’t dare open up for fear of investigations or suspension. The Cabinet’s reaction has been twofold: They are worried about this situation, but as Ms Zegveld noted, these international organisations enjoy certain kinds of judicial immunity. Which, by the way, multinational companies do not. Earlier, the impression was given…

EC:

“So could this be related to financial gain, perhaps?”
      –Willemijn VeenhovenNo, you’re right.

WV:

So could this be related to financial gain, perhaps? It’s been estimated that the Dutch government profits greatly from the EPO. The Office being in the Netherlands, the country apparently makes 855 million Euros off it each year. Could that be a reason they are left to do as they want?

JK:
The Netherlands has the ambition to be a haven for international organisations, such as international courts and organisations like the EPO. But the law dictates the premises of organisations are inviolable without permission from the President. In this case, that means the Labour Inspectorate cannot enter the premises, for instance to carry out an investigation.

WV:

But do you think money might be the issue here?

JK:

No, I don’t think it is. But the problem in this situation is that these external parties have to be given permission by Battistelli, who is himself a part of the conflict and as such not at all interested in cooperating with them. The Dutch Cabinet has made a number of attempts: they have discussed the issue with the governing body of the EPO, the Administrative Council, made up of representatives of all the states who founded the EPO. The Netherlands have also attempted to start a dialogue on social issues inside the organisation itself. One of the participants involved is in fact a representative of the Administrative Council. But not much is happening. We have to…

EC:

Yes, what is going to be the next step? If you’ve already spoken with Mr. van der Steur and asked Parliamentary questions of Ms. Dijksma, what’s next?

JK:

“Personally, I don’t think it’s Mr. Battistelli’s prerogative to allow or disallow the Labour Inspectorate entry into the EPO. It is the Administrative Council’s decision.”
      –John KerstensI’ve asked three sets of Parliamentary questions about this issue, and we get a small step further every time. Yet, there’s no solution in sight, so we’re going to have to put on a little bit more pressure. Personally, I don’t think it’s Mr. Battistelli’s prerogative to allow or disallow the Labour Inspectorate entry into the EPO. It is the Administrative Council’s decision. If The Netherlands is liaising with the Council to solve these issues, then for my next question to the Cabinet I will be asking them to get permission from the Council to enter the EPO and at least clear some things up.

EC:

Member of the Dutch House of Parliament John Kerstens of the PvdA party and Liesbeth Zegveld, SUEPO’s lawyer. Thank you both very much.

JK:

You’re welcome.

“Transcripts in English, French and German are available by scrolling through the document,” SUEPO notes, so just about everyone in Europe can read it. It’s imperative that everyone in any field of technology, which is inevitably impacted by European patents, reads this.

For those who have not been keeping abreast of this long series of articles, our Wiki is a good place to start. The EPO may, unless proven otherwise, be Europe’s most corrupt institution right now. █

The European Patent Office’s Autocracy Has Proven the Streisand Effect, Amplifying Its Opposition’s Messages

Posted in Europe, Patents at 6:22 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Streisand Estate

The infamous Streisand estate. Copyright (C) 2002 Kenneth & Gabrielle Adelman, California Coastal Records Project.

Summary: The management of the European Patent Office (EPO) is still trying to suppress negative messages about managerial failures, violations and abuses, thereby serving to only increase media coverage (newspapers, radio, television) of increasingly well-known and widely-covered scandals

THINGS have been rapidly heating up and escalating at the EPO as of late. The public pages of SUEPO are almost self-explanatory, but some context and background are needed. This post will attempt to summarise the latest developments.

The management of the EPO has chosen not to listen to staff, instead attacking not only staff but also journalists. Benoît Battistelli’s right-hand gangster, Željko Topić, has said that “SUEPO has no standing in this office. SUEPO has no role to play in this office.” These people are obviously not qualified to manage, as they don’t treat their staff like a treasure, an asset, or even a “human resource” (to use gradually more demeaning terminology) but as a nuisance. It’s no wonder they are driving a lot of the talented people away. These are highly qualified people. They’re not a dime a dozen, not even a million (euro) a dozen (per annum).

Certain SUEPO leaders are now formally responding to the menacing messages from the wife of Battistelli's INPI buddy, titling this episode “SUEPO publication concerning an investigation” (too gentle a term). To quote the statement from the public site: “Ms Bergot, Principal Director Human Resources at the European Patent Office, has sent highly threatening letters to Mr Michels, SUEPO Central Chair, and Ms Hardon, SUEPO Munich Chair, following a SUEPO publication concerning an investigation in which Ms Hardon was summoned for interrogation as accused.

“Ms Liesbeth Zegveld, SUEPO lawyer, represents Mr Michels in this matter and Ms Hardon in the investigation. She has sent two letters of reply to Ms Bergot.

“A copy of the reply on behalf of Ms Hardon can be found here and the reply on behalf of Mr Michels can be found here.”

In case of (un)expected takedown demands (this happened before), we are making local copies of the PDFs:

Yesterday morning SUEPO finally shared (after suppression by legal threats from the EPO) this article in German. Benoît Battistelli’s oppression/suppressions have clearly become major IT news (it’s not about labour rights anymore). A lot of people in the media finally become involved these days and the EPO’s management tried to prevent staff from reading journalists’ work. How pathetic is that? As SUEPO put it, “Heise Online comments on the censorship imposed on SUEPO’s website by the management of the European Patent Office. The article recalls former unusual measures such as the covert surveillance with keyloggers and cameras of semi-public computers within the Office.”

“EPO leadership [is] out of control,” wrote Florian Müller, “now SUEPO has even had to remove a link to Heise, Germany’s most-read IT news site.” When news is treated as treasonous and there is a taboo, then the institution itself is built upon lies and corruption. The EPO was strongly in favour of the press when it effectively bribed Les Echos to become its "media partner" (i.e. shameless PR), but it blocks/censors links to Heise (German IT) because there is objective analysis there. There are no EPO payments (from taxpayers) on the table and no strings attached.

Any external observers ought to early see who’s the bad side here. The management of the EPO is now censoring information using self-censorship tactics. This self-censorship is motivated by fear, due to active intimidation and expected retribution (reign by example). This is probably why SUEPO does not link to Techrights so often (the only site to be completely banned all around the EPO’s networks, for the first time ever). There would be a lot more damning information about the EPO’s management out there if it wasn’t for reprisals. These people are thugs and they are using the same tactics that thugs are using.

Days earlier SUEPO took note of further media coverage of these scandals, reaching even European radio. As we shall show at a later date, this also became a television topic (Benoît Battistelli was being ridiculed on European television after becoming somewhat synonymous with “villain” in central Europe).

Suffice to say, patent lawyers sometimes continue to support Battistelli. One ‘magazine’ with its most shameless patent maximalists does some victim-blaming (blaming EPO staff) in this article and this accompanying tweet which says: “There are problems at the @EPOorg, but the staff union’s relentlessly confrontational approach is getting nowhere.”

Who is being “relentlessly confrontational”? The staff or the management? Someone surely missed the full story.

SUEPO now calls for “Supervision of Data Protection at the EPO,” having discovered that data protection at the EPO is an utter joke (even visiting patent lawyers are under surveillance, not just staff). “Recently,” it explained, “a letter from Ms Andrea Vosshoff (Bundesbeauftragte für den Datenschutz und die Informationsrecht) to Ms Renate Kunast (Vorsitzende des Ausschusses für Recht und Verbraucherschutz) came to our attention. In this letter Ms Vosshoff asks for attention to certain weaknesses in the data protection set-up in the EPO. She asks the above mentioned committee for support in addressing the issues.

“SUEPO intends to write a letter in support of this initiative, requesting to be heard in the matter. An aspect that seems thus far to have been overlooked is that Art. 20(1) EPO PPI seems to provide for a cooperation with the “competent authorities” in health and safety regulations and “similar regulations”. The latter would seem to cover data protection regulations.”

Given the EPO’s record of taking down material using threats, we have decided to mirror this here as well:

Lastly, SUEPO’s views on “ILO-AT workload” ( Administrative Tribunal of the International Labour Organisation) were expressed 5 days ago. “The number of ILO-AT member organizations continues to increase totalling 60 today as opposed to 25 in 1990 and 40 in 2000 – thus raising concerns about the continued capacity of the Tribunal to carry out its responsibilities effectively.”

It’s too slow to protect staff and also, to make matters worse, the EPO’s management won’t obey rulings, orders, laws, etc. The management led by Battistelli views itself as acting with impunity or operating above the law.

“The ILO intends to hold a debate,” continued SUEPO, “and prepare a guidance paper highlighting any difficulties encountered by the Tribunal in managing its workload. In preparing this paper, the ILO has submitted a questionnaire to be filled by all stakeholders.

“SUEPO’s answer to the subject questionnaire can be found here [see below]. It represents the views of SUEPO and was prepared with the input from the following staff associations/unions: FICSA, WHO, WTO, WIPO, WMO, OPCW, IFAD, BIODIVERSITY INT, ESO, CERN and EMBL.” Here is a local copy of it:

In the coming days we intend to highlight some more media coverage of these affairs and we will work to ensure that SUEPO cannot and will not lose its voice due to bullying by Battistelli and his circle of aggressors. The more adamant they become and the more aggressively they crack down on information, the more this information will spread (with additional copies thereof). Required reading. █

09.21.15

IBM is Again Attacking Free/Libre Open Source Software by Pushing for Patents on Software

Posted in GNU/Linux, IBM, Patents at 8:57 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

IBM’s infamous love of patents outweighs the company’s publicly-professed love for Linux

Manny Schecter

Summary: A timely reminder that Big Blue is no true friend of GNU/Linux and other Free software projects, just an opportunist that uses the Linux brand and wants to make the platform a commodity (for servers that run IBM’s proprietary software and use IBM-branded hardware)

Manny Schecter, the Chief Patent Counsel from IBM, is lobbying for software patents in India, based on statements like this one. IBM wants software patents everywhere (not just the US), quite frankly as usual. It also did this in Europe and in New Zealand. The evil side of IBM is clearly Free software-hostile, as it lobbies for laws that are inherently ruling out Free software, or make it incredibly hard to adopt. The article that Schecter linked to says that “Srikant Sreenivasan, co-founder at Mumbai-based cloud technology company CloudLeap Computing Pvt. Ltd, spent four months re-engineering something his company had already built after realizing that they had unknowingly infringed on a patent filed by a multinational company.”

Well, like IBM…

“CloudLeap had to reinvent the wheel since it was catering to clients in the US, where the patent law protects all software, unlike in India, where software was so far patented only if it was used in conjunction with an embedded chip or system.”

Again, like IBM…

We have been writing a great deal about the ugly side of IBM for nearly a decade. The above just serves to remind us that IBM has not changed its ways.

To say that IBM is a “big company” and that its patent policy does not reflect or extend to technical staff is akin to the same apologetic gestures offered by Microsoft boosters when it’s pointed out Microsoft sues GNU/Linux with patents (still). █

Windows is Dying, Based on my Conversations With Microsoft Windows Staff

Posted in Microsoft, Vista 10, Windows at 8:37 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Urbis

Summary: The arrival of Vista 10 heralds the continuation of a trend that Vista 8 cemented, namely an inevitable demise of Microsoft’s common carrier (and formerly cash cow), Windows

THE PAST WEEK has been rather informative as I personally came to discover that Microsoft had shrunk (whilst obviously hiding this from the public and the media). Dedicated “Microsoft” buildings have been ‘folded’ into shared buildings, personal offices became shared offices, and there is generally great fear of Google, with operating systems like ChromeOS and Android (Chromebooks now outsell Windows laptops). Recognition of the end of Microsoft is now acceptable even within Microsoft itself (the staff).

Microsoft is very upset when the media speaks about numbers regarding Vista 10, based on what I have learned. Microsoft is nervous because these are lies, perpetuated at times by overzealous boosters. The numbers that are out there put greater pressure on Microsoft to meet expectations because the true numbers are vastly lower than stated in the media. Low-cost ‘upgrades’ and (almost) forced ‘upgrades’ just aren’t enough. People from Microsoft say to me that Microsoft, for a change, does not want to share Windows numbers. Vista 10 is seemingly the exception. Suddenly the company wants secrecy and silence. There is nothing to brag about.

People who work for Microsoft tell me that Vista 10 has had serious stability issues (hence the frequent mega-patches) and even Microsoft boosters speak about these issues right now. Mary Jo Foley makes it look like a negative story (especially the headline), but it ends up coming across more like a bait/advertisement. Robert Pogson says this is “Why Everyone Should Hate M$ And Their Desktop OS”. In another very recent rant, Ken Starks says: “And as far as them having the right not to install the uploaded file if they have automatic updates turned off, then Microsoft is nothing less than a burglar, jimmying a back door to gain entrance. In my world, even according to current law, Microsoft is committing a criminal act.”

This rant from Mr. Starks is about Microsoft force-feeding users of Windows the Vista 10 ‘upgrade’. This happened (based on timing of reports) just over a month after the release, probably because Microsoft realised people were massively rejecting Vista 10. Breaking the law probably seems like the lesser risk to Microsoft given these harsh circumstances. Nobody wants the common carrier. If Windows dies, Microsoft will collapse very quickly.

Over the past week I saw some people ranting about Windows RT, which is destined to be abandoned by Microsoft very soon. This possibly last update of the system disappoints users, who have already been ranting to me about performance issues, among other, far more severe issues. It’s a disaster.

Windows is in a state of crisis and the empire of Windows collapses pretty fast, largely due to counterparts with their growing development environments, including those which target the Web/browser and mobile devices (only iOS and Android).

Ask people who actually work on Windows (developing it) what they think about the future of Windows — or lack thereof — to better understand where the world is heading. It’s sunset for Windows and, consequently, for Microsoft too. All they have is momentum/inertia and this too is running out. █

Microsoft Claims to Have Built ‘Windows’ on Top of Linux, But Where is the Source Code (GPL)?

Posted in GNU/Linux, GPL, Microsoft at 8:08 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

What if Microsoft® Windows Azure is actually what Microsoft calls “piracy”?

Manchester

Summary: Microsoft cannot rely on Windows anymore, so it takes GNU/Linux code and puts its own brand on it, without even releasing the changes (as per the GPL’s requirements)

THOSE who pay careful attention to details and have fairly good memory can still recall that Microsoft had violated the terms of the GPL before it finally compiled. This happened at least once if not twice around the time Microsoft assaulted Linux to promote its proprietary hypervisor (obviously with back doors as Windows is a requirement) and later, just shortly afterwards, lifted some social media code. To Microsoft, GPL is still like “cancer”, to borrow the words of Microsoft’s CEO at the time. Microsoft is just trying to find a way to live with (or co-exist) with “cancer”.

There have been many reports that mostly emanate from Microsoft’s own, self-promotional claims. The Register has one of the earliest reports about this, followed by some Linux sites which asked the right questions, such as: “We don’t yet know when and if Microsoft will release the source code of the project and which licence they will use for it; the Linux kernel is licenced under GNU GPLv2, so it has to be a compatible licence.”

Various news sites twisted the story, if not just in the headlines, then in the body too. Microsoft boosters took this the furthest [1, 2] and rather than admit that Microsoft is more or less defeated by GNU/Linux (at the server level at least), they tried to belittle the importance of these revelations, which would inevitably have come out (Microsoft chose a ‘controlled’ release of the news). “Microsoft has built a Linux-based operating system” was the headline of one such report, but another way to put it is, Microsoft built its proprietary framework using GPL-licensed code from Linux. When will we see the source code and what does it say about Microsoft’s appreciation of its own code, which is obviously unfit for purpose in such complex environments of a very large scale?

To put the story in just one sentence, Microsoft realised that its own code/workforce is unable to put together a reliable hosting platform, so it turned to Linux, took some “cancer” it liked, then put its “Windows” and “Azure” branding on the whole lot. That’s ‘innovation’ the Microsoft way (there are many prior examples) and it may actually — for now at least — be a violation of copyright law. So who’s the “pirate”? █

Dutch Report: EPO Suicides Possibly Caused by Working Conditions Imposed by EPO’s Management

Posted in Europe, Patents at 7:42 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Summary: More press coverage about the terrible situation at the European Patent Office

HR Praktijk, yet another Dutch site, joins at least a couple of newspapers with their reports in the country which houses EPO headquarters. Below we make our permanent record of a Dutch article with various translations. The English translation of the article is as follow:

11 September 2015, From: Jesper van Wijk, Via: De Volkskrant

EPOrg employee suicide possibly caused by poisoned working conditions

Staff union SUEPO is raising the alarm on the recent suicide of an employee of the European Patent Organisation (EPOrg) in Rijswijk. De Volkskrant reports that poisoned working conditions may have contributed to the suicides of five employees at the European organisation.

Staff representatives previously raised serious concerns on the policies of French EPOrg president Benoit Battistelli. SUEPO claims that under his reign, work pressures have been radically increased and that Battistelli has unilaterally forced through changes.

Social dialogue

The Netherlands and other members of the European Union have voiced concerns onhardened social climate within EPOrg. “Partly due to these signals, management and staff representatives have entered into a social dialogue,” State Secretary Dijksma of Economic Affairs wrote to the Dutch House of Representatives in July.

The situation has not improved since. In a letter to the 38 EPOrg country representatives who supervise the organisation, the union is now again raising the alarm on the death of an employee who worked at a location in Rijswijk. This is the fifth time in a little over three years’ time that EPOrg employee has committed suicide. In 2013, an employee from the Rijswijk office jumped from the seventh floor of the building during work hours. The other three incidents were of employees of the EPOrg headquarters in Munich, according to the Dutch newspaper Volkskrant.

Possible measures

On 26 August, the union wrote Battistelli a letter requesting a conversation on possible measures to improve the work situation, but so far he has refused. “It’s tragic that SUEPO is again trying to abuse a personal tragedy to stir up controversy in a situation that calls for sympathy,” Battistelli wrote to the union. “The parallel you seem to want to draw between the death of a colleague and recent reforms and the working atmosphere in general is wholly inappropriate.” SUEPO states that a direct link between the suicide and the working conditions has yet to be established, but that the labour inspectorate should be granted the opportunity to research the tragedy.

As we are going to explain later this month (despite us being on vacation), there are many actions in progress and this awareness campaign is even reaching television, not just radio and newspapers. The EPO’s management increasingly finds itself becoming the story. Not patents it grants are the story but the corruption of the management itself. The amount of public pressure has become proportional to the degree of repression and the more the EPO tries to suppress publication (or staff awareness of these issues), the worse it is getting. Some have already pointed out the sharp rise (an order of magnitude) in suicides — a fact that the bureaucrats will find incredibly hard to refute. It is merely a side effect or a symptom of the EPO going rogue. █

Links 21/9/2015: Tizen 3.0, Red Hat’s Results Coming

Posted in News Roundup at 1:52 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNOME bluefish

Contents

GNU/Linux

Free Software/Open Source

  • Microsoft’s wake-up call on software piracy

    With piracy-related lawsuits becoming a looming possibility, open-source software seems to be the answer

  • Exercising Software Freedom in the Global Email System

    In this post, I discuss one example of how a choice for software freedom can cause many strange problems that others will dismiss. My goal here is to explain in gory detail how proprietary software biases in the computing world continue to grow, notwithstanding Open Source ballyhoo.

    Two decades ago, nearly every company, organization, entity, and tech-minded individual ran their own email server. Generally speaking, even back then, nearly all the software for both MTAs and MUAs were Free Software0. MTA’s are the mail transport agents — the complex software that moves email around from one Internet domain to another. MUAs are the mail user agents, sometimes called mail clients — the local programs with which users manipulate their own email.

    I’ve run my own MTA since around 1993: initially with sendmail, then with exim for a while, and with Postfix since 1999 or so. Also, everywhere I’ve worked throughout my entire career since 1995, I’ve either been in charge of — or been the manager of the person in charge of — the MTA installation for the organization where I worked. In all cases, that MTA has always been Free Software, of course.

  • Open source ‘essential for heritage preservation’

    Working together on open source tools based on open standards is very important for those involved in the preservation of digital information, says Barbara Sierman, board member of the Open Preservation Foundation.

  • GNU/Linux Touted As Safe Replacement For Illegal Software In Bangladesh
  • FOSS the Solution to Piracy, Newspaper Says

    On September 9, a Bangladeshi English language newspaper, Dhaka Tribune, reported that the country’s Intellectual Property Rights (IPR) Task Force and Copyright officials had seized 69 laptops with pirated Microsoft software and arrested two high ranking officials at Flora, one of Bangladesh’s largest computer retailers. The raid came after two years of newspaper ads sponsored by the country’s Copyright Office warning about the legal implications of selling pirated goods.

  • AT&T’s Chiosi: Unite on Open Source or Suffer

    The telecom industry needs to agree on how it wants the various pieces of open source to come together in a platform for the future, AT&T’s Margaret Chiosi said here Thursday. Otherwise, there is the risk of a splintered effort that will ultimately slow critical network transformation.

    Chiosi, a Distinguished Network Architect at AT&T Inc. (NYSE: T) who is also president of the Open Platform for NFV Project Inc. and one of the original players in the European Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI) NFV ISG, explained why open source is critical to AT&T’s Integrated Cloud (AIC) architecture — its converged services platform moving forward — and outlined the numerous open source groups in which the telecom giant is participating, which span 700 different projects.

  • Google’s Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software uses Tesseract

    Google’s OCR is probably using dependencies of Tesseract, an OCR engine released as free software, or OCRopus, a free document analysis and optical character recognition (OCR) system that is primarily used in Google Books. Developed as a community project during 1995-2006 and later taken over by Google, Tesseract is considered one of the most accurate OCR engines and works for over 60 languages. The source code is available on GitHub.

  • Modest CEO on open source and acquisition by PayPal

    Professionally, Harper was CTO of Threadless and then CTO of Obama for America. He’s currently CEO of Modest, Inc., which was recently acquired by PayPal. I asked him what really drives him and he said, “I like to have fun and do interesting things.” Also, in a talk Harper gave in Sweden in 2014, he said that he strives to hire people who looked different from him. In this interview, I ask him more about that and his upcoming All Things Open talk.

  • Google, Twitter Forge Open Source Publishing Partnership

    Google will be coming late to the publishing party, having failed to challenge Facebook with its own social media platforms — the short-lived Google Buzz and the faltering Google+, noted SEO researcher Joshua J. Bachynski. Google’s inability to understand its user base has forced it to form an uneasy partnership with Twitter and others, he suggested.

  • Events

    • A Preliminary systemd.conf 2015 Schedule is Now Online!

      We are happy to announce that an initial, preliminary version of the systemd.conf 2015 schedule is now online! (Please ignore that some rows in the schedule link the same session twice on that page. That’s a bug in the web site CMS we are working on to fix.)

    • Software Freedom Day 2015 Phnom Penh

      The Digital Freedom Foundation is organizing our Software Freedom Day event in Phnom Penh together with the National Institute of Posts Telecommunications and ICT and the Ministry of Posts and Telecommunications on September 19, 2015 at the NIPTICT Building. There will be 10 presentations and several lightening talks with topics covering free and open source software ranging from operating system, virtualization, drones, mapping, servers, to security. Here is the detailed schedule.

    • How will you celebrate Software Freedom Day?

      Software Freedom Day is a global celebration of free and open source software (FOSS). What will you to on September 19, 2015 to celebrate?

      We hope you can choose to do many of the options we listed in our poll to help celebrate FOSS on Software Freedom Day, but even if you can only do one that will be a great benefit to the community.

  • Web Browsers

    • Shopping for a Browser

      I remain deeply suspicious of Chrome, since it has been reported to be snooping on its users and reporting back to Google. And, sadly, the latest news from Firefox is discouraging. It’s possible that that adware and snoopware will be left out of Mozilla’s SeaMonkey browser, which I have recently installed.

    • Mozilla

      • The Firefox Is in the Hen House

        For a variety of reasons that nobody outside of Mozilla seems to completely understand, Mozilla ended its relationship with Google late last year to ink a deal with Yahoo. Some pundits are figuring that Yahoo offered better terms and that Mozilla stands to make more money now than before, especially since it’s now selling default search on a country-by-country basis instead of carte blanche for the entire planet. Others say the change in affiliation had little to do with money, but was brought about by ideological reasons, basically revolving around Mozilla’s Do Not Track system, which Google does not support. Reportedly, as part of the new deal, Yahoo has agreed to abide by Do Not Track requests.

        Whether Mozilla receives more income from Yahoo than it did from Google is questionable, even if a majority of Firefox users keep Yahoo instead of flipping the switch to Google search, which is doubtful. Certainly, a recent move by Mozilla might indicate that the new deal with Yahoo isn’t as fruitful as the organization had hoped and that it’s scrambling to create new revenue streams.

      • Announcing Rust 1.3

        The gear keeps turning: we’re releasing Rust 1.3 stable today! As always, read on for the highlights and check the release notes for more detail.

  • Oracle/Java/LibreOffice

    • Dutch Standards Board mulls making ODF mandatory

      The Standardisation Board of the Netherlands wants to make the use of the Open Document Format mandatory for Dutch public administrations. ODF is one of the required ICT standards in the Netherlands, following a policy dating from 2007. However, the document format is ignored by most. This should change, said Nico Westpalm van Hoorn, the chairman of the standards board, speaking on Tuesday at the ODF Plugfest in The Hague.

    • Italian military to switch to LibreOffice and ODF

      The Italian military is transitioning to LibreOffice and the Open Document Format (ODF). The Ministry of Defense will over the next year-and-a-half install this suite of office productivity tools on some 150,000 PC workstations – making it Europe’s second largest LibreOffice implementation. The switch was announced on 15 September by the LibreItalia Association.

      The migration project will begin in October and is foreseen to be completed at the end of 2016.

      The deployment of LibreOffice will be jointly managed by the two organisations, announces LibreItalia. The NGO will help the ministry to ready trainers in different parts of the military, and the Ministry is to develop a series of online courses to help with the switch to LibreOffice. The material is to be made public using a Creative Commons licence.

      An agreement between the Ministry and LibreItalia was signed on 15 September in Rome, by Ruggiero Di Biase, Rear Admiral and General Manager of the Italian Ministry of Defence Information Systems and Sonia Montegiove, President of Associazione LibreItalia.

    • LibreOffice Installations In EU Governments Approach One Million

      The government of the UK, in its guidance on using ODF (Open Document Format) surveys usage of ODF and LibreOffice by EU governments. Usage is huge and widespread and profitable. Lately, The Netherlands is considering making ODF mandatory in government. That this was obvious to me 15 years ago but is now being acknowledged shows the depth of lock-in M$ has caused in the world but, in 2015, folks are now running on the sandy beaches instead of in neck-deep water. The world is finally being freed. Better late than never.

    • FSF turns 30, Italian Military Goes LO and ODF & More…
    • Italy’s Ministry of Defense to Drop Microsoft Office in Favor of LibreOffice
    • Making FLOSS The Default Option Helps Procurement For Government
    • ​Italian Ministry of Defense moves to LibreOffice
    • Forza open-source: Italian military to adopt LibreOffice

  • CMS

    • WordPress brings the freedom to the front

      About 75 million Web sites depend on WordPress. If you are one of its many users who recently upgraded to Version 4.3, you may have noticed something new. Recently, a coop worker-member, Pea, informed me that this version includes a new tab with a reference to the GNU General Public License. With some quizzical interest, I ran the upgrade on a WordPress instance I maintain.

      I eagerly waited for the upgrade to finish. When it loaded, what I saw was typical for a WordPress upgrade, a description of the version’s new features. Then I saw a tab prominently named “Freedom.” I clicked on it, and boom: right there were the four freedoms of free software, starting with Freedom 0. Take a look for yourself.

  • Business

  • BSD

  • FSF/FSFE/GNU/SFLC

  • Public Services/Government

    • Swiss checklist to procuring open source

      A fifteen-point checklist to help public administrations to procure open source software solutions and services was published in August by Swiss open source procurement experts. The list helps to determine which procurement specifications take this type of software into account, and which criteria exclude open source.

  • Openness/Sharing

  • Programming

  • Standards/Consortia

    • UK Cabinet Office Says “Hello, You Must be Going” to ODF

      Technological evolution is famous for obsoleting wonders created just a few years before. Sometimes new developments moot the fiercest battles between competitors as well. That seemed to be the case last week, when Microsoft announced its Azure Cloud Switch (ACS), a cross-platform modular operating system for data center networking built on…(wait for it)…Linux, the open source software assailed by the company’s prior CEO as a communist cancer.

      It also saw the UK Cabinet Office announce its detailed plans for transitioning to the support of the OpenDocument Format (ODF), a document format that was just as fiercely opposed by Microsoft in the most hard-fought standards war in decades. But at the same time, the Cabinet Office announced its commitment to work towards making document formats as close to obsolete as possible.

Leftovers

  • Security

  • Environment/Energy/Wildlife

  • Finance

    • Uruguay: Governing Coalition Rejects TISA Negotiations

      The executive branch will still make a final decision over the matter, to be presented in October.

      The ruling progressivist coalition Broad Front overwhelmingly decided to withdraw Uruguay from the negotiations on the supra-national trade-deal TISA (Trade in Services Agreement) in a vote on Saturday.

      With a 117 to 139 vote, the decision was backed by the Movement of Popular Participation (of former President Jose “Pepe” Mujica), the Communist Party, the 711 list (of Vice President Raul Sendic), the Party for the Victory of the People (PVP), the Great House (Casa Grande), the Federal League, and the Socialist Party (of current President Tabare Vazquez).

    • ‘Lesson 1: The enemy is always within’

      When YANIS VAROUFAKIS appeared at TUC Congress, he said the ‘magnificent’ Greek people were ready for the struggle with financiers — only to be betrayed by his own party. And he warned that fearful leaders could one day be the downfall of Britain’s people too. Joe Gill reports

      GREEK ex-finance minister Yanis Varoufakis brought some rock star glamour to the opening of the TUC Congress on Sunday in Brighton. He smiled for selfie shots with delegates at a 1,000-plus meeting. Delegates were high on the back of Jeremy Corbyn’s stunning victory in the Labour leadership battle the day before.

    • EU Proposes New Corporate Sovereignty Court For TAFTA/TTIP; US Not Interested

      As we have reported, the most problematic aspect of the proposed TAFTA/TTIP trade agreement between the US and the EU has been the proposed corporate sovereignty chapter, formally known as investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS). The outcry over this was so great in Europe last year that the European Commission put negotiations of this topic on hold, while it carried out a public consultation on the matter — presumably assuming that the extremely technical questions about this complex issue would kill off any further interest by the public. Instead, an unprecedented 150,000 submissions were received, 145,000 of which said get rid of ISDS completely. In response, the European Commission merely promised to try to address the many concerns raised with a new and “improved” version.

  • PR/AstroTurf/Lobbying

    • The BBC is Irredeemable

      The extent of BBC bias during the referendum campaign was breathtaking. I have worked, and specifically reported on the media, in dictatorships which had a less insidious and complete bias than the BBC has against Scottish independence. The relentless anti-Corbyn propaganda shows that the BBC exists to reinforce the neo-liberal narrative at all costs, both at home and abroad. Laura Kuenssberg achieved levels of disdain and ridicule in her report on Shadow Cabinet appointments this evening that ought to disqualify her forever from employment anywhere but Fox News. This was followed by ‘Reporting Scotland’ and a long propaganda piece against the idea of a second referendum, replete with lies about pledges of ‘once in a lifetime’.

    • Fox & Friends Sunday Is Very Concerned Stephen Colbert Wore A Black Lives Matter Wristband
    • Jack Straw and Malcolm Rifkind are cleared over “cash-for-access” allegations

      Former Foreign Secretaries Sir Malcolm Rifkind and Jack Straw were today cleared over lobbying allegations.

      The pair, who both stood down at May’s general election, were apparently caught offering their services for cash in separate hidden camera stings by Channel 4’s Dispatches and the Telegraph.

      Standards watchdog Kathryn Hudson investigated claims they had broken strict lobbying rules.

    • Congress Is a Confederacy of Dunces

      Already we’re deep into September and Congress has reconvened in Washington, prompting many commentators to compare its return after summer’s recess to that of fresh-faced students coming back to school, sharpening their pencils, ready to learn, be cooperative and prepared for something new.

  • Censorship

    • Heightened Trade Secrets Restrictions Could Chill Global Speech

      Trade secrets are seeing a resurgence of attention by policymakers at home and around the world. While there can be legitimate reasons to keep commercially valuable information secret, particularly amongst those with whom it has been shared in confidence, the latest trade secrets push goes further, potentially entangling whistleblowers and journalists.

  • Privacy

  • Civil Rights

    • Moral Obligation = Conscience, Trump

      Further, what does it say about the GOP that their front-runner for candidacy has no conscience? This latest gaffe is not the only indicator. Trump also thinks it would be a good idea to just round up ~11million “illegal immigrants”. How many Jews/communists/opponents did the Nazis have to round up before they committed a crime against humanity? Trump also holds that being born in USA should not convey citizenship… Trump is insane and the GOP is either insane or about to fragment to avoid schizophrenia. That a huge fraction of USAian citizens might vote for this guy is frightening. It’s like 1930s Germany/Italy all over again. Whether Trump could make political deals or get the trains to run on time, he should be shunned in the political arena. If, in our worst nightmare, Trump should be elected, the world should immediately sever all relations with USA to keep him in check.

  • Intellectual Monopolies

    • Copyrights

      • Presidential candidate Lawrence Lessig goes one on one with Ars

        Lessig: The question isn’t just what policies a candidate supports. If that were the question, we’d have climate change, a public option for health care, immigration reform, background checks on guns, etc., etc., etc. The question instead is also: What is the plan to get that policy enacted?

        What every presidency since Clinton teaches us is that presidents promise reform, and then fail to act on it. That’s not weakness. It’s structural. A regular president cannot take on Congress. It will take a president with a super-mandate. That’s what the referendum presidency is meant to achieve.

        Ars: Campaign finance reform clearly is not a bipartisan issue. How are you going to get the GOP interested in this issue? And is this why you are running as a Democrat? In fact, given your platform, why have you chosen a party?

        Lessig: Two words: Donald Trump. Until Donald Trump, it’s true that among GOP insiders in DC, corruption wasn’t an issue. After Donald Trump, it is as much a question for Republicans as Democrats: How can we have a Congress free to lead?

        I wish there were a way to run as an independent. But the two parties have made that essentially impossible—at least to win. No doubt I could split the vote of the Democratic Party, but I have no desire to Nader this election.

09.17.15

European Patent Office Expands Censorship and Intimidation Against Staff as Pressure Mounts

Posted in Europe, Patents at 2:15 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Chinese labour and Internet standards in Europe

Manchester

Summary: The management of the European Patent Office (EPO) continues to increase its repressive assaults on EPO staff, essentially blocking access to additional sites which explain what the EPO is really doing and why this is wrong

COINCIDING with staff protests/demonstrations (but not strikes) that took place on Tuesday, the muzzling of Florian Müller gets reported. “EPO leadership pressured SUEPO to remove link to my blog from its homepage,” he told me earlier this week, shortly after writing that “In July it became known that the EPO blocked examiners’ access to TechRights” (source), correctly adding that it merely invokes more backlash. The “recommended reading for whomever at the EPO [...] prohibit links to this blog: the Streisand effect.”

The EPO is possibly trying to block (censor) evidence of the censorship itself. That’s how pathetic they’re becoming now. Are they really willing to go down this rabbit hole?

“Document temporarily removed due to threats of reprisals from EPO management,” says SUEPO’s public page in numerous places (with slight variations). “SUEPO is taking appropriate action to counter the threats.”

Well, welcome to the European Union’s most corrupt organisation, where censorship is part of the plan to hide evidence of the corruption, and sites that cover the censorship are themselves being censored, too. China or Russia are where one might expect such behaviour, not the European Union.

So, the EPO is now censoring/filtering/blocking yet another blog, and for what? It’s not as though the staff cannot access these sites from their mobile devices or their homes. Not many staff would be ‘brave’ enough to access sites critical of the EPO from within the premises of the EPO anyway, especially now that widespread surveillance (including cameras and keyloggers) is common knowledge among staff.

It seems likely that Müller became a target of censorship and suppression after he had posted a letter or a bunch of letters which the EPO’s management does not want to be public, for it proves bad behaviour. It actually started in Techrights and as Müller put it on Tuesday: “Last week, the TechRights blog published a letter by the head of the EPO’s investigative unit to Elizabeth Hardon, the chairwoman of the Munich chapter of the Staff Union of the European Patent Office (SUEPO), summoning her to a hearing last Thursday. I also blogged about this development because it shows that the promise of “union recognition” is just a carrot the EPO leadership has been dangling to staff without any genuine desire to improve the internal climate.

“Mrs. Hardon has probably never been at a greater risk of being fired, and the EPO is now not only talking about that scenario but additionally threatening “to take any other legal measures against [her]” over the alleged disclosure of the letter that was published last week.”

Any letter with threats in it is likely to spread sooner or later (at Techrights we never know the identity of our sources), so the EPO’s management must have been foolish to assume that it’ll never be leaked or sent out to a reporter at some stage. It merely proves that this management is incompetent. It believes that silencing opposition will work rather than continuously backfire and this is why after a relatively calm summer the management comes under fire again. Last week the Dutch media reported on the subject and we now have article translations [PDF]. These were published by SUEPO, which added: “Translations in English, French and German are available by scrolling through the document. The article was also published in the paper version of 10 September 2015.”

Here is the article’s text in English:

EPO President Benoit Battistelli. © ANP

Alarm about reign of terror at the European Patent Office after fifth suicide

The union Suepo has raised the alarm about the suicide of an employee at the European Patent Office (EPO) in Rijswijk. According to Suepo, poisoned working conditions may have contributed to the fifth suicide in three years at the Patent Office.

By: Anneke Stoffelen, 10 September 2015, 02:26

The European Patent Office employs around 7000 staff, spread over five offices in different countries, who evaluate patents for 38 affiliated member countries.

Staff representatives have previously raised the alarm about the reign of terror apparently being conducted by French EPO President Benoît Battistelli. According to Suepo, the work pressure has increased enormously under his leadership and changes to working conditions have been forced through by Battistelli unilaterally. Anyone who expresses criticism can expect reprisals.

Together with a number of other member countries, the Netherlands has expressed its concerns about the entrenched social climate within the EPO. In a letter to the Lower House in July, State Secretary for Economic Affairs Dijksma wrote: ‘Partly as a result of these signals a ‘social dialogue’ has been launched between management and staff representatives’.

A 42 year old employee in Rijswijk committed suicide in August, on the last day of his holidays.

However, the situation has not improved since then. In a letter to the 38 representatives of the EPO countries that supervise the organisation, the union has now raised the alarm about the death of the 42 year old employee at the Rijswijk office. He committed suicide in August, on the last day of his holidays.

It is the fifth time in just over three years that an EPO employee has committed suicide. In 2013 an employee jumped from the seventh floor of the office building in Rijswijk during working hours. The other three cases of suicide related to staff at the EPO head office in Munich.

France Telecom

In its letter, the union Suepo draws a comparison with the situation at France Telecom, which in 2008 and 2009 was afflicted with a wave of suicides amongst staff. The union wants the management of the EPO to assist with an independent investigation into the working conditions at the Patent Office.

On 26 August the union wrote a letter to Battistelli requesting a meeting about the potential measures for improving the work situation, however, so far the EPO President has refused to grant such a meeting.

“It is tragic that Suepo is once again abusing a personal tragedy and inciting controversy”, President Battistelli in a letter to the union.

‘It is tragic that Suepo is once again abusing a personal tragedy and inciting controversy, when condolences should be in order’, wrote Battistelli to the union. ‘The link that you appear to be drawing between the death of a colleague and recent reorganisations and the working atmosphere in general, seems totally inappropriate.’

Suepo says that a direct link between the suicide and the working conditions has not been demonstrated but that the Labour Inspectorate should be given the opportunity of
investigating this tragedy.

However, the EPO is not obliged to assist with such an investigation because as an international organisation it enjoys legal immunity. Consequently, the EPO management can also disregard a ruling by The Hague Court of Appeal with impunity. In February, the Court of Appeal ruled that the EPO was in breach of human rights by obstructing the activities of the union.

For other translations see the original PDF. █

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