04.13.17
Gemini version available ♊︎Politician Links UPC to EPO Abuses and Slams the European Commission for Overlooking EPO Tragedies Like “Violations of Fundamental Rights” and Deaths
At what cost can politicians turn a blind eye to the destruction of the EPO (some believe to promote/shield the UPC, as Maas certainly does)
Summary: A new parliamentary intervention shows that some — albeit very few — politicians do pay attention or care about the situation at the European Patent Office and they try to do something about it
MARC TARABELLA (S&D) is already familiar with EPO scandals and last year he accused the Commission of being passively complicit in the EPO's abuses.
Tarabella, according to SUEPO, has just brought up “European Patent Office (EPO) and social abuses,” putting forth the following “Question for written answer E-002338/2017 to the European Commission…”
From SUEPO’s English translation, which was published earlier today:
In 2016 The President of the European Patent Office dismissed three elected staff representatives, all of them members of the staff union. Three other staff representatives were aggressively demoted in 2015 and 2016. Over the past four years five staff members of the EPO have committed suicide. Sheltering behind its immunity, the EPO has refused any independent enquiry by the local authorities concerned with regard to the circumstances of these deaths. While it is true that the Supreme Court of the Netherlands has recently upheld the immunity of the EPO, the findings of the Court of Appeal with regard to the violations of fundamental rights remain totally valid. If these events had occurred within European institutions, there can be no doubt that action would have been taken rapidly to determine where responsibility lay and to impose the appropriate penalties, but nothing of that kind has been done with the EPO.
“If these events had occurred within European institutions, there can be no doubt that action would have been taken rapidly to determine where responsibility lay and to impose the appropriate penalties, but nothing of that kind has been done with the EPO.”The EU Commission has entrusted the EPO with producing the Unitary Patent. All of the twenty eight countries of the EU are represented on the Administrate Council of the EPO. The Commission has a seat as an observer, and can therefore make its voice heard. For more than three years, many members of parliament have also been condemning the highly “problematic” social situation at the EPO. Is it not high time that it made its views known, and takes up the position adopted by parliament with regard to the EPO?
What if the official position of the European Commission on these social abuses?
Is it in favour of an independent enquiry?
The EPO’s management is of course trying to ignore all this while pretending to be "with science" (or “with research”). It’s distracting at a huge expense even while is mocks and attacks science (more on that later today). Earlier today the EPO promoted this nonsense again. This publicity stunt, which EPO applicants are paying for against their will, is designed to accomplish nothing but distraction. It’s just something for the EPO’s PR people to link to and say that they “support science” even when they promote lies and human rights abuses. █
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