Raw: SUEPO Connected the Unitary Patent (UPC) to Abuses at the European Patent Office
- Dr. Roy Schestowitz
- 2017-12-25 06:22:36 UTC
- Modified: 2017-12-25 06:22:36 UTC
Summary: SUEPO's letter to the boss of Jesper Kongstad, a protector of Benoît Battistelli who allegedly got sacked a few years later
Mr Henrik Sass Larsen
Minister of Business and Growth in Denmark
Danish Ministry of Business and Growth - Erhvervs- og Vækstministeriet,
Slotsholmsgade 10-12, 1216 København K
min@evm.dk
Unitary Patent and European Patent Organisation - Your duty to safeguard the fundamental rights of EPO staff
Dear Mr Sass Larsen,
We are writing to you as the Central Chairs of the Staff Union of the European Patent Office (SUEPO). Around 50% of the 7000 staff members of the European Patent Office are members of our Union.
At a time when Denmark is facing an important referendum on whether or not to join the Community Patent Court, it is important to ensure that no relevant factors that could potentially prove damaging are disregarded.
The Kingdom of Denmark is a member of the European Patent Organisation, whose supervisory body is the Administrative Council (AC) of the EPO. The current AC Chairman is the Danish representative, Mr Jesper Kongstad who is also concurrently Director General of the Danish Patent Office (DKPTO). As head of the Ministry of Growth and Business, all of Mr Kongstad’s actions fall ultimately under your responsibility.
There are well-reasoned concerns that suggest that the EPO is flouting established and internationally recognized principles of labour law. SUEPO has brought these concerns to the attention of the Administrative Council and Chair in a letter dated 3 March 2013 entitled “Social Democracy - Mr Battistelli's reform of the Staff Representation”. You will find a copy attached to this letter.
As executive President of the EPO, Mr Benoît Battistelli (FR) has adopted a dubious management style that may be characterized by authoritarianism and a complete disrespect for rights that are assuredly fundamental rights within a democratic country like Denmark. To give you just a few of many examples:
- Mr Battistelli has severely limited the right to strike: it is contingent on his accepting the grounds for striking and eventually approving the request to strike, all before he will then allow any industrial action to take place
- Freedom of speech is severely curtailed; staff who voice dissent are punished.
- Any staff member can be subject to an investigation by a newly created internal police force; they can neither keep silent nor be assisted by legal counsel.
- Access to independent justice is both limited and very ineffective.
All these unilaterally enforced changes have led to the worst social conflict at the EPO in its 40 years of existence. There is no indication of any improvement in the situation on the horizon - on the contrary, it seems the situation will only get worse. Not only are these changes one-sided, they risk emasculating the checks and balances in place to moderate EPO governance. We fear that in the medium term there will be heavy costs to pay in terms of the health and welfare of staff: such a regime will lead to stress, burnout or something worse. In the long term, legal inadequacies could pose problems of liability for the organisation itself, and for the Member States that fail to ensure that EPO employees enjoy the same fundamental rights as all other citizens of Europe.
Moreover, as a minister in a genuinely social-democratic government of a country that has a long-standing reputation for transparent governance, you should be concerned about the opacity of any available information concerning the EPO. The salary and terms of service of Mr Battistelli (in contrast to those of his predecessor) are kept secret. His accountability to the Administrative Council, and therefore the Member States, is limited. The perceived impartiality of one of the Auditors who, in theory, should work on behalf of the Administrative Council, might be questioned when the successful candidate happens to have been the closest associate of Mr Battistelli during his tenure at the French Patent Office (INPI). Indeed, Mr Battistelli has appointed to several key positions within the EPO a number of former associates from INPI, far exceeding the normal level of representation for France (please see http://suepo.org/public/su14062cp.pdf).
All of these changes have happened under the eyes of the Danish delegation and the Chairmanship of Mr Kongstad, both of whom have always supported Mr Battistelli.
Taking all the above information into consideration, we would ask you to take a position on your duty to safeguard the fundamental rights of EPO staff and brief your delegation and Mr Kongstad before the next AC meeting accordingly.
Yours sincerely,
[Omitted]
Recent Techrights' Posts
- Rewriting Things in Rust
- How far would you go?
- What Microsoft Reputation Laundering (With a Weaponised Law Degree) Looks Like in a Foreign Continent
- You would expect this in uncivilised and primitive countries
- Slopwatch: LLMs 'Write' Fake or Distorted 'News' About "Linux"
- LLM slop disguised as news
- Weeks After Microsoft Bankruptcy in Russia the Company Shuts Down in Pakistan, Too
- Last month Windows' share in Pakistan fell to an all-time low
-
- Links 05/07/2025: Hungary and US Defecting to Russia, "Google's Hotseat Hypocrisy"
- Links for the day
- Gemini Links 05/07/2025: 4th of July 2025 and "Zig Roadmap 2026"
- Links for the day
- How to Combat the Exploitation and Abuse by Microsoft GitHub
- Not to mention corruption and crimes against women
- Bryan Lunduke is Actually Sending His Audience to Attack People
- "[Lunduke] is actually sending his audience to attack people."
- Even The Right Wing is Rejecting Bryan Lunduke
- no wonder he became so irrelevant and marginal
- Microsoft's MSN Helps Microsoft Spread Lies About the Layoffs' Scale (Well Over 25,000 People Laid Off This Year)
- There seem to be monopolies on lies and on truth
- The Death of X Has Been Greatly Exaggerated (by Compromised Media)
- X.Org Server is alive and well
- In 2025 Everything is "AI". Remember Blockchains?
- Talk about what companies and things (services, products, software) actually do, not the labels they use
- Julian Assange Has Been Free for a Year
- Julian Assange and I disagreed on some things
- Monopolies and Scalping
- Monopolies gravitate towards price hikes
- Over at Tux Machines...
- GNU/Linux news for the past day
- IRC Proceedings: Friday, July 04, 2025
- IRC logs for Friday, July 04, 2025
- Microsoft's August Layoffs Wave: "August is Confirmed for Additional Performance Based Cuts"
- "August is confirmed for additional performance based cuts from the recent connects along with additional organizational cuts."
- Links 04/07/2025: Google Replaces the Web With Slop, "AI Might Kill Us All"
- Links for the day
- Gemini Links 04/07/2025: Mindfulness and F1
- Links for the day
- Rob Musial's June 2025 Additions of Malware in Proprietary Software
- Via the GNU Web site this week
- Links 04/07/2025: Microsoft's H-1B Visa Applications Show Another Crisis Unfolding, Many More Deep Cuts and Shutdowns Revealed, Complete Microsoft Exits
- Links for the day
- Gemini Links 04/07/2025: A Day To Remember and "Stop Killing Games"
- Links for the day
- Crime and Corruption at Microsoft GitHub Cannot be Covered Up by SLAPPs in Another Continent
- We'll write about this for a long time to come
- Slop Videos Are Disappointing Garbage, Nothing New, Just Brute Force up on Display or a Pedestal of Slop
- Slop videos aren't a new thing
- Over at Tux Machines...
- GNU/Linux news for the past day
- IRC Proceedings: Thursday, July 03, 2025
- IRC logs for Thursday, July 03, 2025
- The War on Local Storage (People Hosting Their Files Locally and Privately)
- There's nothing wrong with controlling one's computing
- What Digital Independence Means
- Independence in the digital realms means abandoning platforms like GitHub, not just rejecting proprietary software
- NVidia is a Bubble
- they temporarily see fortunes and wrongly assume perpetuity thereof
- Fedora Does Not Care About Diversity and Inclusion, It's About Optics (Corporate Image)
- any notion of inclusion is superficial and misleading
- Don't Buy the Excuses for Microsoft's Mass Layoffs
- Back in the 90s, Microsoft bought a lot of companies to get and stay ahead
- Happy Independence Day to Our American Readers
- Maybe tomorrow will be a good opportunity to explain to American people - in terms of concepts, not brands - which tools respect their independence
- Slopwatch: Linux Journal, Linuxsecurity, and Google News Getting Even Worse (More Slopfarms Added Which Attack Linux With Bruce-Force SPAM)
- Google News is part of the same problem
- Links 03/07/2025: More Cuts and Cancellations at Microsoft Revealed
- Links for the day
- Gemini Links 03/07/2025: Favourite Child and Launching WikiGem
- Links for the day
- GNU/Linux is Replacing Microsoft Windows. But We Need to Eradicate Microsoft, It's a Hub of Crime.
- I have been writing about Microsoft since the 1990s when I was in school
- Mystery Surrounding the PCLinuxOS Sites and PCLinuxOS Magazine
- Let's hope this isn't something major
- People and Companies Do Learn Some Lessons From Their Mistakes (Stubborn Ones Don't)
- Brett Wilson LLP is an example of one that would rather drown in mistakes
- Links 03/07/2025: 'Hey Hi' Slop Ridiculed Some More and Microsoft's Layoffs Tally for 2025 Reaches About 29,000 in Just 6 Months (Almost 5,000 Per Month)
- Links for the day
- Microsoft Staff Harassing Women, Strangling Women, Telling Women to Kill Themselves and Worse? Not a Problem!
- Two women have left Brett Wilson LLP
- The Slopfarms Are Losing the Plot (and Google is Propping Up Rogue Sites)
- Google is part of the attack on the Web, on information, and on technology
- New BetaNews Realises There's No Potential or Future in Slopfarms, Prior Editor Wayne Williams is Back
- They realise that slop (so-called "AI") cannot replace humans
- Claims That Microsoft Looks for Staff That Works More and Gets Paid Less (or Can Only Code by Grabbing Other People's Code, Under the Guise of "AI")
- People can form their own opinion
- Richard Stallman Was Right About Reasons Not to Use Microsoft
- last updated 2017
- Over at Tux Machines...
- GNU/Linux news for the past day
- IRC Proceedings: Wednesday, July 02, 2025
- IRC logs for Wednesday, July 02, 2025
- Gemini Links 03/07/2025: No to Cloudflare and Small Web July
- Links for the day