11.24.20
Posted in Deals, Deception, DRM, GNU/Linux, Microsoft, Vista 10, Windows, Wine at 7:56 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Published hours ago as a press release paid for by WSL (Windows) boosters
Summary: The press release above (link omitted, it was pinned in several sites) is a cause for concern; after Microsoft infiltrated OSI and the Linux Foundation (both are now GitHub boosters, in effect diverting projects to Microsoft’s proprietary monopoly) it’ll be important to watch this space
THE word “mole” may seem rather strong, but it’s in the press release. The same people who have already infiltrated Canonical to a certain degree (to promote Microsoft Windows in the official Ubuntu blog) are now picking another sort of ‘outpost’, not even elaborating on the nature of the said collaboration.
“If Microsoft genuinely loved Linux, it would improve WINE.”Those who are familiar with the antics and tactics of Whitewater Foundry would rightly be concerned. This is a move that’s anything but exciting, except perhaps for Microsoft (if it hopes to more tightly control the WINE project through these people).
If Microsoft genuinely loved Linux, it would improve WINE. WSL is the very opposite of that — it’s about keeping people away from GNU/Linux and getting them stuck inside Vista 10 with all the back doors, the extensive surveillance, the DRM and so on. CodeWeavers basically sells proprietary software based on the Free software, which is WINE. Why would it wish to get closer to Whitewater Foundry? Time will tell, but it doesn’t look good. This would not benefit GNU/Linux but Microsoft’s war on GNU/Linux (it's about control, akin to what the deal with Novell sought to achieve) █
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Posted in Europe, Law, Patents at 6:34 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
As did a few other law firms as of late, mostly for practical reasons rather than illegality (ripe for espionage)
Can’t anyone see that outsourcing ‘European’ legal proceedings to the United States is outright absurd and unlawful?
Summary: Few courageous attorneys are willing to speak out about (and against) what EPO management is doing right now, in effect exploiting a public health crisis to override the law, spy on lots of people, outsource legal proceedings to the United States and so on
THE management of the EPO isn’t fooling staff. The management will have its E-mail boxes stuffed by complaints this week. This kind of action is long overdue and may be effective when staff cannot congregate (legally) to protest.
“Well, as it turns out, not everyone in the patent/legal profession appreciates this ridiculous rush to ViCo, which now forces (or compels) parties to participate in something illegal (SUEPO cited the relevant laws or regulations).”What about law firms and attorneys? As it turns out, those with a spine are willing to speak out and we’re thankful to the few that do. Thorsten Bausch (Hoffmann Eitle) wrote about the EPO’s management breaking the law (again), this time by rushing to ViCo (or VICO, the spelling varies). Laws replaced by buzzwords and catchy acronyms?
The “EPO should also listen to the parties’ concerns,” Dr. Bausch explains, “against oral proceedings by VICO in an individual case and take them seriously.”
As we put it the other week, using an analogy and moreover paraphrasing the EPO’s misleading text: “Nuclear weapons advances have been broadly welcomed by the military profession.”
Well, as it turns out, not everyone in the patent/legal profession appreciates this ridiculous rush to ViCo, which now forces (or compels) parties to participate in something illegal (SUEPO cited the relevant laws or regulations). From Dr. Bausch’s analysis/opinion:
With that, we are back in the present. Just recently, the EPO President has ordered (oktroyiert) that oral proceedings before the Opposition Divisions will from now on take place via videoconference (VICO). Consent of the parties will be no longer required.
[...]
So, to cut it short, VICO as a means to hold oral proceedings in opposition proceedings were available since (at least) May 2020. Yet alas, they were not accepted by “the patent profession” to an extent sufficient to clear the EPO’s backlog. Thus, time to tell the profession how to do it properly. Thank you, Mr. President.
It is more the style of this communication that disturbs me than the substance of the President’s decision. I (and I think this applies to the majority of the patent profession) do realize that we live in difficult times, and that oral proceedings in person before the Opposition Divisions are not exactly what should be done in order to keep your contacts to the necessary minimum. I also understand that the EPO is building up a backlog of cases if no or only a few decisions can be made in COVID-19 times. The patent profession will suffer at least as much from this backlog as the EPO itself. Just imagine if you have to attend to (and ideally win) 2 or more oral proceedings every week… – So, I understand that something should be done to avoid this unpleasant state of affairs. But is this not the point in time where to conduct a public consultation and collect both the ideas of stakeholders and their concerns before announcing such a decision? Conversely, if you understand your position as the boss of an Octroybureau, why bother?
[...]
So this new Article would enable and empower the Boards of Appeal to adopt a “new normal”, i.e. oral proceedings by videoconference “if the Board considers it appropriate to do so“. Notably, this new Article in its present form would apply indefinitely, i.e. may well outlive the current COVID-19 situation. I would not be surprised if the Boards of Appeal and their President would tell us that this is definitely not intended and that the Boards would certainly return to the “old normal” after the end of the pandemic. I would even accept and believe that at face value. However, this is precisely the problem of enablement laws – you are completely dependent on the goodwill of the persons you have empowered. I personally would therefore much prefer a legal solution that is either limited in time from the beginning or made dependent on a declaration of the President of the Boards of Appeal or (better) by the Administrative Council that there is a state of emergency due to a pandemic, during which special rules apply, but these rules cease to be applied once this state of emergency has ended. If my understanding is correct, this is also how several contracting states (including Germany) have formulated their infection protection laws.
[...]
Conversely, the EPO should also listen to the parties’ concerns, if any, against oral proceedings by VICO in an individual case and take them seriously.
Some clever commenter has already made the point we last made yesterday, with respect to software patents in Europe: “How many patents are there over videoconferencing? Even the EPO can’t tell if it is a legal solution that respects all the patents they granted themselves.”
Yesterday we joked that those webchats of theirs can be taken down by a patent troll engaging in injunctions, patent assertion activities (blackmail) and so on. We already know about some European GNU/Linux developers who face such abuse, thanks in part to the corrupt EPO granting patents it never should have granted. It hurts everybody. At the moment there are a couple more comments in there. It’s good to see Dr. Bausch back to asking the “tough questions” — the sorts of questions that Benoît Battistelli and António Campinos can only ever distract from using fluff/noise du jour. █
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Posted in Site News at 10:47 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
There’s a courageous fightback despite the growing risk
Summary: A quick roundup of news and key developments; most of them are positive and they give us hope
TODAY we’ve finally caught up fully with many EPO affairs and we’re gratified to see intense blowback against the UPC as well (see the comments here; SUEPO has just linked to that). Less than a day ago Donald Trump finally conceded, EPO staff is starting to mass-mail the management, and many other positive things are happening. The fascists are on the run…
We don’t expect anything to come out of UPC/A, so we won’t be writing much about that, except to ridicule it. We’ll also write a little less about the EPO, seeing that staff (productive staff, e.g. examiners) started to fight to take back control of the Office. We don’t regret spending the past 2-3 weeks focusing so much on the EPO. It’s well overdue and very much necessary.
“The fascists are on the run…”Not everything is so positive however; the pandemic is still destroying lots of things, Groklaw is still offline (the last time Google saw that site online and took a snapshot of the front page was October 24th and today it’s November 24th, so we very much doubt the site will ever come back*), Phoronix is begging for money (it deserves readers’ support), and we still haven’t migrated to the new server — it's an urgent matter.
Phoronix recently upgraded the setup a bit; included or added to the right is a new photograph. They still do decent journalism about technical matters. Areas that they cover aren’t touched by anyone else (except LWN, sometimes).
Linux Journal isn’t publishing much anymore (maybe once a week, on average, usually a HOWTO) and a lot of coverage about “LINUX” is just ridiculous click-bait (right now a lot is based on some private E-mail in which Linus Torvalds responds to a question about Apple hype).
Geeks who now work from home have more time and more motivation to improve their setups. It’s not just Phoronix.
MinceR has just pointed out in IRC Tony Arcieri’s latest setup, a multi-screen laptop arrangement. Some people use a tiny so-called ‘phone’ to scroll down and click on “timelines”, whereas others get some real work done (not pressing “like” or uploading selfies).
Linus Torvalds, a longtime home (‘remote’) worker, famously said:
“If it’s a hobby for us and a job for you, then why are you doing such a shoddy job?”
Suddenly, working in a bathrobe isn’t considered so eccentric, right? █
____
* When we saw signs of trouble we mirrored the Bill Gates deposition videos.
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Posted in Europe, Finance, Patents at 9:57 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Summary: The financial "hoax" at the EPO (taking away money from staff to feed a gambling addiction of managers) needs to stop; staff has begun mass-mailing the management, threatening legal action
THE EPO is trying to distract the public from a crisis long brewing at the Office. António Campinos has lower trust/approval rates than CEIPI‘s Benoît Battistelli (Campinos also came from CEIPI) and there are legal actions on the way (EPO staff against the EPO). Several weeks ago we learned that some European publishers had been studying EPO affairs; knowing and seeing some letters, however, we know that the Mafia which runs the EPO will resort to blackmail and bribes to prevent negative publicity. Will that succeed?
“The European citizens definitely deserve to know what’s being done in their name.”Regardless of whether or not mainstream media writes about EPO corruption, we have enough material that we can publish here to show the public some internal EPO affairs. The European citizens definitely deserve to know what’s being done in their name. Sometimes with their money, too…
This morning SUEPO circulated among staff a Central Staff Committee publication bearing the following message (“TH/MN” means The Hague/Munich, where well over 90% of staff is based):
General assemblies of staff TH/MN: E-mailing your feelings to the President
Dear colleagues,
We thank you very much you for the high participation of the general assemblies held in Munich and The Hague on Thursday. We feel a momentum among staff, the feeling of enough is enough. We have suffered from many reforms that have had a cumulative detrimental effect, without any credible justification, the most recent of which being the implementation of the new salary adjustment procedure (SAP).
In both assemblies, we call on you to make your views known by sending an email to the President and VP4, preferably adding in cc your local staff committee to keep your staff reps updated. A number of colleagues have already done so, and the depth of feeling portrayed in those emails has left a strong impression on us, hopefully also on the President, and we sincerely thank you for your actions. We received requests during the general assemblies to draft a template for the email.
In this publication, we provide an example of an email as well as a short list of questions as inspiration to put your thoughts into writing.
We appreciate that colleagues have varying views on the best action to take to express our discontent, but we hope that a significant proportion of you are on-board to help demonstrate the frustration felt with a flood of emails. We further want to express that this collective action, to evidence that we are not at all happy with the outcome of the SAP, is just the beginning.
Sincerely yours,
The Central Staff Committee – CSC
The corresponding letter is dated yesterday and it says this: “We have suffered from many reforms that have had a cumulative detrimental effect, without any credible justification, the most recent of which being the implementation of the new salary adjustment procedure (SAP).”
Here’s the full text:
Munich,23.11.2020
sc20174cp
E-mailing your feelings to the President
Dear colleagues,
We thank you very much you for the high participation of the general assemblies held in Munich and The Hague on Thursday. We feel a momentum among staff, the feeling of enough is enough. We have suffered from many reforms that have had a cumulative detrimental effect, without any credible justification, the most recent of which being the implementation of the new salary adjustment procedure (SAP). The outcome of the latter can be found in this CSC publication.
During both assemblies, we informed you that in the meeting of the CSC with the President on Wednesday, the President stated that he did not believe that staff were furious about the outcome of the SAP, and therefore he did not have any incentive to change it. So now we call on you to make your views known by sending an email to president@epo.org and vp4office@epo.org, preferably adding in cc DHSTCOM@epo.org / MNSTCOM@epo.org / berlinstcomm@epo.org / pvwien@epo.org to keep your staff reps updated. A number of colleagues have already done so, and the depth of feeling portrayed in those emails has left a strong impression on us, hopefully also on the President, and we sincerely thank you for your actions.
We received requests during the general assemblies to draft a template for the email. Here we provide an example:
Dear Mr Campinos, dear Ms Simon,
I was informed during the General Assembly held by our Staff Representation of the first impact that our new SAP will have on my salary progression. I would like hereby to express my discontent and disappointment regarding the new SAP, which to my knowledge is shared by many colleagues.
Such a salary adjustment does not meet my legitimate expectations that my remuneration, at the very least, keeps up with the living costs at my place of employment and maintains equality of treatment. This measure comes on top of past measures that have also breached my legitimate expectations. I can only hope that you will take staff’s concerns into consideration.
Unfortunately, if the SAP is applied as is currently foreseen, I see no other option than to seek legal remedy, beginning with a Request for Review.
Finally, I urge you to discuss reasonable remedies for the SAP with the Staff Representation.
With kind regards,
However, we feel that the impact of writing to the President is significantly stronger if colleagues put their views into their own words. Therefore, in order to assist you with drafting your personal emails, or with adding extra information to the template above, we provide a short list of questions as inspiration to put your thoughts into writing.
• How do you feel about this year’s salary adjustment being lower than local inflation (–1.2% in NL, –0.3% in DE, –0.7% in AT)? Particularly when considering that despite the pandemic, the Office surplus for 2020 is estimated to be €310m and the number of filings as of Q3 have not reduced with respect to last year.
• The effect of the new SAP this year is equivalent to losing approximately 1 step, and if a similar result were to materialise in the next two rounds, it would amount to a loss of around 10% of your salary in only three years, when compared to the old SAP. Does that influence your work mentality?
• Are you concerned about the influence of the SAP on the amount of our monthly pensions, which is particularly pertinent for those at the beginning of their careers and those in the NPS who already have a very limited maximum monthly amount?
• Have the other recent reforms, proposals, and changes influenced your view of the EPO as an employer? (e.g. the new career system, restructuring of the formalities teams, automatisation of your tasks, constant changes in your working tools, the education and childcare reform proposal, introduction of fixed-term contracts for all newcomers, changes to the SSP contributions and the 16:1 distribution of SSP cash injections, ever-increasing targets/workload)
• How do you perceive the social dialogue between staff representation and the administration? Do you feel your elected staff committees are being listen to by management?
We appreciate that colleagues have varying views on the best action to take to express our discontent, but we hope that a significant proportion of you are on-board to help demonstrate the frustration felt with a flood of emails. We further want to express that this collective action, to evidence that we are not at all happy with the outcome of the SAP, is just the beginning.
Sincerely yours,
The Central Staff Committee
Notice how they put it at the end: “We appreciate that colleagues have varying views on the best action to take to express our discontent, but we hope that a significant proportion of you are on-board to help demonstrate the frustration felt with a flood of emails. We further want to express that this collective action, to evidence that we are not at all happy with the outcome of the SAP, is just the beginning.”
A lot of readers of ours might not be familiar with the basis for these grievances (there are several angles/aspects to these, not purely financial). Earlier this month two publications were disseminated to explain what the Office was doing with SAP (not the company), in effect lying to staff and to member states in order to pillage and plunder at the cost of — or expense to Europeans to the tune of — billions of euros. As a bonus, there’s a link to the far right (Mercer family, boosters of racist sites and Donald Trump propaganda outlets).
Exactly one week ago the following open letter (open for staff to see) was sent to Campinos regarding the “Salary “Adjustment” Procedure” (they put scare quotes around the misleading euphemism) for 2020. “Three proposals for repairing the EPO new salary “adjustment” procedure” were put forth, saying they were “looking forward to a positive sign from the President (and his Administration) regarding our proposals.”
Of course nothing has happened since.
“In this open letter to the President,” they said, “we propose three concrete measures.”
“The new SAP is currently a disaster in terms of equality of purchasing power and parallelism with the evolution of the salaries of national civil servants.”
Going back to the first letter, the representatives “feel a momentum among staff, the feeling of enough is enough.”
This is the reason for the escalation. The latest letter to Campinos reads as follows:
Reference: sc20172cl
Date: 17.11.2020
Mr António Campinos
President of the EPO
ISAR – R.1081
OPEN LETTER
Proposals for repairing the EPO new salary “adjustment” procedure
Dear Mr President,
The new salary adjustment procedure is cutting EPO staff salaries and pensions massively. Instead of an adjustment of about 3.8 % in July 2020, the newly introduced “sustainability clause” will cap it at 0.5% in January (in The Netherlands and in Germany). Such savings go way beyond the forecasts and are hitting staff unnecessarily.
Regarding the forecasts, the draft budget for 2021 (CA/50/20)1 mentions an adjustment of 2.2% from the year 2021 onwards delivering EUR 2bn savings until 2038. The Advisory Group on Remuneration has argued (GCC/DOC 17/20)2 that by the end of 2025 already EUR 1bn will have been saved. This assessment seems to be very conservative. The adjustment in 2021 of 0.5% instead of 3.8% will already contribute EUR 0.95 bn to the savings that will be made until the end of 2025.
Moreover, the operating surplus of the EPO is predicted to reach EUR 310m by the end of 2020. EPO staff should have been thanked for their efforts during the on-going pandemic, since they were the ones who maintained business continuity and who even made possible that +6% European patents were published compared to the plan. Unfortunately, the administration already anticipates that there will be no adjustment at all for next year due to the application of the exception clause.
The situation is unsustainable for EPO staff (and pensioners). The new salary adjustment procedure must now be repaired together with proper transitional measures. This adds on top with the proper settlement of the previous procedure to reduce litigations.
_____
1 See pages 4, 9, 67 and 168.
2 See paragraph 58.
We propose the following measures:
1. Winding up the previous salary adjustment procedure: Settlement of the moderation clause effect
The moderation clause introduced by your predecessor in the previous salary adjustment procedure has resulted in delayed adjustments negatively affecting a number of countries. A measure is foreseen in Article 1(2) of CA/D 4/20 but its implementation is still pending and is in our view incomplete. Simply paying out lump sums cannot solve litigation.
We suggest:
• To adjust the scales of all countries affected by the moderation clause during the period 2014-2019 (e.g. The Netherlands, Sweden etc) and update all scales from 1 July 2019;
• To pay the respective contributions into the pension schemes of active staff.
The positive effects would be as follows:
• Such contributions into the New Pension Scheme and the SSP would be for instance of particular benefit for staff in the lower grades.
• Updating all scales with effect from 1 July 2019 would allow solving the problem of the Luxemburg scale which will otherwise be hit hard by the recently introduced sustainability clause in the new method.
2. Transitional measures: Adapting the scales as a compensation for postponing the adjustment from July to January
Article 9(2) of CA/D 4/20 effects a six-month transition from the previous salary adjustment procedure to the new one. However, it remains unclear which procedure will be applied over this period and how it will be implemented. Merely paying out lump sums might trigger further litigation.
We suggest:
• To apply the result of the new salary adjustment procedure (i.e. 0.50% in The Netherlands and Germany) on the salary scales as from 1 July 2020.
• To pay out a lump sum of the remainder of the same period (e.g. 3.28% for Germany and 3.3% for The Netherlands).
The positive effect would be that the adjusted scales would lag less behind the real economic evolution. Please note that adjusting the scales to compensate for the six-month delay in adjustments is the solution which was implemented by the Co-ordinated organisations when they introduced the same change in the past. At the EPO the cumulative adjustments on 1 July 2020 and 1 January 2021 would then amount to 1% which would remain far below the real result of the procedure (3.8%). It would require a specific proposal to the Administrative Council. In budgetary terms the normal adjustment of the scales would still be cut by 70% instead of being cut by 85%.
3. Amendments to the new salary adjustment procedure
The results of the new salary adjustment procedure for the year 2020 have now been confirmed: salaries will be adjusted on 1 January 2021 less than inflation meaning that staff (and pensioners) will lose purchasing power. This contradict the Office’s promise made in your Communiqué of 9 April 2020. The most obvious pitfalls must be corrected.
We suggest:
• To propose to the Administrative Council the necessary amendments to Article 18 of CA/D 4/20 to implement the measures as described in points 1 and 2 above;
• To amend as well the implementation of the carry-forward mechanism of Article 10 of the Implementing Rule for Article 64 ServRegs in such a way that any positive adjustment remaining from Article 9 (“sustainability clause”) accumulated every year shall be used to adjust the salary and pension scales accordingly after 3 years (mid-term review of the SAP).
The positive effect would be that the scales are at least adjusted to the real economic evolution in the middle of the application period of the salary adjustment procedure. In view of the fact that the exception clause will be triggered next year, there is no risk that the EPO would lose control over the evolution of the salary mass in that period.
Whilst still allowing huge savings for the Organisation this further proposal would re-establish purchasing power equality after three years and also be more in line with what is in force in the EU institutions, for which the negative GDP evolution this year is triggering only a postponement of the 2.5% part of the adjustment corresponding to the specific indicator and their scales will be fully updated when the GDP has recovered.
4. Application of the exception clause – amendment to GCC/DOC 7/2020 (interpretation of the interaction between Articles 9 and 11 of the new procedure)
The application of the “sustainability clause” (Article 9) for the year 2020 causes an excess adjustment which is not applied in January 2021 (GCC/DOC 7/2020, paragraph 24: +3.3% for Germany, +3.3% for the Netherlands, +2.4% for Austria and +1.6 % for Belgium).
However, document GCC/DOC 7/2020 (paragraph 27) states:
“According to the latest real GDP 2020 forecast available as of 31 October 2020, it is probable that the exception clause may (Article 11) be triggered next year, for the threshold below -3%. If so, no salary adjustment would apply for 2021.” (emphasis added)
In our view, this statement does not reflect correctly Article 11(1) which
provides that:
“The delayed adjustment shall not be taken into account for the purpose of Article 9 above.”
Our interpretation is that whichever adjustment foreseen for next year will be delayed (Article 11) except for the part that would have been integrated next year in application of Article 9. In legal terms, the provisions of the sustainability clause shall not be cancelled by the application of the exception clause.
We therefore suggest that the document is amended as follows:
“According to the latest real GDP 2020 forecast available as of 31 October 2020, it is probable that the exception clause may be triggered next year, for the threshold below -3%. If so, the only adjustment of the salaries taking place from 1 January 2022 will be due to the application of Article 9(4) up to the ceiling provided in Article 9(2). Any adjustment resulting from Article 2 to 4 in the reference period from 1 July 2020 to 30 June 2021 will be postponed in accordance with Article 11.”
Conclusion
The new salary adjustment procedure is currently a disaster in terms of equality of purchasing power and parallelism with the evolution of the salaries of national civil servants. Furthermore, the results of the SAP are producing savings well in excess of the EUR 2bn envisaged.
As a duty of care of the Organisation not to harm staff if this is not financially justified, we are looking forward to a positive sign from your administration regarding our proposals.
Yours sincerely,
Alain Dumont
Chairman of the Central Staff Committee
Several days earlier a fact sheet was passed around to explain the SAP scam, accompanied by this message:
Salary “adjustment” procedure for 2020: Loss of purchasing power for all staff (and pensioners)
Instead of an adjustment of about 3.8% in July 2020, we get 0.5% in January 2021 (in NL and DE). This is equivalent to a pay cut of about one step.
Each year the salaries at International Organisations (IOs) are adjusted according to a salary adjustment procedure (SAP). The same applied so far at the EPO with a procedure respecting two fundamental principles: equality of purchasing power among the places of employment and parallelism with the evolution of the salaries of civil servants in member states.
Based on the flawed Financial Study of 2019 by Oliver Wyman & Mercer, Mr Campinos has decided to push a “sustainability clause” – in form of a capping mechanism – on the SAP at the EPO and to ignore the warnings of the Staff Representation that this capping mechanism would abolish both principles and apply arbitrarily.
The results for the year 2020 are disastrous: salaries will be adjusted on 1 January 2021 less than inflation meaning that staff (and pensioners) will lose purchasing power.
In conclusion, EPO staff (and pensioners) no longer have a salary adjustment procedure worth the name, but rather an arbitrary mechanism for cutting their purchasing power. This is unheard-of in other International Organisations. Massive appeals will have to be lodged against this year’s adjustment and again next year.
The sheet had some tables in it. We’ve converted these to HTML but left out colour:
Munich 12.11.2020
sc20171cp – 0.2.1- 4.2.2
Salary “adjustment” procedure for 2020 Loss of purchasing power for all staff:
Instead of an adjustment of about 3.8% in July 2020, we get 0.5% in January 2021 (in NL and DE). This is equivalent to a pay cut of about one step.
Each year the salaries at International Organisations (IOs) are adjusted according to a salary adjustment procedure (SAP). The same applied so far at the EPO with a procedure respecting two fundamental principles: equality of purchasing power among the places of employment and parallelism with the evolution of the salaries of civil servants in member states. Based on the flawed Financial Study of 2019 by Oliver Wyman & Mercer1, Mr Campinos has decided to push a “sustainability clause” – in form of a capping mechanism – on the SAP at the EPO, and to ignore the warnings of the Staff Representation that this capping mechanism would abolish both principles and apply arbitrarily. The results for the year 2020 are disastrous: salaries will be adjusted on 1 January 2021 less than inflation meaning that staff (and pensioners) will lose purchasing power.
Mr Campinos’ promise…
In his communiqué of 09-04-2020, Mr Campinos stated that (emphasis added):
“There is no desire to cut staff purchasing power or impose unnecessary savings. There is a desire, however, to make sure that we have a stable and predictable method that generates savings, ensures salaries continue to grow, even above eurozone inflation and even in times of financial crisis, and, above all, make sure we can do so for many years into the future.“
… vs. the facts
The results of the new method before capping and after capping reveal an impressive reduction of the salary “adjustment” as of 01-07-2020.
| Country |
Calculated adjustment |
Capped adjustment |
Difference |
| AT |
2,73% |
0,36% |
-2,37% |
| BE |
1,80% |
0,24% |
-1,56% |
| DE |
3,78% |
0,50% |
-3,28% |
| NL |
3,81% |
0,50% |
-3,30% |
______
1 See the selected analysis by Ernst & Young of the 2019 Financial Study and its background.
Overall, our salary adjustments are reduced by -86% because of the capping mechanism. Contrary to the President’s words “not to cut staff purchasing power” and “to ensure salaries continuing to grow”, the results also show clearly a huge loss of purchasing power in The Hague, Vienna, Berlin and Munich.
| Country |
Inflation (HICP2) |
Capped adjustment |
Difference |
| AT |
1,10% |
0,36% |
-0,74% |
| BE |
0,20% |
0,24% |
+0,04% |
| DE |
0,80% |
0,50% |
-0,30% |
| NL |
1,70% |
0,50% |
-1,20% |
Whichever reference one takes (cost of living evolution measured by parities or by reference to national inflation) the results in the above tables show the arbitrariness of the method introduced under the governance of Mr Campinos.
Losses are higher where the evolution of the cost of living is higher, which is contrary to what a salary adjustment method should result in. One could illustrate it even better with reference to some pensioner scales, like the Turkish scale which should have been adapted by 14,86% but will be adapted by 1,97%. This means a loss of purchasing power of 12,89% in one year, due to arbitrariness. The same applies for Luxemburg (-15,67% this year), which scale should have been corrected as in the Coordinated Organisations but will not be. One can expect lots of unhappy staff and pensioners every year as this arbitrariness will hit randomly year after year.
The operating surplus of the EPO is predicted to reach €310million by the end of 2020. This achievement was made possible thanks to the dedication of staff who worked hard despite the on-going pandemic.
EPO staff should have been thanked for their efforts, since business continuity could be maintained and even +6% published European patents than planned have been produced. Staff certainly does not deserve a massive cut in purchasing power. The benchmark with other IOs for 2020 shows that EPO staff will have the worst salary “adjustment” in 2020. The administration has tried to argue away any criticism of the capping method by claiming that the carry-over mechanism is a fix-all solution. However, as will be laid-out in a future publication, the cash pay-out associated with the carry-over is just a cheap attempt to pacify our discontent, and we will not be fooled by such a transparent effort to throw sand in our eyes.
For 2021, the administration already anticipates that there will be no adjustment at all due to the application of the exception clause, another limiting mechanism in the salary adjustment procedure of the EPO which is very likely to kick in next year due to the drop in Gross Domestic Product this year.
EPO staff (and pensioners) no longer have a salary adjustment procedure worth the name, but rather an arbitrary mechanism for cutting their purchasing power. This is unheard-of in other International Organisations. Massive appeals will have to be lodged against this year’s adjustment and again next year.
______
2 HICP = Harmonised Index of Consumer Prices
We look forward to the next steps, seeing that there’s a boiling point being reached. The representatives say “the feeling of enough is enough” is consistent (across workers). We’re back to 2015. Will representatives be subjected to more threats? Will union-busting activities resume (in their previous levels)? A dysfunctional patent office is a real threat to the economy; the examiners want to rectify things and avoid collapse. █
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Posted in Deception, Europe, Patents at 7:57 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
EPO staff suffers a lot; but the EPO’s managers paint rosy pictures to confuse the masses
Summary: Under the EPO’s dictatorship the law is being routinely violated; in order for the public to not pay attention or receive mixed messages (resulting in confusion) the EPO is manufacturing so-called ‘studies’ (which patent offices aren’t supposed to do; they should focus on patent-granting while complying with the law)
THE pseudoscience industry is big and likely growing. It gives people false hopes; not too long ago, as we noted here, the EPO mentioned homeopathy, saying it was not backed by evidence. That’s an understatement. But the EPO’s regime isn’t backed by evidence either. All it can do is some annual publicity stunt for photo ops with actual scientists who actually accomplish something, wrongly insinuating that those accomplishment are owed to patents and nothing else. The “EIA” festivals are an insult to science because they associate scientists with Europe’s most corrupt institution; people who sometimes win Nobel prizes are compelled to take photos with criminals. Lots to be gained from it (for the criminals, not those scientists).
“The “EIA” festivals are an insult to science because they associate scientists with Europe’s most corrupt institution; people who sometimes win Nobel prizes are compelled to take photos with criminals.”And published some hours ago at the EPO‘s ‘news’ section was the latest piece of garbage (warning: epo.org link) seeking to associate actual scientists and the public interest… with the EPO. The management of the EPO has been bribing universities for biased ‘studies’ (on a range of issues, including UPC), in effect corrupting academia as much as it had corrupted the media (with bribes and blackmail). Once again the tyrants at the EPO are doing so-called ‘studies’ (marketing). The Office is doing ‘research’ about itself… once again. Anything to distract from the corruption there…
A new study published by the European Patent Office (EPO) today, 24 November 2020, shows that European universities and public research organisations use European patents as the main instrument to exploit their inventions commercially. It finds that these institutions already exploit more than a third (36%) of their inventions, with another 42% of their inventions planned to be exploited.
The study, entitled “Valorisation of scientific results – Patent commercialisation scoreboard: European universities and public research organisations”, further finds that licensing is by far the preferred channel of commercialisation (accounting for 70% of the commercialisation of inventions), followed by R&D co-operation (14%) and the sale of patents (9%).
The puff piece includes passages like “says EPO President António Campinos…” (the hallmark of Benoît Battistelli‘s self-promotional garbage and lies. Is António Campinos different from him except in name?)
The EPO is still corruption-led. █
The latest publicity stunt from the EPO is widely known as ‘science-washing’, e.g. by misusing white coats (to portray something unscientific or antiscientific and non-factual as a “science”)
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