Bonum Certa Men Certa

EPO Robbery Under the Shadow of Pandemic Sweeping Across Europe

Old Icelandic Cashiers



Old cash drawSummary: The EPO is being looted by corrupt management which gaslights the staff and turns the Office into somewhat of a laughing stock (even stakeholders have grown impatient, seeing that justice itself ceased to exist in EPOnia)

The Central Staff Committee of the EPO has just circulated the following document. It shows that António Campinos isn't more credible than Benoît Battistelli and the money only flows outwards to a financial scam, rather than to staff which does all the actual work (under exceptional circumstances).



Here's what it says:

Zentraler Personalausschuss Central Staff Committee Le Comité Central du Personnel

Munich 22.03.2021 sc21040cp – 0.2.1/4.2.1

Reward exercise for pandemic year 2020
“Strong Together” but 30% of staff excluded



In a meeting with the Central Staff Committee on 24 February 2021, Mr Campinos announced that “in view of the efforts of staff to ensure business continuity under the challenging pandemic conditions, up to 70% of staff will be able to receive a pensionable reward” and confirmed his intention in an Intranet publication the following day. Mr Campinos has now tabled to the General Consultative Committee his “President’s Instructions on Rewards 2021” effectively confirming that 30% of eligible staff will be excluded. The document also reveals that Mr Campinos has even downsized the budget available for rewards despite massive savings made on the salary adjustment procedure.

2020, the first Covid-19 year... The year 2020 was a challenge for all staff. When the Covid-19 pandemic broke out, EPO management put the focus on ensuring business continuity at all costs. Home-working, paperless and home-schooling became the rule. Constantly changing new digital procedures and tools were introduced. Thanks to the dedication of EPO staff, by the end of 2020 the EPO annual cash surplus amounted to at least EUR 310m (CA/56/20). When presenting1 the February 2021 analysis2 “Intellectual property rights and firm performance in the European Union”, Mr Campinos explained that "[t]he stronger your IPR portfolio, the better your business performs. And IPR-owning businesses don't just generate more revenue, their employees earn more too.” Likewise, EPO staff should be thanked for making such achievements possible even during the pandemic.

... but downsizing the available budget Mr Campinos presented in the Budget and Finance Committee (BFC) and the Administrative Council (AC) a draft budget 2021(CA/50/20) foreseeing:

- a salary adjustment of 2,2% bringing the basic salary mass3 to EUR 1.020.395.000; - a budget for pensionable rewards4 of EUR 13.400.000 and of EUR 12.856.9775 for bonuses. ____ 1 EPO post of 19 February 2021 on LinkedIn 2 “According to this analysis, firms that own IPRs generate 20% higher revenues per employee than their counterparts without an IP portfolio. The highest revenue-per-employee gains are linked to bundles of trademarks, with performance premiums of 63% for trade mark and design owners, and 60% for combined patent, trade mark and design owners. Firms that own IPRs also pay on average 19% higher wages than firms that do not.” 3 CA/50/20 page 67 4 CA/50/20 page 168 5 CA/50/20 page 169




However, Mr Campinos’ disastrous reform of the salary adjustment procedure capping the increase of global salary mass at Eurozone inflation (0,3%) + 0.2% had a massive impact in the final budget (CA/D 1/20):

- the salary adjustment of 0,5% decreased the expected salary mass6 to EUR 1.002.075.000 - the budget for pensionable rewards almost remained almost unchanged EUR 13.490.000 and the budget for bonuses was reduced at EUR 12.626.145

As a result of the new salary adjustment procedure, Mr Campinos made between the two documents savings of EUR 18.320.000 at the expense of staff without making any compensation effort on the budget for rewards.

Doubling down against staff, Mr Campinos has now tabled to the General Consultative Committee (GCC) his “President’s Instructions on Rewards 2021” (GCC/DOC 1/2021) which reduce the budget for rewards even further:













Pensionable Bonuses Rewards Total
Draft Budget 2021 (CA/50/20) 13.400.000 12.856.977 26.256.977
Annual Budget 2021 (CA/D 1/20) 13.490.000 12.626.145 26.116.145
President‘s Instructions (GCC/DOC 1/2021) 12.100.000 10.500.000 22.600.000
Downsizing of rewards budget -1.300.000 -2.356.977 -3.656.977


“Strong Together”? How companies treat employees during a crisis reveal their true values. The way they reward them is one of them. Even when making at least EUR 310m surplus and unexpected savings of EUR 18 million, Mr Campinos cuts the budget for rewards by a further EUR -3.6 million. It shows that, contrary to what Mr Campinos promised after the Financial Study 2019, when the Organisation makes more savings than expected, these are not redistributed to staff.

We are still in a pandemic situation and with different pressures on each of us. It is morally questionable to maintain a competition-based system that goes blatantly against the values of cooperation that the administration propagates, thereby excluding 30% of eligible staff. Such a regressive and non-inclusive policy is impossible to reconcile with the “Strong Together” message the Office is trying to convey.

Mr Campinos has still full room for manoeuvre to show his recognition of the efforts of EPO staff by rewarding each staff member with a pensionable reward, especially during a pandemic. Not to do so will be his decision.

The Central Staff Committee

____ 6 CA/D 1/20 page 57



The EPO has become so rogue that it cares neither about Europe nor its very own staff (people who do all the acual work). As we noted the other day, stakeholders are starting to notice that this whole thing is coming down, even justice itself. They've accused the EPO of likely spying on IP Kat comments and putting some of their own there. Weeks after a besieged panel said "OK" to some European software patents (dubious decision tainted by Campinos intervening) we now see EPO management crucified for meddling in another case or stacking the panel. Hours ago somebody wrote: "A question. The deemed date of receipt of the summons is Saturday 27th March. Does the two month period under Rule 115 EPC start on the 27th or the 29th March?"

"As we noted the other day, stakeholders are starting to notice that this whole thing is coming down, even justice itself."The more interesting comments are above that one, but we still don't know if Rose (AstraZeneca) deletes some of the better comments (we just know she deleted quite a few) and whether EPO management is pressuring them behind the scenes, as they did before...

Interesting times for sure.

Recent Techrights' Posts

Links 03/10/2025: "NPR’s Economics Lessons Come With Neoliberal Spin" and Canada Post at Risk
Links for the day
Gemini Links 03/10/2025: Panic Attacks and Food Adulteration
Links for the day
Links 03/10/2025: Lawyers Caught Using LLM Slop Explain Why They Did It, LibreSSL 4.1.1 and 4.0.1 Released
Links for the day
FSF Board Grew 50% Since Last Year, Has New President, Turns 40 in Two Days
It's a good move for the FSF and - by extension - for software freedom
Links 03/10/2025: Conflicts, Death of TypePad, and TikTok/CheeTok Gives a Boost to Far Right Groups in Europe
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Thursday, October 02, 2025
IRC logs for Thursday, October 02, 2025
Slopwatch: Linux Journal, Google News, and LinuxSecurity
They carry on polluting the Web with fake articles
Gemini Links 02/10/2025: Kubernetes With FreeBSD and robots.txt
Links for the day
Links 02/10/2025: 'Open' 'AI' Resorting to Gimmicks and Fake Funding, Europe’s ‘Drone Wall’ Discussed
Links for the day
Links 02/10/2025: Brave Passes 100M Users Milestone, Kodak Selling Its Own Film Again
Links for the day
Michael “Monty” Widenius: It Started in 1983 With Richard Stallman (RMS)
The other co-founder of MySQL is a bit notorious for confronting RMS rather viciously
For the Second Time in a Few Weeks Microsoft Lunduke Makes False Accusations Against Senior Red Hat Staff to Incite a Despicable 'Troll Army'
Nothing that Microsoft Lunduke claims of says can be trusted
su lisa && rm -rf /home/ibm/power
Novell was ruined by another person from IBM, Ronald Hovsepian
A Record Demand at Microsoft: Demand to Cancel
What we're witnessing is a very ungraceful destruction of XBox
Microsoft is Losing Europe
Hence all the "support" and "discount" offers that are limited to Europe
The Free Software Foundation Starts Fund-raising for 40th Anniversary
New pop-up 2-3 days ahead of the 40th anniversary event
Systemd Breaks Networking in Debian and Microsoft Staff Rushes to Make Face-Saving Excuses in LWN
Microsoft's bluca is already there in the comments, his Microsoft money pays for LWN to let him leave comments early
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Wednesday, October 01, 2025
IRC logs for Wednesday, October 01, 2025
What the End of XBox Will Look Like: a Fiery Crash
XBox is the next Skype. It won't last much longer. Expect many more layoffs.
Richard Stallman is Going to Finland to Give a Talk Next Thursday
A day later he speaks in Sweden
Gemini Links 02/10/2025: SMTP Pipelining and End of ROOPHLOCH 2025
Links for the day
Slopwatch: Plagiarism, Fake Articles, and FUD About Linux
not a day goes by without Google News feeding FUD from slopfarms
Gemini Links 01/10/2025: Chat Control and End of Life
Links for the day
Links 01/10/2025: Long Covid Risk Reiterated, "Bitcoin Queen" Caught
Links for the day
Links 01/10/2025: EA $55 Billion Deal is Debt and Slop "Raises Vishing Risks"
Links for the day
Bluewashing at Red Hat Means Redundancies
The man who sold Red Hat to IBM meanwhile became a Microsoft Mono booster
After Killing OpenSource.com, IBM ('Red Hat') and OSI Told Us OpenSource.net Would Replace It (But That Didn't Happen)
Now it's time to move on, perhaps tarnishing the "Open Source" label some more (for whatever sponsor wants this)
Linux is Not a Community Project, It's a Wall Street Product
The core goal should be freedom
Bad Actors Abusing the Free Software Community, Vandalising It Using Rogue Politics and Old Tactics
Oil giants have long attempted to do this; now, the digital equivalent of Big Oil does this in technology
Social Control Media Isn't the Future, The Federation or Fediverse Isn't Growing, People's Accounts Vanish for Good
users' accounts will get deleted, not just become inactive
IBM is Failing, This Helps Show Wall Street is Entirely Detached From Actual Commercial Performance
IBM is unable to grow, it's just constantly shrinking
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Tuesday, September 30, 2025
IRC logs for Tuesday, September 30, 2025
Clerical Aspects of Publishing and Development
In Free software, the management aspects are considerably reduced
Slopwatch: Fake Articles and Google News Promoting "Linux" Spam or Bot-Generated Fear, Uncertainty, Doubt (FUD)
These slopfarms help misplace blame
Third Wave of Microsoft Layoffs in September, This Time Many in Liverpool Affected
Be ready for more waves of layoffs ahead of the so-called "results" in late October