11.06.22

Gemini version available ♊︎

The European Union’s Unspoken-About Blunder: EPO (Patent-Granting Office) Coup and Ongoing Coup Against Patent Courts

Posted in Europe, Law, Patents at 7:29 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Video download link | md5sum b84d35a08a7dc4bb537710b6cea80ec1
Rectifying Lawlessness at EPO
Creative Commons Attribution-No Derivative Works 4.0

Summary: The EPO‘s “f*cking president” António Campinos (he actually referred to himself as “the f*cking president”) is going to face more and more challenges as scrutiny from outside the patent microcosm becomes inevitable if not imminent

The “patent microcosm” — an old term that refers to self-serving groups with no consideration or any regard/respect to “externalities” – is dominating the EPO and the overseeing body (mostly representatives of national patent offices, but not of nation states) must be challenged. The UPC lobby and the people who hijacked the EPO (overlapping groups) make people’s lives miserable, both inside the EPO and outside the EPO. The same people who hijacked the EPO (large corporrations and international law firms) try to do to patent courts what they did to Europe’s largest patent office, but that aspect shall be covered in the next post and today’s final video.

We’ve sadly not spent much time lately covering EPO scandals or even the lack of UPC progress. It’s mostly a matter of prioritising based on urgency. It has been about 3 weeks since we last covered EPO staff affairs except more minor aspects. The above video talks about this petition, which was brought up again some days ago in light of the union communicating “upwards”, seeking to get member states to intervene and disrupt EPO corruption (such as the violations of the EPC, resulting in European software patents among other monstrosities).

Some days ago the following message was circulated among examiners (for the most part):

Strong support for the petition to the Administrative Council to call for a Conference of Ministers of the Contracting States under Article 4a EPC

Dear Colleagues,

In total 1016 EPO staff members support the petition to the Administrative Council to call for a Conference of Ministers of the Contracting States under Article 4a EPC.

We would like to express our sincere thanks to all the signatories for their clear support. This strong signal has been sent to the Chairperson and to the Heads of Delegations of the Administrative Council in an open letter.

It is now up to the Administrative Council to ensure that the conference is convened as soon as possible. We will continue to monitor the progress of the issue and will keep you informed of further developments in a timely manner.

Your SUEPO Central Bureau

SUEPO is well aware that the Chairperson is pretty much in the pocket of Campinos. Nothing will be done by the Chairperson unless his own job is at risk; but this is what happens when the “patent microcosm” is being put in charge of the “patent microcosm”. Heck, maybe he’ll get a high-paying job at the EPO later on (like Dr. Ernst, his predecessor).

Here is the open letter to with annexes merged: (as discussed in the video at the top)

INTERNATIONALE GEWERKSCHAFT IM EUROPÄISCHEN PATENTAMT
STAFF UNION OF THE EUROPEAN PATENT OFFICE
UNION SYNDICALE DE L’OFFICE EUROPEEN DES BREVETS

Zentraler Vorstand Central Executive Committee Bureau central

21 October 2022
su22052cl – 0.3.1 – 5.3

To the Chairperson
and to the Heads of Delegation of the
Administrative Council of the
European Patent Organisation

SUEPO Central Executive Committee

OPEN Letter

To the members of the Administrative Council of the EPO
Call for a Conference of Ministers of the Contracting States under
Article 4a EPC

Dear Mr Chairperson,
Dear Heads of Delegation,

In total 1016 EPO staff members support the following petition on a call for a Conference
of Ministers of the Contracting States under Article 4a EPC and ask you to act accordingly:

“We, staff members of the European Patent Office (EPO) and the signatories of this petition, perceive that the development of the European Patent Organization (EPOrg) has increasingly departed from the structure and its mission as foreseen under the EPC and it appears that no appropriate countermeasures will be taken.

Therefore, we consider an external review of the EPO’s situation by a Conference of Ministers of the Contracting States under Article 4a EPC to be expedient; such a Conference is anyway long overdue in view of Article 4a EPC.


We call on you to have anew a close look:

- at the development and administration of the organization’s resources, in particular the alarming reduction of staffing levels in the core tasks;
- at the development of EPO employment law, at the (absence of) internal dialogue with social partners; and
- at hidden attempts to de-centralize the EPO towards National Patent Offices and weaken the roles and competencies of the various organs defined under the EPC.

We also call you to reflect on whether the strategic governance of the EPO is compatible with the long-term continuity of the Organization’s existence and with the future fulfilment of its mission, also in the context of its role in the Unitary Patent system.

We ask you to transmit this petition to your Ministries in order to convene such Conference without delay.”

Additional more detailed information can be found in the annexes to this letter.

Yours sincerely,

C. Lopes
Chair of SUEPO The Hague

I. Brumme
Chair of SUEPO Munich

T. Czogalla
Chair of SUEPO Berlin

J. Schaaf
Chair of SUEPO Vienna

Copy: President of the EPO, A. Campinos

Attachment: Detailed information on the petition


1 – 1 Date 30.09.2022

Update on the petition to the Members of the Administrative Council of the EPO to call for a Conference of Ministers of the Contracting States under Article 4a EPC

When the petition was launched in June 2022, compelling reasons had already been published as to
why such a Conference of Ministers of the Contracting States is necessary and, in fact, overdue. Since then, more events have occurred that speak for such an external review of the organisation and thus for the support of the petition, which are:

- The production demands for examiners are to be increased – increases of up to 10% are in the air – and this despite the fact that quality has fallen further;
- The office’s practice concerning patentability of business methods under Article 52(2)(c) EPC has become unclear again; and
- More embarrassing ILOAT Judgments showing the EPO’s violation of fundamental rights were issued three months ago and while implementation could be smooth and easy, it has yet to occur.

In more detail:

In the meantime it has been announced by senior managers and line managers that examiners will be required to produce more and that production pressure will be significantly increased for the coming year. This is even though staffing levels in core tasks are alarmingly low, examiner productivity is at its limits and at the same time the quality of issued patents has further deteriorated to below 75% compliance rate. In team meetings the figure of an increase of up to 10% of production has bee mentioned (see also the corresponding CSC publication 1). It seems that management no longer has any meaningful answers to manage the office’s workload.

Concerning the assessment of patentability of business methods in substantive examination (Article 52(2)(c) EPC), a recently started debate illustrates that this issue still seems to be very unclear. A clear guidance at the level of the Contracting States of the EPC seems to be necessary.

In early July the ILOAT issued inter-alia the Judgments no. 4550 and 4551, the latter clarifying that again the EPO has violated fundamental rights of staff freedom of association for roughly a decade. With the Judgment, the ILOAT lifted the presidential ban on Staff Committee sending mass emails to staff.

However, even after repeated requests by the Staff Committee and SUEPO, the President has not yet removed his technical restrictions on Staff Representation in the office’s email system that were put in place to enforce the ban. Currently, it looks like the Office continues to refuse to comply with the court’s ruling and allows the illegal email ban to remain in place. It seems that the ILOAT will have to be called again in this matter, this time simply to obtain the enforcement of its judgment.

Thus, not only has the fear that further embarrassing ILOAT Judgments will be issued against the organisation been confirmed, but it is compounded by the lack of willingness in the office leadership to recognise the highest court having jurisdiction over the organisation and to comply with the EPC. This procedure could put the existence of the organisation, and thus our own, in jeopardy. It is unclear whether the Administrative Council can or wants to put a stop to this.

In view of the above, an external review of the situation of the EPO by the Contracting States has become even more urgent.

This external review is claimed by the petitioners to the Members of the Administrative Council of the EPO to call for a Conference of Ministers of the Contracting States under Article 4a EPC.

_____
1 Open letter of the Central Staff Committee to the EPO President on the subject “Unsustainable productivity increase of +10% for 2023” dated 22.09.2022,


[Redacted: a letter previously published here]


[Redacted: a letter previously published here]


Detailed information on the PETITION
To the Members of the Administrative Council of the EPO Call for a Conference of Ministers of the Contracting States under Article 4a EPC as launched by SUEPO Central in the EPO on 07.06.2022.

We, staff members of the European Patent Office (EPO) and the signatories of this petition, perceive that the development of the European Patent Organization (EPOrg) has increasingly departed from the structure and its mission as foreseen under the EPC.

It appears that the EPO is being more and more transformed into a profit center, which is – in our view – inappropriate for a public service with quasi-judicial bodies responsible for granting monopoly rights by sovereign acts, which have a wide impact on their owners, their competitors and on the public. The fact that almost all management decisions are made on the basis of financial figures calculated according to the accounting standards applicable to the private sector (IFRS) rather than to the public sector (IPSAS) has led to reforms focused on savings on the expense of staff and downsizing of staff in core business to an amount which endangers the good functioning of the EPO. Core tasks are evaluated increasingly more on a financial perspective, wherein internally a link between the number of patents granted and the financial health of the EPO is openly communicated. The EPO career system further adds to an individual preference for granting of a patent over refusing a patent
application.

Internal quality control mechanisms have been implemented, by which the President of the European Patent Office has increasingly assumed the position of an additional higher ranking, but hidden instance in the patent granting procedure above the Divisions defined pursuant to Articles 15, 18 and 19 EPC. This not only questions the authenticity and legal validity of the Division’s decisions but also leads to strong influence to quickly grant patents. While surveys among external “stakeholders” ran by the EPO appear to show a high quality of the EPO patents, internal audits disclose that since years more than 20% of the European Patents have severe deficiencies and shouldn’t have been granted.

Backlogs in examination and search are increasing and it appears that for tackling the problems the current line management is tempted to return to outdated management approaches like “challenging people” measures and management “by fear”, which are unworthy of a modern organization like the EPO with highly qualified personnel. At the same time the EPO plans to reduce the staffing level in core tasks even further. This adds to current plans squaring with a large-scale decentralization of EPO tasks, including transfer of tasks to NPOs. Such significant amendments of the Organization’s structure fall outside the prerogatives of the President or the Administrative Council as defined in Articles 10 and 33 EPC. Furthermore, such a decentralization of EPO tasks would also affect the legal certainties of the validity of the patents granted by the EPO.

Apart from that, virtually all reforms of employment law since 2013 have been legally challenged, a number of which were already considered as null and void by the ILOAT (see e.g. Judgments 4430 to 4435 or 4482) or even in breach of fundamental rights; no significant investments have been made for reviewing the other reforms at stake. The EPO has obviously been unable to develop and apply new policies in line with legal constraints as defined by the ILOAT, so that further embarrassing judgments are to be expected.

All these issues have not been appropriately tackled due to the long-lasting failure of the EPO Administration to engage in a genuine social dialog with the staff representation and trade unions, who have drawn attention to them repeatedly to no avail.

Therefore, we consider an external review of the EPO’s situation by a Conference of Ministers of the Contracting States under Article 4a EPC to be expedient; such a Conference is anyway long overdue in view of Article 4a EPC.

We call on you to have anew a close look:
- at the development and administration of the organization’s resources, in particular the alarming reduction of staffing levels in the core tasks;

- at the development of EPO employment law, at the (absence of) internal dialogue with social partners; and

- at hidden attempts to de-centralize the EPO towards National Patent Offices and weaken the roles and competencies of the various organs defined under the EPC

1 – 2


We also call you to reflect on whether the strategic governance of the EPO is compatible with the long-term continuity of the Organization’s existence and with the future fulfillment of its mission, also in the context of its role in the Unitary Patent system.

We ask you to transmit this petition to your Ministries in order to convene such Conference without delay.

The non-exhaustive list of signs of derailment of the EPO includes:

Management of core business and Quality:
• Staffing level in core business has been reduced significantly during the past years and the office plans to continue the reduction of staffing level in core tasks by 25% of examiners and by 50% of formalities officers;
• Since the beginning of 2021 until the end of April 2022 an increase of the examination backlog by about 12% and search backlog by 5% is visible;
• Rather than adapting the recruitment plans in core business to the actual situation the Office continues to focus on prioritizing and re-shuffling examiners tasks in examination and search;
• The latest figures of the internal quality audit disclose a decreasing trend of quality of grant decisions from an already low compliance rate of 80% in April 2021 down to less than 75% at the end of March 2022.

Decentralisation initiatives:
• The EPO has proposed a new „mobility” program which includes secondment of patent examiners between the EPO and NPOs without limitations; it further focuses on harmonization of IT structures between NPOs and the EPO rather than primarily investing in the tools to support the core work;
• By the reorganization of 1 April 2022, EPO examining divisions and EPO formality officers were artificially separated geographically to different sites, without any added value for the EPO work procedures;
• The Office has departed from long-term and permanent employment towards high rotation short-term contract jobs for the members of the Divisions defined pursuant to Articles 15, 18 and 19 EPC.

Legal Certainty of Sovereign acts:
• Over the past years the President of the European Patent Office has issued instructions by which he increasingly assumed the position of an additional higher ranking, but hidden instance in the patent granting procedure above the Divisions defined pursuant to Articles 15, 18 and 19 EPC. Every notified action of the Division like a communication, summons to oral proceedings, refusal decision or grant of a patent application requires approval of the line manager in substance, although she or he is not a member of the Division;
• No legal means are available for the members of the Divisions for redressing interferences, like unlawful orders of the line manager to issue a communication instead of a decision to refuse an application as no legal instance is available (see e.g., Judgment 4417);
• The current electronic file and workflow system systematically implements resulting interference by management with the Division’s responsibilities and tasks and does not ensure an appropriate authentication of signatures of the responsible members of the Division.

2 – 2

Sooner or later they will need to (re)convene and all those massive problems will have piled up by then. Will they have the guts to admit they neglected/ignored the issues to the point where the patent system got flushed down the drain, instead rendering itself a cookie jar for law firms and monopolists?

Share in other sites/networks: These icons link to social bookmarking sites where readers can share and discover new web pages.
  • Reddit
  • email

Decor ᶃ Gemini Space

Below is a Web proxy. We recommend getting a Gemini client/browser.

Black/white/grey bullet button This post is also available in Gemini over at this address (requires a Gemini client/browser to open).

Decor ✐ Cross-references

Black/white/grey bullet button Pages that cross-reference this one, if any exist, are listed below or will be listed below over time.

Decor ▢ Respond and Discuss

Black/white/grey bullet button If you liked this post, consider subscribing to the RSS feed or join us now at the IRC channels.

DecorWhat Else is New


  1. Links 01/04/2023: Red Hat Turning 30

    Links for the day



  2. Links 31/03/2023: Mozilla Turns 25 and OpenMandriva 23.03

    Links for the day



  3. IRC Proceedings: Friday, March 31, 2023

    IRC logs for Friday, March 31, 2023



  4. Linus Tech (Illiteracy) Tips, LTT, Buys Phoronix Media

    Phoronix Media is being acquired by a larger company; the site will not change though



  5. Decided to Quit Debian and Use WSL Instead (Best of Both Worlds)

    Today starts a journey to a “better” experience, which lets Microsoft audit the kernel and leverage telemetry to improve my Debian experience



  6. Microsoft Has Laid Off Lennart Poettering and Hired Elon Musk

    Poettering gets rehired by IBM; IBM and Microsoft announce merger, putting Poettering back into his former position



  7. Links 31/03/2023: Ruby 3.2.2 and Linux Lite 6.4

    Links for the day



  8. Links 31/03/2023: Devices and Games, Mostly Leftovers

    Links for the day



  9. IRC Proceedings: Thursday, March 30, 2023

    IRC logs for Thursday, March 30, 2023



  10. Links 31/03/2023: Ubuntu 23.04 Beta, Donald Trump Indicted, and Finland’s NATO Bid Progresses

    Links for the day



  11. Translating the Lies of António Campinos (EPO)

    António Campinos has read a lousy script full of holes and some of the more notorious EPO talking points; we respond below



  12. [Meme] Too Many Fake European Patents? So Start Fake European Courts for Patents.

    António Campinos, who sent EPO money to Belarus, insists that the EPO is doing well; nothing could be further from the truth and EPO corruption is actively threatening the EU (or its legitimacy)



  13. Thomas Magenheim-Hörmann in RedaktionsNetzwerk Deutschland About Declining Quality and Declining Validity of European Patents (for EPO and Illegal Kangaroo Courts)

    Companies are not celebrating the “production line” culture fostered by EPO management, which is neither qualified for the job nor wants to adhere to the law (it's intentionally inflating a bubble)



  14. Links 30/03/2023: HowTos and Political News

    Links for the day



  15. Links 30/03/2023: LibreOffice 7.5.2 and Linux 6.2.9

    Links for the day



  16. Links 30/03/2023: WordPress 6.2 “Dolphy” and OpenMandriva ROME 23.03

    Links for the day



  17. Sirius is Britain’s Most Respected and Best Established Open Source Business, According to Sirius Itself, So Why Defraud the Staff?

    Following today's part about the crimes of Sirius ‘Open Source’ another video seemed to be well overdue (those installments used to be daily); the video above explains to relevance to Techrights and how workers feel about being cheated by a company that presents itself as “Open Source” even to some of the highest and most prestigious public institutions in the UK



  18. IRC Proceedings: Wednesday, March 29, 2023

    IRC logs for Wednesday, March 29, 2023



  19. [Meme] Waiting for Standard Life to Deal With Pension Fraud

    The crimes of Sirius ‘Open Source’ were concealed with the authoritative name of Standard Life, combined with official papers from Standard Life itself; why does Standard Life drag its heels when questioned about this matter since the start of this year?



  20. Former Staff of Sirius Open Source Responds to Revelations About the Company's Crimes

    Crimes committed by the company that I left months ago are coming to light; today we share some reactions from other former staff (without naming anybody)



  21. Among Users in the World's Largest Population, Microsoft is the 1%

    A sobering look at India shows that Microsoft lost control of the country (Windows slipped to 16% market share while GNU/Linux grew a lot; Bing is minuscule; Edge fell to 1.01% and now approaches “decimal point” territories)



  22. In One City Alone Microsoft Fired Almost 3,000 Workers This Year (We're Still in March)

    You can tell a company isn’t doing well when amid mass layoffs it pays endless money to the media — not to actual workers — in order for this media to go crazy over buzzwords, chaffbots, and other vapourware (as if the company is a market leader and has a future for shareholders to look forward to, even if claims are exaggerated and there’s no business model)



  23. Links 29/03/2023: InfluxDB FDW 2.0.0 and Erosion of Human Rights

    Links for the day



  24. Links 29/03/2023: Parted 3.5.28 and Blender 3.5

    Links for the day



  25. Links 29/03/2023: New Finnix and EasyOS Kirkstone 5.2

    Links for the day



  26. IRC Proceedings: Tuesday, March 28, 2023

    IRC logs for Tuesday, March 28, 2023



  27. [Meme] Fraud Seems Standard to Standard Life

    Sirius ‘Open Source’ has embezzled and defrauded staff; now it is being protected (delaying and stonewalling tactics) by those who helped facilitate the robbery



  28. 3 Months to Progress Pension Fraud Investigations in the United Kingdom

    Based on our experiences and findings, one simply cannot rely on pension providers to take fraud seriously (we’ve been working as a group on this); all they want is the money and risk does not seem to bother them, even when there’s an actual crime associated with pension-related activities



  29. 36,000 Soon

    Techrights is still growing; in WordPress alone (not the entire site) we’re fast approaching 36,000 posts; in Gemini it’s almost 45,500 pages and our IRC community turns 15 soon



  30. Contrary to What Bribed (by Microsoft) Media Keeps Saying, Bing is in a Freefall and Bing Staff is Being Laid Off (No, Chatbots Are Not Search and Do Not Substitute Web Pages!)

    Chatbots/chaffbot media noise (chaff) needs to be disregarded; Microsoft has no solid search strategy, just lots and lots of layoffs that never end this year (Microsoft distracts shareholders with chaffbot hype/vapourware each time a wave of layoffs starts, giving financial incentives for publishers to not even mention these; right now it’s GitHub again, with NDAs signed to hide that it is happening)


RSS 64x64RSS Feed: subscribe to the RSS feed for regular updates

Home iconSite Wiki: You can improve this site by helping the extension of the site's content

Home iconSite Home: Background about the site and some key features in the front page

Chat iconIRC Channel: Come and chat with us in real time

Recent Posts