Bonum Certa Men Certa

Josef Kratochvíl and All the European Patent Organisation's Chiefs (at the Administrative Council Too) Notified That Over 1,000 Members of Staff Demand Action on Patent Quality and Compliance (Industry Too is Alarmed That Many Invalid Patents Get Granted)

posted by Roy Schestowitz on Feb 23, 2024

Letter

THE Central Staff Committee of the understaffed EPO wrote to the so-called 'boss' (more like partner in crime) of António Campinos.

It is a 10-page publication that includes 3 annexes, all of which covered here before (Annex 1, Annex 2, Annex 3; some coincide with the General Assembly and one is a decade old!).

We shall focus on the new bits, dated earlier this week.

The Central Staff Committee wrote this message to staff:

Putting back quality on the agenda of the EPO: Open letter to the Administrative Council

Dear Colleagues,

Staff of the European Patent Office gathered in hybrid General Assemblies in Munich on 24 January, in Berlin on 31 January and in The Hague on 6 February 2024.

A resolution on objective setting and quality was put to a vote and supported by an overwhelming majority: among the 1523 attendees, 1088 voted in favour, 31 against and 66 abstained. The outcome confirms the view that EPO management instrumentalizes the career and performance system to put pressure on staff to produce quantity at the expense of quality of the final products. Such policies result in low level of staff engagement, high incidence of psychosocial risks and mounting criticism from the industry on patent quality (IPQC).

Following the adoption of the resolution, Mr Beat Weibel, Chief IP counsel at Siemens and founder of the IPQC, told Managing IP (PDF article): “We feel now there is an informal coalition between the users of the [EPO] system and those executing the system.” Mr Jorge Thomaier, Head of IP at Bayer, noted that “This message is loud and clear for the EPO management – they should first talk to their staff and then take our (industry members’) help to improve targets, incentivisation, and in the end, the quality of the patents.”

In this letter to the Administrative Council, we urge the Member States to exercise their supervisory role and instruct EPO management to enter into dialogue with the staff representation and to put in place the measures supported by staff in the resolution.

Sincerely yours,

The Central Staff Committee - CSC

The new part of the letter tells the Administrative Council something it already knows but chooses to ignore because Campinos bribes for complicity, as noted here in 2022 and in 2023. It's a huge pile of corruption, more fitting for Russia than for Europe.

Here is the body of the letter in full:

European Patent Office
80298 Munich
Germany

Central Staff Committee
Comité central du personnel
Zentraler Personalausschuss

centralSTCOM@epo.org

Tel. +49 -89- 2399 - 2120

Reference: sc24013cl

Date: 19.02.2024

European Patent Office | 80298 MUNICH | GERMANY

To the Chairman and
The Head of Delegations
of the Administrative Council
of the European Patent Organisation
Mr Josef Kratochvíl

By email

OPEN LETTER

Putting back quality on the agenda of the EPO

Dear Members of the Administrative Council,

Staff of the European Patent Office gathered in hybrid General Assemblies in Munich on 24 January, in Berlin on 31 January and in The Hague on 6 February 2024.

A resolution on objective setting and quality (Annex 1) was put to a vote and supported by an overwhelming majority: among the 1 523 attendees, 1 088 voted in favour, 31 against and 66 abstained. The outcome confirms the view that EPO management instrumentalizes the career and performance system to put pressure on staff to produce quantity at the expense of quality of the final products. Such policies result in low level of staff engagement, high incidence of psychosocial risks and mounting criticism from the industry on patent quality (IPQC).

Back in 2015, the EPO had initiated a project “Closer contacts with major applicants” to foster a better “esprit de service” (Annex 2). Among the companies selected at the time were companies which have now become members of the Industry Patent Quality Charter (IPQC) and are among the top proprietors of Unitary Patents1. Since 2022, these companies express their concerns on the decrease in substantive quality of EPO granted patents. They bring arguments, data and propose working groups to improve our patent system.

_____________

1 “Statistics and trend centre: Requests for unitary effect”, EPO website


However, this time, EPO management closes its door and denies any quality issue without justification (see overview of events2 in Annex 3).

Following the adoption of the resolution, Mr Beat Weibel, Chief IP counsel at Siemens and founder of the IPQC, told Managing IP3: “We feel now there is an informal coalition between the users of the [EPO] system and those executing the system.” Mr Jorge Thomaier, Head of IP at Bayer, noted that “This message is loud and clear for the EPO management – they should first talk to their staff and then take our (industry members’) help to improve targets, incentivisation, and in the end, the quality of the patents.”

We can only urge the Administrative Council to exercise its supervisory role and instruct EPO management to enter into dialogue with the staff representation and to put in place the measures supported by staff in the resolution.

Yours sincerely,

Derek Kelly
Chairman of the Central Staff Committee

List of annexes:
Annex 1 Resolution adopted on objective setting
Annex 2 “Closer contacts with major applicants”, DG1 Note of 16.02.2015
Annex 3 “50 years EPC: The EPO ignoring the skilled person”, CSC paper of 19.01.2024

cc.: Mr A. Campinos; President of the EPO

____

2 “50 years EPC: The EPO ignoring the skilled person”, CSC paper (sc24001cp), 19- 01-2024 [ANNEX 2]

3 “EPO staff vote through resolution urging quality control”, Managing IP, 08-02- 2024

Our expectation is that they won't even bother to respond but now that it's on the record that they were duly informed they cannot say some time later, "oh, we didn't know..."

Board 28 E-meeting

Other Recent Techrights' Posts

This is Why Codeberg Issues an Apology Today
This response was clear and relatively swift
Destruction and Distortion of Information, Including Facts About Linux (Bonus: This is Destroying the Planet)
All that LLMs have going for them is hype, and moreover media that intentionally misrepresents them and their supposed capabilities
Google Seems to Have Just Killed All Instances of Invidious
YouTube is rapidly becoming just "another Neflix"
 
Gemini Links 12/02/2025: "Bream Gives Me Hiccups", Making Chinese Tea, and More
Links for the day
The Register Studies (to Affirm) Reports of IBM Layoffs "at the Finance and Operations business unit"
something about that specific unit
Links 12/02/2025: SSL FUD, DEI Phase-out, Felonies Committed by MElon (Data Breaches)
Links for the day
Italian Media Covers Richard Stallman's English Talk Ahead of Tonight's Public Appearance
article in La Stampa
Microsoft Skype in a Freefall: About 20% Decrease in Site Traffic in 3 Months (Amid Microsoft Phasing Out Credits)
Microsoft axing more services/features may mean that now they scrape the bottom of the barrel and Skype will simply die, discontinuing service (like ICQ) in a matter of years
Gemini Links 12/02/2025: Depression, Gabbro, WikiTok, and More
Links for the day
Links 12/02/2025: Health, Security, and Monopolies
Links for the day
Gemini Protocol is Increasingly Important to the Net
Gemini Protocol will turn 6 this summer
Former EPO Manager Warns That the Illegal 'Court' for "Unitary Patents" Enables “Law Shopping”
Daniel X. Thomas opposed the very existence of the UPC, which any honest person could recognise was both illegal and unconstitutional
Like GAFAM, the EPO is Passing the Financial Pains to Staff
the EPO is operating illegally at this point
Morale at Microsoft Ruined by the Company Labelling Thousands of Workers 'Low Performers', Sacking Them on the Spot and Denying Them Basic Benefits
people laid off as "low performers" go to social control media to bemoan the label
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Tuesday, February 11, 2025
IRC logs for Tuesday, February 11, 2025
Links 11/02/2025: Current state of the Internet and Smallnet Information Services (SIS)
Links for the day
Conservative Estimate: Over 10,000 IBM Workers to Be Laid Off in the Next Two Waves
The morale is low and layoffs are expected soon, with mass layoffs likely happening next month and then again later
Links 11/02/2025: Trade Wars and "Crisis for American Universities"
Links for the day
Parasitic LLM Slop Sites Destroy the Ability to Find "Linux" News in Google News
Remember that Google News laid off lots of its workers
Richard Stallman's English Talk in Italy Less Than 24 Hours Away (Torino) and Then Another Talk in Italy Scheduled (University of Bozen-Bolzano)
He's active and he travels a lot in spite of his medical condition
IBM Layoff Rumours, Large-Scale Implementations Weeks Ahead (in March 2025)
There are some people corroborating
Links 11/02/2025: Nutritional Poverty, Closure of USAID, More Fictional 'Valuations' Around Buzzwords
Links for the day
Perl Programming Leftovers
recently in perl.org
Microsoft in Africa: From 98% to Less Than 10% in Just 16 Years
Microsoft being on less than 1 in 10 Web-connected devices in Africa is a very big deal
Almost as If MElon Reads Techrights
The joke we started appears to be spreading
Microsoft Blasted for Adding Insult to Injury: Workers Laid Off Without Prior Notice, Without Severance Payment and Basic Coverage (Like Health), Then Stigmatised as Bad Performers So They Cannot Find a Job Elsewhere
Such stereotypes end entire careers
Gemini Links 11/02/2025: NeoVim and Deploying Other People's Code
Links for the day
BetaNews is Still Publishing LLM Slop/SPAM About "Linux"
Assuming it is indeed LLM slop, it seems clear BetaNews has no intention of improving or is simply unable/unwilling to improve
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Monday, February 10, 2025
IRC logs for Monday, February 10, 2025
Scheduled Maintenance Tomorrow and on Valentines
If the site (or Gemini capsule) is offline for a bit, the maintenance windows are likely the root cause
If Matthias Kirschner Loves Free Software, He'll Change the Name of the Microsoft-Sponsored Organisation He Governs (in Order to Avoid Confusion)
The FSF-EEE does not really like Software Freedom, it just loves money (including Microsoft's)
Soylent News Lessens the Scope of Discussion Due to Persistent Trolling and Online Abuse
if they make it a lot harder for new people to participate, then they limit the "general appeal" and reach
EPO's Local Occupational Health, Safety and Ergonomics Committee (LOHSEC) in The Hague: Workers Are Getting Sicker, Conditions in Which to Assess Patent Applications Deteriorate
"According to the Office statistics the total number of days of absence has gone up from 12.4 to 13.1 total number of sick days per Full Time Equivalent (FTE) from 2023 to 2024."
The Standard Needs to Improve Its Standards for Fact-Checking, Aaron Swartz Had Nothing to Do With Reddit and He Detested the Company That Created It
The Web is already bad enough as it is
When the Livestream of Richard Stallman is Apparently Bury-Brigaded Offline You Finally Learn to Avoid Google/YouTube for Streaming
Please, people, stop uploading to Google/YouTube
New Paper From the EPO Highlights Large-Scale Discrimination at the Office, Where People Are Rewarded for Granting More and More Illegal Patents
Even the Kremlin is probably more competent than this
Links 10/02/2025: Ban on D.E.I. Language, Listeria Risk/Outbreak
Links for the day
Links 10/02/2025: Announcing "Stringless" and Mental Health Improvement
Links for the day
Links 10/02/2025: Facebook Mass Layoffs, "Meta" Did What Aaron Swartz Had Done But to the Tune of 81.7 Terabytes
Links for the day
Microsoft Tarnishing the Brand of Arch
Of course Arch can do whatever it wants, but being associated with Microsoft is a badge of shame
The Ultimate and Inevitable Fall of OpenAI (Even Brave is 'Bigger' Now)
"When you advertise at the Super Bowl, you’ve reached just about every consumer in America. It’s the last stop. If you’re not profitable yet, you never will be."
Adding Slop to Your Blog Only Makes One Assume All the Text is LLM Slop
Simon Coter from Oracle has turned to slop
Macao is Leaving Microsoft Behind
Windows is falling to new all-time lows
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Sunday, February 09, 2025
IRC logs for Sunday, February 09, 2025
Microsoft's WSL (LSW) Shows That It Can Never Love Linux, Only Windows
that's just how Microsoft rolls
Activism in Times of War and a Coup
'Linux' Foundation works for fascism
What the Silencing of Neatnik Tells Us About Linus Torvalds Inside a Microsoft-Dominated 'Linux' Foundation
Is Linus Torvalds free to express his mind as he wishes about every topic, even just any technical topic?
Windows Down to 11.35% in Senegal, as Measured by statCounter
Another all-time low (Windows was at 99% in 2009)
"Latest Technology News" in BetaNews is LLM Slop Promoting OOXML and Proprietary Software at the Expense of LibreOffice and OpenDocument Format (ODF)
Remember that "open-source" and Open Source aren't the same; the former is fake