EPO Union Says Monopoly-Granting Targets at EPO "Difficult to Achieve Without Compromising [Staff] Health, Personal Time or the Quality of the Final Products" (Products as in Monopolies, Not Real Products)
"Dear members, dear DG1 examiners, dear colleagues," said the SUEPO TH committee (SUEPO is staff union of the EPO and TH is The Hague). "As previously mentioned, the DG1 production objectives for 2025 have been increased by at least 7% compared to 2024. When the targets were handed down, this translated into double digit percentage increases for many colleagues."
Days ago they sent out a new publication highlighting stress and compromised patent quality (or lack of validity; good luck proving that at great personal expense!). The EPO is basically circling down the drain and staff takes the brunt, too.
Here's what the publication said.
INTERNATIONALE GEWERKSCHAFT IM EUROPÄISCHEN PATENTAMT
STAFF UNION OF THE EUROPEAN PATENT OFFICE
UNION SYNDICALE DE L'OFFICE EUROPEEN DES BREVETSStaff Union of the European Patent Office (SUEPO)
14 January 2025
su25003hp – 0.2.1/4.4Targets DG1 – update & recommendations
Dear members, dear DG1 examiners, dear colleagues,
As previously mentioned1, the DG1 production objectives for 2025 have been increased by at least 7% compared to 20242.
When the targets were handed down to examiners, we received the following feedback:
- Double digit percentage increases are concerningly common;
- In some directorates, individual time capacity is not correctly calculated with some leave counted as working time, even when the leave is well known in advance, such as parental or home leave;
- In others, the requested productivity is the same for all, irrespective of the field’s technical difficulty.
This leaves a lot of you with objectives which are difficult to achieve without compromising your health, personal time or the quality of the final products. Furthermore, as in previous years and due to the career system3, nothing guarantees that you will receive a step or a bonus if you do reach your targets - whereas the performance requested for 2025 would, in many cases, probably have warranted a double step only a couple of years ago.
Given that your 2025 performance will nevertheless be evaluated based on these targets, it is crucial to promptly bring any doubts or concerns to your manager’s attention in writing and to document them for future reference. Therefore, we once again strongly encourage you to send an email to your line manager regarding the target increases, possibly using the updated template provided in ANNEX 1 below. Additionally, please append this email to your 2025 performance report in SuccessFactors, as detailed in ANNEX 2 below. While doing this early in 2025 is optimal, it can also be completed later in the year.
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1 See Objective setting 2025, SUEPO TH, 11.12.2024, and Report of meeting with VP1, point 4, 12.12.2024, LSCTH
2 More particularly, the 2025 budget (See CA/D 1/24, p.21 and Annex 34) adopted by the Administrative Council mentions 413,341 SEO products for 4,025 examiners, i.e. 102.7 SEO products/examiner. At the same time, the DG1 production counter predicts 422,762 SEO products for 4,005 examiners according to DG1 management dashboard2. This comes down to 105.5 SEO products/examiner, an even higher increase than planned by the 2025 budget.
3 Circular 364, Part IV, A(3): “there is no automatic link between appraisal reports and the reward exercise”
We would appreciate it if you could then forward your email to hague@suepo.org.
Additional information:
According to the DG1 production counter:
- on 24 Dec 2024, the production gap was -1162 and the office was closed until 1 January 2025 included,
- on 31 Dec 2024, the production gap was -668.
Despite the production of 494 SEO products during office closure, DG1 did not achieve the targets for 2024.
Such a high production while the EPO was officially closed leads to the question of whether the office is doing its utmost to fulfil its duty of care towards DG1 staff. We would like to draw your attention to the fact that there is a high incidence of illness related to work related stress4 at the EPO and invite you to take care of your health. By disconnecting during time off, taking sick leave if needed and informing OHS if work is affecting your health - or health concerns are affecting your performance.
And finally, the fact that the targets for 2024 were not achieved despite colleagues regularly working during holidays and days off is another reason why the target increases for 2025 seem problematic.Kind regards,
Your SUEPO TH committee – M18B10 and De Bruyn Kopsstraat, 15, Rijswijk
[...]
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4 See reference to COHSEC of 22.02.2024 in COHSEC/DOC 7/2024, p. 4
To those of us (over 99.999% of people impacted by this*) who do not work at the EPO the misuse of words like "products" (monopolies are not products) should be disturbing, but then again consider who runs the Office and what for. The EPO violates its own treaties and spreads its culture of corruption to the EU and to patent tribunals.
People talk about how democracy ends today in the US. We have a similar problem here in Europe. █
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* In a world with over 8 billion people, less than one in a million works for the EPO.