The EPO's Central Staff Committee Complains About the EPO's Management Faking "Production" (Monopolies) to Make More Money

posted by Roy Schestowitz on Nov 12, 2025

2019: EPO May be Financially Defrauding the Public and Its Employees | 2022: Financialization of the EPO Will Doom Europe's Largest Patent Office

Earlier this year we mentioned the letters sent to the EPO's Steve 'Microsoft' Rowan (Vice-President DG1) and Angel Aledo Lopez (Chief Operating Officer) [1, 2], who is trying to manipulate polls at the EPO to not shift the weight of opinion/s but basically intimidate staff into pretending everything is OK. These aren't nice people but colleagues of the "Cocaine Club" from Alicante. They govern by intimidation, gaslighting, and propaganda (they pay media and academia to relay obvious falsehoods). They're totally unqualified for this job^*, but so is the President, António Campinos, who basically bribed all the voters to secure his current term. That's apparently how "democracy" works now. The winner is he who buys the most votes. Yes, he (ask the short-lived Brit).

A year ago (November 8, 2024) we mentioned cuts to workers' benefits ("Incompatible With the European Patent Convention") and a month ago (October 13, 2025) we said that salaries were being reduced. The administration, probably sniffing some lines in-between beers (booze or boobs, maybe both), doesn't want to listen to examiners with Ph.D.-level degrees and decades of experience in patents. Those who do all the work get treated really badly. It is difficult not to relate to the examiners; many of them don't want to grant software patents, but the administration forces them to.

The Central Staff Committee has a new communication, circulated among staff and (as usual) leaked to us already:

Open letter to VP1 and the COO for a true bottom-up approach

Dear Colleagues,

We understand that production targets are now being handed down to teams and individuals. Feedback received already indicates that, once again, some colleagues will be facing double-digit percentage increases in their targets for 2026.

This trend is particularly troubling in light of the fact that a substantial proportion of staff will simultaneously be facing a pay cut. We are deeply concerned about the impact this will have on the engagement of DG1 staff: how can targets be continuously increased when salaries and benefits are being relentlessly cut?

The draft budget for 2026 (CA/50/25) shows 424.700 products and 114.700 published patents. Despite the targeted increases in production and productivity, the Office foresees a decline in staff expenses below the 2025 level.

In this open letter to VP1 and the COO, we respectfully request once again they take this opportunity to engage meaningfully with staff and their representatives, and to honour the requests made in our previous letter to ensure transparency and to adopt a genuine bottom-up approach in the target setting process for 2026.

We furthermore request that the surpluses produced by the EPO, a non-profit organisation, be redistributed equitably to the colleagues who have worked to produce them.

The open letter to VP1 and the COO is dated 6 days ago and contains authoritative references. We reproduce it below as GemText, plain text (bulletin), and HTML:

Central Staff Committee
Comité central du personnel
Zentraler Personalausschuss

centralSTCOM@epo.org

Reference: sc25070cl

Date: 06/11/2025

European Patent Office | 80298 MUNICH | GERMANY

To: Mr Steve Rowan (Vice-President DG1)
Cc: Mr Angel Aledo Lopez (Chief Operating Officer)

By email:
To: vp1@epo.org
Cc: coo@epo.org

OPEN LETTER

Follow up: Transparency with the target setting for 2026 and a true bottom-up approach

Dear Mr Rowan,
Dear Mr Aledo Lopez,

From our colleagues, we understand that production targets are now being handed down to teams and individuals. Feedback received already indicates that, once again, some colleagues will be facing double-digit percentage increases in their targets for 2026.

This trend is particularly troubling in light of the fact that a substantial proportion of staff will simultaneously be facing a pay cut. We are deeply concerned about the impact this will have on the engagement of DG1 staff: how can targets be continuously increased when salaries and benefits are being relentlessly cut?

In your letter of 16 July 2025, you stated: “Regarding the patent granting procedure and your concerns with the setting of targets for 2026 we would like to reiterate that the initial production goals for 2026, as outlined in CA/25/25, are preliminary calculations based on a combination of different factors, including the positive trend for 2025; however, variations may still occur to reflect complexity of the different technical fields, team-specific workloads and performance baselines. The Office takes note of your concerns and will continue organising regular check-ins and feedback loops to address them, should this be needed”.

---

We are disturbed that, regardless of your statements, you have left the preliminary calculations unchanged. The draft budget for 2026 (CA/50/25) still shows 424.700 products and 114.700 published patents. Despite the targeted increases in production and productivity, the Office foresees a decline in staff expenses below the 2025 level.

It is now even more urgent than before to implement the feedback loop you referred to. We respectfully request once again that you take this opportunity to engage meaningfully with staff and their representatives, and to honour the requests made in our previous letter as well as the previous requests of the Local Staff Committee The Hague (LSCTH)¹ to ensure transparency and to adopt a genuine bottom-up approach in the target setting process for 2026. We furthermore request that the surpluses produced by the EPO, a non-profit organisation, be redistributed equitably to the colleagues who have worked to produce them.

Sincerely yours,

Derek Kelly
Chairman of the Central Staff Committee

_______

¹ see point 3 of the notes on the meeting of 12.06.2024, point 4 of the notes on the meeting of 29.11.2024 and point 2 of the notes on the meeting of 06.06.2025

In relation to the above see another letter sent to VP1 on the same day by the Central Staff Committee. The staff seems fed up and tomorrow there will be a cross-site meeting to discuss the latest attacks on (one might say robbery of) EPO staff. █

_____

^* They never ran a patent office before, but instead they had "connections" and they were eager to cheat along the way.