European Patent Office (EPO) Series: From Alicante to Munich: Another Smooth Ride
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Part 36
António Campinos had another smooth ride in 2017 when he moved from Alicante to Munich to succeed Benoît Battistelli at the EPO.
António Campinos had another smooth ride in 2017 when he moved from Alicante to Munich to succeed Benoît Battistelli at the EPO.
We recently provided our readers with a detailed account of how the OHIM Administrative Board succeeded in installing its chairman António Campinos as President of the Alicante-based agency in 2010 by using a "shortlist of one" to effectively force the hand of the final decision-making authority, the EU's Council of Ministers.
Campinos took to his new job in Alicante like the proverbial duck to water. By all accounts he was very successful at divvying out the EUIPO's impressive budget surplus via the recently established "Cooperation Fund".
When his position came up for review in 2014, there was no visible challenger and Campinos did not encounter any difficulty in securing a rubber-stamped reappointment for another five-year term beginning on 1st October 2015.
Because the EU legislation governing the EUIPO only permitted a single five-year renewal of the appointment, this meant that his term in Alicante would have been due to end on 30th September 2020. But the ever-resourceful "trademark expert" was already looking for new opportunities that would help him to broaden his professional horizons and diversify into other domains of "IP" regulation such as the world of patents.
As luck would have it, a position commensurate with his professional expectations and his inflated sense of entitlement was about to come up for grabs in Munich where his mentor, the notorious Corsican despot Benoît Battistelli, was due to retire as the President of the European Patent Office at the end of June 2018.
The EPO's Administrative Council had unhappy memories of the previous election procedure that had played out in such a divisive and protracted manner during the last quarter of 2009 and the first quarter of 2010 as efforts were made to find a successor to Alison Brimelow.
When the time came to appoint a successor to Battistelli in 2017, the Council delegates were keen to avoid a repeat performance of the 2009/2010 election circus.
Under the chairmanship of Christoph Ernst, the head of the German delegation, it seems that the Administrative Council decided to borrow a trick from the repertoire of the EUIPO Management Board and to opt for an EPO version of the "solution of no choice".
This time round there would be only one candidate for the position of EPO President: the incumbent EUIPO Executive Director, António-Serge de Pinho Campinos.
The disgruntled Italian delegation which felt that it had been cheated of a Vice-President position in 2012 due Battistelli's sponsorship of Željko Topić refused to play along and made a belated attempt to field an opposing candidate in the person of the South Tyrolean judge Cuno Tarfusser.
But Tarfusser's "lack of an IP background" – compared to the "trademark expert" Campinos – was used to undermine his candidacy and thereby ensure that Battistelli's designated successor got the job. From the very outset Tarfusser's candidacy was predestined to fail but it nevertheless served one useful purpose: it created the illusion of choice.
Campinos was officially elected as Battistelli's successor at the quarterly Administrative Council meeting which took place in October 2017.
In an interview with the German legal periodical JUVE published in November 2017, the Chairman of the Administrative Council Christoph Ernst was asked whether he could explain "why there was only one single serious candidate for such an attractive and well-remunerated position at the head of an international organization."
The response from Ernst was as follows: "I can't see into the minds of any potential applicants. Maybe some were deterred from applying due to the fact that, from quite early on, it was known that António Campinos was applying, and it was also clear that he enjoyed strong support among the Administrative Council."
This response from the Administrative Council chairman can be read as a tacit admission that any potential candidates who might have been interested didn't bother to apply because they realised that the game was rigged from the start.
Campinos took over as Battistelli's anointed successor at the EPO on 1st July 2018.
Four years later in June 2022 – a year before his first term was due to expire – he managed to secure a rubber-stamped reappointment for a second term despite the disputed track-record of his first term and the protests of EPO staff.
At the time of writing, his current term has passed its halfway point and Campinos makes no secret of the fact that he is actively seeking a further renewal of his appointment.
In the next part we shall see how his efforts to secure reappointment for an unprecedented third mandate indicate that Campinos is intent on transforming what was originally envisaged as a temporary public office into his own permanent personal feather-bed. █