Battistelli is clearly out of control. What we wrote last week about the EBoA (enlarged board of appeals) was likely correct, based on what we are now learning in private (more on that another day). To make matters worse, the illegal suspension of a judge turns out to be an almost eternal limbo. It's like garden leave, only much worse and nearly perpetual. As IP Kat put it this morning: "Following interventions from the Enlarged Board, external national judges and many other quarters, the Administrative Council took the matter in hand, formally suspended the Board Member until 31 March 2015, and promised a speedy and thorough investigation of the matter. 'Speedy' means different things in Eponia than where Merpel lives, but six months after that March date it appears that there has been progress of a sort.
"Battistelli just wants total control and he cannot stand the idea that Dutch courts deem his actions illegal or that judges whom he is not authorised to punish (because they're structurally independent) say the truth about him and his corrupt reign.""This could mean what is says, i.e. that the AC will come to a disciplinary decision this month. However, watch this space, as Merpel has reason to suspect that the story will not come to a neat close, or at least not this month."
Well, the AC's Jesper Kongstad is in pretty much in the pocket of Benoît Battistelli, who suspended this judge, and he is also connected to Zeljko Topić, whom the judge is alleged to have spoken about before he got illegally suspended. What kind of 'justice' can one expect to come out? As Merpal noted later in her analysis: "The EPO management has been seeking to reform the Boards of Appeal, and apparently a necessary part of this project is to get them out of Munich. The fact that the more senior members have family ties there, children in school and college, and may ultimately be forced to resign if there is a long-distance move, is neither here nor there (or is that the whole point?). Regardless, it was long understood that Mr Battistelli favoured sending the Boards to Berlin, but the little birdies hiding from Merpel in the trees along Erhardtstrasse are chirping that the new plan is to send the Boards to Vienna. Nice city to be sure, but it's a long commute after dropping the kids to school in Munich each morning. Merpel will keep you posted."
Battistelli just wants total control and he cannot stand the idea that Dutch courts deem his actions illegal or that judges whom he is not authorised to punish (because they're structurally independent) say the truth about him and his corrupt reign.
Watch what commenters are going to say in the coming days at IP Kat. This might help provide new (but potentially unverifiable) information from within the EPO, currently one of Europe's most corrupt institutions. Demonstrations and strikes are a non-issue, except when the staff union gets gagged by menacing threats from Battistelli. ⬆