Martijn van Dam goes ahead with the plan

Summary: Increasing acceptance and acknowledgement of the human/labour rights issues inside the European Patent Office (EPO), as recognised even by host nations such as the Netherlands

THE EPO turns out to be a terrible place to work at/for. A TV program previously explained why, helping those who don't actually work at the EPO get a glimpse from the inside (witnesses were anonymised).

Benoît Battistelli nearly had an opportunity to de-escalate, but he blew it and exploded with his notorious temper. Human-corrected machine translation of this article has been provided to us by Petra Kramer. It covers this week's encounter/rendezvous involving Martijn van Dam and Benoît Battistelli.

Fruitless conversation with controversial patent boss

THE HAGUE / RIJSWIJK (Reuters) - CEO Benoît Battistelli is accused of conducting a reign of terror at the European Patent Office, but a "firm" interview that Secretary Martijn van Dam (Economic Affairs) held with the highest boss yielded nothing. The European Patent Office is an international organization with 38 Member States, including all members of the European Union. Rijswijk is is home to one of its offices.

"The call, to my disappointment, has not led to any new perspectives," Van Dam wrote Wednesday to the House of Commons. The House, as the government, is deeply concerned about the leadership of the patent boss which has been described as a "tyrannical". Those concerns have been brought over in vain by Van Dam on 4 March.

There will be an investigation into the working conditions at the Patent Office, Van Dam announced earlier this year. When workers protested against poor working environment and against the dismissal of colleagues who criticized the Frenchman Battistelli. The agency is to reorganize and the government and parliament already have made it known that it should implement those reforms more carefully.

As the latest staff survey comes to show, staff is suffering and the working conditions have deteriorated severely. An external probe is desperately needed now. ⬆