IPKat publishes the decision of the Enlarged Board of Appeal (EBoA) under Article 23 EPC.It explains why the EBoA rejected the request made by the Administrative Council (AC) chairman, Mr Kongstad, seeking the dismissal of a Board Member for the events leading up to the house ban.

In another post, IPKat publishes the most significant arguments:

Contrary to what Merpel had understood, the request was NOT rejected for the procedural reason that Mr. Kongstad had made the request rather than the AC making the request as Article 23 requires. Indeed the EBA found that Mr. Kongstad was authorised to make the request on behalf of the AC.

• The request was rejected because it was not properly substantiated. The AC had commissioned a report from a specially constituted Disciplinary Committee (DC). That DC's report formed the substance of the case, and was accompanied by a USB stick containing a mass of documents and files, which were said to be the evidence against the Board Member.
• The EBA held that the DC report did not sufficiently document the facts and evidence for two of the five allegations it held to have been proven, and nor did it express a view on the reliability of the evidence itself. This meant that neither the EBA itself nor the Board Member being accused was able to preoperly understand and respond to the case being made and it was not reasonable for the EBA and the other party to trawl through the USB stick to reconstitute the evidence.

IPKat reports that the Investigative Unit of the European Patent Office paid an unexpected visit to two SUEPO officials in the Hague, who were taken away for an interrogation. On their return, they were badly shaken and required medical treatment and have been on sick leave since.

On 17 November, three further SUEPO officials, who knew they were being investigated for alleged disciplinary offences, were suspended from service and banned from the premises. The Office says, with a perfectly straight face, that "it is not targeting the union". The union has actually been decapitated.

Within two hours of the news of the suspension spreading, some 2,000 employees had organised themselves into a demonstration. The Munich police closed off Erhardstrasse with almost no notice to facilitate this demonstration, and Merpel’s very many eye-witness correspondents tell her that the most remarkable fact of this large attendance was that it contained a lot of new faces, particularly at Director level.

The suspension of three staff representatives in Munich and the attacks on two more in The Hague, attracted quite some attention, most of it rather critical of the EPO. The events were covered by:Pierre-Yves Le Borgn',FOSS Patents,IPKat (here and here),Merkur Online,NRC (translations inEnglish,French andGerman),World Intellectual Property Review

Further EPO related news can be found on IPKat.

IPKat comments on a report published by the International Labour Organisation (ILO) on 15 October 2015 and titled"Workload and Effectiveness of the Tribunal" (with French translation):

"The International Labour Organisation (ILO) is raising serious concerns about the situation at the EPO, where labour or workers' rights are being gradually abolished and the number of complaints has gone through the roof."

and paragraph 18 explicitly states that:

"Member organizations expressed serious concern about the volume of complaints against the EPO, and most importantly about the fact that problems around the "litigation culture" and social dialogue in that organization are not conjunctural but are most likely to persist unabated for many years. The general sense is that, based on available information, the current situation is not sustainable and that measures such as the increase of the number of judges or the number of sessions will not have a lasting effect on, much less resolve, the current flow of complaints filed by EPO officials. While noting the explanations of EPO administration officials about their genuine efforts to improve the situation, member organizations agreed that this was a governance problem of broader dimensions which called for urgent action in the interest of preserving the Tribunal's operation."

SUEPO had previously submitted its views on the situation in the answer to the ILO-questionnaire.

Mr Battistelli has issued on 16 October 2015 an internal Communiqué, entitled "Defending our values", about an "unprecedented disciplinary case". The day before, the Administrative Council did not follow the proposal of Mr Battistelli, which was in flagrant breach of Art. 23(1) EPC, to fire the suspended DG3 colleague. SUEPO, having no insight into the details of the disciplinary case, will not attempt to comment on the merits but would like to point out that:

1. everybody is to be considered innocent until proven guilty, and
2. pending disciplinary procedures are confidential, primarily to protect the personconcerned.

The procedure is still pending since the matter has been referred to the Enlarged Board of Appeal, which has yet to give its opinion.The accusations openly made by Mr Battistelli in his Communiqué of 16 October are thus wholly inappropriate. More comments can be found in this publication.

Translations inFrench,German andDutch are available.

In the report of the 145th meeting of the Administrative Council (AC), the Council announced its decision to initiate a review of the social situation at the European Patent Offce and to continue the exercise aiming at union recognition talks.

In a letter to Mr Kongstad, Chairman of the AC, and Mr Battistelli, President of the Office, SUEPO reminds that the initial talks were interrupted because, at precisely the same time as the talks were starting, the Office Administration considered it appropriate to initiate an investigation with the help of Control Risks against staff representatives and/or union executives.The closure of this investigation and any other investigation or disciplinary procedure targeting staff representatives and/or union officials - without prejudice to the accused - is a condition sine qua non for recommencing the talks.

A copy of the letter can be found here.

Bayerischer Rundfunk comments on the project titled "Closer contacts with major applicants" involving Microsoft, Canon & Co designed to "foster a better esprit de service, not least to ensure that [the EPO] do[es] not lose workload market share to other major offices". The article describes the project as a "preferential treatment".

Translations inEnglish andFrench are available by scrolling through the document.

JUVEreports on the decision of the Administrative Council (AC) to refer the disciplinary case of the suspended member of the Boards of Appeal (BoA) to the Enlarged Board of Appeal (EBoA).The AC did not follow the proposal of Mr Battistelli, which was in flagrant breach of Art. 23(1) EPC, to fire the suspended member.

The social conflict has escalated further with the investigation in relation to a complaint filed with the Investigative Unit (IU) by Elodie Bergot, Principal Director Human Resources, against staff representatives and accusing Elizabeth Hardon, Munich Chair of SUEPO and the Local Staff Committee.

Heise Online (archive) comments on the project titled "Closer contacts with major applicants" designedto "foster a better esprit de service, not least to ensure that [the EPO] do not lose workload market share to other major offices" and so that "[i]tcan be explored as to what the EPO can do for them and vice versa".

Canon, Philips, Microsoft, Qualcomm, BASF, Bayer, Samsung, Huawei, Siemens, Ericsson and Fujitsu are the companies which are part of the project. Most of them are not European.

Translations in English andFrenchare available by scrolling through the document.