The European Federation of Public Service Unions (EPSU) represents more than 265 unions. This week, its General Secretary Jan Willem Goudriaan sent a letter of solidarity to SUEPO, whose members take industrial action on Tuesday 22 March.

Read the press release

EPSU Letter of Solidarity

SUEPO
 

This document provides a non-exhaustive list of some articles, blog posts or videos published in February 2022 (sorted in reverse chronological order, not necessarily by relevance). Latest additions are highlighted in yellow:
 

• (Kluwer Patent Blog published on 23/02/2022) "Industrial action at the EPO to demand restoration of fundamental rights". *Translations are available in German and French.

• (Kluwer Patent Blog published on 03/02/2022) "ILOAT: Former EPO president Battistelli violated staff’s right of free association". *Translations are available in German and French.

Other media articles that might be of interest to our readers

**Note: The translations are without guarantee, these were produced using automated translation.

In its 133rd Session, the Tribunal ruled on 51 cases among which 12 EPO cases. For the second time after the judgments on the unlawful strike regulations, the Tribunal ruled in Judgment 4482 that an EPO reform, “Social Democracy“, breached the fundamental right to freedom of association. Judgments 4488, 4489 and 4490 sanctioned the EPO’s institutional harassment of a former Principal Director and awarded above 250.000€ of damages in total. Judgment 4491 ordered the reinstatement of a single mother with babies (at the material time) unlawfully charged with fraud by the Investigative Unit which made an unfair and distorted analysis of the facts.

More details are provided in this report, read it here.

*The report is available in German and French.

SUEPO Central

**Note: The translations are without guarantee, these were produced using automated translation.

Historical Judgments of the Administrative Tribunal  of the International Labour Organisation (ILOAT) on the fundamental right to strike breached by the European Patent Office (EPO).
 

On 7 July 2021, the ILOAT ruled that the EPO strike regulations put in place since 1 July 2013 created a regime placing several limitations on the exercise of the right to strike which was unlawful because it violated the fundamental right to strike. After 8 years of breach of a fundamental right at the EPO (including 3 years under the mandate of a new President), it is now time to take the consequences and to repair the damage done to the Organization and its Staff.
 

Continue reading the English edition here

Follow this link to the French editorial

For our German readers: Continue reading here

In its 132^nd session the Tribunal delivered a total of 43 judgments, of which 25 concern the EPO (many of which were in favor of the complainants).

The encouraging news from this session is that the following cases were ruled in favor of the complainants:

• Judgments 4433 and 4435 on strike deductions;

• Judgments 4430, 4432 and 4434 on Circular 347.

A more detailed overview of all judgments of the 132^nd session can be found here.

A detailed analysis of the most significant cases involving the EPO will be published at a later date.

SUEPO