30/10/2015
Not Our Values - The European Patent Office in disrepute
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:
- everybody is to be considered innocent until proven guilty, and
- 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.