UN agency dismisses complaints against EPO’s Battistelli
The International Labour Organization’s Administrative Tribunal (ILOAT) dismissed a series of complaints against the president of the European Patent Office (EPO), Benoît Battistelli, in its 125th session, held in October and November last year.
One of the dismissed complaints had been filed by Elizabeth Hardon, a former chairman of the Staff Union of the European Patent Office (SUEPO).
In May 2012, an EPO employee committed suicide. The Munich section of SUEPO sent a letter to Battistelli requesting an independent investigation into the circumstances that may have contributed to the suicide.
Hardon forwarded the letter to people who were on a SUEPO “distribution list”, adding that many people believed that the behaviour of certain managers had contributed significantly to the death. This email was then circulated beyond the intended list.
Hardon withdrew her accusations but when one of the accused managers read the original email upon his return, he requested an investigation.
The investigation found that the email was “humiliating and degrading” for the manager, and that Hardon’s conduct constituted harassment. Battistelli initiated disciplinary proceedings and the EPO issued a report.
But although the disciplinary committee considered the proceedings closed, Battistelli then notified Hardon that “he had decided to impose on her the disciplinary sanction of downgrading” to a lower employment grade, according to the ILOAT.
“Consistent case law holds that ‘[t]he executive head of an international organisation is not bound to follow a recommendation of any internal appeal body nor bound to adopt the reasoning of that body’,” said the ILOAT in dismissing the complaint.
Two complaints filed by Patrick Corcoran (a suspended EPO Board of Appeals judge), one concerning an alleged breach of confidentiality and one about a memory stick that had been seized by the EPO, were also dismissed.
The memory stick complaint was dismissed as irreceivable, because the decision to seize his private property was a procedural step in a process that had not yet been concluded.
In a release, SUEPO said that the memory stick decision “highlights the inability of the tribunal to offer protection against abuse ‘in real time’”.
In December last year, the UN agency set aside decisions made by the EPO in three of five other cases, while dismissing applications for further interpretation.
In two of the judgments, the tribunal ordered the “immediate reinstatement” of Corcoran.
A spokesperson for the EPO said: “With these judgements, ILOAT has clearly confirmed that the decisions taken by the EPO in a number of recent cases have been legally sound and correct. More generally, they confirm that no employee, even a staff representative, is above the law.”
The ILOAT issued decisions in 30 EPO cases, some of which were released in December last year and some on January 24.
SUEPO added: “We find the tribunal’s attitude in the EPO cases puzzling and worrisome. If, by being unusually harsh with EPO staff, the tribunal sought a way to discourage litigation, we fear it may have colossally miscalculated its aim.”
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