Pyrrhic victory

In the previous article, Märpel found out that Guido Raimondi, President of the European Court of Human Rights, finds that the way justice is administered at the EPO is no ground for action. As readers know, the EPO justice system is first based on an internal system for which President Battistelli uses his discretionary rights to reject cases as he sees fit followed by a revision procedure at the AT-ILO. It is quite important to note that AT-ILO is not an appeal court, but rather a "Revisionsgericht". It will not reopen proceedings, only check whether the regulations were correctly applied.

Märpel notes that the regulations allow the President of the EPO to decide as he so wishes, which seriously limits what can be revised.

Märpel further notes that a condition for revision is that the means of the internal procedure must be exhausted. Considering that the length of the internal procedure is in the hands of the EPO and that there is no recourse against an inordinately long procedure, this also seriously limits what can be revised.

Last but not least, Märpel notes that delays at AT-ILO can be so long so as to render the decision moot. So, it came as a surprise when AT-ILO published judgments 3958 and 3960 last December. The judgments concert Patrick Corcoran, the most prominent member of the boards of appeal at the EPO.

Except that Märpel wonders what would have happened if the judgments had been published just two weeks later. The consequence of the judgments 3958 and 3960 were simply that Mr. Corcoran was reinstated for 2 weeks. The blogs and the press celebrated a victory, because Mr. Corcoran was reinstated. But it was a pyrrhic victory and allowed President Battistelli to exercise retribution as soon as the press was moving on to the next news.

Märpel can only wonder what would have happened if the exact same decision had been given in the next session. Would AT-ILO have decided Mr. Corcoran to be reinstated in his former post and he would then still be at the boards? Would they rather have found out that his contract had run out so there was no possibility of redress? Then the scandal would have been much higher.

The timing of these decision changed everything. Cui bono?

The content of these and further decisions on the same case will be discussed in the next article.