Paris
Paris () is the Capital city, capital and List of communes in France with over 20,000 inhabitants, largest city of France. With an estimated population of 2,048,472 residents in January 2025 in an area of more than , Paris is the List of ci ...
,
France
France, officially the French Republic, is a country located primarily in Western Europe. Overseas France, Its overseas regions and territories include French Guiana in South America, Saint Pierre and Miquelon in the Atlantic Ocean#North Atlan ...
European Patent Office
The European Patent Office (EPO) is one of the two organs of the European Patent Organisation (EPOrg), the other being the Administrative Council. The EPO acts as executive body for the organisation
(ÉNA, English: National School of Administration) in 1978. ''Les forums du financement et de l’Innovation'' web site ''Benoît Batistelli'' . Consulted on March 23, 2008. From 1978 to 2002, he held various posts in French government departments and the French embassies in Italy, India, Poland and Turkey. Later, from June 2002 to April 2004, he was assistant director of staff of
Nicole Fontaine
Nicole Fontaine (16 January 1942 – 17 May 2018) was a French politician who served as Member of the European Parliament for the Île-de-France from 1984 until 2002 and from 2004 until 2009. She was a member of the Union for a Popular Movement, ...
, former
President of the European Parliament
The president of the European Parliament presides over the debates and activities of the European Parliament. They also represent the Parliament within the European Union (EU) and internationally. The president's signature is required for Euro ...
chief executive officer
A chief executive officer (CEO), also known as a chief executive or managing director, is the top-ranking corporate officer charged with the management of an organization, usually a company or a nonprofit organization.
CEOs find roles in variou ...
patent
A patent is a type of intellectual property that gives its owner the legal right to exclude others from making, using, or selling an invention for a limited period of time in exchange for publishing an sufficiency of disclosure, enabling discl ...
s,
trademark
A trademark (also written trade mark or trade-mark) is a form of intellectual property that consists of a word, phrase, symbol, design, or a combination that identifies a Good (economics and accounting), product or Service (economics), service f ...
s and
industrial design rights
An industrial design right is an intellectual property right that protects the visual design of objects that are purely utilitarian. An industrial design consists of the creation of a shape, configuration or composition of pattern or color, or co ...
.
Battistelli chaired the Supervisory Board of the European Patent Academy from July 2005 to July 2008. He was also chairman of the Administrative Council of the European Patent Organisation. He was elected to the post of Deputy Chairman of the Administrative Council of the European Patent Organisation on 5 December 2006 for a three-year term. Then, later the Administrative Council appointed him as its Chairman for a three-year term, from 5 March 2009 until March 2012, although his election in March 2010 as President of the European Patent Office meant that he had to step down as Chairman of the Administrative Council.
In 2008, he had been named as one of the potential candidates to succeed
Kamil Idris
Kamil El-Tayeb Idris Abdelhafiz (; born 26 August 1954) is a Sudanese statesman, scholar, international civil servant and politician who has been the 16th prime minister of Sudan since 31 May 2025. He was Director General of the World Intellectu ...
to lead the
World Intellectual Property Organization
The World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO; (OMPI)) is one of the 15 specialized agencies of the United Nations (UN). Pursuant to the 1967 Convention Establishing the World Intellectual Property Organization, WIPO was created to pr ...
(WIPO), but Francis Gurry was eventually selected for the post.
President of the EPO
On 1 March 2010 he was elected president of the European Patent Office (EPO), after a long and controversial series of meetings of the Administrative Council. He took up the post on 1 July 2010, for a term of five years. He was the sixth president of the EPO, the second Frenchman to hold the post, and the first president who has previously held the post of Chairman of the Administrative Council.
Under Battistelli's tenure, the EPO played an important role in the preparatory work for the introduction of the unitary patent, which came into existence on 1 June 2023. In this context, Battistelli was listed in 2014 by the '' Managing Intellectual Property'' magazine as one of the 50 most influential people in intellectual property. In June 2014, Battistelli's term of office as EPO president was extended for a further three years until 30 June 2018, amidst concerns from the EPO staff. In July 2018, he was succeeded by António Campinos.
Discontent within the EPO staff
Battistelli's presidency has encountered discontent among the staff and has been marked by
industrial action
Industrial action (British English) or job action (American English) is a temporary show of dissatisfaction by employees—especially a strike or slowdown or working to rule—to protest against bad working conditions or low pay and to increas ...
s with an escalation of the conflict in 2014. Discontent on the part of staff has been attributed to Battistelli's style of management which, according to reports in the German newspapers ''
Die Zeit
(, ) is a German national weekly newspaper published in Hamburg in Germany. The newspaper is generally considered to be among the German newspapers of record and is known for its long and extensive articles.
History
The first edition of was ...
'' and ''
Die Welt
(, ) is a German national daily newspaper, published as a broadsheet by Axel Springer SE.
is the flagship newspaper of the Axel Springer publishing group and it is considered a newspaper of record in Germany. Its leading competitors are the ...
'', was perceived by staff as being unduly autocratic and unsuited to a European intergovernmental body such as the EPO, and, according to an article in the French newspaper ''
Le Monde
(; ) is a mass media in France, French daily afternoon list of newspapers in France, newspaper. It is the main publication of Le Monde Group and reported an average print circulation, circulation of 480,000 copies per issue in 2022, including ...
'', has been brought in relation with suicides among the EPO staff since 2013. Battistelli's management style has also been criticized in the Dutch newspaper ''
De Telegraaf
''De Telegraaf'' (; ) is the largest Netherlands, Dutch daily morning newspaper. Haro Kraak,Gaat Paul Jansen de crisis bij De Telegraaf oplossen?, ''de Volkskrant'', 2015. Retrieved 1 August 2015. Paul Jansen has been the editor-in-chief since ...
French National Assembly
The National Assembly (, ) is the lower house of the Bicameralism, bicameral French Parliament under the French Fifth Republic, Fifth Republic, the upper house being the Senate (France), Senate (). The National Assembly's legislators are known ...
. In an interview to the German business lawyer journal '' JUVE'', Siegfried Bross, former judge at the
Federal Constitutional Court of Germany
The Federal Constitutional Court ( ; abbreviated: ) is the supreme court, supreme constitutional court for the Germany, Federal Republic of Germany, established by the constitution or Basic Law for the Federal Republic of Germany, Basic Law ...
, expressed the view that EPO's organization giving its president excessive powers is "principally incompatible with the
European Convention on Human Rights
The European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR; formally the Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms) is a Supranational law, supranational convention to protect human rights and political freedoms in Europe. Draf ...
(ECHR)" and that EPO's president, Benoît Battistelli, acted in 2015 against an EPO staff member "without legal legitimacy".
On 9 March 2018 a petition signed by 924 patent examiners denounced "the submission to constraints that are no longer compatible with fulfilling appropriately our duties within the Search and Examination divisions". They wrote: “We are far too often put in front of the dilemma of either working according to the European Patent Convention and respecting the examiner’s guidelines, or issuing 'products' as our hierarchy demands".
Computer tapping controversy
In June 2015, shortly before a meeting of the EPO President with the European Parliament, news broke of a controversial computer tapping action which apparently took place at the EPO towards the end of 2014. An article published in the German newspaper ''
Süddeutsche Zeitung
The ''Süddeutsche Zeitung'' (; ), published in Munich, Bavaria, is one of the largest and most influential daily newspapers in Germany. The tone of ''SZ'' is mainly described as centre-left, liberal, social-liberal, progressive-liberal, and ...
'' stated that it had obtained an internal report which showed that the EPO had tapped two publicly accessible computers that had been identified as a source for leaked information. The systems were placed under surveillance using cameras and keylogging and this led to the suspension of a member of staff. These events led the Bavarian Data Protection Commissioner, Thomas Petri, and the Federal German Data Protection Commissioner, Andrea Voßhoff, to raise concerns regarding
data protection Data protection may refer to:
* Information privacy, also known as data privacy
* Data security
{{Authority control ...
matters at the EPO.
Local political life
As of 2014, he was also town councillor (French: "conseiller municipal") of the French municipality of
Saint-Germain-en-Laye
Saint-Germain-en-Laye () is a Communes of France, commune in the Yvelines Departments of France, department in the ÃŽle-de-France in north-central France. It is located in the western suburbs of Paris, from the Kilometre Zero, centre of Paris. ...
(
Yvelines
Yvelines () is a department in the western part of the ÃŽle-de-France region in Northern France. In 2019, it had a population of 1,448,207.honorary professorship from
Renmin University of China
The Renmin University of China (RUC) is a public university in Haidian, Beijing, China. The university is affiliated with the Ministry of Education, and co-funded by the Ministry of Education and the Beijing Municipal People's Government. The ...
Santander, Spain
Santander ( , ; ) is the capital of the Autonomous communities of Spain, autonomous community of Cantabria, Spain. It has a population of 172,000 (2017). It is a port city located in the northern coast of the Iberian Peninsula, facing the Cantab ...
European Patent Institute The Institute of Professional Representatives before the European Patent Office, also known as European Patent Institute (epi), is a professional association of European patent attorneys and an international non-governmental public law corporation. ...