Context: In late February, the European Parliament (EP) adopted a slightly modified (certainly not improved) version of the European Commission (EC) proposal for a regulation on standard-essential patents (SEPs) (February 28, 2024 ip fray article). The key parliamentarian who pushed for a vote before the end of the legislative term was Marion Walsmann MEP. She did not even stop short of spouting outright falsehoods (March 4, 2024 ip fray article).
What’s new: According to information that ip fray has obtained from independent third parties, Mrs. Walsmann’s aide in charge of that legislative project, Mrs. Cezara Petruc, joined the EUIPO (an institutional beneficiary of the bill) only two days later as its Brussels-based liaison officer for inter-agency relations with the Commission. The role of Mrs. Petruc in the parliamentary process can hardly be overstated. Mrs. Walsmann declined to meet any stakeholder representatives who didn’t speak German and referred them to Mrs. Petruc, who was notoriously unreceptive to any suggestion that further deliberations were needed ahead of a vote. There is a suspicious degree of secrecy around this recruitment: the EUIPO declines to comment and may have removed from the internet a staff newsletter that announced her hiring in March, and Mrs. Petruc appears to have erased the content of her LinkedIn profile.
Direct impact: In her new role, Mrs. Petruc will remain involved with the legislative process and, even more so, the future implementation of the EU SEP Regulation. For the further process, Mrs. Walsmann may benefit from a more open-minded aide. But there is the serious question of whether the rapporteur’s views and the Parliament’s schedule relating to an objectively non-urgent matter were affected by one individual’s career ambitions.
Wider ramifications: The EU has had a major revolving-door problem for a long time. One particularly striking example was the recruitment of a commissioner by Spanish carrier Telefónica (July 9, 1999 CNN article). Whatever rules have been put in place are extremely weak. Even former EU competition commissioner Neelie Kroes got away with lobbying for Uber during a cooling-off period (January 18, 2024 Politico article). Meanwhile, Sunday’s EU election outcome shows that the EU institutions need to try harder to earn citizens’ trust.
In order to give the EUIPO the opportunity to comment, ip fray sent a media inquiry with the following central paragraphs:
According to rumor, the EUIPO announced to its wider staff, allegedly in March, the hiring of Mrs. Petruc as its liaison officer for coordination with the European Commission. Would it be possible for you to confirm this?
ip fray does not mean to doubt (a) Mrs. Petruc’s qualifications or (b) the EUIPO’s related intentions. Notwithstanding the foregoing, this hiring would be politically relevant given Mrs. Petruc’s strong personal investment in the legislative proposal in question. ip fray has multiple sources according to whom Mrs. Petruc was the driving force in the Parliament and consistently unreceptive to any suggestions that the proposal, despite obvious flaws, should be withdrawn and overhauled. It is politically relevant that Mrs. Petruc, in the role she has allegedly taken on, can be reasonably assumed to play an active role in the further legislative process (such as with a view to interinstitutional negotiations) as well as the subsequent implementation of that bill by the EUIPO.
Yesterday, the EUIPO responded:
The EUIPO is an EU agency with around 1,200 staff members coming from all EU Member States, following open, fair and transparent selection procedures. EUIPO staff members are distributed throughout several locations in Europe and around the world. The Office is responsible for registering EU trade marks, designs and geographical indications.
The EUIPO is unable to comment on individual personnel matters due to the GDPR.
Regarding your comments on the proposed EU regulation on standard essential patents, please note that the EUIPO does not comment on any legislative proposals or discussions. As a technical agency, the EUIPO’s role is to implement whatever the legislators decide. Should the legislators ask the EUIPO to manage any other IP right, the implementation will follow accordingly.
As for the first paragraph of the EUIPO’s statement, ip fray already made it clear in its inquiry that there is no intent to question Mrs. Petruc’s qualifications.
The EUIPO’s reference to the General Data Privacy Regulation (GDPR) amounts to stonewalling, which is consistent with the fact that Mrs. Petruc no longer has a LinkedIn profile with a public CV. A liaison officer between two EU institutions has a function sufficiently important to warrant public confirmation. In any event, Mrs Petruc could simply have authorized the EUIPO’s press office to confirm the recruitment.
After the EUIPO’s response, ip fray reached out to Mrs. Petruc under her presumptive EUIPO address. The email did not bounce, which suggests that the address indeed exists. Should ip fray still receive an answer, a follow-up to this article will make it public.
Hirings like this don’t happen overnight. There may have been several months before the EP’s first-reading vote during which Mrs. Petruc knew that she was going to join the EUIPO on March 1, 2024. Did she still have an open mind as to whether the EUIPO should be tasked with the creation of a SEP register and the administration of essentiality checks and FRAND conciliations? According to people who met with her, she was unreceptive to criticism of the choice of a trademark office for those purposes.
To what extent did Mrs. Petruc make Mrs. Walsmann aware of serious issues raised by stakeholder representatives? Mrs. Walsmann’s inability to converse in English deprived her of the opportunity to engage directly with various stakeholder representatives. It would be unusual for a democracy to establish skill requirements for parliamentarians, though it is the responsibility of those who nominate candidates to think about their ability to serve the European people. An MEP who speaks no other language than German (apart from maybe Russian, given her background) is fundamentally disadvantaged. It does not mean she can’t cast a vote on behalf of those who elected her, but she should not be eligible for the rapporteur’s job on a piece of legislation at the intersection of technological, commercial and legal considerations.
Was Mrs. Petruc responsible for some or all of Mrs. Walsmann’s objectively false representations? Chances are that she ghostwrote, in no small part, Mrs. Walsmann’s parliamentary speeches on the SEP Regulation.
The EUIPO’s answer suggests that the agency simply does what it is asked to do. But that does not reflect the political reality, which is that government agencies of all kinds strive to grow and to gain more competencies. The SEP Regulation creates an opportunity for the EU trademark office to make a foray into the administration of patents, and there may be a long-term plan for the EUIPO to be put in charge of the Unitary Patent, which is currently granted by the EPO under a cooperation agreement with the EC.