Slashdot Mirror
The U.S. Patent Backlog
coondoggie writes "Even with its increased hiring estimates of 1,200 patent examiners each year for the next 5 years, the US Patent and Trademark Office patent application backlog is expected to increase to over 1.3 million at the end of fiscal year 2011 the Government Accounting Office reported today. The USPTO has also estimated that if it were able to hire 2,000 patent examiners per year in fiscal year 2007 and each of the next 5 years, the backlog would continue to increase by about 260,000 applications, to 953,643 at the end of fiscal year 2011, the GAO said. Despite its recent increases in hiring, the agency has acknowledged that it cannot hire its way out of the backlog and is now focused on slowing the growth of the backlog instead of reducing it. This too is but one of the goals of the Patent Reform Act currently making the rounds in the US Senate."
Average CS starting is 51k, Comp Eng is 56k, actually.
Live life to the fullest. It's not that life is short, but that you are dead for so long.
From my understanding, the first 6 months, you get 10 patents every week or biweek, unclear on that. Then after 6 months you start getting appeals back from rejected patents (6 months being the max time). And that point, the number of new patents expected is diminished. And of course all the paperwork needs extensive background research for prior art etc. etc.
And as for that, it's not my main choice, but it's better than no job.
Live life to the fullest. It's not that life is short, but that you are dead for so long.
Enjoy.
The system gets paid for dealing with applications, not for approving them. If they aren't approved, they still keep the money. Same with trademarks.
Bzzzt...thank you for playing. at $400 each, it doesn't even cover the cost of the prime examiner. A post above gave about 8 hrs of allowed time for a patent examination (10 per bi-week). Even if they all went to fresh-hires (i.e. inexperienced) at $63k/yr+ 10k bonus, with a typical "efficient" overhead and G&A of 80%, and accounting for sick, vacation, and holiday leave (264 hrs/yr to start), I get a net cost of $541 per patent. And that ignores training, startup, any other incentives, higher cost of experienced examiners, re-examination, etc.
Even with all the cash they have, they can't hire enough to get them back to even.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
Production is measured in units called "balanced disposals" which is the average, over any period of measurment (bi-week, quarter, fiscal year) of the number of first actions on the merits (N) and the number of disposals (D, which are allowances, abandonments, or examiners answers on appeal). For each of the various art areas a historical expetancy X is assigned as so many hours per balanced disposal. the office wide expectancy for this is a bit over 20 hours per balanced disposal for a hypothetical GS-12 examiner. For examiners at other grades/authority levels this is adjusted by a factor as follows:
GS-5 0.6
GS-7 0.7
GS-9 0.8
GS-11 0.9
GS-12 1.0
GS-13 1.15
GS-13 1.25 (partial signatory authority)
GS-14 1.35 (full signatory authority, primary examiner)
GS-15 1.45 (full signatory authority, primary examiner expert)
There are not many GS-15s; the typical top for "lifers" is GS-14 primary examiner.
A primary has to really crank out work and make sure their production does not fall below 95% of their expectancy or bad things be gin to happen. 4 quarters of 90% and you're out the door. Many supervisors press examiners to not produce below 100% even if they are above 95% (fully sucessful in the production element of their performance appraisal plan)