Every Day Is Goof-Off-At-Work Day At the US Patent and Trademark Office

McGruber writes An internal investigation by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office found that some of its 8,300 patent examiners repeatedly lied about the hours they were putting in and many were receiving bonuses for work they did not do. While half of the USPTO's Patent Examiners work from home full time, oversight of the telework program — and of examiners based at the Alexandria headquarters — was "completely ineffective," investigators concluded. The internal investigation also unearthed another widespread problem. More than 70 percent of the 80 managers interviewed told investigators that a "significant" number of examiners did not work for long periods, then rushed to get their reviews done at the end of each quarter. Supervisors told the review team that the practice "negatively affects" the quality of the work. "Our quality standards are low," one supervisor told the investigators. "We are looking for work that meets minimal requirements." Patent examiners review applications and grant patents on inventions that are new and unique. They are experts in their fields, often with master's and doctoral degrees. They earn at the top of federal pay scale, with the highest taking home $148,000 a year.

Comments

Public servants don't give an arm and a leg

[Anonymous Coward]

Film at 11.

Re:Public servants don't give an arm and a leg

[serviscope_minor]

Oh random government-worker hater modded up. Must be a Monday on slashdot.

It's insightful because no private sector workers ever goofed off, or spent the "work from home" days, grazing from the fridge, playing halo. And no public sector worker ever ever rushed through a piece of late work and did a half assed job.

Ever.

Re:Public servants don't give an arm and a leg

[phorm]

Oh, I'd imagine that private workers goof off too. The thing is, when they do it jeopardizes whatever project they're involved with, with monetary loss to the company.

In the case of the USPTO... well I'd imagine you've ready some of the stories of the horrific patents that keep getting passed (and how the USPTO claims they're sooooo overburdened). It's the whole country (and some would say other countries as well, see Apple V Samsung) that's suffering from *that* mess

Re:Public servants don't give an arm and a leg

[TheCarp]

Ever seems to be missing the point. Sure, nearly everybody goofs off occasionally. Have I ever spent most of a work from home day goofing off? Sure. Have I ever dialed into a meeting and played video games because the meeting was totally useless for me? Yup. Ever encompasses many many things.

The thing is, the article isn't about how this one time a guy at the Patent office spent a day goofing off. Its about how goofing off, not doing the work, and then rushing the report is standard operating procedure.

You do get that there is a difference between something that someone did or something that happened and... how business is normally conducted. Like, its one thing to go out for lunch with your coworkers and all get drunk one day....its quite another to do it every day as a matter of course.

Re:Public servants don't give an arm and a leg

[Dishevel]

I do not have to pay for some tool at IBM. If they want to pay people for crap then that is their business.

But it is our business when public employees are being paid good money for bad work. I can understand how you believe differently. Wait. I can't. I can see no reason that your belief that the public has no interest in ho the people they are paying to do a job are performing that job.

The fact that you would state something so obviously wrong makes me think that either you have an agenda or are incredibly stupid.

Re:Public servants don't give an arm and a leg

[edawstwin]

Oh random government-worker hater modded up. Must be a Monday on slashdot.

It's insightful because no private sector workers ever goofed off, or spent the "work from home" days, grazing from the fridge, playing halo. And no public sector worker ever ever rushed through a piece of late work and did a half assed job.

Ever.

As phorm pointed out, when a worker in the private sector goofs off, that can have detrimental effects on a company's bottom line, and the company can take appropriate action. If a public sector worker goofs off, time is lost, but there is no bottom line for a government agency to be affected. Sure, they all have budgets, but there are not many negative consequences for having bad employees. They'll usually get a few more bucks in next year's budget regardless of performance. And the travesty here is that we're paying them to do a bad job. Public sector employees should take their jobs even more seriously than private sector employees because every tax-payer is ultimately affected by their performance.

I have no personal experience working for any government agency, but I did have a friend who got a job with the federal government after having worked in the private sector for many years. After about a month, his direct superior told him to take it easier because he was too efficient. If he stayed at the current level, many other workers would look bad in comparison, and the manager didn't want to have to explain that to his bosses. The manager absolutely could not get away with something like that at a competent profitable private company.

Re:Public servants don't give an arm and a leg

[serviscope_minor]

The fact that you would state something so obviously wrong makes me think that either you have an agenda or are incredibly stupid.

You might like to try actually reading my post rather than just making up the contents and then replying to that unless that is you have an agenda (etc).

So what -specifically- did I state that was so obviously wrong?

Re:Public servants don't give an arm and a leg

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh random government-worker being defensive. Did someone hit a nerve?

Re:Public servants don't give an arm and a leg

[geekoid]

That's a cute view of companies. I have worked at several large corporation, an frankly they have little clue as to who is really productive.
I currently work cor a city government. There is so little waste here compared to any public government.

What I want to know is why government workers get bonuses.

Re:Public servants don't give an arm and a leg

[Dishevel]

Sorry. Implied.

Your post "Implies" that we have no business caring about public sector worker because "Private Sector Sucks!"

I stand corrected. But your post is still either written by an idiot or driven by an agenda.

Re:Public servants don't give an arm and a leg

[edawstwin]

I've worked mostly at smaller companies and one very large one (50,000+ employees). I'll grant you that the oversight wasn't the greatest at the large company, but every department still had to produce something. I'm not saying all government workers are bad/lazy/whatever, just that there is less incentive to be productive, so "goofing off" is certainly more common in the public sector.

Re:Public servants don't give an arm and a leg

[edawstwin]

Only $148k at the top of the scale? They probably get some benefits like health care, but they must be the dregs of Masters and Doctorates. I can't imagine taking such a pay cut, and I get 7 weeks paid vacation as well as a pension and health plan.

It sounds like they get a helluva lot more than 7 weeks paid vacation every year. That's the whole point of the article.

Re:Public servants don't give an arm and a leg

[Anonymous Coward]

The problem with these investigations is any organization where you have thousands of workers and you go looking for some workplace sin you will find "some" workers doing it.

The big problem is if you work for the government and the investigation causes a big enough stink then there will be some sort of action mandated by management that will make life painful for the employee, cost the taxpayer a lot of money, make the agency less productive, and fail to fix the problem.

Frankly, based on the public information available, we don't even know if there is a problem. Could just be the managers don't like people working from home.

Re:Public servants don't give an arm and a leg

[Anonymous Coward]

The PTO has such a huge backlog of unexamined patent applications that they offer incentives to examiners who do more cases than they are required to examine. As to 'paying them to do a bad job' PTO is entirely funded on applicant fees. Though it isn't an excuse for poor examinations they aren't being paid out of the average joe's taxes.

Re:Public servants don't give an arm and a leg

[Anonymous Coward]

So work for the govt, make less pay and be held to a higher standard?

Sounds like a winning plan.

Re:Public servants don't give an arm and a leg

[sillybilly]

I get a whole lot less than 7 weeks unpaid vacation per year, except last year, that made up for a whole lot of prior years, but it was hell, and I might luck out this year. Paid vacations? Whoever heard of such a thing?

Re:Public servants don't give an arm and a leg

[Anonymous Coward]

I love on $39,000 a year, and you can't imagine making less than $150,000?

What's wrong with this picture?

Re:Public servants don't give an arm and a leg

[edawstwin]

I love on $39,000 a year, and you can't imagine making less than $150,000?

What's wrong with this picture?

Why do people assume that something is wrong with a situation like this? Some people make more money than you do. Be happy for them and aspire to do the same (maybe, you know... find out how they did it), or just ignore them.

Re:Public servants don't give an arm and a leg

[sillybilly]

First of all: Fuck patents.
2nd: they could privatize the USPTO, maybe Experian, Equifax, and Transunion, in the record keeping business anyway, could each get a Patent department going. And if one of them slacks off, the other two get ahead. Simple. Fuck government red tape and bureaucracy, like a fucking communist contraption, inefficient, because nobody cares about it as their own business and their own customers, eating tax support, or at least not bringing in the dough like it's supposed to. Experiean, Equifax and Transunion could make some profit on the whole thing, and pay like 30% of it into the IRS gov't coffers. It may be more profitable, time efficient and what not, than a hopeless government bureaucracy, but there would have to be severe FBI-like government oversight against corruption, such as http://panchabuta.com/2011/02/... which by the way showcases, that anywhere you go, local rule applies, and the people or the monarch own all intellectual property there, including copyright and patents, and you can only take out a temporary, revocable and transferable, IP license from them on the intellectual property you came up with, but they own anyway. In the US the issues I'm worried about is that somebody like MA Hanna buys up all 3 credit agencies, then when I apply for a patent, they say one of their cousins came up with the exact same thing, 2 seconds before I did, and I must have stolen the ideas from them. And because of this very simple impossible thing, I say fuck patents. All of them. Except the expired ones that cover my ass, so if I practice what's written, nobody can come sue me that it's their intellectual property, because, hey, it was patented, I follow it to the letter, and expired, so it cannot be yours. The only good patent is an expired patent, in my mind, and they are better than no patents, because no patents are not cock blocks to new patents.

Re:Public servants don't give an arm and a leg

[nsuccorso]

I have no personal experience working for any government agency, but I did have a friend who got a job with the federal government after having worked in the private sector for many years. After about a month, his direct superior told him to take it easier because he was too efficient. If he stayed at the current level, many other workers would look bad in comparison, and the manager didn't want to have to explain that to his bosses.

I had almost this exact situation occur when I went to work for Citicorp (briefly) many years ago.

Re:Public servants don't give an arm and a leg

[ArcadeNut]

I love on $39,000 a year, and you can't imagine making less than $150,000?

What's wrong with this picture?

You're spending too much on the ladies?

Re:Public servants don't give an arm and a leg

[Anonymous Coward]

The point about being overburdened is a good one. By this count those 8300 examiners have an average of 2 to 3 work days to make a determination on 600,000 applications per year. A number which includes design patents and various patents which might not require as much time. Maybe/hopefully each patent is reviewed by more than one person. But with 8300 examiners it seems you could have small teams of examiners encompassing the relevant engineering, scientific, design and legal disciplines getting a small batch of patents to examine each week. If the patent office were well managed and engineers appropriately skilled then it seems like a pretty manageable workload as long as the work gets routed quickly to the correct examiners based on perceived relevance of skills to subject matter.

Re:Public servants don't give an arm and a leg

[serviscope_minor]

Your post "Implies" that we have no business caring about public sector worker because "Private Sector Sucks!"

No it didn't. The GP claimes that "Public servants don't give an arm and a leg". And it was modded insightful.

It shows no insight: there are plenty of public sector workers who do care and there are plenty of private sector ones who don't. In other words, the jab at the ppublic sector workers as a whole (as opposed to this group) is unwarranted.

I stand corrected. But your post is still either written by an idiot or driven by an agenda.

And what, pray tell is that o master of determining hidden nonexistent agendas?

Re:Public servants don't give an arm and a leg

[sillybilly]

In fact that's the reason I talk all kinds of technology here on Slashdot, publish it to the open world, because if I ever have to do something along those lines in my life, nobody is gonna assault me to stop, pay them first for their IP in it, when I came up with it in the first place, or I just wanna be free to do whatever I can think of, even if ignorance of someone else coming up with the same thing, 2 years before me, is technically not an excuse. I came up with the key chain laser pointer dot chasing by a cat, and after I did it for a while, found out somebody patented that way of amusement. Fuck him. Fuck patents. Public domain all the way. I'm a free speech, free thought, free to do whatever you want as long as you don't harm the neighbors - maniac. Don't nobody run up and me and stop, I can't wipe my ass with my right hand the way I feel like wiping it, because they own the method, the technology, and instead I should stand on my hands, bend over backwards like a contortionist, and wipe with my left hand. It's none of their fucking business what I do in the privacy of my own home.
Unfortunately, Slashdot is owned by Dice Holdings, and they can be corrupt too, and be bribed to falsify records (after all the nontangible consideration transfer issue is complicated here or in any publishing), or it's not a simple world we live in to where they'd have to block some of this technology information going to foreign countries, and I can agree with that. Sometimes things are complicated in the real world.

Re:Public servants don't give an arm and a leg

[rogoshen1]

The three credit bureaus control enough as it is, thank you.

Re:Public servants don't give an arm and a leg

[Dishevel]

So. What government workers are doing a great job?

DMV?

IRS?

VA?

TSA?

FBI?

CIA?

NSA?

ATF?

Where are these awesome government workers that try and serve the public as well as possible?

Re:Public servants don't give an arm and a leg

[ewibble]

I don't think serviscope_minor implied that either, he just said its hardly news that either a private sector or public sector employees slack off, they both do. You can argue that we all pay taxes so we should care more however if you buy the product you may also pay higher prices for products. Of course people should care that this is happening, and it should be addressed, all serviscope_minor implied is that it wasn't a problem specific to the public sector. I think its more big vs small, or little buget vs big buget. e.g. http://www.gamesindustry.biz/a..., you can't tell me there wasn't a bit of waste there.

I actually think the reason that this is important is not private/public sector but due to the consequences of bad work. If a patent office employ grants a bad patient it effectively blocks the rest of the world from using that knowledge, without a costly, and long legal battle. That is a massive cost to the world. Where the Xbox one controller, so what it really only effects microsoft.

Re:Public servants don't give an arm and a leg

[mjm1231]

I think it was the "can't imagine" part of the picture he was asking about, actually. I find it odd too. You would expect that someone with such a poor imagination could very easily be replaced by a machine these days.

Re:Public servants don't give an arm and a leg

[jakimfett]

No clue why this was marked "redundant". From what I can see, this is the point that everyone else is missing...it's not about a couple of guys occasionally goofing off, it's a culture of slacking off, then rushing and pushing through shoddy work, which has resulted in some fairly retarded patents getting approved, even in cases where prior art was clear.

Re:Public servants don't give an arm and a leg

[edawstwin]

I think it was the "can't imagine" part of the picture he was asking about, actually. I find it odd too. You would expect that someone with such a poor imagination could very easily be replaced by a machine these days.

What's so hard to believe about someone getting used to a certain paycheck? My income has varied greatly over the years, and each time I was making significant money, I "couldn't imagine" going back to less than significant money. It's human nature.

Re:Public servants don't give an arm and a leg

[Dishevel]

bad employees at IBM do not really hurt us. They hurt IBMs bottom line. IBM is charging what it can get away with do to its competition. The price does not go up do to a badly run business. Profit goes down. As long as there is at least one well run business to compete.

Government has no competition. IBMs shitty employees just is not our problem. Public sector employees are our problem. The minute our lazy asses get up and demand accountability our lives as a whole will get better.

Too many lazy fucks in the public sector and too many lazy fucks in the public to stop it is something that the people can fix. If they can turn of "So you think you can dance" for a few minutes.

Re:Public servants don't give an arm and a leg

[serviscope_minor]

So. What government workers are doing a great job?

To quote another user here: please eat your red herrings on your own time.

Re:Public servants don't give an arm and a leg

[Dishevel]

Yup. I could not think of any either.

Re:Public servants don't give an arm and a leg

[Duhavid]

Privatize? Really?

This will never happen:
"Your patent has been rejected, we ( the patent review company ) already have a patent on that."
"PS: we will have our eye on you..."

Re: Public servants don't give an arm and a leg

[Anonymous Coward]

Just FYI, the USPTO, along with the USPS, are fee funded, not tax payer funded, so it is actually companies and small businesses that are paying to have their applications prosecuted. So you aren't actually paying these government employees to do anything.

Re:Public servants don't give an arm and a leg

[theshowmecanuck]

Sounds like "work from home" doesn't work at the USPTO. Even if it costs a bunch of money to get them into an office, it will be money more effectively spent than paying people to do fuck all.

Re:Public servants don't give an arm and a leg

[ewibble]

I agree IBM will charge whatever they can get away with, but they are competing with other companies with bad employees as well, wastefulness effects everyone no matter if it is private or public. High labour costs will be used to justify high prices if they can, we are not functioning in a market with perfect competition. Your under the false assumption that the only way for IBM to remove a efficient competitor is though price, it isn't they can file patents to remove competition, advertise, buy it out, change legislation, ....

Anyway the patent office is probably/should be funded by filing fees, should that excuse them, no.

Re: Public servants don't give an arm and a leg

[Anonymous Coward]

Fee-funded in a government-mandated monopoly is exactly the same as taxes.

Re:Public servants don't give an arm and a leg

[ub3r n3u7r4l1st]

May be in the USA, but in many east Asian countries, especially Japan, government workers get paid little but work their ass off.

Re:Public servants don't give an arm and a leg

[Sabriel]

You seem to be implying that when a company suffers harm, the rest of the country is unaffected.

Not only is that not how it works, some of those private companies are also the ones whose lobbying brought the USPTO to its current state.

Re:Public servants don't give an arm and a leg

[mjwx]

Oh, I'd imagine that private workers goof off too. The thing is, when they do it jeopardizes whatever project they're involved with, with monetary loss to the company.

You've never worked before have you.

Some people have turned slacking off into a full time job. As long as the company is making money, they dont get noticed. The worst slackers I've worked with were in the private sector (and not unionised, union people know they have a job to do). They're normally in middle management/admin positions that dont get monitored for performance. Think about all the people who call pointless meetings, extend meetings with pointless conversation/questions and when you come to them needing something, they've got a huge tale of woe explaining how they're too busy to help (yet can take a 2 hour lunch).

As long as the P&L statement looks good, these people never get noticed... If the P&L statement starts to look bad, they're normally not the first ones fired either.

Re:Public servants don't give an arm and a leg

[pepty]

For all of the jokes about the DMV, every time I've been there the workers know their jobs and move things along just fine. Its the folks who couldn't be bothered to make an appointment, didn't bring the right paperwork, or hate the law and are (very loudly) requesting that it not be applied to them who end up spending lots of wasted time at the DMV.

Re: Public servants don't give an arm and a leg

[Anonymous Coward]

I work for government. My goal has always been to achieve value for tax payers dollars including my own. I live in the city I work for and have a vested interest in helping deliver services more efficiently and effectively. My idealized vision of the function of government is what led me down this path to begin with. When I first started the first thing someone said is: you do not change the organization; the organization changes you. I can tell you one thing for sure. Trying to make things more efficient without direct authority or influence over someone's pay or livelihood is like repeatedly running into a brick wall or touching a hot stove. We need strong management and executives that are fiscally responsible and be willing to shake things up and rock the boat to make it happen. I have literally seen supervisors shy away from disciplining union staff (another issue) who were sleeping for hours on the job consistently and chronically because they did not want the head ache of dealing with arbitration and potentially being slapped with a harassment claim. These are the things that of grave concern. I hate to say this but part of me thinks that when the system gets bad at some point there has to be enough pain to make us want to rip and replace it. It has been done in the past with Ronald Regan being one example. Complacency is a big problem at every level: voters, politicians, leaders, executives, management, middle management, staff, and so on. Also, and this is important but never talked about: private sector has a vested interest in dealing with dysfunctional organizations. Why? Consulting dollars. Including systems that are expensive to implement and maintain and also encourage additional dysfunction so there are more problems to fix. I hope you understand that the problem is bigger than just government. It is all its dependencies, interdependencies, and relationships. Watch House of Cards or The Wire sometime. Maybe even Sopranos. It will give you a bit of insight.

Re:Public servants don't give an arm and a leg

[bobf0648]

Well, seems to me, if managers know whats going on, then they are goofing off as well. Not doing what they are paied to do.

Re:Public servants don't give an arm and a leg

[Anonymous Coward]

We should pay more people to do fuck all. The world would be a better place.

Re:Public servants don't give an arm and a leg

[Anonymous Coward]

My DMV is amazing.

Re:Public servants don't give an arm and a leg

[Anonymous Coward]

"Your patent has been rejected due to infringment on an existing pattent owned by [trendy name] patent lisencing firm, a joint venture [all of the patent review companies]."

This is America we are talking about, we can't let a corporation's opportunity to abuse We the People go untapped.

Re:Public servants don't give an arm and a leg

[kilodelta]

Well - we know in the EPA some employees are smearing shit on the walls for kicks. So couple this with the USPTO and you can pretty much assure that almost every public agency you've listed is goofing off pretty often. It's a wonder anything ever gets done. And ObDisclaimer: I'm kind of sort of on a contract that one of the players is the VA.

We sent them something for evaluation three weeks ago and they haven't looked at it yet.

And about a decade ago I worked with the CJIS folks in Clarksburg. Not the brightest bulbs or sharpes crayons let me tell you.

Re:Public servants don't give an arm and a leg

[kilodelta]

If you think for a moment that Experian, Equifax and Transunion are running pristine databases you're sorely mistaken. They're pretty much the master of all fuck ups. It's just that their PR machines leads us to believe otherwise.

Re: Public servants don't give an arm and a leg

[Dishevel]

No exactly the same. But they do enough damage that it might as well be the same.

Re:Public servants don't give an arm and a leg

[Dishevel]

You are correct. The way the public gets fucked is either by the government directly or by corps that use government power against us.

However you look at it reducing the power of the government over the people ends up with the people winning.

Re:Public servants don't give an arm and a leg

[Dishevel]

DMV workers are shit. That is why people pay a premium to AAA and Private DMVs to stay away for the government tards.

Re: Public servants don't give an arm and a leg

[MooseMiester]

So all those bailouts to an inefficient post office - that can't do the job DHL, USPS, and Fed-X do... And all those raises in postage... where did that money go and come from again?

Me thinks you're living in a fantasy world when it comes to how things are funded at the government level. Government "agencies". a.k.a. "Tenured Jobs Programs" primary mission is continuing their existence, and increasing their funding. It's why we have "mandatory budget increases" written into LAW for absolutely everything, and why Congress won't pass a budget - they want to keep the mandatory increases written into law before the recession hit. One buys the most federal worker votes this way...

Re: Public servants don't give an arm and a leg

[gzuckier]

Yeah, it's not like some private company whose workers goofed off would produce a car that got drivers killed or anything. And it's not like private corporate pressure to be profitable would ever cause sloppy work.

Re: Public servants don't give an arm and a leg

[phorm]

Was there some indicating that "goofing off" produced defects which caused fatalities? I'd agree with the later (Corporate pressure towards profit) but I don't think that's related to the issue at hand.

Re:Public servants don't give an arm and a leg

[bbsalem]

Remember that it is far easier to hide things in private-sector businesses. Private-sector orgs claim that to have to disclose what the public-sector has to would put them at risk, yet much malfeasence and incompetence can be hidden. I think we have just seen this in auto makers hiding recalls. So, the bottom line doesn't always properly record inefficiency and stupidity, especially when accounting can be used to hide losses. It is creative destruction, technology that undermines entrenched organization that leads to change. People tend to be inertial. That have to be kicked by breakthroughs that make their way of doing things change suddenly. This is true of all operations, private business is not as different from public-sector work as you might think.

In fact, much of the government's inefficiency is due to the penny-wise and pound-foolish spending policies of Congress, which tends to be uncreatively conservative about spending that would really create efficiency. Go to any government office and look at their IT. It is like going back in time 20 or more years in time. That is due to an obstructive procurement process as set up by Congress. What you have to remember about Congress is that most of its members are incompetent, especially about technology, and yet technology is a huge part of the spending they approve. So, if you have ever worked for a government agency, you know that the conditions and the work techniques often revolve abound antiquated technology and the attendant organization problems it creates, not individual laziness. Working in such an environment, created by back-firing checks and balances written into the Constitution, is disheartening if you want to do a better job that gets more efficient and easier. The inertia in the system impedes your progress.

In the private sector one sees much better technology, generally, but there the problem is short-term thinking and failure often comes from half-baked executive decisions that ruin good ideas.

Re:Public servants don't give an arm and a leg

[sillybilly]

And what's the difference between a corporation or the USPTO doing the same thing? After all, all the people in the government got there through corporate funding, so they are corporate pawns subject to constant corporate lobbying, so saying the USPTO employee is not influenced by corporate interests is boloni. In a - there is a shitload of money to be made (or lost through a lawsuit) through the USPTO, so you better have your people in there - kinda way. Which is why I say fuck patents. The only patent allowed should be a defensive one, that enters straight into public domain on publishing, no 20 year hogging interval. That way nobody can later come sue you over what you practice, that they invented it, 2 seconds before you did, so pay up to them. In fact that does not work either, because that patent is vulnerable the same way. What you need is open publishing of ideas, in a covert sort of way spread all over the place, and leaving them public domain without taking out a patent on them, to cover your ass. However the barriers to publishing are huge, and the price of reading officially published material is huge. Of course this only applies to scientific and technical things, art is a whole different cake. There is only one science that applies to the world, and once you obtain a scientific or technological truth and are hogging it from everybody else, you're committing a crime. Such as the Haber-Bosch process, or saltpeter-sulfur-charcoal gunpowder, or paper printing, or porcelain, or ultramarine, or even such things as the number zero, meaning a positional numbering system invented independently by the Mayans and Hindus, but unknown to the Romans and Greeks- these things can be invented independently around the world - those are one and only, and nobody should have the right to hog science or claim intellectual property in it, and scientific publications should not have such a high price, compared to arbitrary price charged for irrelevant novels, that you can live without for instance. To put it in context, you cannot live without gunpowder in 1600, or very difficultly so, but you can live fine without reading Dante Allighieri's Divine Comedy, which, btw, I haven't read to this day, and I'm doing fine without it, it's not an essential part of life, unlike access to science and technology. And I live just fine without Mickey Mouse, but because of him I have to sit here and twirl my thumbs waiting for most scientific publications after 1923 to enter public domain, until 2020, and I could be at 1937 by now. By the way the military published a lot of NBS(national bureau of standards) gov't documents which are supposed to be public domain, with complex issues around that, but hands down publications from 1937-1950 fly far and above in quality to the ones published starting 1950-1960 and on, and you can still find some gems here and there, but the percentage drops to like 5% gems 95% crap in 1960 compared to 95% gems and 5% crap in 1937.

Re:Public servants don't give an arm and a leg

[sillybilly]

I said privatize, create competition to where one agency doesn't have a huge backlog, but know how to reject bullshit patents, and above the 3 top agencies you could have other ones doing similar tasks, but who you obtained your patent from could make a difference, as in where did you get your college education, a run of the mill patent or diploma place, or one that demands quality, and knows how to reject candidates. There could be FBI oversight just like there is with police departments - who are, by the way the master of fuck ups in one sense, not in another, it's a funny world - but you could have competition, and free market competition instead of centralized government is what we believe in in the US, distributed networking like the Internet instead of a central mainframe server that is a critical point and can take everything down with it. Competition in the government between at least 2 parties, such as Democrat and Republican, is better than the one party Nazi or Communist systems of not so long ago, and you're silly to think it's better and these politicians pretending to be competing against each other, and putting up a puppet show for the rest of us, are not really controlled by the same single entity at their balls, called the Almighty US Dollar, or whoever is hogging that entity the best. But even in court we have this make believe antithesis between a conspiring plaintiff-defense legal professionals against you, and some courts do demand you bring along a legal professional, or get yourself certified in passing the bar exam, but it's still better than some arbitrary judge, like it used to be in the old days, even if it turns out to be a puppet show. By the way one of the greatest achievements of Christianity during the collapse of the Roman empire was the providing of religious clergy, like bishops, who truly believed in God, and in absolute truth, and could serve as impartial judges at trials without a prosecutor-defense attorney puppet show. In fact even today we have shows like Judge Judy and the like, where there is an arbitrary despot coming up with decisions, but the US Consitution does not believe in such concentration of power, and gives everyone the right to trial by jury, made up of 12 people, as in distributed power, in internet, or democrat/republican, or prosecutor-attorney, competition in arguments and point of views is better than an arbitrary centralized despot, like the USPTO.

Re: Public servants don't give an arm and a leg

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe so, but ours has a cash bar, internet cafe, strip club, and let's you play GTA while you queue.

Re:Public servants don't give an arm and a leg

[q4Fry]

I think painting broad strokes over all DMV offices is overgeneralizing. (The thing we all have in common is that no one is excited about going to the DMV.)

I lived in one state where I "didn't bring the right paperwork" despite calling specifically about the paperwork to ask whether the documentation I had was sufficient. I was told over the phone that it would be, but when I got there and waited in the giant line, they told me that it wasn't.

Fast forward to a different state: I showed up, got squared away, and left in under 30 minutes.

Patent US 99063520 A

[AlecDalek]

Patent US 9063520 A: The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office
A method and system for under-performing approval of patents.

Re:Patent US 99063520 A

[Anonymous Coward]

Patent US 9063520 B: The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office
A method and system for under-performing approval of patents on the internet.

Re:Patent US 99063520 A

[alphatel]

Patent US 9063520 B: The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office
A method and system for under-performing approval of patents on the interwebs.

Re:Patent US 99063520 A

[qbast]

Patent US 9063520 C: The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office
A method and system for under-performing approval of patents using a computer.

How about cross-licensing deal? Or we could just go straight to full patent war.

Re:Patent US 99063520 A

[Anonymous Coward]

Patent US 9063520 D: The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office
A method and system for under-performing approval of patents using an ipad.

Re:Patent US 99063520 A

[Tablizer]

Let me rework that to reflect it more accurately:

Patent US 9063520 A: The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office
A method and system for under-performing approv...zzzz zz ZZzz...ZZZZZ...

Re:Patent US 99063520 A

[sillybilly]

Privatize.

Re:Patent US 99063520 A

[Anonymous Coward]

Patent US 9063520 D: The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office
A method and system for under-performing approval of patents using a mobile phone.

Re:Patent US 99063520 A

[Anonymous Coward]

An issued patent would generally have "B1" as its kind code, not "A".

Where do I sign up?

[aitikin]

Seriously? You're posting this here without telling me how I can get this job? From the sounds of it, I could do it in the background while at my real job.

Re:Where do I sign up?

[Joe_Dragon]

You need to pay some one off to get that job

Re:Where do I sign up?

[TonTonKill]

From the sounds of it, that's what they are all doing and are now getting in trouble for. Good luck with that.

Re:Where do I sign up?

[pla]

You need to pay some one off to get that job

Nah, I foresee a large number of vacant positions in the very near future - Particularly as we get closer to November 4th.

Of course, any applicants will probably need to actually work for a month or two until everyone forgets about this and moves on to the next government outrage...

Re:Where do I sign up?

[HornWumpus]

I guarantee you they are using a performance metric of some sort.

When work stops being about work, it starts being about something else. I'm going to guess that there is a government union involved that is indirectly in charge of performance reviews. So you get rated by how many dollars you gave to 'preferred political party' (D), how much time you waste on government union activities and how well you parrot the talking points.

Like the sib post said, you need to pay someone off to get the job, then continue paying to keep it. Like being a cop in Mexico.

Re:Where do I sign up?

[Anonymous Coward]

https://www.usajobs.gov/Search?keyword=uspto&Location=&AutoCompleteSelected=&search=Search

Nine openings, seven list at over 100K/year. Good luck!

Re:Where do I sign up?

[Anonymous Coward]

Patent examiners review applications and grant patents on inventions that are new and unique. They are experts in their fields, often with master's and doctoral degrees.

If thats true then anyone should be able to get a job there, seeing all of the idiotic patents they allow. Thus the funny parts were "masters" and "doctoral degrees"

Re:Where do I sign up?

[HornWumpus]

Keep watching, you will learn a lot.

I foresee nobody losing their job, except the snitches. Government work.

Re:Where do I sign up?

[ArhcAngel]

Seriously? You're posting this here without telling me how I can get this job? From the sounds of it, I could do it in the background while at my real job.

But it might seriously cut into your /. reading!

Re:Where do I sign up?

[ShanghaiBill]

From the sounds of it, I could do it in the background while at my real job.

It has happened before. Albert Einstein developed the theory of relativity while goofing off at the Swiss Patent Office.

http://xkcd.com/1067/

Re:Where do I sign up?

[mi]

Nah, I foresee a large number of vacant positions in the very near future - Particularly as we get closer to November 4th.

Wishful thinking. Federal employees are practically unfirable. For one, they are — bizarrely — unionized (to protect them from their employer — us), but that's only part of the reason, for corporations with unionized workforce still do fire bad workers, even if it is harder for them to do so than it ought to be.

The real problem is that firing an underling reflects poorly on his manager(s). This is also the truth everywhere, of course, but in normal enterprises there is this dirty and otherwise reprehensible "profit" to think about, so a bad employee can still be fired even if the manager's record gets hurt in the process. But the glorious government enterprises do not defile their mission with concerns for profit — their revenue is collected for them at gun point by the IRS.

Hence, practically nobody ever gets fired from government — "counseling" and "discipline" is the worst, that usually happens to our civil servants. Is it not time, we put our health care into their capable hands? Oh, wait...

Re:Where do I sign up?

[cruff]

Nine openings, seven list at over 100K/year. Good luck!

And nary a one is for the job category in question: Patent Examiner.

Re:Where do I sign up?

[Anonymous Coward]

Patent examiners review applications and grant patents on inventions that are new and unique. They are experts in their fields, often with master's and doctoral degrees.

If thats true then anyone should be able to get a job there, seeing all of the idiotic patents they allow. Thus the funny parts were "masters" and "doctoral degrees"

Examiners are not experts in their field. You could be approving Apple's patents based on the mere fact that you own an iPhone. Examiners do not judge the technical merits of a patent, nor are they expected to.

Re:Where do I sign up?

[grepninja7]

The reason is that it is hard to fire a federal employee is so that the positions are not used to reward political allies and contributors every time someone new is elected.

Re:Where do I sign up?

[parkinglot777]

I think you should try to apply for the job before pulling political assumption into the topic. Yes, they may be very inefficient, but I at least know some people who tried to get the job and got it plus those who have already been in the job. Not that I say they are very efficient, but the issue is not this simple with emphasis on government...

Re:Where do I sign up?

[synapse7]

Yeah, I was thinking I could probably find enough time to fill out an additional timesheet at my current job.

Re:Where do I sign up?

[wiredlogic]

You can't qualify as a work from home examiner until you've put in 3 years in DC.

Re:Where do I sign up?

[McGruber]

Seriously? You're posting this here without telling me how I can get this job?

Sorry about that - you apply for federal jobs at USA Jobs Website

There are not any patent examiner openings posted right now, but here are some current IT openings at the Patent Office:

IT Acquisitions Specialist - DE

IT Specialist (APPSW) - Software Developer - DE

Systems Development Lead - IT Specialist (SYSANALYSIS/APPSW) - DE

Re:Where do I sign up?

[Dishevel]

Really? I'm sorry, but when was the last time any IRS official pulled a gun on someone and told them to hand over their money.

Try not giving them the money. Then you will see.

Re:Where do I sign up?

[mi]

Really? I'm sorry, but when was the last time any IRS official pulled a gun on someone and told them to hand over their money.

If you don't pay, IRS will put a lien on your house. If you still don't pay, the house will be sold — and police (with guns) will arrive to kick you out from it.

Don't be stupid disputing the obvious — all governments world-wide collect revenues at gun-point. It is normal and the only way possible. It just means, the monies thus collected should only be used in situations, where weapons would take place: enforcing laws and fighting foreign enemies.

You mean like Goldman Sachs, Bank of America, AIG [....]

Corporations don't have the means of coercing people to buy their services, don't even bring them up here.

After all, the benevolence of the private sector is so well known we sing their praises every day because they never, EVER take advantage of people or stick it to us in their quest for profits

Again, corporations are not (normally) in a position to coerce anybody to buy their services — only the government is in such a position and its role in our lives must be minimized, not perpetually expanded.

Your link is to a description of some outrage committed by Comcast — which is funny, because the company is a book-case example of crony capitalism: it (and other cable giants) grew out of government's idiocy of giving them monopoly, and their CEO today plays golf with the President.

Corporations are not any nicer, than they have to be — in order to compete. But monopolies — like Comcast — don't have anyone to compete with. And the government is the biggest and harshest monopoly of all. One can cancel their Comcast bill — even if it can be infuriatingly ridiculous. Now try opting out of Social Security...

Re:Where do I sign up?

[TheCarp]

> The real problem is that firing an underling reflects poorly on his manager(s). This is also the truth everywhere, of
> course, but in normal enterprises there is this dirty and otherwise reprehensible "profit" to think about, so a bad
> employee can still be fired even if the manager's record gets hurt in the process.

I think you are looking at the wrong problem. Yes, this exists but, I look at it this way:

If there is an underperforming employee who just isn't doing the work, there is, most likely, a problem with THAT employee. It may be one you can work with or fix, but, very likely it is localized; and there is a chance, either way, that replacing him fixes it.

If many employees are not doing the work however, the problem is likely not the employees but a more general systemic issue relating to management or work structure; and replacing the employees will likely be about as effective as rotating your tires because the battery stopped charging.

Re:Where do I sign up?

[Anonymous Coward]

No, you're missing the most important point. You transfer under-performing employees to departments/managers that are known for firing people. There will be that one manager that is simply "known" as a total asshat, but that's because all the weak employees get transferred to them.

As for the entire telework problem. How's that working for Yahoo! ?

Telework is the easiest, best solution to not expanding office space/hardware/transportation, it's literately cost savings that look good, that even if you lost 20% efficiency, it would still be cost neutral. That inefficiency comes from not having someone walk by and shoulder surf/intimidate. You can get the same effect from requiring a constant "livestream" of their desktop+webcam to see if they are in front of their machine. That would of course increase data costs. So now instead of using Jo's 10Mbit connection capped at 50GB, Jo now needs a 100Mbit connection with a 500GB cap.

Re:Where do I sign up?

[mi]

If many employees are not doing the work however, the problem is likely not the employees but a more general systemic issue relating to management or work structure

Oh, I didn't mean, it is only the low-level employees themselves, who must all be fired (though some of the ought to be). What I said applies equally to managers — whom their managers are reluctant to fire because it is both difficult to do and hurts the person's own record.

Re:Where do I sign up?

[geekoid]

I've seen federal employees get fired. Several time.
They are not unfirable. They are difficult to fire to protect them against political whims, and crazy panic public irrationality.

Re:Where do I sign up?

[Zontar_Thing_From_Ve]

Wishful thinking. Federal employees are practically unfirable. For one, they are — bizarrely — unionized (to protect them from their employer — us), but that's only part of the reason, for corporations with unionized workforce still do fire bad workers, even if it is harder for them to do so than it ought to be.

This is just simply not correct. I know. I worked for Uncle Sam for a while. While it is difficult to fire federal workers, it's not impossible. Firing for cause can happen, although the more time a person has working there, the harder it becomes. And spare me the "they're in unions" argument. Unions do exist for federal employees, but at least where I worked in the Department of Defense, unions are a waste of money for most people. By federal law federal employees cannot strike (see Ronald Reagan vs. the air traffic controllers) so the union can't really do a lot in terms of collective bargaining. The only benefit I knew of that the union offered where I worked was that they had a supplemental insurance plan you could get through them that would pick up the consumer responsible charges of medical insurance and if you had a very expensive need, like major surgery, with such insurance you could get out of it paying nothing. I know of a case where a unionized worker was going to be fired for just cause. I don't remember what the guy did, but it was really bad and there was no doubt that he was guilty. The union called for hearings and drug their feet where it took a year to fire him but in the end the guy was fired. So other than giving you supplemental insurance or delaying a firing, that's about all a union could do where I worked. The majority of our workforce was not part of any union.

Re:Where do I sign up?

[geekoid]

I like how you went from some people abusing telework(the article) to health care.

Agenda much, asshole?

Re:Where do I sign up?

[Anonymous Coward]

The American Empire Party will take care of that! Once we assume power, we'll put the "execute" back into "executive branch".

Re:Where do I sign up?

[geekoid]

"Corporations don't have the means of coercing people to buy their services, don't even bring them up here."
BWAHAHAHAHAHHAhahhaa.

Re:Where do I sign up?

[geekoid]

Not just patent examiners: Patent Examiners the telework.
So a small group of a small group.

Re:Where do I sign up?

[Anonymous Coward]

Federal employees are practically unfirable. For one, they are — bizarrely — unionized (to protect them from their employer — us),

Too true. Having dealt with the government, I know this for a fact. It is what it is. The bureaucracy is so ingrained there's not much you can do about it.

Re:Where do I sign up?

[Anonymous Coward]

"Corporations don't have the means of coercing people to buy their services, don't even bring them up here." BWAHAHAHAHAHHAhahhaa.

No real counterargument to make, I see. That makes sense, because the statement is, except where government steps in to eliminate competition, absolutely true.

Re:Where do I sign up?

[HornWumpus]

If any of your friends are republicans, I bet they don't admit it at work.

Re:Where do I sign up?

[dywolf]

why would you want to opt out of social security?
you plan to die young, or work til your 90?
this is the same nonsense dreck you "shrink the gov til you can drown it in a bathtub" types always put up.
you need a course in basic civics concerning government (i suggest starting at governmentisgood.com).

and oh, btw, if you dont pay your mortgage, the bank gets the guys with guns to come kick you out.

Re:Where do I sign up?

[Jason Levine]

At best, there will be a handful of sacrificial firings with sternly worded statements about how they will not be tolerating this behavior in the future. Then, business as usual will resume.

Re:Where do I sign up?

[danbert8]

You'd want to opt out of Social Security because it's a Ponzi Scheme. Or maybe because you can get better returns on your retirement dollars in a private fund. Or maybe because you'd rather buy gold for your retirement savings.

If you don't pay your mortgage than you are in violation of a contract and the bank goes to the government to bring guys with guns to kick you out as you are trespassing on the bank's property. It's still the government with the guns. Your bank can't have it's own private enforcement kick you out of their house.

Re:Where do I sign up?

[Trailer Trash]

why would you want to opt out of social security?

Because the returns are abysmal compared to the stock market.

you plan to die young, or work til your 90?

Or, you're not stupid with money.

this is the same nonsense dreck you "shrink the gov til you can drown it in a bathtub" types always put up.
you need a course in basic civics concerning government (i suggest starting at governmentisgood.com).

Ah, yes, let's ask government-worshiping leftists what they think.

and oh, btw, if you dont pay your mortgage, the bank gets the guys with guns to come kick you out.

You make a voluntary contract with the bank and if you renege on your side they have the right to use the courts to enforce the contract. Works both ways:

http://articles.philly.com/201...

A big part of the purpose of government in a civilized society is to enforce contracts. You'd think reading "governmentisgood" would help you understand that.

Re:Where do I sign up?

[Anonymous Coward]

But the glorious government enterprises do not defile their mission with concerns for profit - their revenue is collected for them at gun point by the IRS

No, their revenue is collected under the terms of the social contract that allows you to enjoy the benefits of civilization, such as a patent office to encourage technical innovation. The point of the gun is only for sociopaths, whether they be ones intent on murdering their fellow citizens or stealing the benefits of society without paying.

That you seem willing only to comply with social rules because of that gun, suggests that you are one of the sociopaths, and I'll thank you not to criticize the society the rest of us have built.

Re:Where do I sign up?

[Anonymous Coward]

You laugh, but consider that the only means that corporations do have of coercing people to buy their services (and sure, some corporations or groups of corporations do) involves getting the government to pass laws -- again, making the government the ones holding the guns.

We're not talking organized crime here. And hell, the government doesn't even mind that much as long as they get their cut. Recall that they jailed Al Capone for tax evasion.

Re:Where do I sign up?

[Anonymous Coward]

Corporations are frequently in a position to coerce. Many industries start out with competition, but over time turn into monopolies. Everybody wants the 'best' and whoever product is perceived to be the 'best' gains an upper hand until the point in which the competition dies out. Little start-ups don't compete generally speaking with big industry. They either have something new or focus on a niche, or at a minimum have some radical improvement, and are competing with a monopoly/duopoly/industry/etc has become stale. Even in these situations companies often fail in the long term or get bought out.

Even whole industries collude. Get into a disagreement with your bank and fail to pay a bill for instance and you'll find yourself unable to get a bank account. Fail to pay a car loan on time and all of a sudden nobody will provide you any type of loan. Get on Microsoft's bad side- your whole business goes belly up because the competition gets the OS prior to launch and now your forced to do delay until you can get your systems 'up and running'. Don't like your internet service provider? OMG Did you even have a choice to begin with? Or what about your other utility options? Or how about your cellular options? I can think of all of three companies which actually own the infrastructure in the US. AT&T, T-mobile, and Verizon. Sure others exist, but they are small spotty, and/or primarily just re-sellers.

Re:Where do I sign up?

[Phillip2]

So, patent examiners are employed by we the people, from who they could have nothing to fear. As a result their union is an evil vested interest.

On the other hand, taxes are collected by a vicious and cruel IRS, using the ever present threat of violence and death.

I'm glad that you cleared that up, because I thought it was the same organisation, the government, that both collect tax and employ patent examiners.

Re:Where do I sign up?

[deKernel]

There are several reasons why I would opt-out. First off, I could get a far better return if I had a professional invest that money. Second, I am not adding to a fund that Congress can "borrow from" whenever they want. Third, I abhor the idea that I am just adding to the massive atrocity called the Federal Government.

What really irritates me is that the monster has gotten to the point where it just can't go away because such a large percentage of our population has gotten so damn lazy that they now plan on relying on Social Security for their income during retirement.

Regarding the mortgage assertion....NOBODY FORCED YOU TO SIGN THE PAPERS!!!!!!!! When you sign up for debt, you pay it or pay the consequences.

Re:Where do I sign up?

[udachny]

(same user, backup account)
---

no its not 100% correct/
its 100% ignorant and stupid.

- now you see, that's a flame.

you like a military that will defend you?

- the only function of a government is to defend the citizens from an attack, defend their lives and private property. Of-course instead of that the governments are actually destroying freedoms and rights, murdering people around the world, where there is no business for any of that intervention and creating a gigantic police and surveillance state. Military defence can be paid for Constitutionally, with direct apportioned taxes and/or with excise taxes, and the illegal income tax is neither of these.

In fact in order to go to war or to do defence what government should do is this: Congress has to state what the defence budget is going to be and then apportion collection of taxes for that purpose directly, proportionately to the population of the states (direct apportioned tax). All was have to be paid for, not put on debt for the future generations to pay for and not via inflation either, government must not be allowed to print cash.

you like clearn water and air?

- yes, which is why government should stay out of business altogether, so that the society becomes wealthy due to absence of government in free market capitalistic economy and wealthy societies can take care of their water and air without government intervention. Governments have no business in clean air and water but they certainly destroy plenty of air and water, the bigger the government, the more dictatorial it is, the worse the environmental outcomes are, this is history. The wealthier the economy is due to less government intervention, the more money (production) society can allocate to these causes.

you like a social safety net that keeps the weakest from falling too far?

- no. The only thing that can actually keep weakest from falling too far is a wealthy growing free market capitalist economy, government has no business, no authority in any of these and there is no moral right to steal from anybody to subsidise anybody else, regardless of how weak they are and how wealthy somebody else is that you want to steal from.

you like a postal system?

- not a government postal system.

you like you drivable roads?

- not a government roads.

you like food safety inspections and standards?

- not a government safety and standards.

you like fireman to save your house, and police to catch bad guys?

- not a government firemen and not a government police force either.

then guess what: pay your taxes and stfu.

- fuck you, you piece of shit (now that's a flamebait, definitely is, but you see AFAIC you are a piece of shit for all of your assumptions and for your conclusion, you are a piece of stinky excrement for telling people how they should live their lives, so you are an anti human, anti freedom POS from my perspective).

Every citizen pays their taxes (or should) willingingly, if grudgingly, because they understand that these things cost money.

- wrong. Every person should want freedom, not oppression, and if you want oppression because you were brainwashed into it in the so called 'public schools', then you are not a human worthy of having a discussion with.

Re:Where do I sign up?

[PuckSR]

You don't seem to understand the definition of a "Ponzi scheme".

A ponzi scheme is an investment scam where the "investment returns" are actually the investments of other investors. Investors are being tricked because they think they have invested money. There is no actual investment.
Social security is a public welfare program that is paid via tax revenue. It also includes a tax on earnings to offset the tax expenditure. T

Social Security is not an investment, so it cannot be a ponzi scheme.
Do you think the department of transportation is running a ponzi scheme when they collect gas taxes to pay for road work?

Re:Where do I sign up?

[rock_climbing_guy]

"Corporations don't have the means of coercing people to buy their services, don't even bring them up here."

You didn't hear about this obscure policy that is supposed to be effective this year known as the Obamacare individual mandate?

Re:Where do I sign up?

[Anonymous Coward]

Corporations don't have the means of coercing people to buy their services, don't even bring them up here.

So it's not required by law that we buy health insurance from a corporation? Or auto insurance, if we want to drive?

Sure as shit sounds like they found a means of coercing people to buy their services after all.

Re:Where do I sign up?

[Anonymous Coward]

You don't seem to understand the definition of a "Ponzi scheme".

Do you think the department of transportation is running a ponzi scheme when they collect gas taxes to pay for road work?

I recently found out my wife is running some kind of Ponzi scheme where I give her sex and she claims I will get additional humans back. Like I'm going to fall for that!

Re:Where do I sign up?

[Anonymous Coward]

you like a military that will defend you?

I think you mean oil companies. I'm pretty sure the last time a few thousand people who live on this hunk of land were murdered by a foreign government, the US military both didn't stop it and immediately invaded another area which was completely uninvolved.

you like clearn water and air?

It's a good thing the EPA didn't declare radon emissions from coal burning to be a natural source of radiation exposure. That would be blatant corruption.

you like a social safety net that keeps the weakest from falling too far?

And, like a net, it will close in around them to keep those who fall in ensnared for the rest of their lives.

you like a postal system?

You mean the protected monopoly on letter carrying whose biggest customers are spammers? You're right; without them, the state might only spy on our digital communications.

you like you drivable roads?

Ah, yes, like the interstate system which subsidized the ritual of commuting to work, draining cities of local commerce and making them hubs of the poor and unemployed.

you like food safety inspections and standards?

Clearly not very effective, given the near-constant salmonella outbreaks despite the distinct USDA-inspected-and-approved labels emblazoned upon the offenders' packaging.

you like fireman to save your house, and police to catch bad guys?

I like having renter's insurance and a home surveillance system. My place of work enjoys having an internal fire suppression system and private security. Plenty of others, however, don't like personally retrieving their stolen vehicles and cell phones, but they do it anyway, as it's the only way to get them back without waiting months for a fruitless "investigation" to conclude. The "real" police are too busy handing out traffic tickets and conducting busts on those who grow, burn, and/or sell the wrong sort of substance.

i guess in your worldview the government should just demand and force people fulfill those services without pay?
oh you dont think that? government shoul dhave to pay those things like everyone?

then guess what: pay your taxes and stfu.

Every citizen pays their taxes (or should) willingingly, if grudgingly, because they understand that these things cost money.
if you dont understand that you are a poorly educated moron that they forgot to teach basic civics to in grade school.

Your naivete concerning monopolies maintained at gunpoint disgusts me.

Re:Where do I sign up?

[PuckSR]

The CATO Institute reference is laughable.
It is interesting to read their mental masturbation about how multiple cable companies could compete in the same city, each with their copper. While that could technically happen, the diminishing returns of market entry would keep any sane company from entering into the market. Also, since their Utopia would be lacking in ANY government regulation, the larger company would simply purchase the smaller company if it became a threat. Which is EXACTLY what happened.

That paper was written in 1984. Thanks to their argument many places deregulated the cable industry.
Cable prices sky-rocketed. Companies merged. No true competition arrived. Comcast isn't an example of crony-capitalism. Comcast is the result of people like you and the CATO institute blocking government from heavily regulating "natural monopolies".

Why did anyone care in 1984? Because the federal government had just 'regulated' Ma' Bell. They required the company to reduce its sphere of influence and then they required them to allow "virtual competition". Government 'regulation'(in the form of anti-trust rulings) eventually required AT&T to operate as a copper providers, while other companies could operate as service providers. What was the result of all of this government regulation of a natural monopoly? Prices for long-distance calls dropped rapidly. Services were upgraded in many areas that were previously "unprofitable". Technologies that made heavy use of previously existing infrastructure(ADSL) spurred technological advances.

Basically, the best thing for the internet and cable TV would be HEAVY regulation. It might fall under a different name, but it would be regulation because it would be the government imposing its will on the market. If you wanted truly better service you would look to the deregulation of power operators in Texas as a key example. Create 3 specific "tiers": Content providers, network operators, retailers. Require that no company could exist as more than 1. Pay the network operators based on peers and speed. Watch the internet/cable get better rather rapidly.

Re:Where do I sign up?

[Tablizer]

Einstein developed the theory of relativity while goofing off at the Swiss Patent Office.

But goofing off is relative.
 

Re:Where do I sign up?

[Minwee]

The problem with working at a job where you can do whatever you like and never get fired is that you are working _with_ people who can do whatever they like and never get fired.

If that still sounds like a good deal then it's only because you have never tried it.

Re:Where do I sign up?

[Obfuscant]

and oh, btw, if you dont pay your mortgage, the bank gets the guys with guns to come kick you out.

So don't take out a mortgage. Where can you say the same thing about taxes?

Re:Where do I sign up?

[mwmitton]

You don't seem to understand the definition of a "Ponzi scheme".

A ponzi scheme is an investment scam where the "investment returns" are actually the investments of other investors. Investors are being tricked because they think they have invested money. There is no actual investment.

This is the funniest thing I have read all day. Where do you think the money for SS checks come from? Other taxpayers!

Re:Where do I sign up?

[cyberchondriac]

Same is true of state government, of course. What makes it that much worse is how much a role nepotism (or even AA, but usually nepotism) plays in hiring people who may or may not be qualified for their jobs, but hiring them based on other criteria. It's a bit hit or miss. Some of the relatives that get hired are perfectly capable, knowledgeable professionals who have experience and it all works out okay, but in my environment, a few too many were not qualified and simply got shoehorned in as a favor to some bigwig.

It's one thing when nepotism gets you the interview, which is merely an opportunity to showcase your skillset; but another thing altogether if it guarantees employment, especially to blatantly non-qualified personnel. And I can understand people might get upset over just the interview preference alone.
It's nearly impossible to terminate a bad employee, and I can think of a few real world examples from personal experience, anecdotal evidence be damned, where someone's nephew or brother-in-law was hired and is god-awful in the job, never improves, never learns, doesn't understand squat, screws up often, barely works, gets written up regularly, and still can't be terminated. That's very much a government culture kind of thing. It's not impossible though: I knew of one guy who got fired, because he callously muttered the n-word about a coworker, and he was still in the probationary phase; his butt was out the door in 48 hours.

Re:Where do I sign up?

[danbert8]

If there's no actual investment then why do I get a yearly report from the Social Security Administration telling me how much I have in my fund? If you are agreeing that Social Security is a huge money hole where future generations pay for the retirement of the old, then who WOULDN'T opt out? Probably just the old, not the people paying for the old to retire.

Re:Where do I sign up?

[Tablizer]

No, you are only coerced to choose among multiple private vendors. That's mostly different. And you can still skip buying, but you will have a skipper's fee.

Whether that plan is "good for society" or not is probably another topic. I'm just bothered by your particular comparison.

Re:Where do I sign up?

[Anonymous Coward]

I plan to get more of a return on my money than Social Security can give me.

"and oh, btw, if you dont pay your mortgage, the bank gets the guys with guns to come kick you out."

And here you give yourself away. The bank can only kick me out because I've borrowed money from them and promised to pay them back, under a , you know, contract. They still have to go to the courts to get an eviction notice. They must prove I've signed a contract, promised to pay them back and haven't. The if I still won't pay them back they take their court order to the sheriff and he will enforce the order.
If I own the house outright the bank can't take it away form me. I'm not forced to go to the bank. I could put money under my mattress until I have enough to buy a house. I could even make a deal with the former owner to pay on time. I don't have to go to the bank.

The IRS doesn't ask me if I want to pay taxes. I certainly didn't sign an agreement to pay taxes. The government has decided that I will pay or they will come with guns to take what they say I owe. I CAN go to court. Of course tax court is run by the IRS, with a prosecutor who works for the IRS and a judge who works for the IRS. What do you suppose the chance is that I can win?

Re:Where do I sign up?

[Anonymous Coward]

It's a Ponzi scheme because people who are getting social security were sold social security as an investment where they put money into a fund and then are paid out of that fund when they retire. They were basically lied to so that the Social Security law would pass. And then for years this lie was repeated, so that nothing would be done to fix the underlying sustainability problem.
If it quacks like a duck....

 

Re:Where do I sign up?

[Gusfm]

Bravo sir! I'm glad Slashdot isn't dominated by socialists yet, because in Reddid it's really hard to read anything related to politics without getting angry.

Re:Where do I sign up?

[grepninja7]

Not everything is about your pet political scandal of the moment. Please keep the flamebait off of threads involving me. Thanks.

Re:Where do I sign up?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, You MAY get better returns with investments, but what happens if your investments fail and you are left with no money at 80. This is why Social Security was establish. Just like the name says it is Security for our Society, because when bad stuff happens like a market crash you need some kind of fall back system so a whole lot of people don't end up living in Hoovervilles. See, you just have a very short memory of history, these programs were created because it solves problems that really exist and have happened.

Re:Where do I sign up?

[ewibble]

Seriously do don't already subcontract your job off to someone in China?

Re:Where do I sign up?

[Archangel Michael]

you like a military that will defend you? Yes. I'm tired of nation building nations that don't want it. Bomb them back into the 4th Century where they belong, and leave.

you like clearn water and air? Yes. I'm tired of being told that I should cut my CO2 usage by people flying around in Jet, traveling in SUV motorcades and living in 10000ft2 mansions.

you like a social safety net that keeps the weakest from falling too far? Yes. But I'm tired of people gaming the system and making me pay for it. Safety Net is not permanent solution.

you like a postal system? Not really. It is becoming more obsolete every day. I currently get three or four legit pieces of mail a week, and most of those could be Electronic instead.

you like you drivable roads? Yes. Many of the roads I travel are becoming less so, as government redirects fuel and vehicle taxes to pay for the "safety net" mentioned earlier.

you like food safety inspections and standards? Yes. And for the most part, the FDA has done an average to below average job.

you like fireman to save your house, and police to catch bad guys? Yes. I don't have much complaint about Fire, but Police are pretty bad these days. And I wish they would actually lock up criminals rather than spending time on victimless crimes.

Finally, all taxes are regressive. YES people should pay taxes, but only voluntarily. BY Voluntarily, I mean by using products or services that are NOT required for living. Taxing Income is nothing short of indentured servitude of the masses, and is evil. And nothing you can say will change my view of it.

Re:Where do I sign up?

[Anonymous Coward]

It is 100% correct that taxes are necessary to pay for a lot of services, and that most of us pay them grudgingly but willingly.

It is also 100% correct that taxes are paid under the threat of violence, and that if they were not, people would not pay them.

I am willing to pay my taxes because everybody else pays theirs. I would vote for higher taxes for my income bracket if I was able to vote in the US. I would not be willing to be the only person paying taxes if other people didn't, and I'm not willing to "voluntarily contribute more" which effectively makes no difference overall but makes a significant difference to me, but I am willing to contribute more if everybody else does - which requires the threat of violence for those that don't comply.

This is simple understanding of how society and people work. The threat of violence is necessary for tax collection.

Re:Where do I sign up?

[schnell]

What was the result of all of this government regulation of a natural monopoly? Prices for long-distance calls dropped rapidly. Services were upgraded in many areas that were previously "unprofitable". Technologies that made heavy use of previously existing infrastructure(ADSL) spurred technological advances.

This doesn't necessarily invalidate your point, but your recap of the results of the Judge Greene decision and the divestiture of AT&T is a bit off. The original Department of Justice rationale - this suit being pursued under the conservative Reagan administration, which you would have thought wouldn't wanted to do it - for splitting up AT&T was that it was an un-natural combination of heavily regulated industries (local phone service) and largely unregulated industries (long distance). The ultra-conservative DoJ anti-trust bigwig who actually pursued the case did so on the doctrinal belief that you should either be in a regulated business (rates set by a local Public Utility Commission, as local phone services are/were), or in a competitive business (market pricing) but not both since it allowed the competitive business to be subsidized by the regulated business and distort competition.

What was going on was actually the reverse - AT&T made lots of money selling long distance but not much selling local phone service, and in effect it was subsidizing your local phone bill with what expensive long distance service cost. So, while opening up the LD market to lots of competition did in fact drive prices down for consumers, most people's local phone bills went up because the ILECs were no longer being subsidized. Local phone company "innovation" pretty much went into the toilet (remember, they toyed with making modem users buy separate additional phone lines, and their idea of "broadband" in the early '90s was still ISDN). It wasn't until the advent of ADSL as a way to compete with other emerging broadband technologies forced their hand in the late '90s (in concert with the 1996 telecom deregulation act) that there was much innovation or cost savings for customers in play.

So in some ways the Ma Bell breakup was an interesting exemplar of the "law of unintended consequences" and a demonstration of how heavily regulated services can sometimes drive higher prices and lower innovation than ones with a more open market. Competition will always make a company move faster than regulatory bureaucracy - so your "HEAVY regulation" mentioned above would need to not just be regulation per se but the type that also incentivized investment and competition.

By the way, if you're really interested in the Ma Bell divestiture and its consequences, be sure to pick up The Deal of the Century by the Washington Post reporter who covered the trial and its aftermath.

Re:Where do I sign up?

[Anonymous Coward]

re PuckSR, Maybe you should read how Social Security works, Social Security does in fact run on investments (trust funds) when it has a surplus of money, this in turns social security money. Before cutting, at least look up how social security works, and yes social security is a high ponzu scheme, one which I would gladly opt-out of if I could. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_Security_Trust_Fun. If you need some reading PuchSR

Re:Where do I sign up?

[aitikin]

Best response yet!

Re:Where do I sign up?

[aitikin]

Actually, I work in a sales position where, so long as what you're doing makes the company money, you're pretty well set. Not 100%, there's still general things you have to do or you'll get the axe, but you almost have to try to get fired Of course, if you don't sell, you make a pitiful base check...

Re:Where do I sign up?

[Anonymous Coward]

Except that, given the difficulty of firing someone who overwhelmingly deserved it, the Union's most assuredly DO prevent firings that would have happened otherwise. For every employee that gets fired for sexually harassing the entire population of female staff on his floor, there are probably 50 employees who habitually show up drunk or stoned to work for whom it just isn't worth the overwhelming effort required to can them.

Re:Where do I sign up?

[Anonymous Coward]

Government work is just like being in prison, except there are few or no conjugal visit, snitches get stitches.

Re:Where do I sign up?

[Obfuscant]

What really irritates me is that the monster has gotten to the point where it just can't go away because such a large percentage of our population has gotten so damn lazy that they now plan on relying on Social Security for their income during retirement.

It is not "lazy" for people who could not opt out of a system that ate away at their income, which they were subject to their entire working lives, to expect the promises to be kept.

Would you be happy if you were told that mandatory deductions from your pay (and an equal amount the employer could have paid to you were it not for his mandatory contribution to the same place) were going to cover a layaway plan for a nice new Lamborghini when you retired, and then be told when you actually do retire that there is no Lamborghini and you're a lazy ass for not having bought your own car -- with the income you had left over after paying into the layaway program?

You want to disband social security? Fine. Give me back every penny I paid into the system that you think I shouldn't get anything back out of and we'll call it even. I'll be nice and only expect 2% interest on my money.

Re:Where do I sign up?

[Obfuscant]

No, you are only coerced to choose among multiple private vendors. That's mostly different.

The only way it is different is that you used the words "multiple private vendors" and he used the word "corporations". Do you not understand that the "multiple private vendors" are all "corporations?"

And you can still skip buying, but you will have a skipper's fee.

What you call "a skipper's fee" many would call "coercion", especially when the IRS is the organization that would collect it.

Re:Where do I sign up?

[mattack2]

Delaying firing *for a year* seems pretty serious. Presumably, they were being paid for that year. Were they also suspended? (i.e. year long paid vacation)

Re:Where do I sign up?

[Anonymous Coward]

Saying "I've seen them not able to fire a clearly guilty guy for up to a year" really enforces the GP. Private industry in a right-to-work state would have the guy fired by the time all the evidence was collected.

Re:Where do I sign up?

[mattack2]

I want to opt out of social security because I have a 401(k) and other savings.

As someone else said, Social Security is a Ponzi scheme.

Re:Where do I sign up?

[CrimsonAvenger]

Second, I am not adding to a fund that Congress can "borrow from" whenever they want.

Actually, they've always borrowed against it. The "Social Security Trust Fund" consists of a bunch of intra-governmental (zero interest) T-Bills (essentially IOU's) because any income surplus to actual needs is automatically lent to the General Fund.

Re:Where do I sign up?

[lgw]

Heck, historically it's pretty common that bandits taking money/food from people at gunpoint eventually become the government, as the people start expecting them to protect the people from other bandits, and the bandits reach the point where the only way they can steal more money is to make their victims more successful (so they can steal more in the long term).

Re:Where do I sign up?

[Tablizer]

According to Wikipedia, only roughly 3k people a year go to jail over tax evasion in the US. It could make getting a legitimate job difficult, but instances of physical restraint are small relative to the total population.

Re:Where do I sign up?

[mattack2]

Even though I want out of Social Security, I think you're being unreasonable. I think we should "wind down" SS. Let people opt out of it (maybe force people under 25 to opt out of it), and let others above that opt out, with possibly a sliding scale one time tax rebate or other incentive (a huge one time 401k deposit). Let people who currently expect it stay on it.

I see it as being almost the same as people with ridiculously high pension benefits. The people should get the benefits they were promised when they were hired.. but you can cut down/remove pension benefits for new hires.

Re:Where do I sign up?

[Obfuscant]

Let people opt out of it (maybe force people under 25 to opt out of it),

I'm fascinated by a system you claim is "opt out" that people are forced to "opt out" of.

The problem with letting anyone opt out of it is that you've still got to pay off the promises. That's the problem with Ponzi schemes. You have to keep money coming in from new participants to pay off the promises made to previous players. As soon as you force people to "opt out" the entire system will collapse and those who have the most to lose will lose it all.

So no, you don't get to let people opt out unless you want to make me whole for my previous contributions that will now be worthless. I ain't accepting no Yugo when I've paid my entire life and been promised a Lambo.

I see it as being almost the same as people with ridiculously high pension benefits. The people should get the benefits they were promised when they were hired.. but you can cut down/remove pension benefits for new hires.

It is the same, and we've already seen what happens when corporations do not fund their pension plans and those plans become orphans (through buyout or bankruptcy.) Let people keep their money and they will, and that will orphan the social security system because it will be unfunded. You want to make payouts to those who have paid in, that will take another source of money, like massive, confiscatory income tax increases.

Re:Where do I sign up?

[mattack2]

I'm fascinated by a system you claim is "opt out" that people are forced to "opt out" of.

OK, my wording wasn't very good, but I think my intent was clear.

Basically -- get rid of Social Security over an extended time. (BTW, I realize politically this will never happen unfortunately. Even most right wing Republicans don't say that we should get rid of SS.)

Let people willingly opt out of it, but make future workers NOT eligible for Social Security... Unfortunately, since people can't plan for themselves, something like a "mandated" 401k (it is still entirely all of their money) might be slightly more politically acceptable for them.

Re:Where do I sign up?

[Anonymous Coward]

Lets try it. You pay my share of SS taxes from now on. When I reach retirement age you can collect all the benefits, 100% of them.

If as you say, no one would opt out, this should be a no-brainer. Despite your claims, I've have seen the above proposal at least 100 times offered and never once taken up. So I'm going to assume you also will not take it up and you just spout crap that you don't actually believe.

Re:Where do I sign up?

[Anonymous Coward]

(sock puppet account of an angry cult member)

FTFY. Now quit yer bitchin' and try talking about technology more and your religion less; you might find your karma will come up again. Hell, not that long ago you made it back to positive with your regular account; you could have stayed there had you managed to stay on topic and stop treating this place like a recruitment drive for your cult.

Re:Where do I sign up?

[Anonymous Coward]

Quoting Gene Wilder as Willie Wonka:

"Strike that. Reverse it."

They are difficult to fire to *protect* each set of political appointees from the new boss, and make them far, far more powerful as patronage employees embedded in the unelected bureaucracy. The rules are set by administrators protecting their *current* appointees, and by the previous appointees protecting their own turf.

Of course they're afraid of the new boss!! He might throw them all out, without regard do their "seniority".

Re:Where do I sign up?

[Anonymous Coward]

All work. Show me a private business that promotes snitches and rewards disloyalty.

Re:Where do I sign up?

[Anonymous Coward]

When the conservatives say government employees are impossible to fire, what they mean is impossible to fire without cause. Being unable to fire people without actually supplying evidence of insubordination, illegal activity, or whatever else is the alleged "cause" makes them nuts. "What do you mean employees have a right to defend themselves against my accusations? That's preposterous."

Re:Where do I sign up?

[PrimaryConsult]

A *properly run* government office will use the work from home days and other perks that are not in the union contract as incentives to keep employees working at a decent pace. If they have to re-apply for those perks every quarter, and poor performance means denial, people won't slack.

Some places will use desk locations and shift hours as other motivators... to find the competent employees, look for the ones with a desk by the window or who's hours begin before 8.

I recall one small agency had an entire floor where they sent all of the problem employees, assigned to do only unrewarding repetitive work. Work that provided no useful or transferable experience. Bad managers were sent there to manage the bad employees. They even had a few nicknames for the floor, names that when spoken would immediately get a slacker back to work.

Bottom line: creativity is required on management's part but as long as there is wiggle room, what happened at the USPTO can be prevented without any drastic changes to the actual rules.

Re:Where do I sign up?

[rtb61]

Here is what really happened. Instruction come down from the highest level political appointee to basically approve everything unless it has already been patented. This instruction was lobbied for by patent lawyers to ensure the generation of many, many, patent trials. Now the examiners when given this instruction simply complied and as the felt the process how already been corrupted, decided to align with that corruption and allocate the same amount of time to a partial patent check, just to see if some idea has been patented yet to a full and proper check, see if the idea is already being applied publicly, check to make sure it is actually new and novel etc.. So the patent clerks became as corrupt as the US patent process, basically patent everything and let US lawyers sort it out in US courts. So rounded corners it is and I bet that patent clerk spent days checking for the newness and novelty of rounded corners uh huh.

Re:Where do I sign up?

[mjwx]

Your bank can't have it's own private enforcement kick you out of their house.

Well not any more.

Banks used to have entire fucking armies. They dont now, ironically enough thanks to the government you rally so much against.

Re:Where do I sign up?

[aybiss]

so that the society becomes wealthy due to absence of government in free market capitalistic economy

I nearly fell off my chair laughing. The 1800s called, they want their ideals back.

Re:Where do I sign up?

[cbhacking]

And nothing you can say will change my view of it.

Ah, the characteristic sign of the truly irrational. I actually agree with a good part of what you said in that post, but with that last line you lose all credibility to having a reason-based argument. If no reason could change your mind, then your mind is, by definition, unreasonable (not based in reason).

I'm also curious how you expect to fund the essential portions of the government. The "required for living" stuff like a military strong enough to prevent invasion (not to be confused with what the US actually has), and the critical portions of the government apparatus (like employing the people who decide what those voluntary taxes should be, and the infrastructure to collect and count the votes or otherwise implement the method of selecting said government), and so on; that also costs money, you know?

Do you charge it only to the people who use "products or services that are NOT required for living" and let them - the ones with disposable income - pay more than the fair value of those products and services in order to support the freeloaders who benefit without cost? Or do you institute a tax on things like property (in the sense of shelter and a place you can secure as your own) and, when somebody points out that many such things are actually *more* "required for living" than a monetary income, put your fingers in your ears and go "LALALALALALALA" over and over again until they go away?

Oh, and if you *do* plan to collect the entire tax base off optional services, how do you prevent somebody from setting up a non-government business that provides the same product or service but costs less (because it doesn't have to bear the overhead of also running a country)? Do you make competing with the voluntary-tax services illegal (no for-profit prisons, say)? Do you allow competition on the basis that the government is inherently more efficient and will win in the free market? Do you allow competition but cripple the private businesses by not allowing them privileges that the government has (say, the right to forcibly detain or injure people) and thus force those who want effective services to pay their taxes to the government anyhow?

I'm sincerely curious whether you've thought of any of this before, or have answers now. Your post suggested that yes, you have an answer for all the questions... but it also seems self-contradictory and I wonder how you plan to resolve such issues.

Re:Where do I sign up?

[Anonymous Coward]

sad thing when stupid but non-destructive unprofessionalism (a single racial slur) is more punishable than expensive decades-long (until retirement) ineffectiveness and incompetence.

i work for the DoD and there is a lady in my organization that spends more time trying to pass her responsibilities onto others than anything else (IF anything else). she is one year away from her 30 years for retirement.

the only normal way to fire someone is to set attainable objectives and if they do not meet them, rate them poorly for their next performance review. the problem with that is two-fold:
1) its a HUGE pain in the ass to rate someone poorly, so most people dont even bother. you really have to have your shit in order (documentation, monitored performance improvement plans, etc), otherwise you are opening yourself up for a blistering counter-attack.
2) if you have a poor performer in your section, you dont tend to give them anything important, so that if they fuck up it doesnt really hurt much. marginalize to limit damage. that means their documented objectives are small easy things that they meet with ease, and then you cant give them a poor rating. catch-22

even then they probably wont be fired, just shipped off somewhere else (different state/country/department/whatever). you really have to be a child molester or say a bad word to get fired, its all a load of shit, and it pisses me off that work-horses like myself burn out and quit before we get anywhere near 30 years while there are slackers pulling in fat paychecks to do nothing until they retire.

Re:Where do I sign up?

[ivaradi]

Unnatural Monopoly: Critical Moments in the Development of the Bell System Monopoly,

Re:Where do I sign up?

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't you mean put them enforcing us buying health insurance?

Re:Where do I sign up?

[kilodelta]

Oh tell me about it. I was a state employee not once but twice. In both cases I saw horse trades that made it hellish for everyone.

For example - I had an Admin Director yelling at me about something SHE didn't do. That was when I knew - no more state employment unless I'm REALLY high up and can tell people to fuck off.

Re:Where do I sign up?

[Dishevel]

Lets look at the number of people that can not fight the IRS and just have to pay huge amounts of money.

Just because not many people choose to fight the IRS to the point of prison does not mean they do not wield that power.

Think you are safe? Go tell an IRS auditor that you are clean as a whistle and he and his family can go fuck themselves.

We will all enjoy seeing you spend all your money on tax attorneys for the next decade of your life while you tell us that "Instances of physical restraint are small relative to the total population"

You will dance to their tune solely because they have the power to imprison you. They do not have to imprison many people to terrorize the population.

Re:Where do I sign up?

[udachny]

It's a good thing that those billion year old laws of gravity were still at play, when you fell of your chair, you didn't hit the ceiling and didn't go out of the window.

Pretending that laws that govern nature do not work will not work out well, if you pretend that gravity is too old of an idea to work, why don't you step out of your window? I mean all the way down, every second that you didn't hit the ground yet you may still be under impression that you are correct and gravity isn't there.

Denying the normal laws of economics is no different. You can pretend that by denying normal economics and applying your Keynesian nonsense you are flying, but you are only flying until you hit the ground and it will be too late to realize that jut like gravity, capitalist free market economic principles don't go anywhere, they never stop applying and they will bring you back to reality in a short order.

Re:Where do I sign up?

[dywolf]

once again the ignorant libertarians have modded as troll those they disagree with because they never took a civics lesson

Re:Where do I sign up?

[dywolf]

What you've just said... is one of the most insanely idiotic things I have ever heard. At no point in your rambling, incoherent response were you even close to anything that could be considered a rational thought. Everyone in this room is now dumber for having listened to it. I award you no points, and may God have mercy on your soul...

we have public food safety rules and inspectors because PEOPLE DIED from corporations that put profit ahead of safety.
we have public fireman and police because PRIVATE POLICE FORCES HAVE NEVER WORKED FOR THE BENEFIT OF SOCIETY, only those who hire them.
you seriously speak against public funded roads? when the modern highway system is directly responsible for much of our economic activity?

you belong in the 1890s, when life was great for the 0.01% and sucked for everyone else. socialism, the new deal, the modern welfare state, antitrust law and corporate regulations ALL came into being directly in response to the abuses caused by uncontrolled, unfettered capitalism.

that's barely more than 100yrs ago, and already society has forgotten it.
Taxes are not oppression, and the post is not flamebait, and you're stupid and ignorant if you think either is true.

Re:Where do I sign up?

[dywolf]

to be clear:
capitalism tied to a free market (because they are NOT the same thing) is as yet the most effective economic system yet developed.
but it is an undebateable fact that it is naturally self-destructive.
it has always, eventually, shot itself in the foot and ground to a halt.
the boom-bust cycle isn't a bug, it's a feature.
we have seen this countless times throughout history.

that is the purpose of government regulation and public welfare: to control the beast, to prevent its self-destructive tendencies, to channel its positive attributes while (hopefully) reining in its excesses and break the cycle of boom/bust.

problem is stupid people like you who ignore history and reality.

Re:Where do I sign up?

[dywolf]

no. The only thing that can actually keep weakest from falling too far is a wealthy growing free market capitalist economy.

In over 10,000 years of human history that has never happened, never been true. not once.
Not in ancient egypt. Not in ancient Rome. not in merry old england. not in China. And not in our own country.
you are ignorant of basic history.

if you oppose the concept of a road as a public good, then fine. go "subscribe"...and then try to work out the logistics of negotiating how to cross your neighbors property, and how to deal with switching "road companies"...and every other logistical nightmare that comes with natural monopolies. then maybe youll learn why roads are a public good, that we all benefit from.

so i imagine in your world, where there is no public safety rules, no public food inspectors, no public firemen or police...you imagie just civilians banding together for the common good when something bad along these lines happens?
a large group of people acting in unison to exert a collective will in their own self-interest?
there's a word for that: GOVERNMENT. thats why you're position is myopic and ignorant.

then there's also education and schools...you benefit directly from having a educated populace around you yet you would rather people only get whatever education they can aford? congratulations: you've doomed 99% of society to eternal ignorance, killed democracy, and ensured your own conitnued oppression. education for all is one of the cornerstones of our freedom.

and speaking of freedom...dont ever say im not patriotic and freedom loving. you can just shove that right up where the sun dont shine. I spent over 13 years in the USMC. so believe me. i take freedom very seriously.

ive also studied philosophy, civics, political theory, and history, especially history, and thats why i know your position is unteneable and unrealistic. you are willfully ignorant and blind to all that has gone before. its you and your ignorant brethern that sabotage government and then say "see? its worthless". the greatest threat to American excellence, exceptionalism, and freedom comes frm your side of the fence, from your positions, not mine.

Re:Where do I sign up?

[Archangel Michael]

When Richard Nixon even suggested using the IRS, the left went nuts (probably because they didn't think of it first), now that the left has been caught red handed actually doing it ... "yawn". Duplicity.

Re:Where do I sign up?

[grepninja7]

More flamebait on an article from two days ago. You must be bored.

Re:Where do I sign up?

[dywolf]

again, not flamebait. and the guy is an a confesed abuser of the mod system.

Re:Where do I sign up?

[dywolf]

again: not flamebait.
stop abusing hte mod system ebcause you're scared of different viewpoints that actually understand their position and its consequences.

Re:Where do I sign up?

[Trogre]

Surely Social Security is just a savings scheme for the wealthy, no? What's the pension worth where you live? Still enough to live on I hope.

There's hope...

[gnasher719]

... that one of them will find the successor of General Relativity in his goof-off time :-)

Re:There's hope...

[Anonymous Coward]

Brilliant. I wonder if that's a joke at the office, "I'm only working here until I complete my GUToE."

Re:There's hope...

[Anonymous Coward]

2 Star General Relativity

Re:There's hope...

[Tablizer]

... that one of them will find the successor of General Relativity in his goof-off time

Hey, if they invent practical flying cars or star travel, they deserve some good ol' goof-off time.

If I can arrive at the Risa Galactic Hilton within 15 years, I'll personally buy them a 2k-Naps-for-Free card.

Re:There's hope...

[aitikin]

... that one of them will find the successor of General Relativity in his goof-off time :-)

Nah. This is the US Patent office, not the Swiss one.

I am shocked

[Anonymous Coward]

That people at work would have time to goof off like this.
(I would have had first post, but my boss walked by and I had to alt-tab to my spreadsheet).

Re: I am shocked

[Anonymous Coward]

Goofing off is one thing, but when you half ass your work the half of the time you do work it gets ridiculous.

Cue the 'We can't find the emails tape'

[grheller]

Congress will investigate this of course and I wonder if thePTO will have the balls to say they can't find their emails.

Re:Cue the 'We can't find the emails tape'

[vux984]

Congress will goof off for 3 months, then rush to pretend like they were investigating it.

Re:Cue the 'We can't find the emails tape'

[Jason Levine]

Congress doesn't goof off for months and then pretend they were investigating something.

They're more the "hold pointless hearings to make it seem like you're doing something and then go out on recess" kind of folks. Of course, they also will mix in "pass a law you claim with solve X when it really just benefits your favorite lobbyists."

Re:Cue the 'We can't find the emails tape'

[vux984]

"They're more the "hold pointless hearings to make it seem like you're doing something and then go out on recess" kind of folks. "

aka -- goofing off :)

Re:Cue the 'We can't find the emails tape'

[Anonymous Coward]

solution: re-elect no one.

Re:Cue the 'We can't find the emails tape'

[Tablizer]

Congress will goof off for 3 months, then rush to pretend like they were investigating it.

Worse, they pretend the whole time, but blame the other party at the end of 3 months regardless of (non) findings.

"Why did it take them so long to discover the harddrive was recycled? That looks suspicious, very very suspicious. More investigations, charrrrge!"

Interesting

[emagery]

I know someone who works there, and they complain quite a bit not just about some of the other workers but also a lot of the folk semi-external to the office on whom they have to rely. Not exactly useful information, I know, but it makes me wonder.

Re:Interesting

[Anonymous Coward]

It's no different than in any huge company where 20% of the workers do 80% of the work. There is a reason Boeing is referred to as "The Lazy B".

Re:Interesting

[Anonymous Coward]

Several years ago I posted a reply about my experiences at the USPO. It was substantially vindicated by this article. People slept at their desks. BS and trash talk flowed all day long. Some employees would engage in sex in the stairwells. Some went cube to cube peddling alcohol. In an office of 20, maybe 2 people actually did any work. College degrees were commonly from some third or fourth tier "historically blah blah" ethnic oriented college. No MIT or Cal Tech grads. Not many "Blah State Tech" grads. Just the bottom of the barrel of what might be called "educated". Advanced degrees? You must be kidding!

I'm sorry to hear that things have not changed. But not surprised.

Hopefully they can be replaced by pattern matching

[spacepimp]

I can only hope that these experts rushing to get their reviews done quickly at the end of the quarter can be replaced by pattern matching AI. Their results if rushed have huge implication in the million s and billions for certain industries. Also, is there any tracking of who has which patents to review? Is the person filing the patent ever allowed to have communication with the reviewer? I would imagine there is plenty of room for bribery or pay off to let a certain patent review through.

But they have a patent on that process...

[jkrise]

And like most notoriously poor patents granted; they will not reveal details of their goof-up; or how it works. Nobody else can copy their style of work since they have design patents on those things as well.

Re:Hopefully they can be replaced by pattern match

[Anonymous Coward]

Im sure they have access to each other. In fact this may be why they only really work PT. The other time they are busy meeting with these people taking bribes.
So far it doesn't sound like people are really surprised here.

This is a shining example

[halivar]

of why small-government types are not completely out of their fucking gourd.

Re:This is a shining example

[Anonymous Coward]

Small-government types should want patents eliminated 100%.

Re:This is a shining example

[fahrbot-bot]

of why small-government types are not completely out of their fucking gourd.

Size and quality are not, necessarily, related. They assume that small government would be staffed with highly qualified and highly motivated people, yet forget there only about 550 people in the US Congress (Senate+House) and they haven't gotten anything done in years.

Re:This is a shining example

[dywolf]

Oh they are. They very much are completely out of their gourd.

Much like hte existence of winter does not disprove global warming, the existence of lazy people does not disprove government.

Re:This is a shining example

[operagost]

This assumes that what you want out of a legislative body is quantity. That's pretty much the opposite, since nearly every law Congress passes restricts freedom (or at least transfers it from one group of people to another) and thus, getting something done is usually bad.

Re:This is a shining example

[halivar]

Or at the very least pared back to their original usage.

Re:This is a shining example

[halivar]

They assume that small government would be staffed with highly qualified and highly motivated people

By no means! A small government will attract the same sorts of people; the difference is the evildoers can't hide in the massive, inscrutable cogs of the machinery. Accountability is easier when there are fewer places to pass the buck.

Re:This is a shining example

[joocemann]

No... it's a shining example of why the 'work form home tele-work' idea isn't always a good idea. Lets take on step back and look at what you said .... Do you really think that private enterprise is a better place for a role in which all ideas/invetions are vetted for novelty? This is a regulatory agency, so to speak. Private business could only make things worse by being private. It doesn't make sense to even have a patent office and its purposes (a government-driven protection to ideas) governed by private business. That would be like allowing a wolf to tend to sheep.

Re:This is a shining example

[Anonymous Coward]

Many of us don't want Congress to get anything done, since when they do get things done it usually ends up hurting our wallets and/or our freedom.

Now, if there were a section of congress devoted solely to repealing laws, I'd be all for it.

Re:This is a shining example

[Anonymous Coward]

Previous poster's point is that Congress is already small. They already cannot hide in any massive inscrutable cogs. Your proposed solution has not solved the problem.

Re:This is a shining example

[nine-times]

So you're saying that Congress has been doing a good job?

Re:This is a shining example

[halivar]

At least we can unelect them, if stirred enough to do so. Eric Cantor illustrates that point.

Re:This is a shining example

[halivar]

I am not in favor of hiding government largess by contracting it out. At that point, the "private" enterprise is merely an unofficial extension of government, isn't it?

Re:This is a shining example

[joocemann]

You're absolutely correct. The size of our government is not understood by almost anyone. Maybe we know about some of it, but the fullest extent is not obvious or even clear in many cases. What is a SMOG shop?

8300? Let that sink in a moment

[Anonymous Coward]

I thought, maybe a few hundred work as patent examiners, tops. 8300? REALLY?

You're telling me 8300 people can't properly examine the existing patent landscape, and diligently determine if something is prior art, just math, not a unique process, or not patentable? 8300 People? Wow! Now THAT is a sobering thought!

On a second note, have the IRS due a 10 year audit on ever single examiner! Hell, a 20 year audit! This entire environment sounds unclean!

Re:8300? Let that sink in a moment

[Overzeetop]

There aren't 8300 people working on each patent application. The USPTO received 609,052 patent applications last year. There are (roughly) 200 working days in a calendar year (accounting for sick leave, vacation, an minimal training/in-service time). Each patent receives (on average) less than 3 man-days total for your diligence in determining the patent background, current state of the art, etc.

Re:8300? Let that sink in a moment

[alphatel]

There aren't 8300 people working on each patent application. The USPTO received 609,052 patent applications last year. There are (roughly) 200 working days in a calendar year (accounting for sick leave, vacation, an minimal training/in-service time). Each patent receives (on average) less than 3 man-days total for your diligence in determining the patent background, current state of the art, etc.

609,052 / 8300 workers = 7 patents to review per worker per year.
If each patent takes 3 days to review, then that is 255 - 21 = 234 days left to do nothing.

Therefore, patent office working as expected!

Re:8300? Let that sink in a moment

[Formorian]

Um how is 609,052/8300 = 7? My math shows 73.379759...., so 73.4ish.

Did you add an extra 0 and make it 83,000?

And therefore 73.4 * 3 = 220.2

So yeah.

Re:8300? Let that sink in a moment

[toebob]

609,052 / 8300 workers = 73 patents to review per worker per year. If each patent takes 3 days to review then that is 260 - 219 = 41 days for sick time, vacation, and any patents that take longer than 3 days. Not much slack available there - especially if their math skills are as bad as yours.

Re:8300? Let that sink in a moment

[Noughmad]

You are off by one order of magnitude, it is 70 patents / worker / year.

Not quite accurate

[Anonymous Coward]

I used to work at the patent office, and I can tell you the article doesn't quite understand the way the office works. Examiners are required to get a very specific amount of cases done for the hours they work or they are fired. They seriously total up the hours worked and require X number of cases done based on it. At worst what is happening is that people are slacking off at the beginning of a quarter and then working extra at the end to make up for it. But it's not like they never do any work. If someone doesn't make their counts, as they call it, they are pretty quickly in trouble.

So the worst here is that some examiners might be doing a bad job at the end of a quarter because they slacked off at the beginning of it. Even still, there's a lot of other reasons why someone might get less counts at the beginning of a quarter. They might be working on their harder cases early, for example, because they're not up against a deadline. Or they might be hanging on to cases they've worked on just to think them over -- since they aren't really due yet. So it's hard to say what's really going on here. There are definitely some bad examiners but there's no way people are never working or they wouldn't get their counts and they'd be fired.

Re:Not quite accurate

[Anonymous Coward]

I think I could get my "counts" by just waiting until the end of the quarter and marking "patent approved" on everything I was assigned. Maybe randomly throwing in one "denied for prior art".

Re:Not quite accurate

[Anonymous Coward]

Or they might be hanging on to cases they've worked on just to think them over -- since they aren't really due yet.

That's the excuse everyone I know used. The reality is we'd do absolutely nothing until the deadline, then we'd shit through everything in our queue.

Re:Not quite accurate

[Anonymous Coward]

Supposedly then you'd get caught in a quality check. I think they are supposed to review every allowed patent. Once you have so many errors marked against you for quality, you're fired. But I honestly could not tell you how good a job the quality people do. Obviously some bad ones get by -- but remember this is out of literally millions of applications. On that scale even 0.1% getting by still means quite a few bad patents. Maybe the quality people don't do anything and the real slackers know it and get by that way. But if so that's not anything to do with the telework program. They could do that just as easily in the office.

Re:Not quite accurate

[phorm]

As demonstrated by many places I've worked and also university exam time... slacking off in the beginning and then trying to "grind" through to meet a thin deadline at the end usually comes at the expense of quality. The work may be done, but how many B.S. patent applications is it enabling to pass through.

Re:Not quite accurate

[Anonymous Coward]

Can you also speak to the pay? I've got a Ph.D. and several years ago was looking to move to the D.C. area from the midwest with a girlfriend who got a job there. The work-from-home ability would have been good for us starting a family. The job pay was lower than I was getting as a post-doc in the midwest, with very limited raises once a year. The salary mentioned in the article is about 3x what I was seeing, so I'm guessing that very very few make that much.

Re:Not quite accurate

[Anonymous Coward]

"So the worst here is that some examiners might be doing a bad job at the end of a quarter"

Yes. That is pretty much the worst possible outcome. That's how bad patents make it through: "method of dispatching taxis? that's not unique or novel. Oh, method of dispatching taxis USING A WEB BROWSER. That IS unique and novel! APPROVED!!!"

Re:Not quite accurate

[Anonymous Coward]

You've got to be there a long time to make that much. But you probably make $100k after seven or eight years. You can't work from home until you've reached a certain level -- at least, that's how it used to be. I'm not sure what the rules for it are now.

Re:Not quite accurate

[Anonymous Coward]

Examiners have a special pay scale (http://careers.uspto.gov/Pages/Misc/SalaryRates.aspx) which has both grades (05, 07, 09 ...) and steps (1-10). As an examiner with a Ph.D. you would start at GS 09-1. Every 18 months with good performance reviews and you move up 1 step i.e. GS 09-2. Every grade has an associated 'production' requirement which is basically the number of hours you are given to complete a case. As you move up you are given fewer hours per case. I think you can move up in step, at least to GS 12 every year so long as you meet the production requirements for promotion. To get to GS 13 and GS 14 you have to undergo a special review period which lasts 14 weeks and if i recall you have to be gs 12 and 13 respectively for 18 months before you can begin that review program. Each time you move up in Grade you are placed in the step with the next highest salary. For example, a GS 09-4 would be promoted to GS 11-1. GS 14 is generally the top end for patent examiners but if you have 15 years experience you can be eligible to move to GS 15 after yet another special review and with even further increased production requirements. It typically takes between 5-8 years to make it to GS 14, depending on what grade you start out at.

Re:Not quite accurate

[Anonymous Coward]

As opposed to granting everything that comes in the door, examiners often give poor quality First Office Actions that are usually based on art that is really not applicable. With the new CLS v. Alice Bank ruling, they are also throwing out 101 rejections as quick and dirty Office Actions. This allows them to get their Count up quickly, and they assume that the patent prosecutor will then amend the claims and provide the examiner a bit more explanation regarding the key ideas of the patent.

Re:Not quite accurate

[PPH]

find /applications -exec grep "using the Internet" {} \; -exec mv {} /approved \;

There. Done.

Re:Not quite accurate

[Anonymous Coward]

That's all mostly correct, although I'll clarify a few points.

Ph.D.'s can sometimes start off at GS-11. However, there is a 6-month shortened promotion cycle for GS-9 to get promoted to GS-11, and you will thank yourself for having the breathing room afforded by not starting at GS-11 (the workload requirements are higher the higher grade you are). The shortened promotion cycle is 6 months each from GS-5 to GS-7 to GS-9 to GS-11, but you can only get shortened promotions for your first two of these promotions.

From GS-11 to GS-12 to GS-13 is a one-year waiting period between promotions. After that, it's roughly a year, give or take, to get promoted to GS-13 with partial signatory authority, and another year to GS-14 (which comes with full signatory authority). Those last two steps come with rigorous quality reviews that you have to pass in order to get promoted.

I don't personally know any GS-15 examiners other than people who became supervisors (which make GS-15 pay) and later stepped back down to examining, or people who did certain details like the re-exam unit or some other special assignments. But there is a program in place for achieving GS-15 pay grade as an examiner, and there's another program based on proficiency in the art for bumping yourself up to GS-14 pay earlier than normal before you get full signatory authority.

Wow - good thing

[kilodelta]

I was recruited by a friend for a patent examiner position. Glad I declined because instead I get to spend my time surfing slashdot instead.

Re:Wow - good thing

[halivar]

Umm, or you could have accepted and still spent your time surfing Slashdot.

Total shock.

[Anonymous Coward]

Government inefficiency? Who could have possibly seen this coming?

How is that different in private sector?

[sinij]

How is that different in private sector? Article implies that this problem is only widespread in the government sector, when in my experiences this is global problem rooted in 'human condition'.

Re:How is that different in private sector?

[camg188]

Usually in the private sector, such widespread unprofessionalism would put a company out of business or at least affect the bottom line.

Re:How is that different in private sector?

[dave562]

The difference is that the private sector has competition. If Company A is billing a certain amount of hours to get a job done, and Company B is billing less to get the same job done, then Company A will eventually start losing work to Company B. Similarly if Company A is turning out half assed work, or doing the professional equivalent of finishing their homework right before class, they will lose business to other organizations who deliver better results.

The company I work for is facing the first challenge of spending too much time on projects. A good portion of our engagements are spent re-inventing the wheel on basic project setup and management activities. It looks good for the Directors in charge of the projects because their people are 100%+ utilized. It kills us in the marketplace because our competitors have good processes in place that allow them to execute projects in less time and for less cost. The company has no choice but to become more efficient.

The patent office has no such competition. Nobody else can grant patents. Therefore they can half ass their way through it and there will not be any consequences for them.

Re:How is that different in private sector?

[Anonymous Coward]

you are quite naive for a 6digiter. I mean slack is the base anything works. Too much slack leaves things undone that much is true too little slack and they cannot handle difficult cases at all as these take more time than allocated by powers that be. The rest is normal human attitude to boring tasks.

I suppose they can be automated out of existence pretty fast and approvals given automatically or by drop of a coin letting courts resolve issues that are important as they anyway would be involved in such case. The freed resources can be sent to fight Putin or IS or what else US Depatrment of State managed to fuck up lately.

Re:How is that different in private sector?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, that's nice in theory.

The hospital I'm at had insanely lazy/greedy processes everywhere. Their only saving grace is the same thing happens at all the other local hospital systems.

Believe me, government doesn't have anything on lazy/waste going on here. And the free market hasn't fixed it.

Re:How is that different in private sector?

[PPH]

Nope. Company A has a lock on key patents integral to the product. You can either pay them for shit work or hire Company B. Who will have to pay exorbitant licensing fees to Company A.

Re:How is that different in private sector?

[HornWumpus]

What does the free market have to do with hospitals? Seriously, you can't be that stupid.

The only free market in medicine is for elective procedures. Boob jobs, Lasik eye surgery etc.

Re:How is that different in private sector?

[Jason Levine]

Unless said company had a regional monopoly and was big enough to lobby to keep the rules favoring them. *cough* Comcast *cough*

Re:How is that different in private sector?

[Anonymous Coward]

Lots. My insurance had practitioners at 3 major local hospital networks (not the crappy Kaiser HMO's, real hospital networks), as well as a lot of private practitioners. I have my pick. Most folks I know can also pick a doc at any of them. It's a free market for many folks with decent insurance. If you are in a small market with only one local hospital network, or have crap insurance your options are limited, but where I am, there certainly is a free market.

Re:How is that different in private sector?

[HornWumpus]

I stand corrected...you are that stupid.

"Close enough for government work"

[Anonymous Coward]

A pal of mine went from "Korporate Amerika" into a local county gov't. civil service job & told me: "It's the most money for the least amount of work I've ever done as a job"... that tell ANYONE, anything, per my subject-line above? Does me! Personally, I would love to see (and I'd vote for him) a presidential candidate that would run on THIS single political promise for a platform - "You, the individual U.S. Citizen, at the county, state, and federal levels, will be granted options as to WHERE every single tax dollar you pay in income taxes will go" (allowing sales tax to be apportioned by gov't. however, as it is now, MINUS raising those taxes without approval of their constituencies in citizenry @ those levels). It would change, everything (for the better).

APK

P.S.=> Think about that.... apk

Obvious

[Charliemopps]

I would have thought this Obvious given that Einstein developed the theory of Relativity, revolutionizing nearly every field of science, all while working there.

Let's see... light is always propagated in empty space with a definite velocity...
er...
Icons with round corners? Approved... ...which is independent of the state of motion of the emitting body...
One click purchase? Whatever... approved...
That is, light in vacuum propagates with the speed c...

Small government libtertarian types shocked!

[Anonymous Coward]

Patent examiners not working more than 24 hours a day?

One person should be able to manage the entire government in thier spare time!

You Don't Know The Half Of It

[Anonymous Coward]

As a reviewer for USPTO, I can tell you that it's far worse than this article portrays.
Typically, I don't do an ounce of work until my deadline is coming up. Then I just diarrhea though my queue, spending less than 10 seconds on a typical application. If you want an analogy, think of it as filing 90% of your work email based on subject alone. I do give more attention to certain applications (the 10% of email you actually read, using the same analogy). These typically fall into one of three categories:

1: Applications that look interesting/entertaining to me.
2: Applications that are a refile of a previously rejected one.
3: Applications that hit the top of my queue when I'm bored of rubber stamping a bunch. Reading the damned things and doing my job actually becomes a break from the monotony of approve approve approve reject approve approve reject.

From what I've seen, this pattern of work is typical. A major compounding factor is the fact that if you reject an application, it's likely to come back and be noticed, but if you approve an application, no one notices. So when you're blitzing through shit you typically want to approve shit unless it's absurd. And if it's ridiculously absurd, you'll want to approve it - we used to hold a competition to see who could approve the most ridiculous patent each deadline. I've stopped doing it since 2 of the people I worked with left, but I know this practice goes on with other groups of reviewers.

Management knows this shit goes on but is powerless to stop it because it means someone would have to actually review the patents, and the managers sure as shit aren't going to even look at them unless it's from a high profile company. All they care about is the numbers. Total number reviewed is king, but they do look at the % approved, too. There are no targets or quotas for % approved, but if you're actually doing your job you'll get shit from your manager because your % approved is going to be significantly lower than average. So you learn to approve shit that's obviously retarded. The "reasoning" behind this is that we're reviewing the validity of the application itself first, the overlap with existing patents second, and novelty/originality last. Anything questionable with regards to novelty/originality is better left to the courts.

The last thing I'll mention is how badly patents are written. Go ahead and look some terrible patents up. Those vague descriptions and those wonky diagrams with little to no coherent explanation are intentional. They're not written that way to be broad, as most people say. If it ever comes to a point of contention, the lawyers will fight that part out anyway. They're written that way in order to be approved quickly. Reviewers do not have to understand a patent application to approve it. If you approve a patent for a triangle and somehow catch shit for it, you can just claim you misunderstood the diagrams. And I can guarantee you, in a patent for a triangle there will be a lot of ridiculous, incomprehensible diagrams.

Re:You Don't Know The Half Of It

[Anonymous Coward]

I also worked at the patent office before the big crash and goofing off was on blatant display at all times. It's not the sort of thing you could miss unless you were intentionally trying not to see it. And even then it would be really hard to explain away what you were seeing.

Individuals would typically start at around 70k a year and be eligible for a huge amount of overtime on top of that, up to IIRC, about 150k a year total, from day one. Once you got through your initial ramp-up period to build up a decent pile of rejections/reexams, it was very easy to coast through on a few hours of work a week. The performance metrics (ie, you get this many points for an initial review, this many for a reexam, etc) were easily gamed, and pretty much any other examiner would gladly share with you their particular methods for working the system to max out their overtime and minimize the actual effort expended.

As far as I can recall, pretty much anyone that had been there more than about 10 years was pulling in 150k while working about 20 hours a week, with all but a few hours a week spent out of the office.

Re:You Don't Know The Half Of It

[Anonymous Coward]

As a reviewer for USPTO, I can tell you that it's far worse than this article portrays.
Typically, I don't do an ounce of work until my deadline is coming up. Then I just diarrhea though my queue, spending less than 10 seconds on a typical application. If you want an analogy, think of it as filing 90% of your work email based on subject alone. I do give more attention to certain applications (the 10% of email you actually read, using the same analogy). These typically fall into one of three categories:

1: Applications that look interesting/entertaining to me.
2: Applications that are a refile of a previously rejected one.
3: Applications that hit the top of my queue when I'm bored of rubber stamping a bunch. Reading the damned things and doing my job actually becomes a break from the monotony of approve approve approve reject approve approve reject.

From what I've seen, this pattern of work is typical. A major compounding factor is the fact that if you reject an application, it's likely to come back and be noticed, but if you approve an application, no one notices. So when you're blitzing through shit you typically want to approve shit unless it's absurd. And if it's ridiculously absurd, you'll want to approve it - we used to hold a competition to see who could approve the most ridiculous patent each deadline. I've stopped doing it since 2 of the people I worked with left, but I know this practice goes on with other groups of reviewers.

Management knows this shit goes on but is powerless to stop it because it means someone would have to actually review the patents, and the managers sure as shit aren't going to even look at them unless it's from a high profile company. All they care about is the numbers. Total number reviewed is king, but they do look at the % approved, too. There are no targets or quotas for % approved, but if you're actually doing your job you'll get shit from your manager because your % approved is going to be significantly lower than average. So you learn to approve shit that's obviously retarded. The "reasoning" behind this is that we're reviewing the validity of the application itself first, the overlap with existing patents second, and novelty/originality last. Anything questionable with regards to novelty/originality is better left to the courts.

The last thing I'll mention is how badly patents are written. Go ahead and look some terrible patents up. Those vague descriptions and those wonky diagrams with little to no coherent explanation are intentional. They're not written that way to be broad, as most people say. If it ever comes to a point of contention, the lawyers will fight that part out anyway. They're written that way in order to be approved quickly. Reviewers do not have to understand a patent application to approve it. If you approve a patent for a triangle and somehow catch shit for it, you can just claim you misunderstood the diagrams. And I can guarantee you, in a patent for a triangle there will be a lot of ridiculous, incomprehensible diagrams.

Every once in a while, one reads a post where the poster has absolutely NO idea what they are talking about -- a post that sits in direct opposition to reality. Then one realizes, the poster is a troll. There is no way that the poster could write so much and get EVERY SINGLE THING wrong.

Don't be mad. One has no choice but to appreciate such posters. Grade A flame.

I salute you, sir.

Re:You Don't Know The Half Of It

[WheezyJoe]

As a reviewer for USPTO, I can tell you...

Just in case anyone is confused from the fact that this was modded "interesting" (as opposed to"funny" or "troll"), it is most assuredly bullshit. The AC is not "a reviewer for USPTO".

Key flaws: there is no such thing is a patent "reviewer" (they are called examiners, and a real patent examiner would never call him or herself otherwise).

AC also wrote about "approve approve approve reject approve". Patent examiners do not "approve" anything... they "allow" applications or pass applications to "allowance". Again, an actual examiner, after all the training they go through, would not make this mistake.

One more, "A major compounding factor is the fact that if you reject an application, it's likely to come back and be noticed, but if you approve an application, no one notices." Bullshit, the opposite is true. An application has to go through multiple reviews before it goes to patent, whereas rejecting an application only needs approval from a supervisor (if the Examiner does not him or herself have signature authority).

Just out to set the record straight for the /. community. If you thought AC's rant was funny/sarcastic (e.g., "Those vague descriptions and those wonky diagrams with little to no coherent explanation are intentional"), then chuckle chuckle; but if you read that stuff and bought it, you've been had by an Anonymous Coward.

Re:You Don't Know The Half Of It

[Anonymous Coward]

Original AC here. No one with a shred of dignity refers to themselves as an "examiner". It would be like referring to yourself as a "marketing specialist" when you're a a telemarketer, or a "customer relations envoy" when you're a Wal Mart greeter.
We absolutely do "approve" and "reject" all day long (on our deadline days). You're trying to call me out for not drinking the kool aid and parroting the mindless babble back at others? Would you call out a post from a Disneyland employee if they didn't call themselves an "imagineer"?
And "after all the training we go through"? There aren't enough Edna Krabapple "HA!" sound clips to express how I feel about that one. As with the other 2 public sector jobs I've held, the principle requirement is a warm body. Training consisted of me showing up and sitting in a chair fighting to stay awake.

You're grasping at straws with regards to how I (and everyone I fucking know) refers to the shit we actually do and how much of a joke it is.

You're just missing my point about reviewing an application. I'm saying that if I approve something and I'm wrong, no one cares or thinks it's out of the ordinary that I did so. That's my review and it's weighed and considered and shit will ultimately get approved (the vast majority of shit that makes it into our queues ends up being approved, though the opposite should be true in my opinion). On the other hand, any valid application I reject has a very good chance of coming back. My manager will instantly see that when it happens, and I will catch shit for it.

You don't have to believe me, but you need stronger arguments if you want to call me out as a liar.

Where do I sign up?

[Anonymous Coward]

Seriously? You're posting this here without telling me how I can get this job?

So what you are saying is the astroturfing to get more people to apply for positions at the USPTO is working?

Lewis Black

[anmre]

"Anyone who works from home is masturbating all day. I know this because I work from home."

~ Lewis Black

Patent Examiner's Union???

[Anonymous Coward]

That explains a lot

Falsifying timecards

[mysidia]

examiners repeatedly lied about the hours they were putting in and many were receiving bonuses for work they did not do

If workers in private industry do that, we call that fraud. Hours of claimed work should be validated and approved by an uninterested third party such as a supervisor.

The supervisor should keep their own private notes and reject the submission of hours, if it is in disagreement with their notes.

Re:Falsifying timecards

[tanderson92]

And how do you propose to do this, given that the article is about teleworkers ?

Re:Falsifying timecards

[mysidia]

Equip teleworkers' laptops with a Webcam, and require them to use AccuTimeCard with Webcam enablement.

Re: Falsifying timecards

[chill]

Exactly. And falsifying hours is one of those thing that can get you fired quickly, union or not.

Re:Falsifying timecards

[mysidia]

Actually AgentGuardian, but you get the idea ---- there are some products that require a real-time clock-in, and actually gather and report some meaningful information about what the remote worker is doing, while they are clocked in.

If they are just sitting around or sleeping --- that will show up. If they are playing solitaire, that will show up too.

Not experts but not laypeople

[Etherwalk]

Patent examiners review applications and grant patents on inventions that are new and unique. They are experts in their fields, often with master's and doctoral degrees.

If thats true then anyone should be able to get a job there, seeing all of the idiotic patents they allow. Thus the funny parts were "masters" and "doctoral degrees"

Examiners are not experts in their field. You could be approving Apple's patents based on the mere fact that you own an iPhone. Examiners do not judge the technical merits of a patent, nor are they expected to.

Patent examiners are not experts in the sense that we think of experts--they are not, for example, in the top 100 people in the world working in a given space, nor do they even have lots of professional experience in the space.

They are also not laypeople. They need to have a technical degree, and the degree they have is generally but not always relevant to the patents the office has them review.

So while they are not experts and not supposed to be experts, they are also not the clerk from your supermarket--unless the clerk happens to have studied engineering.

Re:Not experts but not laypeople

[Dishevel]

I think the clerk from the Supermarket could do a better job though.

Re:Not experts but not laypeople

[LordLimecat]

I cant dispute the whole "large work spurt prior to end of period", but I do know a number of PTO people and they tend to be very sharp and well educated.

I would dispute that the supermarket clerk COULD do a better job-- theres a lot of research that has to go into patent reviews.

Re:Not experts but not laypeople

[Dishevel]

Why? Why is there any work going into it? Their stance is pretty much if we have not specifically approved it before. Approve it and let the courts settle the issue.

Why are we paying decent money for that? A high school kid could do it easily as a first job.

What a load of Republican BS

[Anonymous Coward]

The title is a lie. Everry day is not a "goof-off-at-work" day, and the article doesn't say that. We know the racists in the Republican party hate government employees because the government hires fairly. That claim is proven a lie by the statement in the summary that they work very hard near the end of the quarter. As usual, the Republicans are so stupid they have nothing to stand on so they make-up grabage. Their lies have been exposed again.

Thanks for the job tip!

[damn_registrars]

They are experts in their fields, often with master's and doctoral degrees. They earn at the top of federal pay scale, with the highest taking home $148,000 a year.

I hadn't even considered applying for a patent office job before, but now they are definitely on my radar...

Deadlines. . . whoosh!

[physicsphairy]

They are experts in their fields, often with master's and doctoral degrees

As a product of academia I am professionally trained to get things done on the cusp of deadlines. I'm not joking. Both on the student and instructor side there is simply a great deal of latitude. There's no time management enforced in any form except for "deadlines," so that's when you learn to get things done.

As lovely of a thought as it is that entering the workforce will automatically instill a newfound sense of responsiblity and dedication to all a graduates (and I'm sure it does for at least a few weeks or so), I for one am not surprised that working unsupervised at home at a government job with quarterly deadlines results in people observing the same habits they have for the past 6-10 years.

Admittedly, I wouldn't want to rush a result such that it is inadequately reviewed either, and I don't know if patent clerks have projects which would actually take an entire quarter to investigate, but the first thing I would do is have them sync all of their edits/notes/research in a way to make them reviewable. It's amazing how a little bit of transparency encourages people to make regular progress.

Re:Deadlines. . . whoosh!

[VortexCortex]

As an independent developer who has become homeless after a patent lawsuit even though it was bogus and later thrown out by someone with the money to fight back. FUCK YOU.

A question to resume experts

[timrod]

If I've been goofing off at work for years, but do not work as a patent examiner, can I put down on my resume that I worked as a patent examiner if the work (or lack thereof) is virtually the same?

To All Patent Examiners Reading Slashdot

[Anonymous Coward]

...Get back to work. You're not us.

No surprising

[stevez67]

Human nature being what it is.

Whoa, hold the phone

[EmagGeek]

"They are experts in their fields, often with master's and doctoral degrees. They earn at the top of federal pay scale, with the highest taking home $148,000 a year."

When I was a senior in college, the USPTO was at a career fair trying to snap up as many new grads as possible for patent examiner positions.

New grads are not experts in their fields. Period. No matter what degree they're walking away with.

That said, if I can make $148K working at home for USPTO, where the hell do I sign up?!?

Re:Whoa, hold the phone

[Anonymous Coward]

Few make that. Starting salaries are in the low 40's. It's not quite what the article makes out....

http://careers.uspto.gov/Pages/Misc/SalaryRates.aspx

Re:Whoa, hold the phone

[Jason Levine]

I was going to ask this too, but now I fear I'd have to compete against tons of people whose slacking-off-skills are more advanced than me so I might not even put in the effort to apply.

Hopefully they can be replaced by pattern matching

[Anonymous Coward]

I work at the PTO, and we do have pattern matching programs to help find prior art, they are mostly worthless because interpreting claims to match prior art is an abstract process. If you don't believe me read some patent claims and try to figure out what the 'broadest reasonable interpretation' of those claims would cover, its a nightmare. Applicants are certainly 'allowed to have communication' with us as the examination process involves a lot of back and forth with examiners trying to convince applicants to narrow their claims and applicants asking us to explain our interpretation of their claims and the prior art. As far as bribery goes I have never heard of or experienced any kind of bribery, what we typically experience is more of a brow beating from applicants who disagree with us.

It goes to show...

[Anonymous Coward]

A fat paycheck isn't everything.

Brick-layer mentality does not scale

[Tablizer]

a "significant" number of examiners did not work for long periods, then rushed to get their reviews done at the end of each quarter.

Where does this deadline cycle NOT happen?

Managers and/or auditors could spend more time monitoring employees, but then you have to pay the monitors and hire more managers, and also monitor the monitors to make sure they are monitoring correctly, creating a recursive bloat in inspection time.

Further, the monitors and monitor of monitors would have to be experts to know if employees are really spending quality time. If you just count time staring at the screen, typing, or reading research, you can't know if it's relevant to the task unless you are an expert in that specialty also. Industry-specific auditors are going to be pretty expensive.

Plus, recruiting is harder and/or more expensive if potential specialty employees find out their ass is always under Big Brother's watch.

Brick-laying is relatively easy to monitor. Intellectual tasks, not so much.

Sometimes it's just cheaper to accept some slack than add bureaucracy layers to prevent all slack.

(It's similar to weeding out welfare cheats: Republicans want to heavily monitor welfare recipients, but the cost of monitoring and related lawsuits could be more than the welfare cheating, making taxes even higher, which Republicans can't stand...or at least act like they can't stand.)

Managers should be able to give bonus pay and/or penalties for productivity. However, in practice this often results in favoritism as managers judge based on friendship or kissing up rather than raw merit. Humans are just that way, in general.

In short, no easy fix.

What patent office?

[AndyKron]

The patent system has been twisted into a cruel joke.

Consulting was a downer

[Curmudgeon420]

I consulted for the USPTO several years ago, holding classes on memory and memory interfaces, USB, and Firewire It paid very well, but in the class of 50 examiners there wasn't even one who seemed to care or had any kind of interest in what I was saying. I was invited back but declined.

Yet they are "more productive"&"envy of the wo

[Kartu]

US Patent Office Grants Massively More Patents Than Ever Before (2011)
  https://www.techdirt.com/artic...

The world envies US Patent system (according to USPTO head):
  http://beta.slashdot.org/story...

Cue Hypocrisy

[LordLimecat]

Im just waiting to see how many people hop onto the "Goofing off at work? HOW HORRIBLE" bandwagon during work hours.

Wait, crap.

Re:Cue Hypocrisy

[WheezyJoe]

The Patent Office, in an effort to modernize and attract more talent (you know, accept less salary for your engineering/science degree by working for the government instead of the private sector) implemented a plan to permit people to work from home, and from there to work remotely from the city the Office itself is located at, any city you want (within the 48 contiguous states). This was a natural outgrowth of an earlier (and successful) effort to eliminate paper at the office and work entirely electronically.

The actual source material for the Post article appears to show growing pains that one can reasonably expect from permitting thousands of employees to do their work from home, hundreds or even thousands of miles from the Office (if they qualify). Whereas the Post article seems written intentionally to inflame the reader (for what... maybe to sell more advertising? build cred for the writer?), the source material shows no wide-spread fraud, just your typical employees finding that, with the freedom to work at home, it's real easy to put your work off until deadline and then cram, or not put in the hours you would if you had a supervisor looking into your cubicle each morning. Same shit the private sector has been dealing with for years.

From what I can tell from the source, the management of the PTO is on it, and has been on it at least since the report came out in 2012. The only difference is that, because this is government, it's public and everyone can arm-chair quarterback their asses (probably as they themselves goof off at their terminals at work or from inside their momma's basement), whereas if a private company were going through this, it would be an internal matter and none of your damned business.

The Patent Office performs a function that is crucial; not even the Koch brothers would deny that. Shitting on the whole lot of them because a couple of employees can't handle the freedom of telework is unfair and dishonest, particularly coming from people taking suspiciously long lunch hours to write comments on slashdot :-|

Re:Hopefully they can be replaced by pattern match

[geekoid]

A pattern matching job for how they are currently doing their work? this would be trivial.
One for how they are Supposed to be doing their work? that would be hard

Anyways, this is just telework people.

Cheap Salaries yields cheap talent

[Prien715]

They earn at the top of federal pay scale, with the highest taking home $148,000 a year.

That's not even the salary of a manager at Google (and don't even talk about benefits -- free food is amazing) -- and this is the highest of salaries. For a lawyer (law school is will run you over $100K by itself). Can you imagine why they may not have the best and brightest? With the new patent office opening in San Jose, why would anyone actually want to work for the USPO who has any amount of talent?

Re:Cheap Salaries yields cheap talent

[Hodr]

Just wanted to mention that the article lists $148k as the highest level. Given that the highest paid employees at the USPTO are federal lawyers and judges that seems pretty low.

Re:Cheap Salaries yields cheap talent

[Anonymous Coward]

Did you miss the part where you only work some of your hours and all of the are at home? 15-30 hours a week at home with the patent office vs 40-65 hours a week at Google. $100K is a massive amount when you can live anywhere with a net connection.

Re:Cheap Salaries yields cheap talent

[Anonymous Coward]

$148K / year would correspond to a lower level administrator @ state of California.... I wish the state would realize how grossly they are overpaying their bean counters & "paperwork processors". At least the feds have kept the salaries at reasonable level. Google can pay their folks whatever they want but these people are funded by tax payers.

Re:Hopefully they can be replaced by pattern match

[Anonymous Coward]

The applicants "brow beat" patent examiners because of the numerous patent examiners who use completely inapplicable art to reject applications because the examiners don't take (or can't take) the time to provide sensible rejections.

Good job USA

[Anonymous Coward]

You american's are so often asking why the america hate is so popular these days.

Here's an example of a department run for morons by morons serving morons, with international reach and ability to stifle innovation world wide

Douglas Adams says your math is wrong.

[Anonymous Coward]

your math is off. way off. try 73 patents per examiner per year. 73 * 3 = 219 days working.

365 - (52*2) = 261 weekdays in a year (roughly). 261 - 219 = 42 days left for federal holidays, vacation, and sick days.

And that is the answer to life, the universe, and everything. 42 days of holidays, vacation and sicks days.

*jaw-drop*

[jargonburn]

We're seriously paying? For this?
I think I might be sick. I know the government is.

"experts in their field"

[Anonymous Coward]

OMFG, who knew?

Re:Hopefully they can be replaced by pattern match

[Anonymous Coward]

> what we typically experience is more of a brow beating from applicants who disagree with us.

My understanding is that when a patent is rejected, the applicant can just resubmit, over and over until eventually the examiner cries uncle or they get a different examiner who decides to accept it.

It seems to me that, if that's true, then the job must be very demoralizing and as such I'm not surprised by this story. I would put the blame for this absenteeism on congress for not giving the patent office enough power to do their job effectively.

Ironically, I'd say this is a shining example of how small-government types are completely clueless as to how government works. If you indiscriminately "starve the beast" you just get even shittier results. You can't legislate good governance, but you can pass laws that encourage bad governance.

Patent Meaningless

[Anonymous Coward]

And when they do a really good job, the courts stomp on it.
A good lawyer beats out a good patent every day.
They see this, and it hurts morale.

Shenanigans

[Theaetetus]

As a reviewer for USPTO, I can tell you... I just diarrhea though my queue, spending less than 10 seconds on a typical application... 2: Applications that are a refile of a previously rejected one.

No Examiner calls themselves a "reviewer"; it takes more than 10 seconds even to approve an application; and no Examiner would refer to continuations or RCEs as "refiles".

Suspicious post from anonymous poster that just happens to confirm every anti-patent bias is suspicious.

Re:Shenanigans

[Anubis IV]

Thank you for calling them out on it. Reading it, it sounded suspicious to me, but I had no context on which to judge it effectively. Wish I had some mod points for you.

Re:Shenanigans

[Patent Lover]

No examiner would use the word "queue" either.

Re:Shenanigans

[Theaetetus]

I should've also noted his use of "originality", a copyright term that has no meaning with patents. And "manager" instead of primary or SPE.

Hardly surprising

[StripedCow]

The patent office gets paid more for every patent they approve (even wrongly approved ones), than for every patent they reject.
Hence the culture.

Yes, we are paying these fishermen for the fish they *didn't* catch.

Private sector has BS also

[Tablizer]

I've seen big private organizations with a lot of slack also. Big, complex organizations are just difficult to manage, period. Look at all of Microsoft's and Sony's screw-ups, for example.

The one key difference though is that in the private sector one must meet sales expectations. If your teem doesn't produce sales, it's dismantled and people often fired. It's not always fair, but it is a constant pressure that puts a limit on goofing off.

The patent office doesn't really have the equivalent. Number of patents processed is not a very effective metric because one can slack on quality in exchange for quantity, and quality is difficult to measure because it requires a lot of specialists, who are hard to find and expensive. (Layers of auditors are not cheap, tax-wise.)

However, I do notice that the private sector "wastes" a lot of resources on manipulative marketing rather than making a better mousetrap: they've found it's often cheaper to trick the customer into buying an inferior mousetrap rather than just making a good trap. (The exception may be cars, which have a lot of consumer attention from both the public and consumer organizations.)

Thus, both public and private have plenty of BS and waste, it's just a different form of BS. The public sector generally does work harder, but often harder at manipulating buyers.

Re:Private sector has BS also

[nine-times]

The one key difference though is that in the private sector one must meet sales expectations.

Well no, not exactly. In the private sector, "sales expectations" can be used as a metric for salespeople or the business as a whole, but it's not a metric used for most jobs. Even so, whole businesses can fail to meet "sales expectations". They just have to be profitable enough to stay in business, or failing that, secure some other method of funding to keep them running.

But can an individual hold a job at a private-sector job while being grossly incompetent and lazy? Yes. It's entirely possible, and it happens.

Where do I sign up?

[Anonymous Coward]

Seriously? You're posting this here without telling me how I can get this job? From the sounds of it, I could do it in the background while at my real job.

I'm thinking the same thing.
I have 3 Masters degrees, that has to make me 3 times as qualified as most of these "experts"
I would gladly take the pay cut for job that I could work at 2 days a week,

Re:Hopefully they can be replaced by pattern match

[Tablizer]

...be replaced by pattern matching AI...

Can't, I just patented Artificial Sloth.

The Sky is Falling!

[userw014]

If you've been following this issue, it isn't really about goof-off Federal employees protected by a union (sorry wing-nuts...)

A major part of it was that the US Patent and Trademark office expanded (probably to deal with earlier criticism about slow response or poor quality). But then the Federal judges - who were outside of the USPTO - weren't expanded (due to a hiring freeze from the Party of No, so work piled up while waiting for a judge.

It's easy to understand that the USPTO management might have been reluctant to lay people off in what may have seemed a temporary and artificial situation. It might even have been difficult to lay people off with year-long contracts (but I don't know how that works for the Feds.)

That still leaves plenty of criticism of the USPTO management. If it was inconvenient (rather than difficult) to lay people off, they should have started the process. They CERTAINLY should have kept better track of people's time - and even required certain minimal requirements (like availability, checkins, etc.)

It was management that got lazy or wanted to preserve their kingdom of employees. And the spark for this forest-fire of recriminations was The Party of No screwing up the country with the sequestration and other brain dead forms misguided budgeting.

Re:The Sky is Falling!

[Anonymous Coward]

Nice attempt to head off critics of unions. Yes, examiners belong to a union. And yes, they get all the usual "protection" unions bring to people who goof off.

Re:The Sky is Falling!

[Anonymous Coward]

Nice attempt to head off anti-union comments. But yes, the USPTO employees have their own union. And yes, it protects goof-offs and these working (or non-working) conditions.

The solution is easy!

[superdave80]

I'll bet more taxes to pay for more workers, higher salaries and benefits would fix this problem in a jiffy! Every time I see anybody talk about needing higher taxes to run government properly, I just think about the ten thousand examples just like this, and I just laugh to myself.

And you thought this was...

[Anonymous Coward]

...the one government department where this sort of thing wasn't happening? Oh please. When it is hard to fire someone, hard to hold anyone accountable, and $/hour worked is good, just expect this. Which means you should expect this throughout government. Do we really not know human nature after all this time?

So, what are they doing instead of working?

[Anonymous Coward]

A guy that works for the Port of San Diego told me all he does is look at porn all day on the civil service computers. Typical gov't slackers.

Meanwhile in China...

[Herve5]

I work in Europe and we happen to apply patents, the most important of which are extended in the US, China and various countries according to our competition.
Earlier this year, I had an issue with extending one of my patents to China.
I got a formal letter in perfect english (not in Chinese mind you), raising an issue within the submitted text that indeed rendered it not really patentable.
With the approbation of our IP expert I proposed a redacted text, recognizing the issue and suggesting our new redaction would solve it.
Just two weeks after I got a second, more elaborate reply, still in an english better than mine, that commented my text more in detail and still pointed up a non-patentable point. We prepared a second comment. (at that point, in China like in most other places, if the patent is still rejected there is no more appeal)
One week later, our patent was accepted in China —with a wording much better than in any of the other countries we applied for, including the original language.

I don't wish to conclude on the Chinese potential, on Communist government handling of things vs ours, or whatever.

But some comparisons are telling...

Re:Hopefully they can be replaced by pattern match

[thesupraman]

This.

Unless of course you are Apple, IBM, Microsoft, or one of the other 'special' applicants who have their own rubber stamp (sorry I mean priority clearing house) for their patents.

Eventually we gave up applying for US patents because, especially as a foreign company, the prior art that gets presented is just an insult.

Really, we had them tag teaming two sets of prior art back forward, NEVER ONCE replying to our queries as to why it was applicable, just switching to the
other, and waiting until the end of their allowable response time to do this each time, until the window for acceptance just ran out.
Maximised their fees though, they were sure to do that..

My experience with a denied application

[Anonymous Coward]

We had an application denied last year because the examiner had found "prior art" that he said invalidated our invention. All he had done, however, was to paste the same block of text lifted directly from the "prior art" patent over and over for each of our claims, without explaining why or how the cited patent actually did the same thing.

It's not just Congress stealing you blind

[reboot246]

It's the thousands of over-paid, under-worked bureaucrats who are damned near impossible to fire when they're caught being lazy or violating the law.

I've said it before and I'll say it again. If you're paid out of the taxes I pay and you're caught not doing your job (or committing a crime), you should not only be fired, you should lose your precious pension.

Don't play fast and lose with the public's trust.

Re:Hopefully they can be replaced by pattern match

[spacepimp]

Can it be clustered? Think of the possibilities!

Re:Hopefully they can be replaced by pattern match

[Anonymous Coward]

Get off Slashdot and back to work! ;-)

Re:Hopefully they can be replaced by pattern match

[Tablizer]

It's called "Artificial Sloth Scaled". Makes a catchy acronym.

Government is too small.

[Anonymous Coward]

I think government should be bigger.

View of former US PTO employee

[Anonymous Coward]

Sorry, gotta go anon with this. The Washington Post front-pager on this correctly identifies a major problem with how things work at PTO... part of this case is management getting whistle-blower complaints about some employees, and when info is sought on computer records and such, they got major pushback. The pushback I suspected (and was confirmed by the article) is the all-powerful patent examiner union. The examiner and grunt-worker unions hold a LOT of sway at the PTO.

The PTO as a matter of survival as an intelligent entity NEEDS telework to survive. You can't cram every technical expert you need into the DC area. It is crowded, expensive, and a major negative lifestyle factor getting to and from work every day. They need to allow for alternative working arrangements, including telework and its many satellite offices, to encourage technical experts to work for them. That's what everyone wants... it doesn't do anyone any good to deny paid contributions to the best people nationwide and cast the employment net only as far as someone who wants to take good money to move to the DC area. We want and need GOOD technical subject matter experts wherever they live.

I have known a lot of dedicated people working at PTO, and I'm guessing this issue is not as widespread as is being expressed. The unions need to give management better tools/latitude/"permission"/whatever to monitor work in a better way so they can fire/replace bad apples with better ones WITHOUT endless union lawsuits.

You're reading this on Slashdot

[billstewart]

So, really, you're in no position to criticize...

Sounds like a job for IBM Watson.

[Anonymous Coward]

I am sure that the Watson system could do half the work in a fraction of the time and act as an assistant to the actual examiners. Then perhaps when the job is more about high-level judgement and not so much about cross checking and searching they will be more enthusiastic, and quality levels will rise too.

You are a fool.

[Anonymous Coward]

I have news for you... the citizenry doesn't have a grasp of the complexity of its own government. Who is going to pick "ocean current research" for their hard-earned tax dollars to go to? And when that only gets 42% of the funding it needs, it is dropped and we no longer have tsunami warning systems? Who is going to choose to send every one of five dollars they earn to the FBI or other law enforcement when they could send it to NASA for space ships? What about areas where there are no local income taxes, but instead a county is funded in large part by real estate taxes? Only the 50% who are landowners get to pick where the governments spends for the 100%? Or are you saying NO ONE gets any say on how its government spends money in those cases?

What you are proposing would end up a complete disaster. It would only work if we deported everyone with an IQ lower than 120, and then no one would be around to do a lot of the grunt work of government. We are supposed to vote for people who can represent us as intelligent people who can dedicate time to figuring out how to fund these complex (and sometimes conflicting) needs, as well as represent the biases in that spending we personally believe in. Democratisation of tax spending would be the quickest path the civil unrest and eventually civil war.

No - You are a fool.

[Anonymous Coward]

"Big Government" needs to be one hell of a lot smaller & that's that - everyone knows that (except a fool like you)...

APK

P.S.=> Sounds like YOU work for "big government" & are SCARED of the idea I proposed, so, you can "shoo - go away flea" now, ok? Good... apk

make sense

[Anonymous Coward]

With a family member working at the USPTO, they work insane # of hours. As much as a lawyer... WHY?

They are authorized overtime and have a quota on the cases to eval. Also having the highest GS scale of all gov't agencies is a receipe for abuse in charging overtime and extra hours.

This has been going on for decades.

In someways I'm glad this was exposed, I would like my family member to have a weekend finally. Sure not getting the xtra cash, but really, not being a workaholic for the gov't is not really valued.

Deadlines. . . whoosh!

[Anonymous Coward]

deadlines in academia?

Pure living in a bubble.

Academia deadlines have zero, zero repercussions. It's like entertainment--if it wasn't there, no one would care. The deadlines are fabricated to force folks to get off their lazy tenure and actually show for something.

And that's why more researchers, professors and easy students... wait until the last minute of a deadline and cram to complete their tasks. Where as in the commercial/professional environment is typically not the case. Then again, companies like Google have brought the cram/death march/crisis mentality to the business world from creating a collegiate corporate culture.

When I was at the USPTO.....

[hashish16]

As an examiner it was the managers who were screwing over the examiners. The would wait till the last minute to review applications and then force examiners to scramble at the end of the quarter to catch up on work that managers weren't approving. Hell, after I left my manager took credit for my work that he wouldn't approve. That honest work would have netted me 2 promotions and a nice bonus. Using software to monitor examiner work is pure bullshit.

Please help us spread the word

[Anonymous Coward]

We just started this petition because we believe the government should be using available technology to monitor this. The solutions exist. Please take a minute to sign if you are able. - http://chn.ge/1t43OxW