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

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

[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.

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?

[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?

[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?

[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?

[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?

[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?

[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?

[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?

[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?

[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?

[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?

[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?

[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.

There's hope...

[gnasher719]

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

[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

[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

[nine-times]

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

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]

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.

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.

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'.

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...

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: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.

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.

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: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

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?

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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: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: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.

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: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

[rogoshen1]

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

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: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..

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

[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

[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

[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.