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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.
Patent US 9063520 A: The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office
A method and system for under-performing approval of patents.
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.
"Don't meddle in the affairs of a patent dragon, for thou art tasty and good with ketchup." ~ohcrapitssteve
... that one of them will find the successor of General Relativity in his goof-off time :-)
Congress will goof off for 3 months, then rush to pretend like they were investigating it.
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.
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.
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
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.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
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.
When things get complex, multiply by the complex conjugate.
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
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.
"I opened my eyes, and everything went dark again"
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.
Why is it so hard to only have politicians for a few years, then have them go away?
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.
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.
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.
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?
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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.