Slashdot Mirror
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
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?
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
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.
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?
Visit the Arcade Restoration Workshop @ http://www.arcaderestoration.com