Slashdot Mirror
US Patent Office Seeking Consultant That Can Stamp Out Fraud By Patent Examiners
McGruber writes: A month after Slashdot discussed "Every Day Is Goof-Off-At-Work Day At the US Patent and Trademark Office," the USPTO issued a statement that it is "committed to taking any measures necessary" to stop employees who review patents from lying about their hours and getting overtime pay and bonuses for work they didn't do.
USPTO officials also told congressional investigators that they are seeking an outside consulting firm to advise them on how managers can improve their monitoring of more than 8,000 patent examiners. The Patent Examiners union responded to the original Washington Post report with a statement that includes this line: "If 'thousands' of USPTO employees were not doing their work, it would be impossible for this agency to be producing the best performance in recent memory and, perhaps, in its entire 224 year history."
In related news, USPTO Commissioner Deborah Cohn has announced plans to resign just months after a watchdog agency revealed that she had pressured staffers to hire the live-in boyfriend of an immediate family member over other, better-qualified applicants. When he finished 75th out of 76 applicants in the final round of screening, Cohn "intervened and created an additional position specifically for the applicant," wrote Inspector General Todd Zinser in a statement on the matter.
USPTO officials also told congressional investigators that they are seeking an outside consulting firm to advise them on how managers can improve their monitoring of more than 8,000 patent examiners. The Patent Examiners union responded to the original Washington Post report with a statement that includes this line: "If 'thousands' of USPTO employees were not doing their work, it would be impossible for this agency to be producing the best performance in recent memory and, perhaps, in its entire 224 year history."
In related news, USPTO Commissioner Deborah Cohn has announced plans to resign just months after a watchdog agency revealed that she had pressured staffers to hire the live-in boyfriend of an immediate family member over other, better-qualified applicants. When he finished 75th out of 76 applicants in the final round of screening, Cohn "intervened and created an additional position specifically for the applicant," wrote Inspector General Todd Zinser in a statement on the matter.
according to her bio. Most likely, her entire professional career after law school.
It seems that one only see tenures like that nowadays in government, or in a family owned business. At least in the case of a business we have the pressures of the market which can topple a business that falls too far behind. A government agency can continue for decades with the same inefficient practices without any kind of market correction, with the same cronyism, the same cushy pensions (instead of 401Ks) and sick days and vacation day rollovers. It's like a sports team that didn't keep track of wins or losses, so at the end of each year the coach would say "we're working damn hard, and getting good results." How would anybody know?
Management 101: If you don't trust your employees - you are screwed. You need committed and motivated employees, and you must take actions to keep the employees committed and motivated.
CEO 101: Employee problems are management problems.
Financial Investor 101: A bad CEO can wreck the company.
The USPTO has experienced all three problems, and financial investors in lots of different tech companies have paid dearly.
I have had an examiner on a recent patent application who was not knowledgable in the required physical-geometric structures.
She insisted that a straight object was actually a helix! My patent attorney and I explained the difference, but she and her boss ignored the plain geometric truth and refused to budge and threw out my claims.
I'ld rather have a high level of competence and accept some level of goofing off. You do need a break once in awhile to stay sane.
Again this would lead to corruption with patent pre-screening and favoured people getting patentable stuff and unfavoured people getting junk and working for free.
I'll bet core of this problem is yet again right wing performance based measures ie number of patents reviewed and approved. Everyone time right wing idiots do performance based measures it fucks things up. Performance based law enforcement, people get arrested for nothing, law enforcement is in a rush, slow them down and get tasered or shot, so minimum number of arrests per day leads directly to maximum number of million dollar lawsuits great bloody saving, huh. Performance based schooling means, directly leads to stacking classes for select charters schools and teachers with better performing students and sticking the poor performing students in poor schools with cheap teachers, yep, that is going to produce results.
Stop filling government departments with political appointees, especially management positions, that is the single greatest cause of failure and of course directly leads to even idiots can monitor performance based guidelines, yep, manage them right into the ground.
Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen