Thursday, February 28, 2008

Hiring Practices Not Reducing Patent Application Backlog

The GAO (General Accounting Office) released a report on February 27, 2008 entitled: U.S. Patent and Trademark Office: Hiring Efforts Are Not Sufficient to Reduce the Patent Application Backlog . The report indicates that attrition is offsetting hiring efforts with one patent examiner leaving the USPTO for approximately every two hired during the period 2002-2006. The newly hired examiners leave at the highest rate. Seventy percent of those who left had been at the agency for less than five years.

One of the chief reasons for leaving appears to be production goals formulated over 30 years ago that do not reflect the complexity of today's applications. Seventy percent of patent examiners worked unpaid overtime last year to meet their production goals. On the other hand, the USPTO's retention policies introduced between 2002 and 2006 are cited by those who chose to stay. The examiners who remained on the job liked the USPTO's salary and pay incentives and the flexible work schedule.

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