By Donald Zuhn —
The following is part of a continuing series on how to address the
very real problems facing the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office.
A day after the day of rejoicing for inventors, patent practitioners,
examiners, and seemingly all of civilization, fair-minded people will
concede that the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office faces a daunting
task. After years of neglect – from Congress raiding the users’ fees,
an inadequate number of examiners, technology-driven increases in the
number of applications filed, and a "count" system that has not
rewarded a style of examination that encourages prosecution to a
definitive end point – the Office is facing a massive backlog of
applications without sufficient resources to process them in a timely
manner.
If the patent bar is gladdened by District Court Judge Cacheris’
decision enjoining implementation of the new rules – representing an
attempt, albeit a misguided one, on the part of the Office to address
the pendency and backlog problems – it behooves us to propose
alternatives. Patent Docs
will be posting a series of such proposals, and we invite our readers
to provide their own ideas. As they used to say in the days of the
counterculture, "if you are not part of the solution, you are part of
the problem." Patent Office management clearly thinks the patent bar
is part of the problem; it would be satisfying to prove them wrong.
Regional Patent Offices
Yesterday, we reported on U.S. Patent and Trademark Office Deputy Director Margaret Peterlin’s appearance before a Senate Subcommittee hearing on teleworking. The Deputy Director spoke about the USPTO’s Patent Hoteling program, a telecommuting program in which "hoteling" examiners spend most of their workweek at home and share offices called "hotels" when on the USPTO campus, and the Virtual Art Unit pilot program, in which the production of 13 hoteling patent examiners was found to compare favorably with that of 37 non-participating examiners on the Office’s Alexandria campus.
More interesting, however, was Deputy Director Peterlin’s statement that teleworking USPTO employees reside in Pennsylvania, New York, Illinois, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, Colorado, Texas, West Virginia, and Delaware. Since telecommuting USPTO employees are already spending the majority of their workweek in states as far west of the Alexandria campus as Illinois, Texas, and Colorado, one wonders why the Patent Office has been reluctant to take the next step and establish a number of regional patent offices.
By establishing regional patent offices, the USPTO could expand its pool of qualified examiner candidates to include individuals not living in or willing to relocate to the Washington, D.C. area. And by expanding the pool of qualified examiner candidates, the USPTO could more readily accomplish its stated goal to ensure examination quality by "hiring the people who make the best patent and trademark examiners" (see "The 21st Century Strategic Plan").
While the Patent Office’s 21st Century Strategic Plan contemplates further expansion of its teleworking programs, it does not address the establishment of regional offices. However, because teleworking employees residing outside of Virginia are still required to report to the Alexandria campus at least once a week "to maintain the official duty station at USPTO headquarters," regional offices might also provide teleworking employees with a more proximate duty station (Patent Docs readers having more knowledge about this aspect of USPTO operations are invited to submit comments explaining why the Office must "maintain the official duty station at USPTO headquarters").
Deputy Director Peterlin, however, did provide clues about one alternative to regional offices during her testimony before the Senate. In particular, the Deputy Director noted that the Patent Office has sought Congressional approval for a pilot program to allow teleworking employees to maintain their homes as official duty stations. Thus, instead of establishing a handful of regional patent offices, the USPTO could effectively establish thousands of patent "offices" in which solo examiners go about the business of examining applications. Either alternative would enable the Patent Office to attack the growing application backlog with the only weapon we know will work: an expanded corps of qualified examiners.
For additional articles in the "Post-GSK" series, please see:
- "Tailoring Protection and Examination," November 6, 2007
- "Annuities," November 1, 2007
Patent Docs 
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