by Dennis Crouch
The Department of Commerce Inspector General has released an important investigative report concluding that a substantial number of patent examiners are involved in “time and attendance abuse” — working unsubstantiated hours. The unsubstantiated hours peak just [before] after production quota. In a PR response directed both internally and externally, the USPTO emphasized that the report showed only “approximately 2% of the total hours claimed by the patent examiners” were not explained by the computer-records used by the IG and that “there may be many reasons for the lack of a digital footprint” for that amount of time. The PTO also reports that their new mechanisms for time recording have reduced the opportunity for mistakes.
- IG Report [OIG Examiner Hours Report]
- PTO Media Statement [Link]
This new investigative report is a follow-up to prior IG investigations regarding telework abuses. [IG Reports][Patently-O].
With 10,000 examiners, the 2% over-charge rapidly adds-up to $10 millions+ per year. While most examiners had at least some unsupported time, the vast majority of the potential abuses were concentrated to a much smaller group of examiners. About half of the unsupported hours were claimed by a limited group of ~5% of examiners.
In the background of all of this is that examiners must meet production goals as well as hours goals that are both standardized. Examiners that are outside of the norm (either more or less efficient) will face an increased incentive to fudge the system.
An important question that is not addressed directly by either the Inspector General report or the USPTO statement is whether the examiners identified as potential egregious violators will be further investigated and sanctioned where appropriate. Footnote 2 of the OIG report answers the question from its position:
The OIG has not conducted a criminal investigation (or referred this matter to the U.S. Department of Justice for further investigation) and is not recommending that USPTO pursue administrative action against any of the individual examiners analyzed in this review, due to possible implications of the Computer Matching and Privacy Protection Act of 1988 (CMPPA), Pub. L. No. 100-503, 102 Stat. 2507. In general, the CMPPA imposes certain restrictions on federal agencies’ comparison of multiple datasets to identify misconduct and pursue either criminal or administrative action. Out of an abundance of caution, the OIG designed this analysis to avoid implicating the CMPPA.
I expect that the IG is using this approach as an excuse to attack the PTO without directly attacking any particular examiners. For the IG, the point here is that the PTO needs to improve its systems and structures.
More to come on this.
Lol at complaining about a factory-based time system not fitting a thinking man’s job.
There’s only one paragraph that you need to read in the entire report, as it perfectly explains the entire issue:
For example, an examiner who works 80 hours performing patent examinations and is expected to complete a patent application every 20 hours, must complete four reviews to meet the production goal. If an efficient examiner needs only 65 hours to complete the reviews for which 80 hours have been allotted, that examiner can theoretically do nothing for the excess 15 hours and still achieve a “Fully Successful” rating. Alternatively, that employee could complete five applications in 82 hours and claim 100 hours of work, 18 hours more than the employee worked, in order to receive 20 hours in overtime pay and potentially an above-average rating. The large amounts of unsupported regular and overtime hours claimed by above-average and high performers are an indication that abuse, similar to the hypothetical, is taking place within the examiner ranks.
There’s no doubt that is where almost all of the “unaccounted for” time lies, because examiners that can’t make production will be punished or fired, so we’re talking about people who can super-produce.
The report views “unsupported hours” as a bug, when it fact it is a feature. The only question is “How do you recognize labor efficiencies by inducing someone who is capable of the fifth review to engage in the fifth review?” If you can’t induce the 5th review out of the examiner, you have to hire another examiner (and spend more on training, benefits, office space, and equipment) to make up for all of the uninduced dead weight. The only manner you can do induce is to provide an incentive system that awards a reasonable amount of additional money for engaging in the 5th review.
If that system was the production bonus system you would have better timekeeping. But the bonus system is ridiculous – 10% more work for 5% more pay, and then an additional 1% more pay for each 5% more work. In the hypothetical example, if the examiner is finishing his work 20% faster than other examiners, he could take a 7% bonus at the end of the year, or he could claim 1-for-1 overtime and make 20% more money on each paycheck.
Nobody will do 20% more work for 7% more *delayed* pay, especially not when the employer has consented to setting the value of the labor at 20% more pay immediately. Nor is there any reason to “punish” the fifth review as opposed to the fourth – there is a backlog that needs to be gotten rid of, the stack of applications that need review is effectively (for the time being) infinite. The timekeeping “problems” are just examiners choosing to turn their exams in early rather than pretending that they found the test as hard as other students.
If you made the bonus system equal to the overtime system and paid out quarterly, it would only be moderately worse than overtime (which pays out immediately) and some examiners might switch. In fact, if you paid out bonuses biweekly, this report would simply not exist. Until then, the best examiners are just going to claim their extra work as overtime and do a poor job documenting overtime hours because nobody will punish them because nobody is interested in disincentivizing their extra work.
And to the point of some other people here – When your job is to know the state of the art of a field and the field is a field in general use, you’re almost never not working. If I run out to the mall and I notice a new feature on some store’s display monitor, that mall trip became work. The office acknowledges that not all NPL searches are done by computer, nor is all NPL truly L (i.e. in written format), so it would be virtually impossible to prove someone isn’t working, which is why even the extended lengths the report goes to are insufficient. Thinking and knowing things are parts of the job, and to suggest one is not thinking because one is not typing would render most lawyers with secretaries not even part time employees.
“The large amounts of unsupported regular and overtime hours claimed by above-average and high performers are an indication that abuse, similar to the hypothetical, is taking place within the examiner ranks.”
Yeah and I’m sure it used to happen a lot more than it does today when everyone knows that their time is being scrutinized.
“The report views “unsupported hours” as a bug, when it fact it is a feature. ”
You’re probably right about that, but they don’t see it that way. Because they think it’s a magical thing that the hours magically line up perfectly (regardless of how many RCE’s miraculously come in during a single bi-week).
“Until then, the best examiners are just going to claim their extra work as overtime and do a poor job documenting overtime hours because nobody will punish them because nobody is interested in disincentivizing their extra work.”
Well, you mean fastest. But yes, the incentivization thing is what is driving all of the hours that you’re talking about. I doubt they’re all of the hours talked about, but probably most of them.
Fraud by any other name remains fraud.
Anytime you hear anyone talk about fraud that doesn’t have a gigantic amount of super good evidence proving every element in their hands you already know they’re a ta rd anon. If you don’t know this by now and you’re still intereested in pretending to be a lawlt ard then you may as well incorporate it into your knowledge set right now so that you can pass better.
Spoiler alert, you don’t have such evidence and you’re a ta rd.
I agree with some of that.
Except 6 – I am not the prosecutor here, and don’t need all that evidence to put plainly what is going on – no matter how much you might not like the facts.
Stealing time and saying it took you time when it did not is plainly fraud.
Try to deal with it.
” and don’t need all that evidence to put plainly what is going on”
^Thinking that is what makes you a ta rd.
Except not, 6 – maybe you want to wake up and smell the coffee.
Not a chance here that your views are correct.
Absolute zero chance.
Have a nice day.
Random – you were the one that emphasized that the system is separate for time and for throughput – now (AGAIN) you want to conflate the two.
What is up with that?
I’m not trying to conflate anything. The legal system didn’t just happen upon the billable hours concept while it was out at a bar one night and took it home – the billable hours system is used because it is the best manner of approximating thought-work. The office should be run on a billable hours system if for no other reason than it matches what the public we work with is doing – it’s the standard manner of compensating legal work.
The PTO heads know this, which is why the count system is essentially a billable hours system. But they lack the statutory authority to pay examiners billable hours, they have to pay them hourly wages. So they simply layer the count system on top of the hourly system and then look the other way when it comes to investigating hourlys.
It’s not me trying to conflate them, its the PTO management, and they’re right to, because that is the system that ought to be used and they’re not allowed to purely use just that. You simply can’t take a non-menial process like “thinking” and subject it to a hourly criteria. People will just “think” slower.
As for your comments elsewhere about fraud – there is absolutely zero fraud going on. The time sheet is not asking you how much of your time can be supported by a digital footprint. The time sheet asks how long you were examining. You would expect lawyers who could go out to dinner and bill a client for talking about their case to understand that an examiner need not even be in the building to be examining his docket. I’ve sat at starbucks for two hours and claimed them because I was talking about 101 there. That was entirely proper.
You are such a wanna be that it is not even funny.
You are off on every one of your “premises” here.
Every one.
You are conflating what you think that you want with what you have.
What statutory authority is there that you think that you need to restructure to a billable hour structure (even as the legal industry more and more struggles with that structure)….?
And you think that you can bill for sitting at a Starbucks and “talking about” 101 for two hours…? Where is “talking about” 101 in your job description? What part of examining AN application doe such gen eral “talking about” fall under?
You are definitely part of the problem Random. Stop stealing innovator funds.
There are some interesting misleading points about the report. First, most of the posts here seem to be assuming 80 hours. However, the time codes that were listed omits many time codes that examiners would typically claim including leave, training, interviews, etc. The selected time codes were selected because they were identified as requiring computer activity.
Some areas of the USPTO have around a 70% examination percentage, meaning that in any biweek, an examiner may have only spent 56 hours examining, with remaining time being used for training, art unit meetings, leave, interviews, etc. Over a week, this would actually amount to a little more than 67 minutes, or around 13 minutes a day average. Of course, the “misreported hours” are focused on a smaller number of examiners, but the point is we are dealing with a smaller percentage of hours in the report. Further, since leave and training were taken out, where it is difficult to under report these times, the hours removed from evaluation would not actually add as many unsubstantiated hours.
With the vast majority of the time of the report actually being the examination time, it is also interesting to note that examination does not actually require computer use for all of the time. Many examiners will actually print out claims, specifications, and references to read and markup, where these activities, based on the methodology presented in the report, would conceivably add to the unsubstantiated time, where a large percentage of examination would involve actually reading these documents to understand the invention and the references to be applied.
I would guess that an examiner that is doing a thorough job probably spends less than half of the examination time doing the actual search and typing the rejection, with the remaining time being spent actually reviewing the specification, claims, and references to be applied. This would actually explain part of the correlation between highly evaluated examiners and discrepancies in time. As an example, if an examiner were to print a case for the next day at 4pm, with the workday ending at 5pm, and he/she does not use the computer prior to leaving so that his/her computer locks he/she actually leaving, the hour would be presented in this report as being violation. Using the average 70% examination time, the examiner would claim around 5.5 hours of examination time in the day, where the method of the report would confirm only 4.5 hours of examination, giving that examiner around 18% of unexplained hours. Note that in the above example, nothing would violate any policies, as the examiner would have 24 hours to respond to any e-mail or voice message, thus providing no actual requirement that the computer be accessed prior to leaving.
I am not saying that there are no abuses. However, reports like this make me think that the OIG is more guilty of government waste than the USPTO, where time was wasted both performing flawed studies without understanding the workings of the agency being investigated and providing such an attractive looking 48 page report to present the flawed research.
That is the most thoughtful “defense” I have seen in the “examiners running amuck” trying to defend what on the surface is simply not defensible.
Thanks for the substantive points.
And what about voluntary worked hours? Did the OIG factor these hours in? Me thinks not. So, if an Examiner struggling to make production works voluntary time (ON THE COMPUTER, i.e., electronic footprint) on a Saturday or past their regular working hours during a weekday, these hours were not counted toward the positive-side of the ledger? Huh? These voluntary hours could far, far exceed the alleged “unsubstantiated” hours, when totaled. Moreover, printing out patent applications for perusing is done by a substantial amount of the examining corps, from my understanding (i.e. less eye-strain, easy to mark-up and reference cited pages, etc.), and such hard-copies are readily available should the systems go on the blink. BUT…No computer-time, according to the OIG equates with waste, fraud and abuse it would seem. But hey, the OIG has a job to do, and it would certainly not be in their best interest to report…”after extensive analysis, and vast sums of investigatory money spent, we can report that there is substantially nothing to report. Thank you very much. Good day, sir.” To which Congress might reply “Really? We charge you with manufacturing, er, uncovering waste, fraud and abuse, and you aren’t giving us the preordained result?!.. This lack of investigative ‘effort’ will thus result in a lack of funds applied to the OIG 2018 budget…” Yup.
“These voluntary hours could far, far exceed the alleged “unsubstantiated” hours, when totaled.”
They obviously do, at least in total over the whole corps. Though maybe not for each individual.
And what about voluntary worked hours? Did the OIG factor these hours in? Me thinks not. So, if an Examiner struggling to make production works voluntary time (ON THE COMPUTER, i.e., electronic footprint) on a Saturday or past their regular working hours during a weekday, these hours were not counted toward the positive-side of the ledger? Huh? These voluntary hours could far, far exceed the alleged “unsubstantiated” hours, when totaled. Moreover, printing out patent applications for perusing is done by a substantial amount of the examining corps, from my understanding (i.e. less eye-strain, easy to mark-up and reference cited pages, etc.), and such hard-copies are readily available should the systems go on the blink. BUT…No computer-time, according to the OIG equates with waste, fraud and abuse it would seem. But hey, the OIG has a job to do, and it would certainly not be in their best interest to report…”after extensive analysis, and vast sums of investigatory money spent, we can report that there is substantially nothing to report. Thank you very much. Good day, sir.” To which Congress might reply “Really? We charge you with manufacturing, er, uncovering waste, fraud and abuse, and you aren’t giving us the preordained result?!.. This lack of investigative ‘effort’ will thus result in a lack of funds applied to the OIG 2018 budget…” Yup.
See the posts discussing this OTHER deleterious effect at 9.2.1.1.2.1 below.
..and two wrongs certainly do not make a right, as the perpetrators on the low side of the curve are not the same perpetrators on the high side of the curve, and this attempt at “evening out” is even worse than averaging the scam over all of the examiners.
Fraud is still fraud, my friend.
“As an example, if an examiner were to print a case for the next day at 4pm, with the workday ending at 5pm, and he/she does not use the computer prior to leaving so that his/her computer locks he/she actually leaving, the hour would be presented in this report as being violation. ”
That actually does probably happen in a non-negligible amount of the cases. I myself barely print things out but occasionally my machine locks while I’m reading long cases. Though I print them out more lately though I used to. Still, old people I’m sure print just about everything.
“As an example, if an examiner were to print a case for the next day at 4pm, with the workday ending at 5pm, and he/she does not use the computer prior to leaving so that his/her computer locks he/she actually leaving, the hour would be presented in this report as being violation. ”
That’s only if the examiner is a full-time teleworker, and only if the examiner doesn’t briefly log in to log out of the VPN at the end of their work day, as they are instructed to do.
“ as they are instructed to do”
The small number of the most heavy abusers are also characterized as “high achievers.”
One would think that any such “high achievers” know how to follow instructions….
Yes, well, we do KNOW HOW to follow instructions.
But we have no patience for BS or the tedium of following rules.
That’s life in the fast lane, baby!
Not following rules also leads to abuses such as Fraud.
And there are consequences to traveling in that fast lane, “baby.”
Do the crime, do the time.
Says mr. OCPD who doesn’t understand what gray areas are.
There is nothing grey about misrepresenting facts to the government, and materially benefiting from that material misrepresentation.
You want to see gray where none exists.
Oh, I didn’t realize examiners were supposed to log out at the end of the day. Lock their computer, yes, but I have been told to stay logged on because they do updates etc. overnight and need access to the computer.
This is actually the real instruction from what I understand, to lock the computer…which happens when your computer is idle. Also, the argued example applies to all examiners, as a non-hoteller does not badge out, so no further data points would be found for the report.
You’re definitely supposed to log out of the VPN when you aren’t using it. Check the training materials. (It should be obvious that this does not apply to laptops in the office)
Looking at the current materials, the only requirements with regard to the VPN, especially in view of the dedicated VPN routers that were provided, is to be logged in during work hours, with no mention of logging out when you are done. If you could provide the specific location of the directive to log completely out, I would take another look.
How about when you are thinking about how to respond to the project while you should be trying to go to sleep?
This is a USPTO accounting problem not a real problem. The USPTO either pays too much for overtime, or too little for exceeding production.
If over 2 weeks you need 40 points that means in “hours” each point is worth .5 hours. If you have 41 points over a 2 week period and your “bonus” for an extra point is less than the payscale for 2 hours, then you will “work” 2 more hours.
Obviously. People have been going on about this forever. Implement stu pid system to stop spe arbitrariness at the behest of POPA, then coopt it, and you will eventually suffer the “consequences”.
Not sure how you arrive at “not a real problem” just because it is an Office problem…
I think 6’s point is, if you implement a system that is arbitrary and silly, you are bound to get arbitrary and silly results.
If they Office wants to make judgements on throughput numbers, then pay based on number of pages read and claims searched.
One point for an “office action”, when one perfect office action can be 5 pages and require reading two seven page documents and another perfect Office Action requires 37 pages and reading six 40 page documents is silly and one should expect compensating behavior.
Les,
You give too much credit to 6.
Keep in mind that changing the Officr metrics is NOT a new topic to these boards.
I don’t know what 6 really says, but from what I understand Office actions are worth points, and you can’t put half an office action in one pay period, and half in another, or something like that.
Thus, to me it makes sense that examiner’s will save up office actions that are completed and submit them as needed to make quota. Then when there is a breakpoint (apparently at the end of quarters) where there is going to be enough time for the “randomness” of hard vs. easy office actions to average out in the next period (I guess the next quarter) you can dump all that extra work you did and get paid for it.
It just seems to me that the issue is if these examiners are doing bad work or not.
Now you are giving far too much credit to the gen eral examiner…
And of course, there is the separate – but intertwined aspect of the quality of their examination to deal with (and yes, that is quite a different topic than any standard of review).
But what we have here is purportedly stealing (fraud) of the time aspect only, quite apart from the “quality” (or lack thereof) of any work product.
Fraud on the government is a serious offense (no matter how many examiners attempt lame excuses).
Actually, reading the comments in more detail below it seems like a small % of examiners are utilizing this tactic to gain about 10% of unsubstantiated hours. This is an absurdly low % of hours to be unsubstantiated in an office environment. This leads me to believe that other examiners are working unreported hours to game their production/hour statistics in the other direction as well.
That may be.
ut that TOO is very much a problem.
See the Hricik side of the blog at: link to patentlyo.com
Yes that makes a great deal of sense. If there are Examiners that make overproduction, many will have to work extra to make production, that is just a normal distribution at work.
But it is NOT a “normal distribution at work”: precisely because of misreporting is skewing ANY sense of normal distribution.
I think instead that you mean to say that there SHOULD BE a normal distribution at work, but that normal distribution is being manipulated at both ends to BOTH avoid the pains of the low end, and to excessively reap the benefits of the high end.
In other words, there is yet another indicator of illicit gamesmanship going on.
Let’s do a thought experiment.
Take a normal distribution graph and picture it in your mind.
Take a “whatever” plus and minus sigma (arbitrary at this point, and more for visual effect), and picture in your mind how this “snips” the tails of the curve at both ends.
The low end will not be seen in the reported hours because those at that end will under report in order to avoid the “pain” of falling below the cutoff. This gives a false impression of examiner capability and a false sense of “what it takes to do a proper job” of examination.
The high end will not be seen (at its true level, but rather will be artificially inflated) by the misreporting in order to obtain overtime pay – both by those who SHOULD fall into the middle and by those in the tail reaching for even more of that tail. This is simply outright fraud.
Now take a step back and realize that this “theft” has another related effect based on the standard project management triangle of schedule (time), scope (features, content) and resources (cost, budget,pay) that bears on quality. Given that you are falsely manipulating legs of the triangle with falsity with the schedule and resource legs, are we NOT surprised that quality (no matter how measured) is adversely affected?
Yes, I meant examiner ability to output actions is a normal distribution.
This does seem (to me) to be a major issue to investigate if you are representing examiners, because the “abusers” in the report, are basically the only reason performance metrics dont skyrocket out of reach of the “average” examiner, because there is no such thing (as far as the USPTO knows) as a subpar examiner, because those people just work unpaid overtime to keep their job.
Just keep clear that each end of the tail – and the actions that affect each end of the tail are perpetrated by different individuals, and that the “wrongs” of the one set do not – and cannot – erase the wrongs of the other set.
Lot’s of people are still trying to conflate those different “wrongs.”
Out of “10,000 Examiners”, how many are told each year to pack it up cuz they aren’t “performing”? I assume the PTO engages in the usual management practice of putting people on “probation” or whatever with one of those stern letters signalling that the end is probably near absent a miraculous turnaround. How many such letters go out annually? How many employees pack it up within six months of that letter?
I would assume that information would be findable.
I guess what’s most impressive about the PTO, given the size of the workforce, is the lack of headline-making scandals. Not the silly “star chamber” stuff that gets the Most Important People Ever all frothed up, but real scandals. You know: theft of IP, inside dealing, that kind of thing (not to mention serial harassment of subordinates and the like). Has there been any such newsworthy incident in the past 10 years? 25 years? How far back do we have to go?
Hi MM – I believe there was a scandal involving the blackberry / RIM case in which the PTO was accused of impermissible ex parte communications with a non-applicant (RIM or RIM agents). If my vague memory serves me here, the alleged act was uncovered via FOIA requests by the applicant.
link to patentlyo.com
Thanks for the reminder, iit. I had forgotten about that one.
“I would assume that information would be findable.”
You could do a FOIA request. But the number isn’t that large most years and they usually report the “attrition” rates in the annual yearly publication. Further, as the absurdity of the production reqs continues to grow ever larger I hear that people that aren’t that far under 95% or whatever are usually more or less let slide. But that’s just realism even though formally they could choose to fire that person, the USPTO would be the ultimate loser because they then have to train a replacement at substantial cost. Unless the person is underperforming for a long time or there is mitigating circumstances the the PTO is the loser if it fires people for lack of performance.
6: I hear that people that aren’t that far under 95% or whatever are usually more or less let slide. But that’s just realism even though formally they could choose to fire that person, the USPTO would be the ultimate loser because they then have to train a replacement at substantial cost.
Right, that’s the universal calculus. But certainly some people do get the axe or at least they get a warning that the axe is coming down and, presumably, they bail out before that happens (leaving being preferable to “fired”). Or at least I assume they do, at some measurable level.
You’d have to FOIA that.
“(not to mention serial harassment of subordinates and the like)”
That doesn’t come up because most people are entirely ignorant of what that actually means. Incredibly enough.
Leave it to Malcolm to be an arse and conflate other real problems with this real problem.
(the stench of his “poker tell” is nauseating)
“The unsubstantiated hours peak just before quarterly quota.”
Dennis, your summary of the report appears to be incorrect.
The report says “After each examiner production deadline, the OIG observed an increase in the percentage of unsupported hours.” The report also specifically states that the peak months are January, April, July, and October while deadline months are March, June, September, and December. (Page 18)
That said, the supposed peaks look exceptionally limited (other than the october outlier) in figure 5. I think this would be better described as a August through January phenomenon.
Um end of the fiscal year or whatever “year” for examiners is at the beginning of Oct this year.
October is the beginning of the new fiscal year. So September is the deadline month.
“And the number of patents that examiners are required to review is unusually low, the inspector general found. The agency’s production goals were last set in 1976, before the Internet made it possible to determine the state of the art in a particular field in a short time.”
LOL WUT? Who wrote this report?
“Many examiners complete their work faster than they are expected to”
More like “some few” with generous easygoing signatories. Which coincidentally is part of a larger problem, lack of consistency across the corps.
“But instead of demanding more from examiners, patent officials recently gave them two-and-a half hours more on average to review each application, the inspector general noted, recommending changes to production goals the report called “out of date.””
Lulz lulz lulz lulz. They’re asking for thousands of additional references be reviewed, and more sources. And that’s just the beginning. Set aside the longer and absurdly more complex and lawlyerly written specs/claims.
link to washingtonpost.com
When your “review” and “consideration” merely includes the item appearing in your automated search, you really should not go “begging” for more time for that.
You’re saying I should just skimp on the “review” and “consideration” then? Just kind of blow that off? Because it happens to be included in an “automated search” (whatever that is supposed to be?)?
Not saying that you “should”
Saying that you DO
So then because a random ashat “anon” on the interbuts assertates that “I” conduct “review and consideration” which “merely” includes “the item” “appearing” in my “automated search” I supposedly am obliged to not go “begging” for more time for that?
Wtf are you talking about willis?
Not sure why you are having q difficult time following along.
What automated search? The only automated search I know of is the “plus search” and almost no one uses it because the results are worthless. The fact is that whoever wrote the section of the report about having too much time because now we have the internet clearly doesn’t understand the examiner’s job. The internet only exposes an infinite number of potential new references to search and consider, it doesn’t actually make the job any easier than it was in the 70s when the count system was created (in fact back then you didn’t lose counts for RCEs and because it was 17 years from issue you could write just a 112 or 101 for a 1st action).
With that said, the initial part of the report discussing 420ish examiners that have 10% hours unaccounted for is probably accurate. Anyone in private industry would consider 420 problem employees out of 8100 employees, or just 3% of all examiners, to be a pretty good.
A much bigger problem at the office is the difficulty of firing examiners for turning in poor quality work after they’ve passed their probationary period. The office still emphasizes quantity over quality, mainly because they can quantify it and put it into spreadsheets and pretty graphs.
I’m guessing he’s talking about EAST search as examiner automated search tool. I honestly can’t figure out what manner of crack anon is smoking today though.
Says the guy in a smoke induced haze…
Speaking of Automated searches –
We are now receiving, in some instances, “Notification” of Office Actions, rather than receiving them by mail. The Docketing department then dutifully downloads them and processes them as per usual.
The downloaded “Office Action” often includes a 20 page Office Action followed by 40 pages of useless (to us) search documentation which gets printed right along with the Office Action.
Would you PLEASE ask the powers that be to include that search summary in a separate document?