By Dennis Crouch
In another seeming bombshell for the Patent Office, the Washington Post has published a 2012 internal USPTO memorandum on telework fraud. Lisa Rein from the post writes:
Some of the 8,300 patent examiners, about half of whom work from home full time, repeatedly lied about the hours they were putting in, and many were receiving bonuses for work they didn’t do. And when supervisors had evidence of fraud and asked to have the employee’s computer records pulled, they were rebuffed by top agency officials, ensuring that few cheaters were disciplined, investigators found.
Oversight of the telework program — and of examiners based at the Alexandria headquarters — was “completely ineffective,” investigators concluded.
Further, the report indicates that “USPTO management demonstrates reluctance to take decisive action when the misconduct is egregious and the evidence is compelling.” At the time, the USPTO was led by Director Kappos.
The original report was then substantially tamed-down (with the most damning elements removed) before it was provided to the DOC Office of the Inspector General. Based on the evidence found in the secret original document, the OIG has indicated that it will now launch a probe of the USPTO’s workforce quality control.
Production versus Hours: The facts here are disturbing. However, one underlying assumption of the report is that we should be looking to the hours-worked by examiners rather than focusing on whether the work is completed (i.e., production). Examiner production is closely monitored and measured on a bi-weekly basis and there is no sense in the industry that examiners can avoid those production quotas without major repercussions.
With an element of sarcasim and seriousness and working off another great idea from another on this site, lets just get rid current production measures and how the PTO currently balances production/quality…and go to an hourly billing of applicants like attorneys have. Currently lets say an average senior examiner gets 14 hrs/BD (balanced disposal, basically one case start to finish). If he makes makes $100k with an average 2000 hrs/year, he is paid $50/hr for 142 case start to finish costing PTO $700 to examine each regardless of complexitiy, issuess or how much applicant helps or hinders. Reduce filing fees and allow examiners to just bill applicant’s $75/hr everytime they pick up the case. Attnys would certainly cut to the chase rather than try to explain to their clients why they owe PTO $2000 in examination fees.
You forgot one major element: a competitor.
Not bad, Bill.
Also pay the examiners for hows actually worked on a to a maximum, where that maximum is adjusted according to the number of dispositions.
Also, we need some system that accurately and automatically tracks how long an examiner actually works on a case.
Who cares how long an examiner “actually works on a case”? If the examiner finds the closest prior art in 5 minutes (as some here claim they do), what would you have the examiner do? spend another couple hours flipping through less close prior art? The idea that the amount of time an examiner spends on the case is somehow related to the quality of the examination is silly. What matters is whether, and when, the examiner finds the closest prior art, and whether, and when, the examiner identifies any legally proper grounds for rejection/objection. Who gives a rat’s behind how long that takes?
Wrong.
Flat goals for all examiners. X BD’s/year based on the art they examine and their GS level. Straight bonus for exceeding the goal (e.g. they produce 10% more BD’s, they get 10% more time). No OT.
Nobody who knows anything about patent examination and prosecution cares, or even should care, about how many hours examiners are spending staring at their computer monitors, how much time they are spending on each application, how much time they are spending on each count, etc. Keep giving them counts for FAOM’s, abandonments, examiner’s answers, and allowances. Any and everything else they do (e.g. second action non-finals, re-opening prosecution, etc.) is on their time.
Get rid of the useless “Administrative SPE’s” who do nothing but review time sheets and other such unnecessary tasks, and a lot of the otherwise generally useless SPE’s. Send them all back to examining. And give them their flat goal and the same deal as all the other examiners.
There is a running joke in books by Charles Stross, an award winning author. A secret agent takes orders from top, but is nominally reporting into to lower middle management bean-counter types who take their job seriously and somehow believe the agent has to obey the normal rules. These middle management types are always making a fuss about expense reports, hours on the job, demanding to know where the agent was, why did they miss the meeting scheduled for so and so, etc. It is hilarious.
The hullabaloo here is sounds like a tragic-comic Charles Stross novel.
With the larger exception Ned that the examienrs are NOT secret agents, and that the examienrs are largely NOT serving the higher aims that would be stymied by the following of protocols.
In this sense, your observations – while perhaps humorous – are off base.
This is a terrible reflection on the USPTO. Unrealistic time for examination and the pressure to meet quotas for years have denigrated what used to be one of the better patent offices of the world.
I see where now why the Examining Corps (the bad ones not the good ones) raises their nonsensical APA (admitted prior art) rejections. Most likely they occur on a Thursday night before the end of the current biweekly. Quick trigger fingers gets them RCE fees which means more money to waste on phantom overtime. Ugh!
Moving them back to Alexandria will not work for not only is there not enough space but the use of hoteling and telecommuting saves the PTO many millions each year in rent. Office space is cheap in Detroit, as well as Benghazi, just ask Hilary.
Production quotas for many examiners whose technical acumen lies far afield from the TC in which they work is absurd at best. So too is the target of two decisions a week for APJs working in appeals morass of the PTAB, when it takes a day or two to figure out the inane and asinine rejections raised by the small group of examiners about whom the article is written.
APA rejection is direct from KSR. The worst thing to happen to the patent system is not using TSM. That was an objective test where you could tell if the examiner was doing their job. Now rejections are ’cause, ’cause, and more ’cause.
TSM and machine or transformations were tests for 600,000 applications a year not the several that the Supremees (who are completely ignorant of science and modern philosophy) look at a year.
Frankly I don’t get it. If you tell examiners they need to earn so many points to keep their job, then let them work in whatever way they want. The PTO needs a way to measure the quality of their work separately then hours logged.
Seems suspicious to me that we have these bad stories coming out about the PTO. Probably politics. So, who gains from this? They are probably behind getting the papers to publish it.
NWPA,
You ask good questions that should be asked. Why are these stories breaking now? Who stands to gain and who stands to lose? There is no doubt that politics are involved (when are they not?).
On the flip side, we finally have the spotlight where it has been needed to have been all along. Let’s take this opportunity to re-engineer an obviously broken system. We see that the demand for patent protection remains – even as the efforts to weaken patents from the Left and from the Right are underway. Since we have that demand, we do need to engineer a system that is capable of processing that demand.
There is no question that trade-offs will be required. Even Lemley noted such.
But to move forward, we need to not only re-engineer the system, we need to make perfectly clear the goals of the system.
First and foremost is that the system provide strong patent protection.
We cannot lose sight of that priority.
“The PTO needs a way to measure the quality of their work separately then hours logged.”
There is a way, but as the report indicates the SPEs (and I guess the primaries) beg off from doing that because it requires too much work. And of course it actually does require substantial work.
Not to even mention that the primary’s (and worse still, sometimes the spe’s) work itself could use a good going over ughhhhhhh. They “grew up” in a qualityless environment, who can blame them for that?
“They “grew up” in a qualityless environment, who can blame them for that?”
LOL – yet more fixation with “blame.”
One need not blame anyone to realize the problem, or its systemic nature – to realize that just throwing MORE resources at the problem is NOT a viable answer – and to call for a re-engineering of the entire system.
What is with you and your preoccupation with “blame” 6? You have some tremendous guilt going on in the background of your own psyche? Have you discussed this with your doctor?
“and to call for a re-engineering of the entire system.”
Fine, I’ll bite, throw out your suggestion.
I’ll say up front though that I disagree most likely. Frankly I don’t think that is at all warranted. I think what simply needs to be done is to re-organize the quality training and have massive testing (but all that requires scarce resources).
Currently the training focuses on technicalities that are tough to understand, largely irrelevant for the bulk of apps, and puts no emphasis (which should be nearly the entire emphasis) on understanding the fundamentals of things like: what claims are, what our role is as fact finders, how to find facts regardless of the application in front of you or what the application is about, claim construction, the best way to handle claim construction disputes and how to spot them (mandate that they be worked out with the applicant instead of sitting around rejecting claims solely because of x construction that could and would be easily amended), whether applicant is entitled to a patent and the ramifications of this making the whole system an entitlement program, what the whole point of, and what the nature is of what WD/indefinite rejections are, etc. etc. All of those things are fundamental to quality and yet you’ll never hear a word about them in “training”. And even if you do about some few of them, it will be a throw-away line that is not emphasized.
“What is with you and your preoccupation with “blame” 6? ”
Brosef, you don’t understand what a preoccupation is. But it’s ok, I guess you’re working on it.
I’ve thrown out many suggestions many times, brosef.
You want the detailed solution? That will cost.
“I’ve thrown out many suggestions many times, brosef.”
Yeah figured you didn’t have anything new.
“You want the detailed solution? That will cost.”
Lulz. You can keep ur secrits. Nobody cares about them one whit.
“Brosef, you don’t understand what a preoccupation is.”
LOL – All I have to do is look at you.
You are a fine example of an obsessed and preoccupied lemming.
“LOL – All I have to do is look at you.
You are a fine example of an obsessed and preoccupied lemming.”
See? You just don’t understand them.
But I mean, on the other hand, the psy cho pathic psy cho olo gist we say on Big Think the other day didn’t even recognize his own disability and he knows all the symptoms backwards and forwards I’m sure.
Still haven’t dealt with that log in your eye, yet, eh?
Regarding the PTAB, they need to temporarily reassign 1000 or more senior examiners to the PTAB to decide appeals. The would slow down examinations, but it would or should deal with the backlog of appeals in months.
Moving the deck chairs is no answer Ned.
“I see where now why the Examining Corps (the bad ones not the good ones) raises their nonsensical APA (admitted prior art) rejections. Most likely they occur on a Thursday night before the end of the current biweekly. Quick trigger fingers gets them RCE fees which means more money to waste on phantom overtime. Ugh!”
If the rejection(s) based on APA is no good, why are you filing an RCE?
“Production quotas for many examiners whose technical acumen lies far afield from the TC in which they work is absurd at best.”
Huh? What? Most examiners start out having no particular knowledge of the art they examine. They learn the prior art by examining cases. And by consulting with more experienced examiners in that art on search strategies and techniques.
“So too is the target of two decisions a week for APJs working in appeals morass of the PTAB, when it takes a day or two to figure out the inane and asinine rejections raised by the small group of examiners about whom the article is written.”
If the rejections are inane and asinine, how hard is it to write a decision reversing “for the reasons set forth by appellant”? All I’d have to do is churn out two of those per week? From the comfort of my home? Where do I sign up?
So, were they saying that they had written OAs they didn’t write, or saying it took them longer to write than it did?
Neither. The allegation is simply that they got done with their work faster than normal and then were not “teleworking” for the rest of the day/week then put down normal hours on the timesheet. Though there are some other misc. allegations as well.
They did their OAs and got their counts, so who cares.
Maybe I should read this. But, I don’t get it.
“They did their OAs and got their counts, so who cares.”
Some investigator g e n eral or some such, I don’t remember. Oh, and anon. He cares also. It’s him and the investigator g e n eral.
Oh, and since they’re making a fuss the management is going to jump through some hoops.
Michelle Lee just sent me a nice little broadcast message assuaging the troops about the telework program and the recent media attention.
Likewise she says they’ll be working with POPA.
She thanks us all for our efforts towards promoting innovation.
To she remember to include that there are other incentives besides patents for innovation?
I think that the people on this are so mean. Take a breath. If you were face to face none of you would say these horrible thing. Over the Internet though they feel so free to say dehumanizing items. Think about what you are posting.
You must be new.
It’s part of the “swagger” here
😉
If you guys want a nice lol check out 13555179 on public pair.
Title: The Universe has an End.
Spec. as filed: The number zero as the value of ∞ (infinity).
Claims as filed:
1. The Universe has an End: there is the no such thing as
physical infinity.
2. The mathematical operation the “division by 0” is allowed.
Applicant: lryna Borisovna Shevchenko
Rather than resist, grant this patent now. See how she enforces it.
Instead of “allowing” it I think we should just print it and say “the US hereby accepts all claims made herein”.
I accept all his claims! lol! I wouldn’t allow them tho.
In September of 2012, in paragraphs 6 and 8, the inventor said:
[0006] There is the law of constancy (balance): Where the
all objects that exist in environment are subjects to the order.
The any material object may not physically dissapear Without
leaving some trace or residue and the space.
[0008] The all objects have the life span When they die,
leaving the space With unde?ned or undetected matter after
them; there is also the space reserved for the objects that have
never existed or Would not exist. The one of main subject of
science of mathematics is the volume(s) of object.
However, In 1982, The Boss said:
“Everything dies baby that’s a fact
But maybe everything that dies someday comes back”
Not THAT by friend, is prior Art, with a capitol A!
link to youtube.com
Hey, Les, when we are dealing with and inventor who is channeling the Infinite, who is to argue? We instead must genuflect and adore.
And, we must all drink the proverbial Jim Jones Kool-aid.
Yes I’m not sure it it is a poem or an application. Maybe he meant to submit to the national poet’s league.
Ya know, the scariest part of this is that someday, I’m going to get an Office Action that cites this paragraph 7 against claims of some application to show that it was known that vacuum has some properties that we did not learned yet.
You guys have all missed the best part:
Abstract of the Disclosure = “The “Big Bung!” was not at the beginning of Universe!”.
“Bung” is not a typo.
I think the Wash Post write up for the most part is good – however, I think that the supervisors in the initial internal report are still engaging in a coverup – they focus on “endloading”, when they know good and well that it is true that this practice was never really stated by management to be against the rules. Even if it preferable that one does not “endload”, I can’t imagine that this is the height of the problems at the USPTO. However, supervisors don’t focus on the number of times that they’ve alleged people were making errors in their work when they were not and how this negatively impacted examination of patents – the Supervisors don’t acknowledge the number of times that they allowed poor performers with weeks if not months of overdue work to not receive poor ratings, and to telework and have other privileges. Focarino and ADCs were aware of these issues for years. But they did nothing about them. Supervisory patent examiners were aware of these problems for years, but they did nothing about them. No managers reported this to the IG. Obama Officials Terry Rea and Dave Kappos seemed to have celebrated Focarino and other managers for their participation in this Waste and abuse. Let’s not be naive and fail to acknowledge that many of the current reports coming out of the IG are politically driven by the Obama administration. The IG investigated the hotelling/telework program in 2009 or 2010 and concluded that it was a well functioning program, even despite the massive evidence that examiners with many overdue cases on their dockets who were probably ineligible to telework, were being permitted to telework. Why don’t we hear about this from the supervisors? The supervisors are angry that Kappos took away their ability for the most part to stop examiners from getting their work out when he instituted the autocount function. Supervisors were using the lack of autocount to go after examiners who did not necessarily have quality problems, but who the supervisors did not like for some other reason.
Some of the 8,300 patent examiners, about half of whom work from home full time, repeatedly lied about the hours they were putting in, and many were receiving bonuses for work they didn’t do.
Thank goodness stuff like this never happens in private sector industries like law firms where nobody would ever dare to pad his/her hours for any reason, especially not to obtain reach an “hours billed” goal that would mean more money.
LOL.
I guess the main difference between the PTO model and the law firm model is when the associate is “too efficient” the partner can add the “missing” hours to his/her own timesheet. Or the partner can simply tell the associate that some of the associate’s hours can’t be billed (reflecting poorly on the associate) because the important client can’t/won’t pay the actual cost. Of course, the Associate Attorneys Union is always interested in hearing about stuff like this …
Examining and private practice time keeping are pretty similar. If an examiner is getting, for example, 12 hours per count, then the examiner is credited with doing 12 hours worth of work for every count whether it took 12 hours, 24 hours, or 5 minutes. With much of patent prep and pros work at law firms going to fixed fee, attorneys are getting credit for work done regardless of how much time it actually took. If the app is written for a flat fee of $5k and the attorney’s billing rate is $500/hr, then the attorney gets 10 billable hours for writing the app, whether the attorney spent 10 hours, 20 hours or 5 minutes.
Again, this report is nothing new. The only “new” thing in it, possibly, is the means by which the examiners game the system. Now they’re doing it from home, rather than schlepping to an office every day.
I’ll say it again, nothing new here, everybody move along.
So, are these complainers (likely originating from disgruntled patent attorneys and agents) for FACETIME instead of PRODUCTION?
Perhaps they prefer the way law firms do it- by billing in hourly time -often with little relation to what is being produced.
No measurement system is perfect, but the production measurement system (with a quality component) is much better if what you want is the actual work being done, and not just measuring time a body sits in front of the computer.
The problem Christine (as evidenced in several recent threads) is that the production measurement system (with a quality component) is NOT getting “the actual work being done.”
It’s kind of an important point to keep in mind when the nonsense answer of “just throw more bodies at it” is put up as “an answer.”
If you work at the PTO and you read the article carefully you’d see that the “whistle blowers”/complainers were 4 SPEs that wanted to fire examiners but were not allowed to so they complained (SPEs want to fire lower producing examiners because SPEs are judged themselves by the production of the examiners in the art unit).
As some have noted, there simply isn’t enough room on the Alexandra campus to end teleworking and bring everyone back in-house. Or is there? GSA could requisition a thousand or so FEMA trailers and put them in local parking lots. Presto! Teleworking situation resolved. Not that this would increase productivity or quality, but that’s not what the Post article was about.
…because outright large scale corruption is not news in and of itself to be worthy of eradicating, eh Egon?
Provided the examiners in question were able to make their production and at sufficiently high levels of quality, then I think that should be the end of the inquiry. No corruption here, anymore than there is when an engineer at Google decides to do some of his work related thinking at the local Starbucks instead of inside his cubicle. The Post story never addresses the matter of production, or the computer systems in place that monitor it, making actual fraud (getting paid for doing nothing) very very difficult to pull off. Perhaps the more useful story would have been one that discusses how the PTO came up with all those production numbers in the first place, and how detached the hours provided per count are from the actual requirements of the job.
“Perhaps the more useful story would have been one that discusses how the PTO came up with all those production numbers in the first place, and how detached the hours provided per count are from the actual requirements of the job.”
That’s a pretty boring story. Heard it a million times and isn’t really news.
“and at sufficiently high levels of quality”
LOL – that’s just it – your “if” is a fail.
Further, even IF high quality was obtained, you still have to deal with actual rules and laws being followed.
“no corruption here”
Your head is in deep.
“Further, even IF high quality was obtained, you still have to deal with actual rules and laws being followed.”
He technically doesn’t. Management does. And if they choose to “deal with actual lawls and rules being followed” by turning their heads then … meh. Who am I to naysay their management style? They’re not OCPD like you anon, they’re not overly preoccupied with rules and lawls.
“Technically” is where you need to reassess your understanding of what responsibility means.
This is not “overly preoccupied” – it is understanding what the rules and law are for in the first place.
Your lack of understanding (and lack of caring about that understanding) runs deep.
Egon –
Read a few “Office Actions”. Many of them are almost incoherent and clearly assembled by pasting together claim language and form paragraphs with the occasional insertion of paragraph numbers of paragraphs from the cited document than include one or two words in common with the claim. Such Office Actions can be slapped together in 45 minutes or less. Office Actions are supposed to be the result of 20 hours or so of review and analysis. They seldom are, but are used as evidence of such. It is clear that managers and signing primary examiners seldom read the Office Actions they are signing. Apparently all that is done is that pages are flipped through to verify that the document looks like an office action.
Accordingly, “meeting production” with such documents is evidence of nothing.
“Office Actions are supposed to be the result of 20 hours or so of review and analysis”
Idk who told you that, avg OA prep time should be like 11-12 hrs for a FAOM and then 8-9 hrs for the final with an hour or so left over in my AU and ones of avg time like mine. Some should take like 5 hrs. Others should take like 20 hrs. Maybe. Though I’m always rather skeptical about those “arts”.
11 + 9 = 20
12 + 8 = 20
Maybe that’s where I got if from.
Not enough time to do the job right, for sure. But enough time to do a better job than we see, we think.
“11 + 9 = 20
12 + 8 = 20”
Each of those is two oa’s brosefus.
REALITY
1. A big chunk of the work involves IBM, Apple, Toshiba, et al. Who have highly qualified lawyers. PRIVATIZE that part.
2. Honk if you’ve caught a major error in an OA (incorrect spellings, incorrect attributions, major cut-and-paste).
3. Honk if you’ve called a Congressperson with evidence of major USPTO cut-and-paste on an OA, just so the PE can party.
USPTO union thinks this is some kind of joke. Well, just wait, bozos, you’re about to get a wake up call.
Why aren’t teleworkers doing Video Skype? Why isn’t PAIR and EFS data given to WashPost?
B.S. is B.S., and there is plenty here. And USPTO union, if you don’t like it, go find new jobs. You, like everyone, can be replaced.
“2. Honk if you’ve caught a major error in an OA (incorrect spellings, incorrect attributions, major cut-and-paste).”
How are incorrect spellings, attributions and some cut and paste a “major error”?
“Honk if you’ve called a Congressperson with evidence of major USPTO cut-and-paste on an OA, just so the PE can party.”
What’s wrong with all this cut and paste?
“USPTO union thinks this is some kind of joke. Well, just wait, bozos, you’re about to get a wake up call.”
Well we could always go back to the short forms to help out id iots like yourself.
“You, like everyone, can be replaced.”
But they can’t all be replaced all at once.
“What’s wrong with all this cut and paste?”
Good question.
If done properly and as part of the Office Action (read that as not a substitute for real examination), there is nothing wrong with cut and paste. Unfortunately, how cut and paste is often applied in Office Actions appears to be that examiners use the cut and paste incorrectly, either as mere filler, as slapped together with references that merely use a key word (regardless of any context or meaning) or other plainly egregious error.
Thanks for asking.
“But they can’t all be replaced all at once.”
Don’t be too sure of that. More than one registration-type system has been bandied about.
Yep. Moreover, since bonuses are tied to production (110%-130%) and the bonus does not necessitate a corresponding 10-30% percent increase in examination time, TIME has never really been the countable metric.
“large scale corruption”?
You missed the part about all those allegations being “unsubstantiated”. That’s why D didn’t make a huge fuss over them in his article.
“worthy of eradicating”
Nothing suggests “it” is worth eradicating at all. Everything suggests “it” is worth legitimizing. Literally every single office indicator indicates exactly that, saving only perhaps the RCE backlog. And the RCE backlog itself probably indicates it (for not being worse).
If you eradicate it you risk losing all the gains David K worked so hard to achieve. Are you willing to flip that coin for your OCPD anon?
(sigh)
You need to recognize the “legalese” of what that “unsubstantiated” means 6 – as I already noted, it does NOT mean that you can merely dismiss it.
“already noted, it does NOT mean that you can merely dismiss it.”
Actually “we” (mgmt) likely can “merely dismiss it” anyway regardless of whether it was unsubstantiated, substantiated, proven entirely or unproven. And you know why? Because 0 legal remedy/injury + executive power = amazing things. But if they’re going to make a big stink then it’ll be time for them to do something.
I certainly can merely dismiss it as I have no responsibility for it.
You quite miss the entire point of this scandal, don’tcha?
Yep that’s me, missing the “point” of the “scandal” that I’ve been privy to for years and years.
LOL – whether or not you are “privy” just is not showing up in your comments, 6.
Maybe if you cared…
…just a little.