The U.S. Patent Backlog

coondoggie writes "Even with its increased hiring estimates of 1,200 patent examiners each year for the next 5 years, the US Patent and Trademark Office patent application backlog is expected to increase to over 1.3 million at the end of fiscal year 2011 the Government Accounting Office reported today. The USPTO has also estimated that if it were able to hire 2,000 patent examiners per year in fiscal year 2007 and each of the next 5 years, the backlog would continue to increase by about 260,000 applications, to 953,643 at the end of fiscal year 2011, the GAO said. Despite its recent increases in hiring, the agency has acknowledged that it cannot hire its way out of the backlog and is now focused on slowing the growth of the backlog instead of reducing it. This too is but one of the goals of the Patent Reform Act currently making the rounds in the US Senate."

old news

[heptapod]

http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/10/18/2036215 [slashdot.org]
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/10/07/AR2007100701199_pf.html [washingtonpost.com]

Yes, I know.

[Animats]

I have an application 12 months into a 30 month queue. In a fast-moving field, this is a huge headache. My previous patents only took about a year to get to first office action.

There's a new express program, though. If you file no more than three claims, file online, and do a more diligent search, the USPTO promises to process the patent in less than a year. That was just starting when I filed, and I didn't take that option.

Re:What they told me

[john_is_war]

Average CS starting is 51k, Comp Eng is 56k, actually.

Re:What they told me

[john_is_war]

From my understanding, the first 6 months, you get 10 patents every week or biweek, unclear on that. Then after 6 months you start getting appeals back from rejected patents (6 months being the max time). And that point, the number of new patents expected is diminished. And of course all the paperwork needs extensive background research for prior art etc. etc.

And as for that, it's not my main choice, but it's better than no job.

Re:It's just the math...

[ls -la]

To me, maths dictates that if the patent office hired 12,000 examiners this year and did so for the next 5 years, the problem described would begin to decrease at year 3 and disappear at year 5. That would be an achievement by US standards. Why don't these officials just do this grade 9 math?

That would cost them more money. People are still going to apply for patents no matter how long it takes, so they really aren't losing much (financially) by keeping the backlog, whereas it would cost them ~600-700k/yr in salary to do what you suggest to kill the backlog.

Re:What they told me

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm graduating with a BA in CS this year, and barely looking at any CS jobs below 85k, and there are plenty above.

Reality is about to kick you very hard in the groin.

Enjoy.

Re:What they told me

[Anonymous Coward]

As an examiner, you get credit for rejecting patents too. In fact, if you work it right using RCEs, an examiner can get more "counts" using rejections than allowances. Not that it's right, but I don't think the system encourages allowances over rejections, at least not for new examiners. It does, however, encourage crappy examination.

Re:What they told me

[greenreaper]

The system gets paid for dealing with applications, not for approving them. If they aren't approved, they still keep the money. Same with trademarks.

Re:There is no real issue. Problem solved.

[Overzeetop]

Bzzzt...thank you for playing. at $400 each, it doesn't even cover the cost of the prime examiner. A post above gave about 8 hrs of allowed time for a patent examination (10 per bi-week). Even if they all went to fresh-hires (i.e. inexperienced) at $63k/yr+ 10k bonus, with a typical "efficient" overhead and G&A of 80%, and accounting for sick, vacation, and holiday leave (264 hrs/yr to start), I get a net cost of $541 per patent. And that ignores training, startup, any other incentives, higher cost of experienced examiners, re-examination, etc.

Even with all the cash they have, they can't hire enough to get them back to even.

Re:What they told me

[mavenguy]

Production is measured in units called "balanced disposals" which is the average, over any period of measurment (bi-week, quarter, fiscal year) of the number of first actions on the merits (N) and the number of disposals (D, which are allowances, abandonments, or examiners answers on appeal). For each of the various art areas a historical expetancy X is assigned as so many hours per balanced disposal. the office wide expectancy for this is a bit over 20 hours per balanced disposal for a hypothetical GS-12 examiner. For examiners at other grades/authority levels this is adjusted by a factor as follows:
GS-5 0.6
GS-7 0.7
GS-9 0.8
GS-11 0.9
GS-12 1.0
GS-13 1.15
GS-13 1.25 (partial signatory authority)
GS-14 1.35 (full signatory authority, primary examiner)
GS-15 1.45 (full signatory authority, primary examiner expert)

There are not many GS-15s; the typical top for "lifers" is GS-14 primary examiner.
A primary has to really crank out work and make sure their production does not fall below 95% of their expectancy or bad things be gin to happen. 4 quarters of 90% and you're out the door. Many supervisors press examiners to not produce below 100% even if they are above 95% (fully sucessful in the production element of their performance appraisal plan)

Re:What they told me

[charon69]

Just a warning, my Ex worked in the USPTO after graduating in 2002 as a biomedical engineer.

All I ever heard about that place was horror stories. There are quotas for how many patents you need to process per week. Managers regularly abuse those examiners who can't keep up. "Keeping up" requires approximately 10 to 20 hours of unpaid overtime per week.

And it's all mind-numbingly repetitive work.

This was a smart girl, 3.5+ GPA, never slacked off, and she couldn't handle it. If you decide to accept the offer, go in there with both eyes open.

P.S. Living in the D.C. area (near the USPTO) sucks also. Horrible, crime-ridden neighborhoods. Terrible traffic. Ridiculous housing costs. Good luck with all that.

From a Patent Examiner's Perspective

[Skull_Leader]

From someone on the inside I can tell you that this is not a simple issue. As noted, applications and inventions get more complicated, the search for pertinent prior art gets wider and the amount of time we have to do the work gets shorter. In theory they can hire many new examiners... but we are faced with a huge space crunch here as well. Brand new campus and there is limited room/offices for all these new examiners to work. They would like everyone to hotel... which means work from home. But the problem is you have to be a certain grade and have a certain amount of experience before you can do so. A good thing because this is not a job you learn in weeks or months... its one that takes years to learn to do well. Heck, some of us enjoy having our office and prefer this office environment. But the management side of the office is just worried about production... get cases out. The examiners can do more more more... that is until the stress of meeting our unrealistic production quotas burns us out and we quit. That is if you make it that far. I know brand new examiners, less than a year in, that have already looked elsewhere. And these are bright, hardworking people...

Add in the fact that the software we use is a Frankenstein mess of stuff cobbled together from other places and squeezed to work the way we need. We kill more time waiting for and trying to get our tools to work than we often do examining. So what are they doing about it? Hiring top programmers, even pulling examiners who know our system and are great software developers as well to do the work? Maybe hiring a top company who already has their know how in it like Google? No, they keep using the same block headed people as always to produce half baked software that is beta tested live on us trying to do our job. Oops, software doesn't work? Can't produce? Well, you better figure out how to make production. Mind you if the managers don't do their job they don't get reprimanded and often get a bonus on top of things at the end of the year anyway. Examiner who can't keep up get reprimanded and fired.

So the reality is that there is a lot of lip service by the top administrators here about doing the best job, being the best IP org in the world, etc... but the bottom line is that examiners are pushed to their limits trying to do a good job but see little reward or true respect for it in house. Quality of examination goes out the window over production, and at a certain level that is what starts to happen the higher the grade you are since your production ramps up as well.

If you don't believe me... go ask an examiner at the PTO. Ask several and see how far their answers differ. Not much I feel.

Re:What they told me

[laffer1]

He did say average. I think most of you forget about cost of living. I see this mistake at my university all the time. Graduating students take like $45,000 in LA or something because they don't realize that it's not the same as $45,000 in Ann Arbor, MI. Just because location x pays $85k does not mean that location y pays $85k or even that it's the "same" amount to live on.

Some products cost the same in different parts of the country. Gas is fairly close right now across the board. It's cheaper in New Jersey than the midwest, but it's still within 50 cents or so. A MacBook still costs around $1050 everywhere in the United States. The problem is that in New York or California that is a joke amount of money compared to some farmer or entry level GM line worker might make in the midwest. Hell people make $3 a hour more in Ann Arbor, MI than Kalamazoo, MI at the local burger joint and it's the same state!

This is just in the US; imagine the difference if one were to move to Germany or India or somewhere else in the world.

Re:How many Patent examiners does it take to screw

[ProfBooty]

i think you have examiners confused with the court system.

The examining corp, nor the office itself ever allowed software patents, rather it was a court decision

see State Street Bank & Trust Company v. Signature Financial Group, Inc., 149 F.3d 1368 (Fed. Cir. 1998), 47 USPQ2d 1596

Re:What they told me

[mdd4696]

Rochester Institute of Technology publishes [rit.edu] the average starting salaries of its graduates (as of October 2007):

• Degree: $Min - $Max, $Median
• Electrical Engineering BS: $30000 - $65000, $52000
• Computer Engineering BS: $52000 - $75500, $57000
• Computer Science BS: $35000 - $85000, $55000

This is for all graduates, regardless of location. Many graduates end up in New York state however.

Re:Software patents

[torkus]

Actually the founding fathers knew they WERE fallible and WOULD make mistakes. That's why the attempted to build a 'self-healing' system. Unfortunately they were far more wise and had much more integrity than most people and especially corporation do today.

But hey, all they had to lose was their lives, families, and infant country. We've got $trillions wrapped up in this stuff today!