Posts Tagged: "work from home"

Statement by USPTO on Alleged Patent Examiner Time and Attendance Abuse

In a statement released late afternoon on Thursday, USPTO Chief Communications Office Todd Elmer explained that the USPTO “takes very seriously even one incidence of time and attendance abuse, such as by this particular employee, who is no longer with the agency.” Elmer went on to explain the initiatives put in place over the last year since this abuse occurred, which include a new agency wide policy for full-time teleworkers and supervisors.

USPTO pays patent examiner for 730 hours fraudulently not worked

According to the IG report, “Examiner A committed at least 730 hours of time and attendance abuse, resulting in the payment of approximately $25,500 for hours not worked in FY 2014 alone. The examiner in question also received extraordinarily low performance evaluations, receiving a reprimand for poor quality on nine (9) separate occasions. Rather than cooperate with the IG’s investigation Examiner A resigned and declined the opportunity to review and comment on the investigation findings. But this begs the essential question: Why was Examiner A still working for the Patent Office after nine (9) reprimands for unacceptably poor quality? It seems the USPTO is not equipped to identify abuse unless a whistleblower identifies a particular problem.

Patent Hoteling Program Succeeding as a Business Strategy

The telework program affords employees the ability to work from home from 1 to 5 days a week, and the largest of these telework programs — the Patent Hoteling Program (PHP) — had 2,600 patent examiners participating at the end of fiscal year 2011. With so many patent examiners working from home does the “brain drain” affect the learning curve of new patent examiners who have fewer people around to help and mentor. The Inspector General’s report does not address the issue of “brain drain,” but does quite clearly demonstrate that those examiners that work from home are more productive than examiners who report to work on campus at the USPTO.

PTO Lays Out Ambitions 2011 Agenda at IPO Conference

At lunch Director Kappos explained that the goal for fiscal year 2010, which ended on September 30, 2010, was to get the backlog down to 699,000 — dubbed “project 699.” The Office was not successful, but Kappos says they will get well below 700,000 for fiscal year 2011, perhaps as low as a backlog of 650,000. Kappos’ immediate follow-up: “I say that as Commissioner Stoll starts to choke at me saying that.” Indeed, there are ambitious goals at the USPTO for FY 2011, including a move to unity of invention.

On the Record with Former PTO Director Nick Godici – Part 1

I thoroughly enjoyed my time with Godici, and we managed to get into a wide variety of issues that ranged from his early days as a patent examiner, his patent examination philosophy and approach, the role of the USPTO, the Patent Granting Authority versus the Patent Denial Authority, examiner training, building relationships between patent examiners and the patent bar, the PTO work from home initiative, inequitable conduct, the Bilski decision and what the USPTO is now likely doing to address that, the parallels between the Reagan Administration and the Obama Administration in terms of patent and innovation policy and exactly what it is like to be the Commissioner of Patents and the Director of the Patent Office, and much more. Oh yes, we also talked about his getting a call from Secretary of Commerce Gary Locke last summer and returning to the Patent Office for a few months as a special adviser at the request of the Obama Administration.