“Former USPTO Deputy Director Derrick Brent recently wrote that the Office is ‘now at an inflection point that requires us to build examination capacity to achieve our long-term pendency goals.’”
Donald Trump’s many executive actions on day one of his presidency included implementing a hiring freeze across the federal government. The order put hiring on hold for all Federal civilian employees, until such time as “the Director of the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), in consultation with the Director of OPM and the Administrator of the United States DOGE Service (USDS), shall submit a plan to reduce the size of the Federal Government’s workforce through efficiency improvements and attrition.”
The structure of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) is being challenged in court, with complaints filed on January 20 by worker advocacy groups and private citizens. The DOGE was slated to be run by Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy, but Ramaswamy was reportedly asked to leave this week.
What this all means for the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO), which is still dealing with a patent backlog, is unclear. The current backlog stands at 826,736 unexamined applications/ 26.1 months total pendency for patents. The April 2024 Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (NPRM) on Setting and Adjusting Patent Fees predicted the backlog to increase to 820,200 by FY 2026 before decreasing to 780,000 by FY 2029.
In July, former USPTO Director Kathi Vidal said the Office was tackling the backlog in part via a concerted hiring effort. The agency hired 644 patent examiners in FY 23 and was on target to exceed its goal of hiring 850 examiners in FY 24. This push was planned to continue through FY 25.
Vidal in part blamed reduced hiring targets in response to a predicted slowdown in patent filings for 2020 and 2021, during the pandemic, for the significant increase in the backlog, which some have said represent an all-time high for the Office. The decrease in filings turned out to be “more modest and short-lived than expected,” said Vidal, and the reduced hiring targets left the agency unable to keep up.
More recently, former USPTO Deputy Director Derrick Brent, prior to his resignation and Coke Stewart’s appointment to take his place as Acting agency head, penned a Director’s Blog post explaining that the Office is “now at an inflection point that requires us to build examination capacity to achieve our long-term pendency goals.”
Hiring has typically played a key role in reducing patent pendency. In 2007, due to concerns about the USPTO backlog of 730,000 unexamined patent applications at the time, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) presented a report to Congress that found the Office’s hiring efforts were not sufficient to reduce the backlog. The backlog subsequently decreased over time, after various new approaches to hiring were implemented.
The USPTO told IPWatchdog the Office has no comment on the hiring freeze.
Back to the Office?
Trump has also mandated that federal government employees come back to the Office five days per week, something that would be virtually impossible for the USPTO, which has remote workers all over the country. Dennis Crouch reported today that the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) has now issued implementation guidance that Crouch noted includes “strict timelines and requirements that could force dramatic changes at the USPTO, where remote work has been a cornerstone of operations for decades.”
The USPTO began its telework program in 1997. As of 2023, nearly 13,000 of the USPTO’s approximately 14,000 employees work remotely.
During IPWatchdog LIVE 2024, former USPTO Director Andrei Iancu’s criticized certain aspects of the Office’s remote work policy. Iancu said remote work has “done great things for the Office,” but “since the pandemic ended the vast majority are not coming back in… If these examiners come straight into a remote environment, culturally, they don’t bond as they used to in the past.
Former USPTO Commissioner for Patents Robert Stoll replied that “[in person] work is not coming back…so, I think we need to find tools that simulate in person training and community,” and Iancu largely agreed but said there are other steps that can be taken—such as requiring the academy to be in person again and requiring two years of on-site work—that would help with USPTO morale problems.
There likely will be many challenges to Trump’s Return to Office mandate.
Image Source: Deposit Photos
Author: alphaspirit
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