The USPTO’s attack plan is in limbo due to the Trump hiring freeze
“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. Ramaswamy had been asked to leave the DOGE this week. Elon Musk was supposed to run it, and Vivek Ramaswamy would have taken over. The current backlog is 826,736 unexamined applications/ 26 months total pendency of patents. The April 2024 Notice of Proposed Rulemaking on Setting and Adjusting Patent fees predicted that the backlog would increase to 820 200 by FY 2026, before decreasing to 780,000 in FY 2029. The agency hired 644 examiners for patents in FY 23, and was on track to surpass its goal of 850 examiners for FY 24. The agency was unable to keep up with the increased backlog due to the reduced hiring targets. Vidal blamed this on a predicted slowdown of patent filings in 2020 and 2021 during the pandemic. 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, the Government Accountability Office presented a report to Congress stating that the Office’s efforts to reduce the USPTO’s backlog of 730,000 unexamined patent applications were not enough. 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 also mandated federal government employees return to the Office five times per week. This would be impossible for the USPTO as it has remote workers across the country. Dennis Crouch reported that the Office of Personnel Management has now released implementation guidance. Crouch noted that this includes “strict deadlines and requirements which could force dramatic change at the USPTO where remote work has long been a cornerstone of operation for decades.”
The USPTO started its telework programme 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 “
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[in person]Author: alphaspirit
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Eileen McDermott
Eileen McDermott, Editor-in Chief of IPWatchdog.com is a veteran IP and legal journalist. Eileen McDermott is a veteran IP journalist and has held editorial and management positions at
