http://www.govexec.com/management/2014/08/may-be-worst-abuse-federal-telework-ever/90368/?oref=govexec_today_nl
Paid bonuses to surf and shop....for FOUR years.
Paid bonuses to surf and shop....for FOUR years.
YOUR federal government at work....err,...uhh...maybe not so much.....
- Thread starter Boiler20
- Start date
I never said it was our taxes at work. However, if you think about it ...it is the fees of those applying for patents they are wasting. So, in a sense, yes, it is our money being wasted....if we had applied for a patent, or merely investigated one, which I did have done about 12 years ago....for a really stupid idea I had, along with a couple of buddies.
actuallly, in a weird way it kind of was tax money being wasted
But it wasn't direct. Back when this all started I believe that Congress was siphoning off money from USPTO fees to use for other things. So, at least in theory, the $5M wasted was $5M less that Congress could siphon off to use for, say, gold plating the urinals in the halls of Congress.
In all seriousness, this is a black eye on an agency that is pretty well-run and, as you pointed out, self-sufficient. This problem of the paralegals with nothing to do started back in 2009 when the PTAB was trying to hire more administrative judges. That process got boggen down but they still moved forward with hiring the paralegals to support the new judges they intended to hire. I think the issue of paralegals with nothing to do has since been taken care of as the PTAB has hired a lot more judges (and they still need more). That additional hiring came as a result of reform measures enacted in 2013 which have significantly increased the caseload of the PTAB with challenges to the validity of patents. The change in law suddenly made such USPTO challenges much more attractive, and they also created new types of proceedings for challenging patent validity. Still, while they have brought in new judges to handle these types of proceedings, the PTAB still has a backlog of 25,000 appeals filed by patent applicants. Takes 3-4 years for appeals to be resolved, which is way, way too long.
Here's more:
http://patentlyo.com/patent/2014/08/few-problems-ptab.html
But it wasn't direct. Back when this all started I believe that Congress was siphoning off money from USPTO fees to use for other things. So, at least in theory, the $5M wasted was $5M less that Congress could siphon off to use for, say, gold plating the urinals in the halls of Congress.
In all seriousness, this is a black eye on an agency that is pretty well-run and, as you pointed out, self-sufficient. This problem of the paralegals with nothing to do started back in 2009 when the PTAB was trying to hire more administrative judges. That process got boggen down but they still moved forward with hiring the paralegals to support the new judges they intended to hire. I think the issue of paralegals with nothing to do has since been taken care of as the PTAB has hired a lot more judges (and they still need more). That additional hiring came as a result of reform measures enacted in 2013 which have significantly increased the caseload of the PTAB with challenges to the validity of patents. The change in law suddenly made such USPTO challenges much more attractive, and they also created new types of proceedings for challenging patent validity. Still, while they have brought in new judges to handle these types of proceedings, the PTAB still has a backlog of 25,000 appeals filed by patent applicants. Takes 3-4 years for appeals to be resolved, which is way, way too long.
Here's more:
http://patentlyo.com/patent/2014/08/few-problems-ptab.html
