U.S. Patent and Trademark Office: Hiring Efforts Are Not Sufficient to Reduce the Patent Application Backlog

The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) helps protect U.S. competitiveness by granting patents for new ideas and innovations. Increases in the volume and complexity of patent applications have extended the time for processing them. Concerns continue about the agency's efforts to attract and retain qualified patent examiners who can meet the demand for patents and help reduce the growing backlog of unexamined patent applications. In 2007, GAO reported on (1) USPTO's process for making its annual hiring estimates and the relationship of these estimates to the patent application backlog; (2) the extent to which patent examiner hiring has been offset by attrition, and the factors that may contribute to this attrition; and (3) the extent to which USPTO's retention efforts align with examiners' reasons for staying with the agency. GAO recommended that USPTO comprehensively evaluate the assumptions it uses to establish its production goals. USPTO agreed to implement this recommendation once it determines the effect of recent initiatives designed to increase the productivity of the agency through a more efficient and focused patent examination process. This testimony is based on GAO's 2007 report, which was based in part on a survey of 1,420 patent examiners. See, GAO, U.S. Patent and Trademark Office: Hiring Efforts Are Not Sufficient to Reduce the Patent Application Backlog, GAO-07-1102.