It's not just budget cuts. It's an exploding legal system behind patents. Try to decipher the patent rules [1] sometime. It's filled with incredibly counter-int

It's not just budget cuts. It's an exploding legal system behind patents. Try to decipher the patent rules [1] sometime. It's filled with incredibly counter-intuitive self referential legalese that, even when one understand the jargon, is not entirely clear. And it regularly has very major changes made to the entire code. In general as you approach some degree of complexity in anything, the number of individuals who sufficiently grasp it approaches 0. And then as you're mentioning - that's only about the patent legalese itself. Now the patent examiners also need to be able to have an understanding of what are ideally novel new inventions in various fields, which themselves are often increasingly obfuscated. Anybody could perform a sufficiently capable of job this has way better career opportunities than earning $80k at the patent office. While this does support your notion of budgetary cuts being the primary problem, again I think that misses the core problem which is that the system has become so convoluted that actually having a meaningful holistic understanding requires immense skill and education. Systems that are supposed to be for public, and individual, use should not require a juris doctor to begin to parse. The whole system needs a major overhaul, frankly like much of our formal structures. Isn't it a bizarre system that people are expected to completely obey laws which they are in no way expected to be able to completely understand? [1] - https://www.uspto.gov/web/offices/pac/mpep/index.html https://www.uspto.gov/web/offices/pac/mpep/index.html