Soon after the appeals board brought on additional legal support staff to address a deluge of challenges to decisions by patent examiners, the Patent and Tradem

Soon after the appeals board brought on additional legal support staff to address a deluge of challenges to decisions by patent examiners, the Patent and Trademark Office imposed a hiring freeze that halted hires of judges needed to handle the appeals. Not only are there fees paid to process those appeals, but the USPTO will have made extra revenue by being able to charge fees to patent holders, some of whom would otherwise not have patents for fees to be charged on, should these appeals have been heard. All in all, they seem to have done rather well out of this hiring freeze, though I am sure they have done so with the utmost propriety and scuppering the appeals process has been nothing more than a simple oversight, of course.