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I think implied here is that the quotas are insufficient for determining whether an examiner is doing work. I am sure that examiners and their supervisors would

I think implied here is that the quotas are insufficient for determining whether an examiner is doing work. I am sure that examiners and their supervisors would be at least somewhat aware if this were the case. Based on the general quality of USPTO reviews for software patents, I would say it is pretty plausible that some of these people are getting credit for 'doing work' without actually doing their jobs. So few patents get extra scrutiny in court that I imagine many examiners could get away with that for ages - there'd be no external feedback to indicate that they are cheating.

jnbiche 12y ago
Fair enough. If the quotas are not adequate for determining the standard of work, then they made a mistake in implementing this work-from-home program. But that's not at all what the focus of the whistleblowers are. They're all upset because they don't know exactly when they're employees are working. To be honest, I only read the first two, but they both mentioned almost nothing about inadequate evaluation methods and focused exclusively on the fact that they didn't know when their employees were working. Well, that's not how work-from-home works for most organizations (and that's never how I've seen it work with successful organizations, having been working from home for over a decade now).
pbhjpbhj 12y ago
Standard practice for this sort of work is to do sampling and have applications re-searched and re-examined by senior examiners to see if the conclusion is markedly different. Any examiner who's work is appearing to have shortcomings in a review would then get additional review work, without notice, and then get put on a caution. I'd be amazed if USPTO don't have such a sampling review process. Just like I'd be amazed if established companies don't do code review in a similar way [but at least with code you can run the unit tests and ignore the horrible code inside the black box]. Supposedly the applicant is seeking a patent with a high degree of validity as the patent (particularly the claims) marks the boundaries of their IP. A bad patent should be so worthless that an applicant volunteers amendments to bring it in to good order (ensuring it's novelty, inventiveness, workable description of an implementation, etc.). If this is not the case then it's more likely that the legal/court system has a more general fault IMO. Without this backup (applicants seeking good patents as they are the only worthwhile ones), which is the same backup that prevents frivolous lawsuits, you need to implement an extremely rigorous patent system. Basically you need the patent system to surpass the resources of your largest [in this situation] "opponent", ie your patent office needs to have more resources than your largest tech companies. So you fix the legal system in general or your spend 100's of billions on your patent office. As a postscript it's worth reflecting that if your patent office doesn't have at least this most basic of review systems then your State machine [not that sort!] is broken too as it's not performing oversight at a sufficient level as to ensure that it's executive functions are reviewed internally.

jnbiche 12y ago

Fair enough. If the quotas are not adequate for determining the standard of work, then they made a mistake in implementing this work-from-home program. But that's not at all what the focus of the whistleblowers are. They're all upset because they don't know exactly when they're employees are working. To be honest, I only read the first two, but they both mentioned almost nothing about inadequate evaluation methods and focused exclusively on the fact that they didn't know when their employees were working. Well, that's not how work-from-home works for most organizations (and that's never how I've seen it work with successful organizations, having been working from home for over a decade now).

pbhjpbhj 12y ago

Standard practice for this sort of work is to do sampling and have applications re-searched and re-examined by senior examiners to see if the conclusion is markedly different. Any examiner who's work is appearing to have shortcomings in a review would then get additional review work, without notice, and then get put on a caution. I'd be amazed if USPTO don't have such a sampling review process. Just like I'd be amazed if established companies don't do code review in a similar way [but at least with code you can run the unit tests and ignore the horrible code inside the black box]. Supposedly the applicant is seeking a patent with a high degree of validity as the patent (particularly the claims) marks the boundaries of their IP. A bad patent should be so worthless that an applicant volunteers amendments to bring it in to good order (ensuring it's novelty, inventiveness, workable description of an implementation, etc.). If this is not the case then it's more likely that the legal/court system has a more general fault IMO. Without this backup (applicants seeking good patents as they are the only worthwhile ones), which is the same backup that prevents frivolous lawsuits, you need to implement an extremely rigorous patent system. Basically you need the patent system to surpass the resources of your largest [in this situation] "opponent", ie your patent office needs to have more resources than your largest tech companies. So you fix the legal system in general or your spend 100's of billions on your patent office. As a postscript it's worth reflecting that if your patent office doesn't have at least this most basic of review systems then your State machine [not that sort!] is broken too as it's not performing oversight at a sufficient level as to ensure that it's executive functions are reviewed internally.