US Patent and Trademark Office Reviews

Pros

Great benefit, very flexible working schedule, high salary

Cons

This is not your typical easy to do government job. It all comes down to production, forget about what your Supervisor say about quality and customer satisfication. I heard many stories from other examiners that the only time people get fired is because people couldn't meet the production. Of course, production varies depending on which art you are examining, some are easy, some are hard, so opinion can vary depending on 2 things: Type of art you are examining and your supervisor.

If you are planning to become patent attorney, it is good to work at PTO for a year or 2, as many legal office love people with PTO experience. However, if you plan to go back to the engineering industry, it is better to leave sooner than later, since the skill you learned from the PTO will most likely not appreciated by the engineering industry.

Advice to Senior Management

Compare to other patent office around the world, we are working way too hard. It would be great if we move to the european system. Also, abandoned case that gets revived should have a different count system.

Pros

Excellent benefits. Lots of opportunities to advance. You get to examine different inventions, and make a difference as to whether an invention should deserve a patent or not. You will get to learn a lot about patent law and know the technology that you are examining with time and experience.

Cons

Production can be stressful sometimes. The job is very challenging. Meeting production every biweek is the challenge. If you don't work hard, you will fall behind. It can be tough to keep up with the production requirements.

Advice to Senior Management

Supervisors can provide more verbal feedback on their examiner's overall work performance. If examiners are doing outstanding work, let them know and praise them. They will feel appreciated and it can motivate them to keep up their superior work.

Pros

The pay is good and your schedule is very flexible. You just come in, do your work, and get the heck out.

Cons

The job is very boring and extremely tedious. It really depends on your manager and what art your stuck reviewing. Very difficult to transfer to another art. No professional development. Skills developed at the USPTO are not directly transferable to any other job. A trained monkey could perform this job.

Pros

The pay is great, and there are a lot of intrinsic benefits, such as an extremely flexible schedule, a gym in one of the buildings, a laptop and work-at-home program, and great health benefits and a decent retirement program.

Cons

The production requirement is challenging, as is the workflow requirement. However, I think the biggest downside is the fact that, while the PTO takes the time to train its employees about how to search and how to apply some legal standards, they never take the time to teach their employees logical reasoning or rhetoric. Arguing is 80% of an examiner's job and the most neglected portion of the PTO's training. Without the skills to argue and persuade effectively, it takes considerably longer to articulate your position in Office Actions because you are searching so hard for a way to say what you are trying to say.

Advice to Senior Management

Teach your examiner's how to argue and persuade effectively.

Pros

Competitive pay per production. Ability to work from home in the future

Cons

The career path does not help you in developing countries with low technological advances

Advice to Senior Management

NA

Pros

If you have a good supervisor this is the best job in the world. The magic word is if,,, 60/40 ratio of bad supervisors...However the good supervisors are worth there weight in gold. You cannot imagine how enjoyable this job is when you have a real supervisor who actually trys to help you. They are easily known at USPTO because many people come to see them and other examiners tell there closest friends.

Cons

This job is supervisor dependent, cant tell you how many good people I know who quit because of incompetent and bad supervisors. If you have a bad supervisor, there is very little you can do. The Union is a joke they can do absolutely nothing for you. Senior management is not interested in fixing this problem so best thing to do is do your best and if you have a bad supervisor try as hard as you can to transfer. In the past they allowed this and what happened was that the good supervisors were flooded with people while the problem supervisors were low on people, so transfering was stopped and discouraged. Ask yourself why do between 35-50 people quit every month a good high paying job?

Advice to Senior Management

Listen as to why people are leaving. Provide a way to get away from bad supervisors. Provide an advocate for examiners to resolve these delicate issues. The examiners love Kappos but are not sure he is getting the whole picture. Lower management is a problem.

Pros

1.The pay is not even remotely comparable to other engineering jobs. This is largely driven by the fact that Patent Examiners develop both technical and legal experience. This makes them easily poached by patent law firms that offer starting salaries from 120K-160K for attorneys and 90K-130K for experienced patent agents and the attorney salaries are lockstep increased (basically you get pay increases every year as opposed to being "promoted"). I have had friends that started at the office, went to law school at night, and now make 200K+. Thus to avoid hemmoraging experienced examiners, the office must offer competitive salaries. An average Primary examiner will make something like 130K and that is without overtime.

2. You can work from home once you become a senior examiner, they will change your duty station to your home if you live within 50 miles. Additionally legislation is due to implemented to waive the 50 mile radius, allowing senior examiners to work anywhere in the US.

Cons

When I came in training was great I learned alot from talking to senior examiners. Sadly the next generation of examiners is not likely to have this as the office is expanding the Telework Program, thus allowing senior examiners like me to leave the office and not pass down skills to the next generation. I am not saying they won't be trained. But having fewer senior examiners at the office may cause a skills problem.

Pros

Flexible job schedule, modern facilities. Opportunity to be exposed to cutting edge technologies.

Cons

Limited career growth unless you start at a higher career track. Significant presence of contractors and consultants. IT projects and programs are process/procedural intensive, limited flexibility for agile development of IT programs and initiatives.

Advice to Senior Management

Provide opportunities such as detail assignments to encourage, enrich and provide diversified skills to government workforce. Look for areas where it is more cost-effective for government employees to perform tasks instead of contractors.

Pros

-Incredibly flexible schedule (after completing the 6 month training program)
-Solid pay with well-laid out plan to make more (promotions/overtime/being over 110% for the fiscal year)
-Little forced interaction with others (essentially just you and a computer, with the occasional meeting with your supervisor or attorney)
-Your own office (well, you share it with one other person, but at least its not a cube)
-Production goals will let you know where you're at (though don't rely 100% on it)

Cons

-Little interaction with others (essentially just you and a computer, with the occasional meeting with your supervisor or attorney)
-Feels like a white collar sweat shop at times
-Production goals can be stressful if you fall behind
-Poor communication between examiners and the people who ultimately decide your employment (see below)
-Inconsistent work requirement while they demand consistency (while most cases have 20 claims, some have far more actual elements to be found and some are far easier. But production compensation will be equivalent regardless. Ultimately i think the system is fair as far as total production awarded, but some bi-weeks you'll easily get 150% while others you might struggle to get 80%. see below for more)

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I was an examiner at the PTO for ~2 years and while I had my ups and downs with the job, I'm ultimately sad that I was not retained. I started as a GS-5 (which ensures minimal production goals) and remained fully successful every quarter I was there (though I'll admit I wasn't an ideal employee and did a good deal more work towards the end of quarters than at the beginning). I was happy with the pay I was receiving along with the comfortable production level (amount of work to do each bi-week) so I never attempted to do more/get promotions. I was recently terminated 1.5 weeks before my 2 year mark because they didn't think I was a good long term fit there. I was at ~110% for the fiscal year (1.5 quarters in) and up for my gs-7 promotion this bi-week. However, I spent the first 1.5 months at the patent office doing the bare minimum and achieving 95% production. I talked with friends/fellow employees with longer tenure (though ~3 years, so not that much more) and they ensured me that so long as I was fully successful, that I'd be in good shape. Obviously, that's not the case. Hopefully if anyone reads this and then begins work at the patent office as a GS-5, know that you must get a promotion within the first 18-20 months else its unlikely you'll be retained. I'm not sure if this is the case 100% of the time, but it felt like during my meeting with the director that the decision to fire me had been made months in advance (at the meeting of my termination on my 23rd month of work).

As for consistency, which they ultimately cited as my reason for termination (not that they needed one as you're a probationary employee for 2 years, which I heard recently has been changed to 1) because I would have bi-weeks with 180-200% then others with 40-60%. The result was 110-120% production but they maintained that because I was inconsistent that I was not as good as an employee who did 100-105% every bi-week. I'd recommend future employees to save/hold back cases if they are over 130% for that bi-week, and put them towards bi-weeks when needed.

Advice to Senior Management

While the production system is incredibly transparent to know where you stand as far as production/standing, it ultimately misled me to believe I was in good shape (always receiving fully successful ratings) when I never was. This was never voiced to me early (when it actually mattered) and by the time I was told that I needed to get a promotion it was probably too late. Ultimately its my own fault for being in a gray area (fully successful but not taking promotions as a GS-5) but had I known earlier I was required to take promotions I would have.

Pros

you will have a good pay, but will have a lot of work, but doable, bonus is really good and notivation to be there.

Cons

a lot of work, not that much free time for yourself, somo attorneys are not that nice, long days of work,

Advice to Senior Management

more time for the employess to work on the cases, some are too complex, more thechnical training for the employee too.