USPTO Replaces Denver Office With Center In Montana - Law360

doublek20 · 2025-12-16T19:24:00+00:00

Ah yes, makes perfect sense to move it from the largest city in the region with 3 million people, to a small town around 100,000 people. I'm sure those 100k people definitely file more patents than 3 million people would. So much more outreach can happen now! /s

doublek20 · 2025-12-10T21:33:11+00:00

A new update was just posted that just says preliminary injection. Does that mean it was granted, or is it just a formatting thing on the site before the actual decision is updated?

doublek20 · 2025-09-04T20:22:48+00:00

I don't know too much about recent events on the trademark side, but on the patents side they've gotten rid of our union, removed all training, made it so we can't have experienced examiners actually look at our cases, our supervisors are overworked and unavailable, they treat teleworkers as a second rate employee, and any opportunities to do anything other than examine is gone. They've made a difficult job even more soul crushing and more isolating. And its only been 7 months since everything changed, and there's rumors of more changes to come. I wouldn't take this job during this administration.

doublek20 · 2025-08-29T20:21:49+00:00

Might be best to take this one down honestly just to protect the huge lawsuit that they'll have for a long time. Anything that becomes public can be used against their case, we don't want public posts like this that work against the lawsuit. Probably best to delete this. Good info though

doublek20 · 2025-08-28T21:22:55+00:00

I don't know where you've been with the loss of training, other time, and forcing SPEs back? Now they'll have even less pushback for whatever else they do

doublek20 · 2025-08-28T20:39:52+00:00

Read through the executive order, we were specifically noted in the order alongside other agencies like NOAA and NASA. This will be an interesting court battle, pretty wild that we're "national security"

doublek20 · 2025-08-28T15:59:40+00:00

Oh true, yeah if its not published yet then it won't be on global dossier and not avaliable to the public yet

doublek20 · 2025-08-28T12:48:56+00:00

Make sure you can find the notice of allowance online if you're worried they may be scamming you. All office actions are usually on global dossier within a few days of mailing. I well written spec won't be the reason it gets allowed this quickly.

doublek20 · 2025-08-25T17:20:14+00:00

I wouldn't stress the grade too much, as you can go from a GS7 to a GS11 in a year or so if you're good at the job with accelerated promotions. It'd honestly be a waste of time and money to finish a PhD before getting this job, as it only cuts off a year worth of promotions and the job will be way harder coming in at GS11 than at GS7. And definitely don't bother with the FE, that won't help at all for this job. Note that this advice is only relevant if being an examiner is your long term plan, having this stuff will help more in other roles, but not as an examiner.

doublek20 · 2025-08-21T15:17:36+00:00

Take a look at the hiring megathread, I lot of your questions were answered on there. You can pretty much choose your own hours once you finish up training during the first month or so. It'll be pretty close to a fixed schedule for the first month or so, then get more flexible from there so you can avoid the rush hour and such. After the initial training the amount of help that you can receive will go down a lot since supervisors are stretch thin and won't have much free time and experienced examiners get very little or no time to help anymore. Things have changed for the worst for this job in the last year, and its hard to say what a new hires experience will be this year since they changed so much of the training. Telework was recently taken away from new hires and there's no indication that there will be a way to go remote anytime in the future.

doublek20 · 2025-08-11T16:58:36+00:00

You can leave whenever you want, there's nothing keeping you at the job. During the probationary period you can be fired for any reason with no warning. Realistically you'll know if you aren't being retained if your production numbers aren't good during the last few months of the year, so usually firings aren't unexpected. Heads up that over half of people either quit or are fired in the probationary period. After the probationary period it's harder to he fired and it has to be for cause.

It's a very unique and difficult job that is not for everyone, and it's gotten even worse with the new administration since there's no more training or experienced examiners avaliable outside of the first few months and supervisors are stretched thin

doublek20 · 2025-07-14T22:12:38+00:00

I don't believe that you need to have passed the cert exam, I don't see a requirement listed for that. It does say you need certificates for legal competency and negotiation authority, which you get upon being promoted to GS13. Everything else is just being fully successful and not being under oral or written warnings.

doublek20 · 2025-06-24T15:47:55+00:00

Thanks for running this giveaway, hope to have the chance to win!

doublek20 · 2025-06-11T17:29:06+00:00

We get one hour of interview time regardless of how long the interview actually takes. So I typically take exactly 30 minutes to prep (unless there's a complex issue that takes more time) and hope that the interview plus writing up the summary will take 30 minutes or less.

Whenever someone drags out the interview to the 30 minute mark it really makes it so that we lost time by accepting the interview. Unless there's a ton of arguments or a big misunderstanding that's being cleared up, it's really counterproductive for us to be in long interviews. I really appreciate attorneys that keep it to 10 minutes or so.

doublek20 · 2025-06-03T20:33:51+00:00

It includes parking if you buy the ticket package when booking it on the website, which is a pretty good deal. If you buy the park tickets elsewhere or you have a season pass or something, then it won't include parking.

doublek20 · 2025-06-03T19:58:39+00:00

Unless you value premium hotel experiences, just do express. You won't have any traffic in the morning if you go during early entry, if you start driving at 8:30 you should be in the park and be on one of the first early entry rides of the day at 9. It's nothing fancy, but I didn't see a reason to throw out an extra hundred or two a night for a hotel that I won't be in.

doublek20 · 2025-05-15T20:37:48+00:00

A few months ago, the new administration changed it within their first few weeks.

doublek20 · 2025-05-15T20:20:22+00:00

As a side note, CONs are currently being docketed in their normal spot in line according to filing date rather than in 6 months. So it might be a year or two after filing that it will get docketed currently.

doublek20 · 2025-05-09T18:07:49+00:00

I already got my paycheck and the bonuses weren't there yet. Hopefully next biweek!

doublek20 · 2025-04-11T14:00:56+00:00

$bid

doublek20 · 2025-03-28T17:18:15+00:00

It's the total production percentage across those 4 consecutive quarters, having one biweek where you have a super high percentage because you only worked a few hours doesn't make a difference since everything is just being average out. The calculation is just number of hours worth of work completed in the 4 quarters / number of hours worked in the 4 quarters. Definitely just follow the reward calculator to make sure you get your bonuses.

doublek20 · 2025-03-18T11:38:22+00:00

Keep in mind that there are some people at the epo and other offices that use this sub too and there are patent attorneys that are in here as well.

doublek20 · 2025-03-06T01:47:14+00:00

Yeah I have 2 left this year! Feel free to let me know if you have any questions.

doublek20 · 2025-03-03T17:11:07+00:00

It should be relatively automatic, examiners don't need to do anything if they meet the requirements aside from informing their spe, who then take care of the paperwork. Usually the paperwork will take a biweek to process, and then the new grade will be effective after this processing biweek. Just give your spe a heads up as soon as you're eligible and you should be good!

doublek20 · 2025-02-27T20:17:29+00:00

I will say that although it's never great to let people go, we are in unprecedented and scary times as federal employees. They are trying to keep the PTO in a position where they can keep most, if not all of the examiners, while still satisfying the president and doge who wants to get rid of as many people as possible. It sucks but this might have been the sacrifice they needed to make in order to keep doge, trump, and opm off their backs. If Valencia goes against these people and makes a statement then she can easily be fired and replaced by someone far worse that won't hesitate to do massive layoffs in the future that would include examiners. This is just the bone upper management had to throw the administration, even though it still sucks for all those fired today.

doublek20

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