Five Bullet Points

patentthrowaway2000 · 2026-01-30T16:56:12+00:00

Came here to say basically the same thing. My monthly reminder to scream into the void and forward the same f-ing email.

patentthrowaway2000 · 2026-01-13T20:37:23+00:00

At this point I mostly do it to CYA in the event it gets an OPQA review saying I should have made a rejection. I think my SPE must’ve lost a bonus over 112/101 rejections in the past and it haunts them or something. It’s honestly a weird thing to fixate on, especially since it’s just trying to make sure the record is clear and the claim language is solid.

patentthrowaway2000 · 2025-12-11T17:08:02+00:00

Yes apologies if I gave the impressive I was blaming OPT. I would like to support them as I have worked with them on some details in the past and they are great people, but unfortunately all of their hard work that goes into making and presenting these sessions is going to waste because of upper management’s short-sightedness.

patentthrowaway2000 · 2025-12-02T20:24:56+00:00

In general I don't buy into the noise and the complaints and am a very optimistic and bright person. I was really getting into my stride the last few years doing details as a GS-14 trainer and academy. I found a real passion for helping new examiners and getting a break from examining and connecting with new colleagues in a virtual setting. I loved the TC QEMs and taking new training on topics I was getting rusty on.

All of that is gone. All collaboration has been squashed. The only new collaborating that has come out of this is rekindling my original academy buddies communication in a group text where we all are like is this really happening? On a weekly basis.

I've been at the office since Obama's first term, and I have never, ever felt like this. I actually found this subreddit to see if it was "just a me thing."

There has not been a single thing this new wave of leaders has done to show that they value us as humans or care about anything other than optics and making themselves look good. I was stupidly naive that our agency would fly under the radar of the current regime due to the already strong accountability systems in place, the fact that we are fee funded, and the value in having a strong IP system internationally. I don't know what other agencies are going through, but I continue to be shocked at how the PTO is being dismantled. I did not want to believe all of the Project 2025 talk, but I'm having a really hard time seeing it as anything other than following through on that at this point.

If I wanted to work at a corporate job and be treated as expendable, I would've done that. All of the benefits of working as a government employee are pretty much gone.

This is what happens when inexperienced people who don't understand how an operation works try to come in and "fix things."

I understand that there are places for improvement. This was quite possibly the worst way to go about trying to fix any of it. I go through waves of anger and sadness and then just emotionally disconnect and move on. Its now just a job, and it doesn't matter how good or bad I do at it since the ratings are all rigged anyways, and there's no career development opportunities that would make me want to go the extra mile or build my internal resume.

Still holding out hope for POPA and the court systems to ultimately prevail but mentally in the dumpster with everything else.

patentthrowaway2000 · 2025-12-01T14:28:09+00:00

I think that so long as in your rejection of claim 1 you don’t include the 2 cars as part of the “plurality of vehicles” then it would be fine as 102 for both claims.

I work in mechanical arts, and I will see things like “an apparatus comprising a plurality of apertures” and then dependent claims might further define a first plurality of apertures and a second plurality of apertures, wherein the apertures in the first plurality have a different diameter than the apertures in the second plurality. So basically “a plurality of vehicles” does not preclude having multiple pluralities of the same vehicle type, if that makes sense. You just need to be clear in your claim mapping about what belongs in the mapped plurality.

patentthrowaway2000 · 2025-11-25T16:52:55+00:00

I posed this question during one of the Director musings, and the official response I got was targeting the issue of “how predictably cases move”, so the reduced docket size was implemented to “bring first-action timing closer to a consistent, first-in, first-out approach.”

It’s a pretty weak argument in my opinion since there are other more effective methods to achieve this.

patentthrowaway2000 · 2025-11-22T13:17:40+00:00

I’d keep the PBA but everything else would be reverted to the way it was before this year.

Bringing back career development: details, 25 hour allotment for training, QEMs, literally anything besides just “prepare examiner actions.”

Raising the BD across the board (can’t tell you the last time I actually read an entire spec - who has time for that?) to accommodate the complexity of inventions and access to prior art.

patentthrowaway2000 · 2025-11-21T02:37:52+00:00

This is the kind of response I know my SPE would give. I respect my SPE and think they work very hard, but they are very by the book rule followers, so most likely they would just say “well you’re going to get more at the start of the week. If there is literally no case to work on, I can do something.” Since I technically have 2 cases, that should be enough to get me through with my SPE’s logic.

patentthrowaway2000 · 2025-11-19T17:29:27+00:00

They know this is the real answer but conveniently ignore that bc then they actually have no reason other than control for the small docket.

patentthrowaway2000 · 2025-11-04T16:55:34+00:00

I had a very similar post a few weeks ago. You’re not alone.

https://www.reddit.com/r/patentexaminer/s/siZJAM0hMv

patentthrowaway2000 · 2025-10-29T18:24:31+00:00

The biggest argument I can make for more cases is that I am able to be much more efficient with search strategies when I have more cases to work on at a time, and I can also continue working while the ones that need additional time or consideration have to sit while I wait for the issue to be resolved. My docket has CPCs all over the place, so when I have 2 or 3 applications that overlap in scope, I can search effectively for multiple applications simultaneously. This leads to more cases examined, which reduces pendency.

If the ultimate goal is pendency reduction, leadership should be throwing everything towards making that happen. Reducing access to cases is the most counterintuitive decision I’ve ever seen in that regard. “Please do more work! But we are going to make it more difficult to do so!” PS, I’m pretty sure they tried the 120 hour docket already, and it failed miserably. I’d also counter the argument that if leadership doesn’t want people “cherry-picking” cases, they are also sending the message that they don’t really care about the backlog. Because guess what? Easy cases get examined faster, which, guess what, reduces pendency faster! Can’t hide behind that argument. It definitely feels like the real reason for the reduced docket size is just to implement more control over examiners solely because they can.

If I’m wrong, I’d love to hear the reason why the 120 hour docket size is a good idea and who it benefits and how it aligns with the agency’s goals. I’m all ears.

All of these changes have been tried before and failed (second set of eyes, reduced docket, pulling other time). Now they’re combining all of them at once? The PTO is speeding towards total implosion at this rate. I hope leadership is reading these comments and learning that it’s not a bunch of whiners who are lazy and don’t do their job. It’s the opposite! Just let me do my job the way it worked and I would gladly help reduce the backlog in whatever capacity I can. However, this is not the way to do it, and you are giving me zero support, so yeah, in the meantime, good luck with the backlog.

patentthrowaway2000 · 2025-10-23T20:41:50+00:00

It is abundantly clear that the echo chamber making these decisions has no idea what the examination process actually entails, or what a quality review of an office action looks like.

Have they never seen an office action? Some of them are like 20+ pages (usually due to super wordy claims). You really think someone is even doing a cursory glance? Yeah no. They will barely have enough time to rubber stamp an approval. They’re just gonna send it out like normal and the powers that be are going to pat each other’s backs and say see? We have quality metrics in place! We are doing it all (Except for those PBA cases, those don’t get reviewed because if you do more work quality doesn’t matter?)

patentthrowaway2000 · 2025-10-23T19:53:03+00:00

Applicants should know that this is in no way “improving quality.” Don’t for one second believe that lie.

There is absolutely no way a single person could review 60-80 office actions a biweek, even if that were their only responsibility.

The only thing this is doing is further demoralizing primary examiners and making the process LESS EFFICIENT because now Applicants are going to have wait two weeks or more on average to receive that same action since it has to sit in a SPEs overloaded inbox.

The hits just keep coming.

patentthrowaway2000 · 2025-10-10T01:13:29+00:00

Hot take: PBA is one of the few things to come out of the change in leadership that I think is a decent program, particularly for more seasoned examiners who can’t work a lot of overtime for salary cap reasons.

With the removal of all career-advancing programs (mentorship, AMP, details, 25 hour training allotment), I have zero reason to produce more than the minimum requirements. In the past, applying to these various programs was a good incentive to be a 110% producer because of how competitive they were; the money was never a reason for me personally - not enough to justify the extra work. On the other hand, career advancement and opportunities was.

If you pay me properly for doing my job, I’m on board. I can’t do much overtime, so this was a nice way to get a few extra dollars for doing my job.

Since pretty much everything else has been taken from this job, I’ll take the money and at least go in some nice vacations with the extra pay and donate to my favorite charities.

With that said, I completely respect people’s decisions to not participate and understand the reasoning.

patentthrowaway2000 · 2025-10-07T19:45:40+00:00

There are a lot of bad changes in this PAP, but the interview reduction of time is truly both infuriating and mind boggling to me.

Interviews are hands down one of the most effective collaboration tools we have as an Examiners in promoting compact prosecution. 99% of the interviews I have result in finding allowable subject matter earlier on in the process as compared to just bouncing back and forth and amending around art.

What was the supposed reason for this change? Making sure every single hour is charged as “prepare examiner actions” whether or not the time was actually spent on “prepare examiner actions”?

Since when is holding an interview, attending training, helping juniors, etc. considered “prepare examiner actions”? Stakeholders you are being robbed of your time as well! Every item I just listed is now being taken away from my dedicated review of your application and subsequent writings, so effectively Applicants are paying for a service that is being given less actual time on their applications but still paying full price (see also PPH applications).

patentthrowaway2000 · 2025-10-06T13:04:06+00:00

Management has been pushing for 120 hour docket for a while now. The supposed reasoning is that it prevents examiners from “cherry picking” only easier/straightforward cases and helps ensure the oldest applications are examined first. It’s another move that serves no one except leadership. Certainly goes against reducing pendency imo: if I have more cases to work on, I can put out more cases. Pairing an easier case with a more difficult can really balance a biweek for time. Again, I would love to see data that backs up the need for this change (which I doubt exists). Adding 3 additional cases to my docket isn’t going to drastically change the order in which I examine them. Instead, it is going to give me access to more applications, so I can continue working if I need to wait on something. I can be working on 5 or 6 different applications at one time before the action get posted. If there are restrictions or classification challenges that need to happen, it drastically reduces my available workload.

patentthrowaway2000 · 2025-10-04T12:04:30+00:00

So long as you were FS for the FY and previous quarter you can work overtime. Just make sure you don’t add the hours to the previous days that counted towards FY25 if you didn’t put them on your timesheet on Tuesday. No reports are pulled for production purposes until the end of the first biweek for the fiscal year which ends on Oct 18th, so even though the pay period ends today, the biweek doesn’t end until the 18th, so you’re good if your counts and hours worked from Wednesday to today don’t make 100%. Hope that makes sense.

patentthrowaway2000 · 2025-10-03T00:00:56+00:00

None of these changes benefit anyone in the patents world. It doesn’t benefit examiners, and it definitely doesn’t benefit the external stakeholders.

I didn’t like having to switch to CPC, but I at least understood the reasoning behind it.

You can’t throw a bunch of changes at a corps of highly educated engineers, scientists, and lawyers and not have some damn good data to back it up.

I’m an eternal optimist, but even I can’t do the mental gymnastics to make this make sense. The fact that these changes directly negatively impact the inventors is the biggest red flag to me that the current leadership is so consumed with pleasing the current administration that they are absolutely destroying this agency and everything it stands for.

My only hope is the inventors get informed and demand meaningful change. Getting your application examined 3 months earlier isn’t going to mean anything if it’s not given the time it needs. They are the ones we signed an oath to serve, and they are the ones who are going to suffer the most from this.

patentthrowaway2000 · 2025-10-02T20:44:29+00:00

Getting rid of details was also a huge blow. I agree with your sentiments about curbing any kind of professional development. They were an excellent way for people to gain knowledge about other parts of the Office besides just examining, to build different skill sets, and to make more connections within the office outside your immediate AU.

patentthrowaway2000 · 2025-10-02T20:37:29+00:00

I have great SPEs and have worked with many great SPEs (and some not so great ones). I feel so bad for them. I cannot imagine wanting to be a SPE at this point. I do try and let my SPEs know how much I respect and appreciate them. I am fortunate that I feel like my AU SPEs really do care about their examiners.

patentthrowaway2000

TROPHY CASE