Here are some of the agency's self-described challenges.

* The increasing number and technical complexity of patent applications, coupled with the ability to hire new and replacement patent examiners, continues to challenge the USPTO. The rate at which patent applications are being filed has increased beyond the rate at which we are currently able to examine patent applications, resulting in an increasing backlog awaiting examination that could approach one million cases by 2010 without significant changes. Patent pendency now averages more than 30 months and is expected to increase to 33.8 months (to issue) in 2011. Our challenge is to move toward a patent system that consistently meets the needs of applicants and the public, and enables the USPTO to issue quality patents in a timely manner.

* Moreover, unlike businesses, we are subject to government personnel rules, which at times restricts our ability to quickly respond to changing workloads and hire the number and type of employees who can deliver the services our applicants and others expect from us. Therefore, the USPTO must use the most effective personnel practices, technologies, flexibilities and management techniques to continually maintain and develop an appropriately sized, skilled and diverse staff that is genuinely committed to delivering our important patent and trademark services to the American people.

As to 2005/2006 accomplishments, the agency crows:

* Hired 978 patent examiners in 2005 and are on target to hiring 1,200 in 2006 to address the increasing backlog of unexamined applications.

* Developed an academy approach that intensifies the training to new patent examiners that is a major improvement over the traditional academy. New employees are given in-depth, basic training for up to one year that combines lectures, practical applications, small group study, and one-on-one on the spot assistance with real patent applications.

* Piloted a Patents' hoteling program enabling patent examiners to access the systems they need to do their jobs from home, allowing the Office to expand the size of the Patent Examining Corps to address increased workloads.

* Developed a new pre-appeal brief conference pilot program enabling applicants to request a panel of examiners to formally review their application rejections before they file an appeal brief, thereby reducing the number of applications processed by the Board of Patent Appeals and Interferences (BPAI).

* All ex parte patent reexaminations pending for more than two years were processed to final determination. We continue to carefully track and provide the necessary resources to keep the process current.

* Launched a web-based patent application filing system that allows electronic filing of patent applications (including automated processing of images). Electronic filing prevents introduction of errors during processing. The processing is expedited because electronically filed documents are directly "soft scanned" into IFW thereby eliminating the indexing and scanning process time. Documents are immediately available to the examiner in IFW and to the applicant in the Patent Application Information and Retrieval (PAIR) system.

The office has some sense of reality that adding more bodies doesn't immediately solve the pendency problem.

Exacerbating the problem is our growing patent workload and the resulting need to attract and hire even larger numbers of new patent examiners. In FY 2006, the USPTO plans to hire 1,200 patent professionals, and in years FY 2007 - FY 2012, we plan to hire at least 1,000 a year, for a total of at least 7,200 patent examiner hires in 7 years. This level of hiring is a critical component of the plans to address patent pendency regardless of the time frame for such improvements. Notwithstanding these massive hiring efforts, in the absence of other changes to the current examination system only modest gains in reducing patent pendency are likely to be achieved in the near term. In fact, until these new hires are effectively absorbed into the examination system, average patent pendency will continue to increase.

The agency wishes for some alternative examination system, but it's a chimera.

The current examination process imposes high demands for resources on the part of both the applicant and the USPTO. Further, the high demand for examination under this traditional process has exceeded the current abilities of the USPTO to examine applications as they are filed, resulting in an increasing backlog of unexamined applications.

An open question that the USPTO will address with its stakeholders and in conjunction with the Administration, the Congress and Trilateral partners is whether or not, as an alternative to the current examination system, there is some combination of examination processes and patent products that will better allow applicants to choose what determinations and results they need and what are the most efficient processes to pursue those results and at the same time provide a more efficient use of the examination resources of the USPTO by only providing the level of examination required by the applicant. The answer to that question is by no means certain.

Most tellingly, three paragraphs of substance-bereft prose address the challenge towards improving the quality of the examination process; practically an admission that the agency is struggling to get a grip.

Patent quality is always a topic of debate. Universally acknowledged as an expected and required outcome from the examination process, its definition and current level have achieved far less consensus. That definition and current perception of quality have as many facets as the perspectives of those who characterize this desired result; including corporate executives, patent applicants and owners, competitors, prosecution practitioners, venture capitalists, litigation specialists, patent examiners, oversight bodies of the patent system, academics and the general public. Frequently characterized as an after-the-fact outcome following extensive and tortuous litigation and review of the patent grant, both in the courts of law and public opinion, it seems to have little relationship to the initial examination process and its finite scope. Thus, producing public confidence that patent grants are of the highest possible quality has been a most elusive target for the last several decades.

One of the most vexing problems in the area of assessing patent examination quality has been the wide-held belief that the current quality review measures of the USPTO inspire little confidence as to the accuracy and meaningfulness of the data and the propriety of any established performance targets. Additionally, whereas the primary quality measure of the USPTO, the allowed application error rate, has varied between 4 and 7 percent over more than a twenty year period, the perception of continuously improving quality has not been achieved to date. The USPTO has undertaken numerous efforts to address these issues by expanding the data considered in this process and refining its assessment processes including introducing an in-process review component to the quality data, employing quality review results to guide the development of examiner training programs, looking at customer satisfaction data, using larger samples of data, using data more targeted to the individual examiner level and considering data from both the supervisory and quality assurance review processes. None of these efforts has achieved the desired results of continuously improving examination quality and increased public confidence in the USPTO quality measures.

Determining what should be the appropriate measures of patent quality and what should be the performance targets given the current initial examination process and levels of resource funding provided to support that process is of critical interest to both the USPTO and the patent community. The patent community could assist in developing an objective, to the maximum extent practical, set of review criteria that could be applied across all selected review processes to promote greater consistency and credibility for the measurements of quality. Further, this effort could determine what measures should be used to assess examination quality, how these measures should be reported and what meaningful quality targets should be the goals of an initial system of patent examination. A critical component in the process of determining these measures and targets would be achieving the proper balance between the desire for assured high quality results from and the inherent realities of the resource limitations and ambiguities of the initial examination process.

Here are crucial, quantitative targets the agency sets for itself. 'xx' may be construed as less than 'XX', or otherwise, depending upon phase of the moon, shoe size, grime buildup, et cetera.

* Pendency time will be reduced to xx months in 2008 and to XX months in 2012.
* Backlogs of unexamined cases will be reduced by XX percent a year.
* Patent allowance error rate will be reduced to XX percent in 2008 and XX percent in 2012.
* Patent in-process examination compliance rate will increase to XX percent in 2008 and XX percent in 2012.
* Minimize the impact of significant increase in workload on current pendency goals.
* Improve inputs to application process through assuring currency, two-way communication with patent practitioners.
* Provide timely determination of inventor rights for both inventors and the public.
* Produce timely and high quality actions and avoid rework.
* Enhance the ability to get the "best prior art".
* Combine efforts of the examiner and applicant to complete examination process with quality results.
* Develop quality metrics and performance targets that increase public confidence.

Love those "quality metrics and performance targets that increase public confidence."

Most critically, the agency is aware of the need to -

Establish structures and processes that allow USPTO to continuously hire highly qualified diverse personnel whose skills, knowledge and competencies match our mission-critical needs; improve retention of our qualified staff; and make significant investments in the people we hire.

Not incidentally, earlier this week, in the Patent Commissioner's Corner -

The USPTO is sending to the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) a request for a 7 percent across-the-board increase to the special pay rate for all patent professionals currently covered by Special Pay Table 0576. The request was prepared through the joint efforts of management and the Patent Office Professional Association (POPA).

As an examiner observed, "I am glad to hear that examiners will get the pay rate in 2007 that was promised in 2003."

More from Commissioner's Corner -

We also initiated recruitment incentives to attract highly desirable engineers and scientists to join our Agency as patent examiners. Meanwhile, we are investigating the possibility of implementing retention incentives to maintain present employees in areas where attrition is the highest.

All of these efforts are evidence that we have come a long way together in improving quality, communication and employee work life conditions. I recognize that none of these programs could have been successful without the foresight and talent of countless employees. I applaud everyone's efforts in making these ideas more than just a concept, but a reality.

There's Commissioner John Doll, an ethnic Vulcan, wishing all to "live long and prosper."

And so, as one examiner said with resignation, "Beam me up, Scotty. I'm outta' here."