Currently, examiner productivity is measured based upon examining hours. On a biweekly basis, the formula for examining hours is work hours minus non-examining hours, such as conducting applicant interviews, appeals conferences, training, including senior examiners helping junior examiners, art search panel meetings, sick leave, and vacation. Note that essential examiner functions are not considered productive.

Based upon an examiner survey, nearly two-thirds of examiners work unpaid overtime to make production under the current system. The incentive awards offered by management are ignored by nearly two-thirds of examiners.

The new system is a flat production goal per quarter, established per examiner based upon statistically determined levels of productivity. One examiner estimates that the statistically determined levels should bump up the minimum productivity per examiner by about 5% while reducing the non-examining time that can be claimed.

One assumption built into the flat-goal system is consistent time off. If an examiner takes more vacation or sick leave than the statistically calculated production goal allots, the examiner must cash in the paid leave, and still that missed work time must be made up or the quarterly goal is missed.

The trademark side already has this system in place, to much grievance. The system works fine assuming that your computer never goes down, you are never sick, and you never want to take a vacation. So, if someone has a prolonged illness, like the flu in winter, or wants to save up vacation time for a two week trip, they will need to cash in their leave plus work overtime to make up the missing work for that quarter.

The bottom-line assessment from examiners is that flat-goal is likely to worsen attrition and further hurt the quality of office actions, as examiners strive to hustle more paper in less time. 95% of examiners surveyed are against the flat-goal program. 98% said they would quit training, assigning, and/or classifying under the flat-goal program.

As POPA, the examiner's professional association, opines:

A solid majority of patent examiners work voluntary overtime to meet production goals, indicating that raising those goals under the USPTO’s proposed “flat-goal” (or raw goal) performance appraisal plan (PAP) would force many examiners to work more unpaid overtime, quit or be fired, according to the results of a May 2006 POPA survey of examiners.