1: Examination Quality
Provide high quality examination of patent applications. Other Information:
INITIATIVES ● Enhance recruitment to hire 1,200 new patent examiners a year for an extended period of time, including examiners
with degrees and/or experience in areas of emerging technologies ● Expand telework and explore establishing regional USPTO
offices ● Leverage the effectiveness of the Patent Training Academy to enhance training and create chief scientist positions
to focus on technical training ● Explore partnerships with universities to offer IP courses to science and engineering students,
develop an internship program, and train students in IP to create a ready pool of potential examiner candidates ● Utilize
recruitment and retention incentives to hire and retain a highly qualified and motivated workforce ● Develop alternatives
to the current performance and bonus systems ● Enhance search quality by improving examiners’ ability to retrieve the most
relevant prior art in the examination process ● Enhance the skill sets of examiners authorized to train others by providing
formal training to all personnel who are responsible for training new examiners and reviewing their work ● Design and implement
a comprehensive quality system for patent examination that includes: – Collecting and analyzing all quality review information
for consistency and to provide feedback and improved training – Offering a separate quality award that better recognizes the
accomplishments of examiners who meet or exceed assigned quality expectations – Conducting targeted reviews in problem areas,
which focus on examination processes or functions that show problematic trends – Encouraging submission of relevant prior
art by participating with a consortium of patent users, applicants, attorneys, and members of the academic community to build
a system to actively solicit prior art, especially with regard to software applications – Developing quality measures and
performance targets in conjunction with external stakeholders – Obtaining an independent verification of patent quality using
existing Office of Patent Quality Assurance (OPQA) measures in an effort to increase public confidence in the USPTO quality
measures and targets ● Support reclassification efforts to improve search quality through increased use of classified searching
● Competitively source Patent Cooperation Treaty (PCT) Chapter I applications, freeing examiners to focus on national cases
● Provide assistance to the open source community in their development of an open source database to provide examiners with
potential prior art ● Explore examination reform through the rule making process to create better focused examination and
enhance information exchange between applicant and examiner ● Enhance the Board of Patent Appeals and Interferences’ (BPAI)
flexibility and accountability by addressing projected jurisdictional expansion resulting from continuation reform, pre-appeal
brief conferences, and potential post-grant legislation ● Enhance registered practitioner requirements by developing a program
for Continuing Legal Education, implementing an annual registration fee, and reviewing qualifications to practice before the
Office
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