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Topic: Working for the USPTO (Read 443177 times) |
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Isaac
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Posts: 3472
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Re: Working for the USPTO
« Reply #685 on: Oct 11th, 2006, 8:37am » |
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on Oct 11th, 2006, 8:08am, stuff wrote:| What happened to people taking advantage of the tuition reimbursement program when they cut it? Were they grandfathered in until the end of law school, or were they just out of luck? |
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Examiners were definitely not grandfathered in until the end of law school. The program was continued for the fall 2002 semester during which termination of the program was announced leaving examiners to come up with spring 2003 semester tuition.
In the interest of full disclosure, I was not working at the PTO at the time and already possessed a law degree during my time of employment at the PTO. This is not an issue that personally affected me.
My take on things is that the law school program is a retention/recruitment benefit that might in some cases actually lead to examiners qualifying for higher paying jobs and leaving. When the economy is down and recruitment is less of a concern, the PTO may not see much wisdom in paying examiners to go to law school.
You can read POPAs take on things in their Nov. 2002 newsletter.
http://www.popa.org/pdf/newsletters/2002_11.pdf
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Isaac
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stuff
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Re: Working for the USPTO
« Reply #686 on: Oct 11th, 2006, 11:01am » |
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Recruitment's a pretty big concern these days, right? I mean, the PTO is supposed to hire 1000 people in the next couple of years or something. Where does that number come from? Why do they need to hire so many?
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Jonathan
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Re: Working for the USPTO
« Reply #687 on: Oct 11th, 2006, 11:34am » |
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They are on a hiring binge due to record-level backlogs of unexamined patent applications and the backlogs have been increasing year after year.
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stuff
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Re: Working for the USPTO
« Reply #688 on: Oct 11th, 2006, 11:39am » |
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If they're hiring so many and choosing to keep their law school tuition program, doesn't that imply that they'll have to be more selective about the program's participants?
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Isaac
Senior Member
Posts: 3472
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Re: Working for the USPTO
« Reply #689 on: Oct 11th, 2006, 11:44am » |
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on Oct 11th, 2006, 11:01am, stuff wrote:| Recruitment's a pretty big concern these days, right? I mean, the PTO is supposed to hire 1000 people in the next couple of years or something. Where does that number come from? Why do they need to hire so many? |
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My understanding is that the want to hire 1000 examiners every year for the next five years. The PTO simply has too much work for the examiners they are able to retain to complete in a timely and complete manner. The PTO is seeking to hire more examiners and is also pursuing a number of initiatives to reduce the per case effort required of examiners.
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Isaac
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