Restructuring the Patent Trademark Office

The United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) has been struggling to respond effectively to this sharp increase in workload. Between FY 1991 and FY 2001, the patent examiner workforce increased almost 80 percent to accommodate an 83 percent increase in patent applications.

But patent examiner recruitment and retention problems impeded this staffing expansion. Over this same period, the annual attrition rate for patent examiners averaged 10.5 percent, substantially above the government-wide attrition rate for technical employees.